Close to the Bone

It seems to me to be, in essence, a homoerotic image, enlarging our canon of male pin-ups to embrace wit and honest-to-God deviousness.

I wonder, however, how much of his choice to transmogrify into a skinhead was influenced by a conscious decision on The Pale's part to adopt an image that is currently fashionable, and how much is his own self-expression. I imagine it is a mixture of both, as in most things.

Once, when someone I had trusted dumped on me, I shaved all my hair off, and went with fire in my belly on the hunt for anonymous sex with as little emotional contact as possible. I was hurting, in a very inaccessible place, and instead of seeking reassurance in the presence of someone kind and generous, I sought, and found, scenarios with men immune to feeling that night, who found the image of the skinhead horny, and the ultimate in sexual object.

I became a non-person, a plaything. And when, at dawn, I found myself walking home through the streets of Dublin with grim satisfaction that I had got what I wanted, I wondered what would have happened if someone had shown some kindness, some curiosity as to what had led me to such depths, and not colluded with me in my ritualistic voyage of humiliation.

But then perhaps I needed to get it out of my system. Who is to say? It was all safe sex - but it was as devoid of humour and humanity as a man can manage.

essential part

The symbolism of the appearance; the bald head, the shaved, pierced and tattooed body - fascist or queer? I'm sorry, I can't tell them, me, us, apart and I can't escape. Didn't fascists annihilate 600,000 of us, the forgotten holocaust? I am in a nightmare fantasy, but it's real - the nightclub is full of watchful eyes in hard, shiny-pated faces, skintight jeans, 14 or 21 hole Doc Martens with white laces. Excuse me, what do white laces mean?

"Well, if you're a straight skinhead, it means you're a fascist, a Nazi - if you're a gay skinhead, it means you're into rough sex." How can you tell? "You have to find out for yourself."

A stunningly beautiful dark-skinned man, 6'4" and built like a tank, is being beaten by a smaller white man with a pinched face and boots up to his knees, with an audience of hungry eyes. Afterwards, I watch the two of them having a drink and a laugh. Later still, the Adonis is on his own, his Master nowhere to be seen, and he is looking for more abuse.

Or is it sex? Or is it love? Or is it possible to say? For if you stand very close, after a whack of the belt, you can hear the whispered "is that alright?" from the "abuser," and the "abused" nodding in assent with eyes on fire.

Violence is the undercurrent of the image, as far as I am concerned. It rages in all of us, only some live it out more visibly than others, instead of repressing it, letting it operate on less visible levels in our psyches. What this identification does to ourselves as feeling human beings is not for me to say, except to suggest that if it is done without being conscious of the resonances, no progress can be made, and the patterns of abuse are perpetuated ad infinitum, becoming an essential part of the sexual experience. A man I took home once said that he couldn't come unless he was whipped. It put a dampener on the evening, I can tell you.

power games

Power and impotence, two sides of the same human principle. And the skinhead is to be found on both sides, blurring distinctions. That most vulnerable of suede-heads, Sinéad O'Connor, whose wounds have entered the public domain, finds herself reviled and loved in confusingly overwhelming ways. Her image is achingly resonant of the terrible damage that the human heart can be exposed to. She lives it out for the rest of us, and we respond according to our capacity to understand our own pain and impotence.

Those who bitterly complain that if we had her looks and her money we wouldn't be unhappy are missing the point - she wouldn't have driven herself to such poignant creativity had she not experienced what she had. It is part and parcel of her life. What is bewildering, perhaps, for her is that she has the potential to wield considerable influence now, as a world figure - but as someone who has good reason to distrust authority, she is apparently doing all she can to mess up her chances. She is caught in a destructive pattern, which in most of us goes unnoticed.

I believe her shaven head expresses more than words can say about her life-experience, and taps into something far deeper in us than mere tonsorial taste should allow. The story of Samson resonates to this day. Perhaps at some stage in the future she will emerge with flowing tresses and a pride in her own power as a mature woman and a capacity to enjoy it. And leave behind an image that has more to do with eschewing adulthood than embracing it. I hope so.

And what of the other extreme, the skinheads who are on the increase in fascist groups all over Europe, whose credo is hate? I believe they are expressing something not dissimilar, but without the ability or the desire to be creative about it, they externalise their hatred and project it onto others who threaten their shaky sense of identity, as Germans, Britons, or Irish people. But pain is the root of it. The pain of feeling impotent.

As for gay skinheads, we seem to cross an uneasy divide when we play around with power games, throwing into confusion the roles of abuser and abused. The thin line fades between both to insignificance.