THE NIGHT I WAS QUENTIN CRISP’S DATE

MARC ANDREWS RELIVES THE NIGHT HE BECAME QUETIN CRISP’S MOVIE PREMIERE COMPANION.

There are certain individuals along life’s meandering path whose impact is carried with you long after encountering them. For me, that was meeting Quentin Crisp, the “Englishman in New York” one summer evening – in New York, of course.

Crisp was the author of the astounding autobiography, The Naked Civil Servant that documented his colourful-but-challenging life in London’s post-war homosexual demi-monde. It was made into a 1975 film starring John Hurt as the eccentric, flamboyant, mauve-coloured coiffed, fedora-adorned Quentin Crisp, and made both of them famous.

I’d been regaled with stories about Quentin from an artist friend of my mother’s some years earlier. Back in England during the 1950s, Quentin had been a life model and posed for her. She was an accomplished part-time painter of, mainly, flowers, landscapes and pussycats, but remembered Quentin as “the most beautiful man I’d ever seen”. There was one painting of hers, an aerodynamic collage of an angular male face, that I fell in love with. She refused to sell it to me, however, calling it “unfinished”. I believe it was because it was of Quentin and she was still, somehow, in love with him or his memory.

In 1991, firmly entrenched as an icon of pre-gay liberation and a living (inter)national treasure residing in downtown Manhattan, Quentin was named special guest of that year’s Gay And Lesbian Film Festival. A documentary about his transplanted life in New York, Resident Alien, featuring a slew of his quirky, pithy witticisms was showing during the festival. As the star attraction he was invited to the festival’s launch, held in the middle of Central Park on the top of the park’s stately library building.

My friend Darrell, who can pretty much manage to get tickets to anything in his hometown of NYC, invited me along with his ex-partner’s sisters, two vivacious and voluptuous South American “chicas”.

But what to wear to such a prestigious event? I settled on a dark blue T-shirt I’d been given by Virgin Records in London to mark the release of the Red Hot + Blue AIDS charity album. Pop rapper Neneh Cherry had bravely tackled I’ve Got You Under My Skin, which was released as the lead single. On the front of the shirt was Neneh’s hard-hitting safe sex rap. On the back, emblazoned in large letters, were the words, “Don’t Ignore Me”.

I met up with Darrell and his pussy posse and we strolled through Central Park to the festival launch. It proved to be a wonderfully warm, early summer’s evening. On the rooftop there was a small buffet set up for guests, plus a mass of comfy chairs and beanbags strewn about.

Never one to stand on ceremony, I begun my cuisine plundering only to hear a strangely familiar voice behind me utter in a stately, yet quizzical tone, “Don’t ignore me? That’s an interesting T-shirt, young man!” I turned around and there next to me, also making the most of the nibbles on offer, was none other than Quentin Crisp. I recognised him immediately – he’d long been a left-field hero of mine – and excitedly began to engage him in conversation, managing to keep a lid on my fanaticism.

I attempted to explain what the words on my T-shirt were about. He seemed vaguely intrigued, as he continued to pile up his plate with intricate savoury edibles. I’m not sure if his interest had to do with the fact my T-shirt was quite form-fitting, but I admit I was flirting with him. I invited Quentin to come and join my “party”, as he seemed to be by himself. He acquiesced graciously, and I led him over.

I introduced him to Darrell and the two girls. One of them looked at him, tilted her head and furrowed her eyebrows as if she couldn’t quite place him. “I know you!” she finally exclaimed in her best Latina squeal. “I know you from somewhere, but I don’t know where this somewhere is!”

“Well, we’ve all come from somewhere, my dear,” Quentin quipped. “The question really should be, where are we all going?”

He was helped to a chair and sat among us; elegant, refined and regal, like a Queen Bee allowing her dedicated workers to buzz and bask contently in her realm. After more polite chitchat, I couldn’t hold back… I had to know if Quentin had an opinion about the reigning Queen Of Pop. At the mention of her name he stopped nibbling the hors d’oeuvres and peered at me with a most unimpressed gaze.

“Madonna,” he repeated slowly with the faintest hint of a sneer, “is the Eva Gabor of our times.” Eva Gabor, in case you’re wondering, was the younger actress sister of much-married actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, which essentially means she has been forgotten about by most people already. It wasn’t meant as a compliment.

The premiere movie of the Film Festival was across the street at an arthouse cinema. Quentin took my arm, with an unexpectedly firm grip, asking if I would be kind enough to escort him. We ambled slowly through the park and out into the street, eventually arriving at the cinema. The assembled crowd turned when they saw us, er, Quentin and we were ushered to two prime seats near the front.

The movie, whose title I forget, proved to be a turgid coming-out tale set in a very grim Britain, with unattractive men having unsatisfying sex with each other in a grainy, painfully pretentious way. It was hard going, and Quentin dozed off a dozen times before waking up, each time with a start. When the movie was finally over, I gave him a gentle nudge to stop him snoring.

“Well!” he exclaimed with unbridled disgust, “that was the reason I left England!”

I helped him walk outside into the warm New York City air, whereupon he thanked me graciously for being his “companion” for the evening and shooing away any idea of joining us for a drink. He was heading home, alone, and happily so. He put on the floppy fedora he’d been guardedly carrying in his hands and then – poof! – was gone. It was a brief, yet memorable, encounter with one of the world’s true originals.