Let’s talk about gay sex and drugs: New monthly event

Want to have your say about the London gay scene, drugs, sex and everything in between? Patrick Cash and Attitude want you to come down to the Manbar on Charing Cross Road this Monday evening (May 12) for the second of a monthly event.

‘Let’s Talk About Gay Sex and Drugs’ is an open communication forum for gay men in London to come and speak about how they perceive sex and drugs in the modern capital. Everyone gets five minutes to air their views, and there’s no judgement and no interrupting whilst you’re on stage. Why? Because your voice is as valid as the next gay man’s opinion. You don’t have to be doing drugs, or even having gay sex, to participate. You’re merely invited to speak about how you see these subjects, whilst other members of the LGBT community listen. And if you don’t want to speak, then please, you’re entirely welcome to just come and listen for the evening.

For 15 years in this country, Section 28 forbade the promotion of homosexuality in schools. Exact wording of the bill, read that a local authority ‘shall not promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended relationship’. Implemented in 1988, it remained in law until 2003, spanning almost the entirety of this writer’s own time in primary and secondary education. With clear precursory parallels to the current ‘anti-homosexual propaganda’ legislation of Putin’s Russia, most local authorities in the UK responded to Section 28 by eradicating all mention of homosexuality from schools. Being gay essentially did not exist but for the negative connotations tripping from schoolmates’ tongues.

Some important work is being conducted as to how this has affected the gay male community, a lot of it tied into the concurrent syndemic in London of ‘chemsex’’. HIV rates in the capital are soaring, with most of the reason being attributed to certain (but large) sections of gay men using drugs such as mephedrone, GHB and crystal meth in problematic ways. David Stuart, the drugs counsellor of 56 Dean Street in Soho and my much-appreciated coorganiser of this event, has spoken about problems for gay men with intimacy intertwined early on with the formation of their sexuality. You realise you’re gay but you don’t speak it straight away, no way, you pretend at school, you pretend to those closest to you, your parents and families, and all this shaping your psyche whilst you’re still a developing teenager.

Even in a society that’s legalised gay marriage, there’s still a sense of ‘let’s not speak about the gay sex, please’. Weddings? Great guys, go for it. Boys doing it up the ass? No thanks, not before dinner. And living in a culture that’s so hetero-nomatively infused with straight sex to sell products through advertising, that does sometimes feel, as Panti Bliss might say, oppressive. But then, we don’t need anyone’s permission to be having this conversation. Let’s speak for ourselves, and listen to one another. Because as much as this event is about speaking, it is also about listening; achieving through communication a true sense of a community that cares about its members and what those members have to say.
And if you’ve disagreed with everything I’ve written here then please, come tell me in person on the 12th. I’ll be there to listen.

The next ‘Let’s Talk About Gay Sex and Drugs’ will be on Monday, May 12 at Manbar, 79 Charing Cross Road, Soho, WC2H 0NE, from 6-8pm. Free entry. For more information visit the Facebook page.