by Julian Clary
I never established if Mr Hammond was David Pervis, as the next day we moved on. As we drove out of Adelaide I could see a thick bluish-black cloud hanging low over the city. I knew what Paul O’Grady would have said.
We were all tired out by Christmas and in need of our week off. I had a painful ear infection and was on a course of antibiotics. My rather wonderful surprise gift from our promoter Adrian Bohm was a week’s holiday in a luxury villa on the island of Orpheus on the Barrier Reef. It was a beautiful island: palm trees, cocktails, snorkelling outings to see the underwater coral and multi-coloured tropical fish. Unfortunately my doctor had given me strict instructions not to get any water in my ear. I sat on the beach and listened to others snorting in wonderment through their snorkels. It was a bit like being in a sauna but unable to take your towel off. And there were mosquitoes to deal with.
26 December 1992, Island
How anyone can stand living here with these wretched mosquitoes, sand-flies and so on is a mystery to me. I’m bitten to buggery and have just had a tantrum with my can of Rid – spraying a harmless and rather beautiful moth for no reason, other than it was visible and slow enough to catch. It’s flapping listlessly on the kitchen counter as I write. I’m rather hoping it will recover and fly off home to its babies, full of tales of the evil punter in chalet number nine. Some other flying nuisance has just dived into my Champagne and sizzled to its end. A relative’s revenge.
My watch mysteriously gained two hours today. I went down to dinner at what I thought was nine o’clock, full of questions about how come it wasn’t getting dark at the usual time only to be told by a waitress setting napkins in a deserted dining room that it was only 7 p.m. My guess is the girls who serviced my room played a trick on me, tipped off by the lunchtime waitress who was clearly put out by my 2.30 p.m. arrival. Although I just wanted a salad and apologised, I guess it elongated her shift a bit and by resetting my Rolex they thought they’d buck me up a bit or at least make their point. Can’t think how else it happened. It was two hours fast exactly.
On a desert island all by myself I have time to think.
Reaching for a cigarette as I dined alone tonight, I suddenly realised the significance of the date. Christopher died exactly eighteen months ago today. Made me pause. Seems such a long time ago, but it isn’t really.
There have been three significant lovers since then. Tommy (Chicago), Hans (Amsterdam) and Josh (Perth). An interesting geographical triangle if nothing else. Josh is foremost in my mind, almost an obsession, but I remember when the others were too. And I’m reading Adam Mars-Jones’s Monopolies of Loss, which is making me philosophical, seeing my life in terms of a short story (or series).
Josh 18, me 33 – he on the threshold of physical maturity, me on the threshold of decline, hanging on by means of expensive moisturiser and sit-ups.
But Christopher, lover, friend, soulmate, meaning of Life and Death, is there all the time, in the foreground and the background.
And later . . .
Feeling a bit sluttish now.
Just spoke to Hans for the first time in a week and he sounded all sleepy and sweet and pleased to hear from me. It felt cosy and familiar and reassuring. With a little prompting from me to ‘say something nice’ he said he still loved me and said he hadn’t done ‘naughty things. And you?’
‘I’ve been a good boy,’ I lied.
Didn’t eat much dinner as I wasn’t hungry and I’m feeling fat. My hands constantly wander down to the midriff bulge, or when I’m alone grip the purses of flesh above the hips. Go they must! Exercise, less eating, more gym and less alcohol for me. Oh yes!
Why is cruising such an important part of gay life? I was day-dreaming just now about sporting my new tan at 3 Faces [Melbourne nightclub] and even when I think about Josh coming to Melbourne or, in my more loyal moments, Hans coming to Sydney, a part of me feels deflated because ‘it’, that cruisy, hunting, ravenous twinkle, knows that it will not be able to come out and play. It’s positively odd. That peculiar instinct is only ever happy and sated for about 20 minutes at a time, when contact has been made but the ‘kill’ not yet secured. It’s a kind of hormonal surge. Similar to the fight-or-flight adrenaline rush. Its sexual identity coursing through the body, highlighting all innate powers of communication towards sex, sex, sex.
Sometimes wonder if Josh is a rent boy. A nasty queen with bad breath whispered in my ear one night, ‘I think you should know the boy you’ve been, er, seeing is interested in, shall we say, the financial side of things . . .’
So perhaps when Josh dashes off in the mornings to retrieve his car that’s parked somewhere it shouldn’t be, he’s actually in a hurry to service some old trout.
I don’t know, but I want to. I think we must take into account that the informant was so unsavoury with a manic laugh and a ridiculous ponytail. Silver and greasy, it looked as if it could have your eye out when he swung his head around in Munchkin-like mirth. On my last night he sidled up to me again: ‘I hope you’ve enjoyed Perth and the, er, various pleasures we have to offer . . .’
After the holiday, the tour picked up again in Melbourne. Addison paid a visit. On New Year’s Eve we did two shows back to back at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. at the Universal, a sweat-box theatre. As I came off stage dripping with sweat he said, ‘You think it’s hot here, mate, you want to try it in there,’ heaving a thumb in the direction of the auditorium. ‘Well, where do you think I’ve just been?’ I snapped. This is a fairly typical exchange. That night at 3 Faces he started earholing me, talking conspiratorially and quickly about business and who’s who. The night’s phrase was ‘coming out the woodwork’. ‘I don’t trust that John Pindar. I don’t forget. Three times he turned us down for the Melbourne Festival and now you’re big news he’s coming out the woodwork.’ Or: ‘That Hocking and Wood – no sign of them last year, when you were at the Comedy Club. Now you’re making them lots of money they’re coming out the woodwork.’
I called Stephen. He was at home in Deptford having discharged himself from hospital. He sounded very ill. I asked him how he was. ‘I’m dying!’ he shrieked. ‘I’m a full-blown AIDS boy now. In my heart of hearts I think I’m dying. I’m sick of being ill.’
DON’T LET ANYONE ever tell you that fame comes overnight. There is a time when you buy into it. You see what lies on the horizon and you either go towards it or away from it. And once you decide to go towards it, it’s like a panther chasing a three-legged gazelle. Fame is in your sights and you have but to run. There it was, wafting before me like gladioli in the breeze. There was no excuse not to grasp hold.
For all its drawbacks I recommend fame if it comes your way. You get paid more, it’s a tonic for your self-esteem, people are nicer to you and it makes life more interesting. It helps if you have a particular talent of some description. I imagine if you are a Big Brother contestant people just want to thump you.
But you have to watch out once you are famous. Weirdoes, for example. A sewage worker from Yorkshire wrote to me for years. Curly, babyish writing in green ink, telling me how disgusting and perverted I was in descriptive, some would say arousing, prose. A disturbed teenager from Newcastle told me how fervently she wanted to cut off her breasts, this alarming information written on the reverse side of a Marks and Spencer’s ready-made meal cardboard cover. She completed the missive with a review of the said meal. ‘A little salty, but the creamy sauce was delicious.’
Which is not to say that all fans are such a worry. A dozen or so regulars started to appear at the stage door. When on tour I couldn’t help but notice that the same faces would wave me goodbye at the stage door in Sheffield, for example, and be there to greet me at the venue in Derby when I arrived to sound-check the next afternoon. Soon the front row was completely occupied by the same girls. They didn’t laugh when everyone else did as they had heard it all a dozen times before, but if I strayed, even momentarily, from the script, they all fell about.
They came with us on whole tours. First
there were ‘the Billericay girls’, Helen, Elaine and Sharon, teenagers from Essex who loved the camp, fancied Russell and were prepared to sleep in skips to catch a glimpse of us. Each night, if 2,000 people were transported to camp heaven, I was high and happy. But there were nights when the fragile bouquet of camp, improvised and musical nonsense received a more modest response. The faithful were there come what may. I always felt reassured when I saw them.
For a year or so I almost had pop star status. Girls screamed and grannies parodied desire. Women of a certain age altered their breathing when I hugged them. Mercifully this died down after a while. A more mature, less tactile collection of women now come to see me. Some have been around so long now I follow their lives with almost as much interest as they follow mine. But not quite.
10 January 1993. Melbourne
A review in the Sunday Age describes me as ‘fast as quicksilver’. Come again? Mind you, another review mentioned my ‘taut frame’, which, for someone obsessed with their midriff bulge and given to cheap champagne and brandy binges on alternate nights, was very pleasing. Hurrah for another theatrical illusion, say I.
Hector [a friend of mine] arrived yesterday and we met up at 3 Faces for a post-show rave. Well, too much to drink and a late-night visit to the Peel [a seedy pub], which was tragic. Made me think of going to dinner at his place once when Christopher was quite ill. He laughed all the way there because we were going to ‘Hector’s House’.
It was lovely to see a face from home. What’s more, he had a present for me of two Valium. So I breezed through the evening on one, took the other when I got home, and before you could say Rex Mossop, I was boohooing down the phone to a very sober Hans in Amsterdam.
‘I’m lonely, I miss you, our relationship can’t survive the separation’ was the general text and produced a number of ‘sweethearts’ from Hans and vague talk of coming out to see me. The state I was in rather concerned him I think, but he asked, ‘Have you taken a pill?’ and in that nursey-like way said the right things and told me to go to sleep. That’s the trouble with these nine-hour time differences. People aren’t on the same wavelength.
I had met Hans, a Dutch nurse, the previous summer while on a weekend break in Amsterdam. He was tall and lean with long Ali McGraw hair. ‘I am very beautiful,’ he informed me, ‘I get a lot of attention in the bars.’ In fact, I’d put him in the show, telling the punters nightly how his orgasms were the eighth wonder of the world. ‘We’re talking volume (Wellington boots) and we’re talking velocity. I’ve had to board up the windows.’
When I announced my extended trip away, I asked if he would come and visit me. ‘Twenty-four hours on a plane? Fuck off!’ he said with typical Dutch forthrightness. Now, following my distressed call, he managed to take some time off work and I arranged a ticket for him. Discussing the arduous flight a few days later I explained there was nothing much to do on a plane but eat and sleep. Hans said, ‘But I am sure that the food is much better in first class.’ Of course it is, but I’d booked him into economy. Next day I phoned my agent and arranged an upgrade.
Hans had no inkling of my infidelities. When our conversation moved on to Michael the backing singer’s shifty new beau, Hans said, ‘But you look at Australian men differently. You have me to compare them to. I put everyone in the shade.’ We both laughed but then he said, ‘No, but really, it is true,’ and we both laughed again. For different reasons.
31 January 1993. Melbourne
Hotel full of Sydney queens here for the Red Raw party tonight. They were out in force by the pool. One was heard to say to the other as they looked me over: ‘Nothing to write home about.’ ‘I thought I’d lost a contact lens,’ said the other.
Later I went for a drink with Mark Trevorrow, aka Bob Downe, and the others. Again I was perused by two clearly unimpressed queens. One leaned across to ask, ‘Are you enjoying the tour?’ I said I was, thank you. ‘You’re looking very tired . . .’ said the other. ‘That’s because I am tired,’ I explained. They retreated, po-faced, but not quite out of earshot. ‘Arrogant, isn’t he?’ said one. ‘Yes. And look at the ugly people he’s with!’
I turned to Mark. ‘I’m not arrogant, am I?’
Mark said, ‘No. And I’m not fucking ugly!’
Later still, just to round the evening off, a punter approached me and said, ‘Hi, Julian. That man over there says he’ll suck my friend off if I come and speak to you.’ God Bless Australia. We ended up in a club called ‘Hot Cock for Men’. Unfortunately there was only luke-warm cock left, but somehow we managed.
It was good to finally get to Sydney and check into my favourite hotel, the Sebel Townhouse. Hans arrived. I went, shaved, showered, waxed and tinted to meet him at the airport. He came to see the show on his first night but wasn’t overly impressed. ‘We had this sort of show 20 years ago in Holland,’ he said dismissively. He endeared himself to the rest of the company, though, who appreciated the fact that he was having none of my nonsense. ‘Shut up, arsehole!’ he said during a company visit to the Blue Mountains. ‘I’ve never heard anyone say that to sir before,’ said Philip, incredulous.
‘He doesn’t adore me the way Christopher did,’ I complained to Michael one night in the dressing room. But then I didn’t love him with such gusto either. In fact, love was hardly mentioned. It didn’t seem appropriate, somehow. Sex was of the grabbing, biting, scratching variety. One night we tried toe sucking and something different with a mouthful of Champagne. But there were too many rows, too much sulking.
14 February 1993. Sydney
Armistead Maupin is in town. Staying at the Sebel, in fact. Sent me a copy of Forever the Moon signed ‘Happy Valentine’s Day from a devoted fan’. That was a highlight.
‘We don’t seem to get on very well,’ I said to Hans as we made up after the umpteenth row. He disagreed. ‘I think we have a lot in common. We’re both very intelligent.’ And so modest, too, I could have added but plumped for: ‘Are you intelligent?’
‘Of course. Very,’ came the inevitable reply.
When Hans departed for Amsterdam, I felt a mixture of regret and relief. All was not well with our relationship but it would have to wait until I was back in the real world. For the last dates of the tour we transferred to the bigger, better State Theatre, and I wanted to enjoy the moment. Our first night there was a little fraught, however. Audio equipment was late arriving and the lighting truck suffered a puncture, so the sound check took place amid traumatised technicals shouting things like: ‘I need a barn door on number four NOW!’ as they climbed shirtless up ladders. And that was just the lesbians. After the show a herd of Sydney VIPs, including arts editors, reviewers and assorted gay glitterati, invaded our backstage area. I wore a forced smile and poured them cheap white wine. Once they left we discarded the cheap plonk and cracked open the Laurent Perrier.
15 February 1993
Scurrying through Kings Cross [in Sydney] after the gym wearing a hooded sweatshirt and dark glasses, I encountered Mr Jelly. He nearly strolled past me. ‘Didn’t recognise you!’ he laughed as we did the theatrical kissy-kissy business by the fountain. ‘Your disguise is marvellous,’ he said admiringly. ‘It was only the walk that gave you away.’ For the remainder of my journey back to the Sebel Hotel I study manly walks and attempt to alter my own accordingly. By the time I’m home I’m waddling like a horse-rider with piles. Oh, sod it, I think to myself, and mince in my usual fashion through the foyer.
Two days after the tour finished we were to begin filming for Brace Yourself Roger, and the Wonderdog troops were already gathering; producers and researchers were holed up in a suite at the Sebel, barking into walkie-talkies with that hard-faced television attitude, devoid of sincerity and only really concerned with their own status and prospects. It all felt vaguely like vultures circling, in that I wasn’t ‘theirs’ until the tour had finished and filming began. Then they would swoop.
More upsettingly, Grazio had a terrible accident. He was in hospital with horrific burns to
his face, hands and legs after a box of pyros exploded as he was setting up for the show. He was unrecognisable when I went to visit him in hospital, hands encased in plastic bags full of soggy cream, his face swollen like a football and eyes peering at me from puffy balls the size of oranges. What price camp comedy, I thought? He suffered, and suffers still, so that I may feel the meaningless pleasure of glitter falling gently on my head at the end of my second act.
16 February 1993
Grazio seems a lot better. His face is still bandaged, lips are blistered and fingers are black and brittle but you can see his eyes, familiar and reassuring. He’s fighting jolly hard, but you can see that the realisation of what has happened to him and the constant pain are beginning to get him down. Skin grafts seem to be in order.