A Very Gentle Ribbing in The Black Prince

I was a little early for an appointment to meet a friend in Vauxhall, so I called in to The Black Prince for a few pints and to while away an hour. As I stood at the bar a  dapper gent in his late-fifties, to my right, was engaged in conversation with the young Italian barmaid. He was half-cut, but still quite lucid,
  "So there were only four or five books that you wanted? Out of the hundred I showed you?"
  "Yes, I think that's enough, you know?"
  "Oh, alright, but I really don't think you will like that last one on your list."
  "Why not?"
  "Well, Phillip Roth is a very good writer, but that one is about a young man ... and masturbation!" I realised that he was talking about Roth's terrific Jewish guilt novel, 'Portnoy's Complaint'.
   "You surely wouldn't want to read about that, would you?"
The girl shrugged and said she thought it sounded interesting. I turned to the man and said,
   "Phillip Roth is a very good writer, isn't he?"
   "Oh yes, but I have never read 'Portnoy'. I bought it when I was about sixteen, but never read it."
   "Well, at that age, you didn't need to", I ventured, with a smile.
   "That's right", he said, laughing, "You don't need a fucking owner's instruction manual by that age, do you?"
   I sat down and we entered into conversation, which amongst other things covered my recent permanent defection from Australia. He asked why I would do such a thing and I went through my raison d'etre, including the dire political situation and the increasing racism. And the homophobia I and my fellow queers had all felt and experienced there in the past few years. Now realising that I was gay, the man said,
   "Well, of course, Vauxhall is quite famous as an area for gay people. There are a number of venues around here if that is your situation". He then asked me if I liked football, at all?
   "I don't mean that ridiculous Aussie Rules palaver, where it's just running about carrying the ball wherever you like and falling in the mud and pushing people in the back and punching people in the head and wearing skin-tight shorts and all of that." He had clearly meant this as part of a good-natured ribbing, but as I have never seen a match in my life and know absolutely nothing about the rules of the game, it was rather lost on me. I smiled and explained that I wasn't at all interested in any sport, but that I have a faint aesthetic interest in soccer, only because it is quite beautiful to watch. In my reply I must have automatically engaged in my habitual operatic explanatory hand movements (which I really must learn to contain, if not eliminate from my social repertoire). He made an exaggerated double-take and said,
   "Well, as I said before, I didn't take you as a gay man at first... but those hands really gave it away... That was fucking terrifying!" We both laughed. I bought him another whisky.
I passed the hour very pleasantly with this friendly, kind-hearted, erudite old boozer. When I rose to leave he turned to me and said,
   "Well, you said that homophobia is perhaps on the rise in Australia... Here, it's not an issue... It really isn't... And any joking is usually done with love... I hope you took it as such, just now?" I shook his hand warmly. What a dear old darling.






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