After a Chelsea Party and a One Man Exhibition

Needing a rest from her trance-like walk over gravelled pathways, Rosemary sat down on a bench inside the Temperate House to mull over some of the difficulties she'd experienced when she had given in to Freddie's wish to meet some of her gay friends. Having finally relented, and invited him to a Chelsea party, it had not gone at all well. She recalled the moment when they had returned to Freddie's shared house around eleven o'clock that night; it was untidy, with clothes and musical instruments everywhere in his overcrowded bedroom. Nevertheless, it was unusually peaceful, since everyone else was still out. Freddie had been in a furious mood: "Who the hell were those weirdos at that party? All that chrome chain and black leather gear...that's not "fabulous"...' He had started to move about, stepping over things, randomly picking stuff up and throwing it domi again. He'd raged on: "They didn't look like Nijinsky dancer! Who were they impersonating, anyway?' Rosemary had tried to remain calm: 'They were just being themselves,'\vas all she could come up with. 'I thought you wanted to meet some HOMOSEXUALS?' she added impudently. 'I didn't want to meet a bunch of junkies: dropouts with "angst” written all over them....' Freddie had been shocked. Albert had been amused when she'd said she was bringing Freddie to a party arranged by Albert's gay brother, Archie. He hadn't yet met Freddie and was dying to see her new 'companion'; Albert didn't expect to feel threatened on any level by Freddie Bulsara; he thought that anyone who had aspirations to become a superstar must by default be cool and so wouldn't be into anything (relationship-wise) 'heavy', especially anything like a serious girlfriend in the form of Rosemary Pearson!

However, when she had finally arrived with Freddie, about nine-thirty that evening, Albert was already chatting up a couple of women he later described as Spanish lesbians, with the specific aim of converting them to heterosexuality. Making new conquests was just as much a pastime for him as it was for his gay friends. He just loved the 'promiscuous buzz'; he always said that none of it was meaningful. Rosemary took him at his word, rather than have yet another row about the status quo of their relationship, which, had she given herself any real 'space' to think about it logically, had been slipping away for a long time before then.

At the Chelsea party they'd just left, Freddie had been thoroughly put out; it was the first time she had seen him so disappointed and out of place. Not that he had wanted to be dressed up in chains or razor blades: that style was only for a few discerning punk-style dressers, well ahead of their time. 'Well, Archie is Albert's brother and they are all friends with Patrick....'she went on, trying to rationalise the events they'd just experienced. 'If you'd have let us remain at the party longer than ten minutes you might have met Patrick...' It had been no good her rambling on, Freddie was distraught. "They were all a bunch of sick bums...oh, what the hell. Let's go to bed!' As so often, Rosemary empathized with his pain and wanted to make it all better AT ONCE!

They rolled on top of the bed together, started kissing and ended up making love. But Rosemary was also trying to block out the contradictions: Freddie had insisted for ages on meeting some of the people she knew, and it was ironic how badly it had turned out; so many unknown people had gate-crashed the event! So Freddie had been momentarily jinxed by the strange mix of individuals at that party, despite his endless talk about meeting "anyone bent"! It occurred to her later that he was expecting to meet more down-to-earth people, and probably the famous artists she knew. Freddie had been overcome by a massive dose of self-consciousness, she supposed, in a way that could happen to anyone the moment they're faced with "what they think they want". So she wanted to be comforting: 'Your skin is so dry— good job I love you, any way... you're always so mad-passionate and extreme about EVERYTHING...that's what I like about you.' Rosemary, changing tack as usual had wanted to reassure him just to see him happy again. But he was not to be convinced. He perhaps realised that the whole thing of meeting people who had "come out" was terrifying. Wasn't Freddie prepared?

This un-readiness to "come out" could lead him to some sad and desperate thoughts at that time. 'LOVE ISN'T GOOD ENOUGH-YOUVE GOT TO ADORE ME,' he gasped again, after they had made love and he was calmer. That had been a difficult moment, and they'd been there before. What it was really about, just below the surface, was that Freddie simply didn't like being on his own! A large part of him was entirely fulfilled just by being with his fellow musicians and he was flourishing because of it all, from what Rosemary could see. Anyway, she knew instinctively that the frenetic chaos of his daily social and working life significantly enhanced his creativity. Conversely, away from Freddie's world, Rosemary's 'creativity' was nurtured by absolute serene silence, which was sometimes possible in the beautiful minimalist flat she lived in with Albert Muller. When she had the place to herself, with her sketchbook out, she could nurture her secret ambition: to become an artist one day! With Freddie, there had been no talk of domesticity together; she was quite sure that they could not take things beyond where they already were. But the real sticking point in the relationship, amid all the cosy kissy-kissy talk, was Freddie's need to be all these things, but with someone else, who was (?in/e! Subconsciously, he was always asking the same rhetorical question: "What would intimacy be like with a man?"

Remembering that homoeroticism had provided much of the fuel for Fascism since the European political movements of the 19305. Rosemary wondered why, by the late sixties, homosexuality had continued to remain so much in the closet, despite its newly legal status. Ironically, the 'social allowances' this opened up still left the notion of promiscuity 'terra-incognita'. Freddie was seeking romance and commitment from an as-yet non-existent male lover; but he wasn't depressed about this to the extent that it made him really reckless or anything at all extreme; he was just sometimes despondent. He never spoke of death; he only feared abandonment and emotional starvation, which was a fear Rosemary deeply shared with him. He dreaded ostracism from his musician peers, but only rarely revealed this fear, experiencing a kind of invisible, but momentary, torment. Essentially an optimist. Freddie would always just "carry-on"; he was never to take on the real role of a doomed bohemian.

But. then, in 1969, there were still no "gay guidelines"—although she'd known Patrick for over a year by that time, with his particular 'queer' link to an elite London 'tribe' (that was the term he loved to quote, from Christopher Isherwood's novels). Freddie knew that homosexual men were still mocked by the heterosexual system; not yet the glory days of New York's Stonewall Riot - that would happen later that year. But then Freddie was not at this time engaged politically in any liberation "cause". However, he secretly bought into the myth of homosexuality as a 'walking-sex-crime'—an unhealed wound that might be ultimately self-destroying. Freddie had no apparent knowledge of the New York Gay Alliance and never mentioned any literature referring to it; but neither did he see the 'queer-cause' as a kind of postscript to the Marxist Class War. Rosemary could feel that he deferred to it as 'a mere idea', and the reality of a 'queer' encounter remained at this time a very complex matter for the uninitiated Freddie.

Now, in Freddie's bedroom. Rosemary had suddenly become sick of talking and thinking, so she just rolled on top of him and they had made love again. 'Um, you're such a good lover; I wish you'd stop all this talk about wanting to sleep with blokes... how can I think seriously about being "with you" whilst you're on this never-ending quest?' He stopped, midway in their lovemaking, instantly fraught and uncontainable: 'I can't...I'm just strung out in the middle of it....you're the only one who really knows about this side of me and what I go through all the time...it's such agony...everyone thinks my needs are a joke, a fiction.' He had cried and cried. 'Look...it's because I core about you that I listen to you...but what's going to be in it for me? I'm a woman, and I can't share a man with another man...even though one hasn't turned up yet! It's only a matter of time before you'll be parading around like a movie star having secret rendezvous!' Rosemary remonstrated, seemingly in vain.

After a while he stopped writhing around like a wounded animal, perked up, blew his nose and sat up. Did he know she was right? 'Darling, you know me so well, but whatever you do, don't leave me now...I can't bear it...you mean so much to me...you are so beautiful...let me kiss you...' But no, that was not the point; Rosemary had had to be firm: 'But that's just it. I can't be just floating about and waiting for you like some star-struck groupie! I've got to develop myself and get a direction, as I've said before...I can't just sit on a big cushion like a fluffy cat, waiting for you to come and stroke me...'

That notion of 'getting a direction' was really poignant for her; it was so much more than just 'job-satisfaction' from a good position. It was essentially tied up with wanting to become an artist—to make visual work that could abstractly explore complex ideological issues. It couldn't be mimetic of the New York School, or just a spin-off from it, because that was 'male dominated' Art—or was it? Social issues would go on to inform a Utopian art that Rosemary imagined herself embarking upon, one day. 'Or would my "referents" be historical?' she had thought to herself, remembering her early encounters with the Renaissance art she had seen in Florence and Madrid. No, obviously the work's content couldn't be determined in advance—it was a question of making a start and trusting in the accepted ideas of the day via 'the daily practice of painting', to be put into practice only "at the moment when it was being undertaken"— perhaps like a musician writing a new song.

So Rosemary would need to study Fine Art Theory and History too? All that relentless searching felt nightmarish, in the split seconds she was trying to get it all worked out in her mind! Anyway, she was about to start on her first full-time career as a Graphic Designer, despite the fact that she would be unlikely to receive equal pay for the work, of course, so where would all that complex 'artist's life' fit in anyway? There were far too many contradictions at play—but if Freddie was expecting the moon and stars in his life, why shouldn't Rosemary? Wistfully, as though Freddie couldn't argue anymore, he came to a conclusion—at least, for that moment: 'I know it's mean of me...but I suppose I really want the MOON.. .'He seemed somehow, just for a split second, to accept that he had lost the battle, but Rosemary couldn't bear, as his intimate friend, to see him so miserable. To leave the whole thing on a neutral note, she responded softly, as she usually tried to do by adding '...and you want the STARS!' Rosemary had kissed him on the cheek and lay beside him ready to sleep. But her mind was buzzing with an idea she'd now had, of taking Freddie to a new contemporary art show that might open up some exciting social avenues for him. Could it happen that very week?

As she continued her walk in Kew Gardens, Rosemary went next in memory to a scene that had taken place a few days after the party. She had persuaded Freddie to see a different side of the London culture that she had recently become acquainted with. In her Mini Van they visited Bell Street, near St John's Wood to see Derek Jarman's first one-man painting exhibition at the Lisson Gallery. On arrival, the venue had appeared unmanned; there were no other visitors—just her and Freddie. Of course, she knew too that Derek was part of another world, having not long since won The Young Contemporaries art prize, so naturally was in great demand by the cream of London galleries. But the painting they saw there had been a real treat—it was bold and fearless and uncompromising and it brought Rosemary to her knees. (God, if only she could one day be a painter...) Rosemary knew then for sure that this was what she herself wanted her life to be about! The paintings had stopped Freddie in his tracks too, but for different reasons; he knew from Rosemary that Jarman was advocating the complete legalisation of homosexuality. Through the extreme sensuousness of his brush strokes, Jarman seemed to be referencing his own sexuality. The whole notion of "challenging the status quo" was apparent in his art, and there for all to see. It was simultaneously both personal and political yet somehow the opposite of the 'bohemianism' she had been around since her early childhood, epitomised by her parents' demi-monde life style.

No less appealing as an 'Alternative' life style was the stifling, ubiquitous, middle-class parochialism familiar to her from her contact with former school friends and their families. She recalled her time at the New End College in Hampstead, where she had crammed for her 'A' Levels; a number of students there had chosen to become members of the Angry Brigade, but none of that 'direct-action-violence' had appealed to her in the slightest, either. In the early sixties, through a school friend, she'd met Bill Brandt, who had wanted her to model for his experimental photography; Rosemary had considered it a form of female exploitation and as such quite reactionary: she'd turned it down, just as she had turned down David Hockney's more recent imitation to pose for him! So when she experienced Jarnian's work, Rosemary saw for the first time that social issues could be explored on the canvas and that the avant-garde artist could be at the real cutting edge of social change.

'God, these paintings make the real world seem so perverse,' gasped Freddie. He was quite intoxicated by them already. 'I like the colours but I think the American painter Rauschenberg, made stuff a bit like this before?... But what the hell, they make me want to be a painter too....' Rosemary had confessed to Freddie. She was ecstatic:' So why is it that everything has always been done before? These paintings are really anarchic—they say JUST FUCK OFF!' Freddie had responded, moving as though entranced around the gallery. Then, as so often, he was suddenly singing part of a Rolling Stones song quietly to himself, "Hey you, get off of my cloud."They examined all the remaining works closely in silence.

Coming back together after a good few minutes, Rosemary had added, 'It's all a big rebellion against outlawed homos...it's what Derek calls the 'Heterosoc!' The brush marks seem so sensual and so free...' But Freddie just murmured: 'I want to be as free to be myself as Jarman obviously is....' but he sounded a bit disheartened and sad. However, whenever Rosemary thought about what Freddie was up against, in terms of his strict parental home background, all this was as nothing. He worried because he felt he was flouting his parents' expectations of him', they had, as he had told her before, invested a lot in his public school education and an intense doctrinal upbringing. They could hardly have envisaged him choosing a lifestyle that was so deeply nonconformist, fed by sources that were 'anti-mainstream', as in the music of Hendrix, to name but one influence, or the paintings of Derek Jarman. Thinking then exclusively of Freddie, it seemed to Rosemary that his enormous talent had been catalysed by much more than just rock'n'roll influences: his Parsi background, and the centuries-old Eastern musical heritage he'd grown up with, for instance. In addition, he'd once told her that he had studied a whole range of other musical scales in his youth, including Arabic. African, Cuban and Indian! From that perspective, Freddie had a whole stable of "orchestrations" already at hand. Even when he was imitating other musicians he brought to it a complex range of multiple voices. That his voice was always so incredibly melodic seemed in itself more memorable than the actual melody he was giving voice to! In retrospect, his songs had an Eastern feel to them in that they suggested a spiritual quality behind the lyrics. This aspect of his singing had left more of an impact on Rosemary than anything else about him; much later on she remained unsure as to whether knowing him had been about 'the singer not the song'. She was also uncertain as to whether his rhythmic idiom was especially new or innovative; being musically rather naive, and also partially deaf since childhood anyway, she was only aware that Freddie had multiple voice levels that were quite incendiary. What she heard, not attending that many of his gigs outside of college, was obviously limited, but in its own way it always came across as unadorned, lush and rhythmically seminal.

The Jarman exhibition was the first contemporary art that really spoke to her, apart from the works of the great American Abstract expressionists, which at that time were to her 'other-worldly' and impersonal and of course, male. Freddie had shown her the way that creativity changed the attitude of a person who "reached out into the unknown". But whilst Art and Music were primarily about aesthetics and form, this was a point in time where the personal and the political could be really merged. 'So, creative output could also be commercially viable without compromising the artist!' Rosemary had suddenly realised. What was exciting was that so much subtle and sophisticated work had been developing on the cusp of what, in retrospect, was the start of a new social order in 1970. Amid these convergences and confrontations, Jarman's work could be read to contain multiple layers of meaning. In his painting he had created what looked like 'pocketed spaces' that in themselves contained many voices, instead of a single one. The overall feeling of the work was random and non-composed; but it was deliberate and an actual fragmentation of space that echoed a pure sense of dissonance—rife at the end of that momentous decade of the sixties.

Leaving the Lisson Gallery, Freddie had remembered his rehearsals later on that day; sadly, it was the end of that particular Byzantine phase together. They were still students then and had an end of year Diploma show to get ready for, a couple of months down the line; time was always of the essence despite the chaos. They had left the gallery in a quiet, if not sombre, mood and walked down the street to the parked Mini Van in silence. Back in the here and now of Kew Gardens, Rosemary decided it was time to take a brisk walk to clear her head of these complex memories, which continued to be a source of both anguish and delight to her.