For as long as I can remember – and long before I even thought of myself as gay – I’ve heard tales about how people signal their sexual preferences. In my ‘pre-gay’ life these were very mild; for example, wearing an earring in your left ear or a ring on your little finger meant you were gay.

But then as I entered the scene I began to learn about ‘the hanky code’. I really can’t remember too many details of what each one meant: my self-esteem was already so low I didn’t want to reduce my chances of getting laid even further by specifying what type of sex I preferred! Having said that, I did wear a safety pin from pretty early on to signal that I was into safe sex. Indeed, at one point I had a six inch long red safety pin stuck through a button hole in my denim jacket!

Anyway, I recently came across this explanation of the various sexual signals, courtesy of the Pleasure Chest in West Hollywood. For someone who only got as far as ‘Right means passive and Left means active’ this is some extraordinary menu. For example, who would have known what a fur hanky meant? Or a bit of mosquito netting for that matter?