Enjoy The Silence

I’ve lost many things in my time; my mother in a supermarket aged 3; my cherry (to both a boy and a lady); part of my septum; watches, wallets and so many mobile phones in one year that the last time I called to report it the lady at T-Mobile gasped, “Och, not again?” Every loss has pissed me off to a greater or lesser degree but this week I’ve lost something which has upset me so much I just want to scream. Except that I can’t scream because the precious thing I’ve lost this time is my voice. I’m not just a little bit hoarse either – a trip to the doctor’s first thing Wednesday morning, having woken up mute and in excruciating pain, saw me diagnosed with viral laryngitis.

Now, the irony of my having been struck dumb, when normally nothing and no-one can shut me up, has been lost on exactly nobody. While I know any ribbing is good natured, I know too that even my nearest and dearest are probably having a little chuckle that this most talkative and ebullient of men should - for once! – be rendered speechless. I have to rest my voice as much as possible for a week and then, fingers crossed, I should be back to my usual gobby self; for now I can at least talk to you, so let me fill you in on what’s been going on these last couple of weeks.

The most exciting thing I guess is that the silver lining to the cloud of having this bloody virus is the enforced cessation of smoking. I’d be lying if I claimed to have previously given giving up any more than the most tentative of passing thoughts, despite of course being fully aware of everything a pack a day was doing to my body. Unlike the drinking, which was having very tangible – and public – ill-effects, and my promiscuity, which I briefly hated but learned to accept as part of my make-up, smoking was the one vice I never really wanted to give up. It might sound crazy but because the damage smoking does is internal and unpredictable (sure you can get cancer, but you might not, whereas if you drink you will get pissed!) I’d carried on for 15 years with reckless abandon, stopping only twice – once for 48 hours pre- and post-surgery, and then for one stretch of about four weeks when The Ex and I decided to quit together but were lured back on to the weed by his mother, of all people. This time though it’s different as I finally have the impetus and incentive anyone needs to quit. The equation’s a simple one – quit and get voice back, keep smoking and enjoy chronic laryngitis for life. Talk about a no-brainer. Like the drinking, I know kicking the smokes is going to be a challenge so watch this space for progress reports.

Prior to falling ill I’d had a pretty fantastic run of engagements all of which served to show me how blessed I am when it comes to friendships. Thursday I went for drinks and dinner with The Ex and over pizza and Pinot we shared stories of exploits and sexploits that even a couple of months ago we probably wouldn’t have felt able to discuss. There’s certainly been a turning point in our relationship recently and I feel we’ve gone now from being Exes Who Stayed Friends to being, well, friends. The next evening I had a pure Sex and The City moment as Glenda, OLoC, ActiveWill and I descended on Suzie Wong, Soho’s latest swanky eaterie for cocktails and ‘Oriental tapas’. The place is gloriously fitted out in lacquer, paper screens and all manner of Chinoiserie, and staffed by an almost comedic cast of lady-like boys and, well, lady-boys. The food was fantastic, service was friendly if a little slapdash, the cocktails were strong and spirits were sky-high; if only someone had filmed it we could have sold it as a pilot to HBO.

From there OLoC and I travelled on to Brixton for PWdeK and the Duchess of Derbyshire’s joint birthday do at The Manse. I always love these occasions as the whole extended gang comes out to play, and this was no exception with The Other Ex, Best Straight Lady Friend and Big Rob among the revellers I’d not seen for a while. This was a permission-to-drink night so I got stuck into the vodka but managed to hold back from getting absolutely plastered. I may as well have not bothered though, for as the evening wore on, so the party favours came out, and two consonants and a vowel later I was staggering saucer-eyed for the nightbus, fascinated by the lights and the texture of the pavement (which I became better acquainted with at one point and have a cracking bruise on my left hand to show for it.)

Saturday morning came and in spite of the previous night’s excesses I woke up feeling moderately human (still a little wired if truth be told) and awaited the arrival of The South African who was accompanying me to lunch at my Second Favourite Lesbian’s pad up the road. The Saffa, while only my second favourite South African (Charlize Theron tops the chart), is rapidly qualifying as a New Best Friend what with his immense charm, gossipiness and bitchy-as-mine sense of humour. Being drop-dead gorgeous also helps – I do like my friends to be easy on the eye as well you know. He and 2FL, as well as Mrs 2FL and their other gorgeous gay guest, hit it off a treat and as the wine went down and the volume went up it became quickly apparent that we were in for a long afternoon. Sure enough with dessert digested we adjourned to the de facto gay boozer round the corner where, joined by The Saffa’s delightful Straight Lady Friend, we spent an enjoyable if fairly profane few hours until first The Lesbians and then I admitted defeat and headed home to collapse. The Brewers had been mooted but my stamina isn’t what it used to be and when I woke from my ‘disco nap’ at nearly midnight I realised that my Saturday was over.

On Sunday I enjoyed a new and thoroughly enriching experience – the inaugural Hollogays Learning Day. Adapting an idea given to me by the ever-creative Andrea Bianco, the boys and I had agreed a few weeks ago to assemble for lunch at Glenda’s on this day and each present to the others on a topic, in this case, oceans. ActiveWill kicked off with a very slick and well-researched PowerPoint presentation – as perhaps we should have expected from a man with as specialised a geology masters as he – on the Southern Ocean, complete with illustrations and fascinating facts (we were all agog at the giant kelp!) I followed with my bit on the Pacific; being by far the biggest ocean there’s so much to say about it that I chose to focus on its extremes – the widest this, the deepest that etcetera (I could have been talking about ActiveWill, come to think of it…) and we could all now tell you to the metre the depth of the Mariana Trench. Up next was OLoC who delivered a fantastic freestyle micro-lecture on the Arctic Ocean, about which he’d clearly developed such enthusiasm that it came across in his facial expressions and gestures as he regaled us with the movement of its currents. Glenda took the Indian Ocean from an interesting angle, glossing over the statistics to instead speak extensively and passionately about the socio-politics of the area. Did you know how scandalously Britain had treated the people of Diego Garcia? No neither did I until Sunday but believe me if you did, you’d be angry.

Finally it was Margo’s turn to teach us about the Atlantic and I guess we should have known that he’d do something a little bit off-the-wall. Just how off-the-wall took us all by surprise, despite having known him many years – because for the next half an hour we engaged in an experiential drama workshop, learning about Margo’s ocean through, variously, meditation, improvisation, group machine work, mime and performance. It was bonkers, but amazing, and if we laughed it was only through nervousness at exposing ourselves to each other in a totally new way. We all agreed that the day had been a roaring success and have already set the date and topic for the next Learning Day when I will be hosting the boys, plus Jerry, for The Six Wives of Henry VIII. We rounded off the day with a visit to the Kazbar where, joined by Jerry and his gorgeous mother, and bumping by chance into The Ex along with his New Man, Legally Binding and Mini-Lee, we toasted a thoroughly enjoyable and highly educational new experience.

This week was going to be a veritable social whirlwind, with dates in the diary to see Andrea Bianco for coffee and catch up and dinners with The Other Ex and BSLF, but these have of course had to be cancelled due to my tragic loss. Which takes us rather neatly back to the beginning and my state of silence; as I type this I am sitting, in monastic seclusion, at home where I fully expect to spend the next few days sipping hot drinks, gorging on comfort food (my stop smoking counsellor helpfully warned me that ‘You will put on weight’, at which I softly wept) and watching hour-after-hour of Golden Girls reruns. Which actually sounds rather good fun, so enjoy the silence y’all because that’s what I’m planning on doing!

Drinking, dating and defaults

A couple of posts ago, I promised that I would provide you, dear fans of TS&F, with an update on how the drinking was going. Out with a delightfully broad cross-section of the Gang yesterday afternoon, one of them (Little Agony Uncle since you’re asking) enquired as to why that update had not appeared, and I answered that as yet I didn’t feel that I’d quite worked out what my feelings were. I should have expected nothing less from an experienced agony uncle but was nonetheless still stunned by the simple brilliance of his advice: “Tell it to the blog.” So, here goes…

Since I took the big decision to try quitting for a while, and, following the success of that experiment, the arguably bigger decision to then try drinking again, I have certainly regained - or possibly, just gained – a sense of control about my drinking that was missing. It feels wonderful to be able to say that because, well aware as I was of the physical damage I was doing myself, and the wastefulness of spending entire weekends sleeping off the effects of one night’s drinking, it was the lack of control that had really scared me and finally prompted me to find the stop button. I still don’t feel that I’ve quite got the degree of control that I would like to have however, and as result my relationship with alcohol is still at best ambivalent.

It’s really hard to define what it is that I’m unsure about, but as I’m ‘telling it to the blog’ I’ll let you be the judge of whether what I’m saying makes sense. Since stopping, albeit for just a few weeks, there’s been a paradigm shift in my default drinking mode from drinking almost every day to drinking hardly any days, and from drinking more and faster than pretty much anyone to drinking no more and often much less than everyone. I’ve had a couple or three hangovers but nothing on the scale of ‘the old days’ and I’m satisfied that these have not been because of particularly excessive drinking – my biggest bender having been New Year’s Eve and even that was nothing compared to, say, my Bloodbath party - but because my body’s tolerance of and ability to process alcohol has retuned itself from that of a heavy drinker to that of a moderate one. Most satisfyingly, there have been no blackouts, no memory loss, no stripping naked and leaping into hot tubs (other than stone-cold sober in Chariots but that’s not for here), no turning up at afternoon parties already hammered and terrorising the children…you get the picture.

Yesterday I spent a pretty-much-perfect few hours with the boys in Le Shaz Bar and had just one shandy; last week at dinner with Big Sis I had one beer; on neither occasion did I want any more. So, complete abstinence I can do, and ‘just the one’, I can do; the grey area comes when I allow myself – and it really does feel like allowing myself – to drink, those nights (or days) when I consciously decide that drinking is on the agenda. Friday night and Saturday just gone were both such times, the former Glenda’s birthday drinks, the latter an enjoyable but ultimately unsuccessful date with the sexy Saffa from just after Christmas. On both occasions I followed the ‘old’ (and for most, ‘normal’) pattern of one drink after another and both times reached a point where I didn’t want to have any more; I’d chosen to press the ‘stop’ button.

The difficulty is that to be able to push the button, I have to be able to reach it, and it’s never in the bar or club or party that I’m at. If I stay, I’ll stay drinking – it’s as simple as that. I don’t think this is the ‘alcohol allergy’ that Bubble described; I can and do stop at or very near to the moment of my choosing; I just can’t quite get my head around doing that in whatever my present surroundings might be. Instead I have to do a Cinderella-like flit home, to the security – and sobriety – of home; to the sofa, a cup of tea, some chocolate…sources of comfort other than the bottle. Socially it can make things awkward. On the date, for example, about four hours and five or so pints in, I tried to engineer our going back to mine. Of course that was in part with the ulterior motive of getting a bit closer to the gorgeous hunk o’ spunk (that sadly was not on his agenda, unbelievable as that may be) but primarily because I knew that if we stayed out I would end up plastered and I just didn’t want to be. I guess through giving it so much thought – any thought even – I’ve created for myself a new guilt about drinking whereby anything more than ‘just the one’ triggers a thought process that can become quite self-accusatory.

All this leaves me not quite knowing what to do. I could quit drinking altogether, as not doing something is the only sure-fire way to not feel guilty about doing it, but for a reason I can’t yet grasp I don’t ‘want’ to be teetotal. I enjoy good wines, good whisky, a cocktail, a glass of champagne, and I don’t want to give those up. What I need to get to grips with is how to drink socially, if such a thing even exists. Maybe I’m sweating it all a bit too much; maybe I should just go a bit easier on myself and not beat myself up if I get a bit pissed at the weekend – everyone does, right? Or maybe a bit of self-tough-loving is the key to getting this drinking thing licked. For now, I’m happy, things are good, the future’s bright and I must say, that Agony Uncle gives damn good advice because ‘telling it to the blog’ - and may I thank you for indulging me - has made things a whole lot clearer than they were just 24 hours ago!

Amy, mea culpa

Although it may seem hypocritical given my first ever post, I couldn't help but feel very sad when I read the report about Amy Winehouse's shambolic performance (or more precisely, lack thereof) at G-A-Y on Saturday night. She was clearly off her face on the Friday Night Project the night before, and I doubt she'd even sobered up from that bout of drinking before embarking on the one that saw her so publicly shamed in front of two thousand baying gays. Queuing for Ghetto on Saturday we saw the steps to the stage door at G-A-Y being sluiced down with soapy water and joked that Amy had probably thrown up on the way in; if only we'd known the half of it...

When I wrote that first post, I really was amused - yes, amused is the right word - at how she'd behaved on Char's Show. Thinking it was a one-off, I found it hilarious that anyone could be so downright irresponsible as to get twatted before filming a TV appearance (albeit not a 'live' one as claimed.) I sent my account of that night's events to Holy Moly and it made the headline story, and wasn't I pleased with myself about that? But that of course was before I faced up to my own problems with drink and now, far from finding Amy's crazy-bitch antics entertaining, I find them saddening.

I can't help but wonder what the fuck the people around her are doing. Sure, Amy's problems are hers alone and the only person who can tell Amy that she has a problem is Amy. A friend with a drink problem, or any kind of addiction, is like the apocryphal elephant in the room; everyone will gladly talk around it but only the very brave will talk about it. But besides her friends, surely Amy's record company, manager, agent, stylist, hairdresser (yes I'm sure she has one, despite appearances), driver and so on who should be asking themselves what the hell they're doing to earn their money if they let Amy go on stage like that. It must have been obvious that she wasn't fit to perform on Charlotte Church, Buzzcocks, Friday Night Project and now G-A-Y and that if she did she would humiliate herself, and yet no-one has seemingly had the guts or, more to the point, the simple human kindness to say, 'No, sorry love. You can't go on tonight. We'll tell 'em you've got flu,' before giving her the mother of all bollockings in the hope that she will admit to herself, as only she can, that something must be done. If they think that by letting her go on stage pissed out of her beehive-topped head every night, she'll sooner or later learn her lesson, then they are being at best naive and at worst downright cruel. More likely is that the more bad press she gets for turning up smashed, the more disillusioned and paranoid Amy will become, fuelling more drinking in search of the - to her - blissful abandonment that liquor in sufficient quantities brings.

I titled that first post 'Amy needs rehab.' I'm not sure it's rehab that Amy needs now, but she sure needs something. Maybe someone really close to be brave enough to tell her she has a problem. Maybe to have that one flash of clarity where one realises for oneself that something is wrong. Maybe she just needs someone to hold her and love her and tell her that everything's going to be alright. Whatever it is Amy Winehouse needs, I hope she gets it before it's too late. From me, she gets an apology for not knowing then what I know now - that there's nothing funny about being a drunk.

Thirty, single, fabulous...and f**king busy!

Yes! It’s me, I’m back! Did you miss me? Good, because I’ve missed you like crazy – it’s true!

The lack of recent entries here on thirtysingleandfabulous is due quite simply to my having been so darned busy. Two nights after the Molton Brown experience I went to the closing night of Bent at the Trafalgar Studios which was as brilliant as it was harrowing, and left us – me, Glenda, Our Lady of Chappelle and Margo and Jerry – rather lost for words, unable to quite express how grateful we newly were for the sexual freedoms we take for granted. The following weekend, at my first gay wedding, I was again reminded of just how bloody fortunate we are. Despite the anodyne surroundings of Brixton Register Office, the unintentional hilarity of the piped music (‘I’m Not In Love’ and ‘Love on The Rocks’, for Christ’s sake!) and the language barrier – one groom was French, the other Brazilian, neither could quite pronounce ‘civil partnership’ – it was beautiful and very moving to witness such a tangible manifestation of gay equality. OK, I’m off the soapbox now; what else have I been up to?

The week before Christmas was a hoot. It started with a moment I’d awaited for the preceding 13 weeks – the crowning of America’s Next Top Model (Danielle in case you missed it; yes I was surprised too but thank GOD it wasn’t Jade) Then on the Wednesday – my last day at work, hurrah! - I spent a typically hilarious evening of cocktails, dinner and dancing with Miss Adelaide and Andrea Bianco (who was half-celebrating, half-commiserating having walked out of his new job of just three weeks, his boss having turned out to be the living incarnation of Miranda Priestley) Having completed my Christmas shopping in one meticulously planned commando raid on W1 on Thursday morning, the evening was spent enjoying drinks, canapés and champagne (vintage, and a gold medal winner at the Decanter awards, Glenda authoritatively informed the hosts upon presenting it) chez Margo and Jerry. Their house is fast becoming quite the most stylish place to see and be seen in the gay village, thanks to the flair with which they entertain, and this particular evening was no exception.

The following evening Mother arrived, ready for the trip up to Big Sister’s on the Saturday, and I was delighted that she was in sufficiently good health (physical and mental) to come with me to Dolly’s Christmas drinks soiree. Chaperoned by TWBD, I took Mother on what would be her first ever trip to Brixton and despite remaining fairly firmly glued to Dolly’s sofa she was nonetheless on great form, managing to polish off three bottles of Sol, a gin and tonic and about a pint of bubbly without any visible signs of drunkenness (like Mother, like son…!) Once I had taken her back to mine and ensured she was medicated, tucked up and sound asleep, I rejoined Dolly and the rest of the partygoers - including in addition to the Hollogays, Hollywood Rob and Princess Timmy – at Barcode VauHo for more bevies and boogying. Wishing to keep up the alliteration I finished off the evening by popping next door for a bit of bum-fun, and what a lovely way to round off the evening that turned out to be

The Saturday saw us depart for Norfolk and Christmas at Big Sister’s, which in a festive nut selection nutshell can be summarised as five days of pure joy; great company, great food (and mountains of it), fabulous presents (I nearly died of shock when Mother gave me two extremely tasteful and perfectly fitting items of clothing!) and a totally chilled atmosphere with not a single raised voice all the time we were there.

Arriving back on the Wednesday and with Mother safely despatched on her homeward journey, I arranged to hit the town with OLoC, Glenda’s planned drinks party having sadly had to be cancelled due to its host having flu. Much as I had had a gorgeous time with the family, as had OLoC with his, I needed to reacquaint myself with civilisation and as we were both in the mood for a warm welcome, cold drinks and hot boys, we headed for Le Bar de Kaz. There we met up with The Canadian who, through the sniffling brought on by his ‘white Christmas’, informed me that he has decided to settle down with one – just one! – of his current beaux. For you dear reader this means fewer tales of The Canadian and his pan-continental sexploits; for me it simply means that our catch-ups will be rather less difficult to follow.

Tipsy (yes, tipsy! You heard right!) and randy we moved on to Los Dos Brewos, and both OLoC and I were successful in finding company for the night – his a very cute scally type who took him back to (where else?) Peckham; mine a rather gorgeous and (thank you baby Jesus) sillily well-endowed South African lad who kept me busy until well into the next afternoon – they don’t call it a ‘job’ for nothing… (On that topic, I’d welcome readers’ suggestions as to new ways to reply to the compliment ‘You give great head’. Currently I either just say ‘Thanks’ or more often ‘Yes, I do,’ but I’d like a wittier riposte. Answers on a saucy postcard please.)

On New Year’s Eve Eve it was back to the Kaz to meet The Ex and a few of his crew (to one of whom, it later transpired, he is newly-enfianced) for Saturday beers, thence to the fully-recovered Glenda’s for copious amounts of fizz and gossip into the night.

My New Year’s Eve party was fabulously fun and unexpectedly well-attended. I’d expected just a handful but was delighted to welcome OLoC, Dolly, Glenda, Princess Timmy and cute ickle friend thereof, KLo and Mr Media (a gay man trapped in a woman’s body going out with a gay man trapped in a straight man’s body, and boy do the gays love ‘em both), The Ex and The Ex’s New Man (who for the record seems very nice), Smurphy, Judders and Dr Az. All came bearing liquor (and quality liquor at that – my friends have class), and I laid on some nibbles, played some cool tunes through the slinky iPod speakers Santa brought me, conversation flowed, merriment was made and 2007 was seen in in an atmosphere of love and laughter that bodes well for the year ahead.

Waking on 01/01/07 with only my second hangover in eight weeks (the first having been the morning after the South African…well I hadn’t had a chance to sleep off the drink!) I gladly accepted an invitation from The Ex to go round to his for the SW19 premier of Sarah Jane Adventures, the teatime Doctor Who spin off ostensibly for kids but which seems much more aimed at the The Gays than at The Brats. (There was some sort of plot involving an aggressively marketed fizzy drink whose shady but superficially altruistic manufacturer seemed set on world domination, which whilst serving as a clever critique of the current state of global capitalism was far less of a draw for me than the fact it had that Harley off Footballer’s Wives in it looking hot.) Smurphy and Judders - both as drunk as it is physiologically possible to be without the liver imploding – having left, I found myself in the very Noughties but less-uncomfortable-than-it-could-have-been position of chilling in front of the TV with The Ex and his new man in what used to be my front room. After a while (and eager to be on the sofa in time for The Vicar of Dibley) I headed home, washed up the glassware and threw out the debris from NYE, and settled down with a curry to see Dawn French tie the knot with him off Robin Hood. I cried, natch.

All of which brings us pretty much bang up to the minute, other than to update you all on how the drinking’s going…but that I think deserves a post of it’s own so watch, as ever, this space.