In the mid-90s when I was a 19-year-old undergraduate I did work experience at the now defunct The Face magazine. They put me in what they called the fashion cupboard. Looking back on it now, I recall I spent a hot fortnight in August either hoiking large volumes of clothing around London for various photoshoots or listening, usually at close quarters, to homosexual men – fashionistas, darling – discussing their sex lives in great detail over the telephone. I wasn’t terribly worldly and I found the whole thing fascinating.
Far more sophisticated than me was the other work experience boy, Lance, a skinny 17-year-old who was, as they say, as gay as Christmas. He worked in the post room and I remember talking to him in there one lunchtime when a member of the senior editorial team, a man in his mid-forties, brushed past him to check his pigeonhole.
‘Don’t you dare touch me,’ Lance hissed at him furiously, and suddenly everything seemed to stop.
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