MILESTONES The Gay& Lesbian Review WORLDWIDE

January–February 2018 $5.95 USA and Canada

JAMES O’KEEFE The Evolutionary Origins of Homosexuality TIMOTHY HOBSON Last Surviving Eyewitness to The Alger Hiss Case Tells All MARTHA E. STONE Remembering Those Who Left Us in 2017 MARTIN DUBERMAN Why Auden & Kallman Endured

Alison Bechdel Tennessee Williams’ Woes BY ‘The is all about father and son.’ AN INTERVIEW WITH DANIEL MENDELSOHN Fun Home, the Musical, Hits the Road BY ROSEMARY BOOTH

The Gay & Lesbian Re view January–February 2018 • VOLUME XXV, NUMBER 1 WORLDWIDE

The Gay & Lesbian Review ® WORLDWIDE CONTENTS PO Box 180300, , MA 02118

Editor-in-Chief and Founder Milestones RICHARD SCHNEIDER JR. ______EATURES Literary Editor F MARTHA E. STONE Honoring Those Who Left Us in ’17 10 M ARTHA E. S TONE Poetry Editor A few words in memory of some people who made a difference DAVID BERGMAN Evolutionary Origins of Homosexuality 14 J AMES O’KEEFE,EVAN Associate Editors Epigenetic switches are activated when a gay son is needed most O’KEEFE,&JOHN HODES JIM FARLEY JEREMY FOX Eyewitness to the Alger Hiss Case 19 T IMOTHY HOBSON CHRISTOPHER HENNESSY The accused Communist’s stepson tells the homo side of the story MICHAEL SCHWARTZ “The Odyssey is Contributing Writers all about father and son.” 22 D ANIEL MENDELSOHN ROSEMARY BOOTH Frank Pizzoli talks with a classicist in the footsteps of Homer DANIEL BURR The Unreliable Tenderness o NDREW RICHARD CANNING f the World 25 A HOLLERAN COLIN CARMAN Tennessee Williams’ woes are all there in letters to James Laughlin ALFRED CORN ALLEN ELLENZWEIG Why Auden and Kallman Endured 28 M ARTIN DUBERMAN CHRIS FREEMAN A new look at Chester Kallman explains why they stayed together PHILIP GAMBONE MATTHEW HAYS ANDREW HOLLERAN REVIEWS CASSANDRA LANGER ANDREW LEAR Alexander Howard — Charles Henri Ford 32 FELICE PICANO DAVID MASELLO Karin Roffman — The Songs We Know Best: John Ashbery’s Early Life 33 ALAN CONTRERAS JIM NAWROCKI Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni – After Andy; Thomas Morgan Evans – 3D Warhol 34 MARTHA E. STONE JAMES POLCHIN Stephen Bourne — Fighting Proud 35 PHILIP GAMBONE JEAN ROBERTA VERNON ROSARIO Ian Schrager — Studio 54 37 J. KEN STUCKEY HEATHER SEGGEL Armistead Maupin — Logical Family: A Memoir 38 JIM NAWROCKI YOAV SIVAN John Boyne — The Heart’s Invisible Furies 39 DALE BOYER Contributing Artist BRIEFS 41 CHARLES HEFLING Sean F. Edgecomb — Charles Ludlam Lives! 42 RICHARD CANNING Advertising Manager John Lauritsen — The Shelley-Byron Men 43 DANIEL A. BURR STEPHEN HEMRICK Michael Ausiello — Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies 43 TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER Parvez Sharma — A Sinner in Mecca: A Gay Muslim’s Hajj of Defiance 44 CHARLES GREEN Webmaster OLIN ARMAN WWW.STRATEGYBEACH.COM Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris, directors — Battle of the Sexes 48 C C ______Alison Bechdel, writer; Sam Gold, director — Fun Home 50 ROSEMARY BOOTH Board of Directors STEWART CLIFFORD (CHAIRMAN) ART COHEN POEMS & DEPARTMENTS EDUARDO FEBLES DRIAN ITCHIE DONALD GORTON (CLERK) Guest Opinion — On “Passing” in the Transgender Community 5 A R DIANE HAMER CORRESPONDENCE 6 TED HIGGINSON IN MEMORIAM — Charles Shively, Pioneer Activist and Author 7 MICHAEL BRONSKI ROBERT HARDMAN BTW 8RICHARD SCHNEIDER JR. DAV ID LAFONTAINE ROBERT NICOSON POEM — “Life Study” 27 MARIAN MERIAM RICHARD SCHNEIDER,JR.(PRESIDENT) POEM — “April 27, 1932, Gulf of Mexico” 36 PAUL ALEXANDER MARTHA E. STONE POEM — “Let Me Count the Ways” 40 DAVID CURRY THOMAS YOUNGREN (TREASURER) CULTURAL CALENDAR 45 WARREN GOLDFARB (SR. ADVISOR EMER.) ARTIST’S PROFILE — Juan Bastos, Portrait Painter, on Exhibit in LA 46 CHRIS FREEMAN

The Gay & Lesbian Review/WORLDWIDE® (formerly The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, 1994-1999) is published bimonthly (six times per year) by The Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational corporation located in Boston, Mass. Subscriptions: Call 844-752-7829. Rates: U.S.: $35.70 per year (6 issues). Canada and Mexico: $45.70(US). All other countries: $55.70(US). All non-U.S. copies are sent via air mail. Back issues available for$12each. All correspondence is sent in a plain envelope marked “G&LR.” © 2018 by The Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc. All rights reserved.

WEBSITE: www.GLReview.org • SUBSCRIPTIONS: 844-752-7829 • ADVERTISING: 617-421-0082 • SUBMISSIONS: [email protected] January–F!bruary 2018 3 FROM THE EDITOR The G&LR’s 25th Year Begins: ‘Milestones’ HUS BEGINS our 25th year of publication, which is it- sity to survive and reproduce than do families not similarly self a “milestone” of sorts, one that’s hard to absorb on blessed, so their genes are preserved. Ta few levels both personal and professional. But I think Another kind of breakthrough is offered here by Timothy the word “milestone” can also describe a number of the articles Hobson, who is the 91-year-old stepson of Alger Hiss. For that follow. This issue, in other words, does not have a strong readers not old enough to remember Richard Nixon, Hiss was conceptual theme, but several of these pieces make important a rising star in the U.S. State Department in the late 1940s until and original contributions to the LGBT knowledge base. an old associate, Whitaker Chambers, went before the House To start with the sense of “milestone” as used in periodicals Un-American Activities Committee and testified that Hiss was to announce births, deaths, and marriages, it is the second cat- a member of the Communist Party. Nixon joined in the smear egory that concerns us here, as Martha E. Stone offers her an- campaign. Hobson had an insider’s view of these events and nual roundup of LGBT activists, artists, writers, and others offers a theory as to why Chambers, an admitted homosexual, who passed away last year. It seems an unusually long roster chose to go after Hiss with such mendacious fury. this time for whatever reason. It occurs to me, only half face- More firsthand research is on display as Martin Duberman tiously, that the political apocalypse of 2016 has acted as a opens the vault on the lives of W. H. Auden and Chester Kall- major stressor on many people in the interim, and perhaps this man, who stayed together despite vast differences in lifestyle has taken a toll. and level of commitment. This re-appraisal of Kallman’s mo- A more upbeat sense of “milestone” applies to a number of tives and character dispels the image of him as a user and ne’er- other pieces that I think represent important breakthroughs or do-well and helps explain why Auden stayed in the relationship revelations in our understanding of LGBT issues. The article until his death in 1973. by James O’Keefe, et al., offers an elegant synthesis of scien- Another kind of milestone is suggested by an Artist’s Pro- tific findings on homosexuality in a way that resolves the fun- file of portrait painter Juan Bastos, who recently had a one- damental paradox it presents to evolutionary theory. Given that man retrospective of his work in Los Angeles. Juan produced same-sex-oriented people tend to have few children, why does- the artwork for twelve covers of this magazine from 2004 to n’t homosexuality die out? Not to give too much away, but it 2012, and we are heartened by his continued success. turns out that families with gay members have a higher propen- RICHARD SCHNEIDER JR.

By the author of the memoir August Farewell and the novel Searching for Gilead.

“Atmospheric style and intimate characterizations... explores and sexuality as dual forces in the construction of a person’s experience and identity. Often explicitly erotic and always well-written.” — Clarion Review (4 stars out of 5) Available at www.amazon.com & www.DavidGHallman.com

4Th! Gay & L!sban R!v!w / oRLdide GUEST OPINION On ‘Passing’ in the Transgender Community bastion of male exclusion. ADRIAN RITCHIE As of 2016, Canada has a law that protects people against CAN REMEMBER every time I have used a men’s rest- these forms of discrimination—a legal change brought about room since coming out as a man. The first time, I was walk- by adding the words “gender identity and gender expression” Iing through my university with a friend, and I hesitated at to a list of categories protected from discrimination. Needless the door as the outline of a male stick figure drilled into my to say, legal protection cannot shield people from all private gaze, my hesitation prompting my friend to shove me inside. It acts of hostility. But it’s worth noting that Canada accom- wasn’t a busy restroom stop—there was actually no one else in plished this expansion of rights through a simple addition of there at the time—but still I was terrified. What if someone protected categories, a measure that the U.S. could easily enact else came in? How would I escape? Would there be enough through a simple tweak to the Civil Rights Act—if the politi- time to wash my hands? All these thoughts ran through my cal will to do so were there. head. In the end, no one came in, and with subsequent visits to Fortunately, there are resources for people who share my other, busier men’s rooms, I’ve come to realize that it’s not so experiences. Refuge Restrooms is a service that “seeks to pro- different from being in the women’s room. For the most part, vide safe restroom access for transgender, intersex, and gender no one really cares. nonconforming individuals” (see www.RefugeRestrooms.org). Still, those first few visits terrified me, and I didn’t really They also have an app that allows users to find where nearby start to use the men’s room until I truly felt that I could “pass.” gender neutral restrooms are located. As more and more rest- Passing, for those untutored in the vocabulary of the trans com- room locations are added to this app, my hope continues to munity, is the concept, in the words of the Trans Student Edu- grow for a future where apps like this are obsolete and all rest- cational Resource, of “being perceived by others as a particular rooms are safe for all genders. identity/gender or cisgender regardless of how the individual in question identifies.” Passing is important to many trans peo- Adrian Ritchie is an artist and student at York University in Toronto. ple and is often considered a matter of safety. However, the ______practice of passing is itself quite controversial, as it is based * D. P. Schrock, et al. “Emotion Work in the Public Performances of Male-to- upon an underlying acceptance of gender as binary, the as- Female Transsexuals.” Archives of Sexual Behavior, 38(5), 2009. sumption that the goal is to emulate one half of the traditional dichotomy between masculine and feminine appearance. This excludes trans people who do not accept a binary gender system and those who don’t want to pass or are physically unable to do so for medical or other reasons. In defense of passing is the issue of violence aimed at trans- gender people, which happens mainly to those who are unwill- ing to pass or unable to do so successfully. A study of over 400 transgender women showed that 55 percent had been targets of street harassment, and ten percent had been assaulted with a weapon.* Passing is a privilege in the trans community, the privilege of (relative) safety. This experience is amplified when it comes to gendered spaces, especially restrooms. For example, a 2014 study involving eight transgender men found that most avoided using public restrooms unless gender neutral ones were available, fearing physical consequences upon entering that

My roommate and I were forced by the Phillips Exeter Academy in 1962 to un- dergo psychiatric treatment to be cured of our homosexuality, with the result that he committed suicide and I became a schiz- ophrenic. Another schizophrenic, the Ger- man theologian Paul Tillich, thought that I was the Second Coming of Christ. Rejecting this label, I told my first lover, Mark Frechette, that he was the real Christ. After Mark starred in Antonioni’s Zabriskie Point, he was crucified in prison in 1975 at the age of 27.

www.barnesandnoble.com

January–F!bruary 2018 5 Correspondence whole discussion of free speech on campus, they know holds offensive views. As teach- Author Questions Basis for Review trigger warnings, comfort zones, and so on. ers, we owe a duty of care to our students. As To the Editor: At the Times [of London] Higher Educa- scholars, we have an intellectual obligation to I was disappointed in your review [Nov.- tion World Academic Summit meeting last frame ideas and perspectives in historical and Dec. ’17] of my novel Our Time: San Fran- September, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford Uni- social contexts. We can reject homophobia cisco in the 70s. Your reviewer found my versity Louise Richardson revealed that she and maintain a high standard of intellectual resume more important than his job as a re- has “had many conversations with students rigor; we only need to put the emphasis on viewer to comment on the style and content who say they don’t feel comfortable be- the student’s ability to understand and argue, of the novel. Did he read the wrong thing? cause their professor has expressed views all the time respecting the personal identities I started writing seriously late in life, and against homosexuality. And I say, ‘I’m of the people we are teaching. this is my first novel, so I wasn’t expecting sorry, but my job isn’t to make you feel Gabriel Schenk, Oxford, England a glowing review that sent readers racing to comfortable. Education is not about being the nearest bookstore to read about an ex- comfortable. I’m interested in making you Correspondences quisitely magical time in our history that uncomfortable.’ If you don’t like his views, To the Editor, changed the way gay men thought about you challenge them, engage with them, and Regarding the Nov.-Dec. issue with the sex. Was the reviewer so uptight about his figure how a smart person can have views theme “100 Years of Subterfuge,” we might sexuality that he was afraid to comment on like that.” consider the following points in relation to the candidness of all the sex in the novel As someone who has taught students at several contributors: that was the essence of that era? He ends Oxford and elsewhere, let me say this: it is 1. Stephan Likosky [in a piece on early saying that he would have preferred a non- absolutely not the role of a teacher to make 20th-c. postcards] notes that the French re- fiction account. If he’d done his homework, students feel uncomfortable. Prof. Richard- ferred to homosexuality as “the German he would have found my memoir Do You son is mistaking the need to challenge stu- vice,” with many negative connotations. Live Around Here?, which recounts my first dents intellectually with making them so But the British had once described it as “the years as an out gay man. distressed that they cannot focus on learn- Italian vice,” sometimes even in a positive Chuck Forester, San Francisco ing. Of course we should all be able to jus- sense, because Italians were thought to be tify our positions, including the idea that generally more relaxed than the English What If Your Professor Is Anti-Gay? homophobia is bad. Students should be en- about alternative values. To the Editor: couraged to analyze ideas they may not 2. Andrew Holleran mentions A. E. In his astute critique of the modern mania agree with, and it’s okay for them to feel out Housman’s gay brother Laurence but not his for procreation and consumption (“Stop of their depth at times; that this is how we lesbian sister Clemence, while Jeffrey Mey- Everything! Save the Planet,” Sept.-Oct. stretch them intellectually. ers lists all of Thomas Mann’s lesbian and 2017), Eric Robertson complained that This pedagogical work should take place gay children. “people like me cannot say these things” in an environment the student is comfortable 3. David LaFontaine writes about the col- because doing so might make some people in. Just as you would not ask a student to take laboration of four gay men in creating West uncomfortable. Let me recount an incident an exam while sitting in icy water, we should Side Story. In fact, within the arts world, from across the Pond that implicated the not expect students to learn from someone there have been many such collaborations. For instance, the Met opened its first season at Lincoln Center in 1966 with an opera Join Other Readers of The GLR for by Samuel Barber to a libretto by Franco Zeffirelli, also the director and designer, conducted by Thomas Shippers and choreo- Gay Europe 2018 graphed by Alvin Ailey, all now known to be homosexual. Benjamin Britten composed Learn about the gay history and art of operas for his life partner Peter Pears, and Europe’s great cultural capitals, and he often used the homoerotic themes of do it in style with Tours. “gay” novelists (Herman Melville’s Billy All trips are designed and led by Prof. Budd, Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, and Andrew Lear, the founder of Oscar Henry James’ Turn of the Screw). Wilde Tours. Despite subterfuge, we are indeed everywhere! TENTATIVE DATES: Donatello’s Fr. Paul K. Thomas, Baltimore David Dublin Gay Theatre Festival — May 10–14 Corrections Oscar Wilde’s London / Paris — August 14–22 In the November-December issue, Margaret Gay Greece fom Achilles to Alexander — Sept. 26–Oct. 4 Cruikshank’s most recent book was given incorrectly. Her latest book is 2017’s Fierce Gay Italy from Caesar to Michelangelo — Oct. 5–14 with Reality: Literature and Aging. DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE FOR G&LR READERS In the same issue, in a review of his book, For itineraries, dates, & prices Sex Cultures, Amin Ghaziani’s position at Visit: www.OscarWildeTours.com the U. of British Columbia was misstated. www.hetravel.com He is an associate professor of sociology.

6Th) Gay & L)sb an R)v )w / !RLD!iDe IN MEMORIAM Charles Shively, Pioneer Activist and Author

MICHAEL BRONSKI published in 1975. He was active in the Boston poetry scene, particularly Stone Soup Poets. Indeed he understood himself NE OF THE PIVOTAL FIGURES in the Gay Libera- primarily as a poet—his poems were spare, imagistic, almost tion Movement, Charley Shively died on Friday, Oc- religious—a word he would have rejected—and mystical in Otober 6th, at the Cambridge Rehabilitation and Nursing their intensity. He leaves three finished poetry manuscripts. Home in Cambridge, . He had been a resident During the 1970s and ’80s, he was involved in numerous there since June of 2011, suffering from Alzheimer’s. He LGBT organizations, was a founding member of Gay and Les- would have turned eighty on December 8, 2017. bian Advocates and Defenders (GLAD), and, along with Fag At the 1977 Boston Gay Pride march, Shively became in- Rag, wrote frequently for Gay Community News, Gay Sun- famous for burning pages from the Bible—as well as his Har- shine, The Guide, and poetry journals. Almost always dressed in vard diploma and a teaching contract—as a protest against overalls and speaking in his slow, southern Ohio drawl, he was oppressive institutions. This act of incendiary and effective po- a ubiquitous figure at political meetings and rallies. During this litical theater—it nearly caused a riot—later obscured his work time, he taught full-time, traveled to Kenya, Ecuador, and Viet- as an organizer, scholar, poet, and publisher. nam on three Fulbrights, and was hired as a tenured professor at Born in poverty in Gobbler’s Knob, Ohio, in 1937, Shively UMass Boston in the American Studies Program. excelled in high school and entered in 1955. Shively’s partner beginning in 1964, Gordon Copeland, died After being granted a masters in history at the University of in 1994, the year Shively was diagnosed with HIV. He retired Wisconsin in 1959, he entered the doctoral program in history from UMass in 2001 and began exhibiting signs of Alzheimer’s at Harvard. During this time he worked at Boston State Col- a few years later. During this time he traveled to Paris to do re- lege, where he was active in New University Congress, antiwar search on homosexuality and the French Revolution. working groups in the American Historical Association, and Charley Shively’s legacy is in his writings, and also in the other anti-Vietnam war groups. His graduation from Harvard in example of his insistent refusal—always with humor—to fol- June of 1969 coincided with the Stonewall Riots. That sum- low the rules, and often not even to acknowledge them. mer he began what was to be his life’s work: gay liberation. His vision of gay liberation was deeply and uniquely inflected Michael Bronski is professor of media studies at Harvard University. by his study of, and belief in, anarchism. After helping form Gay Men’s Liberation in Boston, Shiv- ely worked on the first issue of Lavender Vision, a 1970 co- gendered Gay Liberation newspaper. A year later helped form the Fag Rag Collective, which published the first national post- Stonewall gay political journal. In Fag Rag Shively published a series of twelve essays, beginning with “Cocksucking as an Act of Revolution,” that became foundational to post- Stonewall gay male political theorizing. Written in a conver- sational tone with a mixture of personal confession, everyday anecdote, Karl Marx, Herbert Marcuse, Mikhail Bakunin, Kate Millett, and Shulamith Firestone, these influential pieces be- came canonical. During the next decade the ever-changing Fag Rag Collective was held together by Shively’s presence and persistence. He was also responsible for founding Fag Rag Books, the Good Gay Poets collective and Press (which pub- lished noted poets such as John Wieners and Ruth Weiss), and Boston Gay Review, a journal of cultural criticism. Along with his political essays, Shively’s academic work included the six-volume edited Collected Works of Lysander Spooner (1971)—a 19th century social anarchist—and A His- tory of the Conception of Death in America, 1650-1860, his doctoral dissertation (1987). His groundbreaking research on Walt Whitman resulted in two books—Calamus Lovers: Walt Whitman’s Working Class Camerados (1987) and Drum Beats: Walt Whitman’s Civil War Boy Lovers (1989)—which he viewed as an expression of political commitment as well as ac- ademic research. A lifelong poet—he first published poems in high school—Shively wrote at least one poem a day. His Nues- tra Señora de los Dolores: The San Francisco Experience was

January–F)bruary 2018 7 FRIENDS OF THE REVIEW* LEADERSHIP CIRCLE Henry van Ameringen Eric Anderson & Roger Beck James Hess BENEFACTORS BTW Stewart Clifford Ed Lemay Bill Cohen Robert Nicoson Seth Grosshandler & Kim Wainwright Blaine Pennington Robert Hardman Robert Roehm Ted Higginson Louis Wiley Jr. Three Photos in No Need of a Punchline They pretty much David LaFontaine Philip Willkie speak for themselves. They come from around the world, and all SPONSORS Anonymous Bob Hellwig & Gordon Whitaker three involve matters of questionable taste as locally defined. Anonymous James Hendrick Michael Barrett John Hudson 1. For anyone who missed this sign in front of the Bella Vista Bjorn Bjorklund Michael Jarvis Baptist Church in Edgewater, Florida, which went TV viral in Robert K. Black Gary W. Jung Samuel D. Brown Rob Kvidt early November, here it is. For the rest of you, here it is again. Peter Cannon Dick Land Victor Carlson Robert Lobou It seems like the kind of double entendre that might once have Michael Carson John Longres Robert Christie & Kevin Ceckowski Gregory Manifold remained confined to the gay community, where its unintended Robert Cloud John Manola meaning would immediately be clear. The fact that the rest of Art Cohen Michael Matthews Michael Denneny Joel Michael America is now hip to the perils of oral sex is perhaps a sign John Desmarteau MD Mark Mullin Joe Tansey & Frank Devito Donald Ott of progress. Robert Dockendorff Larry Palmer 2. From the town of Gary Domann Bertram Parker Martin Duberman Daniel A. Pavsek, PhD Mariano Comense in Bradley Paul Edin John Pence Irv Englander Falxa and Plute northern Italy: contro- David Fertik Doug Sadownick Steve Frasheur Jan Schoenhaus versy erupted when the John Frybort Ron Seidle & Fred Vega grave of one Carlo An- David & Gary Furland-Werchak Laurence Senelick Thomas Gerber Nicolas Shumway noni materialized in Chris Geschwantner Richard C. Snider Robert Giron Dennis P. Stradford the local cemetery—a John P Gooding John Swaner flamboyant affair, to Bill Gorodner Morris Thompson Patrick Gourley Kenneth R. Trapp say the least, amid the Peter Gray Ralph Virkler somber tombstones. In SUPPORTERS Richard Alther Daniel Goggin David Mungello fact, it was a self-con- Richard Ammon David Golovner Anthony Napoli Jon Anderson Danny Goodson Aaron Neil sciously “gay” state- Donald Anderson Thomas J. Gormly Ronald Nelson Ronald Anderson James Gother Maury Newburger ment by the deceased Anonymous Garth Greenwell Walt Odets 200 Randall Arndt George Griffin Michael G. O’Connell III and his surviving hus- Michael Averdick Michela Griffo Chester Page Frank B. Wing Paul Grzella Dean Papademetriou band to tell the world of Bruce Babski James Haas Rhonda Parish & Celia Kudro Don Bachardy Ambern Hague Don Patterson their “colorful life” to- Henry Baird Joseph Hall Allan Phillips Jeffrey Benevedes Diane Hamer Ted Pietras gether over 36 years. Laurence Best James Harmon Frank Pizzoli D. A. Blackford, MD Stephen Harvey Charles Popper One resident found the Duane Bodin Richard Hay James Pusch Christopher Bohnert Scot Hedrick Bruce Eric Richards grave “too showy and Steven Bold Alfonso Hernandez Marion Ridley & Mark Lundy William Bonsal TK Herrin Gordon Robinson colorful,” while a town Hendrik Booraem Robert Heylmun Irwin Rosen Rosemary Booth Curtis Hinckley Robert Roth notable said it was “in Kenneth Borelli Stephen Hoffman Stephen Russell James Brogan James-Henry Holland John & Richard Sande-Connolly bad taste and too glam- Steve Buresh Jill Hollander Sam Sanders Marc Butler Larry Iannotti Howard Schmuck orous.” One can imag- Daniel Campbell Helen Irwin Steven Schreibman James Carnelia Peter Jarman Don Schroeder ine Carlo’s reply: “Too Jim Cassaro John Johnson George Seeber Christopher Cochran Kent Johnson PhD Doug Serafin glamorous! How is this Donald Cornelius Brian Kelly John Shaffner Frederick Cowan Leonard Keyes Dr. E. C. Sheeley even possible?” Raymond Deangelo Chris Kilbourne Kenneth Sherrill Louis Dellaguzzo Jon Kimbell Eric Slater 3. This one needs a bit Angelo Diretto Clay King Charles Smires James Diskant John Knepper Donald Milton Smith more explanation. The Martin Donaldson Alan Kristal Dennis Sondker Suzanne Dreyfus Gary Krivy Jim & Peter Stepp-Zimmer pictured piece, titled Heyward Drummond Barry Kropf Glenn Stover G. Dryvynsyde William Lacivita Charles Strang Domestikator, by the Alfred D. Duhamel Don Lamb Ron Suleski & Jonghyun Lee Patrick Dunne Robert Landau Mark Summa collective Atelier Van Lieshout, was pulled from a show at the Ronald Durnford Stewart Landers Jerl Surratt Edward E. Eliot Gura Lashlee Steve Susoyev Louvre, which deemed it “sexually explicit” and thus verboten. Thomas Ethington Leonardo Leon John Tederstrom Douglas Evans Alan Lessik Robert Teller The art world reacted in disbelief, as well it might, not only Robert Fernie Maurice Levenbach Andrew Thompson David Ferris Malia Lewis Bill Thompson & Walker Harper because any possible sexual meaning is pretty darn abstract, Charles Fishburn Ronald Lonesome Andy Tracy Dennis Flood & Carl Duyck Karl Mann Glenn Underwood but also because the pictured objects really aren’t capable of Jeff Fox Bennett Marks & Kim Harris George Van Pelt Frederick J. Fox, MD Charles Marlow Anthony Volponi having sex. Louvre art director Jean-Luc Martinez offered the William Fry & Darryl Sanchez Alberto Martin Thomas Von Foerster Michael Fuller Claude Martin Andrew Wentink usual explanations about how the work might be “misunder- Frank Gagliardi Peter Maxson & Jack Taylor James West Michael Galligan Bill McCarter Eric Wilson stood,” adding that it had “a brutal aspect”—a word that in Tom Genson Richard Meiss George Wolf Sterling Giles & Rudy Kikel Mark Meltzer Larry Wolf French comes closer to our “bestial” or “beastly.” In other Dennis Gilligan James Moore James Zebroski words, it’s how animals do it. Perhaps the safest assumption * “Friends of The Review” are people making an annual donation to The Gay & Lesbian Review of $120 or more. The G&LR is a 501(c)(3) educational corporation. All gifts are fully tax-deductible. would be that M. Martinez just isn’t a fan of doggy style.

8Th Gay & Lsban Rvw / oRLdide New & Notable

“A tour de force that highlights the failures of neoliberalism. With Honey Bears There’s a British advert for honey that takes the intensity and verve, mainstreaming of gay culture to new levels. The first of several Laura Briggs reveals episodes leads us down a sylvan path to a fairytale cottage in the crisscrossing binds which reside three bears—gay bears, that is, with beards and that constrain women, bellies and great good humor as they perform their chores of particularly women of chopping firewood and gathering nuts and berries. But mostly color, queer women, they spend their time making porridge—what else?—on which and poor women.” they spread various dainties and drizzle generous amounts of —Alexandra Minna Rowse Honey. So, the first thing to note is that the concept of Stern, author of “bear” as gayly defined is sufficiently well known in Britain Eugenic Nation that it can be used to sell honey to housewives. But also, the gag works on so many levels: the fact that real bears like honey, that there were three fairytale bears who ate porridge—the guys even do the “too hot, too cold, just right” routine—and that gay men are stereotypically great cooks. The two-minute “This lively and smart spots even include cooking tips for your rolled oats; and when book . . . cracks open things go well in the kitchen... “Bear hugs!” a future, resisting transphobia and Karma Time Among the Democratic victories on election day ushering in a new in November was that of Danica Roem, who became the first horizon for anybody transgender legislator in Virginia (anywhere?) by defeating Re- struggling with the publican incumbent Bob Marshall for a seat in the House of norms they oppose and Delegates. The poetic justice of it all! Marshall wasn’t just anti- the forms of life they gay; he described himself as Virginia’s “homophobe in chief.” desire and deserve to Nor was this an idle claim: it was Marshall who introduced an live.”—Judith Butler, anti-transgender “bathroom bill” into the House. His aggres- author of Gender sively transphobic campaign included frequent use of the Trouble: Feminism wrong pronoun to refer to Ms. Roem. By all accounts, the De- and the Subverrssion of mocrat ran a brilliant campaign, making herself as visible and Identity available as possible, even as her opponent refused to debate. Had they done so, Roem may have been forgiven for uttering those immortal words: “I’m your worst nightmare.” “An important contribution to the Plugged In Readers who have never darkened the door of history of AIDS Chaturbate.com or the like may not know that there is such a activism. Compelling thing as a vibrating butt plug; and now there’s a model that can and potentially be activated remotely and wirelessly. The maker of the device, empowering to future Lovense Hush, explains that the wireless feature allows you to visual activists.”—Sarah stimulate yourself with ease, or stimulate a partner remotely, or Schulman, author of you can stimulate each other, say, while walking in the mall. TThheGentrriification of But it turns out the devices are subject to hacking—indeed it’s the Mind an easy hack (who thinks of butt plug security?)—such that an outsider could take over the device from afar. In a demonstra- tion, hackers from Pen Test Partners showed how they could detect the Bluetooth-based device from outside someone’s home and cause it to go berserk. There’s even a word for this prank: “screwdriving,” derived from “wardriving,” which im- plies that the takeover is a hostile act. Which it may well be, TO LEARN MORE: but then, how bad could a berserk butt plug be for someone al- WWW.UCPRESS.EDU ready so engaged? The attack could easily backfire.

January–F)bruary 2018 9 IN MEMORIAM Honoring Those Who Left Us in ’17

MARTHA E. STONE N KEEPING WITH this magazine’s annual tradition, NAMES Project Foundation/AIDS Memorial Quilt. He was also we remember here the activists, writers, artists, enter- editor and contributing writer for POZ magazine. In the last part tainers, and other notable members of the LGBT com- of his career, he worked in public affairs at a strategic consult- munity, and some allies, who died over the past twelve ing company on HIV treatment and prevention programs. months. Please note that all deaths occurred in 2017 un- less otherwise indicated. KATE MILLETT, a leading second-wave feminist and author of I the 1970 bestseller Sexual Politics, died on September 6th at age ACTIVISTS AND PUBLIC FIGURES 82. She will remembered at length in the next issue. GILBERT BAKER, creator of the iconic rainbow flag, died on March 31st at age 65. After having settled in the early 1970s in CELESTE NEWBROUGH, activist and writer, died on August 4th San Francisco, where he used his sewing talents to create cos- at age 77. An organizer against the 1978 Briggs Initiative, which tumes for his drag performances, he often designed banners for if passed would have barred gays and lesbians from working in protests and marches, calling himself “the gay Betsy Ross.” In California public schools, she helped fund the creation of Gilbert 1978, at the request of Harvey Milk, he designed “an emblem to Baker’s rainbow flag (see his obituary, above) and chaired pio- represent the movement,” as one obituary put it. The original neering meetings that launched the San Francisco LGBT rights flag was acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in 2015. movement. An editor and writer, her last book was Angel of Polk Street (2017), a novel about a transgender teen. She is survived CHRISTOPHER COLLINS,anHIV/AIDS activist, died on January by longtime partner, Ilona Pivar, a psychologist, to whom she 3rd at age 37. He was an HIV prevention counselor at Philadel- was married. phia’s Mazzoni Center, where he was lauded for his outreach and lifesaving work with LGBT people of color. Active in many WILLIAM A. NORRIS, retired judge, died on January 21st at age programs in Philadelphia, including The Colors Organization 89. While serving on the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, he and Gay Men’s Health Leadership Academy, he was remem- wrote a majority decision in 1988 in the case of Watkins v. U.S. bered as “a beautiful spirit.” Army, ruling that gay people had the same constitutional pro- tections as racial minorities. It overturned the mandatory dis- LARRY COPELAND, politician and activist, died on September charge of Staff Sgt. Perry J. Watkins for acknowledging that he 5th at age seventy. In 1974, he cofounded “Portland Town Coun- was gay. This ruling is widely seen as the first to use equal pro- cil,” Oregon’s first mainstream advocacy group for gay and les- tection as an argument for gay equality. Norris’ autobiography, bian rights, and in 1982 he became Oregon’s first openly gay Liberal Opinions: My Life in the Stream of History, was pub- person to run for office, in a bid for Portland City Commissioner. lished in 2016. He helped establish crisis hotlines and legal services for the LGBT community, and was honored in 1999 by Portland’s Eq- GINA QUATTROCHI, pioneer in AIDS housing programs, died on uity Foundation as “the pioneer in gay and lesbian civil rights” December 13, 2016, at age 63. Her involvement in the AIDS cri- in Oregon. He is survived by his partner Frank Blas. sis began while she was the associate general counsel for the New York State Nurses Association. The deaths of many friends led JIM GRAHAM, attorney and politician, died on June 11th at age her to take action, and she was instrumental in founding the first 71. During the height of the AIDS crisis, he served as executive group residence for people with AIDS in New York. For a quar- director of the Whitman-Walker Clinic in Washington, D.C., pro- ter century, she was the AIDS Resource Center’s chief executive viding legal advice to gay men dying of AIDS who had no fi- and also helped found the National AIDS Housing Coalition. She nancial resources. Later, he was elected to four terms on the D.C. is survived by her children and former partner, Priscilla Lenes. City Council, where he was its second openly gay member. He introduced or backed many progressive bills to benefit the LGBT CHUCK RENSLOW, activist and businessman, died on June 29th community. He is survived by his partner Christopher Watkins. at age 87. Considered a “longtime pillar of the LGBTQ com- munity in Chicago and around the world,” in the 1950s he GREGORY LUGLIANI,anHIV/AIDS activist and writer, died on July founded Kris Studios, a physique photography house, and was 8th at age 58. He joined ACT UP in 1988, after having moved to deeply involved in local politics and LGBT issues. He was co- New York from California. He headed communications at Gay founder of the Leather Archives and Museum in Chicago and Men’s Health Crisis and was communications director for the publisher of numerous gay men’s magazines and newspapers. He opened Gold Coast, believed to be the first leather bar in the Martha E. Stone is the literary editor of this magazine. U.S., and was the recipient of many awards. He was inducted

10 Th) Gay & L)sb an R)v )w / !RLD!iDe into the Chicago LGBT Hall of Fame in 1991. A biography was and wrote for many magazines and newspapers, as well as for published that same year titled Leatherman: The Legend of her blog, “The Smoking Cocktail,” which covered LGBT arts, Chuck Renslow, by Tracy Baim and Owen Keehnen. culture, and politics. She served on the Board of Directors of the L.A. Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce, was a mentor for JOHN SCHENCK, an equal rights activist, died on December 28, the Point Foundation, and was one of Go magazine’s “100 2016, at age 67. He founded Arkansas’ longest-running Pride Women We Love.” parade, in the city of Conway. Schenck and Robert Loyd, who died last year, were subjected to years of verbal and physical ha- MAX FERRÁ, director, died on February 4th at age 79. A trail- rassment by homophobic residents of their town, as well as by blazer for Latino theater, in the 1960s he founded, and was the police. They were legally married in Canada in 2004 and later first artistic director of, the Off-Broadway INTAR Hispanic Amer- were plaintiffs in Wright v. Arkansas, which challenged the ican Arts Center, dedicated to producing works (in English) of state’s same-sex marriage ban. The couple’s home of thirty years Latino/a playwrights, such as Carmelita Tropicana, Manuel Puig, will be turned into a museum, said Schenck’s son. and Nilo Cruz. Born in Cuba, he arrived in the U.S. a year be- fore Castro came to power. Later in his career, he moved to CHARLEY SHIVELY, activist, writer, educator, died on October 6th Miami, where he continued to direct. He is survived by his part- at age 79. He is remembered in this issue by Michael Bronski. ner, Winston Gonzalez.

RICK STAFFORD, political adviser and organizer, died on Septem- MICHAEL FRIEDMAN, a prolific com- ber 2nd at age 65. In 1993, he made history as the first openly gay poser and lyricist, died on Septem- chair of a major U.S. political party, Minnesota’s Democratic- ber 9th at age 41. Among many other Farm-Labor (DFL) Party, which was created in 1944 by Hubert theatrical ventures, he was co-creator Humphrey. Called “a consummate insider’s insider,” he was a of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson, mentor and adviser to many in state politics. He was a board mem- which opened on Broadway in 2010 ber of the National Stonewall Democrats and chair of the national after a successful Off-Broadway run, LGBT caucus of the Democratic National Committee. and the 2010 Signature Theatre re- vival of Angels in America. At the time of his death, he was artis- EDIE WINDSOR (born Edith Schlain), same-sex marriage activist, tic director of Center’s Encores! Off-Center died on September 12th at age 88. Windsor had been living with series and was working on numerous projects, one of which was Thea Spyer for forty years when the latter became ill. The cou- ple married in Toronto in 2007, and Spyer died two years later. Windsor inherited her estate, but Lisa Dordal's Mosaic of the Mosaic of the Dark Dark is actually a book of when the IRS forced her to pay taxes Poems by Lisa Dordal light. Dordal means to illu- on it, she sued the IRS. Windsor be- minate the quotidian until it came the plaintiff in Windsor v. U.S., is as luminescent as any the case that led the Supreme Court spiritual experience: "I to rule that same-sex couples had a dream of flight. A sun/that constitutional right to marry any- can hold a million where in the U.S., with all the protec- earths/and a mouth that tions and privileges of heterosexual swallows its fire." This is couples. The story of this decision is explored in the documen- the eye of a poet looking to her work for redemption tary film Edie & Thea: A Very Long Engagement (2009). She is and grace. Mosaic of the survived by Judith Kasen-Windsor, whom she married in 2016. Dark is a beautiful book. –JERICHO BROWN ARTISTS AND ENTERTAINERS THOMAS DERRAH, character actor, died on October 5th at age Mosaic of the Dark is a 64. He appeared on Broadway in Jackie: An American Life,as portrait of a young woman well as in countless Off-Broadway and regional productions, but emerging from the constric- tions of family and cultural was best known for the roles he played in over 100 plays at the expectations into her own American Repertory Theater (ART) in Cambridge, Mass., of authentic self. While well- which he was a founding member. He also appeared in numer- rooted in personal experi- ous and received several awards, including an Elliot Nor- ence, the poems branch out ton Prize for Sustained Excellence. He is survived by his spouse, with an empathetic and pre- actor–playwright John Kuntz. cisely observant heart to give us a glimpse of the J. D. DISALVATORE (born Julie Disalvatore), filmmaker and mysterious world that writer, died on August 24th at age 51. Her films include AMa- threads through us all. –ELLEN BASS rine Story (2010), which took on the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” pol- icy, and Shelter (2007), winner of a GLAAD Media Award, among Order online: www.blacklawrence.com other plaudits. She was film festival manager for L.A.’s Outfest

January–F)bruary 2018 11 a sequel to A Chorus Line. He died of complications from AIDS a private coaching business, John Mace Vocal Studio, which he only nine weeks after having been diagnosed, and was remem- and Dorr (who died in 2016) ran together, where they trained bered at length in (Oct. 11, 2017). opera singers and many musical theater stars, including Bette Mi- dler. Increasingly vexed about not being able to marry, the two GILA GOLDSTEIN (born Avraham Goldstein), considered by became involved in the Freedom to Marry online advertising many to be Israel’s first openly transgender person, died on Feb- campaign in 2011. They were interviewed in a two-minute video, ruary 5th at age 69. In younger years she was a sex worker and which features photographs of their lives together. By the fol- dancer, later turning to acting and singing. A documentary about lowing year, they were able to marry legally in New York. her life, That’s Gila, That’s Me, was made in 2010. She lent her name to Tel Aviv’s Project Gila, the movement for transgender DAVID MANCUSO, a DJ and self-described “musical host,” died empowerment in Israel, which began in 2011. on November 14th, 2016, at age 72. In 1970, he founded the “first underground dance party,” The Loft, as a safe space for HOWARD HODGKIN, painter, died on March 9th at age 84. De- members of the LGBT community. Because neither food nor scribed as one of Britain’s greatest contemporary artists, he drinks were served there, it was exempt from New York’s strin- painted on wood, not canvas, and described himself as “a figu- gent cabaret laws, and it paved the way for other clubs such as rative painter of emotional situations.” He represented Britain Paradise Garage and the Saint. Some music historians have con- at the 1984 Venice Biennale, won the Turner Prize in 1985, and sidered The Loft to be the birthplace of disco. Mancuso was in- was knighted in 1992. A comprehensive book about his work, ti- ducted into the Dance Music Hall of Fame in 2005. tled Howard Hodgkin, written by Andrew Graham-Dixon, went into a second edition in 2001. He is survived by his partner, ALEC MCCOWEN, British character actor, died on February 6th music critic Antony Peattie, and by children from a previous at age 91. Widely admired for a lifetime of stage and screen per- marriage. formances in Britain and the U.S., he joined the Old Vic in 1959. He earned a Tony nomination in 1969 for his portrayal of Pope WILLIAM M. HOFFMAN, playwright and librettist, died on April Hadrian in Hadrian VII, by Peter Luke. His memoirs include 29th at age 78. His play, As Is (1985), was the one of the first Young Gemini (1979) and A Double Bill (1980). He was prede- Broadway productions (along with Larry Kramer’s The Normal ceased by his partner, stage and TV actor Geoffrey Burridge. Heart) to focus on AIDS. It opened Off-Broadway and moved to Broad- GEORGE MICHAEL (born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou), singer way, winning an Obie and a Drama and songwriter, died on December 26, 2016, at age 53. He was Desk award for Outstanding New remembered in a cover article by Colin Carman in the March- Play. It was nominated for three April 2017 issue. Tonys, including Best Play, and was made into a TV movie in 1986. The STUART J. THOMPSON, Australian-born Broadway producer, author of many plays, he wrote the died on August 17th at age 62. He was general manager of more libretto for The Ghosts of Versailles, than seventy Broadway, Off-Broadway, and national touring pro- which was based in part on his ex- ductions, won six Tony awards (including God of Carnage for periences at Caffe Cino. Commissioned by James Levine, it pre- Best Play in 2009 and Death of a Salesman for best revival in miered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1991. It starred such 2012), and was nominated for twenty. He served on the board of luminaries as Renée Fleming and Marilyn Horne and was the the Broadway League and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS. first new opera performed there since 1967. He is survived by his The lights of Broadway were dimmed for a moment to mark his spouse, William Russell Taylor II. passing. He is survived by his spouse, Joseph R. Baker III, pres- ident of the Medicare Rights Center. ALBERT INNAURATO, playwright, died on September 24th at age seventy. His biggest hit was Gemini, which opened on Broad- DIANE TORR, artist and activist, died on May 31st at age 68. way in 1977 and ran for 1,819 performances, making it the Born in Canada, she grew up in Scotland and England, spend- longest running non-musical from the past seventy years. To ing most of her adult life in New York, where she was a pioneer date, it is the fourth-longest-running play in Broadway history. in performative female-to-male gender crossing. She started out The plot centers around a Harvard student who comes home for as a go-go dancer and went on to co-found the WOW (Women’s his 21st birthday and has to deal with being gay. The play was One World) Café Theatre in the East Village. She developed made into a movie in 1980 (Happy Birthday Gemini), briefly re- drag king workshops, presenting them across Europe and ap- vived Off-Broadway in 1999, and turned into a stage musical in pearing on American TV. She co-authored Sex, Drag and Male 2004 (Gemini the Musical). His subsequent plays were not as Roles (2010), and her work was the focus of a documentary, well received. He wrote for television and was passionate about Man for a Day (2012). She is survived by a daughter from an opera, writing for a number of opera publications as well as di- early marriage. recting and consulting. WRITERS AND EDUCATORS JOHN MACE, vocal coach and same-sex marriage activist, died on JOHN ASHBERY, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, died on Septem- May 8th at age 97. He met Richard Prahl (who later took the stage ber 3rd at age ninety. His obituary, written by Alfred Corn, ap- name Richard Adrian Dorr) in 1948 at Juilliard. They established peared in the November-December issue.

12 Th) Gay & L)sb an R)v )w / !RLD!iDe , acclaimed as one of Spain’s greatest writ- STUART TIMMONS, a writer and historian, died on January 28th ers, died on January 5th at age 86. He grew up in chaotic cir- at age 60. He was remembered in an obituary by Trebor Healey cumstances during the Spanish Civil War, with a father who in the July-August issue. was violently homophobic and a grandfather who was proba- bly gay. He wrote dozens of works of fiction and nonfiction, ROBERT A. WILSON, writer, publisher, and bookseller, died on all banned under Franco’s regime but published in other Span- November 29, 2016, at age 94. The owner of the Phoenix Book ish-speaking countries. Marks of Identity (1966) was a novel- Shop in Greenwich Village, he was friends with Beat poets and ized version of his life, and his two-volume memoir, writers and was deeply immersed in the Village scene. He pub- Forbidden Territory and Realms of Strife, was published in the lished dozens of bibliographies of such writers as Gertrude late 1980s. Goytisolo’s literary mentor was Jean Genet, to Stein, Jack Kerouac, Elizabeth Bishop, and Gregory Corso, and whom he was introduced by his wife, the late writer Monique his store became a hangout for many writers. After 26 years in Lange. Goytisolo, who took many lovers throughout his life operation, he closed the Phoenix in 1988, sold his inventory, but remained very attached to Lange, lived much of his life in and moved to Maryland. He published a memoir titled Seeing Marrakech, where he created a family of choice. He was Shelley Plain: Memories of New York’s Legendary Phoenix awarded the Cervantes Prize in 2014. Book Shop in 2001. He was predeceased by composer Kenneth Doubrava, to whom he was married. RUDY KIKEL, a poet and an editor, died on May 23rd at age 75. Based in Boston, he was for many years the arts and entertain- PSYCHOLOGISTS AND SCIENTISTS ment editor of Bay Windows, a weekly gay newspaper, and has JUDITH BRADFORD, scientist, died on February 11th at age 73. been credited with giving that paper its name. He edited two Based for much of her career at Fenway Health in Boston, she volumes of poetry under the title Gents, Bad Boys & Barbar- was considered a pioneer in LGBT health research. Her career ians (1995 and 2004), and published several works of his own began in 1983 during the AIDS crisis, after which she created poetry, most recently Period Pieces (1997). His weekly col- the National Lesbian Health Care Survey, considered a land- umn in Bay Windows, “One of Us,” profiled many LGBT in- mark study. She was the first researcher to receive funding from dividuals over the years. Selected interviews were later the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to train the next gener- compiled as One of Us: LGBT Voices from New England ation of LGBT health researchers. She is survived by Nannette (2014). He is survived by his spouse, Sterling Giles. L. Dumas, to whom she was married.

HENRY MCCLURG, publisher, died on September 16th at age EMILY SISLEY, psychologist and writer, died on October 21, 70. In 1974, he launched the first of his many gay publica- 2016, at age 86. She co-authored, with the late lesbian novel- tions, Contact, a magazine covering Houston’s bar scene that ist Bertha Harris, The Joy of Lesbian Sex: A Tender and Liber- he later sold to the Advocate. Over the decades, his publishing ated Guide to the Pleasures and Problems of a Lesbian empire included many Texas and Gulf state gay newspapers Lifestyle. It was published in 1977 (reprinted in 1985) as a com- and magazines, including the Montrose Star, Houston’s first panion volume to Charles Silverstein and ’s Joy gay newspaper. of Gay Sex, and it was considered one of the earliest lesbian sex manuals, described by Publishers Weekly as “one of the MARK MERLIS, novelist, died on August 15th at age 67. He most lucid celebrations of female eroticism published in our was remembered in two obituaries, by Richard Canning and time.” Paul Russell, in the November-December issue. GEORGE WEINBERG, psychotherapist and writer, died on RUTH MOUNTAINGROVE (born Ruth Shook), poet, photogra- March 21st at age 87. A lifelong friend of the LGBT commu- pher, and writer, died on December 18, 2016, at age 93. She nity, he said that he had been influenced by many gay friends was co-founder of Rootworks, an intentional lesbian commu- and figures beloved in history and literature, whom he later nity in Oregon, and co-founded, with her partner June Moun- learned were probably gay. Weinberg coined the word “homo- taingrove, a feminist journal called Womanspirit and a phobia” in 1965 for a speech he gave at the East Coast Ho- photography magazine called Blatant Image. Her life story, told mophile Organization (ECHO). Weinberg’s best-known book in videotapes, is housed at the archives and special collections was Society and the Healthy Homosexual (1972; 2nd edition, of the University of Oregon. 1991), which was considered to be revolutionary when it was first published. RIP NAQUIN (born Robert Naquin), publisher and activist, died on August 8th at age 63. He organized the annual Southern SOURCES Websites: arktimes.com, awiderbridge.org, baywindows.com, bestofneworleans.com, boston- Decadence celebration in New Orleans, a six-day extravaganza globe.com, chicagotribune.com, dfl.org, ebar.com, gaycitynews.nyc, LGBTQarchive.com, for the LGBT community that began in 1972. An organizer of katemillett.com, latimes.com, legacy.com, losangelesedgemedianetwork.com, miamiher- ald.com, moma.org, nola.com, nytimes.com, obits.oregonlive.com, out.com, playbill.com, philanthropic events, he turned Southern Decadence into a presspassq.blogspot.com, slate.com/blogs, startribune.com, theguardian.com, times-stan- fundraising event. He cofounded Ambush magazine in Baton dard.com, twincities.com, washingtonblade.com, wbur.org, westviewnews.org. Rouge in 1983, moving it to New Orleans three years later. He Also: Murphy, Pat. “Lesbian Lists.” Whole Earth Review, no. 75, 1992, p. 101, retrieved from Expanded Academic ASAP; New York Times Display Ad, Oct 21, 1977, p. 81, re- and Martin Greeson (also known as Marsha Delain) became trieved from ProQuest Historical Newspapers. Louisiana’s first legally recognized gay couple in 1993 when Photo Credits Edie Windsor: Robert Libetti; Michael Friedman: Tristan Fuge; William New Orleans allowed couples to register as domestic partners. M. Hoffman: from Conversations with William M. Hoffman, Part 1 (video).

January–F)bruary 2018 13 ESSAY Evolutionary Origins of Homosexuality

JAMES O’KEEFE,EVAN O’KEEFE, AND JOHN HODES

“Homosexuality may give advantages to the group by special tal- undergo extinction within several generations. The essence of ents, unusual qualities of personality, and the specialized roles natural selection is to favor and conserve beneficial genetic vari- and professions it generates. There is abundant evidence that ations and eliminate maladaptive ones. Thus, if homosexuality such is the case in both preliterate and modern societies. Soci- were a genetic error, it would have been removed long ago from eties are mistaken to disapprove of homosexuality because gays the gene pool via natural selection. have different sexual preferences and reproduce less. Their pres- This evolutionary enigma is magnified by accumulating ev- ence should be valued instead for what they contribute con- idence indicating that male same-sex sexual preference—de- structively to human diversity. A society that condemns fined as sexual attraction to male partners even when female homosexuality harms itself.” — E. O. Wilson (2012) partners are available—is largely determined prenatally via in- herited genes undergoing epigenetic modification in utero. In HROUGHOUT recorded history, homosexuals other words, genes coding for sexual orientation are activated in have comprised a small but significant cohort of the developing fetus in response to the signals emanating from human society. Evidence of same-sex sexual be- the mother and her surrounding environment, which are en- havior dates back to the oldest written texts, first docrine mechanisms acting upon the fetus during pregnancy. noted in Egypt 4,400 years ago, and subsequently Thus, homosexuality is not solely a consequence of the in-utero found in ancient Greece, Rome, and China. Ad- environment; nor is it determined by an individual’s genes Tditionally, same-sex mating behavior has been documented in a alone. Instead, a complex interaction between the two produces broad range of animal species, including mammals, birds, rep- biological changes that alter sexual orientation. tiles, and insects. In Western countries today, the prevalence of Twin studies provide strong evidence that sexual orienta- male homosexuality is between two and eight percent. Never- tion is at least partially genetic. For example, if one identical theless, same-sex physical intimacy is illegal twin is homosexual, there is an increased in many nations, with punishments including Male homosexuality likelihood that the other twin will be too. death or imprisonment. The law in India, put appears to have arisen However, several large studies scanning the in place by British colonizers, calls for im- because of its potential entire human genome have not revealed a prisonment ranging from fourteen years to single, consistent genetic variant among life, citing the rationale that homosexuality benefits for the surviv- males with homosexuality. Thus it is now is “against the order of nature.” ability of the family. clear that no specific “gay gene” determines Here we discuss a body of scientific ev- sexual orientation. idence that directly contradicts this assertion and instead argues In the largest and most rigorous genetic linkage study fo- that homosexuality has emerged through evolution as a normal cused on this topic, Sanders and colleagues scrutinized the DNA variant that confers survival benefits to the family, particularly from 409 pairs of gay brothers, searching for shared single nu- in certain settings. The predominant focus of this paper is male cleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)—substitutions of a single let- homosexuality, because substantially more scientific data has ter in the genetic code (Sanders, 2015). The two specific SNPs been published on same-sex sexual orientation in males com- that were most commonly shared among the 818 gay men were pared to females. in the Xq28 and 8q12 regions, located on the X chromosome and chromosome 8, respectively. HERITABILITY OF HOMOSEXUALITY “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolu- MATERNAL FERTILITY LINKAGE tion,” wrote Theodosius Dobzhansky famously. However, in the The heritability of homosexuality is also supported by mater- context of Darwinian natural selection, homosexuality appears nal fertility data. A woman who gives birth to a gay male is to be a paradox. Gay men have eighty percent fewer offspring likely to come from a maternal bloodline with especially high than do heterosexual males, so this trait would be expected to fertility. Evolutionary theory strongly suggests that genes for homosexuality should be eliminated from the population unless James O’Keefe has authored or co-authored 360 medical articles, in- a potential compensatory mechanism exists. One proposed, par- cluding many on evolution and human health. His TED Talk summing tial solution to this Darwinian paradox is the potential existence up this research has been viewed over one million times. of a gene that increases fertility when present in a woman but Evan O’Keefe, a third-year medical student, has published on global predisposes to homosexuality when present in a male. Any re- health, human evolution, and prevention of cardiovascular disease. duced male fertility associated with homosexuality is offset by John Hodes, a pre-med student at Marquette University, has conducted the high fertility of the mother and her female relatives. An- research on belonging and its connection to mental health. drophilia—strong sexual attraction to males—has been pro-

14 Th) Gay & L)sb an R)v )w / !RLD!iDe posed as a genetically determined trait that when inherited by a woman increases the number of children she will bear, but when Fecundity of Maternal Aunts & Grandmothers inherited by a male will predispose to homosexuality. p < 0.0001 Most studies show that maternal fertility is indeed signifi- Heterosexuals cantly higher in families that have one or more homosexual sons, thereby compensating for the lower fertility of gay men Homosexuals (Figure 1). Because the single X-chromosome in males can only be inherited from the mother, the X-chromosome would be the 1.0 1.2 1.4 1.6 1.8 2.0 2.2 2.4 2.6 logical place to look for such a gene. These studies align well Number of Children with genetic linkage studies discussed above, indicating that FIGURE 1: Fecundity of female relatives of heterosexual men compared to one of the most common genetic SNPs shared by gay men is homosexual men. For the homosexual but not the heterosexual cohort the located on the X-chromosome. maternal female relatives had significantly more children per woman. Source: Camperio, Ciani A. and Pellizzari, E. “Fecundity of Paternal and Maternal Non- Because females have two X-chromosomes, one of the X- Parental Female Relatives of Homosexual and Heterosexual Men.” PLoS One, 2012. chromosomes is deactivated in each cell early in embryonic de- velopment, usually in a random fashion whereby the maternal logical mother’s uterus, the higher the chances that a baby boy X is inactivated in about fifty percent of the cells, and the pa- will be gay. Having biological brothers raises the probability of ternal X is inactivated in the other fifty percent. Skewing oc- homosexuality in later-born males, even when these siblings curs when the inactivation of one X-chromosome is favored have been reared apart in different households. In contrast, over the other, leading to the dominance of one type of X-chro- older, non-biological brothers (step-brothers and adoptive broth- mosome in a woman’s cells. Studies show that mothers of gay ers) have no effect on sexual orientation, indicating this associ- men are much more likely to have skewed X-activation than ation is not a result of the family environment during childhood. mothers who had no gay sons, another strong indication that This finding has been seen in modern as well as traditional cul- male homosexuality is a partially heritable condition, and genes tures. Furthermore, sexual orientation of females is not influ- on the X-chromosome are likely to be involved in determining enced by this so-called fraternal birth order effect, and sisters do sexual orientation in males. not add to the effect. The correlation pertains only to male sib- lings who have been gestated in the same woman’s uterus. All THE ROLE OF EPIGENETICS of these findings point toward a prenatal epigenetic origin for Epigenetics is the switching “on” or “off” of genes without al- the fraternal birth order effect. This appears to be mediated via tering the original DNA sequence. Epi-marks are chemical tags the maternal immune system. added or removed from the structure of the genes at specific Among the prenatal influences of male homosexuality, the sites on the DNA strand. The pattern of tags on one’s epigenome fraternal birth order effect is the most robust and replicated find- is highly individualized and is changed by one’s environment— ing. Each son raises the relative probability of homosexuality in allowing for turning on the genes that are likely to be beneficial the following son by 33 percent (Blanchard 2004). Although for survival in the current environment. Environmental signals these increased odds may seem outsized, they are relative to a trigger these epi-marks, which alter the expression of genes that baseline rate of homosexuality of about two percent for a first code for different traits. In this way, epigenetic tags provide a son; the probability of having a gay son reaches fifty percent only dynamic strategy for altering gene expression, providing bio- after ten older biological brothers. Thus, the fraternal birth order logical pathways through which the perinatal environment can effect explains only about fifteen to 29 percent of the male ho- translate into long-term changes in brain structure and function mosexual demographic. for the individual. The leading hypothesis for the mechanism controlling fra- Compelling evidence indicates that epigenetic mechanisms ternal birth order effect is progressive immunization of mothers are fundamental to the genesis of homosexuality, which helps to male-specific antigens while carrying a male fetus, with in- explain both its partially heritable nature and the in-utero en- creasingly higher levels of anti-male antibodies with each suc- vironmental effects that seem to predispose a male to same-sex cessive pregnancy (Bailey, 2016). Eventually, this can affect orientation. In fact, recent findings indicate that epigenetics op- in-utero sexual differentiation of the brain in later-born males. erating in utero may be integrally involved in determining the The process appears to be mediated by a maternal immune re- future sexual orientation of the fetus. Ngun and Vilain (2015) sponse to Y-linked histocompatibility antigens. Homosexuality, analyzed DNA samples from saliva collected from 37 pairs of in this way, is a natural response to environmental signals in the identical male twins in which just one twin was gay and ten mother’s womb, an evolutionary adaptation that is effectively a pairs of identical male twins in which both were gay. By scan- natural method of birth control at the family level. ning the epigenomes they found that nine epi-marks were more The second line of research has linked male homosexuality common among the gay men compared to their genetically to prenatal stress. A male fetus whose mother endured high lev- identical straight brothers. Ngun and Vilain created an algo- els of stress during the pregnancy is more likely to be homosex- rithm based on the pattern of epi-marks that could correctly ual or bisexual. Observational studies suggest that environmental predict the sexual orientation of seventy percent of the indi- and/or psychological stress during prenatal or early postnatal life viduals in the study. Two lines of research point to these epi- may increase the likelihood of male homosexuality in humans genetic effects. (VanderLaan, 2011). Experimental data has shown similar find- The first is the effect of fraternal birth order. The greater the ings in rodents. In a case-control study, 100 homosexual or bi- number of male fetuses who have previously inhabited the bio- sexual males were compared to 100 heterosexual males with

January–F)bruary 2018 15 respect to the level of stress in their mothers’ lives during preg- entation—a navigational style that has been shown to be more nancy, as ascertained by interviews with the study participants common among women, as well. and their parents. This study was conducted in Germany about Studies have highlighted structural brain differences be- forty years after World War II ended, and thus many of the re- tween heterosexual and homosexual males, particularly in the ported stresses were related to undesired pregnancies and war anterior hypothalamus, and suprachiasmatic nuclei. While the atrocities. During their pregnancies, the mothers of gay men suf- significance of these variations in brain structure between gay fered severe stress significantly more often than the mothers of and straight males remains largely unknown, and further re- heterosexual men (Figure 2). search on specific receptors and neurotransmitters is needed, the neuro-anatomical divergence does support a biological basis NEUROPSYCHOLOGICAL DIFFERENCES for homosexuality. One study (Zhou, 1995) concluded: “This Homosexual males, as compared to heterosexual males, display postnatal period of hypothalamic differentiation indicates that, significantly less physical aggression and hostility. Gay men in addition to genetic factors, a multitude of environmental and have also been reported to have generally a greater capacity for psychosocial factors may have a profound influence on the sex- kindness, cooperativeness, and sensitivity.Compared to hetero- ual differentiation of the brain.” sexual males, homosexual males tend to score significantly higher on psychometric testing of empathy, which is strongly KIN SELECTION THEORY OF HOMOSEXUALITY linked to altruism. A recent study found that among both men “Homosexuality is not a reproductive strategy; it is a survival and women, homosexuality tends to promote emotional con- strategy,” remarked R. C. Kirkpatrick (2000). Classically, an or- nectedness (Fleischman, 2014). In another study using the em- ganism achieves evolutionary success by sexual reproduction. pathizing quotient (EQ)—a sixty-item scale used to assess Alternatively, inclusive fitness, also referred to as kin selection, empathy in participants by measuring emotional reactions— is another strategy for successfully transmitting one’s genes to Mark Sergeant and his team reported that homosexual males the next generation. A parent and child share fifty percent of consistently exhibited higher levels of empathy compared to their genes, as do a brother and sister; an uncle shares 25 per- heterosexual males (Sergeant, 2004). cent of his genes with each of his nieces and nephews. From a Studies report that homosexual men outperform heterosex- mathematical perspective, an individual can achieve the same ual men on standardized tests of verbal skills. A comprehensive genetic success by raising one offspring or helping to ensure statistical analysis of three large, nationally representative, lon- that a sibling successfully raises two offspring. J. B. S. Haldane gitudinal databases from the U.S. and the UK found strong as- (1955), who pioneered the mathematics of kin selection, fa- sociations between childhood intelligence and subsequent adult mously quipped: “Would I lay down my life to save my brother? homosexuality. More intelligent children as compared to less No, but I would to save two brothers or eight cousins.” intelligent children are subsequently more likely to self-iden- Thus kin selection is an evolutionary strategy favoring the tify as gay as adults, to express same-gender sexual attraction reproductive success of an individual’s close relatives, some- (Figure 3a), and to have had significantly more same-gender times despite the loss of that individual’s own reproduction sexual partners during their lifetimes (Figure 3b). These analy- and/or survival. Kin selection drives the evolution of altruistic ses found that homosexual individuals tend to be more intelli- behavior toward relatives, a phenomenon known as kin altru- gent from an early age, suggesting that these two traits may be ism. Kin selection appears to involve both epigenetic and ge- linked from birth. netic mechanisms that are transmitted indirectly via the lineage Conversely, gay men compared to straight men generally of siblings and other close relatives. According to Eva Jablonka possess a less accurate innate sense of direction and tend to nav- (2015), a geneticist and theorist: “Sex is not always tied to re- igate by using landmarks rather than instinctive directional ori- production. Instead, it is about something even more funda- mental—the maintenance of DNA.” Similarly, Sexual Orientation and Prenatal Stress in Males a genetic variation that predisposes one to ho- mosexuality could possibly foster the mainte- nance of a family’s genetic line despite its tendency to reduce the affected individual’s chances of reproducing and having offspring of their own. The male homosexuality trait, despite its ten- dency to significantly reduce a man’s fertility, may persist because gay males help make their Heterosexual Bisexual Homosexual Heterosexual Bisexual Homosexual families more functional and resilient by im- % Men Men Men Men Men Men proving emotional interconnectedness. Homo Moderate Prenatal Stress Severe Prenatal Stress sapiens is among the most social of species, Heterosexual Men: n = 100. Bisexual Men: n = 40. Homosexual Men: n = 60 and survival of the fittest involves more than ** p < 0.01 as compared to heterosexual men *** p < .001 just a single person; it is the social unit that sur- vives. Superior verbal reasoning skills, higher FIGURE 2: Sexual orientation of male study participants with a history of either moderate prena- tal stress (left panel) or severe prenatal stress (right panel). levels of empathy, and lower levels of physical Source: Dorner, G., et al. “Stressful Events in Prenatal Life of Bi- and Homosexual Men.” Experimental and aggression—traits found more commonly in Clinical Endocrinology, 1983 (81). homosexuals than in their heterosexual coun-

16 Th) Gay & L)sb an R)v )w / !RLD!iDe Intelligence and Homosexual Attraction NEW for the NEW YEAR

Percent of all men who express homosexual attraction

Very Dull Dull Normal Bright Very Bright % Cognitive Classification

FIGURE 3a (above): Associations between childhood intelligence and subse- quent adult homosexuality. Error bars represent the standard error of the mean. FIGURE 3b (below): Mean lifetime number of homosexual sex partners by child- hood cognitive classification. Source: Kanazawa, S. “Intelligence and Homosexuality.” Journal of Biosocial Science, 2012 (44). THE DAMNED DON’T CRY—THEY

Intelligence and Homosexual Behavior JUST DISAPPEAR The Life and Works of Harry Hervey Harlan Greene Mean lifetime number of A biography of an unconventional Southern homosexual sex partners writer who illuminated gay life in the South for all men 200 pp., 12 b&w illus., hc and eb, $29.99

SOUTHERN PERSPECTIVES ON THE QUEER MOVEMENT

Very Dull Dull Normal Bright Very Bright Commited to Home Cognitive Classification Edited by Sheila R. Morris terparts—can promote improved fitness and strength of the Foreword by Harlan Greene family as a unit. By improving the functionality of the group, A collection of essays by South Carolina gay males could help their siblings reproduce more success- activisits on the development of the LGBTQ fully and improve the viability of their nieces and nephews in harsh ancestral environments. In this instance, gay males sub- movement consciously display kin altruism by forgoing their reproductive 240 pp., 24 b&w illus., hc $27.99, eb $21.99 success in the setting of a large number of older brothers or when born to especially fertile mothers. In these scenarios, male homosexuality could have evolved as a form of birth con- AVAILABLE AT BOOKSTORES, trol to limit overpopulation in settings where more offspring might endanger the welfare of the family by overburdening the ONLINE, AND FROM clan with yet more mouths to feed. Furthermore, male homosexuality could help reduce coun- terproductive competition among male siblings and cousins for female mates. It is possible that homosexuality could be epige- netically induced in male fetuses in times of increased stress. In- stead of adding more family members by reproducing directly, a gay male may be endowed with a suite of emotional qualities that help support emotional bonding and group cohesiveness, thereby improving the family unit’s resilience to stress. 800.768.2500 • www.uscpress.com This kin selection theory of homosexuality, as originally

January–F)bruary 2018 17 proposed by E. O. Wilson forty years ago, postulates that the in-groups. In addition, male homosexuality also reduces popu- reproductive penalty imposed by homosexuality must be offset lation pressures at a family level in certain scenarios in which by improved chances that the siblings of a gay individual will this is likely to be beneficial—in settings such as multiple older successfully reproduce and their nieces and nephews will sur- brothers, large families, and/or highly stressful environments. vive. Subsequent studies of this hypothesis have yielded con- Homosexuality is increasingly understood as having a bio- flicting data. Studies from the U.S. in 2001 (Bobrow) and logical cause, and in many cultures the gay community has England in 2005 (Rahman) reported that homosexual males made substantial progress on legal and social acceptance. And compared to heterosexual males were not found to have a sig- yet, individuals in the sexual minority remain targets for big- nificantly higher level of familial affinity, generosity to family otry and bullying. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and members, or benevolent tendencies to their siblings. However, Prevention recently published a nationally representative sur- in many modern societies, homosexual males have been ostra- vey that polled 15,500 U.S. high school students about their sex- cized from their families for being openly gay, which could in- ual orientation and several aspects of well-being. The disturbing terfere with natural altruistic tendencies they might otherwise results of that survey are depicted in Figure 4. feel toward their relatives. Currently, in many countries around the world, same-sex In contrast, a study of the natives of Samoa provided a test physical intimacy is punishable by death or imprisonment, and of the kin selection hypothesis of homosexuality in a cultural gays are often the victims of violence and discrimination. Just milieu more congruent with the environment in which humans recently, the United Nations passed a resolution condemning evolved. Homosexual males (referred to as fa’afafine) in this the use of the death penalty for consensual gay sexual relations. traditional culture play an integral role in their families, pro- Shockingly, the UN delegation from the U.S. voted against this viding emotional support and nurturing behavior for siblings, resolution—which passed nevertheless. The emerging under- nieces, and nephews. In a scientific assessment of this popula- standing of the biology of sexual orientation indicates that tion (Vasey, 2007), the homosexual men were more likely than same-sex sexual preference is a naturally intended, normal vari- heterosexual men to display avuncular behavior, and showed ant that evolved via kin selection, and thus it should not be con- significantly more kindness and generosity to their extended sidered illegal or emotionally depraved. Indeed, homosexuality families, particularly to the nieces and nephews. appears to be an evolutionary adaptation to help safeguard the family’s well-being—an altruistic purpose. IMPLICATIONS Further research is needed to form a better understanding of The scientific understanding of the biology of sexual orienta- the evolutionary advantages of homosexuality, and more stud- tion is still in a nascent stage. Studies strongly suggest homo- ies focused on females are needed. The elucidation of the sci- sexuality is influenced by genetics and epigenetics, but the entific underpinnings of homosexuality will require an specific genes and epi-tags have yet to be clearly elucidated. interdisciplinary approach using genetics, epigenetics, and evo- Still, enough of the pieces of the puzzle of homosexuality are lutionary biology, along with neuroscience, anthropology, psy- now visible to begin to see a pattern. Male homosexuality ap- chology, and biomedical sciences. pears to have arisen via human evolution because of its poten- REFERENCES tial benefits for the functionality and survivability of the family. Bailey, J.M., et al. “Sexual Orientation, Controversy, and Science.” Psycho- Due to a specific suite of traits, largely determined in utero, gay logical Science in the Public Interest, 2016 (17). males could provide diversity and stability to their families and Blanchard, R. “Quantitative and Theoretical Analyses of the Relation between Older Brothers and Homosexuality in Men.” Journal of Theoretical Biology, 2004 (230). Bobrow, D. and Bailey, J.M. “Is Male Homosexuality Maintained Via Kin Se- Risk Factors and Sexual Orientation lection?” Evolution and Human Behavior, 2001 (22). Fleischman, D.S., et al. “Testing the Affiliation Hypothesis of Homoerotic Mo- tivation in Humans: The Effects of Progesterone and Priming.” Archives of HOMOSEXUAL HETEROSEXUAL Sexual Behavior, 2015 (44). Haldane J.B.S.. “Population Genetics.” New Biology, 1955 (18). Jablonka, E. and Lamb, M.J. Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Percent of Teens Affected Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life. Cambridge, 2005. Kirkpatrick, R.C., et al. “The Evolution of Human Homosexual Behavior.” Cur- rent Anthropology, 2000 (41). Ngun, T. C., and Vilain, E. “The Biological Basis of Human Sexual Orientation: Is There a Role for Epigenetics?” Advanced Genetics, 2015 (86). Rahman, Q. and Hull, M.S. “An Empirical Test of the Kin Selection Hypothe- sis for Male Homosexuality.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 2005 (34). Reardon, S., et al. “Epigenetic Tags Linked to Homosexuality in Men.” Nature, October 2015. Sanders, A.R., et al. “Genome-Wide Scan Demonstrates Significant Linkage for Male Sexual Orientation.” Psychological Medicine, 2015 (45). Sergeant M.J.T., et al. “Aggression, Empathy and Sexual Orientation in Males.” Felt Sad/Helpless Attempted Suicide Bullied at School Forced Sexual Acts Personality and Individual Differences, 2006 (40). % VanderLaan D.P. and Vasey, P.L. “Male Sexual Orientation in Independent Samoa: Evidence for Fraternal Birth Order and Maternal Fecundity Effects.” FIGURE 4: The Youth Risk Behavior Survey is a nationally representative as- Archives of Sexual Behavior, 2011 (40). sessment that is considered the gold standard of adolescent health database in Vasey, P.L., et al. “Kin Selection and Male Androphilia in Samoan Fa’afafine.” the U.S. This study found that teenagers in a sexual minority, compared to their Evolution and Human Behavior, 2007 (28). heterosexual peers, are more likely to suffer bullying, violence, and depression. Wilson, E.O. The Social Conquest of Earth. Liveright Publishing Corp., 2012. Source: Kann L., et al. “Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance: United States, 2015.” Mor- Zhou J.N., et al. “A Sex Difference in the Human Brain and Its Relation to bidity and Mortality Weekly Report, 2016 (65). Transsexuality.” Nature, 1995 (378).

18 Th) Gay & L)sb an R)v )w / !RLD!iDe ESSAY Eyewitness to the Alger Hiss Case

TIMOTHY HOBSON LGER HISS was on a very clear trajectory to- munist while in federal service. In response, Hiss asked to tes- ward becoming our nation’s Secretary of tify before HUAC, where he categorically denied the charge. State—after helping to found the United Na- When Chambers repeated his claim on nationwide radio, Hiss tions—when, in 1948, he was repeatedly and filed a defamation lawsuit against him. Under oath, Hiss denied publicly attacked, for reasons I now see as po- even remembering Chambers, though later he recalled him, not litically motivated, clearly false, possibly as Chambers, but as a journalist named George Crosley. Cham- Apathological, and definitely homophobic. bers, by that time, had ridden to dubious fame as a former So- Alger Hiss was also my stepfather. At age 91, I am the last viet spy. He claimed he was an intimate personal friend of Hiss living eyewitness to this dark moment in our country’s history, and his family, and had dined with us on many occasions. After commonly known as “the Alger Hiss Case.” I’d like finally to denying these charges under oath, Hiss faced perjury charges, close this chapter in our history—to the extent possible in this and after two federal trials he was sentenced in 1952 to two con- age of fake news and falsified history. current five-year terms in federal prison. The attacks on Alger Hiss came from none other than the § future president Richard Nixon, who was hoping to win his first term in the U.S. Senate. Also attacking Hiss was the notorious NOW ADD ME TO THE STORY, a young man when my stepfather, Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose purge of suspected Commu- Alger Hiss, was enduring these accusations from Whitaker nists was in full swing, and his lawyer Roy Cohn, a closeted Chambers. But for that story, let me cycle back to the begin- gay man. Among Cohn’s many high-profile clients later in his ning. Born to Priscilla (“Prossy”) and Thayer Hobson in 1926, career was Donald Trump, a relationship that lasted for many I was their last-ditch effort to hold the Hobson marriage to- years until Cohn’s death from AIDS in 1986. gether. But the marriage failed just one year Finally, lurking throughout the Hiss Case, Alger Hiss was my step- later, and my mother and father were di- and especially as it concerns my role in it, was father. At age 91, I am the vorced—illegally, in Mexico. Thayer, luck- J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI for al- ily for me, had two wonderful older sisters most fifty years—and another closeted gay last living eyewitness to who cared for me whenever my mother man. He maintained his power—and his se- this dark moment in our wanted the freedom to go out gallivanting, cret—through a huge, private collection of country’s history. as “Prossy” searched for a new husband. dossiers on the personal lives of every politi- When I was three, in 1929, she met and cian or power broker who mattered in Washington, including pres- married Alger Hiss. He became my legal father, and we three idents. He even had a file on me (about which, more to follow). lived together in New York City and then in Washington, D.C., Finally, there was a brilliant writer who would later become as my father started a long and successful career in various de- a contributor at Time magazine (1939-48) named Whittaker partments under President Roosevelt during the New Deal era. Chambers. For reasons that have yet to be fully disclosed, In 1936, he joined the State Department. Chambers set out to use his position—along with the paranoid The supposed evidence against Hiss were the “Pumpkin Pa- mood of the country at this time—to ruin the reputation of Alger pers,” copies of secret State Department files, allegedly stolen Hiss and end his career. There are some questions that must be by my father, which ended up hidden in a pumpkin patch (hence raised, and which I will try to shed some light on here: To what their name), and then were “discovered” by Nixon. There was extent was Chambers motivated not by civic duty but by a per- considerable publicity about the dramatic efforts Nixon had un- sonal grudge against Hiss? Was Chambers gay? If so, how dertaken to find them in a pumpkin patch on Chambers’ farm in might this fact explain his desire to destroy Alger Hiss, whom Maryland, and get them to the government. he had encountered years earlier, when both were young men? However, there was no espionage charge against my father With the full support of Nixon and Hoover, Chambers first until Chambers found himself facing a slander charge by Hiss. accused Hiss of being a Communist under oath before a House One lie under oath followed another as Chambers wriggled out Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) hearing on Au- of the slander suit. But from then on, he was very carefully pro- gust 3, 1948. Chambers, himself a former member of the U.S. tected (and coached) by Hoover and the government lawyers, as Communist Party, testified that Hiss had secretly been a Com- he was the only witness against Hiss. (Chambers, on the other hand, was never charged with his multiple proven perjury state- Timothy Hobson, MD, is a 91-year-old retired surgeon, philosopher, ments under oath, since he cooperated with the government.) and poet living in Southern California. While gay since age fifteen, he During the early part of these proceedings, Chambers gave a was married for 42 years (now divorced) and has four children and handwritten confession to the FBI stating that he had been a “prac- eleven grandchildren. ticing homosexual” (in the language of the day) right up to the

January–F)bruary 2018 19 found by the Hiss defense team and given to the FBI. It even appeared onstage as evidence in the trial. The big lie was that the typewriter had a production number in- dicating that it was manu- factured after the date of the original “Pumpkin Papers” that my mother had suppos- edly typed for Chambers! The typewriter also had forged typeface changes and alterations, revealing an at- tempt to make it look like earlier Hiss typing samples. It is now known that the FBI investigated records of the typewriter date’s “inconsistencies,” but this was never shared with the defense. They argued throughout the trial that the type- writer entered into evidence was the original machine. “Forgery by typewriter” is one of several mysteries in the government’s case. Experts on both sides presented testimony at both trials. One thing I can speak for, and say with confidence, is that my mother was a really lousy typist, and I seriously doubt she could ever have typed the alleged documents that Chambers claimed she did—on any typewriter, forged or not! Another point to con- sider is that the FBI never showed the defense team Chambers’ confession admitting to being a “practicing homosexual” until years after my father left jail—which was completely unethical and illegal. But they wanted a conviction that badly. One obvious question for me has always been: why would a man like Chambers even begin such a barrage of false accu- sations, which actually dated back to 1939? My belief is that Chambers had fallen in love with Hiss when they first met in 1936, but that he was rebuffed by Hiss and became pathologi- cally hateful toward him. I’m not a psychologist, but a wonder- ful book by Meyer Zeligs titled Friendship and Fratricide (1967) chronicles the lives of both Hiss and Chambers from a clinical, psychological viewpoint, and points to a history of prior psychiatric episodes in Chambers’ life that have parallels with the Hiss case. Zeligs theorizes a “Hiss fixation” on the part Top: Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers testifying before HUAC in 1950. of Chambers, as revealed by the fact that Chambers had ac- Middle: Richard Nixon crowing about his “Hiss Probe.” quired and preserved some of Hiss’ possessions. Bottom: Alger Hiss mug shots upon his arrest. From my own life and my own personal observations and time when he supposedly had a final meeting with my father, at discussions, I am certain that Hiss would have rebuffed Cham- which he tried to convince Hiss to renounce his Soviet support. bers. I know for a fact that my father knew absolutely nothing As I have studied the history of the case against my father about the subject of homosexuality until 1945, when I received over almost seven decades, I have read and reread (and re-lived) an “undesirable” discharge from the U.S. Navy for my own pro- Chambers’ charge, his retraction, and his out-and-out lie about fessed homosexuality. He was so perplexed at the time, that it his story many, many times. He used a lot of different names was only then that he and Prossy began a crash course to edu- and many deceptions and complications in his life. He claimed cate themselves on the subject, to psychologically support and to have been a close family friend. Hiss did not know him help me. well—except as journalist “Crosby”—and I personally cannot recall ever meeting or seeing him. § And yet, this man destroyed my father’s career and our fam- AT THE TRIALS, the defense based a major part of its argument on ily’s life, and it certainly complicated mine. All these years what an outstanding man Hiss was, what upstanding citizen. later, the discrepancies continue to come to light. The “Pumpkin Pages and pages of testimony, and even affidavits right up to a Papers” were supposedly given to Chambers by my father, after Supreme Court justice, were entered into evidence at both Hiss being typed by Prossy on her old Woodstock upright typewriter. trials to support this assertion. Hiss was painted as a sort of There is still a mystery about that Woodstock typewriter. It was Eagle Scout who did impeccable legal work for our govern-

20 Th) Gay & L)sb an R)v )w / !RLD!iDe ment—almost a robot of perfection—a figure so unbelievable to I am happy that we did finally become close friends before he some that the government had only to provide a few examples passed away in 1996. of imperfect work to knock him off his pedestal. § I entered the scene as the only other potential witness. I claimed not to remember Chambers at all, stating that he was AT THE TIME OF THE TRIALS, Hiss was the President of the not a family friend, that he never came to dinner, and that for Carnegie Foundation for International Peace. He had been the three months, during the exact time of the “typewriter” story, I official Secretariat of the San Francisco International Conven- had been lying in bed with my leg in a cast, upstairs, in a George- tion that created the United Nations, and was well on the way town house with flimsy walls. I not only knew everyone who to becoming Secretary of State. Please humor an old man and came and went—the front door of the house was just below my let me indulge in a game of “what if” for a moment. bedroom—but I could hear everything that went on below my If Chambers had not falsely accused Alger Hiss; if Nixon, room! I never remember having seen or heard Chambers even Hoover, McCarthy, and Cohn had not been so willing to sacri- once, let alone the repeat visits he claimed he made to our home. fice truth and decency for personal advancement; and if 22 What’s more, I never heard my mother typing anything dur- diplomatic experts had not been fired at the State Department ing that period. I even underwent an hour-and-a-half of question- (for “suspected homosexuality”), I believe we would have had ing under pentothal, the “truth serum” of the day, which was a good chance of avoiding the Korean War. Hiss possessed such administered by an anesthesiologist in the defense lawyer’s of- diplomatic skills that perhaps a peaceful resolution could have fice, and nothing new was discovered to counter my memory. been found—which in turn could have prevented the fiasco in Still, consider the legal psychodrama of the defense’s legal team. Vietnam that began a decade later. Despite the value of my testimony, before allowing me to address This possibility leaves me with regret that I didn’t help Hiss the court they had to consider how the presence of an openly gay when I could. I still have great disrespect for the FBI of those stepson could ruin Hiss’ “Eagle Scout” image. years, and I’m I am still angry at having been blackmailed by At both trials, a wonderful family servant who had worked the FBI into not testifying. Meanwhile, it appears likely that for us at all three Washington homes during Chambers’ period of some documents relevant to the Hiss Case still have not been re- putative visits stated under oath that she never remembers see- leased to the public. When some day they are, perhaps the truth ing Chambers, and that he certainly never came to dinner. I of- about Alger Hiss and his innocence will emerge and be accepted fered to testify on behalf of my stepfather, but Hiss himself made once and for all. Perhaps the citizens of today, knowing my the ultimate decision, saying: “No! I will not allow Timmy to story, will be more vigilant to make sure nothing like this ever testify even if it means I go to prison. I will not ruin his life, as happens again. Chambers is trying to do to mine.” By this point of my life, I was in my final years at NYU taking pre-med requirements. Later, I graduated magna cum laude, but I was refused admission 2018 will be a very big to NYU Medical School, as I had included my Navy “undesir- able” discharge in my application. However, I feel that my con- nection to Alger Hiss was also part of that decision. year for truth. In the end, Hoover and his FBI team blackmailed me into not testifying at the two Hiss trials. Hoover sent out a team of agents to investigate me and everyone I had ever known or slept with. Many friends called to warn me that FBI was check- ing my activities. I can clearly recall the two agents who came to my cold water flat in Greenwich Village. They were not im- polite but were very official, informing me of their knowledge of my Navy discharge and unsavory behavior in New York City. And they very clearly informed me that all of this infor- mation would be released publicly if I ever decided to testify. I never testified at either trial, feeling blackmailed by the FBI and my own government. I certainly had troubles of my own, and could never accept Alger as a full father figure, though he tried valiantly and earnestly. Psychiatrists have explained it to me thus: “After all, he took your mother away from you.” But I remember him most warmly, and he was almost as perfect as the defense painted him. I even remember his visiting long after his jail time, and teaching one of my sons how to pour water from a pitcher, try- ing to teach both of us how to throw a ball, etc. I have never known a finer man. I even visited him with his new girlfriend, after he and my mother separated. (Prossy never granted him a divorce, always thinking he would come back, and my stepfa- ther was not able to remarry until after Prossy’s death in 1984.)

January–F)bruary 2018 21 INTERVIEW

Frank Pizzoli talks with a classicist in the footsteps of Homer ‘The Odyssey is all about father and son.’

DANIEL MENDELSOHN HEN Daniel Mendelsohn’s 81-year-old Daniel Mendelsohn: Oh, absolutely. My dad, who was 81, had father Jay enrolled in his seminar on The always wanted to travel. My mother really doesn’t like to travel, Odyssey at Bard College, which was fol- and, being a mid-century Jewish couple, he couldn’t imagine lowed by a Greek cruise, they experienced doing anything without her. It wasn’t until my father was in his what Daniel refers to as their “own little seventies that I started going to international literary festivals epic.” Their adventures resulted in a full- and bookstores, and I started taking him everywhere. But this Wlength memoir titled An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic, trip was obviously special. And it was certainly our own little recently published by Knopf. In keeping with his hybrid style in epic. That’s when the book came into focus. previous works, Mendelsohn again combines the personal with the literary and the historical as he elaborates parallels be- FP: Mom doesn’t like to travel? tween Homer’s classic work and his own “odyssey” with his DM: She’s a stay-at-home mom who is very intelligent and father. well-read. The travel bug never bit her, although my dad would A prolific writer whose seven books include The Elusive have liked to travel a lot when he was younger. So I cherished Embrace: Desire and the Riddle of Identity (1999), The Lost: A the opportunity to take him along. Basically, the last ten years Search for Six of Six Million (2006), and Waiting for the Bar- of his life, wherever I went I took him, and we had a great time. barians: Essays from the Classics to Pop Culture (2012), But the Odyssey Cruise was obviously special. Mendelsohn may be most familiar to readers for his frequent FP: And the parallels are amazing. Both your story and The Odyssey are nonlinear. DM: Yes, exactly. When we took the cruise I wasn’t planning on writing a book. When he took my class I thought maybe I’d get an interesting article out if it: How my octogenarian father took my Odyssey course. It wasn’t until we were on the cruise, about halfway through, did I begin to think it might be something big- ger. As you point out, the whole experience was very nonlinear. I love moving in circles rather than a straight line. Having my fa- ther be part of the experience, first in the classroom and then on the cruise, well, after a certain time I realized what I had.

FP: When did you actually start a notebook? DM: About halfway through the cruise. We started to have these amazing experiences, like going into Calypso’s Cave, or meeting an elderly gentleman with a scar on his thigh just like Odysseus Jay and Daniel Mendelsohn on the Odyssey Cruise had. In Book 19, when Odysseus returns home, Euryclea, who contributions to The New York Review of Books and The New had been his nurse, recognizes him by a scar on his thigh. When Yorker. His 2009 of the Greek poet C. V. Cavafy’s these things started to occur I started getting serious. complete works was a herculean effort about which he has much And you have to remember that I didn’t know my father to say in what follows. would fall ill and die within six months. Of course, I took a This interview was conducted by telephone in late Septem- break from everything during the months that he was ill and for ber 2017. —FRANK PIZZOLI a couple of months after he died. When I look back at what turned out to be the last year of his life, I realized there was a Frank Pizzoli: Your father was a retired research scientist who narrative arc—the classroom, the cruise, the hospital. That’s attended your twelve-week seminar on the Odyssey at Bard Col- when I told my agent that this is going to be a book. lege. Then, you both went on the Odyssey Cruise. Was that your own epic voyage with your father? FP: Not to reduce your father’s memory to a technical term, but you had a through line? Frank Pizzoli has published interviews with many noted writers. He is DM: Yes. We’re both journalists, so I don’t think it’s wrong. the founding editor and publisher of Central Voice. Sometimes you don’t know you have a story until you have a

22 Th) Gay & L)sb an R)v )w / !RLD!iDe certain vantage point. On the cruise I started running back to much more real estate devoted to the father–son passages than the stateroom and typing notes. He would ask: What do you to the husband–wife situation. How could I not have noticed think you’ll be doing with this? I’d reply: I don’t know but I that before? It’s like looking at The Odyssey with special pair of think it’s going to be something. I’ve written two other family glasses—a father–son pair—because my dad was sitting right memoirs, so he knew what I’m about. In that way he became ap- there, and suddenly all this stuff about fathers and sons leapt provingly aware of the book as did some inquisitive passengers out at me in a way that had never happened before. who knew I’m a writer. FP: Shifting gears a little, Cavafy’s poetry also leapt out at you. FP: Any Trojan horses? Did you discuss your gayness? What You’ve translated all of his work, correct? was your first discussion with him? DM: Yes, that book is his complete poetry, every aspect of his DM: My father was the original classicist in our family. We were verse [CP Cavafy: The Complete Poems, 2012]. It took me always talking about gayness. Given the culture in which we were twelve years. At the time I started, around 1994, there were not immersed, same-sex relations came up often as a topic. He was many good . There was one that was the standard, totally cool with it. My father was really wonderful when I came and, although it was very good, I felt there were aspects of out to the entire family. I started out writing for the gay press. Cavafy’s poetry that needed to be brought out more, certain for- My first memoir was very much about that. On the cruise, we mal aspects. For example, some of his poems rhyme, a lot of hung out with a San Francisco gay couple—a doctor and his part- them are actually sonnets, and you wouldn’t have guessed that ner. One was my dad’s age, the other younger. My father adored by reading previous translations. People don’t realize that, be- them, and we spent most of our time with them. I’m very lucky cause it’s not something that was emphasized in the standard because my parents were always very cool about my being gay. translations until I started to work on my own.

FP: Your father witnessed a lot of cultural change over the FP: Earlier translators were heavy-handed in what they re- course of his lifetime. moved by de-emphasizing? DM: I’d like to think I educated him over the course of my life. DM: But I don’t want to dis anyone’s translation, like Edmund I came to realize that my father could be cruel sometimes when Keely’s work. [Keely was a Princeton professor while Mendel- he had emotions he didn’t know how to express. For him, es- sohn was in graduate school there.] He wanted to bring out the pecially when he was younger, his feelings could come out as “modernistic” aspects of Cavafy’s poetry, since he was a Modern anger or disdain or even cruelty if he had worries about his chil- poet, so that’s what he emphasized. If you’re a translator, you re- dren when we were a young family. There’s a passage in the book about how he treated a gay student when he was in high school—pretty sweetly and gently, actually, and that was the 1940s. But for a Jewish guy from the Bronx of his vintage, he was actually pretty cool about things. It’s interesting to look at men of that generation. My dad was born in 1929, and over the course of my life I realized he was quite a gentle person who didn’t always know how to express it. My parents didn’t bat an eye when I came out in 1980, when it wasn’t a given that you’d fare well.

FP: Did your course help him understand homosexuality? DM: He read many of the Greek classics before taking my course and was always curious about how things worked. He thought it was interesting. He was highly intelligent, and I ex- plained it all to him.

FP: This blending of the personal and the literary is a hallmark of your work, correct? DM: Like all my other books, this one entwines two kinds of narratives, one personal and one critical or literary. I’ve done this in all my books now. To me, the most important thing about the experience that led to this book is that even people who haven’t read The Odyssey know it’s about this guy who’s been separated from his wife for twenty years and is madly trying to get home so he can be reunited with her. Having read and taught The Odyssey many times over, and having had two mentors who were both experts on the manuscript, it wasn’t until I had my fa- ther in that seminar that I realized the extent to which The Odyssey is actually even more about father and son. People don’t think of it as a father–son story, but there’s

January–February 2018 23 alize that you cannot bring out every aspect of someone’s work. ing]. My review may reflect a generational thing. White is You have to choose your battles. Keely’s translation was the stan- twenty years older than I am. I came along at a different mo- dard published in the 70s. It really brought out the crispness of ment. For his generation, it was so important for gay writers and Cavafy’s work. But I felt that readers needed to know that Cavafy their work to be recognized. By the time I started writing in the was a 19th- and 20th-century poet who straddled both periods of 90s, it wasn’t that big a thing for a writer to be gay. Today, gay time. He was interested in forms: sonnets and rhymes. Every writers don’t have to write about gay things. Being gay now can translation provokes a response; it’s a seesaw effect. be secondary to your words. The whole point of being a writer As a gay person, I felt that there were kinds of nuances that is precisely that you can be liberated to write about whatever I wanted to communicate. For example, there’s a Greek word you want. With White, I thought he allowed himself to be, chose for pleasure, hedone. It’s actually connected to our word, hedo- to be, in a kind of a literary ghetto. It’s still important for gay nistic. It’s the same root in ancient Greek. In Keely’s transla- people to be recognized as writers for good writing, not neces- tion, he almost always translates that one word as sensual sarily for being gay. That’s very important. pleasure. Why does he have to call it sensual, to distinguish it from what? Being gay, that would never have occurred to me. FP: You’ve said that writers learn from an intelligent reviewer When Cavafy is referring to sex between men, you know ex- not necessarily a positive review. What have you learned from actly what he’s talking about. I thought he made certain pas- intelligent reviews? sages a little bit clinical by always referring to male-on-male DM: You really learn a lot. I really am serious about that as a sex as sensual pleasure. I wanted to de-psychologize it, make it person who writes books and reviews. Meaningful criticism is seem more natural. Pleasure is pleasure. beneficial. We all want to be better. No one becomes a creative person for ego gratification. You don’t become a writer to win FP: And Cavafy wasn’t hiding anything when he wrote it. prizes. The point is we all know a writer has to always be doing DM: No, which is amazing, given that he was writing in the his best work. When people point things out, you learn. 1890s and into the 1920s. Nothing cagey, no coding, he never I think my new book is by far my best book. Many people pretended. He was always very straightforward about men hav- read my Holocaust book, a family memoir [The Lost: A Search ing sex with men. I wanted to bring out the matter-of-factness for Six Million, 2006]. Many people loved that book, and I loved about that. that book too. It was an international bestseller. I tried to do some things stylistically which I would not do now. Some re- FP: Literary legend says that poets burn brightest when views pointed out that I was pushing the envelope a little by my younger, but Cavafy doesn’t fit that mold. long sentences. I listened to them. I think my writing now is DM: Cavafy started writing in his thirties and it wasn’t very much tighter, less showy in places. good. It wasn’t until his forties that started producing a succes- sion of masterful work. I think Cavafy got better and better as FP: When you’re doing an essay, is it like shaking a bottle of he got older. He was only seventy when he died. No one would soda and then off with the cap for all the fizz? contest that his work just got richer, more pared down, more ex- DM: I do a tremendous amount of research. I was trained as an pressive, more concentrated as he got older. Americans are in academic. One mentor said to me: You can’t write anything until love with the idea of the young genius, the early success story. you’ve read everything. So, I can take months to write one of We anoint young writers who come out of the gate with an 800- or NYRB essays. I usually try to read everything page bestseller. In reality, most writers get better as they age, that seems to me to be germane. You read all of the works by the because you know more as you get older. author you’re writing about and everything all around it—what he read, his influences. I write very fast. All my essay first drafts FP: You and Edmund White have sparred in the recent past. It are complete within a day. I usually wake up at 6 a.m., then start happened in The New York Review of Books, a journal for which writing at about 7:30 a.m. and go until 6 p.m. It may not be per- you both write. Can you offer any background? fect but I like to get everything down. I usually have about 70 DM: I reviewed his memoir City Boy: My Life in New York to 100 pages of single spaced notes by the time I start one of During the 1960s and 70s for NYRB. I expressed the view that those pieces. I’ve done all the legwork, and then I let it perco- he was really concerned more with the writers he mentioned late for a few days after I’ve done all my research. I let it wash than with their work. I just thought it was kind of a lazy book. over me. I admire a lot of his early writing, but I thought he was coast- ing a bit in that book. I just didn’t find it very persuasive. Since FP: That way you don’t have to go back to look up some factoid. he is the eminence grise of gay writers, the book should have DM: Precisely. And I don’t know what an essay’s going to be. been better. I think he has been comfortable to be the king of I never use an outline. Don’t know what the ending is going to that city. As you become more prominent, you must improve, be. My discovery goes to the very end. not rest on your reputation. My question is, Did he give up something when he decided to become the king of gay letters? FP: You’ve been very gracious with your time. What was lost when he decided to be the big fish in that pond? DM: Oh no, this has been so interesting. I wish we could keep In my mind, I want to be in the ocean, not the pond. going. It’s one of the most interesting conversations I’ve had so I don’t want to criticize him; I was just reviewing his book. far. It’s nice to talk about the other work too but I appreciate the I don’t even know him. I met him at a party once twenty years way you’re trying to see my new book in light of my older ago at Princeton [where White currently teaches creative writ- work. That’s what I try to do when I write about people.

24 Th) Gay & L)sb an R)v )w / !RLD!iDe ESSAY The Unreliable Tenderness of theWorld

ANDREW HOLLERAN ENNESSEE WILLIAMS met James Laughlin the Black Masseur” are so homoerotic that one wonders why at a party in New York given by Lincoln they didn’t get Williams in the sort of trouble Gore Vidal Kirstein, the man responsible for founding, with claimed he suffered because of his novel The City and the Pil- George Balanchine, the New York City Ballet. lar. The answer, I think, must be in part that the publisher was To Laughlin, the founder of a new publishing New Directions—a small house whose reputation was more house devoted to the avant-garde, Williams was artistic than commercial, and hence less in the public eye. In- Ta promising poet whom Kirstein had recommended, and anyone deed, more than once Williams begged Laughlin not to publi- Kirstein recommended Laughlin took seriously. To Williams, cize or distribute a particular book of his in any way that might the shy, impecunious poet in a tattered sweater hiding in one of bring it to his mother’s notice. “I want no part of any commer- the smaller rooms of Kirstein’s apartment, Laughlin was some- cial publishers now or ever!” he wrote Laughlin on March 11, one who might publish what he called, in a letter to his family, 1945. “Not as long as I am eating without them. Once you get his “verse.” tied up with one you become, for better or worse, a professional Most people consider Williams a “poetic” playwright— writer which shouldn’t happen to anyone!” someone whose lines have entered the English language the The irony that lies behind a fascinating new collection of way poetry does (“I have always depended on the kindness of the two men’s letters, The Luck of Friendship (expertly edited strangers”), but few have read or know about his poems and by Peggy L. Fox and Thomas Keith), is our knowledge that short stories. The first volume of Williams’ poems that New Di- Williams wanted both commercial and literary success. And rections published was In The Winter of Cities (1956); the sec- while his letters to Laughlin are frequently more about literary ond, twenty years later, Androgyne, Mon Amour (1977). And matters—the covers of his books, the format, the publicity— Laughlin was always asking for more. He admired Williams’ before long one begins to hear the off-stage boom of his Broad- poetry, he told his author, because, unlike most of the avant- way career, the big plays that both made him a very famous garde poets, Williams wrote for the heart. professional writer and drove him to drink It was important to Williams to consider There is no relationship under the pressure to repeat what he called himself a part of the avant-garde. Even at the quite like the one between “the catastrophe of success.” About these end—especially at the end—he saw himself Broadway plays—and the later Off-Broad- as an experimental writer. (It was the critics, a writer (Tennessee Williams way flops—Laughlin was always encourag- he said, who refused to allow him to experi- in this case) and his or her ing and complimentary, providing the ment.) By writing Laughlin on February 6, editor (James Laughlin). unconditional support any writer wants from 1945, “I would like all my shy intrusions on his or her editor. Although Laughlin wasn’t the world of letters to be thru N.D. [New Directions],” Williams afraid to say what he didn’t like in these productions, he was was joining a stable of writers that included Henry Miller, Ezra always buoying the playwright up. But Laughlin thought of Pound, Guy Davenport, and William Carlos Williams—all writ- Williams primarily as a poet. “I always enjoy the plays,” he ers who were out of the mainstream in some way. His first play wrote Williams on April 20, 1951, “they are wonderful—but I to be produced, Battle of Angels, flopped in Boston when the still feel that essentially you are a poet, and that in the end you smudge pots being used onstage sent smoke into the fleeing au- will do your greatest work in that field.” dience—a scene out of Mel Brooks. His second effort in Boston, Clearly Williams thought of himself as a poet, as well, and a reading from a play written entirely in verse, did not go much was conscious of what other poets were doing. He even brought better. “I made the terrible mistake of trying to read Dos Ran- the poetry of other poets whose work he admired to Laughlin’s chos,” he wrote Laughlin. “It went all to pieces while I was attention. One of these was Frederick Nicklaus, one of the reading. It began to sound like shit. My voice became loud and young men Williams lived with in Key West. “Frederick was expressionless and I kept going on, hoping to find a passage pleased with the cover design for his poems and I think his an- suitable to close with. I really murdered it! As I did not give ticipation of their coming out keeps him happy, as it should,” them a synopsis to begin with or select in advance the parts that Williams wrote Laughlin on March 12, 1964. And it wasn’t just could be offered out of context.” Nicklaus that Williams helped. Williams agreed to let Laughlin One cannot imagine any context for some of the short sto- publish his own work in paperback because, Laughlin said, the ries Laughlin published in collections like One Arm (1948), greater sales would allow him to publish the work of young which were truly ahead of their time. Stories like “Desire and writers he might otherwise not be able to afford. In other words, Williams helped subsidize writers as impecunious as he had Andrew Holleran’s fiction includes Dancer from the Dance, Grief, and been when Laughlin got him a grant from the organization that The Beauty of Men. became the American Academy of Arts and Letters when

January–F)bruary 2018 25 Williams really needed the money. course you pay for it with something—per- This was because the two men shared The Luck of Friendship: haps a cumulative distrust of what is called the same exalted vision of the writer’s vo- The Letters of Tennessee Williams ‘real love.’ ... As for hurting people who cation. “I haven’t turned up anything new and James Laughlin love you—nothing is less avoidable!” that seems much good,” Laughlin wrote Edited by Peggy L. Fox Take another reference to Frederick Williams on April 23, 1947. “I guess most and Thomas Keith Nicklaus, for example. In a letter from Key all of the young writers are just hell bent for Norton. 352 pages, $39.95 West dated March 1963 we read: “As for success, copying books that have ‘suc- poor little Freddie, I think he is probably ceeded’ rather than trying to get down what their souls whisper one of the best poets in America. I seriously do think so. But he to them in the black of their despair.” The black of despair was, nearly strangled me to death a few nights ago because I woke up of course, Williams’ hunting ground. But he was always con- at three AM and tried to revive him, sleeping on the sofa, by scious of his status in the literary world. Laughlin had to per- pouring ice-water on his head, and he says that I called him a suade him that paperback editions of his books would not be whore.” One year later, when New Directions is bringing out down-market, but would make them more available to students Nicklaus’ poems, Williams writes of Nicklaus: “He understands, and the young writers he wished to reach. he says, as well as I do why it is wrong for us to try to go on to- There is no relationship quite like that between a writer and gether. We can’t help each other any longer, and if we tried to, his or her editor. It’s based partly on mutual usefulness; the ed- we would probably do nothing but hurt each other. Sic transit.” itor is the magician who will bring the writer’s work to the pub- The world beyond sex and literature is occasionally noticed. lic, the person who therefore lies somewhere between a knight From London he writes in 1948: “England is a great and inde- in shining armor, Santa Claus, and God; the writer is the means finable horror like a sickness that has not been diagnosed but by which the editor hopes to succeed. Both want to make the drains the life from you. The upper classes are hypocritical, cold other happy, both are on their best behavior, both united in a and heartless. They still eat off gold plates and dress for dinner. reverence for the word, on whatever level. That’s why The Luck They entertain you lavishly for the weekend. On Monday you of Friendship is so wel- get a little note enquiring if you stole a book from them.” (Years come; it’s that part of later he would think of moving there.) From Rome in the same Williams that is so often year. “I have made some good friends such as Frederic Prokosch forgotten in the unavoid- and that unhappy young egotist Gore Vidal.” Two decades later, ably melodramatic ac- in 1971: “Maria [Britneva] has been a devoted friend to me all counts of a life that was these years despite her present attachment to Gore Vidal. I think in so many ways sensa- he uses her as a ‘front’ for his dissolute activities in Rome but tional. It’s the sane, quiet she is impressed by the grandeur of his penthouse on a Roman artist who spent every palazzo and his undeniable wit. (I thought Myra Breckenridge morning writing, no mat- was more disgusting than funny.)” On the future of the U.S., in ter where he was or what a letter dated April 9, 1947: was going on around him, the man who protected The heat and dampness are descending on New Orleans and it is like a Turkish bath only not as socially inspiring. So I am the mysterious source of wondering whether to go East or West. From the looks of his inspiration from all at- things generally, one would do well to get clear out of the tempts to figure it out. (In country and stay out for at least the opening stages of “The James Laughlin his Memoirs, the only American Century.” I have a feeling that if we survive the next book New Directions did not publish, simply because Laughlin ten years, there will be a great purgation, and this country will could not match the advance Random House was offering, once more have the cleanest air on earth, but right now there Williams doesn’t once discuss the subject of how he wrote.) seems to be an unspeakable foulness. All the people at the con- The comedy, and tragedy, of this collection lies in the arc it trols are opportunists or gangsters. The sweetness of reason traces from the letters of a shy, young, ambitious writer to those died out of our public life with FDR. There doesn’t even seem to be a normal intelligence at work in the affairs of the nation. of a middle-aged success turning a beady eye on the world Aren’t you frightened by it? around him to those of a man at the end of his career who won- ders if his obsession with writing didn’t destroy his life. But it’s (If this is what Truman inspired, what on earth would he have all done through a single prism: the exchange of letters between made of the people at the controls now?) two men whose missives expand beyond practical publishing But it’s Williams’ personal life that pokes through increas- matters to commentary on what’s happening in their personal ingly, on which the most succinct comment is probably the one lives, though one is hetero-, the other homosexual. Laughlin makes in a letter to Williams in 1954: “I sometimes A letter dated March 1945 is an example: “The evils of think that the tragedy of so many of us is that our sexual type is promiscuity are exaggerated,” Williams wrote Laughlin. “Some- often not the type we can live with!” Amen. The mess increases body said it has at least the advantage of making you take more as the years pass and the letters, whose intimacy deepens as he baths. But I think one picks a rose from each person, each of a and Laughlin discuss divorces, break-ups, flops, and illnesses, somewhat different scent and color. Each affair can make some reflect this. Once he loses the domestic stability provided by his new disclosure, and whether it builds or reduces your range of ten-year relationship with Frank Merlo, who died of lung can- feeling and understanding depends pretty much on yourself. Of cer when Williams was at the height of his commercial success,

26 Th) Gay & L)sb an R)v )w / !RLD!iDe everything goes downhill. Traveling with a friend in the Far to be alone in. I guess no place is a good place to be alone in.” East in 1970, Williams writes to Laughlin: And on December 16 of that same year, from New York, he wrote of a new shrink: “This new one puts a bottle of whiskey The big problem now is loneliness. I must find a new life-com- on the table beside me and he tries to persuade me that I am a panion. This is especially urgent since, after five years with Glavin [another of his young men] and an almost total celibacy, reasonably good person, despite my self-contempt.” I have a strong libido again as well as a need to be close to Self-contempt was only part of it; the rest was his insecurity someone. It’s pretty hard to work out a problem like that in the as a writer. The balm was Laughlin’s constant encouragement. States at my age with my minimal attractions, discounting As early as 1949, Williams writes Laughlin from Rome that “I what I hope is still a fair degree of financial security. depend so much on your critical opinion as there are times when my own seems to fail me. I lose objectivity about my work, as The young poet, grateful to Laughlin for getting him a $1,000 everyone does at times.” On Oct. 15, 1950, he writes that grant in 1944, is now a rich playwright who can subsidize younger Laughlin’s letter “comes at a time in my life when I have a need writers through the profits he brings New Directions, a millionaire for some confirmation or reassurance about my work’s value. ... who has to worry about who will receive legacies when he dies. I feel that I have worked very hard and very seriously over a By the time he writes Laughlin a letter from Key West in May considerable period, that I have not done anything cheap or 1963 about the will he wants to rewrite, he’s worried that another meretricious, that regardless of my known limitations as a of the young men who came after Frank Merlo would not get any- writer, I have shown taste and courage and do have honesty.” thing unless he changed his will: “I would not rest easy in my But the longer he goes on writing, the more battered he feels. grave, which I’m afraid is something to be considered now, if he From a letter written to Bob McDonald, Laughlin’s assistant at were cast upon the unreliable tenderness of the world.” New Directions, on January 22, 1972, just before the opening of The grace of that last phrase, like “my shy intrusions into lit- Small Craft Warnings at the Truck & Warehouse Theater, a play erature,” or, in another letter, “I don’t believe God is dead but I in which Williams himself acted in order to keep it going: think he is inclined to pointless brutalities,” is present in every- thing Williams wrote. As for the humor: “The local doctor told I have been a writer nearly all my life, well, from before pu- me I had non-contagious mumps and just go home and lie down berty, even, but it adds up to almost nothing. I mean I’ve dis- with a bottle of booze by the bed. Others said I had non-conta- covered nothing. There’s been no answer to the questions. I gious but infectious mononucleosis which makes me think of am sure this must be the feeling of nearly all writers when they what Jabe said to Myra in Battle of Angels: ‘Do you think I had a sense that their work is finished. Probably all of them, as I did, had hoped that the Sphinx at the edge of the desert would reply tumor of the brain and they cut out the brain and left the tumor?’” to their shouts, but she remains a silent stone enigma at the The last question was not entirely a joke, of course; edge of the desert. Williams thought he was going to die for a good portion of his adult life. But he seems to have been as strong as an ox. It was And from Key West on March 9, 1973, regarding publication in his mind and spirit that begin to show the wear and tear. The book form of Out Cry, the play Laughlin considered the final loneliness, for one thing. After Merlo died, Williams began a summation of all of Williams’ themes: long search for his replacement. In May of 1964, he wrote from [I]t is a comfort to know that you’ll bring it out as a book: Key West: “Marion is here with me but she’s got to leave to- something will survive the holocaust of these years of half- morrow and I might leave with her as this is not a happy place crazed often impotent effort. ... Sometimes it seems to me that the past twelve years or so has been one long sick ego trip and I don’t see the end of it yet. ... The simple natural thing of doing Life Study my work was slowly shattered through my collision with the false intensities and pressures of ‘show-business’—for which Sometimes I could cry about I was not cut out. the amount of work I do in one day. In short, Williams never got over the division between the Let me not list, let me not repeat. demands of commercial success and the art of writing (some- But come inside to my longing dreams thing that plagued one of his heroes, F. Scott Fitzgerald, as where hard work turns to soft love well). Still, Laughlin, the man whom Williams told, “You are and her hands hold my hips my literary conscience—the only one outside of myself” pro- that call for touch like loons on the lake vides comfort and reassurance. “These dark days will pass,” he that shimmers cool jade and hot gold at sunset. assures Williams on March 29, 1963, Let me think about her lips even though in the moment things look black. You’ve had a as sweet as strawberries rough life, not the glamorous ease that is supposed to go with I bought from the one-armed farmer success, but look at the wonders that have come out of it. And with the psychedelic shirt who probably I don’t just mean the great plays and the beautiful poems and fought in Vietnam by the ghosts on his face. the stories that cut through to the truth, but also the hundreds See how thoughts of her paint my mind with art of kind things you have done for people, and can still do. You though I imagine art comes to life sometimes. are a good human being, Tenn, and don’t forget it. You mean a lot to a lot of us, as well as the public, and we want you MARY MERIAM around for a long time. In one sense, he need not have worried.

January–F)bruary 2018 27 ESSAY Why Auden and Kallman Endured

MARTIN DUBERMAN HESTER KALLMAN is the bad boy of the older Brooklyn College student and fellow poet named Harold standard W. H. Auden story. In its extreme Albaum. (He later changed it to Harold Norse, became part of version, the tale goes something like this: In Allen Ginsberg’s circle, won considerable recognition, and lived 1937, Kallman, a sixteen-year-old freshman at into his nineties.*) Brooklyn College, slyly maneuvered an intro- In the Norse Papers at the Lilly Library, Norse describes duction to the esteemed thirty-year-old poet, Chester Kallman in 1939 as a young man whose “charm and Cbedded him down that very night—re-awakening Auden’s powers have become a legend.” His contemporaries tended to long-disappointed, long-simmering hope for a lifetime com- regard him as a singularly “glamorous” creature. Starting at age panion, a “true marriage”—and hung on ever after, fitfully twelve, he had (in Norse’s words) habitually “molested adults in available, a slattern of promiscuous lust, an abuser of trust, a subway toilets” and fearlessly approached attractive men on the financial leech, a glib, destructive, talentless dilettante, the street. In his 1989 autobiography, Memoirs of a Bastard Angel, saintly Auden’s “hair shirt.” Norse emphasizes other aspects of Kallman’s character: his na- But is there any truth to this account? Let us start at the be- ture was “essentially benign” and kind-hearted, though his ginning, when Auden and Kallman first met. In several manu- campy, merciless wit, “an acid rain of mockery,” sometimes script collections—the Auden-Kallman correspondence in the concealed his affectionate nature. Chester also had from an early New York Public Library, the James Merrill-Kallman letters at age a profound passion for music and for opera in particular, the Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, and the identifying, diva-like, with its exaggerated emotions. Harold Norse Papers at the Lilly Library in Indiana—material After his first sexual experience with Auden in 1939, Kall- is now available that allows for a far more nuanced description man delightedly reported to Harold Norse that the poet had ex- of Kallman himself and of his relationship with Auden. claimed, “Thank God it’s big!” “Talk about groveling!” added More is involved here than attempting to revise our under- Kallman naughtily. “He’d stay down all night if I didn’t remind standing of one relationship. The rescue mis- him that even I am not inexhaustible.” From sion has broader resonance: the need to Auden saw in Kallman the Kallman’s point of view, the two were from “queer” history, to interpret it from the van- life partner he’d given up the start sexually incompatible: Auden de- tage point of our own cultural perspective plored anal sex, while Kallman’s primary (keeping in mind that all historical writing is all hope of finding, and pleasure lay in getting fucked. As Auden interpretive). For too long the commentary was wise enough to realize once wrote in his journal: “To me the act of on past LGBT lives has been in the hands of that love was far harder fucking, whether heterosexual or homosex- mostly conservative, mostly straight aca- to find than sex. ual, seems an act of sadistic aggression, to demic historians and critics who tend to de- submit to it, masochistic, and neither ac- fine “healthy” or “authentic” relationships as ones that include tively nor passively have I ever enjoyed it.” To Kallman such a lifetime, monogamous pair-bonding—the ultimate signpost of view was unthinkable heresy. something called “maturity.” When on an out-of-town trip with Auden about a year after Auden (and his many biographers) shared that definition of they met, Kallman wrote Norse that he was sexually bored: what constitutes a successful relationship, but Kallman (who’s “When I do get back to the city I expect to spend 3/4 of my time had no biography) did not. A good-looking young blond of full- flat on my stomach biting into pillows, listening to the music ... lipped sensuality and—as he was pleased to advertise—“well- of the bed-springs.” It didn’t help that Auden was an inept, awk- hung,” Kallman was from an early age cocksure (pardon the ward lover. Although he’d had his share of sexual adventures in pun), confident of his seductive prowess and buoyantly shame- Berlin in the 1920s, his dormant Christianity (by 1940 he was less when satisfying his abundant sexual appetite. Even before about to recommit to his idiosyncratic version of the faith) fed meeting Auden, Kallman had already told his father (his mother his uneasiness about sensual indulgence. Kallman, born Jew- had died young) that he was “queer,” that he saw nothing wrong ish, was adamantly secular and regarded sex as a source of un- with it and had no wish to “outgrow it.” Bright, clever, and equivocal pleasure. keen-witted, by age sixteen Kallman was already enrolled as a Their views on homosexuality itself were no less at odds. freshman at Brooklyn College. He had been sexually active Auden felt that it was a misfortune, a “crooked” disorder. He since the age of twelve, having his first serious affair with an kept changing his mind about the infirmity’s origins, but his negativity remained a constant. During his Freudian phase he Martin Duberman was awarded an honorary doctor of letters degree by ______Columbia University at its 2017 commencement. He has three new books * See the published Williams–Norse correspondence, John J. Wilson coming out in 2018, beginning with a memoir titled The Rest of It. ed., The American Idiom (Bright Tyger Press, 1990).

28 Th Gay & Lsban Rvw / oRLdide saw it as “an unconscious criticism of the mother as a love-ob- yet he refused to relinquish the relationship. He saw in Kallman ject”; at other times he thought it a form of adolescent rebellion the life partner he’d given up all hope of finding and was wise or a flight from intimacy. Consistently and ruefully, he viewed enough to realize that love was, after all, far harder to find than homosexuality as a “backward” or “regressive” form of attach- sex. His description of himself (to Christopher Isherwood) as “a ment—not a variation of authentic love but an impediment to it. real Victorian wife,” though perhaps written with tongue in Before meeting Kallman, Auden had considered his erotic life check, wasn’t far off the mark. a failure—a narcissistic derangement, as he saw it, limited and For a time, Kallman continued to see Norse almost daily, barren. and he continued to cruise relentlessly—and unrepentantly. His attitude reflected, of course, standard psychiatric as- Auden may have fallen madly in love, but Kallman had not. He sumptions of the day. However brilliantly original in his de- liked and admired Auden, was powerfully drawn to his genius, ployment of language and comfortable with his personal his awesome phrase-making, his magnetic story-telling and out- eccentricities, Auden was utterly conventional in his views on landish erudition, his gallant generosity of spirit. But he was not sexuality and gender roles. Kallman, though a gifted poet, drawn to Auden’s sometimes domineering, cantankerous would never find a comparably unique poetic voice, but he re- moods, his stubborn, sometimes gruff, certitude—and most as- jected conventional views about romantic love and monogamy suredly not to his fleshy, unathletic body and limited, clumsy and freely indulged his guilt-free enjoyment of “immoral” sex- sexual repertoire. ual pleasure. His attitude looks ahead to the 21st century, while Not least, Kallman enjoyed having an entrée into Auden’s Auden’s seem anchored in the late 19th. glamorous world. When the two went cross-country in the sum- What made Kallman a better candidate for Auden’s affec- mer of 1939 on what Wystan insisted on calling their “honey- tions than previous attachments was their shared class origins, moon” (“Such a romantic girl!” Kallman wrote Norse), and Kallman’s precocious intelligence, and his passion for language. bought “wedding rings” to mark the occasion (Kallman refused Soon after meeting him, Auden wrote the poem “Heavy Date”: to wear his), their first stop was a two-day visit to Thomas Mann and his family in Princeton, followed by a layover in I believed for years that Baton Rouge to see Katherine Anne Porter and her husband, a Love was the conjunction meeting in Taos with D. H. Lawrence’s widow, Frieda (“a mar- Of two oppositions; velous woman,” Kallman wrote That was all untrue; Norse), and finally a leisurely Every young man fears that He is not worth loving: stay in California with Christo- Bless you, darling, I have pher Isherwood. (Judging from Found myself in you. his published diaries, Isherwood over the years would continue to Auden was now able, with lapses, have mixed feelings about Kall- at least to consider the notion that man. He liked him “much more” homosexuality was something as he grew older, writing in a other than a curse—if experi- 1948 diary entry, after a visit, that enced within the context of a Kallman “is very funny, and so committed relationship, that is, anxious to be friendly that it is when performed (in his words) quite touching. ... [He] said to with “a person with whom I shall me: ‘I feel at last that you really be one flesh.” From their first don’t disapprove of me.’”) meeting, Auden was obsessed and Kallman kept a zealous eye out adoring. Kallman, for his part, at bus and train stops for attrac- seems to have realized early on tive young men, reporting in a let- that he’d found in Auden a soul- ter to Norse that he’d “almost mate—yet never confused that precipitated a domestic crisis by with having found a sexual part- groping a boy sitting next to me ner who could magically and en- between Jacksonville and Talla- duringly meet his erotic needs. hassee. Boy, I think, was straight Not even in the short term. avec un basquet, ma chère, that Kallman wanted sex often and he kept adjusting. Wystan was with a variety of partners—and he quite rightly exasperated, the boy was open about it. He never pre- merely removed my hand with a tended to be equally smitten, and slight smile.” When forced to be- never agreed to sexual fidelity. come aware of Kallman’s “an- Auden knew the terms of the re- tics,” Auden more typically kept lationship from the beginning. He discreetly silent. Thrilled that “the sometimes suffered greatly, espe- marriage of true minds” he’d long cially in the early years, from W. H. Auden sought was now actually at hand, Kallman’s amorous wanderings, Auden seems to have hoped that

January–F)bruary 2018 29 once Kallman’s teen years were behind him and his hormones Even this had its difficulties, for Chester sometimes resented less rampant he would turn more domestic—and monogamous. Auden’s patronage.” But that, as he would unhappily learn, was not to be. At this point, Kallman played his trump card. Following Auden’s stormy reaction over “Jack,” Kallman announced that N THE VERY EARLY DAYS of the relationship, Kall- he and Auden would no longer have sex. And he meant it— man may have been briefly caught up in Auden’s ec- though the two would stay together as a couple, and each would static fantasy of enduring “oneness” and may even find in the other not only his best friend but a mutually reliant have shared and encouraged it. Soon after their initial “co-conspirator.” As Auden put it in a mid-1940s letter: “I need meeting in April 1939, Auden had to leave New York your interest and your help more than you know (or allow your- for a few weeks to fulfill a teaching engagement at St. self to know).” For his part, Kallman stressed “that, in what- IMarks School, and during May and June Kallman sent him sev- ever context it may be, or whatever interpretation it may be eral letters underscoring his devotion. In one, dated May 13th subjected to, I love you.” and in apparent response to Auden’s parched need for valida- It was Kallman who opened Auden’s eyes to the wonders of tion, Kallman provocatively replied, “Why this self-abase- opera. The two came to share a lifelong passion for the form ment? Can you be assured?” He did try: “I love you, I love you, and starting in the late ’40s co-wrote a series of opera librettos, I love you.” In a subsequent letter Kallman even suggested the most successful of which was Stravinsky’s “The Rake’s (without saying as much outright) that he’d been giving his Progress.” The original deal for “The Rake” was made between cruising a temporary rest: “You worry about the sailors and I Auden and Stravinsky—until Auden, with typical generosity, wile [sic] away my time imagining you teaching some student simply told Stravinsky that he’d be taking on “his friend” French in bed. ... We’re both wiling [sic] away time ground- Chester Kallman as co-librettist. When a surprised Stravinsky lessly I think.” reacted negatively to the news and was clearly upset, Auden Ten days later, in another letter, Kallman reiterated his de- assured him that “Mr. Kallman is a better librettist than I am”— votion: “Dear, I do love you!” and soon after followed up with and in fact Kallman did prove to be an extremely gifted one. “this love business is beginning to tell on me. I miss you dis- After working together for a time, Stravinsky (whom Kallman turbingly much—damn you darling.” He even reassured referred to as “the mighty anal”) wrote him directly to say that Auden regarding their different preferences in bed: “I am quite he had “found your poetry most expressive and flexible for my convinced, we are not different, darling, not at all—just a music.” Not only was Stravinsky delighted with Kallman’s bunch of healthy youngsters who come in different positions considerable contribution but (according to his associate, and look at different people, but we’re quite all right, eh?” As Robert Craft) “was quickly won by [his] ... intelligence and if brought back to reality, Kallman signed the letter “Your lit- sense of humor. ... Kallman [according to Craft] was easier to tle whore.” understand than Auden, and could bring out ... [Auden’s] dor- The honeymoon was brief. Within a year, a crisis arose when mant affability, as well as subdue his tempers. ... Bluntly stated, Auden discovered that Kallman had fallen for a handsome, the Stravinskys were happier with Auden when Chester Kall- well-built young Englishman known only by the pseudonym man was present.”* “Jack Lansing,” and started seeing him with some regularity. Yet Kallman never found, either as a librettist or a poet, any- Auden was shocked at the depth of rage this “betrayal” aroused thing like Auden’s dedicated vocation; perhaps his talent was- in him. He felt that he knew for the first time “what it is like to n’t deep enough—his consecration, certainly, was much too feel oneself the prey of demonic powers, in both the Greek and sporadic. He never shared Auden’s highly disciplined work the Christian sense, stripped of self-control and self-respect, be- ethic, and at least one friend—the distinguished poet James having like a ham actor in a Strindberg play.” But as Humphrey Merrill (“Jimmy”)—came to view Kallman as a prime and sad Carpenter—the Auden biographer who has shown more sym- example of a significant talent destroyed by alcohol—and “gay pathy toward Kallman than any other—has written: “Chester’s self-hatred.” As early as 1951, when Merrill attended the pre- behaviour was only to be expected. He had never loved Auden miere of “The Rake’s Progress” in Venice’s glittering La Fenice with the same intensity as he was loved by him ... and Auden ... theater, Merrill noted that at the curtain call—a roaring ovation, had in his eyes the role of patron and protector rather than lover. with the librettists joining Stravinsky onstage—Kallman looked like “a vision of Sin, puffy and purpled and scarred.”† When Harold Norse ran into Kallman during roughly the Lord Byron’s same period, he lamented (or pretended to) that the brilliant, de- Gay Epic monic boy he’d once known had disappeared. Perhaps, Norse wrote in his notebook (now in the Lilly Library), “Having been “Definitive edition. Scholarly and readable.” too close to him at an early age, I saw him when all was prom- — Hugh Hagius ise, intimations of grandeur. Now, that’s over. ... Also, his social “Don Leon will be an invaluable resource.” manner [is] ... close to the Jewish ham actor. Lots of mugging, — Rictor Norton always one eye on the effect, never quite true, sure of itself, “Indispensable new edition of Don Leon.” ______— Beert Verstraete * See Vera Stravinsky and Robert Craft’s Stravinsky in Pictures and PAGAN PRESS Documents (Simon & Schuster, 1978). Books for gay men since 1982. † An important collection of “Jimmy’s” uncatalogued letters to Chester www.paganpressbooks.com is in the Ransom Research Center at the University of Texas.

30 Th) Gay & L)sb an R)v )w / !RLD!iDe given.” Norse was being harsh, as we know from other, more many old friends were gone, too many donnish rituals dis- appreciative observers, like Isherwood or Merrill. carded. There were few amenities, and even less conviviality. Still, there was no gainsaying the decline in Kallman’s His friends feared that he would drink himself to death. Miser- promise (and his good looks). When he and Auden were apart able and ill, Auden suffered a fatal heart attack in 1973, age 66. they exchanged letters (Kallman sometimes belatedly) about It was Kallman, devastatingly, who found his body. Hearing the everything from literature to publishing to money—which Kall- news, James Merrill wrote to him: “It may not always have been man often needed and which Auden usually sent. Auden would plain to you ... how greatly he loved you & relied on you; but it periodically urge Kallman—believing that “no friendship...can was to the rest of us. I mean, always was.” Shocked and heart- endure without cool, clear ‘minds-to-hearts’”—to yield less au- broken, Kallman never recovered. A year and a half later, he too tomatically to his impulses, particularly in regard to sex, and to was dead, at age 54. activate a more rigorous routine when it came to writing. But to no avail, perhaps partly because Auden himself relied heavily EARLY EVERYONE who has written about on alcohol and Benzedrine. They were no less explicit in their Chester Kallman has essentially described letters about their separate sex lives, with Kallman always hav- him—without using the word—as a “border- ing far more to report. “Divine soldier and his friend,” he wrote line” personality: a spoiled and selfish so- Auden at one point, “both hotter than the nuts of hell—just want ciopath, a sexual predator, an irresponsible to fuck all night long.” At another point he mockingly chastised parasite interested in little more than in- Auden for going to the Turkish baths when in Michigan: Ndulging his insatiable sexual appetite. Sometimes explicitly, but “Shame on you, Wystan. ... By the way—has anything been usually by indirection, Kallman’s critics profess bewilderment thrust at you through the Ann Arbor ‘glory holes’?” over Auden’s profound and lifelong attachment to him. For the remainder of their lives, Wystan and Chester contin- Kallman could cause Auden pain and public embarrassment, ued to live together for part of each year; their affective, though but that stream ran in both directions. Auden’s uninterruptable not their sexual lives, remaining closely bound. The “marriage” monologues and rude, grumpy arrogance inflicted their own that Auden had as a younger man desperately longed for, held. share of discomfort on Kallman. Besides, being the spouse of an For years they spent winters in New York City and summers acclaimed genius, and considerably younger as well, could be first on the island of Ischia and later in the cozy Austrian town an onerous role, automatically encouraging dismissal as a mere of Kirchstetten. In their later years, much to Auden’s regret, Kall- appendage, a sponge. Kallman was in fact too gifted simply to man began to spend increasing amounts of time in Greece, where bask in reflected glory; he was more its victim. casual sex was much more available. By 1963, he had substi- The point isn’t to parcel out “blame” more evenly but in- tuted Athens for New York and he and Auden from then on lived stead to recognize that from their very first meeting, an “elec- together only during the summer. The separation greatly deep- tric spark” passed between Auden and Kallman that in the ened Auden’s gloom and loneliness; nor did it help Kallman rally coming decades would often dim but never go out. Though their his resources: more of his energy went into cooking than poetry. relationship, like most—like all?—could be contentious and He became a master (and hugely messy) chef, once turning out troubled, they saw in each other the likeliest candidate either a dinner of Chicken Marengo and chocolate soufflé for twelve on would ever know of a “true marriage”—and not primarily (as the same evening he moved into a new apartment. often suggested) because of dovetailing neuroses. Kallman was He also fell in love—with a young soldier named Yannis far more of a genuine partner than is usually credited. “I rely Boras, who was admiringly described by Jimmy Merrill’s part- absolutely upon your critical judgment,” Auden once wrote him, ner, David Jackson, as having “the patience and affection to put and in another letter he stated flat-out that “you are the one com- up with terribly strange lives ... [he had] that great talent which rade my non-sexual life cannot do without.” Kallman often in- understands what is human and what is simply a nervous sur- fluenced Auden’s taste, held his own with him intellectually face.” Tragically, Yannis, age 26, died in 1968 after being hit (surpassing him in aphoristic wit, though never matching his by a drunken driver. A bereft Kallman turned more and more to erudition), and proved genuinely and generously supportive in drink. As for Auden, in his later years he’d have an occasional, difficult moments. brief affair, but sex had never been at the center of his life and Auden could now and then sound a note of homosexual its absence seems never to have bothered him much; he de- “chauvinism,” but far more often he saw his “condition” as a scribed himself in his 1966 poem “Fairground” as one of those curse, and possibly even a crime. “It’s wrong to be queer,” he who’d put “their wander-years behind them,” who “play chess told a friend in 1947, “all homosexual acts are acts of envy.” or cribbage,/games that call for patience, foresight, manoeuvre,/ When The Kinsey Report was published the following year, like war, like marriage.” Auden wrote a review that he himself characterized as “so anti If he didn’t miss sex, he most certainly missed Kallman; the homintern” that he tore it up. In 1950, he titled his review of a habit of a shared life had been central to his sense of well-being. new biography of Oscar Wilde “A Playboy of the Western In the hope of somehow regaining some form of community, World: St. Oscar the Homintern Martyr.”* he accepted Oxford’s offer of a permanent residency and re- Chester Kallman shared none of those views. He was com- turned to England early in 1972. Kallman approved the move— fortable with his homosexuality and delighted in sex. That has not least because, as he wrote a friend, Wystan had of late been almost certainly been a contributing factor—and arguably the imposing “rather hair-raising tension ... on everyone near him in most important one—to his undeservedly negative press. New York, me especially.” For a brief time, Auden seemed ______happy and relaxed at Oxford. But too much had changed; too * See Edward Mendelson’s Early Auden, Later Auden (Princeton).

January–F)bruary 2018 31 BOOKS Why We Remember Charles Henri Ford

T’S QUITE POSSIBLE that only a dation led to the first U.S. publication of the few readers of this magazine will FELICE PICANO book, by the Gay Presses of New York know who Charles Henri Ford was. (through its SeaHorse Press line), in 1986. Yet here we have a lengthy and heav- The U.S. edition contained a lengthy and I Charles Henri Ford: ily annotated book from Bloomsbury Press factually rich prologue by scholar Steve about his work—or, rather, about certain Between Modernism Watson, and it sported cover art and a fold- aspects of his work. After all, Ford was and Post Modernism out of ten pen-and-ink drawings that Tche- nothing if not a consummate dilettante in by Alexander Howard lichev had done for Ford’s own private the old sense of the word: he wrote poetry; Bloomsbury. 251 pages, $114. edition of the book: artwork never previ- he edited magazines; he co-wrote a novel ously seen, rescued from the depths of a banned for decades in the U.S.; he made films; he drew and steamer trunk, which slowly wended its way from Katmandu, painted; and in the end he left a diary titled Water from a Bucket Nepal, where Ford kept a home. (2001), admirably edited by Lynne Tillman, which surpassed The Young and Evil isn’t a great novel, although it is fun to all previous literary works for name dropping. read. It’s too campy for any kind of “plot” to hold onto, and its Ford could name-drop so well because he was born in 1908 characters are mostly known through their 1930’s campy dia- and died in 2001; he lived in New York, and Paris, and then all logue. If anything, it’s closer to a postmodern work than to a con- over, and then in New York again. He was beautiful when ventional novel—a half century before that movement emerged. young, and still handsome in his nineties. There’s a famous Ford’s own, quite accurate words about it to me were that it was photograph by Henri Cartier-Bresson of Ford at thirty button- “quite deliciously madcap.” He thought it was surrealistic, and ing his fly outside a Montmartre pissoir. He had love affairs maybe it is, but it’s more like what a 25-year-old woman author with famous people like Djuna Barnes and the painter Pavel from the depths of super-hip Brooklyn with too many gay pals Tchelichev, who were at the culture centers of their time. He be- might write next week. Ford would have loved reality TV and friended André Breton and the Surrealists, and during World War II he brought them to America. He was curious, intellectual, and tal- ented, with a celebrated stage actress sister, Ruth Ford; and he lived as well as anyone of his era (for a time in the Dakota in New York City). All the nastiness of mid-20th-century history seemed to bounce off Ford like bad re- views of a hit show. One wouldn’t know many of these facts from Alexander Howard’s tome, Charles Henri Ford: Between Modernism and Post- modernism, however, because Howard is after different game: he wishes to show how Ford spanned the two literary movements of the past century. Which is all well and good, and I agree with his analysis, but not with how he arrived at it. Howard appears to be a poetry critic primarily, which may be why he com- pletely misses the outstanding fact of Ford’s Charles Henri Ford, 1935. Photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson. life for us now, a decade and a half after his death. What stands out is not Ford’s poetry but that he co-wrote would have perfectly fit in with the Real Housewives of Beverly the 1933 novel, The Young and Evil, with his friend (and prob- Hills. He believed that anything could become “art,” especially able sex partner) Parker Tyler, a prescient film critic who wrote all the trivia of our lives, and he worked on this assumption. Screening the Sexes and Underground Film, among other books. Howard gives the novel about four sentences in his book. The novel, published by Obelisk Press in Paris and smuggled And, given that he cites the Gay Men’s Press edition of the book out of France, was, in Gore Vidal’s words, “doubtless the first in a footnote, a 1989 reprint and not the 1986 U.S. edition, it’s and still most crucial queer novel written.“ Vidal’s recommen- pretty clear that Howard never saw either edition and possibly never read the novel. So, what does he include in this book? He Felice Picano’s latest book is a memoir titled Nights at Rizzoli (OR writes about Andy Warhol and Ezra Pound. He writes about Books). Pound’s influence upon Ford as a poet, which seems a stretch,

32 Th Gay & Lsban Rvw / oRLdide and he includes almost half a chapter about Pound’s later can- tos, Drafts and Fragments. As for the Warhol influence, it was EGR Writers House actually poet Gerard Malanga, a Factory hanger-on, with whom Subsidized housing for writers in Augusta, Maine Ford palled around for years. If you want to know more about Charles Henri Ford, find that Steve Watson essay and read the novel. Or read various in- terviews with Ford in the mid-80’s. Or read the sixth chapter of my book, True Stories: People and Places from My Past, titled “The Absolutely, Very Last Surrealist, Charles Henri Ford.” Any of those will give more of a picture of Ford and his unique per- sonality and, sadly, his somewhat marginalized literary exis- tence—sadly, because he so wanted to be at center of it all. www.egrwritershouse.blogspot.com The Child Is the Father of the Poet

HEN JOHN ASHBERY teenager who was reading Hazlitt under the died at ninety in September, ALAN CONTRERAS bedsheets. His photographic memory ap- some lamented the passing parently allowed him to retain every word of America’s greatest living he saw, and he deployed this collection of W The Songs We Know Best: poet. No one agrees on what is meant by terms at seventeen with a clarity that must “great,” but I was in a restaurant reminding John Ashbery’s Early Life have been blinding to his contemporaries myself of Ashbery’s early work when my by Karin Roffman (and his teachers). server stopped at the table and said “Oh! I Farrar, Straus and Giroux We are then treated to his early years in love Ashbery. Especially Some Trees.” That 336 pages, $30. college, where he heard himself called she, a random twenty-something, knew and “gay” for the first time while cruising the liked Ashbery’s work from sixty years ago seems to add at least bars. During this period, he was still sending smokescreen let- one fresh brick to the pedestal that has continued to lift him ters to some friends, pretending to be interested in women, and above the swarm of poets vying for lasting renown. trying to seem straight at Harvard, which at this time (the late There is broad agreement that Ashbery was our most influ- 1940s) expelled known homosexuals. He managed to remain in ential living poet. His style was so distinctive that, as Alfred college while ramping up his sexual explorations, returning to Corn noted in these pages (Nov.-Dec. 2017), “we’d never heard his family farm and its hated apple-packing chores as needed. anything like it.” We still haven’t. Whether that is good or bad Although Ashbery is best known as a poet, he also wrote is for poetry readers to say. I find some of his poetry immensely plays and fiction. One of the hilarious moments in his college moving and some that does not convey meaning to me at all. career was the “premiere” of the parody Return of the Screw, Yet if Ashbery’s writing did not exactly lead to a school, it cer- which involved “a Harvard student’s nearly erotic encounter tainly generated an argumentative classroom of poetry. His way with a Dean Flotcher.” Later, more serious plays included of writing was a breath of energy to many poets of the last half Everyman and The Heroes. The latter was produced to good re- of the 20th century. Having felt his infused word-spray puffing views. He could also be appallingly direct with friends and col- into their ears, some ran to their desks, pen in hand, while oth- leagues. Imagine saying to the young Samuel Barber: “... but I ers fled gibbering into the shrubbery. They still do, which speaks don’t think you should write another major work.” to the extent of his influence. Ashbery sometimes baked word-cakes with unusual ingre- The book under review is about Ashbery’s early life, and the dients, giving the reader no real idea why crêpes made with author, Karin Roffman—whose knowledge of poetry is im- pineapple and opium found a place next to formaldehyde, tulips, pressive—devotes many pages to the poet’s childhood and its farts, and swans. (Here’s a challenge: can you spot which ob- influences. Nor is this emphasis misplaced: Ashbery’s child- jects are from a single Ashbery poem and which I invented?) hood experiences and memories remained a recurring theme of That he was once inspired to write a poem simply to have fun his work for his entire life. Looking back to some of the juve- listing the contents of thesaurus entries is therefore not a sur- nilia included in this book, I notice two things. First, the work prise. One of his own high school couplets carried a foreshad- of teenage Ashbery, hiding his sexuality in diaries and coded owing of many works to come: “So, musing, she fell asleep, Latin phrases, is remarkably similar in style to what the mature still sorry about the bed/ Glad of the flickering stars, now green, writer gave us. The Ashbery “sound” was simply enriched over now red.// Whoever criticizes this poem adversely must admit time. Second, his juvenilia were shockingly advanced not only that it is at least bizarre.” in how he used words, but in what words he used. Here was a Yet there is a lyrical, boy-in-love Ashbery who is sometimes missed by those who lose their way in the word-storm. The poet Alan Contreras is a writer and higher education consultant who lives once asked simply: “Is there something intrinsically satisfying in Eugene, Oregon. about not having the object of one’s wishes, about having mis-

January–F)bruary 2018 33 calculated?” Roffman notes that he recognized in his childhood was angry with whom, and so on, but also who was collaborat- what he rediscovered at Harvard: “unrequited love was good ing with whom among his many friends and artistic colleagues. for his writing.” His memory for words extended in the emo- While entertaining, I’m not convinced it was worth the effort tional arena to long-term recollections of specific experiences, to include all this in the poet’s biography. In general, the last such as ill treatment at Deerfield, happenings in his family, and section of the book feels the weakest, perhaps because it is so boys he had wanted, the latter a growing and rapidly-changing clearly a transition to a significant change in his life. The young list. people are starting to scatter into life’s diverging channels; Ash- Ashbery was to a certain extent a reactive poet. Throughout bery is becoming a “known” poet when Some Trees wins the these early years we see how his dry periods, some of them last- Yale Younger Poets prize; and soon he’s off to Europe. ing many months, were often followed by significant flurries of I have never mentioned a book’s cover in a review, but this poetic creation apparently originating from an incident, a work time I must. The leafy photo of a tender, teenage Ashbery pick- of art, a person met, or another writer’s work. One of the great ing cherries in the family orchards was taken by his father Chet, strengths of this book is that the author understands the nature an accomplished photographer as well as a farmer. Its use as the of the creative process and offers clear descriptions of how entire cover, with a superimposed “postcard home” bearing the some of the inspirational sequences happened. Yes, she is using title, is a choice of genius, presumably by jacket designer Sarah- some of Ashbery’s own diaries, which helps, but a biographer may Wilkinson. The photo has meaningful links to every chap- still needs a sense of judgment to sort out what’s worth men- ter of the book and is a poignant, perfect image of the pleasure tioning and what’s not. and pain of formative youth. The publisher took a design risk Roffman gets a little breathless when she plunges into Ash- with this unusual cover and it worked. Roffman’s subtitle sug- bery’s slut period in his late twenties, shortly before he left for gests that she may already be working on Ashbery’s subsequent France. She makes a valiant effort to accurately track and de- years. It is a life story well worth telling, and Roffman has scribe in short sentences who was sleeping with whom, who proved equal to the task. Warhol Off the Wall

T HAS BEEN three decades since Supper (1986), which had been commis- Andy Warhol died at New York Hos- MARTHA E. STONE sioned by influential art dealer Alexander pital (on February 22, 1987) of com- Iolas and opened in Milan six weeks be- plications from gall bladder surgery. fore Warhol’s death. At that time, it was I After Andy: In 2017, over a dozen books about Warhol “the largest religious-themed work created or his art, ranging from the frivolous to Adventures in Warhol Land by an American artist.” Warhol had appar- the academic, were published. After Andy by Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni ently purchased a plaster sculpture that he and 3D Warhol can be found at either end Blue Rider Press. 336 pages, $28. used as source material, but Fraser-Cavas- of that spectrum, the former a fun read by soni also mentions “images found in a Ko- a one-time Warhol groupie, the latter a 3D Warhol: rean religious store and a Jesus night-light rather scholarly book by a noteworthy art Andy Warhol and Sculpture newspaper advertisement.” It’s notewor- critic. by Thomas Morgan Evans thy that Iolas died at age eighty, just a few After Andy is a memoir by editor-jour- I. B.Tauris. 264 pages, $24.95 months after Warhol, and in the same hos- nalist Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni, daughter pital. But back in 1952, Iolas was running of British writer Antonia Frasier and step-daughter of the late New York’s Hugo Gallery where Warhol had his first solo ex- playwright Harold Pinter. An avid party-goer and flagrant hibition, Fifteen Drawings Based on the Writings of Truman name-dropper, she first met Warhol as a young teen, and a few Capote. years later became an “English muffin,” one of a cadre of high- Thomas Morgan Evans, the author of the densely written toned young British women who worked in various capacities 3D Warhol, covers territory not found in many other compen- for the Warhol industry. dia of Warhol’s works. Evans classifies as “3D” such diverse Interspersed among Fraser-Cavassoni’s recollections of her works as 1964’s Brillo Boxes (which, he said, paved the way (very heterosexual) life—she was, for instance, one of Mick for Minimal sculpture and “the erasure of evidence of fabri- Jagger’s girlfriends—are chapters about Warhol’s art, which cation”); the 612 Time Capsules (1974-1987, called an are based on the author’s earlier journalism. She also recounts “archive of clutter”); soft sculptures (such as the helium-filled the back story around the truth—or falsehoods—of some of Silver Clouds, 1966), and—because it was based, in part, on a the anecdotes recorded in The Andy Warhol Diaries (posthu- 3D object—the silkscreen The Last Supper. mously published in 1989) and the sale of his possessions at The author posits that Marcel Duchamp’s 1953 show at the Sotheby’s to finance the formation of the Andy Warhol Foun- Sidney Janis Gallery had been the inspiration for Warhol’s dation for the Visual Arts. 1954 show at The Loft Gallery. Duchamp had tightly crum- In describing the importance of his European trips to pled a poster and displayed it; Warhol pinned elaborately Warhol’s art, Fraser-Cavassoni goes into detail about The Last folded paper on The Loft’s walls. As the paper fell from the

34 Th) Gay & L)sb an R)v )w / !RLD!iDe front of a wall of 3D lenticular prints of daisies.” 3D Warhol contains some unexpectedly lovely color plates and black-and- white images. If you have the patience to wade through some academic writing, you’ll find that Evans offers tantalizing in- sights into Warhol’s lesser-known works of art. ______

WARHOL MANIA HITS CAMBRIDGE,MASS. In the fall of 2017, the American Repertory Theater (ART) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, premiered a one-act drama, Warhol/Capote, based on many hours of their taped conversa- tions. To celebrate this event, the Harvard Art Museum dis- played six of ten screen prints from a Marilyn (1967) portfolio. They are distinguished by their mint condition: they had never been removed from their original packaging, and the colors are vibrant. A beautiful silver-on-gray Marilyn made her look like Marlene Dietrich, while faint vertical lines appeared in the background of a hot pink Marilyn, possibly from the card- board packing case. Within a few miles of the ART, two other college-affiliated Warhol exhibits were on view: at Simmons College and at Mass. College of Art and Design. The latter displayed a col- lection of Polaroids, mostly of socialites and sports figures, many of which were used as source material for future por- Andy Warhol, Silver Clouds, 1966. Installation at traits. An attractive and useful gallery catalog, Andy Warhol: MOCRA, 2006. Photo: Jeffrey Vaughn. What’s the Difference?, edited by Heather Hole, was published walls, it became crumpled, and was re-pinned. It had appar- for the Simmons exhibit. All works on exhibit are stamped: ently been Warhol’s hope that Silver Clouds would float out “Extra, out of the edition” and are leftovers from official prints the windows of the Castelli Gallery, putting them on par, con- and portfolios. Some leftovers! There’s the Jackie Triptych ceptually, with that “throwaway” crumpled paper exhibit. (1964), a series of moments before and after JFK’s assassina- Evans brings to light some fascinating works, such as The Rain tion; Shoes (1980), sprinkled with diamond dust; Sitting Bull, Machine (ca. 1970), described as “a large shower of water in from the 1986 Cowboys and Indians series; and more.

How to Survive a World War

VER A QUARTER CENTURY hero of the Battle of El Alamein. In such a ago, Allan Bérubé’s ground- PHILIP GAMBONE climate, gay British soldiers lived a breaking book Coming Out “knife-edge existence,” Bourne says, Under Fire (1990) brought at- “fearful of being found out and court-mar- O Fighting Proud: tention to the plight—and the heroism— tialed”—a sadly familiar tale. of thousands of gay and lesbian Americans The Untold Story of the Gay Men In Fighting Proud, Bourne describes in the armed services during World War II. Who Served in Two World Wars his book as “exploring and highlighting A monumental piece of scholarship, it by Stephen Bourne the many stories about gay men’s lives in justly deserved the awards and accolades I. B.Tauris. 236 pages, $27.50 the two world wars which have never it received. been grouped together and published in Now, Stephen Bourse, a British writer and historian, has one volume.” These stories—“fragments I had come across set out to investigate his country’s version of this story. Not through the years”—include ones about gay servicemen not surprisingly, it’s a story fraught with the same prejudice and only on the front lines but on the home front as well. Alas, hostility as the American one. “I regard the act of homosexu- “fragments” is the operative word here, for the book amounts ality in any form as the most abominable bestiality that any to little more than a tantalizing pastiche of bits and pieces of human being can take part in,” declared Field Marshall gay history. Bernard Montgomery, the so-called “Spartan General” and Bourne opts for anecdotal and eye-witness accounts, which, he says, “can bring out into the open details that are Philip Gambone has just completed his sixth book, a memoir titled As sometimes missed by academics who are immersed in theo- Far As I Can Tell: Finding My Father in World War II. retical concepts and approaches.” Fair enough, but, surpris-

January–F)bruary 2018 35 ingly, almost all of the scraps he culls come from previously published sources. Consequently, the book’s subtitle, “The Un- April 27, 1932, Gulf of Mexico told Story of the Gay Men Who Served in Two World Wars,” seems disingenuous, as almost all of Bourne’s stories have al- Below you lies the gulf, impatient as ready been told. the woman, your companion, waiting in your cabin. Information about homosexual servicemen in World War I is difficult to come by. To his credit, Bourne addresses a num- The woman — ber of interesting topics related to that war: the alleged homo- the last of so many failures. Until now, sexuality of Lord Kitchner, the most celebrated British military they have all been men. Some, leader of Word War I; the “comradely and platonic” friendships you can remember their faces, between younger and older soldiers; the unfortunate destruc- pale in the dim glow of bedrooms. tion of letters, photographs, and diaries “for fear of blackmail Others are little more than names forgotten, or legal recrimination.” In one chapter, he gives capsule biog- lost in the fog of drunken nights. raphies of a number of legendary gay figures of Word War I— among them poets Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon, “The bottom of the sea is cruel,” you wrote Lawrence of Arabia, diplomat and Irish Nationalist Roger a decade before, but as you linger here now, Casement, and the actor and composer Ivor Novello. Disap- standing at the ship’s rail under the noonday sun, pointingly, however, these profiles run to less than a page each, it is no more cruel than abandoned poems, mere thumbnail sketches of scant interest or worth. a lost boyhood, or sleepless nights in rented rooms. The majority of Fighting Proud focuses on Word War II, where information is more readily available. Bourne notes the “Goodbye, everyone!” surprising number of gay men in the armed services during you suddenly shout to the passengers milling about that war who, though relatively open about their sexuality, on the deck. Then you look away from the ship, were able to “avoid trouble.” How did they do it? away from this moment, onto the shimmering Despite extreme attitudes like those expressed by Lord water stretched out before you still as a corpse. Montgomery, Bourne (quoting a friend) claims that “there was a tolerance exercised in all but the most extreme situations.” PAUL ALEXANDER This “relaxed attitude” can be attributed, in part, to the dire need the British government had for all available manpower. The Armed Forces, some gay men later claimed, “weren’t fussy about who they accepted.” Visibly gay men were even commandeered to service as drag performers for the troops. The brass refused to remove these homosexual entertainers be- cause, as one sailor said, “they were too valuable to be dis- charged. In wartime they were good for morale.” Gay servicemen also survived through sheer pluck, humor, outrageousness, and give-as-good-as-you-get crudity: “What goes up my arse won’t give you a ’eadache,” Terri Gardener, an officers’ cook, used to tell those who accused him of being a “brown hatter.” Nevertheless, as Bourne points out, even though same-sex relationships were often tolerated, they were “rarely, if ever, openly discussed.” Along the journey through the book’s 23 short chapters, we learn some interesting facts: that working-class communi- ties were more tolerant of gay men than were middle-class ones; that gay men developed a slang, Polari, with which to privately communicate among themselves; that on the home front there was a lot of sex during blackouts; and that in the Navy, sailors proved to be “a fairly randy lot and masturba- tion was not at all uncommon.” Bourne, who has written extensively about LGBT British history, has certainly done his homework. His bibliography is impressive. But, for my money, he is too fond of citing long passages from other books and too hesitant to indulge in com- mentary and deep analysis. Indeed, block quotations comprise close to a third of the book. In the end, the greatest asset of Fighting Proud is that it will send many readers to the library in search of the numerous other biographies, histories, and per- sonal accounts from which Bourne so lavishly quotes.

36 Th) Gay & L)sb an R)v )w / !RLD!iDe Freak Out!

HE MOST striking feature of But this brings us to the first reason this Studio 54 is its heft: Amazon lists J. KEN STUCKEY book is worth the investment: its complete the shipping weight as 8.2 refusal to apologize. Nearly every other pounds. Almost any page of this treatment of 54’s history, from books to T Studio 54 substantial publication confirms what peo- television documentaries to the unfortu- ple already know about the legendary by Ian Schrager nate 1998 film, seemed to insist on using nightclub: that it was a playground for Rizzoli International Publications the pair’s incarceration, Rubell’s death, celebrities, a temple for disco, and a brand 396 pages, $75. and disparaging takes on the era’s ex- of spectacle not seen before in a nightly cesses as tragic allegory. Schrager’s book venue. This highly predictable intersection of themes raises the offers not one paragraph of remorse. Among its many self-jus- question: unless you yourself frequented the club, why invest in tifying visual hallmarks: Teddy Pendergrass seated at a piano this tribute to the best nights of someone else’s life? Still, the re- and duetting with Stevie Wonder; Liza Minelli cutting a rug wards of this volume are numerous, although they partly de- with Mikhail Baryshnikov; Bianca Jagger being led into the pend on the version of gay life with which one identifies. And club on horseback by a fully naked man whose formal tie and that question begins with New York’s role as the one-time tails were a grease-painted illusion; and, perhaps most daz- mecca for gay men. zlingly, Richard Gere in an immaculate white suit being led David Carter’s Stonewall: onto the dance floor by Diana The Riots That Sparked the Gay Ross. Ross is clad in jeans and a Revolution cogently opens the ragged tanktop that reads “no story of gay migration to Man- swet,” wearing not a trace of hattan with Greenwich Village’s makeup, all of which coalesce refusal in 1817 to conform to the into a sprezzatura glamor that grid that reshaped most of the only a true diva could pull off. borough. But the Village’s ability The combinations of celebri- to be the destination of noncon- ties are often more interesting formity is hard to imagine with- than the stars themselves. The out a surrounding city of industry, questions these images provoke which thrived precisely because almost sound like the beginning of a coordinated infrastructure. of a riddle: What did Michael The story of Studio 54 is that Jackson say to Steven Tyler? Far- same paradox of chaos married to rah Fawcett to Cary Grant? order, bohemians hobnobbing Leonard Bernstein to Jackie with establishment titans. The Onassis? Eartha Kitt to Gloria club’s very name, in contrast to Swanson? Coretta Scott King to London’s aspirational “Heaven,” ... anyone? The book also has its mundanely announced its spot on share of fun with these pairings, the grid, 254 W. 54th Street. The and the tumult that lay ahead for club’s founders were Ian them. Farrah is identified alter- Schrager, now a hotel investor nately as “Fawcett-Majors” and whose imprimatur lends this vol- as “Fawcett,” and shown in one ume a definitive quality, and photo with her subsequent life Steve Rubell, a restaurateur partner Ryan O’Neal despite still turned promoter who died from being married to Lee Majors. AIDS-related causes in 1989. By Mick Jagger is with Bianca Jag- outward appearances at least, ger in one image and with girl- Rubell’s role within the club was friend Jerry Hall on the opposite to be the anarchist to Schrager’s voice of reason. Either page. O. J. Simpson appears with fellow footballer Marcus Schrager didn’t see it that way or he wasn’t an equal force, since Allen, who was later rumored to have had an affair with Simp- the two eventually landed in prison for tax evasion, ending the son’s wife Nicole. club’s three-plus years (1977–’80) as the world’s most cele- For the roughly two generations of gay people who came of brated discotheque. age in the era of disco and house music, however, the magic of this book lies not in celebrity but in anonymity, of assimilating J. Ken Stuckey is a senior lecturer in English and media studies at into sweat-drenched crowds where sexual difference made us Bentley University. the same. That legacy does not appear to be lost on Schrager. An

January–February 2018 37 equal share of the photos is given to gay or curious masses who notes for an LP mixed at the club, and the posters and invitations came to the club to grant each other permission to misbehave on that were once the promotional staples of an era before e-mail a grand scale. Some photos, like one of an Adonis in a jockstrap and Twitter. For many of us whose formative coming-out mem- sodomizing himself with the leg of a chair, are there to excite or ories are tied to the countless nightclubs now shuttered, those perhaps to appall. But there are just as many pictures of people items are often all we have left. doing what in New York in the ’70s became ordinary for the Although Schrager is listed as the only editor here, he is un- first time: dancing in whatever combinations and clothing (or doubtedly aided by the journalistic acumen of Bob Colacello lack thereof) they wanted. and Paul Goldberger, both Vanity Fair contributors who have After serving their sentences, Rubell and Schrager paired foreword essays here. In a prefatory interview with Schrager, once more to build another dance temple, the Palladium, Goldberger offers one of the book’s most poignant observations. which was bigger than the 54, more inclusive, and enjoyed Speaking of the crime and decay that marred New York when much greater longevity. It magnified the legacy of the 54 be- the club opened, he notes: “The parts of the city that respectable cause, what it lacked in elephants, horses, and coked-up people would go in, it was a much smaller place. ... Now, those celebrities, it made up for with visual and sonic architectures [feared] blocks, the houses are selling for $10 million in those on an epic scale. In this way, it symbolically preserved the areas. The neighborhoods people once wouldn’t walk in, they 54’s spacial concept, where music and lights merged to make now can’t afford.” The cruel irony of gentrification is that mar- life feel glamorous, even without a Jackson or Onassis stop- ginalized people take the world’s unwanted spaces and elevate ping by. them into cultural zones that the marginal can’t afford. At this Studio 54 memorializes other things that glossier documen- price point, perhaps even this book is such a zone. But like all taries forget. Several pages preserve the architecture from ini- the other sacrifices LGBT folk made to find one another on the tial construction through later redesigns, the cover art and liner dance floor, it is well worth the price. How to Get to Barbary Lane

N his semi-autobiographical novel title. As members of the LGBT commu- The Night Listener (2000), Armistead JIM NAWROCKI nity, says Maupin, we eventually “join the Maupin’s fictional alter ego Gabriel diaspora, venturing beyond our biological Noone makes the following observa- family to find our logical one, the one that I Logical Family: A Memoir tions about storytelling: “I’m always too actually makes sense for us.” Naturally, a aware of the effect I’m making. I’m afraid by Armistead Maupin good chunk of this memoir focuses on the people will lose interest if I don’t keep tap- Harper. 304 pages, $27.99 writer’s biological family, which was dancing. My whole mechanism is about Southern and decidedly conservative. charming people. And fixing things that can’t be fixed. That’s There’s even a gothic element, as Maupin explores the myste- why I tell stories: it helps me create order where none exists. So rious circumstances surrounding the suicide of his paternal I jiggle stuff around until it makes sense to me and I can see a grandfather. pattern.” Maupin assumes an almost apologetic tone as he describes Maupin’s latest book, the memoir Logical Family,ishis the roots of his family’s conservatism and his youthful embrace first book of nonfiction, yet he brings to it the unique story- of its politics. Jesse Helms was a family friend, and one of telling gifts that have animated his fiction, and he more than Maupin’s earliest writing gigs was as a conservative columnist delivers on the “tap dancing” that will win his readers’ attention for his college newspaper. In fact, Maupin carried the conser- and engagement. Maupin fans will recognize many of the sto- vative banner all the way to the White House, so to speak. ries and autobiographical details that he shares in this memoir; Shortly after his tour of duty in Vietnam—he had enlisted and he’s mined them often for his fiction, particularly in The Night served in the Navy—he went back to complete a community- Listener, as well as throughout his nine “Tales of the City” nov- building mission, essentially a PR effort, that earned him the els, and always to great effect. admiration of President Nixon and an Oval Office visit. This He’s equally forthcoming about his encounters with the fa- meeting is captured in a photograph that Maupin later displayed mous and the infamous, a list that includes Jesse Helms, Richard proudly (if ironically) in his San Francisco apartment. (It’s also Nixon, Christopher Isherwood, Ian McKellen, Tennessee included in the book). (Years later, historian Douglas Brinkley Williams, and Rock Hudson. It’s no stretch to describe Maupin’s informed Maupin that his visit was recorded on one of Nixon’s memoir as “highly anticipated,” and he doesn’t disappoint. infamous White House tapes.) But Logical Family is also a coming out story, and it’s this It was during his time in the military that Maupin lost his idea of finding one’s own community (or “claiming truth,” as virginity, at the relatively ripe old age of 25. His account of the Maupin phrases it in a prefatory note) that gives the book its event is wonderfully honest and unvarnished. He also includes a funny (and perhaps, to many readers, painfully familiar) story Jim Nawrocki, a writer based in San Francisco, is a frequent contrib- about getting crab lice for the first time. utor to this magazine. Maupin eventually ends up in San Francisco, and after a

38 Th) Gay & L)sb an R)v )w / !RLD!iDe few stops and starts he lands the writ- scribes his first actual sex with the for- ing jobs that lead to the birth of his fa- mer matinee idol. mous “Tales of the City” books. For Some of Maupin’s encounters with readers who happen to be aspiring writ- the famous are very brief, but wonder- ers, Maupin offers stories about just fully telling, such as the time he unex- how hard it was to break into writing pectedly found himself offering refuge, full time, and how many lackluster jobs and a joint, to a beleaguered Tennessee he had to endure before he finally found Williams. Maupin’s logical family is a his footing. And for fans of the “Tales richly populated one. There are tender of the City” novels, he provides in- reminiscences about a wide array of triguing background on the people who lovers and friends with whom he navi- inspired his creation of Anna Madrigal gated San Francisco in the 1970s, and and some of the novels’ other colorful the consequences of the AIDS epidemic characters. that followed soon after. Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect Over the past couple of decades, of Logical Family is reading about the memoir has evolved into a kind of those who, to varying degrees, were publishing phenomenon. You don’t have part of Maupin’s “logical family.” His to be a former head of state, a movie friends included Christopher Isherwood Armistead Maupin. Logical Family dust jacket photo. star, or some other luminary to write and Don Bachardy, and Ian McKellen, among others, and he your memoirs, but you do have to know how to read the cur- paints an engaging and moving portrait of these relationships. rents of your experience and find within them the particular He also describes his romance and friendship with Rock Hud- poetry of your life. Maupin’s storied career has certainly pro- son. What emerges is a poignant portrait of a restless soul who vided him with the raw material for a rich memoir, and in Log- came to an untimely and tragic end. The Hudson-related stories ical Family, he’s woven it all into an intriguing and beautiful are not without humor, however, especially when Maupin de- pattern. Gay Shades of Garp and Gump

OHN BOYNE has published nine excesses—of this book. Boyne is obviously novels in Ireland and a number of DALE BOYER a devotee of John Irving. The World Ac- books for young adults, including the cording to Garp is mentioned, in Dutch, as international bestseller, The Boy in a time reference in the novel, which itself is J The Heart’s Invisible Furies the Striped Pajamas.Heisnot,however, dedicated to Irving. Calling The Heart’s In- known for featuring gay characters or by John Boyne visible Furies a “gay Garp” would be going themes, which is perhaps why the jacket Hogarth. 580 pages, $28. too far, but the comparison is apt in many copy of The Heart’s Invisible Furies is so ways. coy about its subject matter, namely, the life of a gay man in After Cyril is born, he’s adopted by a very well-to-do fam- Ireland from the 1950s to the present. Indeed, looking at the ily, the Averys, and thus begins his journey through life. Cyril’s book, one would never know it involved gay themes, which is adoptive parents are humorous in the way that only the most unfortunate, because it means that some of Boyne’s intended stereotypically English characters can be. His mother, the al- readership may miss this novel. legedly famous novelist Maude Avery, is hilariously self-in- The target in Boyne’s crosshairs is Irish attitudes toward ho- volved. When he asks her for information about his birth, she mosexuality and the historically harsh repression by the replies: Catholic Church. The narrator’s mother is almost literally thrown out of the Church in the opening scene for being an “For heaven’s sake, Cyril ... that was seven years ago. How unwed mother. This unfortunate plight leads her to Dublin, on earth would I recall? Your mother was a girl, I know that much.” where she eventually takes up residence with a welcoming gay “Don’t you even remember her name?” man and his partner. Of course, she doesn’t know the two are “It was probably Mary. Aren’t most Irish country girls gay at first (this is 1950s Ireland), but when the two are vi- named Mary?” ciously assaulted by one of the men’s fathers, there can be no further doubt. And it is at precisely this moment that the narra- Likewise the “great first love” of Cyril’s life, Julian, is outra- tor, Cyril, comes into the world. geously funny in the early scenes, though his sexual awareness That Cyril is literally born in the midst of a gay-bashing and confidence at age seven strain credulity. At one point he episode gives a good sense of the overall flavor—and also the explains why priests assault little boys: “It’s because they’re all so sexually frustrated, of course. They can’t have sex, you Dale Boyer’s most recent collection is titled Thornton Stories. see, so they beat up little boys and it gives them stiffies when

January–F)bruary 2018 39 they do it. It’s the closest they get to orgasms during the day.” repressive times, which the current generation of gay people Julian and the Averys are so much fun that when they disap- has largely forgotten. pear in the second third of the novel, one misses them. Cyril’s decision ultimately causes a break with Julian. It’s The novel does, in fact, turn more serious in its later sec- is hard to say precisely why his rift with the great love object tions. In a way, it has to: what narrative of gay men’s lives in of his life is so affecting, but it is. Julian and Cyril are nothing the second half of the 20th century could do otherwise? At alike: Cyril is bookish and shy, and head-over-heels in love times, in fact, the novel is reminiscent of the movie Forrest with Julian, while Julian is a good-looking, self-centered wom- Gump, with the narrator seemingly present at all the most im- anizer whose relationship with Cyril is based mostly good-na- portant gay events of the past six or seven decades. Eventu- tured ribbing. But the affection does seem to be heartfelt at root, ally, Cyril makes a decision to hide his true nature and marry which is why their split seems so devastating. a woman, a decision that may divide readers. Indeed, some It would be a mistake to call this a story of unrequited love, may feel that the novel and its main character are never truly and yet the specter of Cyril’s love for Julian hangs over the en- redeemed. tire novel. More accurately, it is the story of one gay man as he At one point the narrator is confronted by Julian, who asks: makes his way through the events of a lifetime, and eventually “What the fuck is wrong with you [gay] people? ... Why do you makes his own kind of peace with the world. The other mistake always have to lie about everything, hide everything? Why not one might make would be to assume, perhaps by virtue of its just tell the truth?” The reality, of course, is that in Ireland and title, that this book is overly serious or heavy. On the contrary: elsewhere it was impossible for a gay person be honest with the first third of this novel contains some of the funniest mate- anyone about what he or she was feeling. Whether Cyril’s big rial I’ve ever read. The Heart’s Invisible Furies is a big, messy decision is ultimately defensible or not depends a great deal on novel that is cartoonish in places, overly reliant on coincidence, how one responds to this accusation, which could depend upon and heavily sentimental. But the sentiments it evokes are very the age of the reader and whether he or she lived through those real; expect to shed a few tears at the end.

When, ready to check the evening lottery numbers, I hollered Let Me Count the Ways up the stairs for a magic noise and you boomed back down to the tune of Puccini’s Nessun Dorma: “Magic noise-uh, magic noise-uh.” As you sit in the yard by our pond late in our lives, concerned about your health, When, as I’m ready to serve the next carefully timed course taking such comfort in the bright, darting koi. to guests, you come to the last morsel of something and cut it in four pieces, chewing each ever so slowly, As a tube-head, glued there in the den, endlessly as if to please Amanda Wingfield but certainly not the cook. watching, dozing off in the middle of The Miracle of our Lady of Fatima and waking As you told me you were in my native Springfield, Illinois in the middle of The Creature from years before we met and wondered if you might meet the Black Lagoon. What the hell? and get involved with someone there.

As you take a lightbulb upstairs As you tense all over before release as a darning egg, with every intention or raptly watch my own release you’ve brought about, of closing holes in some socks, although and then, cuddling, give and accept further, quiet comfort, you never get around to that. both of us finally waking too late for breakfast and too early for lunch. What to do? Hey—if you’re watching your weight, this one’s a two-meal day. As, just weeks after I met you, I waited on a corner for you in winter and saw you approach As I’m puzzling how to garnish a dish—salmon in your comical Russian hat, one earflap slathered with aioli mustard and sprinkled with thyme before six-minute up, one earflap down in the wind. I felt like Anna oven broiling, Karenina observing Count Vronsky’s ears. served with Trader Joe’s kung pao tempura cauliflower—and what? That’s the question. And you suggest putting plump green grapes As, early on, I had difficulty with your accent, on the broiler near the end for a minute or two. Yes! Thank you. and you were talking about Miss Piggy and I thought you were talking about Resphigi. When, during our wedding vows What the hell? in New York’s City Hall, after my voice broke saying “I do,” As you were in the chorus of an amateur production you responded with “You bet!” of Guys and Dolls before we met, so that still in the shower As now, before me, you slowly navigate steps up a stairway, you sometimes belt out “When you see a guy reach I watchful behind you, attuned to your difficult and cherished for stars in the sky ...” breathing. Your cherished, cherished breathing. DAV I D CURRY

40 Th) Gay & L)sb an R)v )w / !RLD!iDe BRIEFS

Writers Who Love Too Much: even to the past fifty years. Encyclopedic in gotten harder in today’s France, because psy- New Narrative 1977-1997 scope, the book goes back to Marlene Diet- chologists “pathologize the closet” and often Edited by Dodie Bellamy and Kevin Killian rich in Berlin and the pansy revues in 1930s adopt an “imperative of ‘outness’” toward Nightboat Books. 544 pages, $24.95 L.A., but also catches up with a Kenyan rap- sexual minorities. French newspapers, TV Fans of New Narrative (NN) will leap to de- per named Art Attack and the Russian punk shows, and films criticize LGBT immigrants’ vour this remarkable anthology, a fortieth- trio Pussy Riot of today. Then and now, he secrecy as well. But Mack found that porn anniversary “Best Of” that sensibly confines observes: “LGBT musicians have powered films might be an exception. A porn film may itself to the NN phenomenon’s first two many of the most important stages in the de- start with an obnoxious cliché—for example, decades. Those who don’t know what the velopment of music over the last century.” “homo thug” or “the veil as striptease”—but San Francisco-based movement is should The standout chapter is “Lavender Coun- without a requirement to be politically cor- take its significance on trust, and read this try,” because the gay side of Country and rect. The result may be a largely accurate pic- right now! You’ve lots of catching up to do! Western is typically overlooked. Bullock ture of sexual creativity in Muslim suburbia. The movement had its origins in the science stresses how current acts like Chely Wright Sexagon vividly portrays the context in fiction-based poetry scenes of the 1970s, but and Drake Jensen are carrying the torch which many French LGBT immigrants live Writers Who Love Too Much shows the ex- passed by k. d. lang, among others. The book now, under pressure for self-disclosure. tent to which its tentacles reached out to a is dedicated to the victims of the Pulse Night- ROSEMARY BOOTH wide range of non-naturalistic poets, essay- club shooting of 2016, where the 49 Floridi- ists, novelists, and even playwrights across ans slain were largely men and women of Our Horses, Ourselves: Discovering the the U.S. and beyond. Key figures include color, which makes Bullock’s profiles of Co mmon Body: Meditations and both of this volume’s editors, whose gen- black artists like Tony Jackson and Bessie Strategies for Deeper Understanding erosity in their introduction is characteristic Smith all the more poignant. The book ends and Enhanced Communication of all the key NN writers. with the threat of Trump in the ascendency by Paula Josa-Jones While the East Coast publishing matrix and artists scrambling to organize fundraisers Trafalgar Square. 278 pages, $29.95 became ever more ruthless, corporate, and for causes they fear will come increasingly Choreographer and e questrian Paula Josa- opportunistic in the ‘80s and ‘90s, including under attack with the resurgence of Republi- Jones has written an intelligently observed, in its promotion of LGBT books as a sub- canism. Bullock’s time-capsule reminds us beautifully rendered collection of experi- genre, the New Narrators focused on avant- that gay politics and rock ‘n’ roll have long ences and inspirations about her interactions garde collaboration, dialogue, and mutual been intertwined. COLIN CARMAN with horses. Josa-Jones approaches riding as support (mostly). They did not hope to make the dancer she is, calibrating breath, balance, money or have a commercial “hit,” and in al- Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the and alignment, while focusing on her core. most every case they succeeded at commer- Sexualization of National Culture As important, she reminds us how essential cial failure! The exceptions would include by Mehammed Amadeus Mack it is to become “one with the horse” through Kathy Acker, whose novel Great Expecta- Fordham University Press. 344 pages, $27. a deeper understanding of how they experi- tions is excerpted here, and her biographer If France is shaped like a hexagon, then the ence the world: “Always in the moment, Chris Kraus, whose ILoveDickis also ex- study of sexuality in France leads to the word aware of smells, sounds, and sights, what is cerpted. Other contributors who “crossed “sexagon.” In this lively study, Mehammed near o r far, hard or soft, familiar or strange.” over” include Rebecca Brown, Dennis Mack proposes that the French goal of mixité, As a choreographer, Josa-Jones c reated criti- Cooper, Brad Gooch, Gary Indiana, Eileen or assimilation, has been recast in sexual cally acclaimed works featuring dancers and Myles, Sarah Schulman, and Lynne Tillman. terms following the dramatic increase in horses. Not dressage events, they are lyri- RICHARD CANNING Muslim and Arab residents since Algeria cally expressive s watches of movement built gained independence in 1962. Mack, who from somatic improvisations between hu- David Bowie Made Me Gay: teaches French and gender studies at Smith mans on the ground and equines cueing off 100 Years of LGBT Music College, offers his view of French attitudes each other. These dances are wonderfully il- by Darryl W. Bullock toward “others,” defined by ethnicity, reli- lustrated through gorgeous photographs and Overlook Press. 320 pages, $35. gion, gender, or sexual identity. One provoca- choreographic notes. Interviews a nd teaching The year 2016 was a mixed bag for music tive finding is that immigrants are being from such lesbian luminaries as visual artist historian Darryl W. Bullock. His book Flo- pushed to disclose details about their private Gillian Jagger, composer Pauline Oliveros, rence Foster Jenkins made it to the silver lives, including their sexual lives, to demon- and performance artist Ann Carlson further screen, with Meryl Streep in yet another strate their aptitude for citizenship in today’s illuminate the author’s journey toward em- Oscar-nominated performance. But another France. So, for example, North African im- bodied awareness. Josa-Jones’ wife, Pam icon, David Bowie, died earlier that year, and migrants living in Parisian suburbs may resist White, complements the text with explosive, out of Bullock’s grief came his latest work, answering mental health workers’ questions color-saturated paintings. Meditations and David Bowie Made Me Gay: 100 Years of about their family life, because exposure exercises encourage the reader to pause, em- LGBT Music. The author does not confine makes them feel vulnerable. LGBT Arabs brace stillness, focus on breath and touch, himself to the usual suspects—Lou Reed, and Muslims may be even more wary of self- become m ore intentional, and embrace inter- Melissa Etheridge, George Michael—or disclosure. However, refusing disclosure has connectedness. J OHN R. K ILLACKY Subscribe to the Digital Edition! Sign up for full Website access at www.GLReview.org

January–F)bruary 2018 41 The Neo-Ridiculous Technique

OR THOSE who liked Charles built on Ludlam’s genius. Ludlam, in turn, Ludlam’s Ridiculous Theatre RICHARD CANNING was inspired above all by the English mod- Company in its heyday in the ernist author Ronald Firbank, whom Edge- 1960s, what can one say? There comb does not mention. He does, however, F Charles Ludlam Lives! was a lot to like. It was a theater of true interview many of the key players in the excess; sitting in the front row was ill-ad- , Bradford Louryk, Ridiculous story. vised. Morphing out of the Play-House of , and the Queer Legacy My only regret is that Edgecomb men- the Ridiculous, a Manhattan-based alter- of the Ridiculous Theatre Company tions only twice, in passing, a fourth fel- native theater troupe—which was founded by Sean F.Edgecomb low-traveler, Lypsinka, who now performs by the late actor-director John Vaccaro and Michigan. 246 pages, $70. under his own name in shows such as John which Ludlam joined early on—the Epperson: The Artist Principally Known As Ridiculous Theatre Company allowed Ludlam free rein to Lypsinka, and who clearly belongs among those who have de- write, perform in, and direct a series of dazzling, perverse, veloped Ludlam’s legacy. Nevertheless, Charles Ludlam Lives! non-naturalistic comic pieces. His intent was to counter the is an important addition to American queer theater studies, to go humorless accounts of gay men’s marginal, miserable lives on my shelf beside Laurence Senelick’s The Changing Room: that had dominated American theater (Tennessee Williams, Sex, Drag and Theatre (2000) and David Román’s Acts of In- William Inge)—to the extent that these lives had been repre- tervention: Performance, Gay Culture and AIDS (1998). sented at all. Ludlam and his fellow performers used cross- gendered performance, otherwise known as drag, to accompany cryptic and intellectually extraordinary dramatic rewrites of canonical theatrical staples as well as stories known in other forms. TurdsinHell (1967) was a remake of The Satyricon, while Blue- beard (1970) riffed on H. G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau and the legend of Bluebeard’s castle in gen- eral. Stage Blood (1975) mocked ,andThe Mystery of Irma Vep (1984), Ludlam’s masterpiece, took on the “penny dreadful”—the 19th-century British equivalent of pulp fiction—as well as Victo- rian melodrama more widely, such as Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights or Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. David Kaufman’s wonderful biography Ridicu- lous!: The Theatrical Life and Times of Charles Lud- lam (2002) was unfairly critiqued by some reviewers for failing to offer any account of the “afterlife” of Ludlam’s career, which was itself ridiculously termi- nated by AIDS at the age of 44, in 1987. Now the very talented theater scholar Sean Edgecomb has come up with the goods, focusing on three key prac- titioners of “neo-Ridiculous” technique. They are scarcely household names if you live outside of New York, with the possible exception of Charles Busch, who, along with Everett Quinton, has done more than anyone to keep Ludlam’s works on the stage. Busch moved into film with Psycho Beach Party (2000) and had a big Broadway success that same year with The Tale of the Allergist’s Wife.Itis with considerable care and thoughtfulness that Edge- comb has researched the work of Busch, as well as that of Bradford Louryk and Taylor Mac, who have

Richard Canning’s latest book is an edition of English nov- Charles Ludlam elist Ronald Firbank’s Vainglory (Penguin Classics).

42 Th) Gay & L)sb an R)v )w / !RLD!iDe “camp” in their writing are particularly astute. Clearly these men had powerful emotional attachments to each other, and both Shelley and Byron, with their affinity for ancient Greece, Romantic Poets alluded to sexual acts between men in their poetry. The book falters in proving that the members of this circle had sexual relationships with one another, or that they talked DANIEL A. BURR among themselves about male love and its “emancipation”— precursors of the gay liberation movement. “Of course they did” The Shelley-Byron Men: is all Lauritsen offers as proof of the latter. His analysis of one Lost Angels of a Ruined Paradise poem with possible gay implications ends with this wishful by John Lauritsen statement: “In my imagination, Shelley fell head over heels in Pagan Press. 192 pages, $16. love with Williams and concluded Epipsychidion in a burst of inspiration.” NE STRIKING ASPECT of this book is the author’s John Lauritsen has had a long career as a gay activist and animus toward the literary executors and biographers scholar. Despite his occasional desire to see more than the evi- Oof the Romantic poets Shelley and Byron. John Laurit- dence supports, he reminds us in this book that the emancipa- sen is correct that until the early 1980s most academics and bi- tion of canonical literary figures from homophobia does not ographers resisted acknowledging “homoeroticism in the works happen by accident. Many scholars, both gay and straight, have and lives of canonized authors.” This resistance is now more worked for years to make it come about. historical artifact than ongoing force. Not so for Lauritsen, an ______independent scholar who has published many books on topics Daniel A. Burr, who lives in Covington, Kentucky, is a frequent con- ranging from AIDS to the Romantic poets. He writes as though tributor to this magazine. Shelley’s wife Mary and daughter-in-law Jane were still threat- ening to silence anyone who questioned the pious legend they created around the poet, who died in 1822 at age 29. The au- thor’s attitude toward women in general, not just Mary and Jane, which borders on misogyny, undermines his credibility. The Narrator Survives The book, which originated as a talk, is half text, half ap- pendices containing excerpts from works by various writers. Despite the cobbled-together quality of the book, its thesis is TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER sound for the most part. The “men” referred to in the title are Thomas Medwin, Shelley’s second cousin, who introduced two Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies of his young friends, Edward Williams and Edward John by Michael Ausiello Trelawney, to the poet, then living in Italy. Early in 1822, Atria. 320 pages, $26. Byron, at the height of his fame, moved to Italy to be near Shel- ley. For six months, these five men lived near each other in HEN MICHAEL AUSIELLO spotted Christopher Pisa. Lauritsen contends that they “were drawn together by sex- “Kit” Cowan at a New York event for gay athletes, it ual affinities, that they discussed male love, and endeavored to Wwas a match made in Manhattan, but there is no liberate it.” happy ending to this boy-meets-boy love story. To say so is not The interlude ended when Shelley, Williams, and a young to ruin anything for the reader. The author reveals the unhappy sailor drowned at sea in July 1822. Byron would be dead by ending to this memoir in its very title, Spoiler Alert: The Hero 1824. Lauritsen expands the group to include two additional Dies. friends of Shelley, Thomas Love Peacock, the executor of his From the beginning of their relationship and a banter-filled, will, and Thomas Hogg, the author of the first biography of the flirty first date that almost ended in disaster, Ausiello was smit- poet. Both faced the wrath of the protectors of the poet’s repu- ten. Kit was a tall, bespectacled, sexy nerd who really knew how tation when they brought up Shelley’s relationships with men. to kiss, and the attraction was absolutely there. And yet, even Unquestionably, the families and biographers of Shelley and from that first date, it was obvious that there were many differ- Byron bowdlerized their works and suppressed aspects of their ences between them, including a wide gulf in childhood expe- lives after they died. However, this suppression concerned their rience and basic personality. Kit had enjoyed a supportive scandalous relationships with women as much as with men. family growing up and was somewhat introspective, while Shelley abandoned his first wife to live with another woman, Michael had been bullied and fat-shamed as a child and was and Byron was rumored to have had an incestuous relationship prone to depression and anxiety. Michael admired Kit’s style in with his half-sister. There is ample evidence that Byron had sex- decorating and dress; he recalls with more than a little humor at ual liaisons with adolescent boys while a student. To prove that how Kit was dismayed by his Smurf-filled home. Still, their yin these five men, all of whom married women and had children, and yang meshed, and they went beyond kissing, on to bed, and were at least bisexual, Lauritsen does not rely on biographical all the way to saying “olive juice” (as Ausiello euphemizes the evidence but upon textual analysis of their writing, particularly “I love you” declaration). They called one another cute nick- poems and correspondence. This is the most convincing part of names, and they adopted a cat—all of which may sound like the book. His discussions of coded references and instances of any typical romance, though the lovers found themselves mostly

January–F)bruary 2018 43 incapable of living together, choosing to keep separate resi- “there was nothing I wanted more than to take off his white dences, a situation that led them into couples’ counseling. trousers.” He also remembers the desire he felt toward cricket In the end they did live together, but that “end” did not last players, particularly admiring the Pakistani team for “their long. A little more than a decade after their love-at-first-sight taller, and in my eyes more masculine, physiques.” meeting, Kit, who’d been having intestinal problems for He recalls his distant aunt Khala, who would paint a verbal months, was finally driven by the pain to consult a doctor. The description of the Prophet Muhammad so beautiful that the diagnosis wasn’t good: he had a fist-sized neuroendocrine tumor young Sharma would feel “a forbidden longing I could not ex- in his rectum, which was rare but would, they were initially told, plain.” Because of the religious prohibition against homosexu- respond well to treatment. All hope was abandoned, however, ality, Sharma grew up feeling shame about his desires. This was when subsequent opinions indicated that the cancer was much not helped by his mother’s severe disapproval. She later died more aggressive than first thought. His diagnosis gave him less from cancer while he was away exploring his sexuality, and for than a year to live, which affected Ausiello in a special way. years he felt as though he had killed her. When he was a child, he had lost his beloved mother to cancer, Before he could travel to Mecca, he had to make arrange- and he remembered those days of decline and death all too ments. Because of a childhood medical issue, he was never cir- keenly. cumcised. Sharma feared that his fellow pilgrims would Still, of course, he rallied for the man he loved, who became discover his “un-Muslim penis” due to the required outfit for his husband in the midst of diagnosis and before treatment— the Hajj, two seamless pieces of white cloth called an ihram. nuptials fondly remembered, complete with honeymoon. As for So he had an operation. He also removed many photos from his the rest of Kit’s illness and death, readers get a hard look at what iPhone, keeping one of his husband. happened, told with thin humor, as if Ausiello is attempting to In the book, Sharma captures the grueling ordeals of many protect everyone from the horror of illness and loss. Beware, of the rituals involved in the pilgrimage, which are only inten- however, that despite the often funny or ironic tone—one that’s sified by the immense crowds, the seeming indifference to the never angry or mean-spirited—there is finally no protection safety of the pilgrims, and the religious police’s brutal interpre- from the details of suffering from bowel ailments and the side- tation of religious practice. At one point, he writes, “I emerged effects of chemotherapy. Thankfully, despite a sad ending that ... exhausted, bruised, calloused, dehydrated, and spiritually bro- readers know is coming, we also see a transition from anxiety ken.” Despite these experiences, he makes peace with his to strength on Ausiello’s part, and we’re left with the image of mother’s death and feels he can call himself Muslim. an author who is on the mend. Sharma has sharp criticisms for both Saudi Arabia and Wah- ______habism. A strict puritanical form of the religion, the latter has Terri Schlichenmeyer is a freelance writer based in Wisconsin. become popular throughout the world through the Saudis’ fund- ing of religious schools. He argues that ISIS, which he calls Daesh, draws much of its ideology from Wahhabism, particu- larly its treatment of homosexuals and women and its glorifi- cation of violence. A Hajj for Freedom Despite the heavy subject matter, the book has a sense of humor. For example, some of his friends point out that when pronounced differently, Daesh might be translated as “stick it CHARLES GREEN in.” The book is full of information about the history of Islam and the Muslim world. Sharma also includes a helpful glossary A Sinner in Mecca: A Gay Muslim’s Hajj of Defiance of terms. There is some repetition, but many non-Muslim read- by Parvez Sharma ers might benefit from it. This is a well-done book that offers a BenBella Books. 280 pages, $16.95 valuable perspective in these fraught times. ______N THIS POWERFUL MEMOIR, filmmaker Parvez Sharma Charles Green, a frequent contributor to these pages, is a writer based describes the physical, emotional, and spiritual journey he in Annapolis, Maryland. Iembarked on while going on the Hajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca. The risks were great indeed, for as an openly gay Mus- lim and director of A Jihad for Love, Sharma faced serious con- sequences if he were recognized. Furthermore, he planned to covertly film the pilgrimage on his iPhone, which became the basis for the film A Sinner in Mecca. This was also dangerous, for the Saudis take pains to make sure that all films about the Hajj are favorable. This book is a companion piece of sorts to the film, but stands on its own. Before making the pilgrimage, Sharma poignantly recalls his awakening sexuality some years earlier. Born and raised in India, his first sexual experience was with Muhammad, the care- taker of one of his favorite shrines, who taught Sharma how to pray “properly” in exchange for English lessons. He writes that

44 Th) Gay & L)sb an R)v )w / !RLD!iDe Saturday Church (Damon Cardasis) Drama with musical elements Cultural Calendar concerns a 14-year-old boy in the Bronx whose family recoils when he begins experimenting with gender and sexuality. Readers are invited to submit items at no charge. Must have rele- Signature Move (Jennifer Reeder) Dramedy set in Chicago about vance to a North American readership. E-mail to: [email protected]. a lesbian from Pakistan who meets a Mexican-American woman Be sure to allow at least a month’s lead time for any listing. with whom she pursues her obsession with Lucha-style wrestling. The Wound (John Trengove) South African drama centers on three Festivals and Events young men thrown together to undergo a traditional rite of passage that brings out intense feelings, including sexual ones. FILM FESTIVALS Palm Springs, CA. Int’l. Film Fest. Jan. 2-15. Theater / Dance Bloomington, IN. Pride Film Fest. Jan. 25-27. Fire and Air World premiere of Terrence McNally’s latest play, New York,NY. Queer Experimental Film Fest. Feb. 2-5. which tells the story of the Ballets Russes, featuring Diaghilev and Phoenix, AZ. Desperado LGBT Film Fest. Feb. 9-11. Nijinsky. At the CSC in Manhattan, Jan. 17–March 4. Austin, TX. Outsider Film Fest. Feb. 14-18. Angels in America Broadway revival of parts 1 & 2 of the epic drama opens at the Neil Simon Theatre on Feb. 23rd. EVENTS Skintight Off-Broadway play about a woman jilted by her husband Creating Change Annual conf. of the National LGBTQ Task Force who moves in with her famous father, only to find he’s involved with will be in DC, Jan. 24–28, 2018. Visit www.creatingchange.org. a man of 20. At the Roundabout Theatre from May 31. First Event 2018 Annual transgender conf. “Making a Better World,” Still at Risk New play about Kevin, a surviving activist from the in Marlboro, MA, Jan. 30–Feb. 4. Visit: www.firstevent.org. AIDS crisis, who struggles to find purpose in an age of gay com- Time to Thrive Annual conf. held by the Human Rights Campaign placency. Jan. 19–Feb. 25 at San Francisco’s NCTC. for LGBT youth. In Orlando, FL, Feb. 16–18. For more info, visit: Cardboard Piano Drama finds the daughter of an American mis- www.timetothrive.org, and follow the links. sionary falling in love with a teenage girl in Uganda as civil war MBLGTACC (Midwest Bisexual Lesbian Gay Transgender Ally erupts. At San Diego’s Diversionary Theatre, Jan. 25–Feb. 25. College Conference ) To educate and empower Midwestern stu- Time Is on Our Side New play about a lesbian couple who use dents, faculty, and staff. Feb. 16-18 in Omaha, NE. their podcast to “queer” history—which leads them to an unsettling GSA/LGBTQ Youth Summit Will take place in Decatur, GA, on discovery. At Chicago’s About Face Theatre, March 1–April 8. Feb. 24. More info at: www.georgiasafeschoolscoalition.org Art Exhibitions 2018 LGBT Health Workforce Conf. is a call to action: “Securing Past Achievements and Building Our Future. To be held in NYC, David Hockney The artist’s paintings, drawings, and photos are on May 4–5, 2018. Visit: www.bngap.org/lgbthwfconf/ exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, thru Feb. 25th. Haptic Tactics Exhibit explores ways of engaging with abstract Feature Films work made by living queer artists. Leslie-Lohman Gallery in SoHo, NYC, Feb. 18–May 20. www.leslielohman.org/ Body Electric (directed by Marcelo Caetano) Brazilian drama in- spired by Whitman’s “body electric” poem follows handsome Elias Barbara Hammer: Evidentiary Bodies Assembles pieces of film, through the frenzied gay nightlife of São Paulo. installations, works on paper, and other material from her archive. At the Leslie-Lohman Gallery in NYC thru Jan. 28. Bones of Contention (Andrea Weiss) Documentary tells the tragic life story of Spanish writer and poet Federico Garcia Lorca, who David Bowie Is Retrospective of the artist’s extraordinary five- was murdered by Franco’s forces during the Spanish Civil War. decade career. March 2–July 15 at the Brooklyn Museum. Call Me By Your Name (Luca Guadagnino) Drama based on André Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon Gender in contempo- Aciman’s novel is about an American professor’s son whose Italian rary art & culture. At the New Museum in Manhattan thru Jan. 21st. villa is host for a handsome graduate student one summer. Mascara, Myth & Mayhem Photos by Susan Kravitz of 4 decades Chavela (Catherine Gund and Daresha Kyi) Documentary about of the “The Invasion” of the Fire Island Pines by Cherry Grove gays. Mexican singer and national treasure Chavela Vargas (1919–2012), Jan. 12–March 11 at the Stonewall Museum, Ft. Lauderdale. who came out officially as a lesbian at age 81. Cory Leibowitz: Museum Show 350 pieces by an artist who has God’s Own Country (Francis Lee) UK drama about a young sheep worked in all genres (painting, fabric, installations, photography, farmer without much focus in life—until a handsome Romanian etc.). At U. of Penn’s ICA, Philadelphia, Feb. 2–March 25. migrant worker arrives, and something happens. Nobody’s Watching (Julia Solomonoff) Argentinian drama on the CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS – THE G&LR travails of young Nico, recently arrived in NYC from Buenos Aires The Gay & Lesbian Review accepts unsolicited manuscripts and to launch an acting career, missing his boyfriend back home. proposals on all LGBT-related topics. Especially sought are propos- Rebels on Pointe (Bobbi Jo Hart) Documentary on the Ballets als on the following themes for issues in development: Trockadero de Monte Carlo, the venerable all-male drag ballet. • Alternative Sexualities from “heteroflexible” to roleplay. The Ring Thing (William Sullivan) Drama begins with lesbian • Social Problems: Homelessness, addiction, poverty, etc. lovers and an accidental marriage proposal in P’town, then splits • Long Before Stonewall: LGBT culture from BC to the 19th c. into two alternate futures based on their differing expectations. Please e-mail your proposal to the Editor at [email protected].

January–February 2018 45 ARTIST’S PROFILE Juan Bastos, Portrait Painter, on Exhibit in LA

CHRIS FREEMAN UAN BASTOS is a portrait painter whose work was on exhibit at a major Jretrospective at the Denenberg Fine Arts Gallery in West Hollywood, CA, in No- vember. Included in the exhibition were the covers of several issues of The Gay & Les- bian Review that featured Juan’s art. I had a lively conversation with Juan about his career as an artist and about the exhibition, which was part of the massive Getty Museum project, Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, a celebration of Latin Ameri- can art in Southern California, with dozens of galleries participating. Juan’s covers for The G&LR, of which there were a dozen in the early 2000s, included portraits of Tennessee Williams, Susan Sontag, Rudolf Nureyev, Ian McKellen, and Gore Vidal, with whom he developed a friendship late in the great writer’s life. I interviewed Juan in October at the lovely L.A. home that he shares with his partner Tom Parry. — Chris Freeman

Chris Freeman: Tell me a bit about your background, especially regarding how you first became interested in art. Juan Bastos with paintings. The one of Gore Vidal was featured on a G&LR cover. Tom Parry photo. Juan Bastos: I was born of a Bolivian fam- very good control through drawing; so for text. I have never seen an exhibition of ily in Venezuela. We moved back to Bolivia composition, everything was there, but I had commissioned contemporary portraits, re- when I was eleven, and I was happily sur- to learn to use color. I’m a bit of a purist. I ally ever. So I’m delighted that the Denen- prised that two of my relatives were explored mixed media, but I wanted to re- berg Gallery is hosting this show for me. I painters, one a portrait painter. Every week- ally know how to draw and how to paint. will have a few landscapes and a self-por- end, we went to their house and I’d sneak trait. Years ago, I used to exhibit my work, into her studio and look at all her work. My CF: So the technical part is very important. which was more in the magical realism mother’s cousin was an artist who lived in JB: Extremely important. You copy the style, in Peru, in Washington, D.C., and I Paris. She was a bohemian. great Masters. You learn their technique. I was part of a biennial in Egypt, represent- was copying Leonardo da Vinci when I was ing Bolivia. I had a group show in Paris. CF: So the life of the artist immediately ap- a teenager. You learn shading, how to draw But I stopped working in that style over pealed to you. hair; you learn certain brushstrokes. One of twenty years ago to be completely dedi- JB: I was embracing art at an early age. I my relatives, a painter, put a few brush- cated to portraiture. took private tutoring at fourteen. I briefly strokes on my canvas once when I was studied architecture in Bolivia, and but then young, and I still have a little bit of that CF: You have a friendship and with the came to the U.S. to study commercial art from her. When I paint, there is a little bit of great Los Angeles artist Don Bachardy. Tell and illustration. However, I very quickly the expressive quality that she had. My in- me how you met him and what your rela- changed to fine arts, eventually graduating spiration was the great Masters, but blended tionship has been with him over the years. from the Maryland Institute College of Art with my own South American style. There JB: I had his book October, which featured in Baltimore. I went on to do an MFA at is some Latin American flair in my work. his drawings and his lover Christopher Isher- Towson University, nearby. After that, I was wood’s diaries. I had some of the postcards able to make a living as an artist. I had com- CF: As a Latin American artist, it must be a of Don’s work. And then I went to a show of missions for portraits then and was also ex- great honor for you to be part of this huge his work in the late 1990s at the Laguna Art hibiting, including figurative work and Getty Museum project “LA/LA.” Your Museum. I loved the work. I asked a person magical realism. But I stopped doing that show is opening in West Hollywood in early who worked at the museum if there was a kind of work in 1995. November at a local gallery. way I could get his address; somebody who JB: What’s interesting is that a lot of art happened to be walking by and overheard CF: How did you get started as a portrait coming from Latin American has a political told me that address, from memory! So I sent artist, and how did you learn the craft? presence; mine in this exhibit doesn’t re- him a letter, saying that I’m a portrait artist JB: At first, I did a lot of pencil drawing. I ally. These are portraits; some were institu- and that I’d love to meet him. His reply came stopped painting at sixteen and just drew. tional commissions, family portraits. It will on a postcard of his portrait of Gore Vidal. I Drawing is the basis of everything. I had be interesting to see my work in that con- invited him to come for dinner and then he

46 Th) Gay & L)sb an R)v )w / !RLD!iDe asked me to sit for him. Afterwards, I said, two hours. This was at his house in L.A. I CF: How did you come to work with The “Don, now you have to pose for me.” had never met him before or even read him, G&LR, which is published in Boston? but I did read some of his work and I took JB: My husband, Tom Parry, went to Har- CF: Your portrait of Don is remarkable. him the books to sign. After I took the pic- vard and was president of the Harvard Gay JB: In the studio, there were all these por- tures, I said, “Gore, I need you to pose. I & Lesbian Caucus, an alumni/a organiza- traits of Chris by Don, so I knew I wanted want you to be happy with the portrait when tion. So he introduced me to Richard to use that in my portrait of Don. I remem- I finish it, and the only way that’s possible is Schneider through those channels. As you bered the David Hockney portrait of them if you pose for me for one sitting. Then, you recall, the original name was The Harvard together. In my portrait, both men are about can approve it and I’ll send it to the GLR.” Gay & Lesbian Review. Richard told me he the same age; Don is the age that Chris is in We didn’t talk much, but I said, “Gore, this needed some illustrations and other artwork, the background portrait. Don said, “Juan, has been a great experience for me. May I so we started to work together. I did Ten- you captured Chris’s eyes.” I said, “Well, I come back to visit you?” He replied, “Mi nessee Williams, Susan Sontag, Sir Ian copied your portrait,” but he insisted: “No, casa es su casa.” So for the next two years, I McKellen. When Sir Ian saw the portrait, he Juan, you interpreted it.’ visited him every couple of months. said, “I love it, but where are the wrinkles?”

CF: How do you put yourself in the context CF: Can you share one of those gems? CF: Do you think of yourself as a gay artist? of Bachardy? You are both obsessed with JB: Of course! He had a picture of Isher- JB: Well, I’m an artist, and I’m gay. In all portraiture. wood next to his bed. I remarked that it was of my portraits, there is something about JB: He’s even more obsessed than I am, be- a nice picture, and he said, “Yes, we were me. So if a woman poses for me, there has cause of how he works. We both work from good friends.” I asked him about Chris, and to be a common denominator in my life, but he works only from life. Everybody he said, “pas mal.” Not bad. I said, “I un- essence, my spirit. I grew up surrounded by I work with poses for me, at least once or derstand his English was beautiful but his strong women, my sisters, my mother, my twice, and I help myself with photographs. German not so much, it sounded more grandmothers. So when I do a portrait of a The live pose is amazing. When people working-class because, Don told me, he had woman, I like to reinforce their strength. pose for me, I engage them in conversation; learned it from hustlers in Berlin.” Gore Don doesn’t really do that. But he has so lit- replied, “The things one can pick up for ten CF: So it’s a kind of ultimate empathy or tle time; he does two or three finished por- dollars!” identification that you’re striving for. traits in one sitting, whereas my work takes JB: When people see this new show, they’ll much longer. CF: And Gore liked your portrait? see the portrait I did twenty years ago with JB: He did. He even compared my work to Tom. It is an intimate portrait; it’s clear that CF: Don talks about his work as a con- John Singer Sargent more than once. When it is two men, together. Back then, early in frontation. But that’s not your style. I was putting together my website I said, our relationship, I was still somewhat in the JB: No, but every portrait is a challenge. I “Gore, can I ask you a favor? I want to use closet, especially back in Bolivia. So it was have to create the illusion of life on a two that Sargent quote from you for my web- important for me to do that painting at that dimensional surface. That’s where I get the site. May I have it?” He said, “Well, I’m time. It was an affirmation. It was a symbol kick, trying to capture something in the por- not happy about it. However, I’m not un- of our relationship, and we actually used it trait. I’ve had sitters who are very guarded. happy about it either.” So, I said, “I com- for our Christmas card. The portrait is self- I have to find a way to get them to open up. pletely understand. I will not use it.” He explanatory. Recently, I was interviewed for And because I tend to have a good deal of said, “Juan! I’m telling you I’m not un- a Bolivian newspaper, and they asked if I time with each sitter and I talk with them, I happy about it.” I reached over and touched was married. I said, “Yes, and his name is become something of a bartender; they take his knee and told him that I wouldn’t use it Tom.” They loved that. It is important for me into their confidence. I try to make it unless he was happy about it. After a pause, young people to have role models; the fact fun, to engage in whatever we need to make he said, “All right! All right!” Later, when I that I’m out, I hope, helps young artists. it work. I end up with many stories. did the portrait of Rudolph Nureyev for the Knowing that Michelangelo was gay gave GLR, I took the original for Gore to see. He me inspiration when I was young. I’m glad CF: That brings us to Gore Vidal, one of the liked it very much and he said that he to be out. great raconteurs. You painted him for a cover thought Nureyev would have liked it. I also of The Gay & Lesbian Review, correct? did a portrait of a young Lincoln with Chris Freeman teaches English and gender JB: I was supposed to meet him just to take Joshua Speed in the background. Gore studies at USC. His forthcoming book “Isher- photos to use and then leave; I stayed for loved that one. wood in Transit” is near completion.

"Ricard offers a thoughtful debut... The narrative is endear- ing and impressively assured, and it will be an entertaining treat for fans of LGBT romantic iction ... a warm, fun, character- driven tale about moving on and embracing life.” —

www.russellricard.com January–F)bruary 2018 47 FILM Billie Jean King’s Stroke of Genius

ATTLE OF THE SEXES recounts showdown with Riggs is approaching. The what was in fact the battle of the COLIN CARMAN film even hints that King’s victory was in decade: the women’s movement some way helped along by Marilyn’s love and the sexual revolution versus and support. B Battle of the Sexes the inevitable male chauvinist backlash, all In the film, both principals are impecca- telescoped into a single event in 1973. It Directed by Jonathan Dayton bly cast. Emma Stone fairly channels King was the demonstration tennis match be- and Valerie Faris and her athletic stride, and Steve Carell tween the reigning champion of women’s Cloud Eight Films, Decibel Films, captures Riggs’ brazenness while softening tennis, Billie Jean King, and the faded but Fox Searchlight,TSG Entertainment some of his roughness around the edges. formidable male champion of yesteryear, The film was written and directed by the Bobby Riggs. duo of Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris, who also created Lit- But first, a disclaimer: I hate sports. I had never set eyes on tle Miss Sunshine. Off screen, they’re a married couple with a a Super Bowl game until Lady Gaga starred in the halftime keen sense of the personal and the political. They told The New show last year, dropping from the rafters like a bejeweled spi- Yorker (Aug. 8, 2017): “We were particularly intrigued by Bil- der. Growing up as a Jersey boy in the early 1990s, I was so bad lie Jean’s private life ... and [how] at the same time, she was at baseball that I used to hide in the porta-potty reading Gins- fighting for equal pay for women.” They were referring to the berg’s “Howl” or the like to avoid playing. However, my mom was an avid tennis fan, so sometimes I watched tournaments with her, though I was usually thinking more about André Agassi’s mane or Ivan Lendl’s legs than about the match. This explains why Battle of Sexes squeaks by for me as a watchable film, namely for its absorbing balance of professional tennis and some things I do care about, such as love, marriage, and selfhood. The movie follows the lead-up to the 1973 expo- sition match that featured Billie Jean King and her 55-year-old opponent, Bobby Riggs, who challenged her to a winner-take- all match that September. Billie Jean King, then age 29, was un- doubtedly the greatest tennis player of her generation, and certainly the most famous, while Riggs had been a champion in the 1940s and became a well-known tennis hustler and promoter thereafter. The wildly hyped match took on huge symbolic importance as a “battle of the sexes.” On the big day, King was carried on a palanquin into the Houston Astrodome by a group of muscle- men. On meeting Riggs, she handed him a piglet, a squealing symbol of the male chauvinism that he wore as a badge of honor. In return, Riggs (sponsored by Sugar Daddy candy) handed King a lollipop larger than a human head. Among the notables in the stands were Salvador Dalí and Glen Campbell. Ninety million spectators worldwide tuned in—the largest live audience ever for a tennis match. The match itself turned into something of a rout for King, who won in straight sets (6-4, 6- 3, 6-3), taking home the $100,000 in prize money. It is hardly surprising that this Roman Coliseum of sexual politics has finally become a feature-length film. What is sur- prising is how forthright Battle of the Sexes is in depicting Bil- lie Jean King’s inner conflict over her growing lesbian feelings. She is married to a man—a not unattractive man at that—but finds herself irresistibly drawn to her team’s favorite hairdresser, Marilyn Barnett, with whom her affair is heating up even as the

Colin Carman, PhD, a frequent GLR contributor, is completing a man- uscript on the queer ecology of Percy Bysshe and Mary Shelley.

48 Th) Gay & L)sb an R)v )w / !RLD!iDe fact that the ratio of men’s to women’s prize money in tennis was about eleven to one. The King-Riggs match was epic in large part because of its historical backdrop and the way in which it crystallized the fem- inist and sexual revolutions. It was a defining moment that le- gitimated women’s tennis and women’s sports in general. Leading a group of what became known as “Women’s Lob,” King had been lobbying, without much luck, for equal pay in tournament prize money. She drew the ire of the clownish Riggs when she pushed for equal pay at the 1973 U.S. Open, and stayed on his radar until their final showdown. By defeating Riggs, King catapulted her stature as a feminist hero into the ranks of Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Jane Fonda, and a few others, though King was unique, argues sports historian Nancy E. Spencer, in functioning as a “Feminist Athlete Doll” in the “symbolic role of liberator for women.” She was also unique, of course, in being a lesbian, a private truth that would not become a public matter, much less a cause célèbre, until many years later. Though it began production in the spring of 2016, Battle of the Sexes could not have been released at a more perfect time, and for two reasons. First, Donald Trump’s irresistible desire to plunge into the racial politics of “taking the knee” by NFL play- ers reminds us that sports have always had a political side— Jackie Robinson and Jesse Owens come to mind. Second is the fact that LGBT and women’s liberation remain closely inter- twined. Unless you were living on Saturn in 2016, you proba- bly heard the one about a former New York Senator and Secretary of State who ran for the highest office in the U.S. and, despite being overqualified, lost to an overtly sexist, know-noth- ing publicity hound. Prior to the release of Battles of the Sexes, veteran tennis ance as “weird.” pro and bigmouth John McEnroe faced the wrath of Twitter and Of course, memoir and musical are fundamentally distinct ESPN punditry when he remarked that if Serena Williams were forms—sketches with captions versus score and lyrics—and a male tennis player, she would rank “like 700 in the world.” He the musical requires serious compression of plot. In terms of made the rounds on late-night TV to apologize and restore the overall emphasis, however, the difference may be less than peace. Meanwhile, Williams, pregnant at the time, stayed under you’d think. In both graphic and acoustic versions, for exam- the wire and delivered her riposte via Twitter: “Respect me and ple, the Bechdel siblings are a driving force. This is true in the my privacy as I’m trying to have a baby.” This movie, by ges- memoir, where their incredulous expressions shed doubt on turing toward the present day, forces us to take stock of the state Bruce’s honesty, and in the musical, where their voices defy of women’s equality 45 years after this event at the height of his order to stop playing coffin games and instead belt out the women’s liberation movement and asks whether that battle spoofy ads for the family business. The biggest showstopper has been won, and clearly it has not—not by a long shot. includes these lines: “We got the Kleenex and your choice of Psalm,/ Stop by the Fun Home,/ Think of Bechdel when you need to embalm.” Fun Home Continued from page 50 But there are many captivating numbers, including the fam- ily’s wry song of introduction that’s reprised at the end, “Wel- neral home display coffin, suggesting their camaraderie (the come to Our House on Maple Avenue”; Helen’s despairing memoir is dedicated to them and to Bechdel’s mother). Helen’s lament when she realizes her marriage is coming apart, “Days frequent turns pounding keys on the family piano convey her and Days”; the poignant lullaby “Pony Girl” that Bruce sings to angry bewilderment. Alison before he goes off cruising during a trip to New York; the Another change is that the memoir is filled with literary re- full company’s fantastic “Raincoat of Love”—which is sung flections that prompt digressions and associations. For instance, with disco lights streaming across stage back; and collegiate Al- Alison continually decodes novels her father is reading for clues ison’s declarative solo, after she and Joan make love for the first to his feelings, and her own. The books they parse suggest se- time, that she is a real lesbian after all: “I’m Changing My crets and taboos: books by Proust, Fitzgerald, Colette. But if lit- Major to Joan!” erary references suffuse the memoir, the musical scoffs at such After winding up its tour of twenty U.S. cities in 2017, the high-brow allusions. For example, Alison’s girlfriend Joan dis- Fun Home cast is scheduled for engagements in Barcelona, misses Bruce’s recommendation that she read Colette for guid- Tokyo, and London in the coming months.

January–F)bruary 2018 49 THEATER Alison Bechdel Comes of Age

F THEATER IS a temporary re- past as an entrée to their tightly intertwined arrangement of life to spark discovery, ROSEMARY BOOTH lives. the musical Fun Home, adapted from “Medium Alison,” a student at Oberlin cartoonist Alison Bechdel’s best- College, adds anxious worries about her I Fun Home selling graphic memoir of the same name, sexual identity to the mix of volatility and exceeds requirements, not only yielding in- Based on the graphic novel confusion surrounding her father, who has sights but whipping up exuberance out of by Alison Bechdel kept his gay self secret while living the life anguished chaos in the process. As seen in Directed by Sam Gold of a high school English teacher, part-time a recent production, the musical demon- Touring Broadway Company at the mortician, husband to Helen, and parent of strates how translation from visual to Boston Opera House, Oct. 17-29, 2017 Alison and her two younger brothers. acoustic form can amplify and dazzle. Restoring and decorating the family’s enor- The musical version of Fun Home credibly captures the per- mous, dilapidated 19th-century house is Bruce’s overriding ob- plexing atmosphere, searing revelations, and generous spirit of session. After the years-long renovation is finished, having Bechdel’s original work, the story of an emerging lesbian and completed court-ordered counseling for plying a minor with al- her closeted gay father as their secrets are disclosed to a wider cohol, and as his marriage is coming apart, he commits suicide. world, with all the risks implied. Playwright and performer Lisa Alison’s attempt as an adult to understand how she and her fa- Kron (Well and the Obie-winning 2.5 Minute Ride) wrote the ther had been connected, the elusive but real ways that he gave book and lyrics for the musical. Sam Gold directed the 2015 her support, are the main themes of this engrossing tale. Broadway production and the company’s national tour, and he Fun Home avoids simple resolution of complex issues, and will direct Fun Home’s London debut at the Young Vic in June. the musical feels faithful to the tone and storyline of Bechdel’s Fun Home is the first Broadway musical to have an openly lesbian protagonist and the first show written entirely by women to win a Tony Best Musical award. Composer Jeanine Tesori has written a pitch- perfect score for the musical, with more than two dozen numbers that carry strong emotion. The main characters—Alison Bechdel at three dif- ferent ages, her mother Susan, and her father Bruce—all sing powerful solos, and even the Bechdel kids’ songs command attention. Kron’s script calls for frequent shifts in sets and lighting as the action shifts backward and forward in time, a device that allows connections to be made between early events and later ones. The show’s circling back is similar to the technique used in the memoir, where earlier stories are re- framed in light of new experience. The fast- paced musical is a hot-wired but still cerebral exploration of the human yearning to connect, Joan (played by Karen Elibacher) and Middle Alison (Abby Corrigan) in Fun Home and of home as the incubator for a creative life. 2006 memoir. But memoir and musical are distinct forms. The The underlying story is set in rural Beech Creek, Pennsyl- former relied on its author’s childhood journal and an astonish- vania, in the late 1960s and in 1980, with the Alison of today ing cache of saved letters, memorabilia, notes, photos, news supplying occasional commentary as a nearly constant onstage clips, and literary quotes to generate drawings and captions. The observer. Oddly enough, she opens Fun Home by divulging its musical, on the other hand, displays not thoughts or images but ending: “[My father] killed himself ... and I have become a les- behavior: it uses actors to tell the story. So, changes had to be bian cartoonist.” Bruce Bechdel immediately appears onstage, made. accompanied by his six- or seven-year-old child (“small Ali- Thus while detailed drawings are largely missing from the son”). As the pair begins digging through a box of discarded show, the musical exploits selected images from the original as Irish lace curtains, they start rummaging through the family’s metaphors. Small Alison is lofted as an “airplane” on top of her father’s feet, symbolizing his gift of playful, artistic perspec- Rosemary Booth is a writer and photographer living in Cambridge, tive. Alison and her little brothers jump into (and out of) a fu- Mass. Continued on page 49

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