ABSTRACT
The Pet Shop Boys' ironic coupling of the urban lament 'Where the Streets Have
No Name' with the camply romantic 'I can't take my eyes off you' in a single released
in 1991 could easily be played as soundtrack to this chapter, since it segues between
the bleak and the bouncy, between earnestness and frivolity, between cruelty and
desire. Inevitably read, as with so many of the Boys' songs, as an AIDS lament, the
song also evokes a sense of being on the streets, of both wanting to seek 'shelter
from poison rain' and wanting to 'let me love you, baby' – at once an erotics of
looking and a desire for disappearance (also captured lyrically in some passages
of Alphonso Lingis's sensuous geography, Foreign Bodies (1994)). It thus summarises
the importance of the city streets for sexual dissidents: the flow of people, the chance
both to disappear in a crowd but also to catch glances, to look and be looked at,
the chance for a brief encounter – the possibilities which frame the city streets as
an iconic space in the queer sexual imaginary, contributing to that 'great gay migra-
tion' to urban areas detailed in the US by Kath Weston (1995). Similarly, the PSBs'
first major hit single 'West End girls' (1985) couples street fear with yearning: 'Too
many shadows, whispering voices/Faces on posters, too many choices/If, when, why,
what/How much have you got?/Have you got it, do you get it?/If so, how often?/
Which do you choose/A hard or soft option?'.
