The War Years (Charlotte Street )
Most of the models I knew I had met very casually while we stood in some canteen. . . There was one whom I met by formal introduction.
When the class was over he suggested that we should visit one or two of the cafes which he frequented in Charlotte Street. If it had not been for this casual invitation a whole world might for ever have remained closed to me. . . no one who had not a pathfinder's badge could have reached them. . . once I had been introduced by an habitué and found that my appearance was acceptable there, my whole social life changed.
Until now my evening had been spent lying down or writing to my mother or mending my socks or having a good cry. Suddenly all these activities, which I had regarded as mildly pleasant before, were brutally squeezed into hidden corners of my leisure so that I could devote two or three nights a week to sitting in one or other of the cafes in Charlotte Street.
This occupation represented far more than a change of pastime; it marked the discovery of a new self. To my public face I now began to construct a public character. I moved from concentrating on individuals to dealing with crowds. . . In my youth my object had been to reform. I now wanted to entertain. I was moving among people to whom my homosexuality was of no consequence whatsoever. I began a whirlwind courtship of an entire district.
There was a marvelous generosity about the way the restaurants were run. The helpings were large, even discounting the portions of drowned cockroaches which were served, at no extra cost, with every dish. The staff was friendly and unhurried to the verge of immobility. So was the clientele: bookies and burglars, actresses and artisan, poets and prostitutes; and there was an entirely new caste brought into being by the war - deserters. . . With this subsection of hooligans I had a special bond, because I had two exemption papers. One had been flung at me by the medical board and said that I suffered from sexual perversion. Another sent to me by the Labour Exchange presumably out of sheer kindness gave no particular reason . . These I could lend to anyone who wished for a few hours to leave his hide-out. It was only necessary for the deserter in question to decide whether he preferred the hardship of jail to the disgrace of being Quentin Crisp.
When the class was over he suggested that we should visit one or two of the cafes which he frequented in Charlotte Street. If it had not been for this casual invitation a whole world might for ever have remained closed to me. . . no one who had not a pathfinder's badge could have reached them. . . once I had been introduced by an habitué and found that my appearance was acceptable there, my whole social life changed.
Until now my evening had been spent lying down or writing to my mother or mending my socks or having a good cry. Suddenly all these activities, which I had regarded as mildly pleasant before, were brutally squeezed into hidden corners of my leisure so that I could devote two or three nights a week to sitting in one or other of the cafes in Charlotte Street.
This occupation represented far more than a change of pastime; it marked the discovery of a new self. To my public face I now began to construct a public character. I moved from concentrating on individuals to dealing with crowds. . . In my youth my object had been to reform. I now wanted to entertain. I was moving among people to whom my homosexuality was of no consequence whatsoever. I began a whirlwind courtship of an entire district.
There was a marvelous generosity about the way the restaurants were run. The helpings were large, even discounting the portions of drowned cockroaches which were served, at no extra cost, with every dish. The staff was friendly and unhurried to the verge of immobility. So was the clientele: bookies and burglars, actresses and artisan, poets and prostitutes; and there was an entirely new caste brought into being by the war - deserters. . . With this subsection of hooligans I had a special bond, because I had two exemption papers. One had been flung at me by the medical board and said that I suffered from sexual perversion. Another sent to me by the Labour Exchange presumably out of sheer kindness gave no particular reason . . These I could lend to anyone who wished for a few hours to leave his hide-out. It was only necessary for the deserter in question to decide whether he preferred the hardship of jail to the disgrace of being Quentin Crisp.
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