Just came from the launch of Katherine Zappone and Ann Louise Gilligan’s book Our Lives Out Loud in Dublin. Edna O’Brien gave a lovely speech, her first book launch, she said.

I’ve read the book, and loved it. My full review will appear in Thursday’s Hot Press, and on this blog in a few weeks’ time.

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It’s massive self-delusion, of course, escapism at its most banal; but there are worse ways to escape. Far worse. But it’s still pap; the word comes from the mixture of flour and water that poverty-stricken mothers used to make up for their starving infants; looking like the real thing, but completely useless for nutrition. Maybe if I pour enough of it down my throat I’ll eventually gag and start screaming for the real stuff, the real food of life. Lord, let me switch off the remote. But not yet.

I have seen enough gritty American crime drama to give me a thorough grounding in forensics. I know exactly how to leave a clean crime scene behind me, in the wake of whatever nefarious atrocity I choose to commit. No flies on me. Only on the corpse. I’m certain, now, I could pass a lie detector test, and am sure I could resist the devious methods that clever cops use to get a perp to confess. I know all about psychological profiling and could easily frame someone else for my crimes, if I had the whim. I can predict whodunnit within the first five minutes of each show. It’s all in the casting.

On the medical front, I’ve watched enough hospital dramas to know how to diagnose all sorts of ailments, know when to call for an MRI or CT scan, when and how to intubate, and am a dab hand at knowing when to call the time of death. It’s always when the doctors start sweating. An armchair God, I can recognize which character is a goner, before they even know it. Again, casting is the clue; but in medical dramas, it’s who is playing the relative/partner/parent that matters. Whoever gives good grief.

I don’t buy into the bourgeois notion that we are civilized, as a species; perhaps I’ve been listening to too many stories in the day job, of how badly people treat each other. It’s a jungle out there, I tell you. Give me unexpurgated base behaviour on television, when people are in extremis, battling away for something that matters, fictional or real, and it relaxes me. I’m odd, I know. But, I’m not alone.

But, rest assured, I still have standards. I’ve avoided the TV equivalent of crystal meth: resisted the entire series of Big Brother this year, as have many people I know; hopefully that brand of sadistic TV has had its day, subjecting talentless exhibitionists to the torture of months of boredom. TV presenting is a skill, I grudgingly concede, but  there has got to be a less mind-numbing way of auditioning for the next generation of airhead presenters than 13 weeks of trial by tedium. I will probably tune in for the final week, just to see what character type has floated to the top of the Big Brother Bog this year. Clues. Looking for clues.

My fix of choice, however, my TV smack: fashion. I’ve been compulsively watching reruns of competitions such as Project Runway, Next Top Model and Make Me a Supermodel. What’s weird is that I’ve not been a fashion queen before - prior to this summer of goggle-box gluttony I paid no notice whatsoever to women’s frocks or even pretended to understand labels or seasons or what style is in or not. When a friend of mine lamented that she hadn’t a clue what to wear for a date, I told her that’s when a “gay best friend” would be useful, if she knew of any. I could do with one of those, myself.

But, I’m getting into it now. There is something magical when a model gives good face in a photo, or struts her stuff down a catwalk; something mesmeric, archetypal. Why some beautiful women are photogenic, and others are not, remains a mystery. Those who succeed are instinctive artists, masters of a curious alchemy, producing breathtaking results. Ever since I got hooked, I’ve been noticing women far more; the line of a jaw, the smile in an eye, the set of a shoulder. This is not the same as eroticism; because the multi-billion dollar fashion industry, and modelling itself at its highest level, is all about women performing and posing for other women, judging each other, competing with each other, seeking praise from each other. It is women who define and refine beauty.

At the opposite end of the gender spectrum, about as far as you can go, the Olympics has me watching our lads try to knock the lights out of as many men as possible, in the “noble art” of boxing. And, getting medals for it; more than the USA has managed. A boxer is his body; there is no concern about one’s image, action is all. The clowning, genial, unassuming, warm blast of masculine energy that is Kenny Egan, when he won his place in the boxing finals, caught my attention, arrested me. The ultimate in unreconstructed retrosexual maleness, when he found himself surrounded by cameras, he minced around like a model in the ring, play-acting, pretending to revel in the adulation. But the boxing world is one of the last bastions of a type of masculinity that, in Ireland at least, is blissfully un-self-conscious and dignified. Watching the RTÉ panellists discussing the matches afterwards was a joy. The former boxers discussing the “sweet science” were the epitome of proud, passionate, eloquent working class Irish men. I’m in love, again.

TV. All human life is there. If you watch it long enough.

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A lively evening of debate on gay marriage this evening. Lovely to catch up with the good folk of MarriagEquality and LGBT Noise. But Katherine Zappone and Ann Louise Gilligan stole the show. As they should.

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Given that, the programme was a decent presentation of the latest research, and the subject himself was as genial and anodyne as one might expect from his teatime TV persona, complete with his equally dashing long-term partner Scott.

He checks himself in to a Chicago research establishment, where he undergoes a test while viewing all sorts of erotica, a sort of lie detector. A natty little piece of equipment is tethered to Barrowman’s own equipment, a plethysmograph. The penis doesn’t lie, apparently: it twitches. Then he underwent a 90 minute MRI scan, studying blood flow in the brain, again while viewing various pornographic images. The slightest arousal could be seen, in real-time, his brain flashing red when he’s turned on.

Afterwards, the researcher gives him the results, but teases Barrowman first by informing him  deadpan that the results prove he’s straight - and he fell for it, in great confusion, the big girl’s blouse. But, whew, to much relief, the tests “prove” what Barrowman always knew.

Tests only prove what they set out to prove: in this case, that a man who says that he finds men attractive is telling the truth. However, the converse is not proven - a man whose brain and dick registers arousal on viewing male images may not identify as gay, or even bisexual. And, a man who, for example, likes getting blowjobs (and it’s top of the list of favourite sexual practices among men) may not need to open his eyes to enjoy the experience. Sex is not only about visual stimulation; sexual expression is not the same as conscious orientation, nor gay identity.

The next question is when did his homosexuality start - what “caused” his feelings to be this way.  We’re on rockier ground here - because of course human consciousness is not merely causal, it’s fluid, elastic, responsive. He explores the hoary old chestnut that gay men are the “result” of overbearing mothers and absent fathers. He goes to see his Scottish parents, who now live in the American midwest, and asks them what they think about that theory - but of course they deny it. It’s an impossible one to prove or disprove in a TV programme, because its origin is psychoanalytic, and therefore a matter of Barrowman’s subjective experience, not whether or not his mother is a harridan or his father is a shrinking violet. Neither of course was evident, they both seemed pleasant, ordinary people.

Barrowman’s boyhood room was revealed to be still preserved neatly, in a slightly disturbing way - his entire Barbie collection was still in storage, in his closet. In its original, immaculate packaging. Oh dear. The shrink in me suddenly became extremely interested in his mother; but, alas, it was not that kind of programme.

The research switches to “gender non-conforming children”. There’s a study now under way which is examining old home movies of children. In one, a little girl plays with a truck and gleefully breaks things. Then, we see the woman as she is today - a cross-legged dyke with a boyish haircut and glasses. In another, a teenage boy dances camply to New Romantic music, a queen in the making. Of the boys in home movies who were judged to be extremely “feminine”, 75% of them grew up to be gay, and even then that figure, we hear, is viewed as conservative. However, the corollary is not explored: what proportion of gay people exhibited “gender non-conforming” behaviour when they were children? And is identifying as gay the same thing as having sex with members of the same sex?

We are introduced to two 12-year old brothers, twins.  In Jared’s room, there are cars, planes, footballs, typical boys’ stuff. In Adam’s room, far pinker, he happily shows off his My Little Pony, cuddly bears, Barbies, and unicorns. Their mother Danielle comments on the two boys - Adam was always into the pink pyjamas, the “feminine” stuff. She insists he was born this way, and said that she was never a girly woman herself in any case. Happily, the two brothers are content in their differences and in their family.

As for the theory, espoused by the likes of Iris Robinson et al in our very own Bible Belt in Northern Ireland, is being gay is a choice? Barrowman found it hard to get any ex-gay to talk on camera - thirty turned him down. But one man came forward. Ron Wolseley was once a gym-bunny gay, with sultry pics of his semi-naked body to prove it. He is now a frumpy married man with 2 kids. What was the turning point? “My life was hurting people, my parents were weeping. If I wanted to be Christian, I could set that part of me aside. It was a matter of retraining my mind.” He equates it with liking cigarettes and chocolate - he still desires them but doesn’t consume them. I don’t doubt him. People can do all sorts of impossible things.

“Gay” and “straight” brains seem to be different, we hear. Barrowman’s spacial abilities are tested - and a test to see how good he is with words. According to this research, there are recognisably “gay” brains - gay men perform in these tests like heterosexual women. Barrowman snorts - he doesn’t want to be like a “big woman”. (There’s an element of misogyny in so many gay men; I often wonder why). The tests show that gay men are more verbose and expressive, and perform in a “female-typical” way. Barrowman’s own results were so “female” they were off the scale.

When do these brain differences arise? Symmetry in the brain is organized in the middle of pregnancy. It is hard-wired before birth, Barrowman is told, and he greets the news with emotion: relief. He sees it as confounding the idea that it’s a choice that we behave this way.

What about why there’s a difference? He searches for a DNA marker, to see if there’s a “gay gene”. In his own family, the test is inconclusive. There is another theory: that low levels of testosterone in the womb create “female-typical” brains, which then would make them more attracted to males. (That’s such a heterosexual way of looking at sexuality - will science ever rid itself of its bias?) Another marker for intrauterine testosterone deficiency is the shape of our hands. A ring finger that is longer than the index finger indicates that one may have been exposed to higher levels of testosterone in the womb. Gay men tend to have shorter ring fingers, more like a woman. Barrowman trolls around a Gay Pride festival in Long Beach to take handprints - and 60% of those men’s hands had “feminized” fingers.

Another theory: if one has older brothers, a man is more likely to be gay. If one has 4 older brothers, the likelihood is a whopping 71% that one will be gay. The theory is immunological: it’s as if her body mounts an immune response to heterosexual male infants.

Barrowman searches with enthusiasm for scientific validation - he wants a “ticket” for being gay.  But as history has shown, if there’s a ticket for being gay, then there are dark forces in the world that would dearly love to punch it. It’s not too far-fetched to imagine, given the extent to which fundamentalist religion is taking hold in the world, that at some stage in the future a woman might choose, for example, to inject herself with testosterone if she is pregnant with a male infant, to ensure he turns out a “real” man.

I don’t have older brothers. My ring finger is long and butch. I sincerely doubt that I ever lacked testosterone, at any stage of my life. I’m a slob. I don’t chat for ages on the phone with friends. I’m good at DIY, outdoorsy stuff such as camping, and fixing things. Despite those characteristics, instinctively, I feel that I was born gay, and indeed that in some ways I have a “female-typical” brain. My aversion to sports when I was growing up, my playing with dolls as a boy, my sense of the dramatic, my interest in the emotional, the relational. I’d never describe myself as “straight-acting” - but as an actor I could play straight, and there are a hell of a lot of gay men out there who are actors, putting a lot of energy into the performance of playing “real” men. But, it’s not only gay men who do that. And there are also a hell of a lot of men out there having sex with each other who aren’t “gay”. As Mark Simpson writes, there is one obvious flaw in “the popular, consoling and time-honoured view of gay men as women’s souls trapped in men’s bodies”: why do so many of us have emotion-free sex with each other, the antithesis of “female-typical” behaviour?

The questions that scientists are asking now are more interesting than they used to be, less damaging, but the results simply throw up more questions. I would imagine, however, that  researching the “causes” of heterosexuality would be equally as fascinating. But I can’t help wondering if that would be less easy to find funding.

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DC and Marvel superheroes and supervillains face extinction. The Anarchic Invincibility Deficiency Syndrome unmasks masked idols and Supermen fade to grey. When the world falls darker than Joker’s soul, something sharper than Wolverine’s claws will save us. Heroic Couplets, comic book duality and a touch of La Ronde from award-winning writer Neil Watkins.

This blurb is deliberately, perversely deceptive. There are no superheroes here, Batman is nowhere to be seen. However, at one stage, at the edge of my seat, mouth open, I was thinking of writing my first one-line rave review on this blog: “Go see this fucking show”. But then, I thought, “don’t get high on this intoxicating atmosphere, wait until I connect, I’m moved, until I get the story, until it all makes some sort of meaningful sense”.

It didn’t. Like an exciting trick from Gaydar, it seemed, in the poppers-rushed moment, to be an important and intense experience; but, the morning after, the room smelling of stale socks, head throbbing, tongue like sandpaper, I am wondering what on Earth possessed me.

It is still, however, required viewing for anyone interested in modern queer Irish sensibility - for playwright Neil Watkins turns out to be the man behind the drag act called Heidi Konnt, who apparently won Alternative Miss Ireland in 2005, the year before I returned to Ireland. It’s edgy, sexual, and perverse enough to set up nervous laughter in some segments of the audience, (no doubt those expecting men in Superman costumes doing something silly). Part burlesque, part Cabaret, part Hedwig, it’s morbid and desolate and disconsolate and seductive, and yet somehow strangely insubstantial for all that. Curiouser and curiouser.

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Love 2.0

The first, Two Houses by Belinda McKeon, unusually, and fascinatingly, is a two-hander between a 30-year-old brother, Eamon (Brendan McCormack) rolling in from the pub late at night, and his 16-year-old sister (Jenn Murray) having internet chats on Bebo, and it is at once a glimpse of a teenage girl’s awakening to the realities of life as it is an American Beauty-like exposition of a man’s folly.

The second piece, Investment Potential by Philip McMahon, gripped me. It wasn’t so much in the story, which was deftly and intriguingly told, but in the character of Anne, played with depth by Kathy Kiera Clarke. Sometimes good writing is not just about telling a story, it’s about breathing life into a fascinating original character. She is sunk in a depression that is all too real; a deadness inside, a stultifying anhedonia, a heart that needs healing; and yet she purrs with a deadpan humour. Three scenes, told in a disjointed chronology, map out her romantic relationship with bookstore manager Brendan (McCormack again, winningly versatile). There’s more to Anne’s story than this play can tell, and I’d love to see it.

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When Mozart was 12 he wrote an operetta called  Bastien & Bastienne. Opera Theatre Company offered a free performance as part of the Fringe Festival in the shadow of St Patrick’s Cathedral, and despite the rain and a dodgy radio mike, an enjoyable time was had by all.

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Dubliner Raja Nundlall is one of those special teachers who make their enthusiasm and passion for their subject infectious, apparently effortlessly. Self-deprecating and yet knowledgeable, he made it fun, and shared his love of film, his creativity, and his practical nous with us. Happily non-academic, he’s the sort of teacher who is worth their weight in gold, because at the end I felt I got what I came for - and more. It all seemed do-able in the end. Luckily, there were only four of us in the group this time around, which meant we each had a camera to play with and in our last project, a little video, we each had a go at everything.

It was my first time in Filmbase, and as an introduction to the organization it could not have been better. Obviously, there’s something really vigorous and healthy about the place. I’ll be back.

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A wonderful evening at Crawdaddy the other night - the delightful Jay Brannan came to town. Support came from the endearingly shy and promising Adam Matthews, and, the opposite of shy, fresh from thisispopbaby at Electric Picnic, Justin Bond. It was a Shortbus reunion. I have to say Bond is definitely an acquired taste - the first time I saw him in London a few years ago, in Kiki and Herb, I was disturbed, but not in a good way; I felt alienated. Now, having seen him twice in three days, with the marvellous Our Lady J on keyboards, I found myself stirred and moved by, among other tracks, “Tomorrow is the 22nd Century”, in ways I didn’t expect, like being caught by the throat. Powerful stuff.

It was an emotional night for Brannan, coming to Ireland for the first time, with a name like that. He’s doing this, his first big tour, on a shoestring, taking buses from the airport, refusing to take taxis and walking everywhere; staying in hotels in Rathmines, for godsake. He is even saying he’s going back to his day job when the tour is over. Surely not.

He is just as he appears on YouTube - but perhaps even lovelier in the flesh. And he is very funny. He announced that he was about to do something horrible, and he did: he opened his set cheekily with “Molly Malone”. Despite some sniggering in the back, he did manage to pull it off, which says a lot about his charisma. Although he’s knowing, and most definitely working it, he is earnest and charming. He was touched that the crowd were singing along to his songs, “Soda Shop” and “I Want To Be A Housewife” in particular. And anyone who can sing a song about giving head gets my vote. He won us all over completely, and it was by no means a gay-only audience. It’s been a while since I heard a crowd as warm and generous to a performer. Perhaps that is what a room full of people falling in love is like.

Update: YouTube of the night:

And Cybernoelie took some nice vids too on YouTube.

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