Let's Talk About Sex

There is a bona fide 80s revival happening at last. Michael Jackson's Thriller is 25, padded jackets are in, and I'm just watching for an outbreak of big hair and ra-ra skirts among young women to complete the picture. Soon the miners will be on strike.. oh no, there aren't any miners left, are there? Thatcher had them all put to death.

But let's not dwell on the sordid - let's welcome the return of the Most Misunderstood Decade in Musical History. Beginning in post-punk, witnessing the rebirth of funk and culminating in worldwide rave, the 80s were a miraculous journey for music, resounding with the sudden impact of technology way before any of the other strings which make up our guitar-shaped culture - or as it was, a keyboard-shaped culture - as cheap Japanese drum machines and samplers found their way into bedrooms everywhere.

In 1983, Professor Perry and I constructed an audio sampler in a biscuit tin (Scottish Shortbread, nice and flat) powered by the marvellously rubber-buttoned lo-fi monster, the ZX Spectrum. A full second and a half of 8 bit audio was available in ear-crunching glory. I sampled the Flintstones and recorded a version of "I Wanna Be In America" which I gave on chrome cassette to my black, gay American friend Donald, who was working with me that summer at the Tate Gallery, London.

Donald was the most out of out gay men I had yet met. He was a solidly built, perfectly charming, erudite, politically savy New York Columbia graduate. He wore long dreads, half-moon spectacles, and black Vivienne Westwood dresses. The rather square management of the publications department were quietly proud of him, like a trophy of their liberalism as they hid behind their brown cardigans and corduroy slacks in an otherwise conservative decade.

Donald opened my eyes to the vices and schisms of North America like no other person I had met. He told me about clubs, music, fashion, art, and sex. This was in the days when AIDS was a looming shadow, sex was not a subject for open debate, but I was fresh from art school, where all subjecs were fair game, and Donald's carnal knowledge was wide-ranging. And so, the two of us would charm and entertain our fellow book and ticket-sellers for hours, expounding the techniques of troilism, the benefits of cocoa butter, and the fine art of fisting in measured, reasonable tones at a volume just below public, in order to retain our employment.

Although I learned a lot, I was unshockable, and we both took perverse pleasure in observing various members of staff getting very hot under their collars, eavesdropping on our wide-ranging discussions on carnal behaviour, mores and morality. Donald seemed surprised to have ever shocked anyone, and on the rare occasions when a less bold staff member would request an explanation or a change of subject, he would always apologise politely and attempt to ensure there was no repeat performance of offending someone's more delicate sensibilities. One female staff member later confessed to me that she had been driven to masturbate in the toilets, as a result of the salty conversations we were having.

At a stroke, my life was divided into before and after - my impression of the USA before Donald, and my knowledge afterwards. Sex was a fascination for us both, but more lastingly, he told me of the deep racism that scars the land of the free, and how that freedom does not extend equally to people of colour. He told me about the black man who attempted the simple act of walking across America barefoot, north east to south west, and how many times he was arrested for doing that, and how many times the police beat him up for doing nothing but walking in the wrong place without shoes. Actually, he was telling me about himself. He became sad, honestly recounting tales of oppression and brutality, but, still despite his Europhile nature, maintaining an American's peculiar pride in his own, flawed country.

You know how it is: disposable pop music defines your life without you having any choice in the matter. For all his sophistication, Donald had a uninhibitedly straight taste in music, and loved cheap pop songs as naturally as flowers. This morning when I awoke and considered the ongoing 80s revival, it was Donald and Salt and Pepa who came to mind, rather than any of the musical greats of the 1980s which became my personal touchstones. Let's Talk About Sex will always remind me of Donald. And right now, I can't get the song out of my head.