Anti-Gay Paris
Pompiers, sex clubs & "the jism prison"
To ‘celebrate’ Pride Weekend - and just over a quarter of a century since Anti-Gay was published - I’m posting three essays about my 1998 trip to Paris, which originally appeared in Attitude, downloadable as a single PDF (c. 3800 words). This was back when I was young enough to still want love to save me from sex. Before I matured into my middle-aged, dirty old man phase of wanting sex to save me from love. A much more successful strategy in an age of 'dating apps'.
Excerpt:
“Why are the firemen in Paris so popular?” I ask my host as he speeds me from La Gare Du Nord down Blvd de Magenta in that hair-raising nonchalant Parisian way which conclusively does away with Princess Di conspiracy theories.
He shrugs, taking both hands off the wheel as we approach a hairpin corner at high speed. “Beecause they all look like porn stars. They are all veery feet, young, clean-cut and with short ‘air.” (Even in France, ‘porn’ is defined by Matt Sterling rather than Pierre Cadinot).
“In Britain they are usually fat and forty,” I whine. “Except for the twelve that like to pose for calendars.”
“Eef you go out of Parees eet ees the same,” he says, screeching to a halt at a red light. “But ‘ere the firemen are run as a branch of the meeleetaree. They are ‘and-peeked from the other serveeces, and ‘ooever does the ‘and-peeking ‘as great taste!”
At that precise moment, a big, shiny fire-engine drew up next to us at the lights, throbbing seductively. A smooth, meaty forearm rested on the top of the red cabin door. Behind that, an anonymous square jaw and chin jutted out beneath a fetching blue cap, brim pulled rakishly over the nose. Suddenly I understood why my host drove so recklessly. And why Princess Di’s ugly death was not without some redeeming beauty. After all, her horribly battered body would have been lifted out of the twisted wreckage of that Mercedes by pompier forearms guided by a pompier chin.