Street corners: theatres, boulevards of chic,
hanging around, impressing the chicks, slagging each
other, slagging the chicks,
impressing each other

but why is it in dear old Ireland
men despise attention from other men?
Scowl, grit their teeth, a sneer

In no other country,
“Who are you lookin’ a’?”
Is a threat

Any time I look at a man on a street
my street, inner city dub,
a lad with a swagger, bandy legs and atti-chewed
I catch his eye, and he
automatically – instinctively –
hawks and spits

He hawks and spits.

Tough man. Don’t be looking at me or you’ll get a dig.

But the lucky sod happens to get a bone marrow transplant from someone with a rare resistance to the HIV virus, that occurs in about one in a thousand Europeans. Nearly two years later, he’s as fit as a fiddle and is totally clear of both HIV and leukemia. Talk about a last-minute reprieve from Death Row.

It’s a true story. And, I realise it may sound strange, but it makes me wonder about prayer. About miracles, and that sort of stuff. Around Christmas, I try to remind myself that the tacky extravaganza is not only about shopping and eating and drinking. It has to be about something else, something that isn’t about gratification. Doesn’t it?

You see, I believe that the only word I have for what I’ve been doing in response to AIDS since it first terrified me in the early eighties is praying. Never consciously directed at a Higher Power or a God or Jesus or Allah or anyone else, it’s been a sort of focussed period of concentration, almost an internalized furrowing of my brow, for anything from a few moments to a few hours, in which I am actively willing that the world provides a cure for the bloody disease. The world? Human beings. Scientists. The Fates. The Fureys. Anyone will do.

I was reminded of the sad toll the disease has taken on the lives of so many Irish people when I attended a lecture by Niall Sweeney, the writer and graphic designer and general fount of creativity, (or should that be font of creativity?) on the social and visual history of the annual Alternative Miss Ireland contest, the beauty pageant that is open to men, women, and animals. The team of dedicated professional volunteers who have worked so hard over the years to raise funds to defeat the disease and support those living with it, have a heartwarming story to tell. But the design is eye-watering – it’s a visual feast, grotesque and stylish, absurd and sublime, crazy and serene. Most of all, what is evident in the images and videos in the archive is an extraordinary celebratory sense of humour.

But there is a poignancy to it, as so many of the original team have died of the disease since the competition started. It is the hurt of that mournful, terrifying period in the eighties and early nineties that I was reminded of, seeing those fabulous faces and their outrageous frocks.

All that praying, all that willing, the mental forcing, the bending of one’s will to make something happen over the years. The sadness, the grief, the loss, the fear of those close to me. The missing faces on the scene, the wistful memories of fearless lovemaking. The torture of the regular HIV test that never seems to be anything less than an existential trial, a weighing up of pleasure’s costs, the opening of the door to see if Death is waiting outside this time.
All this, for one little virus. I was speaking to a friend last night who, like a few others, wonder about the strict connection between the virus and the deadly disease. I used to think like him – fear drove me into denial, and had me clutching at straws, the discrepancies in the original discovery of the virus, the squabbling laboratories, the cases of those who didn’t die who “should have”. The impact of believing you’re about to die, and how it speeds one towards death, a placebo effect in reverse. The synchronicity of those dying first being those who (generally) used a lot of drugs and had a lot of sex. All pointing to it being a lifestyle effect, a state of mental or spiritual dis-ease.

But it’s not either/or. It is both, for some people. But, for most people, it’s just a virus that strips away one’s defences. It’s as simple as that.

And now we learn that it can go away. Admittedly it’s kind of impossible to imagine how those same conditions could be repeated for everyone with the virus – every thousandth European with the genetic anomaly would have to be found first, needles in a haystack, then blood-typed and marrow-typed. How many times could a person have their bones drilled open and their marrow sucked dry to save a life? I pity the poor donor, who saved this man’s life. He’s got an unenviable choice.

Anyway. In the meantime, all we can do is hope that this is the first of many such breakthroughs. And pray.

When things seem at their darkest, they often turn out unexpectedly beautiful. Fact. Have a peaceful, loving, healthy Christmas.

Only two out of three Irish men say they agree with monogamous relationships.  But 7% have never had sex at all, and the vast majority of men have only had up to three sexual partners in their lives. Although half of men welcome the liberalization of attitudes towards sex as a good thing, for both men and women, six out of ten believe that young men are under too much pressure to have sex when they are young. The same proportion say that how others perceive them matters: a staggering 80% of them identify personal care (skin/hair) as being of importance to them, and of those, half of them say that fashion is “very” important to them in their everyday lives. To repeat: Four out of ten Irish men -  Fashion very important. I know. I don’t believe it myself.

8% of those under 35 admit to having had sex with other men, and again this must be seen as a conservative figure, although men are split 37% – 38% against gay marriage. (This compares starkly, and unfavourably, to the Lansdowne poll in March which indicates 58% of Irish people are in favour of gay marriage. I wasn’t aware the sexes had such different attitudes; or, perhaps, as in all opinion polls, the wording and context of those questions are too different to be comparable.)

Contrary to the positive gloss put on by the manager of the polling company, Ian McShane, who claimed that the figures supported the view that “mens’ wives/girlfriends/partners rank as being extremely important to them in their lives in general,” I see a different story. Of 22 life aspects rated, a man’s wife or partner came only fourth on the list of importance, after financial independence (the same as women in last year’s poll), being able to look after oneself (a no-brainer) and – get this – leisure time. You read it here, folks. Guys really do prioritise football, and pints with their mates, over their wives/girlfriends.

Almost 50% of all men believe that single men have a better life (rising to 69% of younger men), which supports my view that, in general, many men need to be persuaded/cajoled/invited/pressured/blackmailed into entering relationships; it isn’t necessarily the priority for men that women think it is. Although, of course, life takes its toll: by the time we get past 40, most of us concede that being single isn’t better. The majority of men will turn to their spouse or partner for comfort “when the chips are down”, with only one in eight turning to the Catholic church for solace.

But to put it in context, not to mention for the entertainment, John Waters’ column in the  Times is good value. Especially when it comes to understanding the dyspepsia of the modern Irish male, that particularly sour flavour of opinion that affects a large swathe of Irish journalism. Rather than viewing this poll of Irish male attitudes as a spontaneous snapshot of opinion, he says, it may be “more like a videotaped statement of a hostage with a knife to his Adam’s apple.” Ooer. Victim, much! “There is no such entity as ‘men’” he rants, at least “not in the sense that there is nowadays an entity called ‘women’ or perhaps ‘wimmin’. Women are the only gender. Men do not campaign for themselves, nor take the side of other men.”

In the sense that awareness of men’s needs and issues are not generally addressed in the media,
and acknowledging that “gender studies” courses in universities do tend to mean “women’s studies”, I take his point. But the politicization of women, over the past few decades in particular, and the changes they have made to society as a result, were necessary, because men were blind to the (mostly unconscious) collusion between them that excluded and disempowered women. The “personal is political” approach to societal change, that feminists pioneered and worked hard for, has brought about changes that men now approve of – for example, most men disagree with the statement that the man should be the main breadwinner in a household.

Feminists may be disappointed by the finding that most men believe that a woman should accept that her children are more important than her career; and yet compare that with last year’s poll: 53% of women believe it is better for children if their mother is a full-time home-maker. Men and women are not that far apart in their opinions.

Feminism is not the problem that Waters would have us believe, it brought about the beginning of social change that is welcomed by all men and women. Now that attention is being paid to men, in this poll, it is good to see that we are strongly in favour (74%) of workplace legislation to allow us to play more of a role in raising children, and 85% of men believe that single fathers should have exactly the same rights as single mothers. As surprising as that may be, given the lack of media attention to these opinions heretofore, men just have to follow the feminists and organize if they want to effect political change, and not complain bitterly about hard-done-by we are by wimmin.

Brothers, unite!

It’s massive self-delusion, of course, escapism at its most banal; but there are worse ways to escape. Far worse. But it’s still pap; the word comes from the mixture of flour and water that poverty-stricken mothers used to make up for their starving infants; looking like the real thing, but completely useless for nutrition. Maybe if I pour enough of it down my throat I’ll eventually gag and start screaming for the real stuff, the real food of life. Lord, let me switch off the remote. But not yet.

I have seen enough gritty American crime drama to give me a thorough grounding in forensics. I know exactly how to leave a clean crime scene behind me, in the wake of whatever nefarious atrocity I choose to commit. No flies on me. Only on the corpse. I’m certain, now, I could pass a lie detector test, and am sure I could resist the devious methods that clever cops use to get a perp to confess. I know all about psychological profiling and could easily frame someone else for my crimes, if I had the whim. I can predict whodunnit within the first five minutes of each show. It’s all in the casting.

On the medical front, I’ve watched enough hospital dramas to know how to diagnose all sorts of ailments, know when to call for an MRI or CT scan, when and how to intubate, and am a dab hand at knowing when to call the time of death. It’s always when the doctors start sweating. An armchair God, I can recognize which character is a goner, before they even know it. Again, casting is the clue; but in medical dramas, it’s who is playing the relative/partner/parent that matters. Whoever gives good grief.

I don’t buy into the bourgeois notion that we are civilized, as a species; perhaps I’ve been listening to too many stories in the day job, of how badly people treat each other. It’s a jungle out there, I tell you. Give me unexpurgated base behaviour on television, when people are in extremis, battling away for something that matters, fictional or real, and it relaxes me. I’m odd, I know. But, I’m not alone.

But, rest assured, I still have standards. I’ve avoided the TV equivalent of crystal meth: resisted the entire series of Big Brother this year, as have many people I know; hopefully that brand of sadistic TV has had its day, subjecting talentless exhibitionists to the torture of months of boredom. TV presenting is a skill, I grudgingly concede, but  there has got to be a less mind-numbing way of auditioning for the next generation of airhead presenters than 13 weeks of trial by tedium. I will probably tune in for the final week, just to see what character type has floated to the top of the Big Brother Bog this year. Clues. Looking for clues.

My fix of choice, however, my TV smack: fashion. I’ve been compulsively watching reruns of competitions such as Project Runway, Next Top Model and Make Me a Supermodel. What’s weird is that I’ve not been a fashion queen before – prior to this summer of goggle-box gluttony I paid no notice whatsoever to women’s frocks or even pretended to understand labels or seasons or what style is in or not. When a friend of mine lamented that she hadn’t a clue what to wear for a date, I told her that’s when a “gay best friend” would be useful, if she knew of any. I could do with one of those, myself.

But, I’m getting into it now. There is something magical when a model gives good face in a photo, or struts her stuff down a catwalk; something mesmeric, archetypal. Why some beautiful women are photogenic, and others are not, remains a mystery. Those who succeed are instinctive artists, masters of a curious alchemy, producing breathtaking results. Ever since I got hooked, I’ve been noticing women far more; the line of a jaw, the smile in an eye, the set of a shoulder. This is not the same as eroticism; because the multi-billion dollar fashion industry, and modelling itself at its highest level, is all about women performing and posing for other women, judging each other, competing with each other, seeking praise from each other. It is women who define and refine beauty.

At the opposite end of the gender spectrum, about as far as you can go, the Olympics has me watching our lads try to knock the lights out of as many men as possible, in the “noble art” of boxing. And, getting medals for it; more than the USA has managed. A boxer is his body; there is no concern about one’s image, action is all. The clowning, genial, unassuming, warm blast of masculine energy that is Kenny Egan, when he won his place in the boxing finals, caught my attention, arrested me. The ultimate in unreconstructed retrosexual maleness, when he found himself surrounded by cameras, he minced around like a model in the ring, play-acting, pretending to revel in the adulation. But the boxing world is one of the last bastions of a type of masculinity that, in Ireland at least, is blissfully un-self-conscious and dignified. Watching the RTÉ panellists discussing the matches afterwards was a joy. The former boxers discussing the “sweet science” were the epitome of proud, passionate, eloquent working class Irish men. I’m in love, again.

TV. All human life is there. If you watch it long enough.

Given that, the programme was a decent presentation of the latest research, and the subject himself was as genial and anodyne as one might expect from his teatime TV persona, complete with his equally dashing long-term partner Scott.

He checks himself in to a Chicago research establishment, where he undergoes a test while viewing all sorts of erotica, a sort of lie detector. A natty little piece of equipment is tethered to Barrowman’s own equipment, a plethysmograph. The penis doesn’t lie, apparently: it twitches. Then he underwent a 90 minute MRI scan, studying blood flow in the brain, again while viewing various pornographic images. The slightest arousal could be seen, in real-time, his brain flashing red when he’s turned on.

Afterwards, the researcher gives him the results, but teases Barrowman first by informing him  deadpan that the results prove he’s straight – and he fell for it, in great confusion, the big girl’s blouse. But, whew, to much relief, the tests “prove” what Barrowman always knew.

Tests only prove what they set out to prove: in this case, that a man who says that he finds men attractive is telling the truth. However, the converse is not proven – a man whose brain and dick registers arousal on viewing male images may not identify as gay, or even bisexual. And, a man who, for example, likes getting blowjobs (and it’s top of the list of favourite sexual practices among men) may not need to open his eyes to enjoy the experience. Sex is not only about visual stimulation; sexual expression is not the same as conscious orientation, nor gay identity.

The next question is when did his homosexuality start – what “caused” his feelings to be this way.  We’re on rockier ground here – because of course human consciousness is not merely causal, it’s fluid, elastic, responsive. He explores the hoary old chestnut that gay men are the “result” of overbearing mothers and absent fathers. He goes to see his Scottish parents, who now live in the American midwest, and asks them what they think about that theory – but of course they deny it. It’s an impossible one to prove or disprove in a TV programme, because its origin is psychoanalytic, and therefore a matter of Barrowman’s subjective experience, not whether or not his mother is a harridan or his father is a shrinking violet. Neither of course was evident, they both seemed pleasant, ordinary people.

Barrowman’s boyhood room was revealed to be still preserved neatly, in a slightly disturbing way – his entire Barbie collection was still in storage, in his closet. In its original, immaculate packaging. Oh dear. The shrink in me suddenly became extremely interested in his mother; but, alas, it was not that kind of programme.

The research switches to “gender non-conforming children”. There’s a study now under way which is examining old home movies of children. In one, a little girl plays with a truck and gleefully breaks things. Then, we see the woman as she is today – a cross-legged dyke with a boyish haircut and glasses. In another, a teenage boy dances camply to New Romantic music, a queen in the making. Of the boys in home movies who were judged to be extremely “feminine”, 75% of them grew up to be gay, and even then that figure, we hear, is viewed as conservative. However, the corollary is not explored: what proportion of gay people exhibited “gender non-conforming” behaviour when they were children? And is identifying as gay the same thing as having sex with members of the same sex?

We are introduced to two 12-year old brothers, twins.  In Jared’s room, there are cars, planes, footballs, typical boys’ stuff. In Adam’s room, far pinker, he happily shows off his My Little Pony, cuddly bears, Barbies, and unicorns. Their mother Danielle comments on the two boys – Adam was always into the pink pyjamas, the “feminine” stuff. She insists he was born this way, and said that she was never a girly woman herself in any case. Happily, the two brothers are content in their differences and in their family.

As for the theory, espoused by the likes of Iris Robinson et al in our very own Bible Belt in Northern Ireland, is being gay is a choice? Barrowman found it hard to get any ex-gay to talk on camera – thirty turned him down. But one man came forward. Ron Wolseley was once a gym-bunny gay, with sultry pics of his semi-naked body to prove it. He is now a frumpy married man with 2 kids. What was the turning point? “My life was hurting people, my parents were weeping. If I wanted to be Christian, I could set that part of me aside. It was a matter of retraining my mind.” He equates it with liking cigarettes and chocolate – he still desires them but doesn’t consume them. I don’t doubt him. People can do all sorts of impossible things.

“Gay” and “straight” brains seem to be different, we hear. Barrowman’s spacial abilities are tested – and a test to see how good he is with words. According to this research, there are recognisably “gay” brains – gay men perform in these tests like heterosexual women. Barrowman snorts – he doesn’t want to be like a “big woman”. (There’s an element of misogyny in so many gay men; I often wonder why). The tests show that gay men are more verbose and expressive, and perform in a “female-typical” way. Barrowman’s own results were so “female” they were off the scale.

When do these brain differences arise? Symmetry in the brain is organized in the middle of pregnancy. It is hard-wired before birth, Barrowman is told, and he greets the news with emotion: relief. He sees it as confounding the idea that it’s a choice that we behave this way.

What about why there’s a difference? He searches for a DNA marker, to see if there’s a “gay gene”. In his own family, the test is inconclusive. There is another theory: that low levels of testosterone in the womb create “female-typical” brains, which then would make them more attracted to males. (That’s such a heterosexual way of looking at sexuality – will science ever rid itself of its bias?) Another marker for intrauterine testosterone deficiency is the shape of our hands. A ring finger that is longer than the index finger indicates that one may have been exposed to higher levels of testosterone in the womb. Gay men tend to have shorter ring fingers, more like a woman. Barrowman trolls around a Gay Pride festival in Long Beach to take handprints – and 60% of those men’s hands had “feminized” fingers.

Another theory: if one has older brothers, a man is more likely to be gay. If one has 4 older brothers, the likelihood is a whopping 71% that one will be gay. The theory is immunological: it’s as if her body mounts an immune response to heterosexual male infants.

Barrowman searches with enthusiasm for scientific validation – he wants a “ticket” for being gay.  But as history has shown, if there’s a ticket for being gay, then there are dark forces in the world that would dearly love to punch it. It’s not too far-fetched to imagine, given the extent to which fundamentalist religion is taking hold in the world, that at some stage in the future a woman might choose, for example, to inject herself with testosterone if she is pregnant with a male infant, to ensure he turns out a “real” man.

I don’t have older brothers. My ring finger is long and butch. I sincerely doubt that I ever lacked testosterone, at any stage of my life. I’m a slob. I don’t chat for ages on the phone with friends. I’m good at DIY, outdoorsy stuff such as camping, and fixing things. Despite those characteristics, instinctively, I feel that I was born gay, and indeed that in some ways I have a “female-typical” brain. My aversion to sports when I was growing up, my playing with dolls as a boy, my sense of the dramatic, my interest in the emotional, the relational. I’d never describe myself as “straight-acting” – but as an actor I could play straight, and there are a hell of a lot of gay men out there who are actors, putting a lot of energy into the performance of playing “real” men. But, it’s not only gay men who do that. And there are also a hell of a lot of men out there having sex with each other who aren’t “gay”. As Mark Simpson writes, there is one obvious flaw in “the popular, consoling and time-honoured view of gay men as women’s souls trapped in men’s bodies”: why do so many of us have emotion-free sex with each other, the antithesis of “female-typical” behaviour?

The questions that scientists are asking now are more interesting than they used to be, less damaging, but the results simply throw up more questions. I would imagine, however, that  researching the “causes” of heterosexuality would be equally as fascinating. But I can’t help wondering if that would be less easy to find funding.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Naturally, I don’t want it to get worse. But it’s hard to challenge the assumption that the only good news for a nation is continuous economic expansion and progress, for ever and ever amen. Depression or loss in our personal lives often proves, in retrospect, to be enriching, educational, a time for re-evaluation and refocusing. It’s a time when we are forced to change old patterns and rediscover a sense of purpose and meaning, when we test our character and resolve, and reconnect with what really matters. We grow and mature through difficult times; we tend to coast during the good times. This, surely, is the same for society. I can’t think of a better example on a national scale than the introduction of the National Health Service in the UK sixty years ago, when a country decimated by war and sorely lacking in funds decided to take a principled stand on the care of the most vulnerable members of its society. It is still a source of great pride to the British, including the Tories, and rightly so. Having lived there for thirteen years, of all the things I miss about my life there, apart from friends, the NHS is top of the list. Yes, it’s not perfect; it could be much better. But it’s an expression of British values at their best.

I’m wondering whether we in Ireland could do something similar, a Great Idea for our straitened times. The mistake is to believe that it is only when we are wealthy that we can change our society for the better, to do something to make ourselves feel good about ourselves, proud of ourselves, to make a statement about what really matters to us. If we have to tighten our belts, we’ll do it gladly if it’s for something worthwhile. The pain of hard work and pulling together results in satisfaction and pride; the pain of a hangover leaves us feeling guilty and dissolute.

The Celtic Tiger years seem to have left us with a hangover: binge drinking at record levels, massive mortgages for modest houses that are currently freefalling into negative equity, acres of empty office and retail space, stalled social housing projects, congestion and dismal public transport, the beauty of our countryside ruined by a planning free-for-all, rampant gangland crime and drug-taking, overcrowded rioting jails, nightmarish A&E departments, and overstretched social services unable to cope with vulnerable youths. If unemployment continues to rise, I dread the characteristic Irish qualities of envy and begrudgery turning into an entrenched xenophobia and racism, the kind that caused several Chinese families to flee their homes in East Wall last month.

Perhaps our focus on the North distracted us from the introspection and creative thinking that was necessary. For far too long, the perceived location of our troubles in the Republic was external, the wound was violent and bloody and heartbreakingly bitter.

This is the first recession we’ve had since the peace process. So, what sort of society do we want to build, now we’re not killing each other or blaming the British, with most Irish politicians still aligned along ancient tribal lines? Did the Celtic Tiger give us a sense of pride, a greater sense of satisfaction with ourselves as Irish people? I’m not convinced. Perhaps it prised us away from the victim mentality, the poor mouth, that was never far from our public discourse, which needed to happen. But, then what? If not victims, then who are we now? What do we stand for? And, now that religion seems to have lost its bony grip on our necks, what new morality is taking its place?

As I write this, in a café in Thomas Street, generally populated by art students, a mother in her late forties and her agitated twenty-year-old son approach my table. He’s got the sort of body language that is alarming on some primitive level. He’s tense, wired; it’s catching. He’s got a back-of-the-throat strangulated Dublin whine of a voice; his skin is prison-pale, he’s too thin for his jeans. She sits, laying her shopping bags down around the armchair; she’s been buying clothes. She wants to better herself. She’s wearing sunglasses. He’s standing beside her, towering over me, fumbling elaborately through his pockets, the way you do at a bar when the drinks arrive and you hope someone else will get the round. But she wasn’t having any of it. “Get your mother a cappuccino. Will you not have one yourself?”

She’s trying her best to connect with her adult son, to treat him as a grown up, to get him to behave like one – perhaps she thought that by meeting in one of them posh cafés with sofas it might shift things, break a pattern, mark something different. But instead of sitting at a table in a corner where they’d have privacy, she chose to have an audience for her chat with her troubled son. Me.

Maybe he’d just come from a failed job interview, or a meeting with his parole officer; in any event, he had only bad news to tell, when he returned with her coffee, and even that was dragged out of him unwillingly. As the conversation went on, I got a sense of just how much she was at her wit’s end with him.

“Alright ma, I know, stop giving out to me.”

“I’m only saying”.

“I know you’re only saying.”

“Could you not do a course? Why not?”

“Look, ma, you don’t understand, I… oh, I don’t care.”

Nothing she said would make any difference, nothing he said would make any difference. Maybe he was just playing for time before he got to the methadone clinic. Maybe he was hoping he could tap her for twenty quid to score. Fat chance.

“You don’t care? What do you mean you don’t care?”

She’s exasperated. She knows it’s true. She thinks that by saying it out loud, reflecting it back to him, he’ll hear how bad it sounds, shame him into getting his act together. He’s disgusted. With himself, with her, with his life. She tries to keep him in conversation. But he’s having none of it. He has to go. He won’t answer where.

“Will you call me later?”

“Yes, ma,” he lies.

He escapes. She stares at her cup. As careful as I have been not to make eye contact, especially with him, I can’t resist. Sure enough, she’s waiting for me to look at her, her sunglasses in her hand, her eyes moist. She sighs, and shrugs. What’s a mother to do? I smile grimly back, offering the sympathy she needs. She puts her sunglasses back on, her defences, picks up her shopping and walks out, leaving her full cup of cappuccino behind. What a waste.

It’s unhappy young men like him that are the main problem in Irish society; and yet they are also symptoms of a greater malaise. Aimless, drifting, lost, angry. No purpose. Money alone does not bring happiness. It’s not just a simple matter of saying that more employment will help him, that maybe more boom times ahead will lift all boats, including his; his problems go much deeper. It’s a question of meaning, identity, narrative, of quality of life, not whether he can get a poxy job on a building site or a burger bar and live in an expensive shoebox an hour and a half out of the city by crowded bus, getting hammered on payday his only release.

He’s far from unique; at least he has a mother who is trying to reach out and help him. But that sort of aimlessness and anger and despair is rife among young Irish men; it’s a crisis of masculinity. They are the gangs roaming and terrorising the badlands, cramming our jails, queuing outside the methadone clinics and lying on trolleys, drunk or strung out, stabbed or shot, in our A&E departments. They are the future absentee fathers of the next generation. The problems they cause to our society are enormous; the investment required to address their needs is not so much financial (even though euro for euro it would easily save money in the long run in terms of crime reduction and reduced prison population) but emotional. Attention, most of all, is needed: these men matter enormously. They need to know it. Good policing, good education and training, emotional literacy, prison reform; what’s needed is a thorough campaign of practical, psychological and emotional support.

We as a society need to care. More. And especially now. Their hurt is our hurt. Otherwise, what is society?

Jay Brannan’s first album “goddamned” is out this week, and is a must-download. He financed it himself – he is one of the growing number of singer/songwriters who are managing to start their careers with money earned from tracks released on iTunes and CDBaby and Napster, and whose reputation spread on MySpace, Facebook and, in particular, YouTube, where he has over 13,000 subscribers to his simple boy-sings-with-guitar-in-his-bathroom videos. While writing for the album, he kept his day job as a proofreader in New York, and saved the money to produce it himself, and pay for the promotional tour. (He’s playing 2nd September 2008 at Crawdaddy). He has not done a “record deal”, there are no executives in the music industry pulling his strings. He’s his own man.

Brannan first caught my eye playing the ethereal Ceth in the stunning 2006 indie film “Shortbus” (showing in Panti Bar, Wednesday October 22nd), by Hedwig’s creator John Cameron Mitchell, a film that is ostensibly about sex but reaches far deeper into the human heart than most; a provocative, moving and ultimately life-enhancing experience, in which Brannan sings his own song, “Soda Shop”.

In his wistful track “I Want to be a Housewife” he dreams ironically of a life washing dishes, scrubbing floors, with his mythical man outside in the yard, suburban-stylee, working on the car, and tending to the barbecue, while Jay is doing his laundry for him. (“What are boyfriends for?”) “Crazy about each other/ we both have fucked up pasts/ but when we are together/ we have a fucking blast”. “I want to be a housewife” he asks. “What’s so wrong with that?”

Sadly, plenty. The more “feminine” of us, (does that correlate to those of us who are looking for love?), who yearn for the easy naturalness of simply stepping over the line into predefined traditional gender roles, our “straight-acting” guy un-self-consciously doing “guy things” out in the world, yet at the same time loving us at home as if we were a precious and irreplaceable part of his life, don’t have it easy. To a large degree, this is something to do with how we men relate to the “inner feminine”, for want of a better phrase. (Yes, I do want a better phrase. Trying to discuss gender is loaded with pitfalls and distractions and prickly sensitivities – we have yet to establish a way of talking about gender that isn’t steeped in esoteric and/or potentially divisive value systems – ie Jungian archetypes, astrological symbols, queer theory, feminism, gender studies etc).

Of all the times I have heard men speak about love, I have yet to hear a gay man speak of his long-term male partner with the same tenderness and awe as I’ve heard heterosexual men talk about their wives or girlfriends, with my dear old Dad leading the way in my book. This isn’t homophobia – lesbians outdo men in their capacity to speak of love for the women in their lives. (By the way – I’d love to hear testaments to redress that imbalance from men-loving men). It’s a guy thing, it’s our emotional illiteracy, and those who love women tend to learn and develop that literacy the longer they are in relationship with them. Across the board, I believe that anyone who looks to women to form loving relationships with has it easier than those who look to men. That may seem an outrageous thing to say; I’d just point out that not every man unambiguously looks for relationship in the same way that women do, we are far more ambivalent about them than is good for us. This is what prevents me from easily slipping into being the token gay at a bitchfest with “other” single women, complaining bitterly that all men are bastards, that men are the root of all evil in the world, the whole controlling aloof commitment-phobic lot of them. They’re criticizing me. I’m criticizing me. I am betraying myself, my gender if I do so. I feel uneasy when I am in those sorts of conversations – I am not sure whether being a traitor to my gender is something of which I should be proud. Or am I betraying the woman in me? Damn. So much treachery, so little reward.

Brannan comes from a hellfire-and-brimstone fundamentalist family that doesn’t take kindly to his being queer, which can’t have helped. He says he has spent “so much time trying to be comfortable with being a feminine person, a feminine guy.” He could work on countering it, he says, get coached, in which case he “would probably get laid more. Sad, but true”. Is it any wonder that he says he has the “lowest self-esteem on the planet”?

He’s not the only one. Plenty of men struggle, right across the scale of orientation, with how to prioritize love over sex. With his references to leather, however, I would guess that Brannan has had enough of a taste of the sex-as-sport world to make the life of a housewife just that little bit less unambiguously attractive. If we fall for sexual players, we don’t settle down with the “nice” guys. Settling down with the sexual players may seem like a fantasy come true, having our beefcake and eating it, but those dogs don’t stay in the yard at night, and resent being tethered. And, usually, it’s women who get away with tethering, who know how to do it; once a man starts sounding like a scolding wife, he’s history.

There’s a real problem when it comes to how men express that soft side of them that needs/yearns/longs for love. Some gay men bury it, play the game just like the rest of the lads; some act it out literally, with drag-queen subpersonalities that are like alter-egos, singing torch songs of unrequited love; but there’s an edgy element of parody and misogyny that often distorts the impulse, mocks the tricks and traits of femininity without allowing the vulnerability and tenderness any room. And, as Panti has bemoaned in her one-woman show, trannie-lovers are a rare and curious breed, and not exactly given to settling down with a mortgage and 2.2 cats.

A queen may feel liberated getting in touch with her inner diva, feel more complete, get more attention and laughs, but it ain’t gonna bring her love. Indeed, in the increasingly sexualised “straight-acting” gay dating scene, such effeminacy is treated with suspicion and, at times, hostility, oddly reminiscent of the early homophobic bullying and teasing we received at school. It’s as if some gay men resent those who remind us of our own “inner feminine”, that which we’ve worked hard to suppress and cover up in adolescence, and work hard to be just as “straight-acting” as the lad next door, just as “normal” when we’re “grown up”. Because “real men” have all the sexual capital to spend.

Looking at the current cover of Gay Community News, in which seven well-known drag queens pose in their full glam splendour and proclaim: “Throw the Pride Bouquet, girls! We want gay marriage!” I am, perhaps mischievously, drawn to wonder how many of them actually have partners lined up to be their husbands.

Of course we deserve full equality and the right to marry – but perhaps it’s only when we do have that right will we men begin to honestly reflect on why it’s not quite as simple as the song says.

This beautifully written and thoroughly well-researched book is Beard’s searingly honest attempt to understand what his friend had gone through to arrive at this momentous and (to him at least) astonishing decision.

They agree to go walking across Wales together again a few months after Dru’s surgery. Along the way, Beard attempts to put the pieces together about Dru’s past life in the body of a boy and a man. This is no ghost-written autobiography, however; this book is as much about Beard himself as it is about Drusilla.

It is deliciously un-PC, unpreachy, refreshingly free of sentimentality, and, at times, drily comic. Beard’s admirable choice to be as forensically probing about his own feelings and thoughts as he demands of his subject, gives voice to what so many people think – but dare not say out loud – about transsexual people. Not the knee-jerk sensationalism of the tabloids, but the quiet internal gnawing anxiety that is an often authentic response to when our gender conditioning is challenged, because we know so little about transsexualism.

He admits, at the beginning, to wondering: ‘‘Is it catching?’’ He sets out to discover if Dru is real or if she’s some kind of trick or joke. What’s funnier than a bloke in a dress?

He speculates about all the possible motives that might make someone claim to be transsexual, which is, perhaps uniquely, a condition that requires self-diagnosis. ‘‘Isn’t changing sex, by definition, a superficial act?” he wonders.

Travelling with Dru, he admits to feelings of sourness, prickly suspicion, embarrassment, exasperation and, at times, fear of the way she looks. In a crowded pub along the way, he agonises; he wants her to pass, to fade away, to fade out, to be silent.

He realises his own sense of manhood hinges on what sort of woman he accompanies in public and is dismayed at what he learns about himself and about his own masculinity. He doesn’t want to be seen out with ‘‘that kind of woman’’.

He realises, endearingly, that he’s sexist.‘‘On a bad day’’, he writes, ‘‘transsexual women look so awful they’re embarrassing, if only they’d go away. On a good day, transsexual women look so convincing, they’re dangerous – they might trick us – if only they’d go away.” He makes the point that most autobiographies of transsexual people (transsexual is an adjective, Dru reminds him) are written by that peculiar species of human being, the writer, with that peculiar combination of narcissism and exhibitionism that sets us aside.

Those that catch the public eye, like Nadia in Big Brother, are driven by more than a need to change sex; they wish also to draw attention to themselves, a form of validation through celebrity; a dubious enterprise, to say the least, and one which distorts our understanding of the psychology of it all.

Beard’s search for a past life of tortured and suppressed effeminacy in his friend fails. He realises that there’s no major truth out there, no clearly defined three or four-act episodic structure upon which to hang a tale. There is no exotic revelation, no dramatic denouement; but in this tender biography, it would have been completely inappropriate.

There are too many jewels of insight along the way to dismiss this as an unexciting or mundane journey, however. Dru’s femininity, he concludes, is no more or less a mystery than anyone else’s.

This book’ s genius is to tackle the life of Drusilla Marland and give us a sense of her lived experience, her ordinariness as a woman, born in a particular time, under a particular set of circumstances, in a particular culture; he gently portrays her inconsistencies and foibles, her talents and weaknesses, her courage and nobility – in other words, her humanity.

But it is only achieved by Beard’s own willingness to deconstruct everything he knew about himself, as a man. Beard’s graceful admission of love and humility, at the end of this gentle tribute is touching and life-affirming. This book left me marvelling about human nature. There aren’t many of those kinds of books about.

Becoming Drusilla: One Life, Two Friends, Three Genders. By Richard Beard, Harvill Secker, €16.50

Dru Marland’s blog is here.

This review first appeared in the Sunday Business Post on 1st June 2008.

The couple, one of whom is Australian, were denied permission to leave Ireland and visit Australia, with a view to possibly relocating there, last year in a Supreme Court judgement. This provisional judgement, a 2-1 majority ruling, made no decision on whether the father had access or custody rights to the child, but merely that he had a right to apply for it, and that taking the child away from the jurisdiction would prejudice that right, and referred the central issue of custody/access back to the High Court. This is the result. His rights are no more or less than that of an unmarried father, ie with leave to apply for access or custody, meaning that it is up to the courts to decide the merits of his application, based on the needs of the child.

In Ireland, quality of parenting is taken into account in custody battles, and although there is a strong cultural bias in favour of mothers, a father can win if he can prove himself to have been a good parent. This seems eminently fair – although many fathers rightly complain about how they are discriminated against in the courts when it comes to their children, it has to be acknowledged that men do not rise to the challenges of being a parent as readily as women to, and they often have to be persuaded, reminded, cajoled, demanded and sometimes forced to play an equal role in the care of a child. It is rarely the reverse. So, I don’t think that there should be an automatic assumption that joint custody is best for children after the breakup of a relationship/marriage – each family has to be evaluated on a case by case basis.

In this unambiguous ruling, the judge decided that the welfare of the child was best served by staying with his mother and her lesbian partner. It is likely, however, that this judgement will itself be referred back to the Supreme Court on appeal. However, as a lay person, it is hard to see how such a crystal-clear ruling could be overturned, given as it dealt primarily with the best interests of the child, and the evidence in support of the lesbians seems incontrovertible.

This case has direct echoes for me, reminding me of the time I, too, planned to be a father. Unlike this case, where the father had agreed to be a sperm donor only, and to play the role of a “favourite uncle” to the child, I had planned with an Australian lesbian friend of mine to co-parent a child together, about ten years ago. We were both single at the time, both in our thirties, and both at college. After agreeing in principle, I then asked for a year to complete my studies, and we would then revisit the plans when I was earning properly again. We had talked of living in separate but adjacent flats, and we were full of high hopes, and were very close to each other. Then, during that year, I introduced her to someone, a friend of a friend, and they became lovers. They fast became extremely intimate and close, and of course the universal law of relationships clicked into play, that disregards sexual orientation completely: couples tend to socialise with other couples, and single friends get left behind. I became overworked and overstressed and suffered a major depression, and we inevitably drifted apart, but not with any bad feeling. I still was convinced our decision to start a family still stood, and when the year was up I was fully expecting us to go ahead. However, one morning I heard, via some office gossip, that the two of them were going to Australia, with the prospect of moving there.

That was the precise moment I knew the plans could never proceed, and I was not destined to be a father. Not because of the plans to move abroad, (after all there was nothing to stop me moving to Australia if I wanted to), but because there was no hope of my role as a father being respected, if such an important decision could not be discussed with me first. And so, very hurt, for the first and only time in my life, I ended a friendship, and it was as painful as any breakup with a boyfriend. We never spoke again. They are living in Australia now and are rearing a child, who must be about seven now.

In retrospect, I feel glad I learned about the relationship dynamics between the three of us before there was a child to contend with, for if I hadn’t, I could well have been taking them to court in a remarkably similar case. (Although the likelihood would be that I wouldn’t – families have to be based on love, and can’t be legally required to be held together.)My decision to take a year out before proceeding proved wise. I am of course sad that it didn’t happen, and yet I don’t think about it much now. I’m not one for regrets.

Non-sexual friendships can often be as intense as sexual relationships, often as intimate, often as destructive. The relationship between father and mother in the case currently in the headlines is described as “poisonous” and I can well understand it. Although I am sure it has been miserable for all concerned, and it may feel like no one has really won, the fact that this case has turned out the way it has has resulted in an enlightened step forward for Irish judicial sanity and common sense, and a maturing of the debate about gay relationships and parenting.

Mr Lenihan, over to you.