Gig etiquette and Gay etiquette

Last night i went to see Newton Faulkner at the Shepherd's Bush Empire, I went thinking it was going to be good but quite a sedate evening. I had such a great time, the venue was packed and he really had the crowd in the palm of his hand. He played his guitar in ways i had never seen before, his voice was perfect, hitting every note perfectly and managing to spur the crowd along into some great moments of audience participation. I think some people may write him off as just another male acoustic singer but he is so much more than that, if all else fails he should go into stand up comedy as his filler jokes between songs were fantastic and i could have listened to him all night.

The only problem with last nights gig were certain members of the audience who all seemed to be at round us. Firstly the girl towards the back on level 3, your laugh could bend steel! To the woman behind me who seemed to have only come to hear one song, she talked throughout all his songs right in my ear, if that was not bad enough - she had a very high pitched voice, squeaky McHelium you know who you are!! The prize for biggest twats in the empire last night goes to the 2 muppet girls on the 2nd row of level 3 who spent the entire show either videoing or taking photos of the show (just watch it you stupid cows!) and then when they got bored they decided to hold the camera in front of their faces and take joint pictures of themselves, which is fine once or twice but they did it at least 30 times!!! Unless they are some drastic developments in cosmetic surgery girls, none of those pictures are going to be useable, get off my planet!

I was reading "The London Paper" the other night and every day they have a member of the public write a column about anything they want and readers get to vote on whether that person should be asked to write again. The day before yesterday a gay guy called Mikey write about his experience of attending a party full of gay men that all fitted a certain stereotype, very plucked and preened, talking about Kylie and Madonna, openly discussing how many men they had sex with recently. Mikey wrote that he was sick of this kind of gay man and after leaving the party he stated that he sympathised with Queer Bashers. I don't know Mikey but if i did he would so be removed from my facebook friend list! Yes there are gay men that fit onto a multitude of different stereotypes but i would argue that the majority of people fit a certain stereotype based on a range of things from what they do for a living, what music they are into and who they have sex with. I don't think it does anyone any good to try and change the way others are.

If i have learnt anything from coming out and moving around in the gay community it is to accept the fact that people are different, not everyone fits into a box and thank god some other people think like that, if they didn't my life would have gone down a very different route that would possibly have damaged me a great deal. There are areas of the gay community that i love and other areas that are not for me but for Mikey to say that he symapthises with ignorant people that specifically target their violence at gay men and lesbians is horrific - gay gay gay gay shame!!

xxx