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The Invisible Man

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

I wanted to send you a piece of writing – just to see what you think. It follows ….

Your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Billy (the Kid).

    Thirteen (going on fourteen), with dribbles on his chin.

    With cold snot falling (like honey) from his nose.

    Which he wipes on the elasticated cuff of his jacket.

    A jacket too big.

    Because it is a man’s jacket which he stole from a bus shelter.

    Sometime ago.

    Seven p.m.

    Seven p.m. and Billy is in position, with his hands thrust deep into his pockets, his shoulders hunched, his head bent, his right foot pressed flat against the wall behind him, his left leg extended to act as anchor.

    Seven p.m. and the wind howls through the city streets.

    ‘Got any money, mister?’

    … comes the call.

    ‘Got any money?’ (for a poor homeless kid. Hungry kid …. he thinks, but does not say).

    With the wind beating mercilessly against him, which would have ruffled his untidy hair if it had not been clamped within a baseball cap, the peak turned to one side, making his face look skewiff (or was it his expression?)

    Seven p.m. and the chimes of the great clock are lifted and borne throughout the metropolis, tolling the end of a working day, a workaday, an everyday.

    Seven p.m. and the iron grilled door of the ‘Club Mon Ami’ swings open (next to Billy, to his right), like an arm extending in welcome, as if to curl and close around shoulders, as if to hold in an embrace, as if to lead on to the dancefloor and whirl into a waltz, a jive, a slick fandango.

    And the music starts up

    Slow moving music to fill the empty bar, to waft around the tables, to pervade the enclosed and steadily controlled atmosphere, to mix with the whirr of fan heaters and air conditioners, to start again the nightly interplay, the nightly interaction, the night of revelry and devilry to which ‘Mon Ami’ must bear witness.

    Billy watches passers by, and calls to them as they pass by:

    ‘Got any money?’

    Thirteen, with nowhere to go, not to a flat cramped and empty, and smelling of damp.

    Where his mother sleeps by day.

Where his mother entertains by night.

    Her cries like pain.

    (She would not be there now, would not be there for hours, and were she there he would rather avoid her, would prefer not to be that part of her life hidden behind the dividing curtain, with eyes dark accustomed that can see through rents and tears those strange contortions, those frantic manipulations, those brazen bare assed thrusts and throes which bring in the daily bread. Grunts and groans and calculated moans (on cue) to soothe him into sleep.

    Better the streets.

    Better the city lights.

    Better the hope for a hamburger, the craving for a ‘Coca Cola’, the meeting with friends, and the larking, the marauding, the troublemaking.

    Better an adventure he did not know than tha monotonous predictability he knew too well, which smelt so warm and close, which sounded so wet and clammy and clam-like, which quickened his breathing along with their breathing, and caused him to masturbate guiltily.

    Not old or wise enough to consider her plight.

    Big Ben took up his position at the door to the Club, glanced at Billy, set his arms folded across his bulky chest, his legs slightly apart, his thick potato head square upon his shoulders, and imposed.

    Right on the street.

    Right next to Billy.

    (He flicked a wrapped strip of chewing gum over to the kid, who caught it without a smile, slipped off its silver coating, devoured it with peppermint in his nostrils).

    Passers by looked into Ben’s ugly face, then swung their head away, and walked away, and put their thoughts neatly away, into enveloped, filed and sealed storage, unwilling to know what they knew.

    Those passers by who milled along the pavements of the street, bustling together, battling against the wind, dragging their problems behind them, like so many screaming children, like so many sacks of clay. People weighed down with problems. Problems imposed upon them.

    (Problems (they have) imposed upon them(selves)).

Wandering this way and that way with their destinations fixed, or uncertain, or unknown, with their faces long and isolated, untouched by each other, faces with nobody’s cares but their own. They filled the length and breadth of this street, this long and curving street which wound through the heart of the city, a mighty river of cars and pedestrians, of bicycles and policemen, of articulated lorries and linking chains of tourists, a never-ending flow of activity, with its tributaries like arteries pulsing more life into it, from its shops and its ffices, from its bars and its locales, both its daytime and its nighttime caught between, within the buildings, surging along the roadway with the stale air of congestion and the dim light of dusk.

    ‘Got any money, mister?’

    ‘Yes’, (said the thin man, the thin man hurrying by, brushing by).

    ‘Give us some’.

    ‘No. Why don’t you get off home?’ (said the thin man, looking away, anywhere away).

    ‘Need some money for me bus fare, don’t I?’

    ‘Really?’ (said the thin man, stopping to look not at the boy, but at the man near him).

    Scan the form of Big Ben (the biggest Ben), his crumpled suit with stretched stitching, his cauliflower ears, his eyes within their creased up sockets, bloodshot, his lips curling, his teeth showing … (and see nothing, see him not, see the path being trodden to lead YOU away).

    Billy looks after the thin man, the sleek man, the groomed man, with his manicured nails gleaming clear nail varnish, with his fingers tugging at a flap of dry skin on his upper lip, with his vague and distant air, his unreal, other-worldly air, and spits after him.

    The sound makes the man look back and see phlegm land.

    He sidles on.

    ( … and he persuades himself, with rational thought, that sooner or later the kid, that obscene and objectionable street kid, that urchin, will wend his way back to calm respectability, and will be put to bed between crisp cotton sheets, and will be kissed goodnight, and will sleep, with sweet dreams).

    Billy, the Kid, with his fly half undone, gaping with Superman’s underpants.

    Billy looks around him for his next victim.

    … like flies to a running sore, they come, and they go, and he jingles coins in his pocket.

    Big Ben grunts his approval.

    This haunt, this favourite haunt of young Billy, sheltered beneath the overhanging office blocks (which surge giantesque into the night sky, cool and rigid phalli), with the Club to his right, ‘Mon Ami’ to his right, with a corner to his left, whither he may scamper should the police decide to swoop.

    (Policemen who knew he was there but who turned the other cheek, on the whole, like Christians, on the whole.)

    And the waste ground behind the concrete pristine facade, where derelict small houses offer themselves for exploration, where tramps congregate and burn their litter fires, where couples court (where prostitutes take their clients and boys wait), men in the throes of their ecstasy too preoccupied to watch their wallets or their cameras or their coats or their hats (or their trousers, sniggered Billy to himself, Ben catching the snigger and watching him, watching the gleam in the gleeful eye, the memory burst like a firework, a memory of a man in socks and an erection screaming blue murder after Billy), and women with their handbags ripe for the pucking, like prize plums, fat with cash, unless they wore the garish make-up of the pro and kept their bags firmly slung around their wrists, as his mother always did, her mind on the money.

    Men walk in.

    Leather shining and mustachios bristling.

To the Club ‘Mon Ami’.

     … voices enveloped by the pulse of the music …

    … eyes alert to the dimming light …

    Cut off.

    In an instant.

From the world which turns its slow and even course around them, which carries on as if without them, which clocks on and clocks off with ageless repetition and does its best to disregard their secret enclave.

    Not to know about them.

    In the sanctity of the Club ‘Mon Ami’, small club, mon ami, tiny at the side of the thoroughfare, hidden in the folds of the city ( a city so vast that no vantage point can give a view of it in its entirety), they seat themselves at a table and wait for the night to progress.

    The night which descends upon the street outside as if tugged by the unceasing winds.

    The night which fares in street lamps, which crackles statically into life at the flick of a switch, at the flick of Big Ben’s wrist, who with one careless motion sets ablaze the pink neon sign above the door, the sign which heralds the promise ‘Mon Ami’, ‘Mon Ami’ large and penetrant upon the horizon, ‘Mon Ami’ glaring down to the people, to all of the people, below.

    Which bathes the boy’s face in a pink flush.

    Billy with the tender pink tinged flesh of fresh meat.

    … mon ami.

    He waits around here often (if not always he, then someone like him) waits for the other kids whom he knows will come and join him, waits for the men, amongst the swaggering men (with socks down their trousers), those with their collars turned high, looking furtive, glancing from side to side before they enter the Club, who can be stopped, regaled, who can be forced to part with some cash on the words (spoken or intended):

    ‘Don’t worry mister, your secret’s safe with me’.

    Billy the source of this (and much more) knowledge.

Billy the Clever Dick.

    Standing in the evening air watching the world go by.

Staring blankly.

    At the people who cannot approach.

    Those with rolled newspapers and rolled umbrellas and coats buttoned close and snug.

Those who do not see him but who walk with their heads in the clouds convincing themselves that all is right with the world.

    (And if they did chance to glance his way then he would poke out his pointed and curling tongue, or hold aloft two fingers, and they would glance to the floor, would pretend not to notice him, that he was not their concern, not their problem – like the people on the underground whom he would stare at unflinchingly, his gaze determinedly unswerving, who would hide behind magazines, or watch their reflections in the window, or would busy themselves reading advertisements displayed above his head, intent upon denying his existence).

    When Billy grows up he wants to be the Invisible Man.

    (He’s in training).

Freedom of Speech

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

Do you know Oscar, in this the Information Age, which is how our particular era is being nominated, we are so saturated with instruction and directive that we are as a consequence thrown back upon our own decision making processes in order to progress, even exist! Which means of course that few instructions are being followed and even fewer directives being obeyed! You have to laugh – in an effort to over control it is actually clear to see that there is always room for subversion, and that any attempts to explain are being misheard, misinterpreted, and basically not understood. Honestly you would not credit it!

Now I know that you were very much the victim of information being disseminated about you, and being interpreted in ways that undermined your position, and you could no doubt argue that lies were told and very unhelpful conclusions drawn, but nowadays it seems that not even the vestiges of truth need to have any currency at all. Absolute fabrications, or interpretations, are given validity, with fiction passed off as fact, with verisimilitude the very essence of belief. History is rewritten to favour certain groups over others, and the people of the ‘mass media’, as well as endlessly promoting themselves, promote an establishment status quo. And yet, apparently, in my part of the globe (Chortleton, for heaven’s sake, that bastion of free thinking – and I say that with sarcasm, of course!), there is ‘freedom of speech’.

You see, Oscar, I do at least have you to talk to, and even though I may be being monitored, I can, it seems, so far anyway, say whatever I need to say. My issue today is that really there is nothing to report that you do not already know! The century or so between us really makes no difference! You understand human nature well enough, and that, it seems, alters little!

Ha ha!

Best wishes to you,

Your friend,

Algernon B Duffoure.

Compliance

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

Winning adherence to any set of convictions is difficult to achieve, particularly if the desire is to sway public opinion away from the norm. The norm of course becomes the dominant form, and this whether or not it is the best or most effective way of achieving harmony in relations between all subjects. Skewed of course and always subservient to the will of controlling forces.

Now it may well be that love between the nations and the peoples of the world is preferable to war, but if it is not promoted and exemplified then it is war that will win out. I am very sorry to say. Any level of influence to the alternative grows only very slowly and is dependent upon responses from the masses.

Love between actual individuals, love not influenced by gain and control, is even more difficult to achieve. Love between men that is love and not the need to dominate and control is a greater challenge still. When we are all wrestling with our demons.

Perhaps this is ‘the love that dare not speak its name’ – an actual concern and union with the other, until there is no separation of being.

Thank you for all your gifts, Oscar, not least your ability to provoke thought.

Your friend

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Child poverty

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

You may prefer not to receive this letter – maybe none of my letters are actually welcome, but there does seem to be some sort of impetus behind my continuing to write them, so I shall not as yet desist.

I think you had ‘urchins’ in your day, or ‘street-arabs’, or ‘ragamuffins’ – the poor, very poor children out on the streets with nowhere safe to go, who had empty bellies and who were ripe for the worst imaginable forms of exploitation. I get the impression that they were commonplace in your society, that the chattering classes both noticed and did not notice their existence. You did refer to them, often in the context of available youths, who could be bought and sold for the price of a meal.

In our modern era we look back upon that time as if it is very distant from us, almost through ‘rose-tinted spectacles’, with the likes of Charles Dickens fleshing out for us the plight of the poor, in melodramatic terms, terms that evoke an emotional rather than any form of practical response. It is almost as if they have to be there in order to make the picture complete – of an unjust society, one where people suffered just because of where they were born, at what level in society – and we congratulate ourselves upon our own democratic movements that more equally divide the spoils of economic growth.

And yet there is still child poverty.

It sort of amazes me that this is true, and that across the globe there are children who are not given enough to eat, because conflicts rage around them, because political movements suppress and oppress them, because there simply is not enough in certain areas. It seems crazy that this is the case. That there is anywhere where there is not enough food. Somebody once told me that if all the wealth of the world was distributed equally amongst the world’s population, then everyone would be poor, but then I wonder what ‘poor’ actually means, how you measure it and rationalise it, and why it is that some have so much more than enough, while others do not have food. Surely as humankind we would think that food was an absolute priority for all the peoples of the world, just as a starting point, as something we could build from, as a human race. But it is not the case, and is very difficult to understand, that we who have food on our plates (and cars, and holidays, and clothes, and pets, and homes, and jewellery, and laptops, and mobile phones) can tolerate the fact that somewhere else there are children who are hungry.

Now, of course Oscar, I acknowledge that it is not ‘our’ fault, that the race as a whole may think one thing, but that those who hold and wield power may require something entirely different; even that a sense of superiority cannot exist unless someone else is being oppressed and held underfoot; that incorporating everyone seems like a ‘pipedream’.

But, if only …..

Your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Super privileged

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

I went for a little jaunt this afternoon – just a walk to the main park in Chortleton Spa, and I bought myself a coffee and sat watching the world go by for half an hour. I was watching – but not listening to – the superprivileged.

I was not listening because I did not have to; I could tell from a distance that this foursome – two men, two women – two couples, no less – were lost in a world of carping and criticising, both on a microscopic scale and also in epic proportions. The coffee they had bought was not strong enough, and the wooden spoons seemed like a ludicrous concession to the ‘green’ agenda, and the park was well kept – but by volunteers, so it was said, and the government had got it all wrong, about everything, and leaders could not lead, and rulers could not rule, and the planet was in danger and the cosmos was about to implode.

I could hear it all without listening to a word.

I thought to myself: how comfortable do your lives have to be before you will just shut up for a moment and look at the beauty of the falling leaves, red, orange, yellow and gold, as you pat your full bellies, contemplating the delights of your supper to come, wandering back to your new cars for the journey to dog-ville, and spoiled teenage children, and plans for a winter vacation.

They were compromising their health with chocolate bars, the women with their rather weak caffeine fix, and the men with pints of alcohol foaming before them, indulging, endlessly indulging. I noticed that the women led the conversation – which was an animated conversation, one where things were being discussed, tales were being relayed, and that every now and again one of the men would intervene with some witty side-comment, or some joke, or some ribald observation.

They would laugh.

How they would laugh.

The super-privileged.

Best wishes to you, Oscar dear – such people need your needle-sharp lampooning!

Your friend,

(…and I hope you appreciate that there was a time where very, very few people would have admitted to being ‘your friend’),

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Writer’s Block

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

I wonder if I am suffering from ‘writer’s block’, or if I am just lazy.

You see, even though I know you depend on these letters coming through, that you want to be remembered to the world at large, that there is the danger that you will be lost to history, that your significance will be eclipsed, I still only think of myself and whether I can be bothered to write anything at all – let alone a missive to you!

There is something so very over-indulgent about suffering from any sort of ‘block’; the inappropriate inability to do something that one does want to do, but which one denies oneself in order to whip up some sort of self persecution, contribute to the fear of failure, and just be thoroughly self centred. It is the ‘I cannot be bothered’ that is the most worrying thing, because it is like a self-denial, as if what I might have to say is not worth anything even to myself. Too much time is spent dealing with the realities of a silencing ethos that is culturally and morally generated, without adding to it myself!

And of course I do not take account of the fact that I am very, very lucky to have open to me the means of expression that allow me to say whatever I want to say; although that said, there are strictures in every culture, boundaries that one cannot cross without inviting reproach. I can however express this version of myself, be true to some notion of who I think I am, and make known across this platform my observations, thoughts, commentary. It is certainly not true everywhere. There are places across the globe in this the twenty-first century where certain words and certain phrases will get the author into a lot of bother, where neighbourhoods will erupt in condemnation, where lives are sanctioned, restricted, or even curtailed. I know there are many people across the globe who may be interested to read these letters along with you, Oscar dear, but they are afraid to ‘click the link’, because they would then be revealing something about themselves that their society, their family, their belief-system, would utterly condemn.

That is a real ‘writer’s block’; when one might know what one has to say, but is not allowed to say it.

You skirted issues yourself, Oscar, although there may not have been the vocabulary to address those obsessions of yours that got you caught by public disgrace.

I do not know; but mealy-mouthed and petulant refusals to send these short letters to you seems more to do with an abject sloth than a mental deficiency known as a ‘writer’s block’.

Makes me laugh!

Your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Picture this

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

A picture for you, dear, just a picture to while away a few idle moments.

I know that in that terrible cell you were deprived even of visual stimuli, and so I celebrate your being – and our being, Oscar, dear – with a picture to set you thinking.

There is not much to report: the world is still coronacrazy and lost in the pandemic; my diet is going well and I am growing slimmer than I have been for many a year; diversions are few and far between – a coffee with a friend, cooking some chutney, catching up with soap operas. I know all of this will mean very little to you – so very different from the life you led – with your absinthe, hashish, and opiates.

You may be interested to know that all public theatres are now closed, because people cannot be in contact with each other, and the proximity of theatre seats therefore makes it impossible for people to attend. So now your only hope for immediate existence is mediated via television or radio – instruments that relay into the home your art and artifice. No more applauding crowds, no more speeches from the balcony; I am afraid such venues are at present permanently dark.

‘The Importance Of Being …..’ – I suppose people might start to forget!

Best wishes to you, Oscar,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Hangover!

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

Tell me, please, why it is that it is something of a learned human ‘nature’ to celebrate life in all of its rewards and plenitudes by overindulging in food and drink! I just do not understand it. Why is it that any form of celebration – even the celebration of the everyday going particularly well – has to be capped off with feasts and wine, and spirits and strong coffees, with sweetmeats and treats, all of which do more harm than good!

It seems to me that it is learned behaviour, but it is a very strange one. So, I am in a very good mood, and I have achieved whatever it is that I have achieved, maybe a trip out went well, maybe everything fell into place the way that I wanted it to, and so I decide I am going to treat myself, to round off a good day by spoiling myself. And there of course is the rub. It is literally spoiling myself!

Now I am not someone who is ridiculously over indulgent, as you well know. I will accept an alcoholic drink or two, I will partake of a bottle of wine, I will order a fairly extravagant meal in a restaurant, maybe a dessert, maybe some cheese and biscuits; but these occasions are actually few and far between, and in the current health dilemma that dominates all social interaction (see my earlier note to you entitled: Pandemic!), there is precious little opportunity to go out and make merry. So, like most of the populations of the world, any momentary celebrations have to be practised in the home. You well know from me, Oscar, that my home environment is singular, that I live alone, have occasional visitors, but that most of my time is spent on my own in my comfortable surroundings, and therefore able to indulge my tastes for celebratory meals at the drop of a hat! And I do so maybe once every week, perhaps once every ten days or so. And every time there is the same result, to a greater or lesser degree, of a hangover that forces me to waste much of the ensuing day in recovery, nursing myself through the stomach pains, and the headaches, and the inability to eat properly. I do not even really enjoy the celebration when it is happening! Yes, I must like the moment when the alcohol takes effect, when I feel excited and happy, laughing at life as it presents itself around me, but I always then go too far, have to be rid of the wine, and all of the food, and so devour and drink it all, go to bed not really aware of what I am doing, and sleep a very heavy sleep, to be awoken early with a chronic dehydration and the sensation that my body is in rebellion. And – one more and – I have been doing this for years, perhaps all my entire adult life!

It is socially acceptable, and in certain circumstances even required. I have been at important occasions where to refuse a drink, a toast to whatever, is frowned upon, and I have been with people who insist that they will buy you a drink, that you will drink it with them, whether you want it or not. I have had ‘fun’, shared happy times, tried new things, new beverages, new foodstuffs around the world, and not really taken account of the cumulative harm that I am doing to myself. You must know what I mean, Oscar dear, you were a gourmand and an imbiber with expensive tastes which you also indulged, and which you shared willy-nilly.

Well, nowadays I find myself saying every single time – it has to stop!

I have fairly recently conquered the excesses of my diet, and I intend also to limit to an absolute zero my intake of alcoholic beverages. You note I say ‘intend’, which leaves a certain wavering point, but I shall take things, as all the self help programmes dictate, one day at a time!

I have a suspicion that you never stopped at all – that you carried on with your indulgences until your very end, with only the enforced respite of imprisonment interrupting you. I get the impression that you had a sense of yourself as if you needed no improvement, despite the condemnation of your age, despite the wagging finger of censure. I suppose you felt you knew best.

I know best.

It has to stop.

Best wishes to you,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

The life we lead …

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

How far away your world seems, and yet how very near. I read about you in history books, I consult biographies, I view the films that commemorate your life, your contributions, and of course the infamy of your trial, punishment, the aftermath, and I am struck by the parallels that still exist today.

It is true to say that the rise of social media – which is very much in the hands of the people – allows a form of self expression hitherto unheard of, and that within those realms it is perfectly possible for young gay men – men who would have been those you would have known, men who would have been you – a level of communication with the world at large that has until now been impossible. This means that we receive a competition for attention, and that we can choose what to view in the face of all the realities around us.

So, for instance, it is possible to watch ‘TikTok’ videos that affirm gay experience, make of it a positive, create a dynamic where there is acceptance, tolerance and love – where there is also fun, and enjoyment, and where all the varieties of youthful gay expression find platform. You can exist in a world where this is all you see, because there are so many of them, they are short and sweet, they send a message of hope and of solidarity, and they allow serious points, and trivial points, to be addressed with a candour that is refreshing, and zesty, and undeniable within their sphere of influence.

Equally, there is the opposite, just as powerful, with just as many followers and adherents, and these opposing forces do battle to try to dominate dominant discourse, to become the argument which wins out in popular consensus. I do not know if either of them actually ever wins out, or whether they are avidly and momentarily consumed to bolster burgeoning identities, lost to the sands of time, noticed fleetingly to confirm, or to subvert, a world view, and then reality, and mundanity, become the playgrounds in which they are to be lived out. It is like looking through holiday brochures, and then having to walk home in the rain.

I feel such affinity with the creators, and makers, and stars of these short videos, admire their wit and ingenuity, want them to be right in their assertions that being gay is the best thing in the world, that there are strides ahead to be taken, that understanding is everywhere, that love wins. And I think of you, dear Oscar, the great wave of popularity on which you sailed for many a year, and the parties, and the associations, the rendezvous, the trysts, that you enjoyed, seemingly unendingly. So very precarious, the assumption of rights, rights of passage, rights of representation, rights of being. All bound within legal strictures that can shift and alter, be inclusive, be exclusive, through time, from place to place. Gay people have fought for changes in national laws; others can do the same.

Perhaps tolerance and understanding will become the bywords of human advancement.

I do hope so,

Your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Pandemic!

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

A miserable day of rain and cold in Chortleton, not helped by the fact that we are in the midst of a global pandemic!  Yes!  Coronavirus – Covid 19, or so it is called.

You died, my dear, before the Spanish Flu of 1918, so you may not know what I am referring to, although I suspect that airborne respiratory diseases have been around forever, come in varying strains and levels of severity, so there may well have been something within your lifetime that was a cause for concern.

Of course in this era there is a popular belief that we will be able to defeat any illness that comes our way with mass vaccination programmes, and to some extent that has been proven by the almost total eradication of certain ailments through these means, but so far no one has come up with a vaccine strong enough, or effective enough, to defeat this one.  The whole world is therefore and as a consequence on red alert!  All sorts of measures are in place almost everywhere one goes to try to curb the transmission rates between individuals, because it is by breathing, coughing and spluttering over each other that the disease it seems is most efficiently transmitted.  No laughing matter, I can tell you, as thousands upon thousands of people around the world have succumbed to the virus and their lives have come to an end.

There are those who are completely swaddled within their own homes refusing even to see the light of day, and there are those who are entirely blasé about the whole affair, pretend that it is not happening, or that it cannot get to them, or that they will with no doubt be able to fight off all of the symptoms easily and robustly.  There are those who are completely and utterly paranoid, and those who are completely and utterly deluded.  I cannot be crass about it though, Oscar dear – apparently the forces of evil turn against anyone who dares to question either one way or the other, so one is left to one’s own devices and to one’s own musings, and a need to protect oneself above all else.  

In that respect the life of the older gay male is actually something of an advantage – nobody wants to know you anyway, so there is little chance of social interaction, the young keep their distance, more frightened of the spectre of old age than the possibility of infection (in most cases they seem able to fight it off quite easily), and of course living alone, or in a couple, means one is limited to intercourse only with a known other, or indeed with the self.  Little trips to the shops, wearing a mask, and speedily, are well within the capabilities of the early retired gay male, who can snicker and guffaw in secret (because of the face mask) at almost any even vaguely amusing happenstance that might occur!

Party people do have to beware – whatever kind of party one may be referring to;  events that are ‘super-spreaders’ seem to take their toll!

I’ll keep you posted, Oscar dear,

But until then,

Your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.