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The heterosexual matrix

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

You were caught within the heterosexual matrix so prevalent in your age, with your marriage to Constance, your fathering of two children, your position in the world as a man about town earning a good living and succeeding in your chosen career. We all now know that this was a sham, or only a part-truth, and that the impositions of such a matrix were not at all appropriate for your actual proclivities. So of course this does raise a question about your being heterosexual, and I think quite equally it also raises a question about your being exclusively homosexual. Maybe you were just greedy, a gourmand out to sate your pleasure principle no matter what the cost, with no thought to the social proprieties by which you appeared to live. I find the collapse of the dichotomous relationship between heterosexuality, with its overarching dominance, and homosexuality, endlessly subsumed and denied, quite fascinating; it seems to prove that neither polarity is near to the truth.

I have friends now, Oscar dear, who play within the heterosexual matrix and give in entirely to the proscriptions that surround them. It is for the women who are around me that I have a certain sympathy, because so many of them, despite the cause of feminism, seem to seek out the heterosexual ideal of the good, solid man, wage earning, dependable, on whom to rely. As a consequence they spend all of their time fulfilling versions of the feminine ideal, to whatever degree, and always to some extent allowing male dominance and decision making to hold sway. I listen to their voices, raised in alarm against many of the men who surround them, and see their lives unfolding within the strictures of the patriarchate, limiting their choices, stunting their growth, and catch myself noting that in very many cases they are playing along with the status quo – saying one thing and doing another. Not that I blame them – it is the power of the matrix to which they accede rather than any consciously personal perspective.

Very frustrating though. From the homosexual point of view, where so many of the structures imposed within the heterosexual matrix have already collapsed, and have to be mimicked in order to gain any validity within that separate sphere of being, there seems to be no escape. So long as we all play along ,the caravanserai simply progresses, always in essence the same.

Are there other ways of being, or do we already know the end of the story?

Your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Pleasantries are possible

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

In amongst all of the high drama of your being it must have been possible to be ordinary, just pleasant, open, accessible, passing the time of day in ways that were fruitful, interactive, with consideration. Or were you one of the those people who simply could not see others, was entirely indifferent to the needs of others, and who was simply not able to see the requirements of others because you were too besotted with the requirements of self.

I am sure you felt, for instance, that you were at several times completely in the sway of young Bosie, and constantly acceding to his demands, but I wonder whether you were giving him leeway because you wanted to keep him with you, and so of course were actually being self-serving even when supposedly being aware of someone else. I have noted it very often in human interaction – even my own, I have to admit; that we think we are being kind and supportive to another when in fact our primary consideration is bolstering the self. It is very rare indeed to see or hear of anything that is truly selfless, and I do wonder how possible it is, given that self-preservation is probably one of the primary instincts with which we as a race are blessed. What is more, it all seems so out of fashion nowadays.

The idea that one would sacrifice the self for some greater good or for the good of humanity as a whole, feels like something that might have been at some time or another, but really is not of the modern era. It is the stuff of a fantasy land – of knights in shining armour, or of Jesus on the cross and his host of self flagellants suffering for the good of us all. Does anyone do that sort of thing these days? Did they in your day, Oscar dear? Or is there always some kind of vainglorious association tied in with such pursuits?

You have yourself been cast in such a light; as if the suffering you underwent somehow had to be expected and endured in order to free future generations from the same sort of persecution. But I am afraid to report that it has not yet worked, not on a global scale (remember, Oscar, people on the planet today can still be put to death for homosexual acts in certain states), and is not even entirely achieved in the more liberal states (fingers still point, crimes are still committed, sexual minorities are still vilified even in the most free countries).

I think what I am arguing is that the price was very high for you to pay, and there is still a price attached, and so that notion of expectation and endurance continues; that of course minorities have to be positioned in ways to commit them to some form of suffering, because it is through their suffering that they are most generally known.

I just think it s possible that everything could be a lot simpler and a lot more pleasant; that acceptance could just mean acceptance. If I can have no expectations of others, and can accept them for who they are, whether that wavers, or is constant, whether it is true, or even false, then surely everyone can. I can assure you Oscar, there is nothing special about me.

Your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Equal

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

I hope this letter finds you well.

My preoccupation is with a phrase that sprang to mind when I was preparing to write to you, which is:

We may be equal in our suffering but not in our success.

I do not know where the phrase came from, nor why it should come into my mind, other than that in seeing the levels of association I have with you made me think that my understanding of your suffering is because I too share it. No, I have not had the same experience as you, and not lived the same life, but there are elemental points of reference that would bring us close together. The classification system which makes of us ‘homosexual’, our shared origins in Western Europe, our racial inheritance, and our state of gendered being (as it is defined binarily). These become over-arching and definitional, at least in the ways in which the societies around us will wish to make us known. In effect it is how we will be reported, even though what we actually share is a sort of very common humanity, which we share at the root with everyone else. The systemic reference points by which we are known only come into being once others and their judgements, culturally governed, come into being. We might be able to look at each other simply as human entities, and it is at this point that I can share your heartache, your indignation, and your suffering. In essence it is the same as understanding anyone else.

But what I would not be able to share with you is the level of your success, which grew from privilege; it is the sort of privilege experienced by only a few. There are not so many people on the planet who have the sort of access to success that you had, who move in circles where the currency is self-promotion, and where works and sayings and the very presence of self are celebrated. You were a very fortunate individual. As you scan the full span of humanity and history you must be able to see that you were far more fortunate than most, and that it was advantage, of class, of rank, of consequent education and access to an intellectual marketplace which brought about your glittering career. In some strange effect it was not you. It was not actually you who made it all happen, but it did all happen because of the world that surrounded you.

It is odd to note that I can easily assimilate your pain, but not your glory.

With best wishes,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

My own best friend

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

I wonder what sort of a friend you would have been to me, and what sort of a friend I would have been to you! I know there were those – Robbie Ross, for instance – who were devoted to you and endlessly supportive, but I fear I may have been the sort of person to be slightly wary of you, and not be particularly supportive of your worst crimes. I do not know, it is very hard to say because we are from different eras, and different social milieus.

I think I am a little judgemental, even to myself. If I were my own best friend I might well be quick to criticise, and also to condemn should I ever step out of line about anything. If I am ever speeding in my car, then there is always a voice in my head which slows me down, keeps me within the legal allowances, points out, as a friend and a confidant would, that there will be a heavy price to pay if I am found out, or if I cause any sort of accident. I am something of a sage counsellor, always thinking through the various ramifications of any course of action. I sometimes try the experiment though of being my own best friend, and of imagining what it would be like if I were looking at myself objectively, and could offer advice as only a friend can. Would I encourage myself to be more adventurous, to break the rules, to be more selfish and self-seeking? The position of the best friend may not always have in mind the best outcomes for the one who is befriended. In fact it might be argued that because it is something of an objective relationship, then the friend can project on to the other all of the possibilities that s/he is too averse to taking.

I think you would have ultimately been a caring friend, Oscar, someone who cared for the others who were in his life, as I must be to myself.

Best wishes, as ever,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Of this time

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

Just to let you know that I have not forgotten you.

The genger battle of our age is no longer solely about sexuality but increasingly about transitioning from male to female, or vice versa. There are now, in certain countries, protected rights to choose gender, and the more I research into it the more apparent it is that some level of choice has always existed. It is about whether or not one accepts the interplay of gender stereotypes as they exist within any given culture or whether one subverts or challenges those self same stereotypes.

The debate also undermines the definitional stance that many cultures assign to gender as a concept, something I am increasingly coming to question. Oppositional definitions and binary polarities seem to me to do a disservice to the potential of whole human experience. It seems to me that the possibility of merging opposition would be preferable, and that losing the pretence of clear cut definition would serve humanity better.

Were you a saint or a sinner – who is to decide?

As ever, your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Under pressure

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

I wonder if you will be able to relate to anything that I am about to tell you.

You died over one hundred years ago, which seems to me to be a blink in the eye of the earth’s history, and just a moment in the history of humanity, and yet in that time there have been so very many minor changes to everyday existence, that I wonder if you would recognise at all the lives that we now have to lead. Your death, let’s face it, which was horribly premature, really only occurred a couple of generations ago, and had you survived into a ripe old age you may well have seen many decades of the twentieth century. To a young whippersnapper of today you could be a great-grandfather, and to me, teetering beyond middle age, you could have been a grandfather. But I fear my life experience would be totally alien to you, pressured as it is by the nonsensicalaties of the humdrum.

I think that even the language that I am about to use would not be easily understood, and have just put into quotation marks all those elements that I think you will have difficulty with. I know you cannot correct me if I am wrong, but I am not expecting to be wrong, able as I am to chart developments over a century or so.

So, these are the events that have put me under pressure today:

The ‘batteries’ in my ‘remote control’ for the ‘television set’ which I own have ceased to work, and so they needed to be replaced. Before I left my home to go to the ‘supermarket’ I needed to remember that given the effects of the current ‘pandemic’ I would have to take a ‘face mask’, and, because of the effects of ‘global warming’, a ‘reusable plastic bag’. I checked my ‘bank balance’ ‘online’ via my ‘mobile phone’, and set out. The pressure was building because funds were not as high as I had expected, and the ‘elastic’ on the ‘face mask’ is given to snapping under duress. At the ‘supermarket’ a ‘traffic light system’ shone green and allowed my entry, and I used the ‘hand sanitiser’ before wheeling out the ‘trolley’. Now the ‘face mask’ steams up my spectacles, so I had to remove them and put them into my pocket, along with my hat, because I could not put the ‘elastic’ of the ‘face mask’ over my ears until they were suitably revealed. This meant my head was cold, and I could not see clearly; I certainly could not read the all important ‘small print’ which accompanies every item under consideration for purchase. However my quest was underway, and the suitable ‘batteries’ were found, and there was a selection of different ‘brands’, all ‘advertising’ their differences, and their ‘price ranges’. Again, this prefigured more pressure; I had after all checked my ‘bank balance’, and wasting money on a supposedly superior ‘brand’ seemed foolhardy. I opted for ‘mid-range’, paid by ‘debit card’ at the ‘cash desk’, removed the ‘face mask’ outside the store, replaced my spectacles, and put the hat on to my now distinctly chilly head. I had not needed the ‘trolley’, so it was pushed back into position, but not before locking it and retrieving the coin which had allowed me to have it in the first place. Back at home I have been able to replace the ‘batteries’ in the ‘remote control’, and so can now happily while away the hours watching the drivel which is ‘beamed’ to me ‘digitally’ should I really wish to do so. A source of more pressure, I can tell you, besieging one’s mind with nonsense, empty aspiration, and of course endless ‘product placement’. Whatever you are able to understand, Oscar dear, I am sure you see that basically one can bring on one’s own demise in this day and age through ‘anxiety’ and ‘worry’, through interminable pressure, and all for nothing, or very little, at all.

Forgive such selfish tripe, Oscar; I know you had greater concerns, but I do wish to highlight to you that what you miss by having lived a century or so ago is actually not so much. All of the significance of our current age, our successful mass communication techniques, our digital economies, our ease of availability and of indulgence, seem of little real value, bring endless personal challenge and discomfort, and their insistence adds to feelings of unending pressure.

Ah, to breathe.

I took a walk in order to achieve the above and so was able to breathe fresh air.

To breathe fresh air.

Your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

As if nothing is happening

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

I hope you are at peace, rested, unassailed.

The daily assault of the mass media has already come upon me, as it is absolutely unavoidable in this modern age. I believe that you had newspapers to read, and even some black and white pictorialised magazines to consume, and that in the major cities young lads would stand on street corners and yell out the headlines in order to attract the purchasing of these organs. I believe that may have been the sum of the media. Apart from the theatre performances for which you were so famed, only accessible to the chattering classes, who would then chatter about the contents of the plays they saw upon the stage. Nothing more. Nowadays barely a moment goes by without mediated stories assaulting the populace from all angles, most pointedly now in the palm of one’s hand, as the mobile telephone ‘pings’ its unending importance, bringing us all what is termed ‘the rolling news’. It seems to be of significance for our culture to note that something is happening all of the time!

The peculiar thing is that once one sits back from it, mutes all of the noise, even ignores its insistence, that nothing really seems to be happening at all. There are endless sensationalised fusses made about supposed advancements in human achievement, both negative and positive, with details pored over and ‘evidence’ presented, but none of it really seems like very much at all. Man (or woman, or to my mind, human personage) climbs yet another mountain, and another one, and another one. It is as if humanity has to prove that it can overcome hurdle after hurdle that is set before its way – much of which, it has to be said, is self-imposed. We will defeat climate change (something that we, apparently, caused); we will restore the earth’s resources (all of which we greedily consume); we will conquer any threat to life that comes our way (even though we are the greatest threat to human life, over and over again). It is that last mentioned quality which hits me so hard the more that I think about it; the fact, dear Oscar, that it is ‘over and over again’.

These supposedly grand achievements dominate the headlines, relay to us all the victories and the conquests, the heights that we are able to scale, the grandness of our being, as a race, as a human race. I cannot help thinking that it is in our smallness that we are actually greater, far greater, and under-reported, under-represented, and under-recognised. Kind gestures; smiles; encouragement; the old person diligently avoiding the purchase of plastic; the young person deciding never to own a car; kisses; concerns; delivering shopping; singing a song, under one’s breath, on a bus, on a train; generosity which means sharing a meal, dropping a coin into an outstretched hand, buying a coffee with no requirement for payback; writing to a condemned man, a man condemned by history, martyred, remembered with reservation, and pledging,

I am, as always, your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Contemplating agedness

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

You did not reach a ripe old age yourself. It is a great shame that your treatment at the hands of the judicial system basically contributed to the foreshortening of your life, so that you reached only your 46th birthday. I for one am sorry that this was the case. In fact in your age, the late Victorian age, life expectancy for men was not too dissimilar from the age that you reached, although the prevalence of infant mortality skews somewhat the recording of accurate death rates. Nevertheless, lives on the whole were not long, and certainly not as long as they have come to be all these years later. Now it is common to hear of people living until they are over 100 years old, at least in the West, where not only medical advancement, but also economic plenitude, ensure that many are well cared for into their dotage.

What happens to them though is a different thing altogether, and comes to be slightly alarming. In the countries you inhabited, in Ireland, the UK, France, and even America that you visited, it seems to be the case that the aged are not treated with veneration, but are more often than not parcelled off into care homes, to be kept out of the way, and to lead quite restricted lives. Any health issues become the dominant issues of existence, and since the medics have plied these people with drugs for half of their lives, very often there is the onset of dementia, and of Alzheimer’s disease, taking their toll upon any quality of life. Through this age of the pandemic of Covid 19 the very aged are kept isolated completely from the rest of society, even from their loved ones, in efforts to keep them alive and well (something which of course fails because these people are already old and frail). I must say, Oscar, I do find it bizarre that such efforts are made to keep people who are at the end of their lives going, celebrating the fact that 96, 97, 98 year olds keep on living within their peculiar rest home scenarios, while young people are sent out on to battle fields, are put in dangerous positions everyday, sometimes losing their lives pointlessly. Cars still zoom around cities, polluting the very air that we breathe, mass production of plastics persists, choking natural resources like waterways and seas and oceans, landfill sites become poisoned deserts where certain members of humanity have to eke out a living – and yet, where there is privilege, where there is plenty, keeping a few doddering old folk going beyond any version of a natural end is the priority.

Now I know I am being controversial, and that one day I may well be one of those ancient crones, but I pray to the memory of you Oscar, that should I find myself in such a position I will be fit and healthy and compos mentis. From my standpoint, as it is, in the present, I cannot think of anything worse than a gang of experts making decisions for me and choosing to keep me going no matter what state of being I may be in.

Oh, and it does have to be said – being very very old and very very gay may be a mix that is difficult to endure – unless of course I happen also to be very very well and very very rich too!

Your friend, as always,

Algernon B.Duffoure.

Seeing the future

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

I was wondering if you knew what was happening to you, and if you could foresee what would happen. With the benefit of hindsight it all seems utterly predictable, as if you should have seen what was about to occur, that you could have planned differently, been more aware. I am wondering now if that is the case for all of us, that there are set inevitabilities about existence, and that all we can do is welcome each of them as they come. Very little happens that is truly surprising, that is so out of the concept of the ordinary that it becomes even remarkable.

Yes, there are natural disasters that suddenly crop up on news media that make us all sit up and think, but I wonder how unusual they are for the people affected, or for the people who have been arguing that these supposedly freak occurrences were bound to happen at some point in time. There is always some cause to whatever effect, even if it is one that is not readily foreseen. It is almost as if we are actually taught to ignore the obvious. I am in pain. I ignore the pain. I self-medicate in one way or another in order to try to suppress the pain. I seek medical advice and they too work to suppress the pain. But the pain persists, grows, becomes something more difficult to conquer. I die, it is reported, happy, and having lived a fulfilled life. That old story. Nobody seems to want to investigate the pain. My village cannot fish because oil tankers have polluted the water. People keep jumping from the top of tall buildings. Oscar, I do wonder if we ever learn anything of value at all.

With best wishes to you, as always,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

A state of wonderment

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

My state of wonderment is not at the effect of all that surrounds me, is not the appreciation of all of the elements of being, nor is it any form of sensory overload – it is all about wondering.

If you had lived.

If you had never got into so much bother.

If some level of tolerance and understanding could have saved you from persecution.

Today such levels of supposed tolerance and understanding do exist, but the same parade of characters and caricatures populate popular consciousness, are displayed within the media, all doing what they have been doing certainly since your time, and probably a lot longer. Women simpering around men, gay men kept in the background, or allowed to perform, to reveal levels of absurdity, make everyone laugh.

Things have moved on, things have not moved on at all – it is a constant theme of mine, Oscar dear, because I just keep on being reminded, and I do not have to wonder for very long, how things would be if …. because they never are.

The dominant order asserts itself, and reasserts itself.

I remember that when you were in prison they put you on a treadmill, and do you know, Oscar, that in the United Kingdom the use of the treadmill as a punishment for misdemeanours was outlawed by the Prison Act of 1898 – one year after your release. Ah, the hands of fate ……

Only ever variations on a theme.

Best wishes to you,

Algernon B. Duffoure

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