Redrafting A Book, Redrafting A Life

A month ago I made a decision about the book I have been trying to write for over a year now. The book I now have over 40000 words of, most of which I have now decided to scrap. The book which I read fragments from whenever I am fortunate enough to be asked to read in public.

I knew from the beginning that this book would be difficult to write. I wanted to tell the story of a thirty something gay man living in London. I wanted it to be about the things I have done, the things I still do and struggle to control; the people I have met and the emotions that I have felt.

Above everything, I wanted this book to be about my feelings. Feelings that are often so intense that I don’t know what to do with them. Feelings that I am now acutely conscious that I have spent the best part of 15 years blocking out or diluting by compulsive, extreme behaviour. The meaningless sex, the drinking, the unexplained anger.

As I continued to write my characters became clearer. They were often based on an amalgamation of people that I had known. Often blurry figures, people I had seen on the side lines on London’s anonymous gay scene; lost creatures who I’d watched stumbling around the same sauna for years; desolate, drug ravaged faces in the corners of clubs. These were the people who I felt I knew, or wanted to know, those I imagined half-lives for, but so often those that I could not even name.

I began to fabricate lives for these people. They may have been based on fragments of a long-lost conversation or, more usually, just a look of brutal cynicism or momentary despair as I caught them in an unguarded moment when the unforgiving lights came on at the end of another wasted night.

The characters started coming alive for me as I began to remember shadows from my past. What ever happened to the guy who stood against that tree, so dispassionately, as one man after another sucked his cock that night that Russell Square was raided? Where did Paris, the young man with the baseball cap and increasingly thin body end up years after I snuck out of his flat in East London that freezing winter morning all those years ago?

Then I came to a stop. I had what was becoming, at least on the surface, an arguably rich tapestry of crazy characters – fascinating, damaged people who I hoped I would make understandable. But something was missing. The main character. The person who was supposed to hold the whole story together and give it some sense, some credibility. The character that was based on me.

And it was this character, myself, that I realised I didn’t really understand. Yes, I knew some of his motivations, but they were all so confused. Nothing seemed to hang together. Where was he going and where had he come from? I had no answers to the questions that troubled me. Why did this character keep behaving like he did when he knew he would always get the same result from that behaviour? How was it possible to crave intimacy with every core of your being and yet consistently run away from it with such self-destructive rage?

The truth was that I didn’t know where to go from where I had somehow ended up. All I knew for certain was that all the old escape mechanisms I’d been using no longer worked. Walking down the street on another Saturday night, past the same bars that I’d spent so many nights in, sauntering past the cash machines that had bled my bank account as I crashed from one crowded room to another, falling on to the same dance floors with their pounding music where no one talked and sex and love was reduced to a vicious, competitive sport. None of it worked anymore. My character had hit ground zero and it was only me who could get him back on track.

For the first time in years I stopped. I paused and began to look at my life. I tried to work on the one thing I had unswervingly failed at; spending time in my own company. Being quiet, reflective and thinking. And it was only through doing this that I slowly began to see the story that possibly, hopefully, lay ahead – the tale I had yet to tell, to create.

At the heart of this was a feeling of gaping loss. As I sat at home, rather than flying across town grabbing at any man who gave me a sideways glance, I lay in bed and looked at the photographs on my bookshelf. The dead people as I called them: my father; my grandparents; John, my friend who had obliterated himself with vodka – the man that his partner sadly said I sometimes reminded him of. All the people I had never grieved for, all those memories of wounded relationships that I had been trying to cover up, to blot out for so long.

I decided that if I was going to tell my story, to write my book, I had to find a way of reconciling myself with these people, with what they represented for me. As usual the path went back to my father, and then his father before him, the man who sent him off to a cold boarding school even after he had spent the first four years of his life in a Japanese prisoner of war camp.

For my book to have an end my character had to have a beginning. The problem was that I had never wanted to face where I had come from before. It was just too painful. And yet now I knew I had no choice but to make a start.

I emailed a woman, a researcher, who had contacted my family not long after my father’s death six years ago. She was writing a book about the Batu Lintang camp, the place that my father, my aunt and my grandparents had been interned in when the Japanese invaded British North Borneo, the place they were sent to after their house was burnt down and they’d seen their dogs shot.

I never expected a reply. As with so much in my family nothing had been followed through. My aunt had sent the woman some emails back in 2009, but the contact had petered out. Were the memories simply too raw for her to go there too I wondered?

The email I got back moved me greatly. This lady had spared the time to write a good 500 words about her project. She directed me to useful sources that would tell me more about the camp. She sent a link to the Wikipedia page that she had created. I swapped a night at the sauna for time in front of my lap top. I read about mortality rates, starvation and rapes. And then I cried.

In the last few weeks I have maintained contact with this lady. She has pointed me in the direction of yet more information. I have ordered books and plan to visit the library. I even did something I have laughed at other people for doing, joining Genes Reunited in an attempt to find out more about my family; about the suffocating silence that I have felt has always been at its core.

I don’t know where this project will lead me. Will I ever finish this book? I haven’t even started writing it again yet. All I know is that the more I read about what happened to my father and his parents the more I begin to understand why he behaved like he did; why he built that wall around him that so terrified me. And as I do so I begin to realise why emotional unavailability has become the lynch pin of my life – both in the men I have sought and, more chillingly still, in myself.

The writer in me hopes that all of this will result in a believable central character, the figure that has so far eluded me. And yet, the more work I do, the more time I spend seeking out this hidden history, the more I come to think that perhaps that isn’t the most important thing. If I come to understand myself a bit better then isn’t that all that really matters here? Perhaps all we, as humans can ever really try to do is constantly try to redraft our lives. In that respect we are all writers. The trick, I guess, is to become less harsh critics as we stumble and fall.

Debate all you want: a Bigot is a Bigot

At the annual Stonewall awards this week Cardinal Keith O’Brien won the award for Bigot of The Year. This has led to much controversy in the press and an inevitable backlash from the Catholic Church who claims to be profoundly insulted and hurt by this dubious accolade.

I made my feelings felt on Derek Bateman’s program on BBC Scotland this morning, but shall clarify them here.

Any insult and hurt that the Catholic Church feels is nothing in comparison to the stream of vitriol that has been systematically directed at gay people by the Cardinal – a man who has likened gay sex to bestiality and compared us to paedophiles; rich coming from a leader of a religion that has harboured child sex offenders and allowed them to continue their abhorrent activities.

There are those who have accused Stonewall of resorting to childish tit for tat in giving O’Brien this award. Responding to insults with more insults is undignified and discredits Stonewall’s cause people have said. Let’s get this straight: calling O’Brien a bigot is not an insult, it is a statement of fact. We can debate the various meanings of the word “bigot” all we want, but ultimately the intolerance and undiluted hate campaign that this pernicious man has launched on our community is bigotry in its purest, most venomous form.

Speaking on BBC radio Scotland today, Chris Carman, Editor of The Big Issue said that “in order to maintain the moral high ground and move the debate on” Stonewall should not have given O’Brien this award. This statement loses sight of two vital issues: firstly, the Catholic Church has consistently failed to show any inclination to enter into a dialogue with the gay community. There has been no debate and there will never be any debate as long as they preach hell fire and brimstone from their far from untarnished pulpits.

Secondly, the only way that the gay community can move things on, and defend itself, is through a major organisation like Stonewall. The Catholic Church has the luxury of a large following and access to mainstream media. Comparatively, the gay community has little. Stonewall is one of the instruments that wields enough power to speak for us and restore our self-respect in the face of such relentless hate mongering.

This award is an ironic, witty indictment on not only O’Brien, but every Catholic Church leader who appears to be utterly obsessed with our sexual proclivities. In one eloquent, fell swoop they have responded, on behalf of every disenfranchised member of our community, to the unacceptable dehumanisation of all gay people. It’s no surprise that such a succinct, honourable action is lost on a Church mired in the gilded chaos of its misplaced priorities and decidedly shady, covert behaviour.

The church are now, of course, playing their same old tired game – turning the tables on their critics and casting themselves as victims. In the words of a Catholic Church spokesperson, the LGB charity have resorted to “intolerant and intimidating tactics.” Oh, the rage of Caliban looking in the mirror.

What can we expect from here onwards? As Carman rightly said in his interview, the Church has an army of “canny” public relations people who will do all they can to destroy Stonewall following this incident. Indeed, they are already calling for the charity’s public funding to be withdrawn.

How then does the gay community counter act this? The starting point is to begin to examine and publically question the relationship between politics and this vengeful religion. The fact that Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond has condemned Stonewall, no doubt in fear of losing votes, is cause for alarm. Make no mistake, we are dealing with a highly politicised religion here. Only when politics become divorced from religion can we confidently strive towards equal rights.

There can be no let up on the gay community’s fight against the deformative power of religion; it remains the greatest threat to our freedom. In my radio interview I quoted some statistics from recent research by the Independent on the mental health of gay people. Terrifyingly, more than half of gay individuals self-harm; one in four is assaulted and a chilling 47% have been threatened because of their sexual orientation. This highlights the very real human ramifications of the Stonewall controversy. The impact of the words of bigots, like O’Brien, are intricately related to the feelings of worthlessness that are endemic in the gay community. We ignore the effect on our collective psyche at our peril.

My grandparents

Lying in my bed, my eyes reach up to the family photographs on the top of the cupboard. I scan them and rest on one:- my brother and I standing either side of my grandmother, my father’s mother, in the overgrown paddock at her house. She has a barely discernible smile on her face and wears a blue blouse fastened tightly around her neck. I gaze at it and remember the place that it was taken. Who took the photograph? My father?

My father’s own father lived to 94. He was 80 when I was born. He was not your usual 80 year old grandfather. There was nothing soft and cuddly about him. The grandchildren were kept at a distance, the same distance that his own children were kept at when they were sent to a Catholic boarding school in Surrey, thousands of miles away from Borneo, where my grandfather stayed, determined to rebuild his life and his bank balance after the family were liberated by the Australians from a Japanese Prisoner of War Camp.

As a child we would go on family holidays at Easter and summer to my grandparents’ house. The Homestead was a four bedroom property off the Eastbourne Road, just outside Lingfield. Stockbrokers’ territory. It was like an enclave, separated from the outside world by swampy, common land on each side. Inside that was about 4 acres of land. It was little more than an overgrown field when my grandfather acquired it. He gutted it, sending in men on tractors, gardeners with pitchforks. I asked once why they lived in a big house. My father said it was because my grandfather had been used to having space around him, but as I grew up I realised it was because he didn’t want people around him.

Fires burned for days as he had the undergrowth chopped and burnt. The lawns were ruthlessly landscaped, formidably tall fir trees planted alongside the huge main lawn that swept majestically down from the back of the house to the paddock at the end. A wooden hut was built for their donkey, Jenny. She escaped one night during a ferocious storm, bursting out of her enclosure and through the barbed wire fence before the common land, landing on the main road where she was slaughtered by a late night van. This happened before I was born, but every time I heard this story I wanted to cry.

My grandmother never escaped. Arriving back in England after the war she swapped one prison for another. The rest of her life was spent caring for her increasingly senile husband. Even before his mind unravelled he was monstrous in his demands. My mother told me that she had to ask for money for tampons.

Her once beautiful face had caved in. Loose skin clung to her neck, her eyes were deep hollows of pain and sadness and memory. I remember her as a saintly woman and never heard her complaining about anyone. We’d arrive and she’d have laid out Mars bars on our freshly made beds in the room I shared with my brother. She moved slowly, every gesture enthused with a forlorn gentleness and yet I never felt I could talk to her. Any animation seemed beyond her. She simply looked shell shocked.

Her final decades consisted of pureeing my grandfather’s food and mushing up blackberries from brambles on the overgrown tennis court to give to us as presents. The entire house was falling apart by then. One day my grandfather had told her that the money had run out. He was too old to work so he sent her to the local bakery to bring in just enough money to keep them in food and him in gin. The common land began encroaching on the gardens. The moles were digging up the lawns and we spent our days there doing what little we could to preserve the fractured sense of grandeur that this family had always been ruled by.

Hoppy, as she called my grandfather, had been my grandmother’s life. He had met her when he was 40 and she was 19 when he was travelling the world. Landing in her colonial village in India he had dragged her off and married her. Before the war he had given her a life of privilege. Her role was to look pretty, to host dinner parties for those at the embassy, the big wigs who worked in the timber industry that took all of my grandfather’s attention. She would open the front door to us quietly when we arrived and usher us in to pay court to my grandfather.

He would be sitting as he always did in a large brown arm chair under a standard lamp, a drinks cabinet behind him. He barely moved from that chair. Until he was 85 he would wander off to the smaller garage and remove the sit on mower. Otherwise he never left the house. This all ended the day he wrapped himself around a tree in the orchard. Even then he was a remarkably strong man and was left with only a cut on the forehead and a wounded pride.

But it was that wounded pride that really got to him. The incident was never spoken of again. Like so many things it was off limits. This was a man who had been forced to retire when he was 50 because it was unthinkable that the “natives” would see a white man becoming old and weak. Strength was where it was at for my grandfather; a cold, brusque façade that inspired my fear.
As we sat beside him, on the sofa, he would bark at us suddenly.

“Boy, draw me an elephant.”

I never knew where to begin. My brother always did a better job. I’d simply sit there and smile, hoping that my smile wasn’t too pretty, that my gestures were manly enough. I dreaded having to walk through that long living room at the end of the day and plant a light kiss on his crumpled, severe face as I bid him goodnight.

I don’t ever recall him and my father talking. When we arrived my father would march over to him, shake his hand. “Hello Dad.” Business like. Duty done. And then they’d hardly exchange a word for the rest of the two weeks. They would sit at opposite corners of the room, my father’s head buried in the newspaper. My grandfather was losing his sight and could no longer read. The substitute was having the television blaring out at full volume, which irked my father. He would moan about it to us, but never confront hi,. I was never sure if it was frustration at the noise or the reality of witnessing his father fall apart. I was never sure how much he cared.

At times that house was like a pressure cooker because of the silence. It seemed endless, with no promise of things flaring up, of an unbottling of emotions. That, I soon realised, would have been perceived as being unseemly. So very un-British.

At the end of one summer, as we were packed up and ready to leave, it nearly happened. I was too young to understand what had gone on. Nothing had been said. Looks may have been exchanged or, perhaps, my father had simply become sickened by the prolonged silence that had been gnawing away at the family since he was a child.

My grandfather sat in the background, cravat fastened around his neck, as we moved to the living room door. My father stared at his mother, the anger flaring in his eyes.

“I simply won’t bring the family here again.”

I had never seen her look so frightened and helpless as she did at that moment.

But still we returned -every Easter and summer until he died and then she died, lingering on for just five years, her purpose gone now that the man who had squashed her to a pulp had so cruelly betrayed her by slipping away; a broken woman riddled by a cancer that she and everyone else chose to ignore.

We received a phone call the night my grandfather finally died. I must have been eleven and in those days we still gathered, as a family, around the television that punctuated our own small, still living room. My aunt spoke to my father. He walked back into the room, his face inscrutable. He settled down again with his whiskey. I could tell from my mother’s eyes that she wanted so much to approach him, to lay a hand on his shoulder, but knew that she couldn’t. He looked at my brother and I.

“Say a prayer tonight for your grandfather.”

We crept upstairs to our room, he to the top bunk, me to the bottom. We said nothing to one another. I wanted to cry, but couldn’t. I’d been told to pray, but didn’t know what to say or what to believe in. The next morning I did cry, silent tears soaking into my pillow at dawn. But it wasn’t for my grandfather, it was for my own guilt. The hatred I had at myself and was desperately trying to banish from my mind. The thoughts that churned around my head as the morning light slid through the curtains. “Now he is gone I will feel so much more comfortable going to that house.”

I wondered if, on some level, my own father felt the same.

Midpoint

Waking after dreaming of him again.

Outside, the black stillness, the morning birds. Calmness. No sirens, no knifings.

Old men mowing lawns. A woman, crunched over the steel of a walking frame. Some former fierceness in her eyes, now screwed down to the rudiments of survival. One step after another. Just breathing. It’s enough.

Isn’t it?

Walking. Summer shoes coated in thick mud. Down a cinder path, beside a train line that I take back to my other life, my future life.

Craziness. The recklessness of escape. Shedding half-lives. Running to the careless arms of strangers even when things are good.

Especially when things are good.

When things seem too good.

The restlessness means I breathe.

It always has.

Going back to go forward. To find where I came from. To begin to make some kind of coherent whole.

I climb over a style to get to his grave, nettles brushing my arms. The piercing solace of memory.

I can never find the spot where he lies. And when I do I don’t know what to do. I just stand there, listening to the wind

Howling

It was always the way with us.

Just let it settle

Let it pass

Vieux Carre, the King’s Head Theatre

Tennessee William’s late plays have received a mix press. By the time of his death in 1983 the American playwright’s reputation had suffered from years of drink and drug abuse and his work became increasingly experimental. One of his wildest plays Kirche, Kuche, Kinder even led one scholar to remark that the legendary writer had lost his mind.

While this was not the case, what is certain is that the plays from 1963 onwards have been performed less; indeed some still languish in archives waiting for a daring director to bring them to life.

Williams’ autobiographical play Vieux Carre is one of these late and neglected plays and was last performed in London in 1978. At that time it was the unwieldy sets that dominated the Piccadilly theatre rather than the characters and the poetry of William’s script.

Attempting to launch a revival of this play is a daunting task, but one which director Robert Chevara pulls off magnificently at the King’s Head Theatre. The simple set, with its three beds, strips the play bare and allows it to speak for itself. The results are magnificent as we are introduced to the familiar Williams characters who are all grappling with issues of crushing loneliness and thwarted desire.

All of the performances are flawless, but particular mention must go to Tom Ross-Williams who plays The Writer (based on Williams). Finding himself in a New Orleans boarding house he encounters an eclectic group of people who inspire his writing. Ross-Williams perfectly captures the ambitions and innocence of the young Tennessee Williams as he observes these damaged figures and thereby evolves as an artist and a gay man.

Williams’ best friend on the Vieux Carre is Jane, played by the magnificent Samantha Coughlan. Stuck in a co-dependent relationship with the desirable, yet emotionally unavailable Tye she thrashes about on her bed in a mixture of lust, guilt and regret. It’s a sublimely nuanced performance that gives a merciless insight into the psyche of the tortured, yet endlessly fascinating creature that prefigured Blanche Dubois.

Other notable performances come from David Whitworth as ageing gay man Nightingale and Nancy Crane as landlady Mrs Wire. The scene in which Nightingale is taken off to hospital to die is devastatingly moving, while Crane’s portrayal of an outwardly repugnant harridan prompts us to consider the fallibility of the masks that life often leads us to wear as we hide unspeakable hurt.

This is a challenging piece of theatre; it boasts a large cast and fast-paced dialogue. In the wrong hands it could easily have overwhelmed the King’s Head’s tiny stage. Chevara, however, has tackled it from precisely the right angle – by going back to the beauty of Williams’ language; this he treats reverentially, mining it for every twisted shade of longing and despair.

With all its brittle pain, Williams’ world is not always an easy one to confront, but confront it we must if we want to know the truth. The strength of this intimate production is that it hones in on the conflicted emotions that allow us to understand ourselves better. The triumph is that it achieves this with a breath-taking honesty and tenderness.

Vieux Carre is at the King’s Head Theatre until 4 August http://www.kingsheadtheatre.org/

Polari Prize Longlist Announced

Photo of Paul Burston by

The longlist for The Polari Prize was announced this week as the indefatigable Paul Burston took to the stage at London’s Southbank centre.

This is the second year for the prize which is for a first book which explores the LGBT experience and is open to any work of poetry, prose, fiction or non-fiction published or self-published in the UK in English.

Last year’s winner was James Maker for his beautifully written memoir Autofellatio.

This year’s judges include Time Out Gay & Lesbian editor, bestselling author and Polari host Paul Burston; Rachel Holmes, Head of Literature at the Southbank; Suzi Feay, literary critic; Joe Storey-Scott, books buyer and writer, critic and broadcaster Bidisha.

The shortlist will be announced in September, with the winner being crowned at the Polari 5th Birthday on November 26 where they will receive £1000 (courtesy of Square Peg Media).

The exceptionally strong ten longlisted books are…
‘Rory’s Boys’ – Alan Clark (Bliss/Arcadia Books)
‘Pennance’ – Claire Ashton (self published on Kindle)
‘The Frost Fairs’ – John McCullogh (Salt)
‘Becoming Nancy’ – Terry Ronald (Transworld)
‘Exit Through The Wound’ – North Morgan (Limehouse Books)
‘Body of Water’ – Stuart Wakefield (self published)
‘Modern Love’ – Max Wallis (Flap)
‘Ey Up and Away’ – Vicky Ryder (Wandering Star Press)
‘Grrl Alex’ – Alex Drummond (self published)
‘Perking The Pansies’ – Jack Scott (Summertime Publishing)

The news that three of these books are self-published sends out a bold and encouraging message to upcoming LGBT writers at a time when the publishing industry is facing challenges.

This is a refreshingly diverse longlist, representing work from a range of genres and perspectives.
LGBT people’s strengths lie in storytelling and we have a duty to share our experiences if we are to evolve as a community.

The work that Paul Burston has undertaken with Polari can’t be underestimated. It’s a labour of love that provides a much needed, supportive community for writers. It continues to grow and exceed all expectations.

Many congratulations to all of the longlisted authors.

For more information and updates visit www.paulburston.com

Krystyna Fitzgerald-Morris’ website is http://krysphotos.co.uk/

Death of a Porn Star

I was working abroad when news of the death of porn star Erik Rhodes broke. Since then much has been said about Rhodes’ life and the porn industry that many blame for his destruction. The usual criticisms have been levelled at a business that treats young men as commodities to be exploited, consumed and then spat out. I won’t repeat them now as I’ve voiced similar opinions myself many times in the pages of this blog.

When I heard the news I searched online for Rhodes’ own blog. He started it in 2008, four years after being “discovered” at 22 and catapulted into porn. The blog has now been removed, but excerpts remain in this article. The catalogue of self-loathing and despair in this raw cry in the dark is almost too much to read.

I began trawling the net to find out more about Rhodes. After all, a significant part of so-called “gay culture” tells us that we’re supposed to be fascinated by porn stars. With their perfect bodies and enviable sex lives they’re the idols living the gay dream that we’re told we have to covet. What was this tortured man’s story?

This picture told me all I needed to know.

Why do so many gay men have the bodies of warriors when they are slowly breaking apart inside?

What made this particular young man transform himself into this outwardly powerful, awe-inspiring figure of masculinity that he so grew to despise?

It made me think back to my own experiences in porn. I was 20 when I first made a film, two years younger than Rhodes. It all started with sending off naked pictures to a well-known director who then phoned my parents’ house and asked me if I wanted to take a week away in Ibiza. After eight years of school bullying I had no self-esteem left. I hated my appearance and genuinely believed the taunts of those school kids who I secretly desired. I didn’t know where to go with that. Perhaps posing in front of a camera would make me feel that I had something to offer this new, intimidating gay world that I was just beginning to explore.

It’s often difficult to recognise controlling, exploitative behaviour when it’s actually happening to you; and especially when you’re little more than a child yourself. Only years later, when I accidentally came across the filmed audition that I had to take for the director (the audition that I was told would never be released), did the reality hit. It wasn’t the self-assured, in-control young man I thought I’d been that was standing naked in front of me on that screen, but a frightened, vulnerable boy who was desperately seeking approval and who would do absolutely anything to get it.

There were six other “models” on that set in Ibiza – a set that would’ve been any psychologist’s dream. Two were already working as escorts. A third was “gay for pay” and the other two spent the week bitching and fighting over him, until their animosity broke out in a Dynasty style cat fight beside the pool. It would’ve been funny if I hadn’t spent the night that followed comforting one of them as he lay shaking with tears beside me, recounting his three suicide attempts. He was just nineteen.

The next day he acted as if nothing had happened and popped into the director’s chalet to start an on set affair. I remember asking him why. He smiled and winked as he told me that he knew exactly what he was doing. In his word, he was “playing the game.”

Ten years later I’d meet him in a club. The game had taken its toll. He’d made another six films and was still working as an escort. His body had changed and he’d bulked up to compensate for the once beautiful face that he’d lost. He laughed and said it had all worked out well for him; he didn’t need to pay tax like other people, but the sad, defeated look in his eyes spoke of a decade of disillusionment and regret.

Erik Rhodes’ blog was full of regret. Regret and fear. Fear at turning thirty and the hopelessness of ever escaping from the mire of drugs and meaningless sex that he both craved and felt trapped by. His story is not just the story of a porn star, but of so many of the men we see on the gay scene every weekend; those who want to live the life of the porn star; those who need to be seen, admired and desired. Those who believe there is nothing else, because no one has shown them anything else.

Some people have said that Rhodes could’ve avoided his death and have even gone as far as claiming that he brought it upon himself. After all, aren’t we all responsible for the choices that we make? To an extent, yes, this is true, but it’s also true that we can come together to help one another make better choices, choices that will allow us to be the people we dreamed of being in the years ahead.

For Erik Rhodes it was too late. No one seemed to listen to his very public cries for help. Where was his support network? Who warned him what to expect when he first walked on to a porn set? Where were those gay men, or indeed gay businesses, offering a vulnerable, damaged young man the advice and unconditional comfort that he needed when it all went so horrifically wrong?

The Falcon site is now inundated with messages of condolence from “fans” after the studio wrote a blog paying homage to its top star; a blog in which it also announced its intention to release a new DVD featuring highlights from the “career” that destroyed him, a “career” it’s intent on continuing to make money out of even after its young star is dead. That’s the support that Rhodes got.

But it’s not just the porn industry that’s culpable here. Tellingly, not one of those “fans” leaving fawning messages about Rhodes’ magnificent body and super-human performances has asked what Falcon did to try and prevent its star’s tragic demise. Their minds appear to be on more superficial things, namely getting hold of a new DVD to fantasise about a dead man. Some might call that sick.

Anyone who has read Rhodes’ searing blog, however, is likely to reach the conclusion that he wouldn’t object to this DVD being released, for amongst the acute pain on those pages is a sardonic self-portrait of a man who viewed the industry as it is. He fully understood and accepted that it had destroyed him, but also recognised that this was what he had, unwittingly, signed up for when he first walked on to that set aged just 22. And it’s in this that we see not just the real tragedy of this man’s death, but also the cruel reality of the industry. If any good can come out of Rhodes’ short, unhappy life, it’s that we, as a community, begin to accept the truth behind the gleaming torsos and white teethed smiles of porn and, in accepting this, start to see the roles that we might play in challenging it.