Fridae

Mark McLelland was born in Manchester before it became a cool gay venue. In 1988, at the height of Thatcherism, he ran away to Japan where he was a research student at Tokyo University before getting a job in publishing. He was the editor of such forgettable titles as The Tokyo Pink Guide and Making Out in Chinese.

From 1994 to 2000 he lived and taught in Hong Kong where he wrote his Ph.D. thesis about homosexuality in Japan. This was later published as Homosexuality in Modern Japan: Cultural Myths and Social Realities (Curzon Press, 2000). He now resides in Brisbane, Australia, which he considers to be the best place in the world because it is, in almost every way, entirely unlike Manchester. He is currently writing a book about Tokyo's transgender community.

About Mark

æ: When did you realise you were gay? What was the process like?

mark: I'm a member of the 'I've always known I was different club.' Other kids were calling me 'poofter' from as early as I can remember and I was never asked to join in the football or war games played by the local boys (like I cared). When I was about twelve or thirteen, I remember thinking 'Oh, I really am a poofter. So what?' But by then it was hardly news.

æ: Are you out to family and friends? If yes, could you tell us something about it? Is it an important factor in your life?

mark: I came out at school. Like I said, it was hardly news. I'm basically out to everyone except my parents. I've never felt the need to talk about my sex life with them. Can you think of more of a turn off? Now that I'm an academic with a heap of publications with the words 'gay' and 'homosexual' in the title, I'm never in a situation when I need to come out because it is always assumed that an interest in these issues is indicative of being gay. If my mother has read my book, then I guess she knows I'm gay now.

æ: Do you believe in monogamous or open relationships? Are you in one?

mark: Asking if I 'believe' in monogamous relationships is a bit weird, like asking if I 'believe' in God (which I don't). Do I believe they exist? Well, I suppose so. Do I want to be in one? No. One of the advantages of being gay is that there are no scripts telling you what to do. So why try to rehearse the 'marriage' and 'family' scripts created by straight people?

æ: What kind of pet do you have? Why?

mark: I'm a cat person. I have two at the moment: Alasdair and Alysha. Here's their picture. I got them from the RSPCA in Hong Kong. I went one day with my then partner, Andrew, and we chose Alysha. She had been living in the same Chinese family as Alasdair, but they had emigrated and had to give them up for adoption. That night I felt so guilty about taking Alysha and not Alasdair as well that the next morning I rushed back to the RSPCA to adopt Alasdair too. I'm glad I did, he's the perfect cat but Alysha has a real attitude. I still love her though. I'd like my boyfriends to be more like my cats: come and sleep with me at night but then go away and do their own thing after breakfast.

æ: Have you ever encountered prejudice because of your gender/sexuality? How did you deal with it?

mark: I guess I encountered prejudice for the whole of my childhood because I didn't really manage to learn the art of being a real boy (I never did learn the rules of football and even if I see a game on the TV now it makes me feel a bit ill). Strangely, though, it didn't bother me. Everyone around me was living such a boring, enclosed, pointless existence and I knew that I would go on to better things. Being gay is a real advantage in life as it forces you to think and is a real impetus to get out and do your own thing.

Now, because I live and work in a university environment, I never encounter prejudice. This isn't because it doesn't exist, but because university culture dictates that you cannot publicly vocalise prejudice against any group. There may be gossip but I think that most of the people I know are too busy to waste time speculating about my sex life. I realise that I am in a very privileged position, though, and that to be surrounded by prejudice is very debilitating.

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æ: Have you ever participated in any pro-gay or lesbian events/parties/workshops? If so, which?

mark: In 2000, I was one of the founders of AsiaPacifiQueer, a network of academic researchers working in Australia on queer sexualities in the Asia/Pacific region. We organise events such as workshops and conferences where people can come and talk about their research in a supportive and constructive environment. In December 2001, we have planned a conference on Queer Media in Asia and we hope to have a film show as part of the event.

æ: What advice would you give to someone who is trying to come to terms with his or her sexuality?

mark: Jimmy Sommerville said it best: 'Believe in yourself.' If that fails, Jimmy Sommerville also said 'Run away.' In my experience, the grass really is greener on the other side of the fence and there is gold at the end of the rainbow. If people tell you otherwise, it's because they lack imagination.

Apr�s Interview

æ: Tell us something about your first sexual experience?

mark: I'd love to but my first sexual experiences were all illegal. I started to have sex at sixteen years old but at that time in the UK the age of consent for male-male sex was 21. Not only was I breaking the law by being 'under-age,' I also broke the law because the sex I was having often wasn't 'in private.' In the U.K. homosexual sex is only permissible between two men in a situation where there is no chance of a third party being present. Young people often don't have the privilege of 'privacy' which is a commodity belonging to those older or the middle-classes. So my early sexual experiences were always rather anxious. It wasn't until I went to Japan that I went a bit wild.

æ: What is your favourite fantasy?

mark: I used to think that I might enjoy SM. I tried it once in Japan where I let this guy tie me up and harass me with a variety of kitchen implements. It was actually quite boring. It was also quite stressful. Japanese has a complex variety of 'politeness' levels. As a slave, it is important to use the correct polite forms when speaking 'up' to one's master. I kept using the wrong grammatical forms and then got punished. It was much better when he put the gag on.

æ: Which is sexier, mind or meat?

mark: Beautiful bodies are, of course, preferable. But good conversation can be sexy too. It would be nice to have both but I don't think I've ever met an intelligent beautiful person. The most beautiful boy I ever slept with thought that D.H. Lawrence was a department store.