13. JAY COURT
We had put our name on the council waiting list only the previous year, thinking we never stood a chance. In a very short space of time we were offered a lovely, centrally heated, two-bedroomed flat on the 18th floor of a tower block. We jumped at the opportunity.
There was a policy by the then Labour council in Wandsworth to get families with young children out of tower blocks, and move single people in. This was why we only had to wait about a year. A few months later a Tory council was elected, and the scheme was scrapped.
When I put our names on the council list, I had hoped to be able to get a flat in Camden, where I had been raised till the age of 6, returned to for 5 years in 1968, and where both my parents still lived (in separate flats). I soon learnt there was no chance; because we had landed in Battersea by accident, we were stuck there, even though we had no connexions at all with the area and most of our friends and family lived north of the River. The only chance of getting to another borough was by taking inferior council accommodation, or accepting a flat in Battersea and later getting an exchange. In actual fact, once we moved into Jay Court we did not really want to leave. We did apply for some Camden flats, but the ones we were offered came nowhere near the standard of our Battersea flat.
We had two cats, and since they were used to going out in our backyard, we thought it unfair to keep them in a high-rise flat without a balcony. So my mother had them both for a time, but eventually we took Dixie back, and he settled in OK. My mother kept Dinkie, our other cat.
During March we were busy getting our new flat straight, and having furniture and carpets delivered. Our previous flat had been partly furnished, so there was quite a lot to buy.
No sooner were we straight, than we were off to Brussels for Easter, which fell at the end of March that year.
We crossed the Channel by hovercraft on Good Friday, and had an enjoyable weekend, returning on the Monday. Brussels is not the most exciting of European cities, but we saw what there was to see, including the famous Mannequin de Pis (a fountain in the guise of a little boy pissing), which is tiny and quite hard to find. We also saw the various costumes the statue wears on special occasions.
We paid a visit to the Atomium, left over from a big international exhibition held in Brussels in the 1950s, a sort of equivalent to the Eiffel Tower in Paris. We went up inside the structure, but it has never become as famous or popular as the Paris tower.
There were some interesting Japanese and Chinese pagodas nearby, but we missed perhaps the most exciting architecture in Brussels, the buildings designed in art nouveau style by Victor Horta. His work in Brussels was apparently similar to Gaudi’s in Barcelona, but we had no knowledge of either architect at the time.
The next three months were fairly quiet with occasional theater and cinema visits, and seeing friends. In June George’s two sisters came down to London to stay for a few days, and they were followed by George’s cousin, her husband and her mother at the end of July, who stayed for two weeks.
George was very fond of his Auntie Rose, whom he lived with for a while when his father died. His cousin, Margaret, and her husband were a wonderful couple, who could not do enough for people. Neither Margaret nor her mother were fond of cats, yet they soon got used to Dixie, our cat, and by the end of the fortnight Margaret was spoiling it thoroughly with tins of salmon bought from Marks and Spencer. It took us weeks to wean him back on to regular canned cat food.
We took them to Windsor, Richmond and Kew Gardens, and they also visited the usual tourist sights in London, including the Royal Mews. We all went down to Portsmouth for the day to see George’s Uncle Robert and his wife. This became a regular trip whenever George’s cousin came to London.
We took them all to see ‘The Two Ronnies’ at the London Palladium, They enjoyed the show, but Auntie Rose suffered from vertigo, a fact we didn’t know when we booked tickets up in the gods. For the first 15 minutes or so she was very nervous of looking steeply down at the stage at all.
Another mistake, according to Margaret’s husband John, was to take them to Brent Cross shopping center. Margaret and her mother were delighted with the shops, but John pretended to be horrified as they rushed round seeing where they could spend their money.
‘Oh, this is the worst place you could have brought them,’ he joked. He liked his little dram and would no doubt rather spend his money in a pub, or rather a Trades and Labour club where the drinks were cheaper. His wife, however, strongly disapproved of drinking, but they joked about each other’s extravagances and seemed to get on very well. John was always in a good humor, and both were very generous.
In between these two visits from George’s relatives, we paid a visit to Ipswich to see the friend whom we had helped move a few months previously, and his mother. We also saw a very funny Alan Ayckbourn play called ‘Bedroom Farce’ at the National Theatre. I liked it so much I later took my mother to see it. She was late, and missed the first Act.
For the August Bank Holiday weekend we went down to Somerset with my mother to stay with her friend in Porlock.
My brother Philip turned up there with a friend in tow. Since Philip had never shown any interest in girls, and was now nearly 30, my mother expected another male potholing buddy, but to her delight and surprise it was a girl, Hilda. We met them on the beach by Porlock Weir, and Philip and I went in swimming, but when it was finally time for them to go, Hilda shook hands with everybody else but pointedly ignored George’s proffered hand. I did not notice this at the time, but George was understandably deeply hurt. This was the start of a long breach in relations with my brother. His wife hated my name so much she forbade it to be spoken in her house, and made this fact obvious to my mother. The only possible reason for this hatred could be that we were a gay couple.
Philip and Hilda came back to London with us, and for the one and only time actually came into our flat. I remember them standing holding hands looking out at the view from our 18th floor window.
In September we flew to Spain for a week of touring, and a second week by the sea in Lloret. It was the forerunner of many late September holidays we were to spend in Lloret, and as we always went that time of year it is pure chance we were not there at the time George died in 1991. We had broken the pattern and gone a week earlier to Jersey instead that fateful year.
In 1978 we flew out to Barcelona on Monday September 25th, and stayed overnight in an hotel just off The Ramblas. We did not have that long to explore the city, but I remember venturing out of our hotel that evening after we arrived and going across The Ramblas to wander the narrow streets of the Old Town and see what we took to be the old cathedral, but years after George died I discovered it was just a church, when I found the real old cathedral in a square.
Next day we were driven south to Valencia for sightseeing and an overnight stop, and the following day we moved on to the capital, Madrid. My first impression was how tall the buildings were. It seemed like an American city, with its canyon-like streets of buildings at least 9 stories tall. In the center of the city were much taller buildings, reminiscent of 1930s New York skyscrapers. There were also some impressive monuments and fountains, including a very modern waterfall fountain in a central square where it was possible to walk along a passage behind the waterfall - very cooling on a hot day in this city in the center of sunny Spain. We also visited the famous Prado art gallery and saw its paintings by Heronius Bosch and others.
Our hotel was on the outskirts of the city, a very pleasant little hotel with a half-timbered dining room, reminiscent of an English inn.
Whilst in Madrid, we visited the ancient city of Toledo nearby, and witnessed a religious procession for one of the Spanish festival days. Toledo was impressive, with its huge castle on a hill towering over the town and the Spanish plain.
En route to Madrid we had made a stop at Old Medinaceli, another interesting town, and en route from Madrid to our overnight stop in Lerida we visited the city of Saragossa.
On Sunday October 1st we arrived in the tiny principality of Andorra, the Catalan statelet sandwiched between Spain and France. It is a mountainous little country in The Pyrenees, and is basically two small towns arranged along two valleys, joining in a ‘V’ shape. The principal town is Andorra La Vella, which consists mainly of hotels and duty-free shops where you see French and Spanish people loading up their cars with TV sets, hi-fi equipment, etc.. We spent one night in an hotel here, and had a drive up into the mountains almost to the French border. There was snow up there, and we just briefly emerged from the coach for a photo, but without winter coats it was too cold to linger.
Then it was on to Lloret de Mar for our second week, relaxing by the sea. The town quite impressed us because, although a very commercialized tourist center, the main resort for the then popular Costa Brava, it was a genuine old Catalonian town with some beautiful buildings and narrow streets. Unlike artificial places such as Magaluf in Majorca, which we had visited previously, and which were created solely for tourists, consisting of huge tower block hotels and holiday apartments. Lloret only had one tall building, and boasted a Ramblas lined with palm trees and some interesting old buildings, a very colorful little domed church and the inevitable castle overlooking the sea. It also had an excellent beach of coarse sand, though the sea shelved rather steeply and deeply for non-swimmers.
At night Lloret came to life, its narrow shopping streets a blaze of neon with discos, bars and shops. The main modern street leading down to the sea from the bus station had a canal running down the center. At least in winter it was probably a canal, as the rains drained from the inland hills down into the sea. In summer it was a large, dry, cemented, excavation with a pathetic trickle of water winding its way down the center.
We also made a visit to the nearby resort of Tossa de Mar, which is smaller and quieter than Lloret, but also boasts a castle on a hill overlooking the sea.
On the Friday before returning we went to nearby Blanes and caught a train along the coast into Barcelona, as we had only spent one evening there at the beginning of our holiday. Here we discovered what was to become one of our favorite cities in the world, largely due to the fantastic art nouveau architecture of Antonio Gaudi.
We were very impressed by his still unfinished (in fact hardly started when you look at the plans for the finished building which will be massive) Sagrada Familia. This is an art nouveau cathedral, started about 100 years ago. The original Nativity Facade is the most interesting since it was built largely whilst Gaudi was still alive. Run over by a tram, work on his Sagrada Familia virtually stopped during the Franco years, and was only continued after the downfall of the dictator who disapproved of this unorthodox Catalan architect. The newer facade follows Gaudi’s overall design, but incorporates many modern sculptures not in Gaudi’s art nouveau style.
We also discovered some of Gaudi’s other buildings, including the really unbelievable Casa Battlo, with its dragon’s back roof and cave-like windows, and the larger Casa Mila, occupying a corner site further up the road. On later visits to Barcelona we were to venture inside these fantastic buildings, and even get on the roof of the Casa Mila.
On this first full day in Barcelona we also discovered the Guell Park with its fairy-tale pavilions, walls, sculptures, staircase, terrace and tunnels, all in Gaudi’s art nouveau style. There was also some wonderful art nouveau iron-work in the form of gates and fences. We were so impressed by Gaudi’s work, not least this delightful little park, we were distressed to see children playing on the terrace with its winding, snake-like seats, because they were ruining its colorful mosaics. On a later visit to the park one year to the day after George’s death I was pleased to see these seats were being restored to their original condition, and at the hour of George’s death a year later I left a tiny sprig of flowers in one of the art nouveau tunnels we had first discovered on this trip in October 1978. The park was one of George’s favorite places on this Earth.
Whilst staying in Lloret, we also visited nearby Blanes, but were not impressed with this rather dull town. However we ran into two cockney brothers from our hotel whilst passing a bar on the sea front, and they urged us to go in and join them in a drink.
‘C’mon, ‘s’cheap, ‘s’luvly’ one of the middle-aged brothers slurred.
He was chatting away about the delights of cheap beer, to the obvious annoyance of local Catalans watching on TV the somber funeral of The Pope, who had died a few days previously. They kept giving us withering glances, and when we pointed this out to our cockney friend and signaled him to speak more softly, he just looked round at the TV and said untactfully:
‘Oh they’re just burying some old Pope, don’t worry ‘bout that mate. Drink up, ‘scheap, ‘s’luvly’.
After two more days in Lloret, we flew back to London on the Monday. The two cockney brothers were in a high state of intoxication at the airport as they tried to consume as much duty-free booze as possible before the flight. They were still exclaiming ‘drink up, ‘s’cheap, ‘s’luvly’, and most of the other passengers seemed to agree, as they were either drinking or smoking duty-free goods, or both. This was the typical Costa Brava tourist at the time, attracted by cheap booze, sun, sea and sand (with possibly a bit of sex as well if they were lucky and drunk enough.)
We had done our own thing, however, and avoided the bars and places where the lager louts hung out, discovering the more interesting delights of Catalonia, as well as enjoying the beaches. We were to return many times, but not for a few years yet.
The rest of the year was fairly uneventful. We went on our annual visit to the London Palladium in November to see Dorothy Squires, and one Saturday evening also spent ‘A Night With Dame Edna’.
Coming up at the end of the year was my brother Philip’s wedding, but his bride-to-be, Hilda, had stipulated George was not welcome. This message was conveyed through my mother, and the excuse was it was a ‘family only’ affair. It so happened George and I had arranged to go to Scotland for the New Year, and we had planned to stop off in Settle for the wedding, but after this shocking news, the first firm evidence of Hilda’s raging homophobia, we both decided to skip their wedding and go straight to Glasgow.
I was visiting my father in his London flat a few weeks prior to the wedding, and when he heard I was not attending he was furious. I explained the reason why, and he fairly exploded. He got on the phone straight away to Philip and told him in no uncertain terms that his brother was coming to his wedding and would bring whoever he liked. Philip and Hilda, being very aware of my father’s money, did not dare upset him, and meekly agreed to his demand. To save a further family row, George and I agreed to stop off at Settle for a few hours for the wedding on the way up to Scotland, but we were not happy about it, and there was a strained atmosphere throughout our visit.
Hilda’s relations were quite amiable - her brother was nice, and a butch female relative was obviously gay, and very friendly towards us. Hilda and Philip were very distant, and accepted our wedding gift as grudgingly as we gave it. My mother gave them a dinner service she could ill afford, and told Hilda it was complete apart from some vegetable dishes which were extra to the set, and Hilda turned round and said:
‘Oh, we’d like the vegetable dishes as well, please’.
So my mother, an old age pensioner, had to go home and order the vegetable dishes to add to their wedding gift. As we came out of my father’s car on the way to the reception, he handed Hilda gold watch, and she was fawning over the watch and my dad saying:
‘Oh it’s lovely, lovely. O thank you, oh it’s lovely. Oh thank you, thank you.....’
The whole thing made us sick, and we could hardly wait to board the Settle-Carlisle railway to complete our journey to Glasgow that night. Everyone told us what fools we were to miss the most picturesque railway ride in England by traveling at night, but we were just pleased to leave and head for the welcome of a Scottish Hogmanay. We left Settle at 7pm, and arrived in Glasgow 10pm that night. Next day was New Year’s Eve, when the festivities began. It was another enjoyable Hogmanay spent in Glasgow with George’s relations, who all made me feel welcome and one of the family. Such a change after the hostility of my brother and his wife.
We returned from Glasgow on January 4th and a relatively quiet few months followed.
It may have been a very unlucky day to choose, but April the 13th was Good Friday, and we were off to spend Easter in Paris. It was very good weather, and we visited all the usual sights on Saturday (Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysees, Notre Dame) and spent Easter Day in Pere Lachaise cemetery visiting the famous (and the infamous) in their final resting place, and the remainder of the day we spent around Sacre Coeur in the Montmarte area.
On this occasion we had not booked a room in advance, so looked for an hotel when we arrived. We found one, but the only room available was a sort of hut on the roof. Inside it was a proper room, very basic and a bit sordid, but full of the Paris atmosphere we loved so much. It was a marvelous weekend, with the weather so warm it was almost like summer.
In May we paid a trip to St Albans and visited the Veurulanium Roman site and museum with our next door neighbor, Levy, and my mother. Levy had introduced herself as soon as we moved in by giving us some curtains. She only had one lung and was not in the best of health, yet the council had given her a flat on the 18th floor opposite ours. On several occasions when the lifts were out of order she climbed the stairs and nearly killed herself.
A few days later we saw a good production of the play ‘Bent’ at the Royal Court Theatre, about the treatment of homosexuals in Nazi Germany. The cozy domesticity of the opening scene with the two gay lovers at home could almost have been contemporary to the gay liberation days of the 1970s, till the Gestapo burst in and carted the lovers off to a concentration camp. I cannot help but draw an analogy with how our own little nest was also shattered by the latest persecutor of gay men, AIDS. George died in the holocaust, and for the first few years without him I felt as if I was serving a life sentence in a prison camp, only to be released when we are reunited in the next world. Then thankfully someone came along who gave me some affection and made life worth living again.
George’s birthday at the end of May fell on the Sunday before a Bank Holiday, so we spent a long weekend with Rose and Neil in Hastings.
Saturday June 30th was the day of the annual Gay Pride festival in London, and George went along, but Mum and I were off to Glasgow to stay with George’s cousin, visiting Philip and Hilda in the English Lake District on the way back. For some reason George could not come with us. Although we both worked in the same office, we usually managed to get holidays off together. Perhaps this was one time we couldn’t, or perhaps the visit to Philip and Hilda put him off.
George’s cousin and her husband made us very welcome, and she took us on the local train to Loch Lomond. We had a boat ride on the loch, and a coach trip right round it. I also took my mother to Helensburgh, and to visit at least one of George’s sisters.
The stony cold reception which greeted us at Philip and Hilda’s house was such a contrast to the warm hospitality of Margaret and John in Scotland, who were not even related to us. My brother and his wife just acted as if my mother and I did not exist. They sat all evening hardly talking to us, Hilda looking at school books (she was a schoolteacher who hated kids) and Philip reading, while the TV was tuned inaudibly to boring programs nobody was watching. They did not attempt to make conversation with us, or ask what we would like to see on TV. If we tried to talk we just got sharp, one syllable answers which clearly told us to shut up. My mum asked Hilda:
‘What are you reading?’
‘School work’ she snapped.
We felt most uncomfortable, especially as every now and then she and Philip would bend their heads close together and start whispering confidences to each other. At one point during our stay my mother was telling Hilda something and she just got up and walked out of the room in the middle, without even saying ‘Excuse me’. She later claimed there was an emergency outside with Philip and a hosepipe, but that hardly excused her abrupt departure without a word of apology.
Philip used to share my tastes in music, but his Country and Rock’n’Roll record collection, including a lot of Jerry Lee Lewis albums, seemed to have been relegated by Hilda to the back shelf in favor of classical albums. Certainly I never heard him play any of the music he used to like either at home or in the car.
My mother and I visited Ullswater by bus and spent a pleasant day, and on the day we were returning home Philip drove us to Hilda’s parents by the scenic route. I had brought some Glasgow goodies for George (potato scones, black pudding, lorn sausage, etc.) and Hilda had put it in her fridge to keep it fresh. Quite deliberately she insured it remained in her fridge. I am convinced she planned it all beforehand.
We were sitting in their lounge, when suddenly Hilda popped her head in the door without any warning and said:
‘Come on, we’re off’.
She had her coat on, and Philip was already in the car, having loaded our cases. So we just had to grab our coats and run. When we were safely miles away on the Yorkshire Moors, Hilda turned round to me in the car, smiling sweetly, and said sarcastically:
‘And did you remember to take George’s things out of the fridge?’ Of course she knew full well she had not given me a chance to remember. Philip offered to go back for them, but she said: ‘Oh no you will not’.
She later insured he did not go back afterwards either. She had an appointment at the hairdresser’s near her parents’ place, but canceled it so she could come in the car with us to make sure Philip did not go back for George’s things. It was all incredibly petty, but it created further very bad feeling after the business over the wedding and not shaking hands with George the first time we met Hilda.
At her parents’ house they served up strawberries for dessert, and there was some trouble because Hilda did or did not want cream or sugar, I cannot remember the details. I know Philip snatched away her dish and like a dutiful husband tried to put things right, but Hilda went into a sulk and said:
‘No, I don’t want them now’, and refused to eat them at all.
It was all so childish, and when I got home and related the story to George he remarked that Hilda had acted like a spoiled child. He urged me to write a letter to Philip, saying it was my duty as a brother to make sure he treated my mother properly, and that he appreciated all she had done for him. Hilda and Philip kept on very good terms with my father, who had money, and Hilda valued Philip’s university education, but my father had not paid a penny towards it. My mother had to sacrifice the little money earned from her job to help keep Philip at university, and look after him in the holidays.
I wrote a letter and tried to tactfully remind him of this and other things Mum had done for him. I thanked him for all he had done for us during our visit, but also pointed out we felt uncomfortable particularly when they both had their noses in books and kept whispering to each other, which I said was very impolite in company. Perhaps unwisely, with George’s encouragement, I remarked that Hilda had acted like a spoilt child.
Of course Hilda read this letter, though it was not addressed to her, and it was the excuse she had been looking for. She made Philip cut all ties with me, and decreed my name was never to be mentioned in her house again. From that day till our father got terminally ill in 1998, Philip never contacted me or sent me a Christmas card, and all communications to him from me went unanswered. In 1995 Philip made the one exception in breaking all contact by phoning me obviously to make sure I was not visiting my dad - in London for a few days - on the same day as Philip and Hilda. This happened once before when my dad was staying with some relations on his annual UK visit. I knew Philip and Hilda would be there and wondered if I should go, but George insisted I did and that I get there before they arrived. They were forced to talk to me, and seemed to act as if nothing had happened. But afterwards I got the cold shoulder again. Philip’s phone call that time was to make sure there was not a repeat performance when Hilda would have to tolerate my presence.
My mother went up to their house after George died and mentioned my name a few times. When she did so to Philip, his eyes began filling with tears and he rushed upstairs. When she mentioned my name to Hilda she glared at her with such a look of hatred my mother was taken aback. She told me she had never seen a look of such utter evil in anyone’s face before. However, when I met them in Cyprus for my father’s funeral in 1998, she had mellowed, and even became quite friendly towards me after the initial ice was broken. Is it cynical to wonder if my being a potential fellow inheritor of my father’s wealth whose cooperation was needed for any legal formalities had anything to do with it? Certainly they needed my cooperation to contest the Will which they were not satisfied with, but perhaps Hilda had just become more mature in her attitude towards me over the years.
Less than a month after my mother and I had been there in 1979, George and I were back in the lake District, but needless to say we did not call on my brother and his wife. It was a one day British Rail Merrymaker excursion to Carlisle, with a coach ride and boat trip on one of the lakes included. Unfortunately it was typical Lake District weather, cloudy, misty and gray.
At the end of July we had a one day trip to Margate, and George’s cousin Margaret and her husband, John, came to stay. We took them round and about as usual, and had a trip to Southend together.
At the end of September we had both my mother and our friend Andre round for lunch. They had gotten to know each other when we all went on holiday together to Majorca. The next day George and I were off on the big trip, our first transatlantic venture to the States.
In George’s 1979 diary was a blank hotel guest check on which someone had written his name, address and phone numbers in New York. Of course we did the gay bar and backroom scene in the Big Apple, and this was just when the AIDS epidemic was starting, unknown to anyone at the time. We paid return visits to New York in 1980 and 1981. According to a letter George wrote to a friend of ours, he met a sailor in one of the bars and went back to an hotel with him. I do not know on which trip he met this sailor, or what they did together, but I cannot help wondering as I look at the name on the hotel guest check if it is the person who passed on the virus to George, and ultimately took him away from me. If it is, I cannot be angry with him. He did not know anymore than we did, and he is probably dead now himself. Anger is not an emotion I have felt over George’s loss or the AIDS crisis generally - it would only turn into anger if it transpired AIDS had indeed resulted from some diabolical biological warfare experiments as some people, myself included, have wondered.
The air flight to New York was a nightmare. When we boarded the jumbo we discovered someone was sitting in one of our seats. Eventually a stewardess came along, and told us there was no time to sort the problem out now as the plane was about to taxi ready for take off. She told me to sit down in the available seat, and whisked George off to the first class section. That was the last I saw of him for the entire eight hour flight. Of course the plane should never have taken off at all with seats double-booked, which meant there were not enough for all the passengers.
During the flight I asked if I could join George, and the stewardess refused, saying I could not even go and talk to him as I was not allowed into first class. I found out he was seated upstairs in the first class dining section, without any company or films to watch. I then asked the stewardess if we could at least change places for a few hours, so George could come down and watch a film, but she refused this request too.
I later learned from George that not only had he been stuck alone for many hours (apart from the odd crew member who would come in from time to time) without any film, audio entertainment or anyone to talk to, but when the first class passengers came up for their meal he was treated like an outcast. When he saw rare roast beef (his favorite meat) being carved from the joint, he thought at least he had this consolation, and was astounded and dejected when they brought him a regulation economy class meal on a plastic tray. Not only was it mental torture whilst everyone around him was tucking into roast beef, but it was extremely humiliating, as the first class passengers kept glaring at this second-class intruder eating his economy meal in their midst, making it plain they felt he had no right to be there.
When we finally reached New York and met up in JFK airport, George was in a terrible state and wanted to catch the next plane back home. The final insult was when he complained, and the stewardess told him he had nothing to complain about as he had been treated as a first class passenger. Of course we later wrote and got some cash compensation, but it was a dreadful start to the holiday.
I can now see some symbolism in this episode. My separation from George on our first flight to the States, with him being taken upstairs, only to meet up at our final destination, could be regarded as a premonition of when he was taken from me and left this Earth plane for a higher level. We will only meet again when I too reach this final destination. It is significant that our three trips to New York at just the time the AIDS epidemic was starting there (plus one trip to San Francisco) were the most likely reason George became infected with the HIV virus. A doctor at the hospital where he was diagnosed said the likelihood of him catching the virus at that time was greatly increased if we had visited the States and been active on the gay scene there (especially in New York and San Francisco of course). This was certainly the case. So this traumatic incident on the flight and George’s initial desire to turn back immediately on arrival was, perhaps, a warning that if we did not do so, our separation would one day be more permanent than a few hours.
Of course, we did not turn back. We joined the long line for U.S. Customs and Immigration, and the final straw for George was when he was accused of not declaring a banana (it was left uneaten during the unhappy flight), and it was promptly confiscated with a warning it was a serious offense to try to smuggle a banana into the Big Apple (or more precisely, into the U.S.).
However, once we left JFK airport, we instantly fell in love with New York. The sheer excitement of approaching Manhattan with its dramatic skyline soon made us forget the traumas of the journey out. We were ready to begin the first of our great American adventures.
We arrived in the evening, and then had two full days in New York. During that time we did all the sights, visiting the Statue of Liberty by boat, going up the Empire State Building and World Trade Center, visiting Chinatown, Times Square and Central Park. We discovered lesser known delights such as the Flat-iron Building, so named because of its shape, and reportedly the world’s first skyscraper.
On this and subsequent visits to the Big Apple we enjoyed the culinary delights of New York such as the huge beef sandwiches which were a meal in themselves, and the Blarney Stone chain of licensed restaurants which not only served these sandwiches, but had a bar down one side, and a self-service food counter down the other where they carved huge portions of meat from the joint and topped it off with vegetables. We also discovered strange exotic drinks like Orange Juliuses, which actually came in several flavors.
New York seemed to have everything in abundance, and not just delicious food. The gay sex scene was as free as in Amsterdam, but all the establishments here were bigger and better. We visited the enormous Adonis cinema, which also had a bar and a disco dance floor attached if I remember rightly, and numerous backrooms including one behind the cinema screen, where you watched the porno film back-to-front. There were other gay clubs on several levels with very spacious, exotic backrooms, and most of these establishments gave you tickets so you could wander in and out of several all night long. It all seemed so civilized compared to Nanny-State Britain at the time.
I do not feel the backroom scene in New York in itself greatly increased our chances of catching the HIV virus. You were probably more likely to catch it if you took someone home or to an hotel than if you stayed in the backroom, simply because you were more likely to practice what is now known to be unsafe sex in the privacy of a bedroom. I believe, if George did come into contact with the virus in New York, it was probably when he went back to an hotel with somebody. I was at least as active on the New York backroom scene as George was, yet do not ever remember practicing what we now know to be unsafe (unprotected anal) sex in any of them. I may well have done so if I had gone back and actually ended up in bed with someone. The reason it was so dangerous visiting New York at that particular time was that the HIV/AIDS epidemic was already spreading there like wildfire, yet no-one knew about it or what precautions to take.
We were staying in an hotel near Washington Square called the Gramercy Park, after the area where the hotel was located. The Square itself was an oasis of parkland with a fountain at the center, and was a hive of activity day and night. Skateboarders and drug pedlars were everywhere, and the New York Police Department seemed at the time to take almost as liberal an attitude over cannabis as the Amsterdam police did. At any rate it seemed to be on sale quite openly, especially in Washington Square judging by all the dealers inviting the passing public to ‘check it out’, referring to their wares.
We rode the Subway down to the Battery, and ventured Uptown as far as Harlem. I think the city cast its spell on both of us. Certainly I felt this was the only place to be on Earth. It was like coming home to where I belonged. It seemed everyone belonged in New York, a huge cosmopolitan city where all races and nationalities mingled. It is the melting pot of the world, and I felt proud to be a New Yorker even for only a few days. It may well have been on this occasion the Pope visited New York whilst we were there, and we caught a brief glimpse of the ‘Pope-mobile’ as he drove past. Whilst waiting for it a woman remarked that the top of the Empire State was still covered in mist, evidently a New Yorker’s way of judging the weather, and I felt privileged to be part of it all.
New York is full of the kind of real odd-ball characters who disappeared from London streets years ago. The people are friendly - you only have to open a map and they gather round to show you the way. Transport is very inexpensive, as is everything except the theater, though nowadays London seat prices have more or less caught up.
We arrived in New York Monday evening, and on Thursday we were off by bus (coach) to Newport, Rhode Island. On the way we stopped off at Mystic Village in Connecticut, a delightful but artificial looking place. Newport had a very English-looking church, where John F. Kennedy was married. The harbor and some of the other buildings had a very English feel about them too, but of course we were in New England.
That evening we drove to Cape Cod for our overnight stay, but all we saw of it was a typical American ‘strip’: a highway lined with fast-food outlets, blazing neon and huge signs on high poles. We were advised to eat in the restaurant of the hotel, but we decided to find a place by ourselves and risked life and limb by trying to walk down the strip, which of course had no sidewalks. I think we reached Wendy’s hamburger joint, which had waitress service. All we wanted was the kind of place where you went up to a counter to get served. So we decided we might as well go back to the hotel restaurant, and we were so glad we did. As we sat down at our table the waitress introduced herself:
‘Hi, I’m Millie and I’m your waitress for tonight....’. She showed us the menu, and we decided on roast beef. Instead of a thin sliver of meat, we were amazed when we were each served with the equivalent of the British weekly joint, either of which would have fed an English family of four for several meals. We remarked on this fact to Millie, who shook her head in sad disbelief that the English should be so starved as to make one meal go so far. The bill, when it came, was extremely reasonable, and we were pleased we did not chomp into a hamburger at Wendy’s, delicious as they may well have been.
Friday we stopped of at Plymouth, Massachusetts where the Pilgrim Fathers landed. We saw Plymouth Rock, a statue to the original Americans (a Red Indian) and a replica of the Mayflower.
We stopped for about an hour in Boston, but did not see as much of it as we might because my watch had broken, and we spent most of the time looking for somewhere to get it fixed. We walked through a big market arcade, and eventually found a department store where they mended my watch free of charge. That is American service for you.
We then drove across the river to the other half of the city, known as Cambridge. Here we visited the campus of the famous Harvard University, which also looked very English indeed.
Saturday we drove to Camden, Maine where we stopped for about an hour. During that time I was accosted by a woman on the waterfront who invited me back to her place for ‘a party’. Evidently she thought I looked like a ‘swinger’,but I had to feebly make my apologies by explaining I was just a tourist who had to be back on his bus within the hour.
We drove through the beautiful New England countryside with its brilliant fall colors, and crossed the border into Quebec. Eventually we reached Quebec City, where we were staying for a couple of nights. It is probably the most European city in North America, and the location for many North American films when they want a European setting without the expense of a transatlantic trip. It actually has walls round it and turreted gates, and inside are narrow streets which could easily be taken for Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris or almost anywhere else in Europe. There are also impressive French-style chateaus and towers with pointed green roofs. We loved the city because it seemed so different and out of place in North America. The language, of course, is French, but a peculiar kind hard to understand if you are used to the European dialects. George spoke French quite well, but found it very difficult to understand the Quebec variety.
Next we drove on to Montreal, and stayed in a large room with our own cooking facilities. We bought some bacon and eggs and George cooked us a meal. I have a photo of him cooking over the gas stove, with the open fridge full of cans, and another photo shows me at our own dining table eating the meal he cooked. In yet another corner of the huge room or suite was a large sofa and armchair and a color TV. Of course by now we had discovered the multi-channel entertainment on offer in North America, with an endless choice of programs old and new.
Whilst in Montreal we went to the cinema and saw ‘Apocalypse Now’, a film George appreciated more than myself. I think I found it just too heavy, and a bit above my head.
As we left the city in the bus, bound for English-speaking Canada and the capital, Ottawa, Montreal was receiving one of its first falls of snow that winter, and on October 9th the ground was already carpeted with a thin covering of white.
Ottawa, like Quebec City, had some interesting European-looking buildings, especially the neo-Gothic spires of the Parliament Building. We arrived on the day of the opening of Parliament, and were privileged enough to see the new Prime Minister, Joe Clark, and his wife go past in a horse-driven open carriage, escorted by the Mounties in their scarlet uniforms.
Next day we were due to move on to Toronto for two nights, but George had arranged with his cousin, Sally, for her to meet the bus en route so we could spend the night at her place in Peterboro’, a town some miles from Toronto. We stopped at Kingston, Ontario for a short break, and viewed a Mississippi-style paddle-steamer and an old Canadian Pacific steam engine which were on display, and then George phoned Sally to give her an idea what time to intercept the bus.
As we drove the final lap to Toronto, Sally and her husband Bill met us in their car by a road junction, and the coach stopped and let us off with our luggage. Sally and Bill drove us back to their house, where we briefly met their adolescent sons. It so happened my own cousin also lived in Peterboro’ at the time, so we gave him a ring and he popped over to collect us. We met his wife, Tina, and their two young children, and had a pleasant chat. Tina was a Mormon, but apparently my cousin Bruce was not.
Time was drawing on and we felt trapped there, with no means of escape. George was getting very agitated, since we had really stopped off in Peterboro’ to see Sally and Bill, and it was they who were putting us up for the night and had made all the arrangements to meet the bus. Finally Bruce gave us a lift back, and we had a late night chat with Sally and Bill before going to bed.
During our 24 hours or so with Sally and Bill they showed us all round their big, suburban house, which was typical of many Canadian town houses and included a veranda and a large basement. They also took us round Peterboro’, accompanied by their little dog. We saw the famous elevator lock on one of Peterboro’s waterways.
Finally they drove us to Toronto, showed us one of the huge new shopping malls, and then left us at our hotel. We then did a quick city tour of Toronto, which included a ride up the world’s tallest free-standing structure, the CN Tower, with its dizzying view from the top (you looked down and felt the whole thing was going to topple over at the next gust of wind). Here we had our portrait done by computer-photo, then a fairly new phenomenon. We took the portrait home with us and put it up for a time in the Telex room where we both worked. Computer pictures are made up of letters and other characters to form a photograph, and we kidded everyone who asked about it that we had produced the picture on our telex machine. Most of them fell for it, because we often did receive computer-originated graphics over the telex line, especially at Christmas when transmission of images like Santa Claus and his reindeer blocked our lines for ages. We sometimes ran up our own telex bill by recording these images on telex Murray-code tape, and re-transmitting them on to our Australian correspondents as a Christmas greeting.
That evening in Toronto we went to see a new film, ‘The Amityville Horror’. Next morning we were off for Niagara Falls and the U.S. border. All the main attractions were on the Canadian side, where we were staying overnight, and this side also gives the best view of the Falls
We had our photos taken by the very dramatic Horseshoe Falls, then had a ride on the ‘Maid of the Mists’ pleasure boat to near the foot of the Falls. Everyone had to cover up from head to toe in black plastic macintoshes with hoods, so only the face was showing, otherwise our clothes would have been soaked through with the spray from the Falls.
On the way down through New England from Niagara to Washington D.C., we stopped overnight at a place called Scranton, Pennsylvania. In the motel room we found a little envelope with a printed note from our maid, hoping we would enjoy our stay and if we did could we leave a token of our appreciation in the envelope before we left. Now to us this was like a red rag to two raging bulls: it hit two sore points in one go. We hated tipping, and maids were just a bloody nuisance. We didn’t have maids at home in our flat, so why should we be pestered with them on our holidays? We were quite happy to use the same towels all week, pull the bedclothes together and put up with a bit of dust, but they insisted on knocking at our door at some unearthly hour in the morning when we wanted a lie in, even when we managed to find and display a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign sometimes. If it was wet weather, you felt obliged to vacate your room just so the maid could get in and clean it. We never cleaned our flat every day, but when on holiday and you felt like a lie in you couldn’t do it because of these armies of maids who seemed to be employed solely to annoy us. Now this one in Scranton had added insult to injury by not only demanding to be tipped for being a nuisance, but she had actually had the audacity to leave an envelope to put it in. Well she certainly got a tip, but not the kind she hoped for. As far as I remember the note we left in the envelope for her read something like this: ‘Get back to your Scranton scrag-hole you mercenary maid’. The Scranton alliteration was no doubt lost on our transatlantic pest, since ‘Get back to your scrag-’ole’ was a phrase we had adopted from that marvelous British comedy actress, Patricia Hayes, in the TV play ‘Edna, The Inebriate Woman’ I believe. Of course we were off the next morning, but as we sat on the bus we imagined the greedy maid tearing open her envelope for some dollar bills, only to find this insulting note. We felt we had gotten our own back on all those maids intent on spoiling our past and future holidays by insisting on doing their silly job every morning. At the very least maids should not start work till 12 noon to give people a chance for a lie in, but one clean-up before we arrived, and once after we left would have been quite sufficient.
We were now bound for Washington, D.C. by way of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where the peace treaty ending the American Civil War (or War between the States/War of Northern Aggression as it is referred to in the South) was signed. I took a photo of General Robert E. Lee’s headquarters which had the rebel Confederate flag flying outside.
We arrived for our two nights in the U.S. capital city in time for a big gay march, which we joined in, going right by the White House. Whilst in Washington we visited the other sights including the Lincoln Memorial and the Capitol Building. We were taken on a tour and saw the Senate and House of Representatives. We also went across the river to Arlington, Virginia (in fact a suburb of Washington) to see John F. Kennedy’s grave in the huge military cemetery.
Whilst in Washington we had arranged to make our way to nearby Baltimore where my penfriend lived. I had been writing Dee Snoble for 15 years, but we had never met. We were both interested in 1950s rock’n’roll, and she was once a personal friend of our mutual idol, Jerry Lee Lewis who frequently passed through her hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. We met up in the bus station, and she looked quite different to how I imagined. We had a lot to catch up on, and she showed us Baltimore Harbor, then took us to her house and introduced us to her pet cockatiel. She was very surprised when it took to George immediately, but then he seemed to have an affinity with all animals.
Dee’s house was rather weird in that owls in all forms, shapes and sizes were very much in evidence. A huge stuffed owl high in one corner dominated the room, and seemed likely to swoop down on us at any minute. Owl pictures and ornaments filled every available space on the walls and shelves in the main room, giving it a very eerie feel.
I had brought Dee an album of Newcastle-born Jerry Lee-style pianist and singer, Freddie ‘Fingers’ Lee as a present. I wore my American Eagle string tie for our first meeting, but regretted having abandoned my usual 1950s hairstyle for this American trip. I was rather relieved to find Dee looked very ordinary too, and certainly did not have a 1950s hairdo herself. The reason I didn’t recognize her when we met was my mental picture of her was composed from caricatures of herself she had drawn in our early correspondence, which used to be very wild, both of us doing drawings so the letters were more like comics. Dee depicted herself as a sort of short Brenda Lee type with a huge beehive hairdo, when I met her I was mildly surprised to find she was of normal height with a contemporary hairstyle, and, like myself, wearing spectacles.
When we met some of Dee’s friends on a subsequent visit it became pretty plain she kept her love of 1950s music and Jerry Lee Lewis very much to herself. I mentioned his name as George and I were eating out at a seafood restaurant with Dee and her friends, and they exclaimed in shocked amazement:
‘Jerry Lee Lewis? You’re not a fan of HIS, are you?’
This was in a tone of voice that implied Dee must be 100 years old, and possibly a little perverted for liking someone with such a colorful personal life. Dee was obviously a little embarrassed for she squirmed and then admitted that she had gotten to know me through the various 1950s rock’n’roll fan club magazines.
After our visit with Dee on this first of our American trips, we made our way back to Washington, and next day we were returning to New York for the flight home. En route we stopped off in Philadelphia long enough to see the main sights of that city, including the cracked Liberty Bell. This reminded me of a very similar bell I had seen before I met George in the Kremlin. The Russian bell did not just have a crack, but a large triangular-shaped chunk broken off. (George, in his witty way, had later written on the back of a photo of the Statue of Liberty which we took on one of our American trips, the caption: ‘The Liberty Belle’).
We arrived at JFK airport and flew back to London without further incident. This time we had seats together, and could enjoy the movies and other in flight entertainment. This may have been the time ‘The Muppet Movie’ was being shown during the flight, and George kept dozing off. He was seated between me and a woman passenger, and every now and then George kept half waking up, looking bleary eyed at the screen and, seeing the green figure of Kermit, kept exclaiming grumpily: ‘That bloody frog’ before drifting back to sleep again
The rest of the year was fairly uneventful. We met a Swiss guy called Peter a couple of times for dinner. One of these was at the Swiss Centre near Leicester Square, where we enjoyed a typical Swiss meal. I cannot now recall how we met Peter or what became of him.
We paid our annual visit to a Dorothy Squires concert in early December, this time at the Dominion, Tottenham Court Road. Later that month we also saw a very funny French/Italian film called ‘La Cage Aux Follies’ featuring two gay men in a lifelong partnership. Of course, this film achieved cult status, spurned many inferior sequels and was eventually made into a musical whose initial success was thwarted by the AIDS crisis, which temporarily made a musical with a homosexual theme very risky box office. Happily there are annual revivals of the musical, which has some excellent songs and a very funny but also moving story line. An American version of the film has since been made, called ‘Birds Of A Feather’, but I don’t think you can beat the French original.
In the latter half of 1979 I had applied for a telex job at Amnesty International, in response to a newspaper advert. At the interview I explained I wanted to work similar hours to my current job, which was effectively part-time. George and I used to do alternate shifts at an Australian company, one of us doing mornings and one afternoons, and we changed over every week. Amnesty International were looking for a full-time employee, but they agreed on a trial basis to offer both of us the job on a part-time basis. Whoever was on early shift at the Australian company would go over to Amnesty International in the afternoons and do that job also. At Christmas time we were in a quandary as both the Australian firm and Amnesty International had their staff Christmas parties on the same evening. I cannot remember now which one we went to.
As usual when we were in London on New Year’s Eve we had a party at our flat to finish the year off and see in the new one.
In mid January 1980 George decided to leave the Australian firm we both worked for in order to take up a full-time post with Amnesty International. Two things had prompted this rather sudden move.
The Australian firm wanted to change some procedures, and George was not happy with this and gave in his notice almost on the spur of the moment. At the same time Amnesty international had decided they really did need someone to cover the mornings and were therefore going to advertise the telex position as a full-time one. George decided to take the Amnesty job.
Although it eventually turned sour on him, his time at AI was a rewarding and self-developing experience. He lost his paranoia about anything vaguely left-wing, and thoroughly enjoyed mixing with people who shared his tastes in theater and the arts. It was in the Telex Room at Amnesty international that he first created his famous collages, one of which was later to be featured on TV. I will quote George’s own words to describe what prompted him to do his first collage:
‘‘The inspiration for my first collage came to me when I worked at Amnesty International. On first taking over the office allocated to me, the walls were completely covered with posters and images about torture, the death penalty, and other human rights abuses being inflicted on prisoners of conscience throughout the world. Partly because I felt the posters were preaching to the already converted members of Amnesty, and because I was continually telecommunicating press releases, Urgent Actions case-sheets on the horrors inflicted by inhuman regimes, I felt I didn’t need to be surrounded by spectres of political dictators looking down on me during my working day. So I replaced them with theatre playbills (free from theatre foyers and booking agents), film poster postcards, photos of art and architecture that I liked or admired, etc.. It soon became a special event for all new staff/volunteers/visitors to be shown round my office to admire the artistic, theatrical and cinematic effects. I recommend anyone to alter boring workplace walls with images that reflect their personality and tastes.’
A very sad event occurred on January 20th when George’s much loved Aunty Rose died, She was almost like a mother to him, since he had gone to live with her after both his parents had died. George went up to Glasgow on his own for the funeral.
In March we saw a production of ‘Piaf’ at the Piccadilly Theater. 23 years later I again saw a production of this biographical musical play about Edith Piaf at the same theater, which this time starred Elaine Paige in the role. I cannot remember now who played Piaf in the earlier production.
On March 22nd we had a day trip to Chester, which we instantly fell in love with. Its Tudor-style streets with their unique two-level shopping arcades, all dominated by a pedestrian bridge with a famous clock, gave the city a special appeal. The bridge actually forms part of a walk which takes you all round the old city wall, from which you can view some Roman remains at one point. We visited the city on at least one other occasion, and even bought a picture-clock which represented the one in the middle of Chester. It still hangs in my hallway, but unfortunately I have never been able to get it to keep to the correct time, so have now removed the batteries.
We went to the annual Easter parade in Battersea Park on Easter Sunday early in April with George’s cousin Margaret and her husband John, who had come to visit from Scotland. It was Margaret’s mother, Rose, who had died in January. I took some Super-8 film of the parade and us watching it, which I have since had transferred on to videotape along with our holiday Super-8 film clips. It also includes clips from one or more of our parties and so is a memento of our life together.
Later that month we took a friend to see ‘La Cage Aux Follies’ for his birthday and in May George took me to the Tate Gallery to see an exhibition of Dali’s paintings, which we both loved. We also saw the drag artist Mrs Shufflewick at Battersea Town Hall at one of their Old Time Music Halls attended mainly by pensioners.
In late June we were off again to the States. George has written in his diary the date we flew off: ‘USA. Heathrow-New York. Chapter Two.’ This was the big one - we visited New York, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Hawaii and San Francisco in a 19 day holiday we would always remember.
We left home on a Sunday and spent the first three nights in New York. Our three visits in as many years to The Big Apple now merge into one in my memory, but on this occasion photos prove we re-visited some of the main sights and some new ones to us, such as Cleopatra’s Needle in Central Park. We spent some time walking around Greenwich Village and the Gay Street area. This may have been the visit where we narrowly missed being killed or seriously injured by a window-cleaners’ heavy wooden platform which came crashing down several stories on to the sidewalk, just missing both of us, in the SoHo district as we were walking either to or from the Village.
We re-visited Washington Square, and also made a trip by subway to Coney Island, where we spent some time on the beach and I swam in the Atlantic. A week later I was swimming in the Pacific in Hawaii, where the water was far warmer. Whilst in New York we also saw the film ‘The Shining’.
On the Thursday we flew to Las Vegas via Los Angeles. We somehow lost our courier at L.A. airport and instead of going through the transfer lounge ended up outside the airport terminal in front of the famous Air Travel sculpture. After a few minutes of panic, we found our way to the connecting Las Vegas flight.
The temperature in this gambling city in the middle of the Nevada desert was about 110 degrees, and even at night it was so warm you felt like jumping in the hotel swimming pool to cool off. We were not in the least interested in gambling, and would not have spent two nights in Las Vegas had it not been included in the package. However, we did enjoy the dazzling lights and the excellent, inexpensive self-service restaurants in the casinos where you could pile up your plates with as much as you could eat very cheaply. Obviously the intention was that you should spend your money gambling, but we did not put so much as one cent in the machines between us during our visit, not least because neither of us understood how modern slot machines work, and I still don’t. Anything more complicated than the old-fashioned one-armed bandit where you pull the lever and hope for three cherries or three bars completely foxes me.
Our hotel was some way out, at the end of ‘The Strip’ and down a side street. I remember shopping in a supermarket on the way and discovering a huge can of V8 vegetable juice on sale which I loved. In America it is widely advertised and very cheap, but in the UK it is only available in small cans, is quite expensive, and not nearly so well known. I drank the whole giant can in the heat of this neon oasis in the desert.
Whilst in Las Vegas we went on a sightseeing trip, during which Liberace’s home, among others, was pointed out to us. We also had the opportunity of a flight over the Grand Canyon, and much to my regret we missed out on this, feeling it was just too expensive.
Next stop on our itinerary was Los Angeles, where we were staying in a downtown hotel for three nights. L.A. has been described as seventytwo suburbs in search of a city, so there is no real central or downtown area, and where we were staying was a main street near the old City Hall skyscraper (famous from the old 1950s Superman TV series). This street was lined on either side with cinemas, built in the heyday of Hollywood for showing the latest releases. We discovered that not one of them were showing any films in English, and the whole downtown area was entirely Spanish speaking. All the shops sold Hispanic food, and all shop signs, notices, etc. were in Spanish, which was the only language we heard spoken in that area. We had been considering a one day trip over the border to Tijuana in Mexico, but since we seemed to be in Mexico already as soon as we stepped outside our hotel, there did not seem any point, so we gave that trip a miss.
Unlike New York, which has an excellent subway system, we never did get the hang of Los Angeles’ rather poor public transport system. There were buses, but it was difficult to discover how to get anywhere specific. However, during our visit we saw the famous Hollywood sign in white letters on a hillside, we visited Universal Studios (which is much more of a theme park than a genuine film studio). We saw the Chinese Theater and the stars’ autographs, hand and footprints in the sidewalk and, of course, the highlight of possibly the whole trip, we visited Disneyland, spending all day and staying to see the illuminated parade after dark. We loved the rides, and found it totally unlike any other amusement or theme park we had visited. We even walked through a replica of the French Quarter in New Orleans, which gave us a foretaste of our visit there a few years later.
Next day, Tuesday, we flew the farthest west we were ever to travel together, to Honolulu in the Hawaiian Islands. We were now 11 hours behind British Summer Time, and quite near the International Dateline. As we approached Honolulu airport at night it was like a fairytale land below, full of mysterious twinkling lights. As we stepped off the plane garlands of flowers were placed around our neck, a traditional Hawaiian greeting for all visitors. George and I had our photos taken (separately) with an exotic Hawaiian girl with a flower in her hair. An exotic Hawaiian boy would have been more to our taste, but he was reserved for the photos with the female arrivals (perhaps we should have dressed in drag).
We were staying in Waikiki, the main resort area of Honolulu. It was a high rise area very reminiscent of the Spanish Costas, except this was more exotic with taller palm trees, and everybody in colorful Hawaiian shirts and dresses.
We fell in love with Hawaii, which felt much more like being in Polynesia than in the United States (in fact it is in both). There was a group of musicians we saw several times playing in the street near our hotel, consisting of two male guitarists, and a well-built female singer in a colorful, Hawaiian ankle-length costume and a big flower in her hair, who played a mandolin-type instrument as she sang. There was also a younger woman, similarly attired (possibly her daughter) who sometimes danced, Hawaiian style, to the music. We loved this group, and would stop and listen whenever we passed. The music was typically Hawaiian, but the only individual number I can remember was ‘Blue Hawaii’ made famous by Elvis Presley.
The weather in Hawaii was warm, but surprisingly cloudy. It is in a latitude where the temperature stays warm throughout the year and there are no real seasons, but they do get quite a lot of rain. However, the sea and air temperature are so warm you can swim in the sea when it is raining. We did have quite a bit of sun each day, and one day when there was no cloud at all we stayed on the beach and got terribly sunburnt, not realizing the power of the sun this near the Equator. We were both in agony for days afterwards.
We visited the zoo (we had also visited the Bronx zoo in New York on one of our trips), also Pearl Harbor and downtown Honolulu, where we discovered frozen yoghurt for the first time. It was delicious. We had the misfortune of being in Waikiki on July 4th, American Independence Day, which is the day they light fireworks. Whether it is true of all American high rise cities I could not say, but certainly Waikiki was no place to be out on the streets on July 4th, because crazy people threw enormous firecrackers down from the skyscrapers, especially after dark. Our hotel restaurant was across the street, and we were literally too scared to go out and eat. In the end we made a mad dash, firecrackers raining down all around us, ate our meal and dashed back across the road to the safety of our hotel, not daring to venture further afield that evening.
We did not take the opportunity to see more of the island whilst in Honolulu, which perhaps we should have done, nor did we visit any of the other islands. We were quite happy drinking in the atmosphere of Honolulu/Waikiki and enjoying the beach and the rest between our city sightseeing on the mainland. We had five full days in Hawaii, and spent quite a lot of time on the beach. George probably did this for my sake as much as anything, but he really preferred exploring cities to outlying nature reserves and tourist-orientated ‘culture centers’, so we skipped the coach trip round the island. We saw genuine Hawaiian culture in the streets and parks of Waikiki in the form of Hula dancers and Hawaiian music and singing, and did not feel the need to travel to a special show for tourists, though I do now regret not seeing more of the island.
There was one unpleasant incident I remember, which was entirely my fault. I was aware of a military base in Waikiki, and like many gay men I have always been attracted to uniforms. American uniforms held a special attraction for me, and one day we were walking along the main street in Waikiki and George caught me looking at someone (I believe he was in uniform, but certainly he was not a Polynesian native of Hawaii). George accused me of wishing I had been on my own, since the look in my eyes said I felt if George was not there I might score. He felt, at that moment, that he was in the way. I have always remembered this incident, and it hurt at the time and hurts even more now, because George exactly read my thoughts at that precise moment. Naturally, I felt guilty about it then, and even more so now that George is dead. It is not that I ever really wanted him out of the way, but there are times we all feel our style is being cramped, and George caught me at one moment when I would have liked to have been free to do some cruising to investigate the possibilities of meeting an American Serviceman in uniform.
It was not as if we were in a completely monogamous relationship, since we both used to see other people sexually, and indeed we did the gay backroom clubs in both New York and San Francisco on this trip, but George had to have a supply of amphetamines in order to get in the mood or even think about anything sexual, so if I was feeling in the mood and he had no supply of ‘sweeties’, as he called them, we were in deep trouble. I had to curb my impulses, or it would ruin our holiday.
I could easily have waited till we got to San Francisco and George had either obtained a fresh supply of sweeties, or used the ones he was saving up for our visit to that city. However, I knew it was only in Waikiki I stood any real chance, however remote, of meeting a military guy in uniform because of the proximity of the military base to a nearby cottage (public toilet) which held distinct possibilities. This sense of frustration on my part caused tension between us, because George was very sensitive to moods, and could often read me like a book. However, I curbed my impulses as much as I could. Quite likely nothing would have happened had I felt free to cruise, since Waikiki is hardly a gay paradise as far as I know.
Whilst in Waikiki we went to see a rather strange film called ‘The Island’. We also bought the obligatory Hawaiian shirts. Mine was bright green and George’s blue, both covered in exotic colored flowers, and we wore these almost constantly whilst on the island. They were particularly useful in view of our sunburn, as they were very loose fitting.
On the Sunday, our sunburn thankfully wearing off, we flew back east to San Francisco for our final four nights. George immediately fell in love with the city, because if its friendly atmosphere and almost European architecture. Then there were the hills and cable cars, which made this a unique American city. I also liked it, but still preferred New York.
We saw all the sights including the Golden Gate Bridge, the pyramid skyscraper built to withstand earthquakes, Fisherman’s Wharf and we also had a distant view of the prison island of Alcatraz. We had a ride on a cable car on at least one occasion.
We visited the gay bars and backrooms, and who knows whether George got his fatal infection here, in New York, or possibly back home in London. Certainly HIV was prevalent in San Francisco and New York in 1980 when we were there, whilst it was virtually unknown in London back then.
We walked into one bar, where gay pornographic videos were being shown on a screen above the bar. There was nothing outside to warn the general public, and we were rather shocked as anyone could have walked in off the street just for a drink - possibly a man and his wife, or even a woman on her own. Two guys were watching the screen fascinated, and one of them said to us:
‘This wouldn’t be allowed back home in Texas’.
We explained it would not be allowed back home in England either, though we were going through a liberal patch in London which lasted about three years during which such films were shown at certain seedy establishments in and around Soho, but the clampdown came very soon. Here in San Francisco such things were accepted as a matter of course, and at one gay backroom cinema club, called ‘The Nob Hill Cine-club’, we were handed a membership card on the back of which was printed a list of statements which would cause any British lawmaker or police officer to have an apoplexy. I reproduce it in full below:
‘- The bearer is admitted to the membership of the Nob Hill Cine-Club.
- The Nob Hill Cine-Club is a members only social and artistic facility dedicated to cinema and conviviality. Members are entitled to use and enjoy all of our facilities.
- We believe in a atmosphere of freedom for consenting adults.
- If you are harassed or restricted by any unwelcome police agents or entrappers, please notify the management and we will provide legal representation to you at our expense.’
In London in the early 1990s gay clubs were still employing straight security men to throw people out on the street for such activities, in San Francisco over a decade earlier the club paid your legal expenses if the police dared interfere with your rights as a consenting gay adult. Now the San Francisco attitude is prevalent throughout Europe, Australia and the main cities of North America (although AIDS has caused some restrictions in the latter), and it is only in quaint backwaters such as London where the sexual hang-ups of the population maintain Victorian laws for victimless ‘crimes’ and the gay population still creep around feeling guilty, as if the Stonewall riots which liberated New York’s gay scene had never happened. Things are changing slowly in the major cities of the UK in the mid and late 1990s, and hopefully this more liberal attitude will this time be permanent and not followed by yet another clamp-down as has happened so many times before. The draconian anti-gay laws which survived the 1967 Sexual Offences Act remain on the statute book to be brought back into use at any time. They could close down many of the gay establishments in London at any time under these laws (which thankfully had been changed by 2005).
In San Francisco everyone seemed friendly, and the city had an almost carnival atmosphere. The main streets were full of open-air theater, with crowds gathering around to watch all sorts of entertainers performing.
We visited the Amnesty International office in a Victorian-style house, which was quite a contrast to the AI office in New York which we had also visited. The night before leaving San Francisco we went to a very ornate cinema, The Alhambra, to see ‘Hangar 18'. The exterior of the cinema was built like a mosque, complete with two minarets.
On the Thursday morning we began our long flight back home, changing planes at New York’s JFK airport. I was frantically hoping our London-bound flight would not be called until I had seen my favorite singer, Jerry Lee Lewis, perform on ‘The Eddie Rabbitt’ show in the coin-in-the-slot TVs in the terminal building. Just as the program was about to start our flight was called. It was then delayed for about an hour, and I sat fuming with frustration in the plane whilst my idol played one of his best-ever versions of ‘Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On’ just minutes after I had technically left American soil, although we were still on the tarmac. It is the only time he has been on TV whilst I have been in the States, and I missed him by minutes. I later obtained the show on video, so I now know I had every right to feel frustrated to miss such a show whilst trapped on a plane a few yards from the terminal television screens.
We arrived back at Heathrow, considerably jet-lagged after the very long flight and 8 hour time difference since we left San Francisco. It had been a wonderful trip, and one we would always remember.
At the end of July and beginning of August George’s cousin Margaret and her husband, John, came down from Glasgow to stay with us for two weeks. Then, for the August Bank holiday weekend at the end of August, George and I went down to Porlock in Somerset with my mother to stay with her friend, Cath.
On September 10th it was our tenth anniversary of meeting. I wanted to give George something special, and racked my brains. In the end I decided on an engraved glass of some kind, with our two names and the figure ‘10'. When you are not looking for something out of the ordinary like this, you see such things everywhere, but when you really want something you never find it easily. I looked in Yellow Pages and only a few places were listed. Foolishly, I chose one in Belgravia which charged sky-high prices, but I was so determined to get this special token of our ten years together I ordered it anyway. I could only afford to have our two initials and a figure 10 engraved on a plain brandy glass. I think it cost £15 back in 1980, which was way, way above the going rate for such things. Later, after I had given George the present, I found out where I could get much more elaborate engraved glass for just a few pounds.
The reaction, when I gave the present to George, was not what I had expected. He soon got out of me how much it cost, and he was absolutely furious that I had been silly enough to be ripped off in this way. He was not a great one for present-giving, and the glass was hardly very decorative. Still, he was a bit more appreciative later, but we both felt bad that I had paid at least three times its real value.
On the Saturday following our anniversary we had a special party, and had a wide range of guests including some of my old cronies from the days when I used to work at CND head office, many of whom I had not seen for years. I took some Super-8 film, which was a relatively short-lived craze of mine at the time. Later transferred to video along with other Super-8 film clips, I called this memento of our life together ‘Happy Days’, and our tenth anniversary party was just one of these.
Also In September we saw Shirley Bassey at The Apollo, Victoria and finished off the month with a one-day trip to Blackpool for the illuminations.
October was also a busy month, since George’s sister Margaret came to stay with us for a week, which included her birthday. That month George went to see ‘Les Miserables’, a musical he saw it six times altogether, and I saw it four times. Maybe this was the first visit which got him hooked.