Author Archives: Delicto

Beauty and politics of desire, a boy who never grew old, and the buttocks of history

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Rupert Everett and Colin Firth in Another Country. Directed by Marek Kanievska (1984)

It’s taken me a long time to watch Marek Kanievska’s Another Country because the thought of Soviet spies didn’t exactly fill me with excitement. It turned out to be a red herring. The film opens with Rupert Everett as Guy Bennett (think Guy Burgess), a wheelchair user in his drab Moscow apartment, who reflects on his schooldays at a 1930s English public school.

“It was delightful, utterly despicable.”

I’d forgotten how incredibly handsome Everett, Colin Firth and Cary Elwes as young chickens were. Well, it’s a gay movie and gloom pervades throughout. The agonies of homosexual love and the even greater agonies of being played with by the power structure.

Afterwards, Everett, flushed with anarchy, and a former public schoolboy himself, looks to have blurred his character with real life. A bit of a nightmare then, but I admire him for it. (I think that Everett is a brilliant memoirist – read his books).

When the film was released in 1984, an American newspaper queried why the biggest question hadn’t been answered. How did the lanky, dishevelled Bennett move from a witty and irreverent schoolboy to become a Soviet spy? We never did find out.

A good film, beautifully shot, if not a bit pedestrian at times.

And so, to the sad story of Frederick Alexander (aged 22), a close friend of Everett, who played Jim Menzies, but was really called Piers Flint-Shipman.

He and Everett were the only members of the original stage cast to appear in the film. “A much subtler and better actor that people at first gave him credit for. Wonderfully arrogant. Great dash and élan. One of the few people who could keep Rupert in order,” said its writer, Julian Mitchell. 

In June 1984, while travelling back from France to attend the preview-cum-premiere of Another Country he was killed when a suicidal driver turned into his oncoming car. He would never grow old like Everett, Firth and Elwes.

And a recent anecdote.

Charles Spencer, 9th Earl Spencer, brother of Diana, Princess of Wales, was a young extra when it was filmed in Oxford, Northamptonshire and London in 1983.

“I bumped into Colin Firth – whose first film this also was – when he was promoting The King’s Speech, and said: ‘Colin, you won’t remember me – but we took a shower together in Another Country’.

“Of course I remember!”, he laughed: “You have fantastic buttocks!”

“Had, I’m afraid”, I replied: “not have…”

Rupert Everett (centre) and Charles Spencer (far left) in a scene from Another Country

That Moment – Familiarity is Dangerous

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A night of drunken defiance, the air outside warm and sticky, carrying the sour breath of alcohol from the open doors. My head feels heavy, my stomach lined with white rum, and the thought of going home to curl up with a Jacques Tati biography feels more attractive than another drink. Still, I order another one – habit, not desire.

Ben messages to see if I’m out, and I can feel the eagerness in his words, the barely disguised hunger. Last week we sat in a corner booth until five in the morning, the world narrowing to the scrape of glasses and the whisper of confidences. But I put him off tonight. Familiarity is dangerous.

I once fell for him and, in a moment of reckless honesty, suggested we sleep together. He brushed it off with a laugh, not knowing that I never give anyone a second chance.

A Swan King, a lake, a vanished truth—Ludwig’s final act remains unwritten

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Ludwig II (Ludwig Otto Friedrich Wilhelm; 25 August 1845 – 13 June 1886)

Bavaria’s favourite monarch ‘Mad’ King Ludwig, who liked to build fancy castles, and whose body was found in a lake in June 1886, along with that of Dr Bernhard von Gudden of the Munich Asylum.

His death was declared suicide by drowning but as the story slides further into history, the conspiracy theories grow – murdered by whom and for what purpose?

The composer Richard Wagner appears to have played Ludwig like an orchestra violin, and there were rumours of sexual relationships with Paul Maximillian Lamoral, Prince of Thurn and Taxis, chief equerry Richard Hornig, the Hungarian theatre actor Josef Kainz, and courtier Alfons Weber.

And then there was Karl Hesselschwerdt, quartermaster of the Royal Stables, who allegedly procured young cavalrymen for Ludwig’s pleasure.

Alas, Ludwig Otto Friedrich Wilhelm, King of Bavaria, also known as Count Palatine of the Rhine, Duke of Bavaria, Duke of Franconia and Duke in Swabia, was probably no madder than the rest of us. His extravagance used against him to declare his insanity.

Bittersweet in its quiet absurdity, but the boys get better

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Image: Winter Vandenbrink

“It is a sign that you are growing old,” said the old man, his voice soft with resignation. “Each year, the boys seem to get better. As if someone laced the ordinary—Big Macs, frozen pizzas, vending machine snacks—with something secret and sublime that improves a man’s sperm. A quiet alchemy that sharpens jawlines, brightens eyes, perfects the symmetry of youth. It’s not just beauty—it is evolution disguised as convenience. And I watch them pass, these boys, like living advertisements for a future I won’t inhabit. It makes me sad. And jealous. Not of their youth, but of the ease with which they wear it.”

Fake and be friend. The dance of Caesar and Brutus

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Image: Charlie Marseilles

Urban adolescent. Prowling the streets. Catching stares. Bringing himself to orgasm and waiting for one that will be.

Colvey is number one and will die before he is properly a man. He is angry and suspicious of everyone. Wary of his enemies and more so of those who say they are friends. (Know what I mean bro?) Some will argue that this streak of uncertainty gives him an advantage, but one day he will meet the person that will plunge a knife into him and then knowing who to trust and who not to will be irrelevant. One thing I do know is that it will be the person he least suspected.

Angry with everyone. Controlling the uncontrollable. Respect from those who have no idea what it means. (Respect bro!)

Until then, Colvey must control this unruly band of boys – tearaways, petty thieves, and miscreants – who cannot muster up a brain between them, and who idolise him because they are afraid of the consequences if they don’t. Look around the city and you will see the tags on shitty walls, doors and metal shutters that protect empty shops in rundown streets. Our territory, our ground, our space.

Grooming. A word that has become part of modern society. A bad word. A careless word. Colvey might be accused of grooming kids to swell his ranks. But it is something he started when he was a small boy who shit his pants in school.

Provincial demon. Misery. Mayhem. 

Keep your enemy close to you and let him do your dirty work.

Mason is number two and must wait. Living under a shadow that must surely fade. It is one thing knowing those who will cause you harm, another when that threat comes from within. Catch these hands. Colvey knows this. (You’re my best mate bro). The dance of Caesar and Brutus. Fake and be friend. 

I watch. I see. Tattletale, snitch, informant, telltale, squealer. Colvey’s bitch. The one person he says he can trust. The one person who could bring him down if I wanted to. But that ain’t gonna happen because I’ll be a good number two.

Secrets and lies. Scrawny and slim. Wiry. The violent sex. “You want to know something?” Colvey lies next to me. “I ain’t gay bro. I like pussy. This is only bud sex.” ‘I ain’t a batty boy either,” I tell him. Colvey kisses me. “This is sheesh. Don’t tell anyone that I like bussin’ you bro.”

Charlie / Un après-midi en sous-vêtements

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A hillside in the remote countryside. Serge Gainsbourg sang Black Trombone on the iPhone. Charlie danced in his underwear.  His hair formed a question mark on his head. He looked cute. I grabbed him from behind and he reached over and patted me on the head like a dog. Then he pissed into the wind and I got covered from behind.

Seventeen and silly … and the servants talked for a year and a day

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“He was barely seventeen the first time it had happened, with that foolish Italian boy. He had naively fallen into the trap. It was all too good to be true and he was surprised when the boy demanded money, and kept demanding money. When he had no money left to give, the boy, true to his word, had gone to the police. Much to his shame and chagrin, he had been very publicly arrested in his father’s house in Wimpole Street, and every servant in the street had talked about it for a year and a day.”

The story of Charles Ferguson in ‘Fanny & Stella – The Young Men Who Shocked Victorian England’ by Neil McKenna – 2013

A warning came from Baron Corvo

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I have the urge to write something shocking and disgraceful, but Baron Corvo appeared in my sleep and warned me that it might not be the best thing to do. “After all, I died a nobody, and now I am famous, not for my talent, but for being depraved.”

Baron Corvo (aka Frederick William Rolfe) (1860-1913)

Charlie / The mystery of the black Calvin Klein briefs

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The day started with a mystery that caused a problem. Charlie had done the laundry and I had been angry. It doesn’t matter how many times that you tell him to separate whites and colours, he refuses to do so. The result was that my white t-shirts came out pink yet again. When I challenged him about it, he sulked, and put the rest of the clothes away in silence.

And then we came to the black Calvin Klein briefs. 

Charlie was putting them in my drawer and I pointed out that they didn’t belong to me. He held them between his fingers and examined them. “They are not mine either,” he decided. “They must be yours,” I replied. “They are definitely not mine.”

We stared at the underwear and waited for the other person to admit to owning them. But neither of us coughed up.

Charlie tossed them onto the bed. 

“This poses a significant problem,” I decided. “If they don’t belong to either one of us, then whom do they belong to?”

“That is a very good question. Do they belong to someone who you have been sleeping with?”

“In your dreams,” I responded, but there was hesitancy in my voice. Charlie had the ability of making you feel guilty even when you were innocent, and this was one of those occasions. He pounced upon my uncertainty and decided that I had been sleeping with someone who had forgotten to take their underwear home with them. 

“I can assure you that I haven’t slept with anyone. The only person that I’ve slept with is you, but even that’s debatable.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. I’m just a bit upset because I know that they are not mine, nor are they anybody else’s that I know of, so the finger of suspicion points squarely at you. Have you been sleeping with somebody behind my back?”

Charlie rubbed his hands through his hair in desperation. “Do not be disgusting. I have not been sleeping with anybody.”

“Was it one of those American Mormon boys who came knocking at the door? Did one of them come back when I was out?” It was a cheap shot. But a few days before, they had come bright-eyed and eager to save our souls. I’d politely turned them down and said to Charlie that it was inconceivable that every Mormon boy appeared to be cute. 

When Charlie was hurt, his French accent became more pronounced. “I believe it when you say that you know nothing about them, but you must also understand that I have nothing to do with them either.”

“But whose are they?”

“I have no idea. But maybe they belonged to Levi who left them behind when he moved out.”

“But that was weeks ago,” I said.

“I guess that there is no other explanation.”

And that was where we left it. Black Calvin Klein underwear unclaimed.

Boys, Brass and Billie

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He was once a boy who listened to punk rock. Sex Pistols. The Clash. The Damned. That was almost fifty years ago. Back then, if he’d rolled back half a century from the seventies, then he would have landed in the 1930s with a big war to come. Benny Goodman. Glenn Miller. Duke Ellington. The music was as far removed as he could ever have imagined. It brings us to now. The kids of 2025. Billie Eilish. Drake. Taylor Swift. His punk rock is as strange to them as the 1930s were to him.