yonmei

08:05 am: Still too hot
If you wonder where I was yesterday, I was in Glasgow, having a prolonged meeting for work purposes, and then as it was already 1pm I stayed on till 4pm to see Before Stonewall at the Gallery of Modern Art. Which was quite fascinating - the weeks leading up to Stonewall, as told by a drag queen who was one of the habituees of the Stonewall Inn.

I had been in two minds whether to stay on for the panel discussion afterwards or head back to Edinburgh and perhaps score a two for one, if I got there in time to see Jesus of Montreal at the MCC Church, but the film had brought so many ideas to mind that I thought I'd stay.

Which meant I got to chat with a young Muslim who's just starting an organisation for LGBT Muslims in Scotland, and with a South African called Paul with whom I had a very funny exchange "My family's more screwed up than yours!" over the "refreshments" (white wine, cheap juice, packets of crisps, a couple of plates of grapes and cherries - it looks like they had either no budget for this event or about £10 worth of budget and used the leftover wine and juice from the exhibition launch last week) between 5:30 and 6 - and then headed into a boring non-discussion in which three panellists and a.n.other explained to us why they were there, and what they thought about the issue of LGBT identity, and allowed 20 minutes or so at the end for the audience to ask questions. There wasn't really much time for ideas.

I also got to exchange greetings with the curator, who remembered me as the visitor last week who'd pointed out that the Mapplethorpe isn't the only picture of a sex act in the exhibition: there is also the picture of two women's hands making love to each other in almost Escherish closeness. He was very nice about it and thanked me - "you were quite right, I'll remember that for future tours". But oh dear, the discussion was pants.

Reminded me though, of how things are changing: that more and more younger LGBT people do not give a damn about identifying themselves at such, any more than the straight kids do. We really are working ourselves out of a job. There are kids growing up in Edinburgh and Glasgow today who have no notion, not only that it used to be against the law for two men to have sex, but that it used to be perfectly legal to fire someone from their job for being lesbian or gay. Not now but in fifteen to twenty years, when these kids are teachers and nurses and lawyers and construction workers and secretaries and doctors and parents - maybe it really won't be a big deal. At all.

I got online briefly yesterday in a tapas bar where I drank sangria and nibbled bread and worked a bit, but I had other things to do on my limited connectivity than journal. Sorry.

It's still way too hot. It's already 16 degrees and it's only twenty past eight: yesterday it was 22 degrees. It's Scotland. We're not built for this.



Tags: being queer, glasgow, weather