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W11 in the 70s. Chapter 2: GLF |
I met a ballet dancer called Nicholas from the Ballet Rambert
company. He told me he lived in W11 too and invited me for coffee to
a place in Colville Terrace. Since I knew no one in the area I took
him up, and off I went while my husband looked after my daughter for
a couple of hours. 
 The front door was opened by a six-foot handsome
blonde man wearing a see-through sequinned dress. Come in, he said,
we are getting ready for a party. I entered a room with about
fifteen men nude or semi-nude, painting up their faces and sticking
sequins on each other. Have a drink, said someone, and I sat down
among them. Nicholas was there too, doing pirouettes around the
room. Very soon they found out that I had been arrested for the Miss
World demonstration. We were outside, they said, supporting you. We
were in an alternative gay Miss World contest outside the court. We
are in Gay Liberation Front, they said. Everything was very
colourful and I thought: this is just like Weimar Germany, or like
being in a Fellini film. Remember I had been in art school and had
been in life classes where I had been drawing nudes for years, but
this was so much more creative, I thought. Can you draw a butterfly?
said one of the men. Yes, I replied. Could you paint a butterfly on
my arm? he said, and I did. Then everybody wanted themselves painted
and before I knew it I was into body painting We can’t invite you to
the party, they said, because it’s only for men, but come around for
lunch tomorrow, said Bette Bourne. By the time they went to the
party I had painted moons, stars, flowers, butterflies, snakes,
lizards: you mention it and I think I had painted it. Their bodies
were a mass of glittering images, and then off they went in their
finery to their party and off I went home. The street outside was
very grey in comparison but my mind wasn’t, it was full of colour.
How amazing, I thought, and it was just around the corner. I’m
certainly going around there for lunch tomorrow, I said to myself,
and I did. And a little later on it was with a few of these gay men
that I first went to a Gay Liberation Front meeting in All Saints’
church hall and saw Bobby MacKenzie for the first time.
London W11 in the 70s. 3. Dope and
the Electric |
| Pictures: the very front door in Colville Terrace; GLF poster |
| Contents Bobby and I. 1 How I found out. 1 |
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