Also I've used the new audio gadget over at the dlist site. So if you need to fill up on queer culture history, do listen up to 3 songs I recorded at the first èver gay pride festival in Amsterdam, end of the seventies! It also has a Mel und Kim song that inspired me to dig in like there was no tomorrow when I was eating ass at the Berlin party described below (30-05).

I was surprised though when a decade later he was headline news as he was seriously applying to be admitted into the RK priesthood.
Of course there were objections: how could a publicly known homoseksual become a priest? Wel, very simply, according to Bodar: the church only sets one condition, celibacy, and he was pretty determined to hold to that; in fact: he'd taken his leave from his then lover at the moment he made the decision, however dramatic and true that was. And so all objections were shoved aside and he was indeed ordained.

In the book he argues that the church these days wisely refrains from interfering in scientific research, and so does not take a stand in the debate wheather being gay is a choice, mental desease or a natural condition that happens to some people all over the globe and nobody can do anything about it. He himself feels a lot for the Kinsey scale, where nobody is 100 % homo or hetero. En-passant he states that indeed it's the real macho-men who are least threatened by homosexuality that are able to relate easiest with gay men. I recognize that, and vividly remember how dedicated Ischa Meyer rehearsed in our studio with choreographer Hans van Manen in a very campy dance, dressed in a deux piece and high heels in the early eighties. To get back to his point: homosexually inclined guys should be just as acceptable as black or yellow priests.

What I find painful is that Bodar, to ligitimize himself for church authority, in fact accepts that homosexuality is a mistake. He does so convincingly, or, after reading you believe he means what he says, but that does not necessairily mean he convinced me. He tries to be fair and does not draw back from recognising that his previous loves were sincere and a thing of great value and beauty. He feels it was a thing that just 'happened to cross his path' because he was so late in discovering his true vocation. He was truly griefed when in his puberty he discovered his predisposition, something a lot of us will recognise, and even admits to a suicide attempt.

In return I must approach his view as open as I can: I am very willing to come up for my Roman Catholic upbringing at a great Jesuite college here in Delft. What I value most is that I was never pressured into anything, nor by school, nor parents. Also great is that this church accepts nobody is without sin and has, through the ages come up with some great routines to come clean. Officially that's the sacrament of Confession; unofficially another one of them is "dont ask dont tell". I enjoyed the church freedom of the sixties immensely and contrary to Bodar regret that since then the reigns have been pulled in tightly again. Indeed, his own continuation in the church became threatened by new church ruling 2 years ago, when as a result of the enormity of child abuse in northern America the Vatican declared: everybody who has the slightest feelings towards the same sexe is no longer acceptable in the clergy. Bodar, who already had said he would accept the ruling and would resign was again in luck: priests that had conquered their tendensies, and had distanced themselves for some considerable time, were excused.

Bodar really feels he's done with the subject of homosexuality, and only reluctantly will enter back in the discussion when his pastoral duties require it. Still he does so with wit: The argument that human anatomy makes physical contact of people of the same sex unnatural is just as ridiculous as declaring living where it's cold must be against the will of God. He urges us not to make such a fuzz, and does so sometimes in very funny lines and does not shy away from pretty campy language: "So what if one side declares that neurosis must be at the root of homosexuality and the other camp argues that it cannot be a neurological malfunction only. Like say, how come gay men always look younger? That cannot only be attributed to vanity, can it ? " With that line indeed he proves it must be something in the brain and at the same time places himself in the range of all those other great gay minds like Reve, Komrij, Wilde, Capote, Gore Vidal or Hermans, to end the list with another not tight-assed hetero.

However much I enjoyed his light witty touch, there remains a huge gap. I also oppose gay marriage, but not on the grounds that it is a sacrament, that must primairily remain dedicated to reproduction. For me the inherent vow of faithfulness and dedication to one single person, "till death do us part" is the problem. I, contrary to Bodar, did try relations with women, even with both a boy and girl, during the carefree seventies. In which I found that my true vocation was in worshipping the male, and could not be confined to just one. I feel it is very much thanks to the climate of personal integrity this same church helped create in past decades, that we now have a society that accepts my lifestyle and gives me the confidence to conclude that will also happen with new compatriots of different beliefs in the near future. But I also have to remain true to myself in critisizing that same church when it denies the usefulness of the condom, not only as a means to make Africa a better place to live, but also to prevent the environmental effects of uncontrolled expanding of the human species.

I just hope and , if allowed, pray, our social and cultural climate will evolve in such a way that Mr Bodar can again pick up the Q subject in a relaxed fashion when his pastoral dutries require it. His inside knowledge and solidarity with a minority group that is in dear need of an eloquent voice to plea for them is very much needed. I in turn will try not to offend others that hold traditional values dear, but also must sing along with the eighties tune of Mel & Kim: "Take or leave us, only please believe us: We ain't ever gonna be respectable"

Why the quote, you ask?
Because in 2 days I will be picking up two paintings from a guy who came to Holland, as he thought here he would find a tolerant climate for a homosexual artist who specialised in awakening sexuality in adolescent boys. Nothing illegal in that, I hear you say; not in this country. But this is not the country it was in the seventies. Neo religious morality has reared its ugly head and it is even more ugly within gay circles. The so called priviledged have done an exellent job at making this man's life miserable. I could name names but will not. Just imagine when an entire 10,000 strong yahoo gay art group turns on one person to clear their own petty conscience. It made me sick, and ashamed of my community. Luckily the db foundation now is able to aquire some of his work and do a bit about re establishing an enormous talent.

I'm sooo happy to have an original Bernard at my desk to remind me of the sweetness of semen.
of course all his work are in the delftboys masterclass.

It lies in the middle of an urban renewal area behind Ostbahnhof, derilict, muddy, where some buildings were just too solid classical Prussian built to tear down; some now hold new branches of german superstores, others are under reconstruction as elite housing complexes. Amidst all this stands a huge brownstone building with the allure of Hitler's former Reichskanzlei. Through the huge vertical windows one sees blue and magenta moving lightrays and the unmistakable bass pumping of a killer soundsystem leaks through. a makeshift parking area where concrete and steel slabs cover the muddy underground to accomodate a rotonda of dozens of taxis, that patiently wait turn to unload the thousands of clubbers, opens to a temporary path, 200 meters, well lit, on both sides construction fencing to prevent the waiting masses from exploring other buildingprojects, or pissing all over the place.

Of course I could bypass this line: The Lab has a separate entry, at the left, where the sex elite is welcomed and shown the changing area. I already went on a friday, just to make sure I could find my way for the main event: scatsaturday. First I warmed up at Club Culture Houze, in Kreuzberg, which is smaller, and opens at 21 hours. It is an old favorite, where I was quite a few times before, but it continually improves its interior, so that it now really feels like you are in a 1001 night arabian fantasyland. Lots of canopies, baldaquins, monsters, skeletons, caves, jailbars, plates of fresh fruits, luxurious beds, slings, and the like. This is what the Wasdag could look like if it could be operated on a continuous basis. The lab has to be entered before midnight, when the front door closes, a minute late and Snowwhite can just go elsewhere to show off her glass mules. I found it in time, and was let in for the Rubber night.

now let me first mention: the next few entries may be seriously influenced by "Senseless", the book by Paul Golding, that I am currently reading and is the ultimate in perfidious, nasty camp queer trashing I've ever come across; all in all: a gorgeous read!

As I now consider myself a member of the honorary international league of the ultimate perverts I cannot but look with disdain to the "rubber" crowd. And here I do not mean the industrial section, that tends to go around in Waders, heavy duty sewer resistant overalls, gasmasks, tubes and funnels. No, I was talking about the shining variety, who've invested fortunes in the ultra thin black designerwear that does show every bodypart hidden within in a most pronounced and favorable fashion, especially when it has been treated to an aerosol-shine. These are the guys that radiate: "look how gorgeous I am", and do not try to unpack me, for it took me ages to get into this, besides, your sticky fingers might tear the vulnerable fabric. Back OFF!
Now when I have a dick stuffed in my throat, to consume some of the alcohol saturated bladder content, I expect it to smell like a dick: at least one week's smegma gathered beneath the foreskin, the aroma of sweat, dried up cum and piss lingering between the ballsack skin folds, or better still, the smell of braketrails, not confined to the hole area, but spread all over, as if the thing had been worn backside front. This is what I've learned to love, admire, and hold dear, especially when it's just been unearthed from such a confining and sealing space as a rubberjock. It's what I consider the ultimate of queer haute cuisine! But it was not to be this fridaynight: The style queen 's penis smelled like . . . apple shampoo: Shock HORROR! Yep, I also have a bottle of the stuff in my shower: The 2 ltr. discount bottle of green jello just never seems to empty, but even I have come to like the extreme over-the-top artificial aroma that is just dying to get out of that bottle, that is, the two or three times a year that I still use the shower; I mostly make do with the chlorine cover I get from a visit to the local swimmingpool twice a week. So when I recognised the odor, I let the dick slip from my mouth, levered my legs so that my face slid up along the shiny body as if in an elevator crawling along the atrium of a huge hotel, until it faced the eyes of the outfit's owner and with a smile of discovery said: "apple shampoo?" No reaction; just a slight clinching of the jaw, then the sound of zipping up . . . oops, be carefull ! oh well, it's flaccid now. And gone was the face. And so was I: this definitely was not my night. Bsides, I had to save energy, and semen for the saturday.

On to the ultimate night; not only did I meet a lot of old friends, like Brian, my London guide to perversion and actor in the vid I shot at home, Henrik, the promotor of Copenhagen's SLM scat-events who was filmed extensively last year (see www.euromess.eu) or Jan, in whose dungeon I filmed 2 years ago, or André, whose face I had to edit out of that same video, becoz he was not ready to come out at that time as a shitperv, but who publicised his shitface all over scatboi just 2 monts later, and so many more; it felt like a warm bath, and what better place to experience it could I desire. So many details proved to be just fantastik: The taps n tubes and meters set to the wall around the bar, just like in the old venue, the fat tubes sticking out of the bar that served as barstools, the gorgous barstaff, undressed to the occasion;

and then, I'm just dying to tell you the most spectacular area: where the floor consisted of a anodised-iron mesh, where the older perves, not afraid of some S&M, nor having a grid of 2cm square quadrants pressed into their backsides for at least the next 2 months, had laid their body to receive all the shit and piss they were granted. This floor, of course, was also the ceiling of the busiest playground, where the masses were sprayed by a continuous shower of bodyfluids and solids. It is here that I spent most of my time endulging in a newly aquired preference: pissing up guys asses. Or getting pissed up one's own. There is nothing like the warmth that fills your bowels when a good barload gets deposited there. Besides: it helps to loosen up all the digested produce still remaining, so that your hole keeps leaking for quite some time.
Boy, did I enjoy myself. I could go on here for hours, but I have to prepare for next wasdag. Just one more thing, the killer soundsystem: that has it kept my left ear still whistling this tuesday afternoon. They not only played your usual trancy or ambient fuck music we've come to expect in places like this, but also the best anthem for a night like this by eighties UK heroes Mel & Kim. Don't forget to switch off Bowie first, if you dont want a kaka phony

The image shows the gay mayor of Berlin, Klaus Wowereit, welcoming everybody to CSD (gay pride), their new Hauptbahnhof and the football worldcup.

And so our current minister of immigration , who feels she has to stay "hardliner" even if it kills her, has decided to throw an MP of her own party out of the country.

Returning your passport is not an option we have: Nobody can afford to be stateless. But nevertheless I'm ashamed to be Dutch today. So hopefully the emergency debate in parliament demanded by Femke Halsema will bring down the governement tomorrow, together with the thinking sections of SP, Labour, Greens, some christians . . .
I have very little hope there . . .

There have been publications in some dutch media over the past years about unearthing corpses below medeaval churches and attempts to derive dna from them and find out if they possibly died of the plague, and if there is a possibility that people who survived the plague developped a kind of resistance that could also give them resistance to HIV. Up to now I've always held these stories to belong in the kind of theories that rank in the Da Vinci Code catagory. Untill in the recent newsletter sort of linked these stories with preliminary reseach results:
In the report there is this line: "In 1997 it was discovered that independent of viral load, number of CD4 cells, T-cel function and HIV fenotype, the deletion of the CCR5 gen seemed to slow the progression of the desease". My looking into what this gen was gave the following wikipedia result: People of whom the CCR5 gen has been mutated in the version called delta 32 seem to be resistant to the HIV virus. This same mutation may have made their ancestors survive the pest. They also mention that this does not seem to work in mice and rats with the mutation. They still die of the pest, so there might be another illness that has helped to maintain this mutation in humans for centuries and that it might be smallpocks. The gen mutation is passed on as any other hereditory marker, so some people have it only from their father or mother and thus seem to be half immune, some have it from both parents and are fully immune. Further there is a racial factor: 10% of whites seem to be half immune and 1 % fully, while this immunity is absent in africans and asians.
It is further noted that only 33 % of the guys who have had lots and lots of high risk contacts seem to remain negative , so there are other factors and other HIV strands then the predominent one may show other results.
Nevertheless,
I did have unprotected sex in the late seventies and early eighties. Also in the USA and Canada I was at most of the locations of the infamous patient zero in the period described in the movie, and most of the friends I was with then have contracted the virus and have died. Also others I lived with during the early eighties have since died.
Obviously this an ongoing research area. But I would not be surprised if this suspicion I have had for quite some years, but never gone public about it because it felt like "tempting the gods", may hold some truth. All in all, I only want to say that the stories I originally dismissed as summer tales for tabloids, I now find back is holding some truth in official and scientifiucally backed publications. Just hope we get some more sound results from the ongoing reseach soon.

I'm not saying I can draw conclusions from this reporting: I'm not a medical scientist, but still, the continuing negative results from my ongoing HIV tests cannot seriously be contributed to "good luck" only: I did get infected with LGV, something which almost (but not 100%) is confined to the seropositive population, but still did not contract the HIV virus, sofar. Is it possible that I belong to the small group with the altered CCR5 gen?

International Meta-Analysis of HIV Host Genetics.
Effects of CCR5-Delta32 and CCR2-64I alleles on HIV-1 disease progression: the protection varies with duration of infection. AIDS. 2003 Feb 14; Mulherin SA, O'Brien TR, Ioannidis JP, Goedert JJ, Buchbinder SP, Coutinho RA, Jamieson BD, Meyer L, Michael NL, Pantaleo G, Rizzardi GP, Schuitemaker H, Sheppard HW, Theodorou ID, Vlahov D, Rosenberg PS;

Funny that after writing my bit about Stephan S two days ago, I just read more of the same in the log of BlaB:
This derailing of the gay movement resulted in the disastrous neglect of aesthetics and style, which had always been the great strengths of homosexual culture. AIDS also reduced the gay political agenda to doctrinaire sloganeering and politically correct rhetoric which resulted in an anti-intellectual, anti-dialectical ontology, also catastrophic considering that ambivalence and paradox had heretofore been one of our most effective strategies. Add to this that, as Fran Leibowitz has pointed out, AIDS killed all the cool people, and it was clear that the gay movement was a sinking ship that us rat finks had to abandon fast.
At this historic moment there was also a stratification of the sexes in the gay scene, and as my closest friends had always been female, I was loathe to betray them. As Don Knotts redux, a weak and flimsy daffodil, and with my unique style, it was virtually all but impossible for me to get laid in the gay scene anyway, so why stick around. But what was the alternative? Bored with academia, I started to hang out in the punk scene, which seemed to be characterized by individual style, radical politics, and anarchic behaviour - the very tenets of homosexual radicalism that had been lost. Punk not only looked fresh and cool, but politically it was also attempting to rethink how to organize society, to decentralize power and to fight corporitization.

So it came to pass that we went oppisite routes when the group dissolved. He chose the neoromantic moralistic, socially and legally controlled lifestyle routes that got popular in the Thatcher era, while I, child of the anarchy years and suspicious about all moral control, also having taken my leave from monogamous relationships before and during the Softies years could never return back to that path. I found my stability in living and working with solid friends, but my emotional life was a continuation of the Softies credo, that is reflected in this weblog's title, main themes and subheaders. That is also the reason I still feel a lot of irritation when I read Stephan's output. It started with his book about our mutual lover M. but goes on in almost every publication that touches upon gay culture or lifestyle. In my opinion he's just too sure and outspoken about rejecting the good old party circuit, that, granted, is in decline at some places, but still dear to me. And for the close observer there is not that much decline either; it's only so with the loudmouths who claim to be our political voice, the COC nerds, that rather hold on to their last dime in governement subsidised salaries instead of catering for the people they claim to represent, and the bar circuit of Halvemaansteeg and Regulierdwars that has been in an identity crisis by definition, remaining permanently on the lookout for directions in the shallowest fashion crazes.

That is why I've always looked with skepticism at the way the gay "officials" had such clear guidelines when it comes to how we should live and have sex; the way they proclaimed condoms as the only moral and absolute truth. The rise of HIV infections with 20% last year here and over 30% in Berlin proves their bankruptcy. The COC should have remained loyal to the party crowd and continue hosting their leather and XXX sportswear events, instead of sending them home to their private barebackparties. A clean conscience but a backrupt organisation? Pathetic!

I have done without fucking altogether from the early eighties untill late nineties because I just could not deal with condoms, I'd dropped the habit altogether. But in recent years, now the risk has subsided somewhat, and I got in touch with a younger generation that had the old fuck-the-system attitude, I still felt close to, I've been pulled back to the old habit, drawing on old experiences, and being aware that these are the last years that I will be able to enjoy this great artform, love it more then èver before. I must add here that I maintain some sense of responsibility, fear too, sometimes. I will not be drawn into the breeders crowd and do an hiv check twice a year, to make sure that even if the virus catches up with me, I keep chances of passing it on minimal. So I'm still on the lookout for hopefull exponents of rejuvenation of that old "rooie flikkers" credo of perpetual search for the ultimate queer experience.

There's plenty of evidence that our extreme culture is alive and kicking: Amongst allies working towards a rejuvenated culture I consider Axel, art director of Instigator; Michael, manager of Berghain Berlin, aka Lab-oratory or Snax, or the biggest ongoing sex-dance experiment in the world; or Daniel Nardiccio, who revitalises queer and transgender pop music and theater, radio and dance culture, all in one go, or Rick Castro who I quote here: My documentation is a time capsule: The early 80s started off with the leftover freedoms and hedonism of the 70s, then plunged into the darkness and fear that accompanied AIDS. Sex was once again demonized, as it had previously been in the Victorian era and the 50s. ... As fear of sex and the religious right gained even more power, the undercover police constantly patrolled the streets. At the same time drugs (crack, 'Tina') became harasher as the unstable economy created desperation on the street. Then the Internet came along with a network of online brothels and eventually wiped out the street scene entirely. His photowork does not give directions towards a future, but it shows a lot of ultra young guys, who are not afraid to separate from the moral majority and go for extreme choices in fashion, art, sex, living, dying.
Lastly there is BUTT, that also must be quoted here again for samples of great optimism, that really make me smile:
from an interview with Bjarne Melgaard: Blood turns me on, wanking my cock in it, especially if the cuts are very deep and bleed for a long time, then it gets much thicker and feels a bit like cum. I get turned on by drinking infected blood. The idea of danger is very appealing. Being negative, as of my last test 2 months ago, the representation of death is important as a sexual reference. There is this great book, 'Is the rectum a grave', by Leo Bersani, articulating the connection between homosexuality and death.

All this just lept out of my keyboard after reading Stephan's review of Paul Goldings senseless in Vrij Nederland of april 15th. Stephan has sided with those opinion leaders I call the evaders: Tony Blair, Wouter Bos, Frank van Dalen. I feel much more at home with honest traitors like Rita Verdonk, I'm afraid. I profoundly disagree with his final line; au contraire: the history we've been part of has not been and cannot be concluded as long as we're still alive.

Have just ordered a new photocam. So will probably be showing a lot more pix of my own in future; to start off I'm thinking of ultra annoying traffic situations close to home. I've tried to get local authorities to do something about 'm, but they seem to prefer deadly accidents first. Luckily there are allies out there, like Hans Monderman; two links.

Just hope it will arrive before I leave for Berlin. You may guess what I'll be doing there.

queens day, adult education*), the generation game, hypocricy
*) © Hall & Oats

I almost feel ashamed to admit here that I don’t pay for sex that much lately. There is so much available for free that I just don’t have the time to look for the escort version, even at my current age (over 50). But my rare experiences with payed sex are all exellent. Both the giving and taking version (money that is).

Let me just limit this entry to my first experience, in the seventies: I still was a student, working for the city of Rotterdam’s architecture and planning department, and had to attend housing devellopment meetings with both old and new residents of the city renovaition quarters. These meetings went on for ever and ever, pretty sleep inducing, and were the main reason I never graduated but decided to find a future in theater, where the options to follow your fantasies were so much richer. After these boring meetings I rushed to the railwaystation, where I could be sure to just see my train departing as I reached the platform breathless and sweating to my toes. No, I did not have a motorbike yet in those days; I had not realised the gay bikers had an extremely erotic culture of their own, yet. Nor did we have “randstadrail”, the service that connects the cities in the most densely populated area here now. But I’m drifting off.

Waiting another 45 minutes on a deserted station, where all kiosks had closed hours earlier, I soon found there was just one area were trade was to be found at that hour: the small parking lot at the west side. (don’t go looking guys, it’s all gone these days, Rotterdam is a clean (?) city). I positioned myself between the lampposts and the guys loitering around there, and soon found a nice way to top off my student allowance tax free, by getting into the cars that were casually coming around the corner to see what whas on offer. I never missed a train with it; it all went amazingly fast: Somehow I was extra hot because I was a student and not a junky, but probably all junks also posed as students, and who could blame them.
The only bad vibes sometimes came from other guys, that tried to scare me off because I was occupying their (?) patch. When one guy there had the good sense to find out if I was trade or punter, I bluffed I was both. Good! he said, can I escort you home? I explained I did not live in Rotterdam, and was waiting to take the train. No problem, he said. OK, then, but do you realise you will not make the last train back? No problem, was the answer again. So yep, I was cornered and accepted: we went to my place for a whole nights session. On the platform I made a last attempt to lose him: I’m just a student, cannot pay you much. Boldly he said fifty guilders will do. That was a great way of clearing the air and easing me with the situation.
At home I felt really relaxed and good about having crossed this hurdle. I realised I could just ask this guy whatever I felt like doing, and after some of his encouragement, I did indeed take a giant leap: Can I drink your piss? Sure ! WOW, that was one giant leak for mankind . . . eh me! It would certainly have taken me another decade to get me to experience and recognise my kinks within the social circles I revolved in then. That step taken, with a large portion of the night still remaining, I charged on: can I lick your asshole? (Honestly, I did not know the word rimming then). Yep, sure, he answered. As I went on my exploration tour and made sounds that couldn’t possibly be interpreted as repulsive. He sighed with relief: Wow! he said. He thought he’d chase me away for sure, because is hole was anything but clean. The relaxed atmosphere and the fact that I was in charge (while if I think it through in retrospect, he was) made me reply: I don’t think I want it any other way; this is so much better then the smell of shampoo.

And so, in one night I leaped at least 20 years in recognising my sexual preferences. And you can read how much it saved me in psychotherapy fees (not cheap) in "autobiography of a babyboomer" by Pim Fortuyn (page # 253 Dutch hardback edition of 2002) , not the stupidest dutchman (voted most important guy in our countries history last year, even surpassing William of Orange, founding father, and in the best of Dutch traditions, pretty tolerant too)

The next morning I brought him back to the station, payed him the train fare plus double what he asked previously and said the experience was worth even more to me. Sadly I never found him back at the station.

Reading back a bit here, and also reviewing my conduct over the past moths I must say I start to look so much like a grumpy old man that the muppets would gladly welcome to their balcony. Even if there is a lot of causes to justify my attitude (read the editorial by Durk on the current TOF dispatch), they hardly serve any constructive purpose. So next months I will hopefully only pass on solutions to get the youthful revolutionary queer culture flourishing again: it's spring, budding men season, so let's sprout!

Great thing of this movie is that it already in 1996 painted a picture of how easy it is to radicalise when true feelings are not understood and a queer muslim guy gets treated without love and respect from both directions. We've seen this prophecy come true in French and Dutch youth over the past years. The gay community has very little creditworthyness when it comes to tolerance, and is much more narrowly class devided now then in the revolutionary seventies. I can only take my hat off for this movie and the even more visionary Gerard Reve.

Weird thing is that as in the film nobody understands what the fuzz is about, so it was exactly at the dwh, after the film, chitterchatter was going on as usual about cars and holiday destinations, while I was still drowning in undecidedness about the betrayal of our foreign friend who'd robbed the liquor cabinet of the center just a week ago (read 29-03), and whether or not I should travel to Machelen, to attend Reve's burial ceremonies, because our main tv stations have all decided they will not broadcast it. While last year they broke all time viewing records at the departure of our national crooner André Hazes. so I cannot but quote from an "Eindhovens dagblad" article here:

Prophetic and provocative writer of the people
Monday, april 10 2006
It took ages before Reve's true convictions were fully understood. The climate in our country was not ready for it in the days before Fortuyn. At best, his humor was understood, but nobody grasped it was rooted in deep sentiments that went way beyond funny or devoted. Only in retrospect, (which always justifies almost everything) we all now catch the drift of the last lines: 'Het is gezien, het is niet onopgemerkt gebleven.' (It has been seen, it has been noticed). What is meant here is nothing less then the loving glance of a god who encompasses everything.

The special and according to me admirable thing is that Reve never took that god to be the one of sweet schoolbook imagery or naive talk of church fathers, but found his own imagery and language, in a way Nederland had never seen or heard. Renowned he became by the imagery of God as an ass with which he copulates. It got him in the courtroom, charged with blasfemy, and only at the supreme court he was aquitted. The affair was a blessing in disguise though. Not only his star rose, it also inspired him to speak out about religion and sex once and for all. He did that in a plee sounding as a credo. Reve's god loves, hurts, and must be comforted through our most intimate and precious property: sexuality. That sex is directed to one of the most innocent and stupidly stubborn beings of our creation, no coincidence it was also strongly linked to the final days in the life of Jesus Christ. Master, slave, brother, butchered, resurrected: god.

After the donkey trial Reve again enraged "intellectual" Holland with his quasi-ironic tirade directed at our coloured citizens. However unpleasant, they're most certainly indicative for the radical way in which he always defended spiriual autonomy against annexation in "the left church". Reve quickly made it clear that he had not outed himself as a homo to be elected spearhead of an emancipation movement. Just as little as he intended to join the ranks of the revolutionairies of the sixties. He much rather remained on the cutting edge by violating the taboo of racism. In a very early stage Reve had aired his doubts about this in letters to fellow writer Simon Carmiggelt, that serve as intermezzo for the long and heated bedstory starting in "the language of Love" and continued in "sweet boys". Reve had halted his story, because he arrived at a point where he has not found the courage to go on. Where he wants to go is in said letter: "I'm afraid of a drift through my work, as the hero of my story has homo-sadistic feelings towards blacks. That is not done! In a crime story one can murder and torture to your heart's delight; revolutionairy movements have, as far as murder is concerned, always approved, even hostages and children could be sacrificed for the cause. blessed by Vrij Nederland, Volkskrant, Groene, etc. But my hero is very much mistaken thinking he can do the same".

One is tempted, although he does not exactly say so, to attribute Reve's intention as a way to recognise and confirm evil and possibly eradicate it. Reve was always at his best when he kept things domestic, earthly in the most litteral way, always happy to show God's majesty in a junk yard filled with old bicycle tyres, always on the lookout for demonic temptation of banality. With that he is at a very lonely level in our post war litterature. Not because other writers had no attention for everyday reality, au contraire, they'd stared themselves blind on it. But with the symbol fetishist Reve everyting became image, mirror or equivalent of the unknown in an as yet obscure reasoning.

Further I see all kinds of memorial forum-sites about Reve soiled by nitwits who want to make him out as a child molester. I want to maintain, that he, nor his partner, ever harmed any child. Luckily the VPRO feels the same, and they have re-published his 4 shitty little fairytales (sorry, in Dutch) he told on tv to an audience of 8 to 12 year old kids, who all reacted in a very sweet and funny way. It was hardly noticed back then . Only these days, with its neo religious repression getting an ever stronger foot between our doors, do people find it offensive.

NO, I will not hear of bad influence of Mr. Reve on innocent youths: I just re-read the lengthy comforting and handwritten letter he took the time to write to my house-mate Erwin, when he was in youthfull dispair about being homosexual. With great patience he explained how things could look a lot different and brighter in a few years time. He very much took responsibility for being a role model at a time when hardly anybody dared to be public about "such disgusting preferences"