Free Unity by Michael Arditti

people that I won’t bare them for, at any rate in private. Not everything in Cannes has been stardust and glass slippers. Three nights ago, Ihad a nasty run-in with Wolfram, which I was convinced would put paid to my whole film career. I should make it clear that there was no damage, apart from the permanent dent in my trust. But it shook me. We’d come back from the Warner Brothers party. Fliss accompanied some actors for a drink in the bar and Wolfram followed me upstairs, saying that he had something to discuss. I don’t know whether he was buoyed by the reception of his film or high on drugs or simply in holiday spirits, but he pounced on me, right here, in this room, on the bed where I’m writing this letter. I’ll spare you a full account, except to say that, for someone so skinny, he was remarkably strong. I was so taken aback that I was afraid he’d mistake my shock for acquiescence. I decided that the best bet was to treat it as a game: a bout of locker-room horseplay. ‘I give in,’ I yelled. ‘You’re the winner!’ But he was having none of it and grappled with me like a man possessed. I had no recourse but to hit back, which I did, punching him hard in the chest. I winded him and broke free. I expected him to slink away. But not a bit of it. He accused me of provoking him, of giving off signals, of not knowing my own mind, oh, of all sorts of rubbish. I’d accuse him of attempted rape if the word weren’t so loaded (although I now know that it is no more restricted to women than Boy is to blacks).
    What is it with the stalky business of sex? How could he have shown such a lack of respect for my feelings, not to mention his own dignity? I’m not naive (no, really, you and Fliss played that card far longer than was warranted); I’m aware that he’s attracted to me. But so what? I’m attracted to his films, and yet I don’t try to steal his camera. I decided right from the start that the most sensible tactic was to make light of his interest and root our relationship in play. Anything else threatened to turn me into the stuffed shirt of his allegations. So I studiously ignored his leaning against me in lifts and rubbing his leg against me at dinner and giving me neck massages which left me far tenser than when I was hunchedover the keys. My reserve merely confirmed his view of the cold, passionless English: a confusion of temperature and temperament with which, to avoid embarrassment, I was willing to comply.
    Please don’t be offended, but can you explain to me why gay men assume that anyone who doesn’t respond to their advances must be repressed? I know that it’s a generalisation and there will always be exceptions (I’m writing to one now), but you only have to think back to Brian and Crispin solemnly asserting that all queer-bashers are secretly queer in order to appreciate the truth. They’re as bad as the people who claim that Hitler was anti-Semitic because he feared that he might have Jewish blood: a view which is not merely flawed but dangerous. It’s as if self-hatred were the only hatred that can be understood and – what’s more insidious – that can be justified.
    I’m sorry to dump all this on you, but I thought that you’d want to know. Fliss, on the other hand, showed a lack of concern that was almost hurtful (although that may have been my fault for fudging the details). Even so, I’d have been murderous if he’d tried anything similar with her. Like Judge Out-Of-Touch castigating a victim for wearing a mini-skirt, she managed to make out that I was the one in the wrong. She accused me of over-reacting (her exact phrase was ‘being a drama queen’, which struck me as particularly inapt). Sex was such a trivial thing (this, remember, was my girlfriend speaking!); it would cost me so little and please him so much. I should think of it as cabbage (I presume in the sense of swallowing something unpleasant). She dismissed my disgust as a morbid fear of penetration. Which