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Dissent

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

Is there room for dissent?

I am asking because it seems to me that the position your adopted was one of dissent; you did not agree with the overriding moral assumptions of your age, and you made that known. Or, at least, you put forward a different moral spectrum, harking back to the assumed societies of the Ancients, in opposition to the moral trajectory of your own age.

It was not well received, as we now know; and you paid a heavy price for insisting that your point of view should outweigh the feeling of your age. It leads me to wonder if that is the total capacity for dissent. There is some room within a free society (or one that calls itself ‘free’) for the voicing of views that go against the common trend, for them to be made known to some degree, for them to be heard, but it is through the course of history, beyond the interventions of any interlocutor, that opinion is changed, raising the dissenting voice to one that has influence. You spoke very eloquently about what you termed ‘Greek love’, that which exists between an older, educated, trusted male, and younger acolytes requiring teaching and instruction, and I am sure that in many respects you have a fair point. Of course it is the case that the younger learn from their elders, that a view of the world is formulated alongside, or even in opposition to, dominant tropes put forward by those who have lived the longest, but we know, Oscar, that your form of education went a little further. Your form of education did involve some level of exploitation, buying and selling, trading one thing for another. So it does have to be said, I think, that when the voices of the elders are essentially corrupting and are putting forward messages that are not really of benefit to humankind, then they do have to come under question. Which in some circuitous route does lead me back to the notion of dissent.

It is very difficult to argue that you were right in your views, but just as difficult to argue that you were wrong. Depending upon the stance taken either position would have been one of dissent, although I suppose arguing for ‘Greek love’ did fly in the face of the vast majority of opinions held at the time, and in your particular society, and so it would seem that that was where the dissent actually lay. It is not necessarily where the dissent would lie today. There are those who argue vehemently that free sexual expression across all sexes and genders, inter-generational and socially proscribed, is to be encouraged, promoted, and entered into the statutes of legal frameworks as characteristics that are protected. These arguments see the historical age itself as voicing a dissent to the current dominant order, hiding behind the archaic and the out of date to persecute freedoms expected. So that dissent shifts, and as such is policed, shut down, countered in a cultural warfare that allows some things to be said, and some things to be muted, misrepresented, marginalised.

There must be a common ground. Beneath all of the positions held and assertions made, the learned rhetoric and adherence to beliefs, there has to be some measure of common ground; some argument that says: ‘This is best for humanity, really is, truly allows freedom with consideration of others, recognising all of our needs, all of our honest desires.’

Goodness knows, Oscar, why such questions preoccupy me; I want to find for you some understanding.

Your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

What we have

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

I know that your incarceration will have been a very low point in your life, but it has crossed my mind that actually it served you well in unexpected ways. You did after all write the epic letter to Bosie, ‘De Profundis’, a great work which reverberates its truths through history, and you were inspired to compose the poem ‘The Ballad of Reading Gaol’, which similarly now holds an enviable position within the canon of world literature.

What is more, in the depths of such deprivation, you were thrown back on to yourself alone, with none of the stimuli of the world in which you had so eagerly moved, none of the distractions, the pretences, the dreamy romanticism. It is no doubt true to say that I have no idea of what it must have been like, and never can have, because such regimes are lost to us, altered through time, different in the ways they take their effect and have their impact. The world in so many ways is seemingly so different. Yet I cannot help thinking such a level of loss, of enforced denial, that the inability to sate the excessive appetites of success and celebrity, may in turn lead to some appreciation of what we all truly have, which is very little, which is only ourselves. I know that public censure must have been extremely hard to bear, but to recognise the nobility of the self even in the face of castigation, to see that the two lungs will breathe, the heart will beat, the senses remain, must have offered some little solace. It is all just making me appreciative of the fact that I have all of these things and also my liberty (such as it is in our modern era).

I am increasingly aware that my possession of health and well-being are the most powerful tools that I have in navigating my way through a life which is not uncomplicated, not un-beset by daily issues, by problems great and small that arise from time to time, by expectations and disappointments, by dashed hopes and broken promises. Thinking of you, Oscar dear, leads me to acknowledge that the most basic of advantages that all of us possess, just the breath that flows, the blood that pumps, is enough; everything else is ‘icing on the cake’.

I have a part to play in maintaining my health, my mental stability, my feelings of ease, my joie de vivre. I feel in some sense that I have a duty to myself, that I must expect of myself not an unwavering recognition of my needs, but always the ability to pick myself up should I fall, to set myself back on a familiar path should I digress, to keep on taking steps forward. I, like the majority of the earth’s inhabitants, the overwhelming majority, perhaps even, in some sense, everyone, can transcend, remind, imagine, reach. I am presented with choices at every juncture, and I have the ability to make choices that are of help to me and my world. It is, in so many ways, a glorious thing to be thrown back upon one’s own resources, to have to manufacture for oneself the road map leading back to some sense of salvation, of preservation.

I am happy.

I can continue to be happy.

Your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

In the now …

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

I wonder what happened to you when you received the missive from Queensberry, Lord Alfred’s father, calling you a ‘sondomite’ (sic). I suspect that you flew into an over-emotional rage, or maybe you rolled your eyes in a world-weary way, or guffawed at his poor understanding of the English language, or felt superior, probably that above all, felt superior to his brutish ways with your over-developed sense of aesthetic propriety. It must also have been very strange, in that moment, to be confronted with some level of truth, if truth it were, that you were a ‘sondomite’ (sic). It must have been disconcerting in the back of your mind, thinking over the many conquests that you had enjoyed, the interplay with the ‘street-arabs’, the establishments through which you had prowled in your search for the ‘panthers’. Even if in actuality you had never practised the art to which ‘sondomite’ (sic) refers, I am sure there was the ring of truth to the accusation – remember the ‘soiled sheets’ that were referenced by the chamber-maid at your trial, or did she lie? Was she paid to lie? That ring of truth must have smacked you hard, caught you sharp, made the very instant when you read the word – ‘sondomite’ (sic) – one that chimed sonorously something of a death knell in your mind, a reverberation that has never left you through history.

I am concentrating upon it, Oscar dear, not because I wish to torture you in any way, not because I wish to bring up the most painful of memories for you (and I am sure this was not the most painful), but because I am interested in what we all do when moments occur that rattle our being, shake us to the core, make us stop and stand still, and start to think things through. My suspicion, as I say, is that you reacted in an over-dramatic way to the accusation, whether or not that was made manifest in your behaviour or outlook; I suspect that inwardly you ‘flipped’. This of course jeopardised the next few moments, and then put into question your reactions as they ensued, as it must for all of us, when we are shocked, when we are caught up short. Those ripples of after-effect come to condition to no small degree all that happens next, but only moment by moment, each second unfolding, becoming something in itself, building up the slow minutes, and then the passage of time, and then those little ripples swell to be a tsunami. It puts into our own hands a huge amount of power, as orchestrators, as directors, as the ones who are in change of fate as it unfolds, the future as it is made known, destiny. There is probably a time for the over-dramatic, for the flying off the handle and taking sudden control, but is it a time linked to high emotion, linked so inextricably to fear, making of each act, each singular response, something of a portent? My dawning understanding is that in those moments our actions may well be ill-judged, and not fully formed, and not take into account all of the many influences and variables that might come to take effect. For you, Oscar dear, with your wounded pride, and your public reputation to defend, and the investments of those who were close to you, those who were benefiting from your wealth and your celebrity, it was the precursor of a now infamous doom. Or so the narrative goes. That is the story that is told. It may be true, it may only be an interpretation. It may be myth. What we know however is that you were carted off to a prison cell, that you did undergo what was known as ‘hard labour’, and that your career was left in tatters. Rightly or wrongly, justly or unjustly, that bears the ring of truth.

My own interpretation is that you did not remain steady, and that your ego came to the fore, and that you played a greater part in your downfall than might at first be acknowledged, that in effect you were not only a victim of the age, but an architect of it. Now I know that you were given few choices, that as the net tightened around you there were fewer and fewer outcomes possible that might have brought to you a different fate, but I cannot help thinking that choices are always present, no matter the circumstance, and that therefore different conclusions can be reached. You may not have come to be a symbol of your age, nor a touchstone for liberatory potential, but you could have been a happier man. It is a question, is it not: to put yourself on the cross to be crucified, or to live on?

I am presented with my moments, moment by moment, the now, and now, and now. The lessons to be learned from your example reach deeply, and take me into contemplation, and make my choices ever manifest …

Your friend,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

Levels of Irritation

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

The wind is blowing today. I expect you listened to the wind from inside your cell, as well as witnessing it in all its fury within society. I find it is beginning to irritate me.

It is irritating me not because there is anything particularly unusual about it, not because it is a more terrifying wind than there has ever been, and not because it is destructive, or incessant, or creeping in between the gaps of the buildings I inhabit; it is irritating because I am allowing it to be.

I think of nagging children who pester and cajole, but who of course give up entirely if one does not accede to them; of pet dogs who want to be stroked, to be played with, to be the centre of attention, but who slope off to sleep if one does not participate, waiting at the sidelines until one is ready for them. I think also of my amounts of money, that flow in and out of my life, of the anxiety that accompanies them. When there is much, I worry about the amount disappearing, and when there is little, I worry that I will not have enough; all absurd, pointless and absurd.

Like you Oscar, as is evidenced in the works that you left behind, there are very many things that irritate me, and I have to acknowledge that I am very easily irritated. The banalities of a class system which oppresses not only those who are oppressed but also the oppressors, who have to conform to set standards, who live in shabby gilded cages, working within the narrow confines of their pretended respectability. The denial of natural love, of all the many loves that have dared not speak their names, the ways of being between peoples that are gentle, and friendly, and giving, the loves that radiate in small scope from those at the touchline watching the absurdities of action. All of the mothers, all of the siblings, all of the quietly watchful, holding hands and caressing, putting their loved ones to bed with kisses across the eyelids; the many loves that are not sensationalised, and which continue, beneath the surface, barely acknowledged. Even those that involve desire, regulated, careful and caring, a man with his arms around the shoulders of his closer than close buddy, and a young woman kissing her girlfriend goodbye.

It just seems to me, Oscar dear, that irritations are largely invented, and allowed to fester, and if they are truly real they can be addressed. But if they are the buzzing of the bees, the singing of the birds, the crashing of the waves, the howling of the winds, the touches of a friend, the embraces of a lover – then they do not need to be any more than you and I, and we and they, allow them to be.

Your friend, as ever,

Algernon B. Duffoure.

A Glorious Day

/ Michael Michael / Leave a comment

Dear Oscar,

I hope this letter finds you well; I hope that in the midst of your prison of misunderstanding you get some pleasure from the letters that I send to you. Thank you for taking the time to read them; I appreciate my voice being heard.

I was out walking, just taking some air, with no real purpose and no direction, just ambling along, looking around me, taking it all in. It struck me how much there is to take in. It struck me that I live within absolute abundance, and that everywhere there is the teeming and the multiplicity of humanity, with its impact on every horizon. That in itself made me appreciate all that humanity is able to do, without judgement, seeing the homes and the thoroughfares, the protections from the elements, shelters simple and elaborate, walkways and byways and mountain paths.

Of course we tread upon nature, the natural world, the world that grows and flourishes around us despite our every intervention. It struck me that though we tread on nature, nature very quickly treads back, filling our paths with its plants, finding all the nooks and the crevices where it can seed, multiplying endlessly. I noticed that no matter how I was feeling small trees would continue to bud and shed their almond shaped leaves, pale and yellowing in Autumn, green and piquant in Spring, and that blossoms would open, infusing the air with scent both strong and subtle. There would be wind and energy, flight and function all around me, whether I took the time to see it and to sense it or not. There would be so much of it going on that I would not be able to encompass fully its impact, not through sight, or touch, or smell – there would always be an endlessness from times I knew nothing about and into times I will not experience. A cold day, a warm day, just the vibrancy of it all whipping around me, caught in still tranquillity, lost in a windy squall.

I am, like you Oscar, beset by all the problems of the world, that weigh themselves upon my shoulders, that keep my head bowed and my vision small; just looking, without effort, just letting the world in, put all that away.

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.

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.

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.

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.