Opening with the theft of the original Factory club poster from a Manchester gallery in 1992, this chapter sees Andy Spinoza reflecting on memory and, more particularly, the lucrative market that has sprung up in Factory memorabilia. The Haçienda closed in 1997 and was demolished not long after – its contents were salvaged for auction, with the DJ booth selling for £8,000. Spinoza brokered the deal that saw Peter Hook sell the club name to property developers. But a remarkable act of reconstruction occurred for the film 24 Hour Party People. Spinoza was present at some of the filming, which gave him and various other Manchester characters a chance to relive the Factory era.

In this chapter, life history interviews ‘orientate’ during what was experienced at first as an uncertain and disorientating time. Putting the ethnographic detail of the salsa classes in the context of life stories also orientates the ethnography upon which the book rests in a wider context, providing a deeper understanding of practices of heterosexuality and femininity that have taken generations to form, multiply and evolve. The chapter begins with the jubilation of change in the ‘second stage’ of the women’s lives, where salsa classes were one of many recent changes. Certain lifestyles and interdependencies were perceived of as generational and women distanced themselves from their mothers’ ways of ageing. Drawing on the writings of historians of gender relations, love and marriage and sociologists of contemporary feminism and intimacy, the chapter situates these emancipatory and transitional narratives within the social histories of post-war changes to selfhood and relationships. Despite being enthused about freedom from familial ties, stories show the women are ever-intwined in family relationships and in some cases ‘freedom’ was facilitated by their families. In another layer of complexity, extracts from the interviews reveal deep nostalgia for the durable relationships of their parents’ generation, idealising and aspiring towards these durable, long-term relationships. Finally, current dating practices are described in which multiple femininities and desires played out. A multitude of often conflicting ideals and expectations surrounding ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ femininities circulated at the same time, shaped by normative understandings of gender, generation and age. Yet they were always produced as respectable.

Continuing the story of Manchester’s redevelopment, Andy Spinoza looks more closely at the relationship between city leaders and the city’s music scene. A key figure in this relationship was Colin Sinclair, a former band manager and owner of the indie rock venue the Boardwalk, who in 2005 was made CEO of MIDAS, Manchester’s Inward Investment Agency. He quickly scored a success by attracting the Bank of New York Mellon to Piccadilly. Another success was bringing on board Factory designer Peter Saville to help rebrand the city. Overall, the 2000s saw the city leadership taking a close interest in ‘culture’, which would be a watchword for Manchester’s global offering in years to come.

Nadezhda’s marriage is falling apart – there is no intimacy between her and her husband Andrei. To make things worse, one evening she sees Andrei kissing his male friend. Convinced that Andrei is sick, and determined to fix their family life, Nadezhda sees the local psychiatrist, Yan Goland. Goland asks Nadezhda to bring her husband in for an appointment and then diagnoses Andrei with “homosexualism”. Andrei is facing a difficult choice: to start treatment or not. Fearing his wife’s threats to report him to the police, Andrei decides to give it a try.

Looking more closely at the Manchester club scene of the late 1980s, Andy Spinoza homes in on the topic of drugs. The spring and summer of 1988 saw an explosion in the use of ecstasy, which was mass-manufactured in the Low Countries and distributed by criminal gangs. Mike Pickering’s Haçienda DJ sets and bands like Happy Mondays ushered in a new style and a new, diverse audience. The 1988 ‘Summer of Love’ would not last though. Increasing violence and criminal activity were accompanied by tabloid outrage, and in 1989 sixteen-year-old Claire Leighton became the UK’s first ecstasy victim when she had a reaction to a pill at the Haçienda and died. The club managed to avoid being forcefully shut down, but by now it was a target for feuding drug gangs, and in January 1991 in voluntarily closed. A short-lived relaunch followed a few months later, but a violent incident on 22 June, where six door staff were stabbed, exposed the deep social problems that eventually sealed the Haçienda’s fate.

This chapter dives deeply into the ethnographic space and the sensorium of the salsa class. Drawing particularly on Sara Ahmed’s queer phenomenology, it explores the ways in which heteronormativity was felt through the body in different spaces – and how in various ways the body, or bodies, (re)produced certain spaces as sexualised, or not. Heterosexual femininity was done through body language; through the unspoken, bodily, and sensuous, and produced and reproduced in the spaces in which women found themselves. Despite divorce and living singly increasingly common in mid and later life, the experience of becoming unpartnered was deeply disruptive to social lives and who women were orientated around. In midlife the married moved among the married, and becoming single meant having to find new social spaces and new social networks. In a context of life transition and uncertainty, and feeling out of place, salsa classes were highly structured spaces which felt welcoming, safe and joyful. They were also intimate and close, and the pleasure of this had to be managed. The concept of ‘safe sensuality’ is developed: a way of being intimate but respectable. Alongside, and essential to, the production of the safe salsa space and safe sensuality was the production of a dangerous outside and dangerous outsiders, produced as explicitly sexual. The production of a dangerous outside space and dangerous outsiders allowed the explicitly sexual to be pushed away – and therefore the intimacy and touch, and new ways of being and moving with men, to be safe, sensual and respectable.

In this chapter, Andy Spinoza describes his time at the Manchester Evening News, where he contributed to the Diary page and became its editor. This was his first taste of working for a mainstream publication, and it gave him the opportunity to meet celebrities such as Muhammad Ali, Bill Wyman and Ray Davies, as well as Coronation Street actors and professional footballers. Much of his work consisted of iing events in the evenings, from theatre opening nights to company launches and author Q and As. Over the years he witnessed a punch up involving Peter Hook, gate-crashed a celebrity party during a U-2 concert at the G-Mex and got thrown against a car bonnet by an enraged Christopher Eccleston.

Aleksei Ignatov keeps a close eye on relevant developments abroad. He sees that many countries have already decriminalized the law on sodomy and that both foreign and Soviet science is now viewing homosexuality as a medical problem. Ignatov is well connected and discusses this idea with many high-ranking officials. He confidently writes a new dissertation in which he proposes to decriminalize consensual sodomy. However, several days before the defence of his dissertation, he receives a call from a party official, who strongly advises him to avoid mentioning the issue of homosexuality or its decriminalization. Ignatov has to make a choice: to stand by his beliefs and risk his career, or play it safe and do as he is told.

In this chapter, Andy Spinoza looks at the role of football, fashion and food in Manchester’s regeneration. The late-1990s and early 2000s saw Manchester United flying high under Sir Alex Ferguson, thanks in large part to the famous ‘class of 1992’. At the same time, the city’s fashion was being elevated by artist and boutique owner Richard Creme, who dressed local celebrities such as David Beckham and Eric Cantona, not to mention superstars of the likes of David Bowie. By the mid-2010s, Manchester City were on the rise, and food was becoming a major part of Manchester’s cultural offering. Coach Pep Guardiola’s launch of the restaurant Tast, for which Spinoza did the PR, in 2016 was a watershed moment, and by the time the pandemic hit in 2020, there were some 500 restaurants in the city centre.

There is an outbreak of AIDS in a children’s hospital in the Soviet republic of Kalmykia. The investigation reveals the shocking truth: AIDS is not limited to homosexuals, prostitutes and intravenous drug users, but can also afflict newborn babies. The babies were infected because hospital nurses reused infected disposable syringes. Soviet newspapers now widely blame the inefficient system of Soviet healthcare for the spread of AIDS. A Moscow-based journalist and writer, Oleg Moroz, seeks to help Soviet homosexuals, whose reputation has been significantly damaged by the emergence of AIDS. He decides to interview them so they can tell their stories. The Soviet public now has the chance to hear the truth from these people whose very existence has long been denied by the USSR authorities.

This chapter discusses desires and hopes for the future by drawing on interviews and stories told about dating beyond the salsa classes, in internet dating and online spaces. Respectability was embodied in multiple ways when talking about internet dating, which was tricky in its explicit search for romantic and/or sexual partners. Internet dating was reimagined into a group setting, with individual profiles made by multiple people, and taking individual agency out of the context. Internet dating was also treated like a business, desexualising the spaces and therefore making the space ‘safe’. Interestingly, however, discussions of online forums allowed a much more agential and calculated discourse of desire to arise, with internet dating allowing the picking and choosing of (un)desirable attributes. Talking of what kind of men were not desired revealed much about how the women wanted to be seen themselves. Notions of ‘compatibility’ were seeped in class-based narratives. Derisive descriptions of undesirable men, accompanied with undesirable lifestyles, worked to align the storytellers with a middle-class femininity. The chapter discusses contempt and the cathartic processes of class relations. Contempt was also linked to feelings about ageing. Divorced and midlife men were increasingly dependent and needy, problematic in terms of imagining future relationships. The chapter ends with a discussion of intimate economies that link love and economy, desire and class.

Vadim Kozin is a popular Soviet singer whose appearance on stage makes crowds go wild. Despite his success, Kozin is not happy. He is struggling with his sexual attraction to other men. The secret police are well aware of his proclivities but do not touch him. This all changes when, one day, the feared chief of the secret police, Lavrentii Beria, invites Kozin to his Moscow residence and asks him to sing something for Stalin. Kozin dares to refuse. Chief Beria loves to rape women and does so with impunity. He hates homosexuals, even if they are celebrities.

Aleksei Petrenko could not have dreamt of a better life. He works for the KGB, lives in a new flat with his family and two children. Behind this façade, however, a family drama is unfolding – Aleksei is unhappy with his wife Liudmila. He often swears at her and occasionally beats her. Liudmila brings this to the attention of the KGB leadership and Petrenko is summoned for a public reprimand. Confused and afraid, Petrenko goes AWOL, hiding in various Soviet cities. Here he starts to meet up with men and he goes on a homosexual spree, exploring the side of himself that he had always suppressed.

On a dry August morning a clinic of the Moscow Institute of Epidemiology receives a patient named Vladimir, delivered straight from the airport. He’s just returned from Tanzania, where he worked as a diplomat. Vladimir’s body is ied in unsightly blotches, he has enlarged lymph nodes and a relentless fever. Doctors are puzzled at his ailments and Vladimir himself is fearful. He is scared for his life and also deathly afraid that the doctors may disi his secret. After several weeks of aggressive therapy, the exotic disease, which is affecting his immune system, finally appears to succumb to treatment and Vladimir is discharged from the hospital. Vladimir is relieved that he’s managed to keep his secret to himself. He goes to his hometown in the heart of Russia, where he intends to settle. But as his health again deteriorates, he is no longer the only Russian suffering from these strange symptoms.

On 1 March 1953 Stalin suffers a stroke at his dacha. A group of his close associates from the Politburo lay his body to rest and try to grapple with the long-neglected issue of the GULAGs (Soviet forced labour camps) which have swollen to unprecedented size and are now virtually unmanageable. They decide to grant amnesty to millions of prisoners and slowly dismantle the GULAG system. However, the resulting release of prisoners unleashes a mass wave of crime that overwhelms the country. Alongside this, the homosexuality that was widespread behind barbed wire now threatens, in the minds of the authorities, to spread out to the country at large.