Damn I would have loved to read the interview - it would have been fascinating to hear your friend's perspective and thoughts on this rare rich bit of history, but of course I respect his decision. Hanif's friend, if you are reading this, I think you should be proud - you were brave and open-hearted to have those adventures, and I'm really glad you're still here. On a different note, Sebastian and his lovely mum Valerie were friends of mine, and he would have been really touched to know you wrote so warmly about DITU. I wish he could have been more comfortable with himself, and liked himself more, he was a very sweet person.
"At my recommendation, Carlo is reading Sebastian Horsley’s excellently witty and sordid memoir Dandy in the Underworld, an account of the author’s life in the 80s and 90s as an upper-middle-class drug and sex addict.
It is in the tradition of other famous autobiographies, like De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Henry Miller’s adventures in Paris, Salvador Dali’s memoir, Anaïs Nin’s diaries, and other shameless truthtellers, those who have opted to tell us ‘everything’. They are a lot of fun to read. It is unusual for anyone to be so candid about their indignities, urges and failings."
Oh yea... This is one hell of a reading list containing some of the great voices of the 20th Century. I concur wholeheartedly with with your taste and throw my entire weight behind the aesthetics of this reading list. As Becca Rothfeld states in this years 'All Things Are Too Small' We need to explore the more wider expansive tide of the nature of our human experience. We need to express the macro over the micro, and embrace a point and edges that lead to an excess of our experience.
Many years ago – a devilishly sweltering day in late July – at a local beauty spot, I was approached by a young couple. The man nervously enquired why there were police cars parked at the end of the lane that joined the footpath. I told him that there appeared to have been an altercation among a large group of teens, who were now making their way back towards the lane in dribs and drabs, conversing in hushed, overly-dramatic tones about whatever had just transpired. The schools had broken up for the summer holidays a few hours before.
Having been reassured that there was no imminent threat from the law, the man asked me if I would have sex with his wife, which I did. I will call them Jean and Tyrone. These obviously aren't their real names. I continued to meet with them in the same place and eventually at their home. I would vigorously fuck Jean while Tyrone masturbated. They were well-educated professionals. It was clear to me that their marriage was failing. Tyrone liked to watch me kiss his wife passionately, which in hindsight is terribly sad. At the time, I didn't care. I had yet to develop a conscience. I was grieving the death of my grandmother in inappropriate ways that would have greatly disappointed her and caused her immeasurable concern. Of course now, I deeply regret all of it.
Through Jean and Tyrone, I was eventually drawn into the orbit of a group of local swingers. As a human component in what I hesitate to describe as a ménage a trois, since I wasn't fucking Tyrone, I was grandfathered in, despite being a lone male. There were a couple of extremely perverted women in their fifties who were also single.
The reality of group sex is a distant cry from the libertine odyssey one might hope for, where the participants explore the frontiers of carnality with the refined sentiments of poets, perhaps under the vaulted ceiling of some Renaissance-era building that bears a mural painted by Michaelangelo. It is crude, coarse and vulgar; a world of cheap lingerie twisted out of shape; the artificial fragrance of lubricants; lying on top of someone who you can barely tolerate and would ordinarily cross the street to avoid, on a single bed, in the tiny box room of some 1960s semi-detached council house, the doors of a cheap wardrobe channelling the vibrations of your low wattage arousal. We were a congress of shop-soiled degenerates in moral free-fall, pawing at each other's unwashed folds in a communal miasma of our own wretched manufacture. One night there was an argument. I was on the periphery of it, but it seemed like a good time to cut ties. I have yet to meet a couple who improved their relationship by opening it up to the sexual attention of strangers.
I feel no shame for what I did, though some of it was disgusting. I do feel a deep moral revulsion that defies full definition. If I lean hard into my memories of this time I can make myself dry retch as if, years later, my body is still wringing out the poison.
The experience certainly made me more monogamist in my leanings, though this is largely theoretical. I have learned through trial and error that I am happier on my own.
I subscribe to several blogs and substacks. But your's Hanif and Carlo and others
who write with you I always read and often immediately. So exciting, forgotten worlds brought to life, so brave and daring, so very very alive, sly, funny, shocking, and art art art. Thankyou. It is perfect. Wish I could afford to subscribe. Will you really only have subscribers.
Some years ago I was told an amusing tale by a very well connected friend in the music world. A well known figure in opera liked to indulge in what he described as “rough trade” when he travelled. After an encounter with one such young man they were chatting and he mentioned his job and the young man’s face lit up as he said “you must know my auntie Kiri”. Swift exit.
I am sure you are no stranger to the "Orton Diaries".
They were a shocking (thus amusing) read more than thirty years ago, while preparing my dissertation in English Literature in Pisa. Love fromn Luigi Trombetta
The poet painter flaneur Rene Ricard was one of. the central figures in our NY lives in those days. In addition to his biting critical wisdom, his sexual exploits were legendary; he once rang my doorbell and when I went downstairs to meet him, he was buggering a guy he's picked up. Where do we cast our eyes? Rene winked at me and soon dispatched his conquest before climbing the stairs to join the party. People were always making out in strange places in early 1980s downtown NY; the film Taxi Zum Klo set a new standard, at least until AIDS started killing off the epoch's joyous celebration of gay life. https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/art-scene-chapter-one-/5569
Sorry Hanif , but this reads as of you were both pissed with an old friend who changed his mind about an interview he had KINDLY given you . He doesn't owe you good copy . You owe him an apology imv .
Damn I would have loved to read the interview - it would have been fascinating to hear your friend's perspective and thoughts on this rare rich bit of history, but of course I respect his decision. Hanif's friend, if you are reading this, I think you should be proud - you were brave and open-hearted to have those adventures, and I'm really glad you're still here. On a different note, Sebastian and his lovely mum Valerie were friends of mine, and he would have been really touched to know you wrote so warmly about DITU. I wish he could have been more comfortable with himself, and liked himself more, he was a very sweet person.
"At my recommendation, Carlo is reading Sebastian Horsley’s excellently witty and sordid memoir Dandy in the Underworld, an account of the author’s life in the 80s and 90s as an upper-middle-class drug and sex addict.
It is in the tradition of other famous autobiographies, like De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, Henry Miller’s adventures in Paris, Salvador Dali’s memoir, Anaïs Nin’s diaries, and other shameless truthtellers, those who have opted to tell us ‘everything’. They are a lot of fun to read. It is unusual for anyone to be so candid about their indignities, urges and failings."
Oh yea... This is one hell of a reading list containing some of the great voices of the 20th Century. I concur wholeheartedly with with your taste and throw my entire weight behind the aesthetics of this reading list. As Becca Rothfeld states in this years 'All Things Are Too Small' We need to explore the more wider expansive tide of the nature of our human experience. We need to express the macro over the micro, and embrace a point and edges that lead to an excess of our experience.
Many years ago – a devilishly sweltering day in late July – at a local beauty spot, I was approached by a young couple. The man nervously enquired why there were police cars parked at the end of the lane that joined the footpath. I told him that there appeared to have been an altercation among a large group of teens, who were now making their way back towards the lane in dribs and drabs, conversing in hushed, overly-dramatic tones about whatever had just transpired. The schools had broken up for the summer holidays a few hours before.
Having been reassured that there was no imminent threat from the law, the man asked me if I would have sex with his wife, which I did. I will call them Jean and Tyrone. These obviously aren't their real names. I continued to meet with them in the same place and eventually at their home. I would vigorously fuck Jean while Tyrone masturbated. They were well-educated professionals. It was clear to me that their marriage was failing. Tyrone liked to watch me kiss his wife passionately, which in hindsight is terribly sad. At the time, I didn't care. I had yet to develop a conscience. I was grieving the death of my grandmother in inappropriate ways that would have greatly disappointed her and caused her immeasurable concern. Of course now, I deeply regret all of it.
Through Jean and Tyrone, I was eventually drawn into the orbit of a group of local swingers. As a human component in what I hesitate to describe as a ménage a trois, since I wasn't fucking Tyrone, I was grandfathered in, despite being a lone male. There were a couple of extremely perverted women in their fifties who were also single.
The reality of group sex is a distant cry from the libertine odyssey one might hope for, where the participants explore the frontiers of carnality with the refined sentiments of poets, perhaps under the vaulted ceiling of some Renaissance-era building that bears a mural painted by Michaelangelo. It is crude, coarse and vulgar; a world of cheap lingerie twisted out of shape; the artificial fragrance of lubricants; lying on top of someone who you can barely tolerate and would ordinarily cross the street to avoid, on a single bed, in the tiny box room of some 1960s semi-detached council house, the doors of a cheap wardrobe channelling the vibrations of your low wattage arousal. We were a congress of shop-soiled degenerates in moral free-fall, pawing at each other's unwashed folds in a communal miasma of our own wretched manufacture. One night there was an argument. I was on the periphery of it, but it seemed like a good time to cut ties. I have yet to meet a couple who improved their relationship by opening it up to the sexual attention of strangers.
I feel no shame for what I did, though some of it was disgusting. I do feel a deep moral revulsion that defies full definition. If I lean hard into my memories of this time I can make myself dry retch as if, years later, my body is still wringing out the poison.
The experience certainly made me more monogamist in my leanings, though this is largely theoretical. I have learned through trial and error that I am happier on my own.
There is some cruelty in your analysis of your friend.
I feel for him. Are other people just for one’s own amusement?
Also the representation of his behaviours betrays your own perhaps repressed moral authority?
Maybe there was also feeling, emotions, care, kindnesses……
Actually, H seems to be very much dealing with his own sensibilities in this essay, and rather openly, too … just at the starting point, evidently
Actually, H seems to be very much dealing with his own sensibilities in this essay, and rather openly, too … just at the starting point, evidently
I subscribe to several blogs and substacks. But your's Hanif and Carlo and others
who write with you I always read and often immediately. So exciting, forgotten worlds brought to life, so brave and daring, so very very alive, sly, funny, shocking, and art art art. Thankyou. It is perfect. Wish I could afford to subscribe. Will you really only have subscribers.
Maybe shame is also the distance between how we are and how we think or like to believe we are?
It’s helpful to start by making a distinction between concepts of guilt and shame and checking out the way that they are commonly used in the world.
Some years ago I was told an amusing tale by a very well connected friend in the music world. A well known figure in opera liked to indulge in what he described as “rough trade” when he travelled. After an encounter with one such young man they were chatting and he mentioned his job and the young man’s face lit up as he said “you must know my auntie Kiri”. Swift exit.
Humour was definitely revolutionary in USSR
And wouldn’t the world be dull if we didn’t do things which, on reflection, might make us ashamed if made public?
I am sure you are no stranger to the "Orton Diaries".
They were a shocking (thus amusing) read more than thirty years ago, while preparing my dissertation in English Literature in Pisa. Love fromn Luigi Trombetta
You are so bravely perceptive. It’s thrilling to read.
The poet painter flaneur Rene Ricard was one of. the central figures in our NY lives in those days. In addition to his biting critical wisdom, his sexual exploits were legendary; he once rang my doorbell and when I went downstairs to meet him, he was buggering a guy he's picked up. Where do we cast our eyes? Rene winked at me and soon dispatched his conquest before climbing the stairs to join the party. People were always making out in strange places in early 1980s downtown NY; the film Taxi Zum Klo set a new standard, at least until AIDS started killing off the epoch's joyous celebration of gay life. https://whitehotmagazine.com/articles/art-scene-chapter-one-/5569
Dandy and the Underworld is now at the top of my reading list.
Correction - Dandy in the Underworld but you know what I mean.
Brilliant!
I’ll say one thing for masturbation. You don’t have to look your best. Good piece boys!
Sorry Hanif , but this reads as of you were both pissed with an old friend who changed his mind about an interview he had KINDLY given you . He doesn't owe you good copy . You owe him an apology imv .