A Public Display of Affection: sleazy, nasty, fabulous queer joy
29 Mar 2025 - Photos by Dahlia Katz

Jonathan Wilson (Blake & Clay's Gay Agenda, Inside, Gay For Pay with Blake and Clay, My Night with Reg, The Normal Heart) is this evening's guest at the 2025 Queer Elders Speaker Series. In dry gay speak he notes, "Elder. I'm flattered and insulted at the same time." Considering himself merely an amateur queer archeologist or historian, he is bemused to find that he is now an "artefact." He contacta a few other elders who he thinks are more suitable, but they, hilariously, refuse to become "living history promoting queer joy." We happily settle for Wilson. The speaker series is sponsored by the developers of the XTC Rainbow Towers, a condo complex slated to replace what is left of the Gay Village, previously rebranded from the colloquially named Gay Ghetto. The developers want to use the illusion of paying homage to the past as a marketing tool. Wilson notes that the city is changing, has changed, "it's getting taller and turning its back on you." But the past has a way of surfacing and influencing so Wilson launches into a potent mixture of history lesson, queer theory, personal reminisces, and spirited, unironic and ironic, queer joy.

We travel back to 1979 when Wilson, at 15, arrived in the city. Drawn to Yonge St which was then the center of the underground gay scene, "It was a sleazy, nasty mess back then. It was fabulous." Wilson illustrates the furtive difficult ways that gay men struggled to "connect in the dark," explaining that "we didn't come out, we went in." In to the alleyways, the bars, the dark. Always aware of the dangers but also aware of the ecstatic pleasures of dancing with one's community, of delicious deviant sex. Whenever it gets too dark, and A Public Display of Affection doesn't shy away from the horrors and trauma of our history, the disco music blares and Wilson, and us, lose ourselves in the transporting euphoria of a queer dance floor. Life was sleazy, nasty and fabulous. Wilson marvels at seeing a gay couple holding hands, a public display of affection, in a Starbucks "in daylight." And he remembers just how impossible that seemed in 1979. And the brutal results of daring to do so.

Wilson is not only a skilled raconteur, there is not a second where he loses his grip while deceptively making it appear to be conversational, he also has a remarkable eye for detail. Precise specifics conjure entire vistas. A morning trip to Hanlan's Point is conjured with simple eloquence so achingly sketched that we can feel the sun and sand. And the queer joy. His ragtag group of roommates, chosen family, are etched so precisely that he can move between the characters with a gesture, turning caricature into vivid home movies complete with scratches and wear. A Public Display of Affection doesn't just evoke or illustrate the past, it conjures it into life. At this point I should probably note that I can't help but be biased. I too am an elder and while my experiences were different from Wilson's, the locales, the music, the feelings, are part of the fabric of my being. But for anyone who didn't get to experience the frisson of erotic danger mixed with exultation that was dancing at the Manatee, or felt the helplessness and anger as their contemporaries succumbed to the plague, or witnessed a fearless fabulous queen silence a homophobic mob, A Public Display of Affection and Wilson are an invocation.

Wilson — ably assisted by Denyse Karn's evocative projections and Lyon Smith's sensitive to blaring sound design — bounds, strides and ambles through time and the intimate space. Always armed with a quip, a raised eyebrow or a sly smile, a telling gesture, we ricochet from queer joy to devastation and back again. Repeatedly. Wilson and director Mark McGrinder (Four Minutes Twelve Seconds, The Nether, Clybourne Park, The Normal Heart) never steer the focus from Wilson's charming appeal and carefully thread the thematic metaphors so that they resonate without being blatant. The script is occasionally disjointed, slamming from monologue to sketch without warning or theatrical logic, but then the fragments cohere only to echo against each other. Or clash. Just like memory. Like history. There is much we want to retain, to savour, and much we'd rather forget if there was any way to do that. Wilson doesn't have our entire history to present in a coherent simple manner, but where his history intersects with the community's history he creates a universal history.

Wilson's main concern is assimilation. What does it mean to be an elder when the younger are absorbed into the society that used to reject us emphatically? Can't that history just be relegated to the past? But Wilson warns us that "present is a present" and it can easily be built over and erased which is not assimilation, it is genocide. Yes, we can hold hands in public, express public displays of affection, but the current political climate warrants also looking over one's shoulder while doing it. We can come out but we should also go in to that sleazy, nasty and fabulous world that is queer joy. Never forget it existed. And exists.