This piece appears without paragraphs at the author’s request
I don’t really go on to the gay scene much these days. But I am pleased that it’s there and I feel sad when I hear about venues, like the Black Cap, being closed down by property developers. I was never really a scene queen but the scene was an important part of my learning how to be gay. It was only when I moved to London in 1970 that I became aware that there were a number of pubs and clubs which catered primarily for gay customers. I hadn’t really been aware of anything like this in 60s-Scotland, although there were pubs which took on this role, temporarily, during the Edinburgh Festival. It took me months to get up the courage to go into a gay pub but I well remember the first time I crossed the threshold of the Colherne, the gay pub nearest to where I lived. Once in there, I saw a relaxed looking man in a red sweater and I wanted him to become part of my life. I never saw him again but I went back there frequently; I became more confident about myself and I extended my sexual repertoire. Over the years, I became aware of all kinds of gay pubs catering for different client groups and different sexual tastes; there were pubs where you went with friends and others where you went cruising; there were some pubs where you could take your women friends and some where you wouldn’t. There were some things about the scene that felt comfortably different from anywhere else. I went for some years to the Albert, where almost all the customers were radical young gay liberationists with long hair. In the 80s, when hair was generally shorter, I went to the Bell, an alternative pub near Kings Cross, where scary dyke bouncers would test you about your sexuality before they would let you in (I always passed the test). There were, throughout the 80s, more and more gay and gay-friendly clubs with late night licences; some friends of mine loved Heaven but I was also more likely to head for Bolts, near Finsbury Park. Wherever you went in the UK and the rest of the post-industrial world, there were always pubs and clubs that could be described as the gay scene. The ones in Dundee and Alicante were rather different from those in London and Madrid and New York but it was foolish to expect them to be the same; the thing was that they were there. The gay scene was like a kind of family; like any family, there were parts which you liked and parts which you didn’t; there were some parts whose existence you appreciated, even if you never went near them. I have never been to Florida and so I had no direct connection with any of the people who died or were wounded in the Pulse club in Orlando; but they are part of my family; a distant part but I can connect with some of the stories of the life struggles they will have gone through. I feel sure that some of the families of the victims will be denying that their children were LGBT because those now dead children never found – or made – the time to come out to their families. The stories of a 71-year-old Scotsman are going to be very different in many ways from those of twenty-something Latinos but there are common strands, if there is the time and the generosity to look for them. I understand the anger of Owen Jones when his fellow journalists fail to listen to or value stories about becoming LGBT in this society. The scene is important because, although you don’t necessarily like everyone you meet there, there is some kind of understanding of the factors which have brought you there. There was a kind of safety about the scene – or there was before the massacre at the Pulse.
By Bob Cant | 15 June 2016
