recently i read Fabulosa! The Story of Polari; Britain’s Secret Gay Language by Paul Baker, which i highly recommend for anyone interested in queer history (and coded language), but especially for fans of the charioteer who want to learn more about the gay culture of twentieth century britain.
of course, a lot of the time while reading i was thinking about the charioteer; ralph lanyon, how he fits into the gay scene, and his relationship with bunny.
one thing that piqued my interest is that most of the camp gay men (who were the most likely to speak polari) specifically desired and sought out masculine ‘straight’ men as sexual partners, rather than other feminine men. the preference in the gay scene for “real men” is also spoken about in this documentary (link is timestamped, but the whole thing is worth a watch).
paul baker writes some interesting bits about the ‘trade’ identity, as well as the butch/femme relationships common at the time:
“...for many Polari speakers the ideal partner would be a butch man who did not identify as gay, the Great Dark Man of Quentin Crisp’s fantasies.”
“As mentioned, another term for a sexual partner was trade, which had a range of slightly overlapping meanings. It could refer to a potential, past or current sexual partner, and usually indicated a temporary sexual relationship, sometimes a one-off. Trade sometimes, but not always, indicated a masculine man who might not have identified as gay and would have been likely to have taken the ‘inserter’ role in sex. Such men who were classed as trade did not usually speak Polari and probably would not have identified as trade or talked much about their sexuality… However, trade could also be a station on the way towards a more established gay identity.”
“Internalized homophobia or just plain nastiness might make the trade attack their sexual partner or demand money from them, hence the term rough trade, although this term could also refer more generally to working-class casual male partners.
“There was a distinction between the camp men who identified as gay and more masculine men who did not claim a gay identity but would have taken a male partner. Prior to decriminalization and the subsequent Gay Liberation movement this kind of ‘trade’ identity was pretty common. Drag queen Betty Bourne described one of the sea queens she knew, Big May: ‘She’d been on the boats for years and years. They’d have a husband for the voyage… Seafood is the Polari word. They were all very married, they were in couples. There was the butch and the bitch, it was very aping the heterosexual thing. We called ourselves girls. It’s to do with clinging to our youth, desperately and pathetically.’”
“[in the 1970s] The old queen-trade or butch-femme relationships were seen as problematic through Liberationist eyes, and so clones were a kind of merging of queen and trade into a ‘new, improved’ identity, both masculine and gay – desirable and desired.”
ralph lanyon seems to fit with the general definition of ‘trade’: masculine, straight-passing (he had been with multiple women), dominant, and doesn’t identify with the camp members of the community. regarding rough trade: i don’t think he would have attacked a sexual partner unprovoked (as is baker’s definition of rough trade), but i can definitely see any prospective hookups feeling like they might have been taking a risk with him, based on how he’s perceived by the other gay men:
He stood over the young man, quite quietly, with the kind of expression a captain uses on a tipsy passenger he has found exploring the bridge. ‘Excuse me,’ he said. The young man flinched like a startled fawn, and hurried away.
“Why the – can’t you look where you’re – well going, you –?” If Laurie had imagined Ralph as a captain before, he now glimpsed him vividly as a first mate. The dancer said, “Well, really, I’m sorry I’m sure, but there’s no need to speak to me like that.” Ralph’s only reply was to stare him out; Laurie could hear him working off his protests on his partner halfway around the room.
[The whole scene with Sandy.]
“I bet he handed you out some canings at school, didn’t he?” “About the usual number,” said Laurie, rather coldly. Bunny put his head on one side and looked down at Ralph with an indulgent smile. “It did something to him, you know. Scratch old Ralph after a couple of drinks, and you’ll always find an unfrocked scoutmaster.”
“I suppose you won’t be able to run to Ralph fast enough with all this.” “You’re afraid of him, really, aren’t you?” “Don’t make me laugh,” said Bunny shrilly. “He never caned me at school.”
“[Toto Phelps]’s scared stiff of Ralph, so he came to me.”
‘If it is any satisfaction to you, I paid a call on Bunny just now and he has been taken to sick bay, with concussion and broken ribs as well as I could judge. He came round in time to agree it was the blackout once again.’
now, i’m making two assumptions about bunny: he’s attracted to the masculine ‘trade’ type over others, and he wanted to cling to his relationship with ralph. now, for all we know, he would have done the same to any two-timing boyfriend and his lover what he did to ralph and laurie, and couldn’t have cared less about the breakup. in my opinion, however, he genuinely wanted to keep ralph to himself, whether out of love, lust, infatuation, idk, but there was definitely some possessiveness there (how many times did he tell laurie how well he knew ralph inside and out?). in any case, a lovelorn, brokenhearted, revengeful bunny is way more fun to think about.
and i can see why bunny would have wanted to keep hold of ralph once he got him:
they’re sexually compatible: based on the way the party’s described, there doesn’t seem to be many lanyon types there. of course, we’re seeing it through laurie’s eyes, and he would be inclined to pay the most attention to GASP! flamboyant queers and rent boys (the horror!). nevertheless, there doesn’t seem to be many masculine, straight-passing men actually on the scene to choose from. (not to say bunny doesn’t easily get around: he bagged toto as well as a little on the side almost immediately after breaking up with ralph. i imagine picking up sexual partners isn’t the hard part. the hard part is picking up sexual partners he’s genuinely attracted to.)
they’re in an actual relationship: nominally, at least. the answer to what this entails would probably differ depending on which of them you asked. whether or not they’re both faithful to each other (highly doubt), instead of having to go through the trouble of cruising (or paying) for a hookup, bunny has everything he needs at home.
ralph is vetted: bunny doesn’t have to worry about being attacked by rough trade after sex for no reason, an unfortunately common occurence in the world of queer hookups. (of course ralph does beat him up in ch.16, but not for no reason, and i don’t think bunny wasn’t expecting it, exactly. not that that justifies anything.)
ralph’s stuck in bridstow: for however long his course lasts at the very least. many of the men sought after as ‘trade’ were soldiers, sailors, guardsman, and sex-workers. if bunny did manage to meet a guy who was not only his type but also desired a relationship, there was a chance he would have been unable to remain in the same place for long, due to the transient nature of his job or the war.
maybe ralph’s rough reputation even excited bunny. the “unfrocked scoutmaster” comment with his “indulgent smile” always gives me the vibe that he would intentionally “scratch” ralph after a few drinks just to see what would happen. maybe he liked experimenting with how far he could push ralph’s self control, especially if he was afraid of him (i don’t buy his “don’t make me laugh!). it’s clear ralph spent a lot of his time with bunny drunk:
“I just happen to know that the old dear practically never passes out flat, no matter what he has; and that hag downstairs would wake him at a pinch.”
“If I’d tried it on you, you’d have spotted it straight away. But with hard-drinking types like old Ralph, who’ve got one or two on board already–”
[the fact that the water jug was already A Thing]
maybe bunny preferred him vulnerable that way, and delighted in finding out all the “funny little kinks” he could. maybe something he said while drunk set off the spark that made bunny want to read ralph’s diaries.
ralph and bunny’s husband/housewife dynamic in ch.8 is so interesting. reading it back, when bunny first shows up, he tells them to come downstairs and drink the tea out of a proper set and ralph acquiesces. then, he tells ralph to get the kettle. his shock comes when ralph refuses (in so rude a manner). that’s when laurie makes his comment about bunny not being familiar with ralph’s straight look. i’ve always taken that as a suggestion that ralph had been playing a part in the relationship, and bunny had never seen the ‘head prefect lanyon’ ralph that laurie is so familiar with. so was part of this act an easy acquiescence of orders from bunny? he did let bunny turn the flat into an ikea showroom from hell…
maybe his shock is more so from ralph’s rudeness? maybe he expected ralph to have some amount of embarrassment or shame about being caught redhanded with that hussy, but the absolute unapologeticness and audacity came as a shock?
he gets the idea with the water jug fairly early on. when laurie and bunny are pouring out their tea, ralph refuses and pours himself a gin. he and laurie have a long talk about the war, while bunny sits there left out, then bunny refills ralph’s glass. surely he had been seething and scheming while they talked for so long, not acknowledging him. and at that point, he had only caught laurie in ralph’s bed, and ralph had told him to make the tea himself. not that those two things wouldn’t piss off any significant other, but he’s got a whole evening ahead of ralph blatantly flirting with laurie in front of him and all their friends, and being insulted by both ralph AND his sidepiece, who has the audacity to call him a streetboy! i wouldn’t blame him if he added a drink for every time he felt slighted that evening. no wonder he was able to bear it with such a saintly patience knowing what havoc he was wreaking on ralph’s liver lmao.
there’s not really any point i’m trying to make here, but ralph and bunny’s relationship is one of the most fascinating parts of the book for me to think about, and seeing it through the twentieth century butch/bitch dynamic is quite interesting.
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