On finding a photo of 16-year-old Klaus Mann…

Klaus Mann. Cute twink. What did you become? A chaotic mix: part mongrel, openly queer, a junkie, and premature anti-Fascist. The eldest son of German literary giant Thomas Mann. Born with a permanent side-eye for the world and zero patience.

Every book he published before 1933 got tossed straight into the flames during the Nazi book burnings.

His 1942 autobiography, The Turning Point, reads like a roll call of lost friends; an unsettling number of the people in it had died by suicide, more than feels believable in one life.

Seven years later, in Cannes, he followed the same tragic path.

“Memories are made of peculiar stuff, elusive and yet compelling, powerful and fleet. You cannot trust your reminiscences, and yet there is no reality except the one we remember.” – Klaus Mann (The Turning Point)

On being famous in a hundred years…

I will die and in a hundred years people will decide that I was iconic. Maybe I was just too avant-garde for my era, and everyone needed a lot of time to catch up. Or maybe… I was just a shit writer and in a hundred years time people won’t be writing at all. And when they rediscover my work, it will make my shit writing seem like that of an intellectual. 

On hearing about an intriguing snack…

“He said that he would fix me a snack, but that it might take a little time. I read while he disappeared into the kitchen. When he returned fifteen minutes later, he handed me a plate containing three salted crackers and an unknown delicacy that had been thinly spread over each one. I asked what it was, but he shushed me and said that they were best eaten straight away. I ate them and afterwards he told me that the crackers had been covered with his sperm.”

On the urge to write gay porn…

I write gay sex scenes in which nothing really happens. So why not write gay porn where everything does? The thought crosses my mind, but embarrassment stops me. I have no wish to shock anyone, or to offend.

People tell me there is money in it. In that world you can have sex with anyone you like on the page—the most beautiful man, the ugliest. No limits, no refusals. Anything can happen because you decide it does.

The urge to write it grows stronger.

But then my unhealthy fascination with Baron Corvo returns, as it often does, and he appears in my dreams again. He reminds me—rather coldly—that, like him, I am already sufficiently depraved, bordering on the disgusting, and that there is really no need to write about it.

On realising what I look at each morning…

I’ve started following a French blog called Gay Cultes—my daily hit of a beautiful male body, a little lust, and a sprinkle of homo culture. And it makes me a little jealous because it is simple and never misses. 

On loving these lines in a book…

“He spat and beat his donkey, which farted, kicking one leg. I followed his advice, as the commotion I seemed to be causing was making me a little uncomfortable.”

On observing three guys in a band…

Three guys are standing there with guitar cases on their backs, talking among themselves. From what I catch, they’re starting a band.

For a second I feel this urge to tell them they’re absolutely doomed. Not because of the music—who knows, they might be good. But visually? It’s a disaster. Two chubby guys and one tall, spotty skeleton. 

On finding a good poem…

Together
Sleeping together … how tired you were …
How warm our room … how the firelight spread
On wall and ceiling and great white bed!
We spoke in whispers, as boys will do,
And now it was l—and then it was you
Slept a moment, to wake-time fled;—
“I’m not a bit sleepy,” one of us said.
I woke in your arms,—you were sound asleep.
So close together we had tried to creep,—
Clinging fast in the darkness, we lay
Sleeping together,—that yesterday!

C. Mansfeld

On hearing a man say to his small son…

“Gi’ it a look. It’s reyt callin’ out, innit? All sat there beggin’ for it—everythin’ tha needs t’ knock up a proper bit o’ slopdosh, if tha’s not soft.” 

*****

Did I believe in life after love? In love after love? In life after life? I was unsure at that time.

But we were happy.