CRAIG’S THOUGHTS

By Craig Hanlon-Smith @craigscontinuum

Wisdom Not Wanted or Queer Is Here And Always Has Been.

I recently took a Sunday stroll with a young gay woman I used to teach. Needless to say she is now 33 and I am, well, older than that. Following our meandering and obligatory selfie she posted the image on social media along with a statement proclaiming to “respect our queer elders”. I had, until that moment, never considered myself an elder but gracefully acknowledge the position in the spirit it was gifted to me.

This was the second such meeting with a former student that week (the former also now in his thirties) and both calm discursive occasions seemed a fitting way to acknowledge and indeed celebrate Pride Month in a different way. Perhaps I had not considered myself an elder as there have always been, and indeed remain, those who I consider to be the elders of our community. It is an interesting concept to me that I would be perceived in that way and indeed that I am stepping into such shoes at all. Perhaps acceptance comes with age.

“I would hope that all my ‘elders’ have as much sought the friendship in me over the past 30 years as I them, I certainly felt that they have”

I have always had an interest in older gay men, and before anyone sneers smuttily, I absolutely mean in the spirit of interest and wisdom. As a 20-something I was taken under the wing of a gay couple ten years my senior and, although not technically elders in their thirties, they were definitely mine and I never ceased to be fascinated by the stories of their twenties in London and across the gay hotspots of Europe.

I found the idea that they had been living these exploratory lives while I was locked in my teenage Rapunzellike tower of grimness as exciting as it was riveting. They took me to bars and clubs that by the early ‘90s had lost their contemporary relevance both through the impact of the AIDS epidemic and the gravitational pull of Soho, itself now a faded tourist trap of what once was.

I adored James Ledward, our former editor and friend. He was a human encyclopaedia of relevance, and his assessment of contemporary trials would be wound back to age-old community gripes and local political stalemates, listening to him helped the world to make sense to me.

My dear friend Michael, some 30 years my senior, is a delight to be around and talking to him and others is not about reminiscing. It is absolutely about comfort and confidence in the present. I would hope that all my ‘elders’ have as much sought the friendship in me over the past 30 years as I them, I certainly felt that they have.

I am not so sure how much the elder is a position of worth in the long term. When my elders at whatever age took me into their care and confidence, I believe they recognised a younger them in the me they sought to befriend. I do not recognise a community much more than ten years behind me, nor do I see it recognise me.

That is not to criticise ‘the youth of today’ or any other demographic of our broadening communities, it is to notice and accept the shift. There are some clear links. The addition of the Q on to the end of LGBT was not the invention of the word queer. ‘Queer As F***’ t-shirts in the ‘80s were radical, it was an ownership of the descriptor so oft used to offend. Nor is gender non-conformity as revolutionary a development as its detractors would have us believe.

There has been much made of the ‘coming out’ recently of the US NFL player Carl Nassib. His revelation and simultaneous public donation of thousands of dollars to an LGBTQ+ youth charity cited across the world’s media as a turning point for men.

Just wait a minute. It is the decades of men who were deemed camp, effeminate, flamboyant, fey, limp-wristed, queer, in-drag, who dug the foundations that Carl Nassib’s daisy is now frolicking in, not to mention the trans and lesbian communities who are essential components of that historical route.

I do not wish to undo or dismantle Mr Nassib’s personal journey. I will not, however, allow without a fight or at least a screaming match, the heteronormative sports world and other seemingly machismo ‘gay’ individuals to smack the queer boys and girls of yesteryear out of the way while they tear over the finish line to snatch the prize.

Remember the years when you had to be a half-naked gay teasing straight boy to get on the cover of Attitude magazine? Or a gay boy who looked like one? Not in 2021 sugar tits. Get back in your locker and ask us to let you out when we’re ready. I wonder who his elders are?

“I adored James Ledward, our former editor and friend. He was a human encyclopaedia of relevance, and his assessment of contemporary trials would be wound back to age-old community gripes and local political stalemates, listening to him helped the world to make sense to me”

Any Pride ‘events’ this year are on a much smaller scale than many of us have become used to. I welcome this forced change. A few years ago, another gay man of a similar age shared with me how much more he enjoyed Trans Pride as it reminded him of what mattered ‘back in the day’ when we knew what it was all for.

I hope the elders at these smaller gatherings in 2021 are afforded not only the kindness they deserve, but the ears of the young who defy definition with a multitude of definitions of their own. The frustrations, irritations and disagreements of today are only under discussion at all because of all that went before. Engage it, embrace it, and know it. Our shared history can only ever be described as a continuum.