Thursday 9th June 2011

Not interested in Norse myth? Barely heard of or can’t bear Wagner? Rather be at Prada? Don’t go away. This will be visionary and completely new.

You remember some weeks ago, we saw Die Walküre cast live from the Met. It’s part of The Ring cycle of four operas which last a total of 14 hours. I’ve seen it before but never realised it’s all about Poor Little Rich Gays, despite every appearance to the contrary – such as fearsome Viking helmets with horns, grey sack cossies and rough timber the only known wall finish.

Now, if you’ve never heard of Wagner, don’t let that impede. It’s enough to know he’s awfully important and lends greatness to the Poor Little Rich Gay project.

The main person is a God called Wotan. Awful name. He’s not really a God, more of a Chief Exec Officer (huge power, with limits), so an immediate parallel with PLRGs, who, as we know, drive straight to the top. You won’t believe this, but he’s got the builders in! Just as Poor Little Rich Gays have the entire time. Huge project to build Valhalla, which was to be the dream home of dream homes. Heavenly ethereal motif in the music whenever it is mentioned.  In fact it never quite seems to exist, although it was built apparently, which is exactly as the Poor Little Rich Gay home is – just out of reach, but always yearned for and the search never ending.

Poor Wotan, just like Poor Little Rich Gays here and throughout the world, arches high but can plunge as low the other side. There’s one terrible moment when he longs for obliteration so awful is the ghastly tangle of obligations he’s got himself into re: the building of Valhalla. So Poor Little Rich Gays know the tragic burden of their calling: we must blaze with glory but never forget that in the end we are nothing. In the monumental scene with his daughter Brünnhilde ,who has been disobedient, he unleashes his devastating power. But Brünnhilde stands up to him, tells him a thing or two. He recognises the searing truth of what she says, sees his own weakness and vulnerability. As we know, Poor Little Rich Gays take Kitchens (see glossary). They want someone to care for, nurture and tend but not always, unlike Wotan, do they know the limits of their power.

Then there’s Wotan’s private life. He’s got a wife called Fricka who’s the Goddess of Marriage and the most ghastly old harridan and Mrs Grundy figure. Wotan’s wandered and got children all over the place. Two of them have fallen in love. Wotan is convinced the consequent love-child is the only hope for the future, but Fricka is fuming: ‘It’s incestuous,’ she shrieks. ‘Your trouble,’ Wotan tells her, ‘is that you never predict the unexpected.’  Marvellous. Fricka! She is marriage as conventionally known – absolute yuck! Neat little units of two in a fully equipped domestic setting with morality – never! For the Bath Abbey wedding on Friday I visited www.weddingshop.com (wedding list solutions) and paid for two dinner plates at £50 a piece. It’s still going on, you know, all of that. Laura Malcolm was on the phone, contemptuous.

In our Poor Little Rich Gay world, we have some Civil Partnerships, quite a lot of wandering about which we think little, although there might be a terrible drama at the time, and some very extreme configurations, where one half is away for months living with someone else or just away.

One thing we do know, more or less, as much as we know anything: sex, in the home, does not endure or, after a time, is not required.

But don’t misunderstand. I’m not against intimacy. In the best lives there might well be one and only one to whom you are completely known, with whom you are absolutely at home although frequently seared, harrowed, wracked and maddened. Let’s hope that’s the one you are married to or at least near married to. It might well not be. For me, that person was Anthony Mottram of Prague, first met by me in September 1970 at our minor Public, Barrowborough. But for the past 17 months, he has been keeping me in Abu Ghaib and I’ve had to manage without. I must ensure I do not turn bitter.