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They're sort of like sort of satanic Vienna boys choir boys. I suppose in a way, they're sort of, um the uniform is stereotypically attractive. It's white, which is suggests something sort of pure, which they certainly aren't. Hopefully, in fact, I can recall. And, um, someone who I, um who how do I do? I have to use polite words. Well, someone whose cherry eye popped, [00:00:30] um, at request decades ago who wore, um, sailor pans for the occasion, which I thought was sweet. There's this whole big fantasy area around two in a hammock. Captains and cabin boys, Um, guys dressed up as what they used to call mollies, I think in the 18th century, um, which [00:01:00] is like one of those sort of a retroactive paint by numbers thing. You know, um, we'd like it to have been this way. Now we don't know Jack shit about what went on in sailing vessels up until the middle of the 19th century. We know all about what goes on there. Now, um, there's an assumption that put small boys or young men into environment with [00:01:30] with older, more brutalised guys. And B Will bonk a, um in a commonplace basis is based on a very 20th century view of how human beings operate. That is to say that human beings are substantively Amoral without values and will do whatever the plumbing tells them to do on the day. It's a very 20th century way of looking at things, [00:02:00] Um, and I'm not convinced that the reality lived up to the fantasy in any way. I mean, quite aside from the fact that go and see Amistad and tell me that you want to have an affair with a sailor, find out about life on one of the ships that Columbus took across the North Atlantic or Or or Vasco de Gama took around the south of the American, Um, is and and it's a horrifying, [00:02:30] unpleasant, revolting lifestyle. Um, you've got scurvy. You've got all this crap going on. It's not. It's neither my idea of an environment for a romantic trust or for a particularly satisfying sexual encounter of any kind. But maybe I'm a little strange. Yeah, uh, I I don't think fact should ever get in the way of good fantasy. And, uh, it's like cowboys. Now there. There are cowboys. Uh, but they're probably far, [00:03:00] far more important to the world as fantasy figures than they've ever been. And as workers when I was in Amsterdam, um, I went to, um, some sailor old sailor bars from 1700 something in, um, I straight off Times Square, where I was staying in there was, like, erotic and like like a sexual museum and erotic museum. Because you opened the door to all of the bars on the same street and then inside the door, [00:03:30] there was a red curtain to keep the draught out because it was cold. And then there was just a bar, a wooden curved bar and a bare wooden floor. And they're all exactly the same. And it was sexy because it would have been like that all that time ago, and it would have been filled with sailors. And that was nice. And I gave you a little sort of because it was like it was real, and it was still being used for the same purpose. It was still sexual. Um, it was amusing. And if you understand the idea of erotic amusement, it was entertaining. It was titillating. [00:04:00] So I mean, that history is still evident um, it's got a nice, hungry, sort of woolfish tone. Um, and you could smell it in the wood. You know, it was like a nice, um, I probably had sort of layers of historic seamen. So, um, you know, I felt at home. It was nice. Very little has been written about, uh, the cabin boy in nonfiction. Although he's a stock figure of, uh, an [00:04:30] enormous amount of, uh, light fiction. There does seem to have been, um, some basis in history for the, um the image that's grown out of both the cabin boy and perhaps more importantly, the stewards. Now, the stewards and the New Zealand Merchant Marine were often, um, stereotyped as being gay. And there seems to have been quite a bit of reality to that much in the same way that there's, um I think a popular conception about cabin [00:05:00] crew with modern aircraft. Certainly the cabin boy would have been one of the most attractive and young people aboard the ship he would have been attending. Um, a number of people and there would have been, I imagine, um, an element of the father. So there would be quite a quite a um, almost Greek relationship. One of the appeals for the [00:05:30] gay audience in the Sailor icon is that sailors, historically and probably back to the year dot have had this interesting sexual status where they're like guys in prison or particularly in, so far as all these guys crammed into these physically enclosed spaces. Um, the entire world turns [00:06:00] a blind eye if you like. And that's a naval thing, isn't it? That's Lord Nelson to, um, to the homosexuality that goes on on the ships. It's assumed to happen, whether it does or it doesn't. The assumption is that if you've got all these guys thrown onto these into these little tin boxes floating around in the oceans, that they're all going to be boing each other frantically. And I think that assumption is spread throughout the whole of society in a sort of silent way, whether it's true [00:06:30] or not. Um, one of the funny things that gay men have to put up with is that an awful lot of their learning about the world comes through sideways channels like pornography or advertising things where and and as a consequence, quite a distorted worldview can occur. I think um, we pick up things that we don't that aren't necessarily [00:07:00] there or that aren't necessarily true. Every time you see a photographic image of hoo photographic image of sailor or sailors, um, it reinforces a subtle message that this goes on in this environment, and I'm not sure that it does. There's a wonderful German film which is around called, um, by Wolfgang Peterson called The Boat or Das Boot, which has, um a whole lot of men are confined [00:07:30] to a submarine for weeks on end. I mean, what could be six here? They're confined in a small space. Um, they're isolated from women when they're at sea. Um, their clothes are designed to emphasise their advantages, So they're obviously an object of, um of last. [00:08:00] This was one of the few securely male communities where you could, uh, spend most of your time surrounded by males being in a domestic situation with them. So even if there wasn't always overt sexual, uh, relations between two men, there were some people who certainly enjoyed being around men at sea in confined conditions, and even when they came ashore, they were usually at [00:08:30] waterside bars or they were working amongst dock workers. It was a very male and not entirely detached community, but one where you could certainly be out of the mainstream. The whole idea of the camaraderie and the sexual tension is is amusing. You know, um, it suggests sort of something dirty and rough rather than sort of white sheets, which I find attractive. One of the attractions of the sailor, Certainly prior to gay law reform as an idea was that [00:09:00] I guess put on the blunter terms. If you bumped into one in the pub and you wanted to pick him up, at least he'd understand what you were talking about, Which wouldn't necessarily be true. Um, of a member of the clergy or the army or the medical profession. Doesn't really think about it, really, does it? Um, yeah. So, So so a. A certain degree of communication might be possible, and and the other [00:09:30] thing is, OK, so what this means is that guys in prison and sailors were amongst the two unofficially legally sanctioned locations for homosexuality to take place between certain types of men. There's an understanding that you don't have to go, and you don't have to ask them out on a date. You don't have to have dinner. You can just do it. And I think men understand that with each other more than men [00:10:00] and women might. And that's probably because of the socialisation, rather than it being a natural thing in men and women. Maybe it is the same with some men and women, But, I mean, I know that most men understand if you give them a certain look and they return that certain look, there will be some action in about 40 seconds. So, um, that's always been there. And sailors are the most likely. You know. They're the most likely to respond appropriately. No mucking her in. I like it. I don't think it's nice. I mean it. [00:10:30] It it's contrary to respectable, which is always an advantage when it comes to sex. I mean, formal, civilised sex is is sounds like a church service. To me, the sort of the the idea of sort of like sort of up against the ball stuff is sort of like sailors, as like um, you know, spontaneous sort of raw. And, um, people love it. I mean, that's why we have six on site venues that simulate beats. We have that simulate [00:11:00] darkness that simulate roughness. Um, some people like being pushed up against walls. Some people like pushing people over against war. Remember? Like doing both sailors? Um, were probably also the same as the dock workers. I mean, there was a around our waterfronts, a very large and now almost completely vanished male [00:11:30] physical environment. I mean, there were huge numbers of people on the on the waterfront. There were seven or 8000 wharf alone 20 years ago in New Zealand and several 1000 sailors. Then you had the harbour board employees again, all entirely masculine and many of those people doing physical labour. And you've had lots of young men semi na in the summer days. And yes, people would stroll down there, they would look, um, they would probably buy them beers in places like Chicks Hotel and Port Chalmers. [00:12:00] In the fifties, the beat there were about I think there were 14 parts to the beat between the wharf and Courtney Place, and certainly the people who were the sailors from ships would have known about the the beats on the wharf, which were there until the eighties. Um they were closed. Um, so there was a circuit going around the whole way around, um, from down by where [00:12:30] the railway station is around the place where the Taj Mahal is. That used to be a public toilet back around to the wharf. And and that was a a circuit that people did. Um, only 24 hours. Um, and I know from recollections of older men that the police used to go around it regularly, and then someone on a bike would go and tell people that they were doing it. And they those guys would all go to the one the police had just been to. So the police would go around the whole foot and there'd be nobody there, and they'll be all following [00:13:00] them around the the circuit. Um, also, during World War two, men from the of the same age would take men, um, at Mount Victoria to, um for walks on a summer evening. Um and also I heard I don't know if it's true that they wore bow ties with a red and green light in them so that the if they were busy, the the green light would be red light would be on if they were available. The green light would be on. But that sounds extreme, but why not? So, um, you know, I mean, sailors [00:13:30] always have a friend, and they get things for nothing. You know, people buy them drinks, people feed them, they have sex with them. I mean, all you have to do is put the uniform on, you're in. So it's sort of like, you know, an international passport. The pleasure. Maybe the sailor is sort of like the ultimate icon of the free spirit male. So, like the cowboy or the motorcyclist, he's one of those icons of Firstly, I mean obviously the unmarried male, um, the sexually available [00:14:00] male, who's who's on the road, who's who's a transient. So he's There are advantages to to to having affairs with transient and so far as it's got a finite duration and they bugger off at the end of it and you're not stuck with them. And for a lot of people, I think that's a nice type of fantasy if you're trapped, if you're feeling trapped in a relationship, and I guess everybody who's in a relationship feels trapped sometimes, um, or you feel that relationships [00:14:30] in themselves are traps, then those sorts of fantasy figures. Your truck driver. There's another one. maybe they're gonna They work in that way and and that there's something to aspire to Women I knew used to fuck sailors. And then, um, and that was always amusing because they make it into a huge romantic drama which didn't seem to me at all necessary, because I had no Qun whatsoever with just doing it for the sake of doing it without having to pretend there was anything cosmic involved. But they seem to somehow I want to make our drama. Um, [00:15:00] and that was quite funny. There's a really interesting disjuncture that goes on between the iconography and and the images that we get thrown at us in the media, the fantasies that are fed to us and that we buy into, um, and how an awful lot of them are really anachronistic. Like, um, the Marlborough Man is a classic example. I mean, firstly, because I mean, the heyday of the Cowboy was about 10 years in the 18 seventies, and then it was over. [00:15:30] And yet, to this very day, we get cowboy movies and cowboys on television and that whole Western thing and the sailors things a bit like that. Like up until about 40 years ago, there were hundreds of W and stevedores and cooks and stewards and sailors. And now, with you know, the change to containerized shipping and so forth, and with the collapse of large navies, the number of sailors around has dropped right away. [00:16:00] So although the the image of of the sailor, the the the the you know, blonde haired, blue eyed, muscle bound bimbo and the dress whites or the little blue sailor suit, um, is really present before us, you can go for years without actually ever seeing one. so it's become like a remote thing. It's it's become it's become one of those dead images, like the Knight in Shining Armour. [00:16:30] That's probably more fantasy than fact. Um, but there is a certainly a well documented kernel of truth. Uh, some American and European gay historians in the last decade have looked at the role of homosexuality in the pirate community in the Caribbean. Um, they've also looked at the Dutch Dutch East India company in the 18th century, where it was considered [00:17:00] uh, sufficient A problem by the company directors for them to have recorded it, uh, in in a great deal of detail. Uh, it's fairly logical. When you think of the amount of time that men would have spent together in the days of sail, it could often be at sea for up for two years at a time. Very seldom touch in court because they didn't need to refuel. They were powered by the wind. If people were out trading, uh, they would spend very little time in the contact of women. So I think there would have been an element of people enjoying themselves, [00:17:30] Uh, out of sight of land. The US Navy during the first World War. Um, ran a whole campaign. Somebody got a big in a bonnet that homosexuality was a problem in the US navy. So the US navy, or some part of the US navy decided to do something about this and to set up an entrapment programme. So they recruited all these pretty new bi young sailors and sent them out looking for gay men or for homosexuals or whatever you call them [00:18:00] at the time. Inverts, I suppose. Uranian, um and they. So what they basically did was they set up this network of a provocateur and raised all the the things that normally go with that. So you got all the you had all these state trained, quasi prostitutes going out, trying to roll guys in order to throw them out of the Navy, which is revolting, um, in itself. And then it becomes even more revolting [00:18:30] when the Navy throws the book at its own stooges. So all the guys who were recruited for this loathsome programme were then cashiered or whatever the equivalent is from the United States. Navy lost their pension rights. Many of them were prosecuted, um, for just following orders And that that happened in 1917. Uh, and I guess I guess the interesting thing about that is, um, the problem that they caused [00:19:00] the amount of homosexuality that they generated greatly exceeded any amount that they actually found. Um, which rather begs the question. Really? Tom and Finland did some very nice drawings of sailors early on his career [00:19:30] in the forties, during the war. Tom of Finland. I can't remember what his real name is. Um, during the blackouts in Europe, learned to draw uniforms by touch. And there's a very nice bit in his biography, um, where he, um, was at a bus stop or a tram stop and where whatever city he was, he was in in Europe, and, um, it was full of men in military uniform, and he backed up to one of them. One of them moved into his hands, and he jerked them off at the bus stop or the train stop without anyone knowing, because it was black or dark. And this sort [00:20:00] of thing happened all the time. The beauty about the sailor from Tom of Finland's point of view is again the frock. Um, a snuggly fitting garment, which drapes as a sailor's blouse does, um, is a gift. The tight trousers with the flared cuffs and everything, bell bottoms and everything, the good things to work with as a draughtsman. There's plenty going on there. You've got that thing that Roland Bart talks about, about the ambivalence of where the garment [00:20:30] gapes. You've got a garment that simultaneously the guy's clothes, and he's undressed at the same time. It's fabulous from a from an erotic point of view. Those uniforms are traditionally extremely sexy. And one of the first uses of the t-shirt, the tight trousers with the flares, Um, the the caps, I mean, standard stock image of usually very sexy young men, particularly in the Navy. I mean, in the Merchant Marine, you'd see people from [00:21:00] very wide age groups. But in the Navy, there would be two or 300 men in their late teens through to late twenties, on a particularly large ship. And when those people had put on Mass, then they certainly would have turned heads. And it's that interesting thing, too, about uniforms as degradation that if you look at naval officers, uniforms, the grown ups, clothes, sailors wear pyjamas, they wear kids clothes. They're actually, [00:21:30] um, diminished by what they wear. So you get the sort of double vision going on of a man dressed as a child, particularly as we often dress Children or not. Nowadays, of course, although you still see it in sailor suits, Um, so you've got that whole aspect to the sailor image that it's a man dressed as a child. You find continually in, uh, gay iconography, a limited range of uniforms, sailors, hard hat [00:22:00] men. I just think of some of the pop groups. I mean, they're they're easy to do. The the uniforms aren't complicated if if you're required to go and dress up, they're usually sexy and they emphasise masculinity. It can be linked to, um, upper class and middle class men idealising working class men's bodies and appearance because they have lost that they've had that civilised out of them. That to be middle class means to be somewhat less than masculine because of your appearance and your job and you're soft. So [00:22:30] I think there's a There's a looking for some masculinity and images or ideas of sort of inverted commas brutishness from somewhere else, because they, um you know, they've lost it. The first day of the power cuts in Auckland, some of the guys were in the same leather club as I am, [00:23:00] and I walked up Queen Street, which was in darkness, and there were fire engines and things, and there were groups of Mexican sailors. They were just absolutely beautiful. I mean, the little and dark, which is my type. And, um, I mean, if I saw them and I said to the guys I was with I mean, I just want a six pack, you know? I mean, this is perfect. They're so beautiful. And they immediately said hello to us because we were just neither. And they recognised us as being maybe from the same. They recognised that. We [00:23:30] were sort of, I don't know, there was something we had in common. And, um, the guy should have given them free passes to our club, but they didn't, you know, I suppose a bit shy, but they were, um, very young and very sweet, and they didn't have very nice costumes. And I mean, like, costumes, uniforms. So I mean, you know, out of the mist. There it is. I mean, it still happens. Do your.
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