My Velvet Rage

What are the consequences of becoming consumed by a gay scene that offers seemingly endless opportunities for recreational sex, drug use and binge drinking? What is the toll it takes on you? And when do you begin to realise that you have come to the end of the road?

And, more crucially, what do you do when you reach that point?

Everyone’s experiences are different. For me the crunch point came about four years ago. I was drinking my weight in Jack Daniels every week. Almost every Friday night I sought release from the job I loathed by languishing in a sauna snorting K off random men’s locker keys.

Yet it didn’t seem to interfere with things. I held down the thankless job. I numbed the feelings of lack of self-worth that came from years of bullying with all the aplomb on Neely O’Hara in Valley of The Dolls.

Periodically I questioned my behaviour, but then I looked around me. Wasn’t every other gay man I knew doing the same? Wasn’t it just called being young and carefree? Where was the problem?

The problem came at 2am one morning. In a dark cabin in a sauna in Waterloo one of the three anonymous partners I was with shovelled a little too much of the magic white powder up my left nostril. Within minutes I was sweating uncontrollably and writhing about on the plastic covered mattress like an animal.

Needless to say the three men vanished pretty quickly and left me to it. I must have been lying there for only five minutes, but it felt like an eternity. In that time I saw my past flash before me in vivid detail. I saw my childhood, I saw the school bullies. And then I saw everyone I knew who had died. Lastly I saw my dead father. I was convinced I would soon be joining him.

Crawling along the cold stone floor I called for help. I needed water. I wanted an ambulance. Two Brazilians who worked there dragged me back into the cabin. In agitated tones they told me to wait until it passed. I waited. As soon as I felt better I stumbled to the locker room to collect my belongings. And then the inevitable tears came.

I remember that one of the staff looked at me and told me I was beautiful. He placed a hand on my shoulder and said softly: “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

A similar question was asked by the therapist I took myself to see a month later: “When you go to these places, when you do these things, I wonder what you lose each time?”

I finally began to wonder too. And as time has gone on and I have started to focus on my future, I have begun to ask in the pages of this blog what gay people are sacrificing every time they compulsively act out; every time they seek release from the kind of internalised anger that Alan Downs so eloquently described in his book The Velvet Rage.

I can only speak from my own experiences, but I believe they are not uncommon in other gay men. The childhood victimisation; the distant father; the over-protective mother; the feelings of being an outsider from an early age and the search for enfranchisement through meaningless sex; the addictive need to feel worthy and attractive; the transient solace that is found in anaesthetising your pain.

The tragedy though is that nothing is ever enough. We can fit a revolving door at the entrance to our flats for ManHunt encounter after Gay Romeo encounter after Grindr encounter to waltz through. We can attach a sign to our rear ends proclaiming “entrance in constant use.” The validation each notch on the bed post gives us is so fragile. A hundred nominations to enter Gaydar’s auspicious Sex Factor contest will never bring the real empowerment that can save us and build a worthwhile foundation for our future.

And going back to the poignant words of my former therapist, what exactly do we lose each time we let some stranger paw at our immaculately buffed bodies, those bodies of the iron butterflies we have become? For me I began to lose the ability to harness any genuine sense of intimacy with another man.

I began to distrust everyman I met. What was the point in giving someone a chance, of even trying to share my fears and hopes and dreams when the experiences I had chosen in the past had shown me that all anyone wanted was a few moments of selfish pleasure?

The deep seated rage that many gay men have does not, however, have to be this destructive force. It is all about how we channel it. There comes a point where we have to check ourselves. Hedonism can be blissful, but like everything there is the risk of it being carried to extremes.

There is the very real danger of us sabotaging any chance we have for happiness. Unless issues are addressed there is the probability of becoming a 55 year old man haunting a sauna like a ghost with only his clutch bag of G for company.

It’s something that a significant segment of the men who use London’s gay scene could do with pondering. It is not easy to make changes and face harsh realities or to deal with the baggage from our past. Anyone who does so should be applauded for their bravery and maturity.

I am not saying that I know the right way to go about this. Again, everyone is unique. We are all fallible human beings and works in progress. Yet what we can do is offer one another support as we continue to share our demons and try to reconstruct a community that focuses on mutual respect and empathy. We owe ourselves this much.

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