-Q.T.B.
Through the darkness that I was looking at beyond my window a thought did come and fade, I wasn’t sure if my heart had thrown it at my head or if it was a line from a childhood song. The thought that blew in that night was “What passion is beyond my nights frame?”… The frame was my window- with a few cobwebs of night coming in at me, I did not know what mysterious delights were beyond it, and I had no idea how to claim my piece of the green carnation dawn.
The kid called Fate I sat at the wheel of my Uranian car. He was knowledgeable in all things literary, artistic and musical and he decided to place in my heart the keys to all things holy and wonderfully shameful.
he had the ear for soft sensitivity- ‘of course you like the Smiths and belle & Sebastian! You’re a big puss’ he said ‘ and better a puss than Virginia Wolfe!’. I subsequently came out to my mother with Belle and Sebastian playing on the family‘s loudspeakers.
Into my ears Fate dribbled the words of Ginsberg ‘Everything is holy‘, (tho never in the religious sense). When everything is holy there is no need for religion. Ginsberg was smothered in life and bare of lace edgings… I came out to my friends after I read ‘Kaddish’. I honour he as he did Blake.
Fate threw me E.M. Forster’s ‘Maurice’ and ‘A room with a view’ they helped sand the edges off my rough and innocent heart- “Maurice’ informed me of my choices and ‘A room‘… informed me of what the end result could be if I was to make the right one.
‘Brideshead Revisited’ by Waugh injected a much needed shot of class and lifestyle fun- I learnt about white suits, gin, cigarettes and the grandness and fantastic randomness of aesthetic beauty.
I was schooled on Greek love, and on Macedonian love- Alexander the Great- a man who caught the world in a net of gay myth. To know about he was when I first put the words “great” and “gay” together. now I hold them to the world like Apollo‘s sword.
‘My weakness is that I do what I will and get what I want’ said Mons. Wilde, whose plays and poems and life as a whole is deeply embedded in my queer ass soul. Fate showed me Wilde and in doing so completely convinced me to come out and accept myself in all my glory. Green carnation and all. He is our martyr Wilde and he is patron saint to all gays everywhere. Rejoice in he.
I was the lily planted ’neath authors and poets and musicians and I was nurtured and taught how to accept myself, and become aware of myself. It was as if Fate, that reckless philosopher, was showing me how to live through the characters and their words, preparing me for when I would have to face the beautiful shame of my own life. And when I look out to the nights I know exactly what passion is beyond my nights frame, and I, like Oscar, like Alexander, like Maurice, like Ginsberg, know and love what it is to be a part of this great big grand queer machine...