atlas shrugged

Against my better judgement and because I was at a loose end I went last night to 'XXL', a large gay club near London bridge: as I headed there on my bike down the medieval street plan of The City of London I began to wonder what I was doing. My need or desire to go to a club has long since evaporated, since around year 2000 all gay clubs seemd overnight to uniformly cease to play decent music of any kind. But I still get the occasional twinge of curiosity. I think its a hangover from my youth.

I tried hard to dispel this unease from my mind.
I cant say I was horrified by the club, because I knew partially what to expect, but as i wondered around, I felt incrementally dehumanised by it.

Everything now about gay clubs seems designed to maximise a feeling of alienation. The music was so generic I couldnt even define what it was, so totally neutered was it, so utterly diluted and devoid of any kind of originality or imagination. Music by numbers. I smiled, poe-like in the House of Usher, at the sight of so many bare (bear?) chested men strivng hard to project an image of impervious masculiniity, whilst at the same time dancing unthinkingly to music a 12 year old girl would probably be listening to.

I thought back 15 years to clubs like SHOOM and the FF. wild places for sure, with their own brand of decadence and dysfunction. No doubt. But despite that shadow, you were always guaranteed great music..wild sexy tribal beats, heavy bass laden rhythmns that you could not fight..that held you in a psychdelic state all night long. The music had balls. it was potent. you could go there and lose yourself in music that at least tried to elevate you form the mundane, and into a 'very fine state of mind'. Sure drugs were a part of that world, but it was essentially the music that created the high. One would not have worked wihtout the other.

This kind of music has disappeared form gay clubs now. Great music is the lifeblood of any nightlcub. Drain away that life blood and you ve got a cadaver. And as I dont do drugs anymore, Im slightly oiled with alcohol, but on enetering i realise that I will potentially need a lot more to endure this experience. Either that or leave very early.

Everywhere I noticed men were just milling around, almost aimlessly, incessantly moving ,as if they needed to be constantly soemehere else. I stood outside of all this watching and mentally making notes.

The truth as I see it is that the mainstream gay scene now, has reached a total nadir.

Where once (70's 80's 90's) it was exciting and dangerous and musically adventurous, even cutting edge, the mainstream gay scene is now, at least here in London in a stagnant dysfunctional limbo, preserved in self regarding aspic; you could begin to see this world as a meth-haze hall of mirrors where the neuroses of individual gay men gets reflected back at them a hundred fold in the frightened eyes of every other male around them.There is scant community, and little comraderie. But there is something else alive and well. Competition.

This manifests as the body display. The male body must be on display in a gay club. To hell with dignity and mystique. the goods must be on show at all times. If you want to score and you are clothed.. forget it. This is the competition and you must enter. To stand outside it is to risk oblivion. But to enter the contest also risks rejection. Mosy gay men take the risk, anyhting is better than oblviion isnt it? and its just so much easier to follow what everyone else does isnt it?

The gay scene has been boiled down, stripped of all its finery, reduced to its whitened bones.Theatricality, camp, colour, exoticism are all rejected. Beefed up masculinity is parading around convincingly enough, but look closer: for the most part it seems to be an exagerrated and insecure parody of masculinity.

Im not being homophobic. I dont mean that you cant be gay and be real man. far from it.

Its just that I dont think a real man ( ie: one who is really intelligent and sorted and stable) would be in a place like this. He would see the hollowness of it and walk away, realising that these places offer nothing of value to anyone. Because at heart they are nihilistic.

The dark unsayable truth is that the gay scene which has always had a nihilistic element, peering from under the bright mask of heddonsim, now seems far more dysfunctional than in previous decades, which given the greater freedoms we have, seems strangely ironic. The club reminded me of a factory full of machine men, in different stages of assembly, and disrepair.

A factory devoid of fun, devoid of laughter, devoid of love and welcome. Devoid of a soul.

This has got nothing to do with nostalgia for a better time. Im trying to be as unsentimental as I can. Having said that I do feel a keen sense of loss. The loss of a sense of identity and community, a loss of political and social consiousness, so prevalent it seems, in the sixties and seventies and even early 80s seems at elast standing there in that club, to have vanished entirely...It seemed back then, the gay world could really grow into something great and even possibly revolutionary.

But that promise has not been realised. Blind materialism has infected every part of the gay world, as it has the rest of society. We are a society in crisis, economically and financially and gay clubs are an interesting sociological microcosm of that shift. perhaps its the global recession. A brutalism that reduces and curtails individuals and their communication seems to prevail. poeple treat themsleves and others like machines, as there appears to be no time or purpose for extraneous activities, such as stopping to think, or to meditate or to dream. These are unproductive pastimes and as such, essentially subversive.

I feel and observe a huge sense of conformity to venal attitudes and simplistic ideas, not just in the gay world but generally; As the world becomes more uncertain and volatile, so people seem to cling ever tighter to a world bulit on material values, frightened by anything that questions or undermines their belief in this way of life.

If i could I would dismantle every gay club in London. I would say 'Lets start again' lets start over entirely, a new way of relating. lets be men and stop being boys. Lets grow up and out of this pernicous arrested development that I see everywhere in the gay world. Boys with mens bodies, desperately looking for affirmation, for approval, for acceptance. Looking everywhere except inside themselves, into the eye of all that pain and shame, and not realising that they can get past all that damage. But that they have to do the work; self examination, therapy, meditiation: and perhaps it just easier to project it outwards rather than to do that painful work.

lets stop perpeptuating all that damage and venting it on each other. is that ever going to be possible?

I hope I am not being idealistic when I say that I feel sure there are many gay men out there living amazing stmulating lives of integrity and dignity and intellect and that these places do not feature in their lives at all . Perhaps we should band together and burn them down. Thyve outlived their use. They are not fun anymore. Not if you are a thinking sentient being anyway. They promote nothing and stand for nothing, Gay clubs like XXL have become vacuums.

But the irony is these are the venues that attract the biggest gay crowds. Hundreds, possibly thousands of gay men attend these clubs every week. Think what could be done with that much input in terms of social change or political lobbying or spritual development?

However perhaps I am in the minority here. perhaps most do not see these clubs this way at all, but merely as places to hook up and chat and dance, and of course take drugs.. but I would challenge them. I would say "Do you really believe these are places that promote community and comraderie or even fun?"

I studied semiotics and I think it is dangerous not to read the signs that are all around us, to not look at our own lives as an anthropologist would and to draw conclsuions from that data.

Are gay clubs merely places of fun and freedom of expression? or are thay dangerous and nihilistic places where boundaris are lost and a void of community or mutual respect and love , creates a blank space filled only with intoxication, with a contest of bodies and faces, a shallow world that perpeptuates lonliness and need, but does nothing to help.
I cant apologise for the downbeat tone of this piece. Its just my truth and how I see it. Im hoping that in time things will change and that not only the gay 'world' but society as a whole slows its seemingly inexorable trajectory into a base and unthinking complacency and rank materialism.