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A friend gave me an advance review copy, which I got around to read a couple months after its actual publication.
Hugo, who knew Mr Lucas towards the end of his life, focuses on the Diaries from the 1960s – a decade when Peter, a friend / lover / “rent boy”, draws Mr Lucas into the edges of the Kray twins circles. A decade in which the sex Mr Lucas has been having since the 40s is, partially decriminalised (although his cruising in Cottages, and paying for it was still beyond the law).
Part of the importance of this is a reminder that Gay men were not invented in 1967 – for all the challenges there was plenty of Gay sex and plenty of Gay lives lived wholeheartedly before then. Maybe it was a bubble, a world existing in syncopation from the Straight world – the streets that he cruised were the same streets that the Straight world bustled along without really being aware of each other.
I refer to “Gay men” rather than LGBT+ because in the context of Mr Lucas this is an account of a Gay man, and his encounters with other Gay men or MSM (men who have sex with men). LGBT+ histories are intertwined, but there are distinct threads. His diaries are fascinating exactly because of their particularity -
As we now celebrate 1967 as the beginning of liberation we also need to be reminded that at the time many of those in favour of decriminalisation did so because they believed that Gay people should be pitied rather than punished. To be openly Gay would still be to be marginalised.
That Mr Lucas continued to live with his parents for a significant period of time after being thrown out the army, and endured their piercing comments about his sexuality, their homophobia tells us a lot about the times. But despite their comments they didn’t throw him out – one has the sense that they would have had a toxic love/hate relationship even if he had been straight.
Hugo Greenhalgh also uses Mr Lucas as a lens to explore the relationship between those who pay for sex and those that get paid for it. Mr Lucas seems to have generally seen himself as a patron, a philanthropist almost, when throughout his adult life he paid others for ‘sex’. Hugo shares and reflects on his own youthful experience of being paid / rewarded for sexual encounters – very aware of the problematic power dynamics. It is clear that a complex set of dynamics exist – and it caused me to pause when seeing this call from Tonia Antoniazzi MP for the criminalisation of paying for sex https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c87r42mvzdzo would this push things even further into the shadows, and if so make things worse for the most vulnerable sex workers – a case can be made that bringing sex work into the mainstream might actually achieve better outcomes. But there is no simple answers either way.
Hugo Greenhalgh does not turn Mr Lucas into a hero, he is a character that is compelling but not particularly likeable – but we need these stories – we need to tell our history – warts and all. There is nothing new about being Gay – there are people that want to say we are a figment of a 21st century woke imagination and we need our stories, our histories however complex and conflicted they might be to show that we have always been and they are talking nonsense.
