More Cock-Eyed Optimism

Book excerpt: This frank and honest memoir follows the life of Nigel Quiney aged twenty-one returning to London from the USA. He re-joins the family business of paper importers Ridley Quiney & Co. and leaves home. The new decade of the 'sixties is an exciting time and gay life is beginning to be more interesting, with more clubs and bars and even places where dancing is possible, subject to police raids. With his own studio he now has the freedom to entertain friends and it is in this period that he falls in love with Gordon Heath, the American actor/singer and begins a torrid affair with him. When this relationship finally finishes he resumes again his interest in design which culminates in his producing a range of unique gift-wrapping papers which immediately become best sellers. Thanks to the politics of the family business his gift-wraps were not taken up and thus he created his own business, Nigel Quiney Designs. This launches him into the excitement of Swinging London with increasing sales both at home and across the USA. With an expanding business he travels back to the USA where he indulges in the expanding gay life in New York and Los Angeles as well as promoting his gift-wrapping papers. In holiday times he discovered the joys of being gay in Ibiza and Morocco at a time when little tourism existed there. In the mid-sixties he meets Ted and Gillian Thorpe. She, under the name of Eliot George wrote one of the first gay novels to be published - The Leather Boys, subsequently made into a successful film. Later when she was furthering her career by writing screen plays in Hollywood she and Nigel met. The following year Ted was looking for someone to share expenses when he planned to cross the USA in his Lotus Elan and Nigel put himself forward as his traveling companion. This started a life-long friendship and the two cross country drives produced many memorable and hilarious situations at a time when the English were a very rare event for Americans to come across. This is the second of four memoirs.