By dating, I mean meeting interesting men for a pint, with no strings attached, and going home alone, saying in parting that you’d like to see them again for a movie or something the following week. You know. What most human beans do. It keeps things light and entertaining and no-one gets hurt; and if it gets serious eventually, then there’s a better chance that it might work because you already have some idea about how you relate in social mode on neutral territory. You have tasted the flavour of time in this person’s company. Each person’s is different.

I was going out with someone for a couple of months there, but it didn’t work out. That’s a bit coy, I realise, but I’m not going to kiss and tell. But while I was going out with him, it felt very relaxing to escape the hamsterwheel of my sexual nature as a single gay man.

The nice thing to report is that instead of going crazy since breaking up, I’ve been bizarrely sane. I’ve dated a couple of guys, and that’s been it. A reformed man, I am. Civilized, urbane, witty, you could bring me anywhere and I’d not look out of place.

Something has been getting on my nerves, though. When I confess that I was the one who broke it off with your man, two things happen. One is that no matter how I try to explain it to my friends, I get overly defensive. The second thing is that a split-second image of Ally McBeal being literally dumped into a tip appears in my head. It’s the image that she sees (and we see) whenever a man dumps her.

I can’t get that irritating silly woman out of my brain. I know it’s only a TV comedy, I know I’m not supposed to take comedy characters seriously. But she’s such an airhead, it drives me nuts. The fact that the series is written and produced by a man had me convinced for a while that she was the creation of some misogynistic queen writing autobiographically about Unrequited Love For A Straight Man. (For those readers who have not caught up with “America’s hottest show”, Ally McBeal is a lawyer working in the same office as the man of her dreams, with whom she used to be in love until he dumped her, presumably because she’s so thick. Each week we see how much she’s still in love with this wimp, and how much she’s in denial about it.)

human misery

However, my usually reliable gaydar is not functioning properly; I see the show’s writer happens to be married to Michelle Pfeiffer. How wrong can you get. But then, who’s to say; maybe Pfeiffer is an airhead when she doesn’t have a script; maybe this man’s world is like that. Maybe the world is like that. Perhaps we’re all in denial about what we should be doing with our lives, and there’s an audience watching us somewhere throwing things at the screen, screaming, “Do it, you moron”.

Ah, TV culture. Sometimes I spend a lot of time watching it; and then I can go for months without really bothering. I always try and catch what is supposed to be the “hottest” thing because it’s fascinating to see what values and personalities are in fashion. It says a lot about our society. Sometimes, though, you wish it would go unsaid.

Take The Jerry Springer Show. As long as it entertains, an item of human misery and/or oddness is worthy of inclusion. I watched a few men being publicly dumped by their wives the other night; each thought that he was being brought on for a pleasant surprise. The twist was that the women were leaving their husbands for other women; that alone was reason enough, apparently, to put these men through the most public humiliation I have seen in a long time. Not since one Friday night in a leather bar in East London, but that’s a different story.

The cuckolds put on brave faces, and none resorted to violence, though their hearts were breaking. One man even had his wife complain bitterly that his cock was too big, and that it had hurt her every time they made love in their marriage. He was flabbergasted, dismayed, shocked, embarrassed. The audience bayed with laughter as his erstwhile partner suggested that he cut two inches off of it. These men watched as their beloveds started cavorting around onstage with their new lovers in front of them.

One man, the only one with children, vowed passionately to keep their children away from her, and I couldn’t blame him. The queer party line is that no parent should have their children taken away from them just because they’re gay or lesbian. But after watching that display of emotional cruelty, I would worry about children brought up to follow an example of a lying, cheating mother who gets off on boasting about it on international television.

The scorn that these women were pouring on their husbands was shocking to behold; all the more so because there was no evidence from any of them that the men were guilty of anything other than having been suspicious of them. The fact that they were entirely justified seemed to be unimportant. This was a ritualised Coming Out, but it was a process based on hate, not love. The part of me that feels a link with others who are lesbian and gay, who have shared the experience of coming out, is embarrassed.

What is disturbing is that I can’t get away with saying that it reflects on American culture only. The other night The Jerry Springer Show was on three different channels on cable TV in London; I’m sure it’s no different elsewhere in these islands.

I’m trying to find a positive thing to say about this nightly Theatre of Abuse and Degradation. The only thing I can think of is that we have all known that life is stranger than fiction; perhaps this is the first time that a pungent degree of strangeness is being publicly acknowledged, almost celebrated. But the contrast between sanitised, romanticised Hollywood, and this world of barely coherent, mean-spirited, exhibitionistic, passionate and amoral people could not be more stark.

Perhaps if our art, our culture, drifts away from reality then people go to the other extreme to compensate. A diet of saccharine-sweet happy endings for the Beautiful People can only result in misery for real people, those of us who stare boggle-eyed at flickering screens at 3am, avoiding the reality of a cold, empty bed.