Showing posts with label Joe Orton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Joe Orton. Show all posts

Friday 24 May 2024

1967. The Operative Word.

  We met in the park

It was one of those nights

The small building was more than

quaintly ornamental

I am a bird

he said

and

I am bait  

how

dutifully I answered

  And the operative word?

Jail

we said together

Then I read him

his rights

I was in blue

and he wore leather

                                                                                                                      Catherine Eisner


Cottage (British slang). A public lavatory when 
regarded as a meeting place for homosexual men.
Cottaging. The practice of anonymous sexual
relations between men in a public lavatory.
(The term arises from public conveniences often
resembling faux-rustic structures created for formal
ornamental gardens of stately homes in the imperial period.)

See also: 
1993 Soho Gay Slayer: Colin Ireland and Art’s Sadomasochistic Cabal.


See also:
1940 when the blackout of WW2 closed the park gates on a requiem for lost innocence . . .
Here, for example, is a Park
clearly intended for the dark.