David Hockney: The War Against The Curtain Sniffers

Nice buns.

He waves his cigarette at me. “Do you smoke?” he asks, as if challenging me to a duel. I find myself apologising for having stopped, and he looks at me with a disappointment bordering on contempt – though he seems slightly pacified when I ask for a whisky.

“Bohemia was against the suburbs, and now the suburbs have taken over,” he says. “I mean, the anti-smoking thing is all anti-bohemia. Bohemia is gone now. When people say, well wasn’t it amazing saying you were gay in 1960, I point out, well, I lived in bohemia, and bohemia is a tolerant place. You can’t have a smoke-free bohemia. You can’t have a drug-free bohemia. You can’t have a drink-free bohemia. Now they’re all worried about their fucking curtains, sniffing curtains for tobacco and stuff like that.”

Does he think gay life has become more conservative in recent years? “Yes. I suppose it’s that they want to be ordinary – they want to fit in. Well, I didn’t care about that. I didn’t care about fitting in. Everywhere is so conservative.”

Would he have ever wanted to marry a man? “No, no, no,” he says with utter distaste. Would he have wanted children? “No,” he says, with equal conviction...

Great words from a great profile of the great man by Simon Hattenstone in The Guardian.

The young David knew two things from an early age: that he wanted to be an artist and that he liked boys...

If you ask me, gay life hasn't become significantly more conservative, despite the best efforts of so much of the gay media to get gay men to conform to a hetero norm; work, consume, marry, breed, get rich, get off Grindr, stop taking drugs blah blah blah...

PS Though some gaybores clearly don't need to have this thrust upon them, see these Pink News reader comments. Maybe they was born that way?

Update: I'm delighted that David Hockney thinks gay men have become boring - Artist David Hockney says today's gay men have become boring and just want to fit in. There's no bigger sign that they are winning the battle for equality, says Cristo Foufas. Telegraph online. FFS.

Walt Whitman: Us Boys Together Clinging

We two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going—North and South excursions making,
Power enjoying—elbows stretching—fingers clutching,
Arm’d and fearless—eating, drinking, sleeping, loving,	5
No law less than ourselves owning—sailing, soldiering, thieving, threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming—air breathing, water drinking, on the turf or the sea-beach dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness chasing,
Fulfilling our foray.