In Orton's Shadow

Cruel youth, and the lessons I missed the first time round

I’m rereading playwright Joe Orton’s diaries. In an entry dated 14th July, 1967, Orton, who was thirty-four years old at the time, wrote of cruising for sex. ‘Took a walk,’ he said. ‘Nobody around to pick up. Only a lot of disgusting old men. I shall be a disgusting old man myself one day, I thought, mournfully.’

I first read the diaries when I was in my twenties — younger than Orton had been when he wrote them — and I’m sure that line barely registered. Gay and sexually repressed, I was too busy looking for the juicy bits, as if they could somehow guide the way and tell me how to live, or how to fuck at least. I devoured the descriptions of group sex in a ‘little pissoir under the bridge’ that had suddenly become ‘the scene of a frenzied homosexual saturnalia’ while ‘no more than two feet away the citizens of Holloway moved about their ordinary business’, the tales of picking up a ‘baggy’ Irishman in Leicester when visiting for his mother’s funeral, of fucking him in an unoccupied house with a torn eiderdown (sex and death, the twin drives. I understand now the way they go together — I’ve since experienced the phenomenon myself— but at the time I suppose I just thought it was Orton’s way of thumbing his nose at the moral code), and even the story of Orton being sucked off by a ‘dwarf’ skulking in the corner of a Brighton lavatory.

(Even then I was less enamoured of the abundant sex described in the ‘Tangier’ part of the diary. Orton and his lover Kenneth Halliwell spent two months there, having so much sex that his liaisons ran to a timetable that ‘no member of the royal family would tolerate’, but I never found that part of the diary titillating. Now, on rereading them, I can see why. Perhaps I didn’t notice it before, but the boys that they were paying to have sex with were young. And the fact that — according to Orton’s accounts at least — everyone out there was doing it, and the boys were more than willing, is perhaps neither here nor there. But that is not the topic I’m discussing here).

As I reread the diaries thirty-odd years later —and two decades older than he was when he wrote them — those lines stick out. It’s such a natural thing to think, after all, when you’re young. The sad old man still cruising for sex, the elderly gent leering at the young things in the bar, hoping that they can still scrape together enough sexual currency to lure one away. When young we look at them with pity, and not a small amount of disgust, even though in some distant, almost subliminal, way, we know that one day that’s going to be us. Orton, who was young, healthy, famous and rich — so much so that even he noted that this was ‘going against nature’ and said he hoped ‘no doom strikes’ (spoiler — it did) — did at least have the presence of mind to see that, he knew that aging was a fate no one escapes, even if getting old is a privilege denied to far too many. And he knew, too, that for him age was unlikely to bring with it a reduction in libido or a curbing of his promiscuous nature. He abhorred convention, especially sexually, and poured scorn on monogamy. He loved the thrill and danger of cruising. In looking at those ‘disgusting old men’ he knew he was also looking at his future.

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Six Feet From a Rat

‘A lot of disgusting old men.’ It’s pretty obvious why those lines resonate with me now, and whether I go cruising or not is neither here nor there. I’m a sexual person, currently single (also neither here nor there) and slowly, inexorably, I know I’m becoming that which I once pitied and dismissed. I don’t think I’ve reached ‘disgusting old man’ stage yet, but it’s definitely nearer than it was, and (in the eyes of some at least) I’m starting to be invisible. I’m lucky in that I live in a city with an older gay community, but I still see it. In the bars, on the dancefloors, and on the apps, too. It always saddens that some young men think it’s okay to write ‘Don’t be old enough to be my grandad!’ in their profile text, or, ‘No one over 35! Yuk!’. It’s okay to have a preference — of course it is — but there’s no excuse to be disrespectful, and the people expressing disgust because someone in their forties might find them attractive are also, often, the first ones who’d (rightly) call someone out for saying, ‘No Asians’ or ‘No fatties or fems’. But, apparently, for some people it’s okay to use ageist language, and to shame someone for committing the crime of being older and in possession of a libido. Every time I see it I’m gripped with the desire to say, ‘Y'know it’s going to happen to you, one day? And sooner than you think.’

I don’t, though. Because the truth is I don’t mind it that much. They’re young and foolish, just as I was, and they’ll learn, just as I did. But more importantly, getting older is a privilege, as I said, and I’m not going to complain about it. And I know myself now, I’m much more grounded, much more confident and that makes me — dare I say it? — much more attractive than I was. I was a shy, insecure twenty-four year old, and I wouldn’t go back there, even if I could. (Having hair never really suited me, for one thing. I didn’t know what to do with it).

But, though I try to live in the present, there’s a ticking clock, now. The tension between sexual desire — or rather the desire to be seen as sexual — and encroaching invisibility is wound tighter and tighter. We live in a world that places a high value on sexual capital, and this is particularly true of gay men, whose identities are often forged in the crucible of outsiderdom and transgression. It’s hard not to think about the fact that, one day, the reserves of my sexual currency will be run down to zero, and no one will find me attractive. And that’s if I’m lucky and don’t die first. Hard to be transgressive, then.

Maybe this is what Orton was afraid of. He loved to shock, both in his work and in his life. On detecting disapproval in eavesdroppers, he would raise his voice, not lower it, and tell even more lurid stories of his sexual escapades. Unlike Alan Bennett, say, an asexual Orton is almost inconceivable.

Perhaps it was inconceivable to him, too. The full diary entry reads, ‘Nobody around to pick up. Only a lot of disgusting old men. I shall be a disgusting old man myself one day, I thought, mournfully. Only I have high hopes of dying in my prime.’

On August 9th, 1967, less than one month after writing that, Orton was bludgeoned to death by Kenneth Halliwell, who then took his own life.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on this — whether you’ve read Orton, experienced this tension between desire and aging, or just felt the sting of being unseen. What lines resonate with you? Let’s talk.