Now it’s all I can say that I did have a merry Christmas and a happy New Year but really missed being able be merry and gay.
Don’t get me wrong. I am not gay and I am not gay bashing. However, to use that word to express anything about enjoying myself would lead most people, especially Dick Hoad, to declare something like: “I know he did so ever since.”
My problem about not being able to use a genuine English word like gay to express how I enjoyed the season is frustrating if you take into account that its synonyms include words that are very descriptive of how I like to feel, words like energetic, lively, perky, spirited, and zippy.
Again, don’t get me wrong. I have nothing against people being gay in the modern sense of the word. Unlike religious and other persons, I believe that most people who are that way inclined were born that way. I truly believe that for the majority it’s not an acquired habit, like being a smoker, an alcoholic or a paro, but a genetic quirk over which they had and have no control.
However, I do have a problem opening the eyes of my imagination to two hard-back men doing their happy and gay thing. Conversely, the eyes of my imagination pop wide open at the thought of too (yes too) sexy women.
Back in the day
So, I don’t like being no longer able to be happy and gay myself like how it used to be back in the day when at Christmas we all sang “don we now our gay apparel” with no suggestion about cross-dressing.
It goes all the way back to when I was in primary school at St Mary’s in Bridgetown and later Selah in St Lucy. Among the many English folk songs with which our tender minds were fed was one about a man named John Peel and a line which went, ‘D’ye ken (do you know) John Peel with his coat so gay?’. Can you imagine primary school children today singing that song?
But it didn’t stop there because I was in secondary school when a group called the Platters exploded onto the international music scene and the whole world knew and was singing every word of one of their first and perhaps biggest hits, The Great Pretender. And there was absolutely nothing wrong singing the line “I’m the greater pretender, just laughing and gay like a clown”.
Today that, too, is no-no just as we no longer “don our gay apparel” which, when that Christmas melody was written long, long ago, meant putting on festive, colourful or bright clothing. In other words, dressing like all those people who paraded in Queen’s Park on Christmas morning and the thousands of us who congested every Old Year’s Night party. We were all very gay.
By the way, back in the 19th century, a gay woman was really a prostitute, while, ironically, a gay man was one who slept with a lot of women.
Happy New Year to you too and continue, if you dare, to have a gay old time.
• Al Gilkes heads a public relations firm. Email algilkes@gmail.com