Another thing that is missing from this age when opposed to yours is the evidence of the leisured classes. Now, everybody gets some leisure, some few hours in the day, or few weeks in the year, when they can kick up their heels, bathe in the sea, eat expensive foodstuffs, not be engaged in the workaday. At a certain age they stop work altogether, and then the heel-kicking, if not compromised by the illnesses that result from lifetimes of excess, becomes a permanent feature (except that they are then too old, too out of condition, to enjoy it).
The trouble is that this leisure time really becomes the release of a pressure valve to so very many. Inappropriate behaviour, usually fuelled by drink and drugs, becomes the commonplace. All very ugly, dear. No sense of style. Because to accommodate the newly minted leisured classes, the holidaying hordes, everything has had to be cheapened. There is no quality workmanship any longer, but things are mass produced and mass consumed, flimsily put together so that they will break or spoil or be lost forever with the slightest of pressure. This age is known as a throwaway age, and the sad thing is that even people are thrown away.
Great masses are involved innocently in insurrections and uprisings, and within the consumer paradise of the West bodies are interchangeable, people are hired and fired, dated and dumped; there are those who live and die on the streets. You refer to them as ‘street arabs’, which is faint enough praise for those whom history forgets, just a part of the morass that may not have been there at all. Who remembers those who lie unrecorded, who were not feted and celebrated, who lived the nondescript lives of the many?
I don’t know why I am in such a philosophical mood. I mentioned the virtual world to you in my last letter, and it is there that you see people and things simply being chewed up, and then spat out. Fleeting glimpses of people who do not matter. The gay world has found a significant place on the internet, and I think it is interesting that as their presence in the real world is so marginalised, that it is in the virtual world, a world of their own creation, that they find such strength of presence.
But all of it is enslaved to the dollar; all of it is commercial, and about selling things that nobody really wants or needs. Actual people are a significant commodity. They give of their time, or of their minds, or of their bodies (bodies figure very highly in the gay world), but in a second can be dismissed, can be lost forever, or stored in some download archive, to exist in spaces that will never be seen and never understood.
I find it amazing, Oscar, but this virtual world is more attractive than the real world, and my guess is that multitudes escape there every single day.
I may be overreacting! I may be wrong! But somehow, I do not think so.
Where is the cheapest seed? Africa. I think I am right I thought for a moment that it might be South America, but undoubtedly, after the rape and pillage of the nineteenth century, after the economic exploitation of the twentieth century, after all of the disgust that still lingers on into the twentieth century, the twenty first century, the racism, the inequality, the presumption of superiority by the former colonial powers, the cheapest seed in the world comes from Africa.
Men – sacrificed.
Women – I do not want to think of the women, because the fate that was dealt to them is beyond thought.
I know you never visited Africa. I know that to you Africa was simply a continent to be raped, stripped of any value that might be perceived, reduced to a nothingness of scrubland and desert. I acknowledge the noble history of African descent, the civilisations that have pre figured that of the Western domineers, the superiority of races that have preceded my own.
Oscar, my dear, your whole Victorian exercise was so ill placed. And you did not know it! Ha ha! As they say. Ha ha!
Really the only safe form of exercise is perambulation – a short walk of a mile or two around the streets, bringing you down to earth and back on to solid ground. You would have no vision of what is to be encountered on such an expedition, so let me explain.
Cars, everywhere there are cars – the modern form of transportation, not dependent upon horses at all! I know in your time it would have been a wonder to see a horseless carriage, but now they are so common that everyone, and everyone’s heterosexual wife (homosexual boyfriend’s too) has one. Speeding from place to place, on errands both urgent and utterly frivolous. It has created an ecological disaster, to the point where now, only a century or so since you left us, we have managed to pollute the very air that we breathe. Yes, Oscar, we have found ways to kill ourselves off, to poison the atmosphere itself, to over-produce all of the nonsense that our modern society seems to desire, to the point of absolute destruction.
There is a level of conscience trying to creep into the argument, and many many people are aware that these are the consequences of our collective action, but very little is done in actual terms to counter it. You see, Oscar, cars have become big business, ensure high profit margins, and literally fuel multifarious industries around the world that provide wages to lift people from poverty, and fat salaries for the fat cats (as they are known) who sit at the top of the tree, fiddling (and here is an allusion that you will recognise) while Rome burns! So, on any walk (and walkers are in the minority) there is a constant encounter with cars, parking, manoeuvring, starting and stopping, slowly choking both the passers by and the occupants of the vehicles themselves.
Then there is litter. Everywhere litter. Packaging discarded on to the roadside, and all of the unwanted and valueless detritus of modern living simply tossed on to grass verges, into gutters, and trodden underfoot. We seem to have so much, and this is argued as the apogee of Western civilisation, that everyone has an endless choice of everything that they could possibly desire, but that in having so much we simply throw away all the excess, all the safeguarding, that brings us food ready made, products as instantly consumable. On any walk you literally have to pick your way along the pavements to avoid treading into what other people have decided to discard. Often small objects, but sometimes furniture, or large boxes, even, as mentioned above, cars! Everything just dumped on the roadside, so that now, in this losing battle, we pay taxes to employ people to make some effort to clear it all up! There are some virtuous souls who go out and pick up the litter of their own accord, not paid to do so, but out of civic responsibility, but not only are they in the minority, they also unwittingly become part of the problem. If I were the sort of person to throw rubbish on to the street then I would continue to do so secure in the knowledge that someone else will pick it up for me.
The real problem is the excesses of capitalism, something in its infancy when you were with us, still glorying as you were in the vestiges of Empire. You see in your day the wealthy and powerful kept themselves to themselves and went into the world feeling that they were rightfully exploiting those whom they encountered; nowadays access to wealth and privilege is there for the taking for everyone (broadly speaking, although the argument is actually more nuanced, which I will no doubt come on to, at a later date). Now everyone is exploited by everyone for profit, and the level of exploitation centres around the most basic of urges: food, sex, survival. Vast fortunes are made by pumping the populace with fat, sugar and salt, in various forms; by offering them sexual excitation and titillation, in various forms; and by playing upon their vacuous attempts to survive as a race, through out of control reproduction rates and population explosion. The overarching philosophy is one of: “things will get better”, but not that “things can be great now”. Humanity seems to be locked in a fruitless cycle of aiming for improvement, for longevity, for betterment, but tomorrow, or in the time of sons and daughters, at some point in the not so distant future. It reminds me of religion: you might suffer on earth but you will be rewarded in heaven, or, only death will bring you release!
In that respect not much has changed since your time, and this is becoming a theme of my letters to you. Nothing changes. Superficially everything seems different, but in actual fact the wealthy and privileged carry on doing as they see fit, exploiting the masses in any way that they can in order to bolster up their positions. Those masses consume everything that is thrown their way, both killing themselves and reproducing to keep the whole edifice in place, and at the fringes, which you will recognise, which I am sure you saw all too keenly, the destitute queue for handouts.
That is what I noticed on my walk today. The affluence of big houses with well kept gardens and polished cars, and down the back streets, a queue of people waiting for the church door to open, so that they could pick up a parcel of food.
I went along to an exhibition at Chortleton Manor College today, and simply had to write to tell you all about it. A singular part of that dubious tradition of public schools in what is now called the United Kingdom (probably Great Britain in your day, but not so ‘great’ now!): an ex-country pile converted into a fee paying boarding school some time in the eighteenth century, desperately holding on to its vestiges of privilege and standing. How the British love to pretend that things are still the way they were!
Of course, as minor public schools go, it is doing rather well, attracting a lot of foreign money, I believe; seems to specialise in the oriental student, and the Asian princeling, among all the solid, upright, and oh so British members of its community. If you have enough money, you can attend, that is about the sum of it – although connections do help, and family history, and being a part of the exclusive club. All about ‘rubbing shoulders’, although low on the national stage – not exactly an Eton, or a Rugby, or a Winchester.
It is a place that echoes and reverberates to the marching of its war dead (you have missed both of the ‘great’ wars of the twentieth century, Oscar, (more greatness that the UK has to contend with!) and a jolly good thing too – such squandering of youthful manly beauty). There seems to be something of a cult of hero worship for the sacrificed – all strong young men led by the nose into slaughter, with little regard for their individual plight. Almost as if it were to be expected; born to die. It still goes on today; preparing young men to obey orders no matter how absurd those orders might be, even at the cost of life itself, for usually vain-glorious outcomes. The college reveres this tradition.
Today was ‘A Feast of Fickle Craftsmanship’. You see in this day and age, Oscar, anyone who does anything that is remotely manual is seen as ‘artisan’, is celebrated for doing something other than pushing buttons, guiding machinery, or shuffling electronic documents. Strange to say that what you would have seen as ordinary and not worthy of much comment, is now held in the highest regard and given a rarity value far outstripping its actual worth. It happens in every sphere. Mechanisation has taken over the world, and so if somebody actually does something it is deemed worthy of note, and celebrated.
I cannot help thinking, and you would concur, that the craftsmen themselves would have been finer to inspect than the wooden objets d’art and pieces of extraordinary furniture, that they have been able to produce. Upright young men, well educated, but supported, usually by dreaming parents, to step away from the pressures of the everyday, and to create in woodsheds and outbuildings pieces of art with a functional quality. Such is the level of decadence nowadays that all sense of practicality has gone. Doors open with hidden handles, lights are concealed to illumine surreptitiously, angles are softened or made more acute, and what is valued everywhere is the reality of pieces of wood, with actual grains, gleaming beneath what I am sure is a polypropylene (you wouldn’t understand – we have pursued chemistry to the point of self-annihilation) varnish.
Basically, even the real is subsumed beneath the fake. You see, Oscar, there are no servants anymore who would be willing to polish lovingly the wood of a bureau, or who would encourage dust simply to roll off – not even to settle in the first place! And the tools of this craft are now so far advanced that I believe you can programme in your design and they will cut all the angles required, follow the grain of the wood, buff and polish to an extent that now exceeds what is purely humanly possible. The work reflects the privilege from which the craftsmen stem; things that look a little different, have poor functionality, but exist for show, for showing off. You would love it, I am sure. A chest of drawers that looks like an egg with room for three pairs of socks and a pen, secretly unlocked with a feather shaped key – what more could be desired.
I got the impression that most of these craftsmen, and definitely many of the visitors, were ‘old boys’ of the College itself. That this was a sort of self-perpetuating bubble of existence, feeding itself with extravagance and distraction. You could tell from the way they comported themselves; they had that air of being in control, and of being right, which comes from a public school education – of entitlement. There was no room for criticism at all, and the polite hushed tones, the church-like atmosphere excluded all of those who might laugh, or mock, or take umbrage. And everything was so expensive – huge amounts of money being asked for desks and chairs and cupboards and chests of drawers. More than a month’s salary for most of the populace for something that ought to be practical but now had become a whimsy.
Oh, and there were nudes of course – wooden statuettes for corner displays and alcove decor – ghastly exemplifications of imagined womanhood, wearing pointed stiletto heeled shoes and nothing else, like weird trophies, pert and fulsome! Oh, and also a black man, with a penis bigger than his head, in a kneeling position with his arms outstretched. Disgusting. Something to take home and own and put on display in risque cabinets for others to envy and admire. Really, it was all too absurd, but easy to play the game of being a connoisseur of fine furnishings, opening drawers and cupboard doors, and muttering ‘resin’, ‘burr walnut’, ‘acanthus leaf’ to my companion. What struck me was that you would have been quite at home there, even after all these decades since your earthly departure. You would, I am sure, have noticed nothing unremarkable, and approved in some level of complicity with all that was on display. Apart from the updating of music systems and electricity supplies, and security measures, you would have wandered around seeing and registering only things, and people, whom you already knew.
There was all the smiling and fawning of the over polite punters, and the ‘busy-bodying’ of female curators. A rude young man, not good looking, took money on the door, and everyone wandered around reverently, treating all objects with wonderment and surprise, and speaking to nervous artists with no clear intention to buy. Much had been sold, the place reeked of money and privilege, and of a world that had advanced in no way since you were here. The old boys, as they always did, had gone off to make their fortunes in the colonies, or in the City, and now they were back to indulge ‘taste’. You have to laugh at the pretensions of the bourgeoisie, because that is exactly who these people were. One or two of them may be Viscount this or Baron that, but in actual fact they were just people with money – not so rough trade – out to make a splash. You would have eaten them up like so many anchovies, and I would have enjoyed the show. But I wonder how much you would have rocked the sleepy boat; as feeding frenzies go, this was a table at which to gorge. I get the impression that you were something of a gourmand, not able to say ‘no’, or ‘enough’, or ‘I won’t’.
With love to you, Oscar, for reminding me, again, of human foible, for all that you were, and all that you are.
At the risk of repeating myself (and Lord knows, Oscar, some of the things you said have been repeated through the generations ad nauseam), I would like to enlighten you further about the linguistic and categorical changes that have occurred in attempting to define the differences that supposedly exist between individual sexed human subjects.
Now there’s a mouthful, but it is a challenge to offer you any informed social interchange without an attempt at definition. Goodness knows I will fail, but at least let me put in place some pointers.
Everyday life in this twenty-first century era presents levels of differentiation each of which compete for recognition. There are, as I have already informed you, the metrosexuals. I have, by the way, met only a few of them, charming, usually young, men who style their hair, pomade their bodies, dress in the latest fashions, use the ‘hippest’ and ‘coolest’ forms of linguistic construction and verbal intonation, and who waver between a slightly feminised but rigidly adhered to heterosexuality, and a ‘curiousity’ about homosexual expressiveness. I have seen them in every urban setting, town and city, but like all tribes they stick to their own, by and large, and only let the older gent in if he is literally a father, or a boss, or some revered cultural persona with whom it is trendy to be seen. You would have done very well with them, and would probably know them as ‘dandies’, or even as ‘aesthetes’, as you and so many of your friends were known in your own time. They are the culturally accepted sub-division of gender performance that is currently allowed to feel that they have social influence; in truth they are just the latest peacock version of the dominant class – usually straight, usually white, usually men.
The lesbians and the gays, the bisexuals, transgendered, transvestite, and queer individuals, the intersexed and the asexual beings who are now known in many circles by the acronym LGBTQIA (where there does seem to be a ‘T’ missing) are also very much in evidence, and, I am glad to say, becoming more and more vocal in their demands for recognition – and that on something of a global scale! In many settings, and in many individual cases, gone is the need to hide away and never make manifest the preferences of the homosexual subject. Now there is the chance to self-proclaim, whatever the consequences (and I cannot stress enough that at times and within certain constituencies those consequences can be dire). I must say that all of these groupings that have come into my sphere of being have been absolutely wonderful – generous, spirited, positive and above all, relatable! I count myself amongst their number! I am ‘one of them’ (which of course at one time was a pejorative term, but now is a banner of liberation and freedom fighting).
You would place yourself amongst their number too, dear Oscar, and in all honesty I find it astounding that everyone does not so align – after all who actually is 100% anything? My own favourite point of definition is ‘queer’, which is a vague and blanket term which can incorporate a myriad possibilities across all genders and all sexes, and defy any attempts at confinement or restriction. Most of the young people one sees can adequately fit the bill, at least in what is termed ‘Western democracy’. Although, truth be told, one can go anywhere in the world, enter any social setting, and one will find that youngsters push at the boundaries of sexed and gendered definition, play with the rules of personal performance, adopt different lifestyles and readily strike a pose!
Unfortunately in my advanced stage of life very few of them want to give me the time of day. There is, alas, a much understated point of prejudice: ageism! It has crept in through the course of the twentieth century, probably as a result of the emergence of youth markets, and the consequent privileging of youth oriented cultural norms. It is something else that you would not recognise, Oscar; the aged now are rarely to be engaged with, but are herded together in a sort of twilight existence of near mania and dementia and largely left to rot. They live in communities of nostalgia and rigid conformity (and the queer, I fear, is barely tolerated). A few of the young are paid a pittance to administer drugs to them and to serve them their slop, but other than that inter-generational contact is limited to the family, and then only piecemeal. For the likes of you and me, Oscar, it is very difficult to get them to notice. In that sense I suppose little has changed, except that I imagine a certain readiness to learn from the older folks of your time, a sort of reverence for age which may be my own fantasy and have nothing to do with your lived experience. I expect in many ways you just felt taken advantage of, and I am sure the renters, on the whole, were wily sorts, laughing at you behind your back. A shame – all that we have to endure in the search for a little … love? Appreciation? Notice even?
Nowadays the young, if not in person, certainly in discussion, all ‘play with gender’. Girls look like boys and boys look like girls, their fashions, hairstyles, cultural pursuits, all entirely interchangeable. It’s been going on for years! Generations even! There are those who do not seem to notice that grandparents are the ones who started all of this – flower power, rock and roll, experimentation with substances and states of mind, to produce an array of possibilities of being. I know you will have seen something of this – the hallucinogens, and the smoking of imported vapours, the alcohol of course, that great staple through the ages, keeping the peasantry drunk!
You, and your wife (which always seems absurd to say, because a gay man today does not usually take a wife, unless he wants a visa or a passport, even though many a married man, just like you, dear Oscar, is secretly gay) experimented with styles and fashions that have gone on to redefine sexed definition, and I am sure that there were denizens where men paraded in female attire, and women similarly in male dress. Why it has been reported that your male brothel keeper, a certain Mr. Alfred Taylor, was very fond of ruffles and bows, lace and ribbons and crinolines, so I assume you were no stranger to such displays. But I do get the impression that in your own time you could tell who was who, where they stood in the social order, and certainly their gender, even if it were an assumed one. There was cross-dressing, dear, we’ve always known there were cross-dressers through time, and probably everywhere. But I get the impression that in your day there were a set of clear signifiers at play – short hair and long hair, trousers and dresses, mustachios and rose blushed complexions – or so we are led to believe! Now we have an apparent interchangeability, and on occasions one really has to look twice, just to check, and on some marvellous and mind-boggling occasions one is none the wiser! I do so enjoy it when I carry on walking and do not know who has crossed my path, girl or boy! There’s a lot of fuss about it, but you know me, Oscar, each to their own!
Now I know you had your own fair share of boys in makeup, powder and rouge, boys with vaseline at their lips, and a good array of muscle bound young women, strong and swarthy from their labour, but I get the impression, with a good degree of hindsight, that distinctions were made clear, that definitions were in place. Maybe I am wrong. Maybe you would disagree with me, and argue that as much interchangeability occurred in your own era, but in any case there really was not so much fuss being documented about it. There was very little visibility. Now we have subjects who define their own sense of self in the face of social definition, who take sides, who oppose each other in their multifarious expression, and who parade their difference. It is a very public spectacle, with no attempt to hide, and visible everywhere. It is out on the streets and not behind closed doors, which in one sense is a good thing because people have confidence, are sure of themselves, can express their sense of being, but on the other hand collapses entirely our long-held and culturally shared notions of certainty itself. Which I must say I support wholeheartedly. It feels like a long overdue shaking of the foundations! I suppose any such moves were quietly brushed under the carpet when you were around. To my mind everything is so much better, with a more apparent distribution of possibilities, within reach for us all – even if it has led to a certain level of tribalism, even dubious allegiance, and a backlash – such a public backlash.
Although, and I can see a steely gaze overcoming you, Oscar dear, the current of hetero-normativity continues to hold its sway. When pressed many young people are, on the whole, ‘straight’; that is, except for the few of them who are open about being ‘gay’. Most are ‘men’, or are ‘women’, most hold on to the nomination ‘white’, or ‘black’, even ‘rich’, or ‘poor’. Precious few (and I do mean the most precious of the few, the gemstones in the rock face) embrace their multifarious components. There are recent and popular statements like: “it is our sameness that outweighs our difference”, or: “we are all more alike than we are different”, but still, when pressed, and in official censa, difference defines.
Let me explain it to you, Oscar: the strict dichotomy remains in place, an absolute adherence to the binary divide, which argues that there is male, there is female; there is heterosexual and there is homosexual; some are gay, some are straight (just as they are black or white, or rich or poor). Very many cling to the idea of being heterosexual, and not homosexual, although I am coming across a few who self-declare as bisexual, who flirt and experiment, and in their youth are willing to try anything. The allegiance to absolute points of definition has created a universe of unjust proscription, where most people find it almost impossible to reside all of the time. Most people are all too aware that they have traits that could be deemed both male and female, that their heterosexuality is mirrored by even the most tacit acceptance of homosexuality, that even locked within opposing states adherence to the same is itself defined by the other – there cannot be one without the other.
It is true to say that there is an undercurrent of indecision, that when pressed there are those who will admit that there was once a time, that I did dip my toe, that it entered my consciousness. I went with the flow, they will say, but under duress it is, in most cases, the norm that repeatedly wins out. Just as you would expect, Oscar. You know all the stories! At boarding school I fell in love with my best friend for a whole term but I am happily married now! I may be in love with a man but I can still father a child! I will establish myself in the straight world, enjoy all its opportunities, and then, if the fancy takes me, I will declare myself gay! You just would not credit the subterfuge, Oscar – or maybe you would, maybe you were living it too! How is Constance, and the boys?
Those who come to declare themselves gay, or even mixed, are outnumbered ten or twenty to one. That there is anyone who so identifies is something of a miracle, but still they are kept in the minority! It is a happy miracle that there are any at all, I would say, but it still does not go far enough. There is at least an acknowledgement of being, and a broader, forced acknowledgement that all of the old categorisations are fractured, are teetering, are on the brink of collapse! That such possibilities exist has been long fought for, and has had to overcome, in part, the legacy created by you. But still there is a distance to go. I cannot help feeling that it is the firmly held centre ground that has to be rocked, rather than the peripheries. That definition itself is the problem, endlessly trying to define, to categorise, to lock in a box and throw away the key. If I am gay does that mean that I am not straight? If I am straight does that mean that I am not gay? If I am man does that mean that I am not woman? If I am woman does that mean that I am not man? White? Black? Rich? Poor?
My own richness of mixture may not be so apparent to you, but it makes me such a tasty, zesty, sugar and spice fruitcake that you should welcome me to any tea party.
Oh, Oscar, come back and make us laugh about it all! If only you could take away the seriousness of it all with a frivolous barb!
If only that were possible – dear, dead, and shovelled into history Mr. Wilde!
How are you? How is your ornate hole in the ground? We miss you, and after all this time we would be missing you anyway, however the hand of fate had dealt the cards! Would you have any friends? Would anyone want to associate with you now? The louche, the play actors, the homosexuals?
Suffice it to say that you would not recognise a homosexual nowadays even if you fell over one; no green carnations to give us away! Oh there are people who will tell you, who will state it bluntly to your face, those who cross gendered boundaries as a declaration of their difference, who will kiss each other in public just so that everyone is left in no doubt at all. But this is only acceptable in certain environments, at certain times, and can still cause outrage across the globe. There are many who will self-declare, will ‘come out’, as is the modern parlance, who will stand before their families and societies and say to the world: I am gay, do with that as you see fit! They are either welcomed or rebuffed, with those who are welcomed able to flourish and grow within the confines of acceptance, while those who are rebuffed look forward to a more uncertain future.
It also very much depends upon where one is lodging, what part of the country, (what part of the world!), what sort of conglomeration, even what political state! The metrosexuals proliferate in the Capital, with their bars and their clubs (almost gentlemen’s clubs – although no-one behaves like a gentleman). There are ghettos of gay activity at specific junctures within the Western world (which is not entirely true, because the Eastern world of pillow boys and sleeve servants, of eunuchs and bachabaze, still struggles on in the midst of Western global corporate domination). These ghettos are paralleled in smaller cities and larger urban centres, but once you hit the median range, then the clock is abruptly turned back, and every decade you have not lived through of gay development and homosexual liberation is adequately exemplified in the small towns, villages, settlements and communities that populate the globe.
Places just like Chortleton, where I currently find myself. Here you see the middle-aged queens with poodles named ‘Vita’ and ‘Sackville’, and ‘West’, and gaggles of dirty looking young things exposing kneecaps and thighs and badly shaven midriffs, and the pierced and the tattooed sub-genre of cosmopolitan gays in kilts and suspenders dancing the night away! They are in the gay club. The one gay club set against the myriad bars and halls and discotheques that cater to the straight world. Rarely are they out on the streets. Maybe once a year (literally one day in a year – ten times a decade) on a parade, whistling and yelling, and genuinely appearing to be happy. But mainly either hidden away, or visible in the company of young women, or alone, subdued, walking swiftly with closed expressions and pursed lips.
Of course the gay community does now, even in Chortleton, band together, become married couples, mirror each other in looks and activities, but – and I hate to say it – grow to be just as locked into their interdependent world as the straight couples that proliferate everywhere. As in your day, everywhere you look there is the promotion and the acceptance of the straight world, and the gays are not allowed to stray too far from it. So they have their mortgages, and their jobs, and their trips to the supermarket, and their children by adoption or by surrogate, and essentially everything just trundles on the way it is supposed to within the dominant order.
Of course I am simplifying – forgive me. Of course anyone who steps out of line also has to endure very public displays of disapproval and condemnation, or very private moments of disappointment, of rejection, and hurt. The echoes of your treatment are not hard to hear. That is, sad to say, the way in which I, and the world at large, still sees you; the public pillory, the attempted defence of being different, the sidelong glances, the verbalised taunts, and the unspoken assumptions of the passers-by. How times have not changed!
Chortleton, as a fairly minor settlement, is lucky – there is a gay club! Or, more rightly, there is a gay-friendly club. Gay people are tolerated and given a corner to gather in, so they can be kept under a watchful eye. That’s the only problem with the concept of the ghetto – you know exactly where to go if you want to get them. Go to a smaller place, Oscar dear, and it’s still men in old macs receiving brown paper packages through the post, nudists in their own homes, on their own, with pet Alsatian bitches. You see, class has gone, and so has breeding; now it’s a case of capital, and if one has the filthy lucre then anything goes, and if one doesn’t then there is simply nothing to be done – apart from a spot of prostitution when young, and gin and jeopardy for the old.
Oh yes, the panthers are still around to be feasted upon! Oldest profession and all that. The legal constraints of your time, damning in their execution, forbidding any acts of fornication not sanctioned by marriage, have been replaced by provisions that allow for the selling of flesh within proscriptive terms, and strictly age limited. You, my dear, my dear Oscar, have already been reassessed by the revisionists, and would be classified as criminally perverse for paying youths now seen as underage, locked up as a paedophile celebrity, hunted and hounded as a pervert. That’s the truth of this day and age, and it would not be wrong. I have to say that corrupting the young, teaching them their value in terms of the bought and the sold, reducing them to commodities, and influencing their psychic development in ways that only serve to shatter their sense of self, their integrity, their pride, was an ill service on your part. Because you did honestly believe that your pleasure was paramount, that whatever you wanted was all that mattered, and that others – all others, were at your literal disposal. So, it does have to be said, stated bluntly. So sorry, Oscar dear. Through time our friendship has thus been clouded, but I will not abandon you, will not give up on you. You were also able to bring joy – to millions, through eons!
There is a school of thought that would argue that you are no longer relevant – a dandy of a bygone age justly criminalised for the procurement of underage rent boys, and condemned to history as an example of perversion. But of course you live on in your many guises and you are everywhere to be found in the modern age. Countless numbers of men, if such we must call them, for I believe some of them can be women too, have a predilection for the beauty of youth, the power of virile masculinity, the development of young souls. Countless numbers who think like you but do not act the way you did – and some who are even worse!
It cannot be doubted for a moment that such a typology has been in existence throughout history and across civilisations, stretching through the ages both recorded and unrecorded, manifest in all societies, across continents, carried with the winds of human development. You, my dear Oscar, and I do remain faithful to you, just about, just happen to be the prime example weeded out at a particular time for public consumption and enjoyment. And how you were readily consumed and enjoyed – much in the way homosexuals have been and still are constantly consumed and enjoyed. Witty, urbane, cultured, with a smart turn of phrase and a wry cackle, just hinting at the actualities of a shared existence: an appreciation of young men; an interest in their development both physical and mental; a desire to help them grow, to give them the benefit of your wisdom, to support them, encourage them, be surrounded by them. Oh, and of course they come forward We all know that they have been coming forward through the millennia, unendingly, willingly, sometimes desperately in need of nurturing hands, of intellect. Of course there are those who take advantage of this, but there are also those who do not. There are those who walk into such situations with their eyes wide open, determined to profit, easy about the extent of such arrangements. Oh yes, Oscar, just as in your day, the glad eye and the gurning chops still carry meaning. The young men batting their eyelids, twisting their lips, pouting and preening, who now, in this age, in this society, can establish arrangements with older benefactors, can make, or at least supplement, their living by making their bodies available for a little dalliance; it is a phenomenon from Niagara to Vladivostok, from Seoul to Sydney, in every city around the globe – Tirana, Lisbon, London, Beijing – anywhere and everywhere!
As in your day a certain echelon of society – and let us reaffirm that this is a society ruled by capital on a near global scale – can enjoy this, indulge this, jet from venue to venue participating, unrolling the banknotes, presenting the store cards and the credit cards with no heed for censure or intervention. I would correct myself, Oscar, it is exactly the same as in your day, but now legally proscribed, socially accepted, with agencies of state turning a blind eye, snickering behind outstretched palms, keeping reality under wraps. Some little scandals emerge periodically, in the hegemonic way, just to titillate the masses and let them see that if they too reach the heights of wealth and power then they too can participate in the sort of lifestyle where anything goes, where bunga bunga parties are a reality, where sex is for sale – oh, and Oscar, if it is young men that you desire, then there are plenty. For the price of a Rolex watch – or its cheap facsimile!
You did the same. Your little gifts of silver, your financial largesse, because, let us not forget, within this unequal economy which has existed for so very long, the little that you dispensed was a lot for those on the receiving end. It is exactly the same now. Exactly the same. Those on the receiving end simply have no conception of how you lived, can only look in awe and wonder at the ease with which you were able to move through the world, feted and praised, wildly successful and wealthy beyond their imaginations. So that tossing coins their way became a part of the whole picture, a part of what was going on. So it is now. No doubt.
There was a park in Chortleton where we used to congregate, night after night, always a motley crew, but also always a bit of an array; young men who would do ‘it’ for nothing, or a bed, or a drink and a supper, or maybe, rarely, for cash. Rustlings in the bushes. Condoms on the children’s swings. Why, I was told that one night the police arrived on a periodic raid, and trees started whispering, and bushy groves zipped up their flies, and men flocked through the wrought iron gates to make their rapid escape. One man went there every night with a dog’s lead, and if the police did stop him he’d start hissing: ‘Sukie! Sukie!’ in a stage whisper, as if he had lost his beloved pet! Gossip was that at one time he had a young constable on all fours in a lavatera in the Autumn of the millennium – one hundred years, almost to the day, after your own sad departure. I remember all the gossip more than the action. Bomber jackets with the collars turned up against the cold, blue jeans and monkey boots, dead quiet, the sweep of car headlights, hurried conversations, deals struck. A sort of celebration!
Honestly Oscar, you would not know it, but I cannot claim that anything much has really changed. Nobody gets hard labour anymore (not in Chortleton), that has changed, but the un-subtleties of being overlooked for promotion, of being sidelined in your opinions, being suppressed within the media, or disregarded when your needs become public – all are forms of censure and punishment. I am writing to you, Oscar, because there is no one else to write to! I have to address the dead because the living do not want to hear. The living want to hear their version of things, their interpretation of life, all couched in safe, and very straight conformities, not dare to edge away from the accepted norm.
Nobody gets publicly pilloried, it is true, if it is not an affront to be castigated on social media, to be laughed at and pointed at in social interchange, to be the butt of jokes. There is a whole strand of humour that goes unchecked, evolves, is self-mocking and self-deprecatory, having to set oneself up for ribaldry. The media presence of homosexuality is largely one of fun and entertainment, an opportunity to laugh at, rather than along with. No career comes to an end because of homosexuality, but plenty are stopped, progress is hindered, people are quietly disavowed, or not hired at all. Although that latter is not quite true. Politicians disappear, princes get married, and the proletariat practice a time and a place for that sort of thing.
I’ve attached some flowers because I thought they might please you. There is so much to say, because so much has changed – even photographic techniques. But also, there is so much you would easily recognise. The same levels of subterfuge and skull-duggery permeate the shifting echelons of power, and people scramble to the top of the pile as best they can, doing what they have to do in order to survive. Orderliness has gone; nobody knows why they are here any more, and they have no set place, no hierarchical position. Except that they do.
Sorry, Oscar, I may be starting to ramble – but the injustice of it all just makes my blood boil, and then my blood pressure rises, and then my brain ticks over too fast and the words – the words – they just tumble out!
I wish you could be here now! I wish it were possible to have you here by my side so that you could see all that has ensued since your much publicised demise.
You have become a by-word!
You are not only the very definition of urbanity, of wit, of classical learning, the first celebrity of the modern age; you are now a pervert, too louche for your own good, a sinner, a product of depravity, made to suffer in full public gaze, and through history, for your lack of moral standing.
You fell from grace!
You fell from that blissful state that the right-minded and the quietly-behaved occupy with such smug hypocrisy – which your work of course, which still lingers on, parodies so well.
Your work is standing the test of time, plays still performed, poetry in print, even the words of your own legal defence archived for posterity. People know who you were, and know who you are, and if they do not there are endless reference points for them to consult: biographies, essays, academic papers, audio recordings, articles, speculative prose, photographs, films, artworks, statues, monuments … and letters. It makes me wonder if you have really left us at all!
You certainly made an impact, entered common parlance, found a place in popular consciousness, and have been variously revered and condemned for well over a hundred years, the entirety of the twentieth century, and now into the twenty first!
With each revision of your memory, each revisiting of your canon, insights are added, new perspectives unearthed, and you sail triumphantly from age to age always a touchstone for … for what?
For good, and for bad.
You pivot that particular binary divide – the good and the bad.
I am writing to you as an adulant, and as a co-conspirator. I admire your work, and your stance on social mores, and I see you as a figure with whom I can associate, to some degree, as I also feel entirely misunderstood and wrongly classified by the spirit of these passing ages. I am, like you, not quite straight down the middle, peaking and pushing at the perimeters – and so open to attack!
You are nominated as the first ‘homosexual’, the first to be classified as such in the public eye, criminalised, pathologised, psychologised, and medicalised throughout your own age and well into mine.
The love, that great love, that love through ages and across continents, traversing millennia and cultural boundaries … and that dare not speak its name, not clearly, not just one word … love, uncompromised, appreciative, valued, accepted, tolerated, positive, and forward-looking.
I hold it for you, and all who are anything like you, and for myself too.
Now, it seems, in certain circles, there are no more homosexuals! It is no longer the descriptor of choice!
Apparently we are now in the era of metrosexuals (who are either people who enjoy sexual trysts on underground trains, or those who experiment sexually in cities), and of gays (not always so very happy, but strident, loud and proud, fighting, quite rightly, for better treatment and the improvement of human rights); of the sexually ambivalent, the vers, the gender-queer, the gender-fuck, the non-binary, the human, the human beings.
I am glad we have moved on somewhat.
I did always think that the simple classifications were always problematic – that age old cliché of heterosexual and homosexual, that attempt at rationalising a state of being that set itself, supposedly, against what was, supposedly, the norm. Those norms are toppling now, let me tell you! The general belief that there are static ways of being set throughout time and across societies is slowly losing favour.
Now there are acknowledgements of difference, moves towards acceptance, and a tentative celebration of variegation – in all its multiplicity. Everyone is having to get to grips with the reality that we are simply not all the same, whilst in essence being but one! The gradual collapse of division, however it may be nominated.
You would love it, Oscar, the levels of confusion, the misunderstandings, and the endless ramifications of political correctness, which try to navigate their way around phraseologies, manifestations, proclamations of being.
Oh, this slowly evolving cultural transformation would benefit from your acute eye, your razor sharp wit, your wordplay and poésie, bursting the champagne bubbles of pretension!
Letters to Oscar Wilde 