Seventy eight – Gay Mates

I didn’t want to go the ‘Gay Style and Grooming Fair’. I wasn't bothered by the ‘gay’ bit; I had seen quite a few gay and lesbian events on Meetup and I knew there would be a day when I would have to go to one of them. The bit that did bother me was the bit about ‘male grooming’.

I’m the kind of man that thinks that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a good old bar of soap and a dab of deodorant. Everything other than that, in my eyes, is a money making conspiracy.

Men need soap; what they don’t need is astringent toners, apricot skin scrubs and moisturisers. One ex-wife and one very lovely and well intentioned ex-girlfriend have done their best to encourage me to moisturise regularly. After a week or so of constant reminders, they would give up, leaving the moisturiser to languish in the bathroom cabinet. Eventually, the unused moisturiser would then be chucked in the bin when it passed its sell by date. The joyless cycle of pointless capitalism would begin again when I would then be given yet another bottle of the stuff for Christmas.

Unlike other events, this was one that didn’t have a designated host: the grooming fair was advertised as a part of a group of ‘gay friendly’ events that were held across London. The Meetup event forum, however, was quite busy: there was a sharing of phone numbers and thoughts about where ‘the group’ might meet.

I arrived at Google’s London offices. Google was, apparently, one of the sponsors.

‘Are you here for the…’ asked a chap who had an expensive looking haircut, brown mottled plastic glasses, and a grey cardigan.

‘Yes, I am.’ He asked me for my name. Surprisingly, I was on the list.

‘Just go through the security doors. Ninth floor’.

I stepped into the exhibition area, twenty minutes late; my timing scuppered by train delays. I looked around. There was a big stall where you could pick up complimentary copies of gay lifestyle magazines. On two of the walls there was a huge picture of a half-naked ginger gentleman, who had been clearly spending way too much time in the gym. There was a stall that seemed to be selling underwear packaged in opulent looking boxes. Suddenly, I noticed that there were some people carrying either bottles of beer, or glasses of wine. In the distance, I saw a mass of people milling around what I discovered to be an oasis of free booze. I stepped through the crowds and helped myself to a bottle of Becks and then thought what to do; there were well over one hundred people at the event.

I reached for my phone, found a telephone number of a Meetupper and pressed the dial button.

‘Hello? Hello…’

It was difficult to hear anything over the background noise. A few steps in front of me I saw a chap who had taken out his phone at the same moment I started to make my call. I went over to him.

‘Sorry…’ he said grumpily. ‘I’m on the phone. I’ll be with you in a minute’. I showed him my phone, smiled, and hung up.

I had just telephoned Marty, a Geordie. Marty introduced me to two other members of the Meetup: Carlos and Huan. This was the first time that Marty had been to this group, but he had been to quite a few others. Carlos said that he was just about to go. Seeing my drink, Carlos smiled and said: ‘if you’re having a drink, then I’m going to have one too’, then negotiated the crowds to visit the booze oasis.

Huan turned out to be a doctoral student at a medical school, where he had been carrying out research into physiology. He was at the stage of writing up his thesis.

‘So, you’re a doctor doctor? A medical doctor and a research doctor?’ Huan nodded. I was impressed. Marty, on the other hand, was still finding his feet in London, having moved to the city around eight months ago. He had been doing all kinds of different jobs: retail, security guard work, admin; anything he could turn his hand to. He told me that he had aspirations to work in IT. Carlos did ‘admin’ in a hospital, a job that he hated.

We chatted for around ten or fifteen minutes. Everyone in the Meetup seemed to be thoroughly underwhelmed by the whole event, whereas I was starting to enjoy being there; chatting to people who I would never have ordinarily chatted to. Carlos finished his drink and then decided to head off home. Huan followed, leaving myself and Marty to do one circuit of all the stalls.

‘Do you know Aloe Vera?’ asked a nice lady called Deirdre who was standing behind a moisturiser stall.

‘Not personally, no’ I replied.

Deirdre asked me whether I wanted to enter a competition to win some products. I said that I did. Deirdre then moisturised my hands, which made it very difficult to keep a solid hold of my beer.

Being someone who is somewhat folically challenged, I skipped past the stall that had a vast array of hair care products, and ended up chatting to another woman who wanted to sell me a combined blood and urine test.

‘Its preventative medicine’, she explained. ‘We test for all these different conditions, so you know what you’re dealing with’. I thanked her for her time and told her that being a certain age, I had recently received a free blood test from the National Health Service. When she heard this she refused to give me a free tube of toothpaste.

After stepping past a pungent smelling cosmetics stall, I found myself again at the booze oasis, where I grabbed a second bottle of Becks.

‘You found anything interesting?’ asked a chap who was sporting a spectacular beard and was revealing a disconcerting amount of chest hair.

Like Marty, Andre was also relatively new to London, having moved to the city from Portugal about a year and a half ago. He worked as a freelance piano teacher, but had also studied composition and would like to try to find more solid work. We chatted about digital music, specifically, music that could be created by dynamically manipulating software. Musicians (or programmers) would create loops and rhythms in front of an audience; software as performance. It was something that I had heard about, but had never witnessed a software ‘music’ performance.  Andre was very charming; he was an attentive listener, and at the end of our brief chat, he asked me for my card.

I slipped past a stall that was advertising cosmetic dentistry, and moved onto a clothing stall that seemed to be selling nothing but shorts. There was a sign advertising a free ‘colour consultation’. Being perfectly happy with my staid blue, black and beige wardrobe, I went to the next stall which sold a combination of underwear and moisturisers at astonishingly cheeky prices.

‘The big question is how often you shave’ said a woman to a crowd of men who were peering at a laptop. The laptop presented an image of different cartoon men with varying degrees of stubble. I saw a nicely boxed shaving set which, I understood, could be sent to you in the post.

I caught up with Marty, who was carrying a number of bags. He clearly had a skill at getting free samples.

‘I think I’m going to go in a bit’, I said, realising that there wasn’t anything else to do, other than drink beer and to have a free colour consultation.

‘Yeah, me too’ said Marty. ‘I’ll come with you’.

It had been fun. I had drunk two free beers, my hands had been moisturised, and I had been given a bag of low calorie popcorn.