Author Archive

THE DUO BEHIND NOH8: The two founders of the international NOH8 gay rights phenomenon were recently in Cape Town for Pride - and to add South African faces to their photographic campaign. Mambaonline's Al Mackay got to meet Adam Bouska and Jeff Parshley.
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHANGE: Fate has an unhealthy predilection for making us eat our words. Al Mackay always swore that he'd never get into a long distance relationship. Now, as fate would have it, he's found himself in just such an arrangement.
MY FIRST GAY WEDDING: Al Mackay missed out on his annual ritual of partying at MCQP to attend his first gay wedding. He questions if same-sex marriages will ever stop being political statements and if we’ve liberated ourselves into a new set of social norms.
COME DINE WITH ME?: Without putting too hipster a point on it, I’ve been having dinner parties since long before Come Dine With Me made them cool. It’s only relatively recently that my dinner party circuit has widened to include my gay friends.
DADDY DOES DAY-CARE: Al Mackay considers the pros and cons of dating guys who are considerably younger or older than you are. Is it a power imbalance doomed to fail or a match that could benefit both guys?
FAIRY TALES OF LOVE & FAITHFULNESS: Are we capable of being faithful? Is there a knight in shining armour for us? Thanks to all those fairy tales we’re told, Al Mackay had assumed that once you’d fallen in love you’d automatically lose interest in sex with other people...
BI NOW, GAY LATER: The gay community’s distrust of bisexuals has gone so far as to become a prejudice. We seem incapable of accepting the ambiguity, of accepting that some people are genuinely attracted to both men and women in equal parts, writes Al Mackay.
FLICKING THE SWITCH: On the annual International Day Against Homophobia Al Mackay ponders what makes us gay. Do we have a choice in our sexual orientation? Could our sexuality be changeable? And should it really matter?
THE FILTH OF OPPOSABLE THUMBS: Sexting is the new phone sex, writes Alistair Mckay. He explores the schizophrenic schism between verbal and written communication when it comes to talking dirty.
WHAT’S IN A NUMBER?: Exactly how many people have you slept with? Have you kept count? And does your lover have the right to know? Al Mackay looks at the ins and outs of the ‘magic number’ and all the assumptions that come with it…