If some race from another planet ever arrives on Earth or, one day, some intelligent species again arises from among the Great Apes and they study the decline and fall of our civilisation and of Homo Sapiens itself, they will surely blame, as I do, Oscar Wilde.
The real rot started with Wilde. Of course he was hardly the first Nancy Boy. There have been shirt-lifters around since time immemorial. Ham’s uncovering of Noah’s nakedness is there in Genesis at the very beginning and we all know of the taste preferences of historical figures from Alexander the Great, Caesar, Hadrian through to our own William Rufus, Richard the Lionheart and James I.
But with the exception of the Golden Band and the followers of Sappho, these people kept their activities within a narrow circle.
No, it was Wilde. One of the most famous figures of Victorian society, whose trolling along the Dilly attracted such public outrage and led to his arrest and imprisonment.
Wilde’s real sin was to be responsible for the hundreds of column inches devoted to his exploits published in the penny dreadful newspapers, explaining all of the secrets of his kind to the common folk.
Naturally, or more accurately, unnaturally, the activities that have long gone on at places like Eton, St. Paul’s and other great schools, in the Brigade of Guards and on board Her Majesty’s ships are savoured and then put to one side when one enters society. There was always a duty to marry a woman and have children even if it was the most logical method of bequeathing wealth.
But that damned Wilde set a public fashion! The next thing you have that Pederast Baden-Powell getting little boys to wear tiny shorts and neckerchiefs and cram together in tents saying “Dib Dib Dob”. Kitchener was in the act too, as was Cecil Rhodes. When such prominent people are shown to be Brown Hatters—it gives the practice respectability!
Then even the women started. Bloody Suffragettes! Neckties and bloomers—then it was short hair, trousers and cigarettes and great long, wobbly things obtainable at any chemist shop or pharmacy.
The so called Great War slowed the spread of the vice for a short time, but then when you get thirty million men dressed up in funny clothes having to sleep together---well.
T.E. Lawrence’s experience with the Turks showed that uphill shovellers were not confined to western lands.
The 1920s saw a turning point, if you know what I mean. Bolsheviks, Communists, Socialists—bum-boys all! Isadora Duncan and Rudolph Valentino helped spread the practice world-wide particularly in the Americas—they say that no sooner had a public convenience been erected in the City of San Franciso, then a queue had formed outside it.
As we entered the 1930s there was no turning back. Most of Germany and Italy were dressed in totally camp gear with lots of black, leather and silver—and THAT MARCH!
By mid-century the birth rate had plummeted. All over the civilised world, schools closed, toy manufacturers went out of business. Hugh Heffner was executed. Those who could afford to steal children from Malawi or Romania did so—but the supply soon ran out. Same sex marriages became the norm and our race just began to die off.
As our century draws to a close those of us still left see a pathetic site of old queens in their pink mobility scooters eking out their last years sucking skimmed lattes through their no-spill cups and elderly women desperately searching for orthopaedic army boots. The end must be soon.
