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DMVCTt CBSTt cabaret t MJGF No 1135 7 December 2016 RYNBHB[JOFDPNtRYHBZMPOEPO 18 Suitable only for persons of 18 years and over QX_1135_Cover.indd 1 06/12/2016 14:48 The who, what, why, where & when of gay London… THE INFORMER Medication that drastically lowers the risk of contracting HIV will be made available on the NHS in England as part of a three- year clinical trial. After the High PrEP To Court ruled in November that funding PrEP falls within the remit Be Made of the NHS, it will now be given to 10,000 people. Previous trials have suggested it can cut the risk Available of catching HIV by up to 86% and, despite the pill costing £400 on NHS a month per person, it is likely to save money in the long-term as it is cheaper than treating the disease when contracted. It is estimated that 1 in 8 gay or bisexual men in London have HIV. Malta Bans Conversion Therapy qxmagazine.com EDITOR On Monday, the Maltese DYLAN JONES Parliament passed a bill [email protected] outlawing any practise that seeks to change a person’s EDITORIAL ASSISTANT sexual orientation or gender JOE HOLYOAKE [email protected] identity. Any person offering, advertising, or performing any NEW BUSINESS SALES EXECUTIVE gay conversion therapy will STEVE GREGORY face a fine or jail terms. Malta 020 7240 0055 [email protected] is the first European country to outright criminalise conversion SENIOR DESIGNER therapy. The practise is still JANNE ÖIJER legal in the UK. Another Act [email protected] passed on the same day will let DESIGNER non-Maltese people transition SUREN GUNPATH in Malta and allow over 16 [email protected] year olds to independently CLASSIFIEDS /ESCORTS request a change in gender on 020 7240 0055 official documents if they wish. [email protected] DIRECTOR CHRIS COLMAN Tom Ford: Penetration For All 020 7240 0055 [email protected] The impossibly suave fashion DISTRIBUTION / M.R.DISTRIBUTION designer and film director Tom PRINTERS / ACORN Ford gave an interview with GQ in PUBLISHED BY 2004 where he stated every man FIRSTSTAR LTD. NEW HOUSE, should be penetrated at least once 67-68 HATTON GARDEN, in his life. In this December’s issue LONDON EC1N 8JY of GQ, he has reasserted that COVER: BEYOND: ORANGE GROUP belief in another candid interview. “All men should be fucked” he said. “I think it would help them TO SUBSCRIBE TO QX CALL understand women. It’s such a vulnerable position to be in and 020 7240 0055 there’s such an invasion, in a way, £45 FOR 6 MONTHS even if it’s consensual, it’s just very £80 FOR 12 MONTHS personal. It’s not just sexual, it’s WITHIN UK ONLY a complete set-up of the way the © Copyright in the UK and worldwide, of the publishers world works and most men do not Firststar Limited, Qx (ISSN 1356-6903). QX is understand that at all.”. Well, published every Wednesday. Deadline for editorial and display advertisement inclusion is Thursday, six she’s not wrong. days before the relevant issue cover date. Sorry, but we cannot be held responsible for any unsolicited manuscripts , illustrations or photographs. 2 qxmagazine.com QX_1135_Informer.indd 2 06/12/2016 17:29 QX 1135 MASTER 1.indd 3 06/12/2016 17:30 QX 1135 MASTER 1.indd 4 06/12/2016 17:31 QX 1135 MASTER 1.indd 5 06/12/2016 17:31 GIVE 2016 THE SEND-OFF IT DESERVES, WITH Yes, this is an editorial about New Year. And YES, we know it’s not even been Christmas yet, so how can you start thinking about New Year?! Well you should! We don’t live in the quaint Yorkshire dales where all people do for New Year is watch TV with a box of Cadburys Roses. This is bloody LONDON, goddamit! City of lights and queues and binge drinking and Cara Delevignge and kale chips and vodka and cigarettes and leather trousers and just everything else ridiculous! So on New Year, you can’t just stumble out to central and hope for the best. You’ve got to PLAN stuff, otherwise you’ll be celebrating the end of 2016 on a packed tube carriage with a can of hairspray in one hand and a Ribena bottle full of vodka and coke in the other. Bleak. This is the other thing. We’re thinking this year’s celebrations are gonna be the biggest EVER, because god knows, everyone will be glad to see the back of this mental nutjob of a year. 2016 was a messy bitch who lived for the drama. So what better way to say goodbye to it than big gay messy club nights?! START THINGS OFF, at 5am on 1st January! Yes! We don’t do things conventionally. Celebrating at midnight IS FOR STRAIGHT PEOPLE. As One Afterhours kicks off at 5am at hedonistic (we love that word, it’s our word of the year) superclub Fire! Why is it called Fire? Because it’s LIT. It lasts until 2pm in the afternoon, spanning over three huge rooms and dancefloors, with DJs, performers and cutting edge clubland production! Yes! That’s with DJs Gonzalo, Nik Denton, Zach Burns and more. Need a rest? Nope, sorry. It’s on to BEYOND STARDUST at the iconic Electric Brixton. Beyond Stardust promises to be a celestial celebration of all things euphoric and of the night! As the name suggests, it’s gonna serve as an homage to the late great David Bowie, glamrock queer vibes! It’s powered by salacious social media savvy Scruff, with X-Factor’s Peyton headlining, supporting by Steve Pitron, Tony English, D’Johnny and more. Then (there’s more! Have a Red Bull!) it’s back to Fire for Orange Nation’s flagship freshly squeezed club night, Orange! Mattias Dabo, Alex Georgiou and more will be bringing bangin’ beats to two floors in a final last hurrah to see out the year. SO. Get some Red Bull down ya, like we said. And get yourself on the Victoria Line to Vauxhall. The Victoria Line is the best line isn’t it. SO that’s a bonus! UNTZ UNTZ UNTZ! 6 qxmagazine.com QX_1135_Orange New Year.indd 6 06/12/2016 17:56 As One Afterhours is on Sunday 1st January at Fire, 39 Parry Street, SW8 1RT. 5am – 2pm. Beyond Stardust is on Sunday 1st January at Electric Brixton, Town Hall Parade, SW2 1RJ, 10pm – 6am. Orange is on Monday 2nd January at Fire, 39 Parry Street, SW8 1RT. From 5am. Tickets starting at £25. For more info and to buy tickets, head to orangenation.co.uk 7 qxmagazine.com QX_1135_Orange New Year.indd 7 06/12/2016 17:56 Queer Robin Hood; Drag in Unexpected Places Amrou Al-Kadhi talks us through some of the strangest places he’s performed in drag, from the startlingly subversive to the rustically rural When I hear London Drag Queens talk about how they started, I get the coup was getting 800 students to come in drag to the university’s impression that I’ve missed out on a lot. I, unlike so many of the queens historic Union – wood panelled, and polluted with painted portraits of I love and respect, didn’t begin drag in the loving hands of a Soho gay straight, white (repressed)-male benefactors. When the Union officials bar, or by hosting jobs on the gay night club circuit. I’m sometimes weren’t watching, our crew placed clear acetate on portraits of the envious when I hear about the large drag families and LGBTQI+ stuffy patriarchs and dragged them up with coloured markers. Again, communities some queens have around them. without their realising, we disguised a projector in the space, only to Without a drag mother to guide me through my make-up, my first blast queer videos – some pornographic – onto the “sacred” Union time getting into drag was in a cellar of a Cambridge University college, crests and egotistical portraits during our show. The take-over of 800 and the resulting visual was nothing short of BOTCHED. I was 19, and gender-benders into a space that was then undermined from within felt with no proper queer scene for students. I decided to rent out what was like a dethroning – like we had rode in on a Trojan Horse, a fake gift of essentially a damp crypt - my wig actually rotted that night – and I invited paying customers, who were then set free to ransack on the inside. 400 people on Facebook to come experiment with gender subversion. I Now, I’m not saying that drag always has to be “hostile”. At its offered the stage to other students who wanted to try drag performing, core, it is an expression of joy, self-love, and collectivity, which is why and some semblance of my current drag troupe Denim formed. it’s always such a privilege performing in LGBTQI+ spaces. But there’s The experience sparked my personal take on drag as a tool that something to be said for not preaching to the converted - and the could work within and against potentially hostile spaces. On this specific challenge of working within spaces that are sometimes not your ally is occasion, the cellars sat beneath a group of academics dinking port, a rewarding one. and the interruption of a straight white male porter hell bent on shutting I think my practice of drag as an art form in conflict with institutions us down was a funny conflict to watch (and he failed miserably).