David Hockney’S Great Yes to Life JAMES CASSELL the Gorgeous Bleakness of Hugh Auchincloss Steers JOHN R

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May–June 2018 $5.95 USA and Canada JAMES M. SASLOW Michelangelo’s Gifts to Tommaso STEVEN F. DANSKY David Hockney’s Great Yes to Life JAMES CASSELL The Gorgeous Bleakness of Hugh Auchincloss Steers JOHN R. KILLACKY Peter Hujar’s Eye for the Interesting

Arch Brown on the Making of a Porn Star BY ANDREW HOLLERAN Vindication for John Boswell BY NORENA SHOPLAND Remembering Bob Smith BY EDDIE SARFATY

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" ! The Gay & Lesbian Re view May–June 2018 • VOLUME XXV, NUMBER 3 WORLDWIDE

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

Editor-in-Chief and Founder Body Image RICHARD SCHNEIDER JR. ______FEATURES Literary Editor MARTHA E. STONE Michelangelo’s Gifts to Tommaso 12 J AMES M. S ASLOW Poetry Editor The artist presented his beloved with both drawings and poems DAVID BERGMAN A Certain Gorgeous Bleakness 16 J AMES CASSELL Associate Editors Hugh Auchincloss Steers painted the humanity of the plague era JIM FARLEY Of Maine, Men, and Marsden Hartley 19 P HILIP CLARK JEREMY FOX How a regional artist smuggled hunky men into his paintings CHRISTOPHER HENNESSY MICHAEL SCHWARTZ David Hockney’s Great Yes to Life 22 S TEVEN F. D ANSKY Contributing Writers Same-sex desire is central to his ecstatic vision of the world ROSEMARY BOOTH Belated Vindication for John Boswell 26 N ORENA SHOPLAND DANIEL BURR COLIN CARMAN Did gay men marry in the Middle Ages? It all hinges on one word ALFRED CORN Squaring the Disability 29 D ENISE NOE ALLEN ELLENZWEIG Being LGBT tends to complicate issues of care and community CHRIS FREEMAN PHILIP GAMBONE How to Be a Porn Star 31 A NDREW HOLLERAN MATTHEW HAYS Arch Brown reveals how he invented quality gay porn in the ’70s ANDREW HOLLERAN IRENE JAVORS JOHN R. KILLACKY REVIEWS CASSANDRA LANGER ANDREW LEAR Martin Duberman — The Rest of It: Hustlers, Cocaine, Depression ... 34 D ANIEL A. B URR DAVID MASELLO George Klawitter – Andrew Marvell, Sexual Orientation & 17th-C. Poetry 35 A LAN CONTRERAS JIM NAWROCKI BRIEFS 37 JAMES POLCHIN JEAN ROBERTA Alan Bennett — Keeping On Keeping On 38 P HILIP GAMBONE VERNON ROSARIO Bonnie J. Morris & D-M Withers — The Feminist Revolution 39 R OSEMARY BOOTH HEATHER SEGGEL Joe Hagan — Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner 41 J IM NAWROCKI YOAV SIVAN Nicholas Frankel — Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years 42 F REDERICK S. R ODEN Contributing Artist Alan Hollinghurst — The Sparsholt Affair 44 F ELICE PICANO CHARLES HEFLING Yvonne Welbon and Alexandra Juhasz — Sisters in the Life 45 J EAN ROBERTA Advertising Manager Amy Hoffman — The Off Season 45 M ARTHA MILLER STEPHEN HEMRICK Moshe Sakal — The Diamond Setter 46 C HARLES GREEN Magnus Hirschfeld — Berlin’s Third Sex 47 I RENE JAVO RS Webmaster Dome Karukoski, director — Tom of Finland (film) 49 J ACK NUSAN PORTER BOSTON WEB GROUP ______Peter Hujar: Speed of Life (art exhibition) 50 J OHN R. K ILLACKY Board of Directors STEWART CLIFFORD (CHAIRMAN) POEMS & DEPARTMENTS ART COHEN EDUARDO FEBLES GUEST OPINION — An Anti-LGBT Bill Moves through Congress 5 CHRIS JOHNSON DONALD GORTON (CLERK) CORRESPONDENCE 6 DIANE HAMER N EMORIAM DDIE ARFATY TED HIGGINSON I M — On Losing Bob Smith 8 E S ROBERT HARDMAN BTW 10 RICHARD SCHNEIDER JR. DAV I D LAFONTAINE POEM — “Oh, This Was a Long Time Ago, When I Was a Vampire” 18 GREGG SHAPIRO ROBERT NICOSON ART MEMO — On Being Changed by a John Wieners Poem 21 STEVI-LEE ALVER RICHARD SCHNEIDER,JR.(PRESIDENT) INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM – Zimbabwe after Mugabe: Few Signs of Progress 28 JOYLINE MAENZANISE MARTHA E. STONE OEM IANE URTNEY THOMAS YOUNGREN (TREASURER) P — “Riddle” 33 D F AUTHOR’S PROFILE — Mark A. Roeder’s Youths of Indiana 43 ROBERT CUMMINGS NEVILLE WARREN GOLDFARB (SR. ADVISOR EMER.) CULTURAL CALENDAR 48

The Gay & Lesbian Review/WORLDWIDE® (formerly The HarvardGay& 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 $12 each. 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] May–Jun! 2018 3 FROM THE EDITOR Pride Issue: Body Image HE HUMAN BODY is the ultimately fascinating subject artistic closet for the next few centuries. The female nude has a for visual representation; thus the most dangerous, shock- history all its own, and certainly fared better through the ages. Ting, subject to taboo—and the most irresistible for artists As late as the early 20th century, we still find artists having to to explore. One option is to ban all depictions of the body, as contrive a symbolic pretext for painting the male form. Thus, for Islam basically does, but this is a road that Western art has never example, as Philip Clark explains, Marsden Hartley was able to taken. We have been faithful to what the Greeks bequeathed: an paint nearly naked men in the 1930s only by presenting them as extreme naturalism in style combined with an idealization of the heroic workers who came by their muscles honestly. human form. It was a confection that often turned pornographic The cultural sea change following World War II greatly ex- in Roman hands, after which Europe might well have abandoned panded the possibilities for representing male and female bodies the nude under Christendom. And yet, even in the Middle Ages and (homo)sexual situations. David Hockney’s poolside paint- it was possible to depict the unclothed male, however stylized in ings of the 1950s are remarkable because the bodies don’t rep- execution, as the image of Christ on or off the cross. resent gods or workers or anything other than themselves. Even The artists of the Renaissance took full advantage of this so, as Steven F. Dansky argues, Hockney’s male figures are part loophole and depicted the dying God as a fit servant of man, ex- of the artist’s ecstatic vision of life, which places homoerotic de- panding this to include non-Jesus biblical figures and mytholog- sire among the things to be celebrated. ical ones in various stages of nudity. Michelangelo advanced this Two other artists, both from the post-Stonewall era, take us practice by dispensing with both the literal and figurative fig leaf, into a world that didn’t exist before: that of LGBT people living barely staying within local standards by calling his hero “David” socially distinct gay lives. Photographer Peter Hujar got started or placing his subjects in the Garden of Eden. Beyond these very soon after Stonewall and documented the burgeoning street cul- famous works, he made hundreds of drawings of young men, ture and political consciousness of the 1970s (see John R. Kil- again in mythological settings, including some homoerotic ones. lacky’s piece). Hugh Auchincloss Steers captured on canvas the These he presented, along with love poems, to various men with tragic decade that followed, portraying the suffering and caring whom he was enamored, notably Tommaso de’ Cavalieri. It’s all that marked the plague years—scenes in which, writes James laid out here by James M. Saslow. Cassell, the bodies of the sick retain a warm sensuality that be- The Renaissance continued along this trajectory for a while, lies their owners’ decline, a final affirmation of their humanity. but then the male body largely retreated into something of an RICHARD SCHNEIDER JR. Gay Iccons

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4Th! Gay & L!sban R!v!w / oRLdide GUEST OPINION An Anti-LGBT Bill Moves through Congress eral contractors. Although the legislation would not apply to CHRIS JOHNSON federal for-profit contractors, it would apply to nonprofits, such EN. MIKE LEE (R-Utah) has reintroduced legislation in as church-affiliated hospitals or universities, which would be the U.S. Senate seen to enable anti-LGBT discrimination able to engage in anti-LGBT discrimination and still obtain gov- Sin the name of “religious freedom”—and Donald Trump ernment contracts. Jennifer Pizer, law and policy director for made signing such legislation a campaign promise. Lambda Legal, said of the bill: “One of the main goals is to The purported intent of the First Amendment Defense Act freeze-frame the lack of civil rights protections for LGBT peo- (FADA) is to protect individuals from adverse action by the ple. Many religiously affiliated non-profits want to keep get- U.S. government if they oppose same-sex marriage. Lee said ting lots of public money and want to be able to discriminate.” in a statement: “FADA simply ensures that federal bureaucrats David Stacy, government affairs director for the Human will never have the authority to require those who believe in the Rights Campaign, said in a statement that FADA “would legal- traditional definition of marriage to choose between their living ize state-sanctioned discrimination and undermine key civil in accordance with those beliefs and maintaining their occupa- rights protections for LGBTQ people. Supporters of this legislation or their tax status.” tion are using religious liberty as a sword to hurt LGBTQ fami- A section of the bill explicitly forbids the U.S. government lies.” According to HRC, the legislation would impair LGBT from “alter[ing] in any way the federal tax treatment” of insti- protections in the Violence Against Women Act for emergency tutions that oppose same-sex marriage. That has been a concern shelters, undermine LGBT non-discrimination rules for home- expressed by public universities, such as Brigham Young, which less shelters, and deny same-sex couples access to benefits fear that their tax-exempt status could be stripped away, as hap- under the Family & Medical Leave Act. pened in 1983 to Bob Jones University for not recognizing in- FADA has undergone various iterations. Although the latest terracial marriage. According to Lee’s office, the legislation has version is in some respects narrower than earlier ones, it has 21 co-sponsors, all of them Republicans. new language covering individuals who think marriage should Critics say FADA would harm LGBT rights by eroding fed- be limited to “two individuals as recognized under federal law,” eral non-discrimination protections for LGBT people. For ex- not just confined to opposite-sex couples. ample, FADA would undermine President Obama’s executive order against anti-LGBT workplace discrimination among fed- Excerpted from The Washington Blade. Reprinted with permission. New from UC Press

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May–Jun! 2018 5 Correspondence other. Evolutionary effects are instead the the references to Greek sculpture and Science and Equal Rights result of blind chance. In a moral sense, pæderastic love. Are we to assume that To the Editor, too, not everything has to be valuable to Oliver is momentarily transformed by all In “Evolutionary Origins of Homosexu- the family as a survival advantage in the images of beautiful youths he encoun- ality” (Jan.-Feb. 2018 issue), James order to be valuable and worthy of social ters in his work, and the embodiment of O’Keefe and his collaborators contrast the protection. that ideal form in Elio? In real life, Armie antiquity and prevalence of homosexuality Showing that homosexuality is rooted in Hammer is nine years older than Timothée with its criminalization, which even today evolution will not, therefore, show much of Chalamet, 29 and twenty when the filming in some countries involves the death anything from a moral point of view. A far took place. Inevitably, the film was criti- penalty. They indicate that criminalization better defense of same-sex interests and cized by some viewers for its portrayal in- and other ill treatment of gay and lesbian identities is this: they have value in them- tergenerational sex—in the book their ages people is justified by the old chestnut that selves and in the relationships they make are supposed to be 24 and seventeen—but homosexuality is “against the order of na- possible. No further evolutionary study is the age of consent in Italy for most pur- ture.” O’Keefe and colleagues therefore necessary to make this point plainly before poses was fourteen in 1983. Also, as look to Nature to justify protecting gay and society and the law. Holleran points out, it is Elio who seduces lesbian people from harsh treatment. They Timothy F. Murphy, Chicago Oliver. offer a tour of some scientific studies indi- Holleran is right that the father in the film cating that homosexuality might be an evo- Why Call Me By Your Name Broke Hearts is an important addition to the novel. I did lutionary effect. To the Editor: not see him as talking about his own prior While their main focus is on the science Andrew Holleran’s review of Call Me by homosexual attraction, but rather the truth of sexual orientation, when they venture Your Name (March-April 2018) offers a that a deep love is intrinsically valuable, into ethics they argue that if homosexuality good analysis of both the novel and the whether it lasts or not. It is a wonderfully is the legacy of evolution, it follows that film. He places the film in its historical wise encouragement that Elio needed. homosexuals don’t deserve harsh treatment context, commenting on its advancement One last point: in the novel, Oliver eats because there must be some evolutionary over the well-received Brokeback Moun- the peach; Elio doesn’t stop him. Why reason for such people to exist. The idea tain. I agree with Mr. Holleran that know- would he? Likewise, the camera pans that homosexuality is genetic dates, in var- ing the sexual orientation of the two main away, as Holleran remarks, just when it ious versions, from the 1800s, and reached characters is important in the film and for should reveal the sexual consummation a theoretical high point in the 1970s. One knowing who the characters are. that Elio and Oliver enjoy. I found this to can draw a fairly straight line between Karl What was lost in the film version is the be the worst moment of the film, reminis- Heinrich Ulrichs’ theory of a third sex to very meaning of the novel’s title. In the cent of movies under the Hays Code in the E. O. Wilson’s sociobiological accounts of film, the statement is tossed off as a pass- 1950s. Some of us laughed out loud. It was homosexuality. Even so, it’s a major con- ing intimacy. In the novel, the words “Call a ridiculous step backward from the hot ceptual mistake to put one’s hopes for bet- me by your name,” have far more signifi- tent scene in Brokeback Mountain. ter lives for gay men and lesbians into the cance. The two young men merge their Jack Miller, Atlanta evolutionary basket. identities, each taking on the character of Natural Law theorists bypass evolution the other. This is a psychological experi- “Once a Philosopher...” when condemning homosexuality because ence that can occur only in a profound To the Editor: the “nature” they’re interested in is not part love. That the merger doesn’t last is the sad Concerning Voltaire and the “anti- of a scientific but of a moral order. They reality they must endure, especially Elio. physiques” [March–April 2018 issue], typically argue that men and women My reading of the novel is that Elio is fun- there is a famous anecdote. A young man should incline toward opposite-sex rela- damentally gay and Oliver is straight. I once asked Voltaire, concerning the art- tionships in accord with their divinely or- think the film conveyed this as well, icle on sodomy in his Dictionnaire dained nature. This “nature” is a maybe even more so. The sexual experi- philosophique, whether it was based on teleological end point, not a biological ence that Elio has with a girl his age is ex- personal experience. “No,” replied the starting point for science. Thus it remains perimental sex of the sort that many gay philosopher, “not at all.” “Well,” said the impervious to criticism that homosexuality men have in their youth. That he wants to disciple, “in the interests of science, I pro- is biologically caused. Regardless of maintain a friendship with her, but not a pose to make an experiment and try it out causality, people should not aspire to this romance, confirms this pattern, I think. myself.” “Go to it,” Voltaire encouraged deflection from their true moral nature, Oliver, on the other hand, follows his heart him. Shortly thereafter, the young man re- says the Natural Law crowd. to marriage and family. turned to make his report. “What’s your An evolutionary account is also unnec- Nonetheless, I have to agree that both opinion,” the sage asked him. “I’m not essary to defend the morality of same-sex the novel and the film remain muddled sure,” the disciple answered. “I think I’ll relationships. O’Keefe and colleagues de- over their sexual orientations. We are left have to try it again.” “Ah,” proclaimed scribe evolution as expressing intentions: with our own views on the characters’ sex- Voltaire, “une fois, un philosophe, deux “same-sex preference is naturally in- uality, or bisexuality, or position on the fois un sodomite!” (“Once a philosopher, tended.” There is no reason to think that Kinsey scale, or whatever. We are also left twice a sodomite!”) nature “intends” anything in the sense of with our individual takes on love between Laurence Senelick hoping to achieve one outcome over an- men of different ages. Holleran takes up Tufts University, Medford, MA

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,.. 75+0(4 EDDIE SARFATY "$-( ( "+(0 6A5 8(4 HAVEN’TSHED a single tear since my friend Bob Smith (.(&6(' 1(/5 died. Bob, who broke ground as the first openly gay co- (' (6(4 75+;($*(4 Imedian to appear on The Tonight Show, passed away on January 20th after a long battle with ALS. Like the hilarity and honesty that permeated his writing, his refusal to live in the closet during the height of the AIDS crisis inspired countless ? 2156 610(9$.. "+,6/$0=@ people and literally saved lives. $8,' 4,0,'$' ?75+0(4 Bob was my pal, my mentor, and my cheering section. We 6$-(5 6+( (9 #14- &+11. performed together hundreds of times, were roommates, and $(56+(6,& %$&- 61 ,65 4,&+ *$; 41165 even dated for a not-so-hot second. In him, I was lottery-win 75+0(4 ,5 $ /$56(4 21(6 1) lucky to find the perfect creative collaborator. (Someone al- .10(.,0(55 (81-,0* &+,.'+11' &$56,0* ,6 ,0 $ &11. most as difficult to find as the person to fall in love with.) %(0(81.(06 /$*,&$. .,*+6@ 7%.,5+(45 "((-.; I’ll miss him terribly—I’m sure in ways I’m not expecting. Since losing him, I’ve been prepared for—have maybe even been looking forward to—a crushing but cathartic sadness that 4$0( 1<(6, would initially immobilize but ultimately heal me. But no, I !0),0,5+(' -(6&+(5 1) feel surprisingly okay. My husband Court, worried that I’ve $ (81.76,10 been suppressing my feelings, asked me a few days after Bob’s death if I’d cried yet. Without thinking I said, “I’ve been cry- 64$05 $4%$4$ 74B$ ing for ten years.” And there it is. I’ve been crying regularly since that horrible day when I sat 0( 1) 7412(A5 )14(/156 94,6(45 next to Bob in a tiny exam room at Columbia Presbyterian Hos- 64$05.$6145 $0' 27%.,5+(45 ? pital and heard him respond to the doctor’s devastating words by 4($' 4$0( 1<(6,A5 21(/5 9+,&+ quipping: “Lou Gehrig’s Disease? I don’t even like baseball!” $4( 6,0; 018(.5 51 )4$,. $0' 56410* I’ve had a decade of crying: on the A-Train after Bob re- $0' 0(('; $0' 561,& +(; (0' ceived what he’d later refer to as his “Your Gonna Die-Igno- .,-( 6,0; /18,(5 9,6+ 6+( 10( /14( sis”; after he told me he’d been researching assisted suicide 6+,0* 6+$6 56125 6+( 64$,. 6+(4(A5 $ programs in Europe; after too many parties where I watched &+$15 61 +,5 21(/5 $0' $ 52(&,),&,6; .,-( 6+( (:$&6 '(6$,.5 1) Bob’s disappointment as his wickedly funny comments fell 174 6,/( $0' 9( 10.; -019 ,6 6+417*+ 417*+ *14*(175 .,0(5 flat, deprived of spontaneity by his slurred speech; in count- .,-( 6+(5(@ ,.((0 ;.(5 less stores and museums, watching people respond with awkward smiles and pitying nods as he struggled to make himself ,/16+; ,7 understood; in restaurants, catching the disgusted looks of din- ers as Bob drooled and spit up his food; at Gotham Comedy ,0*'1/ 1/( Club, watching the audience grow impatient as Bob struggled $06$5,$ to get out jokes that he’d killed with a thousand times. I cried reading Bob’s Facebook post saying, “I’ve just performed stand-up for the last time,” and watching him try out ?,0*'1/ 1/( ,5 $ %,* eye-operated computers—a process he compared to “picking ,/$*,0$6,8( )($56 )14 6+( 5(05(5 out my own coffin.” In the emergency room, I cried with Bob’s 94; 9,6+ +7/14 $0' 5,<<.,0* 9,6+ partner Michael Zam and our friend, comedian Judy Gold, as 5(:7$.,6; ,7A5 ,//(45,8( 56;.( we prepared ourselves for what might be the end. ($&+ 5(06(0&( $ %4$&,0* 2.70*( For the better part of a year, I couldn’t hold it together ,061 $ .,37(),(' .$0*7$*( $ .$-( watching Bob shuffle down a nursing home’s bleak halls. I +$5 10.; '((2(0(' $0' &.$4,),(' wept quietly while Bob slept next to me on an exhausting flight 5,0&( 6+( ($4.; 21(/5 6+$6 /$'( back from Israel after he was turned down for an experimen- +,5 0$/( $0' 6+( )174 5(37(0&(5 1) ,0*'1/ 1/( 5+19 tal treatment there, and repeatedly on numerous bus rides home +,/ $6 6+( 8(4; 2($- 1) +,5 )14/@ >(8,0 ,..,$0 from Massachusetts General after Bob was rejected from their latest clinical trial because he “wasn’t sick enough yet,” or “could still walk,” or “had been diagnosed too long ago.” I $.,5/$0 %11-5 $4( $8$,.$%.( $6 52'%11-514* /$<10 $0' teared up after every appointment where his emotionally *11' %11-5614(5 (8(4;9+(4( stunted ALS doctor at Columbia shot down Bob’s hopes and,

8Th$ Gay & L$sban R$v$w / oRLd ide FINALISTS FOR THE 2018 LAMBDA LITERARY AWARDS IN THE CATATEGORY OF LGBTQ STUDIES

Unmaking Love The ContemporarryyNNoovel and the Impossibilittyyoff Union

ASHLEY T. SHELDEN

“[A] fascinating and important book that is a pleasuretoread Bob Smith and Eddie Sarfaty ...willhavebroad impact on both literary studies and queer at yet another hospital, when they confirmed he’d never be able theory.” to eat again. —Jane Gallop, Distinguished Professor, I escaped to the bathroom in his apartment and cried the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee first time I couldn’t understand a joke he was trying to tell me. At the show of an artist with ALS who Bob met online, I had to hurry into the next gallery to hide my face after watching the two of them holding hands because that’s all they could do for each other. I wept angrily thinking of every encounter where someone spoke to Bob like a child and each time a friend reached their limit and disappeared from his life. I couldn’t stay composed after phone calls with his mom, remembering that she’d already buried one child. I probably cried the hardest when I felt like shit for losing patience with Bob, for bullying him, and for resenting him. Oddly, now that my friend is gone, it seems right to be done crying. I was unexpectedly calm as we boxed up Bob’s apartment, when I canceled his cable and wrote “DECEASED”onhis The Ethics of Opting Out mail. Surprisingly, I held it together when the postman deliv- Queer Theoryry’sDeeffifiant Subjects ered Bob’s ashes to my door and when his family arrived for his memorial. MARI RUTI Though this evil disease beat Bob, it hardly got the best of him. His optimism, patience and wisecracks gave ALS a bru- “In Opting Out, Ruti asks readers to opt in toacomprehensive tal ass-kicking, which, despite his suffering, was wondrous to discussion of the ethical limits of some of the most provocative claims made in queer theory.” watch. That Bob’s nightmare is over is something to be grate- —Los AngelesReviewof Bookkss ful for and happy about. I’m not naïve; I have no illusions that I’m done with grief. But, I know that no matter how many tears I and everyone else shed for Bob Smith, they’ll come nowhere close to the number of laughs he’s left reverberating around the world.

Eddie Sarfaty, a comedian and writer based in New York City, is the author of Mental: Funny in the Head. He and Bob Smith were mem- CUP.COL UMBIA.EDU bers of the stand-up troupe Funny Gay Males.

May–Jun$ 2018 9 NEW. NOW. BTW WHAT DROWNS THE FLOWERS IN YOUR MOUTH A Memoir of Brotherhood One Billboard Outside Minneapolis The message was sim- RIGOBERTO GONZÁLEZ ple: “MICHELE BACHMANN,NO.—GOD.” However cryptic to outsiders, everyone in Minnesota knew exactly what it meant. With gut-wrenching, skin-close honesty, RigobertoGonzález...offersariveting“ The former congresswoman and darling of the Tea Party had account of the sustaining love between made quite a show of brothers in the midst of raw grief, trauma, deciding whether to and wrenching poverty.” run for the U.S. Sen- —Joy Castro, author of Island of Bones ate seat vacated by Al Franken, telling tele- GIVEN UP FOR YOU vangelist Jim Bakker that she was asking A Memoir of Love, Belonging, and Belief ERIN O. WHITE the Lord for advice. And up went the bill- White’s excellent, often heartbreaking board, complete with an image of a hoary God. When Bach- memoir“ is about how faith and desire intersect—and when an impassible distance mann decided not to run, Minnesota Public Radio ran the remains between them.” headline: “Michele Bachmann: No sign from God so no run for —Lit Hub Senate.” The billboard had been paid for through crowdfunding, so it may be said that not God but the people had spoken.

THE PATERNITY TEST Rope-a-Dope In the ever-growing annals of clergymen caught A Novel in the hot seat, here’s a case in which the hot seat was the front MICHAEL LOWENTHAL seat of a car, where a pastor in Pennsylvania was caught with a “Readers—both gay and straight—will naked young man who was tied up with nylon rope. As so often come away from Lowenthal’s novel with a in these matters, the pastor’s explanation was far more BTW- deeper understanding not only of the ethical issues surrounding surrogacy, but also of the worthy than the original story: “I was counseling a young man ever-evolving gay community.” with a drug problem, okay?” stated Pastor George Gregory of —Publishers Weekly Waterfront Christian Community Church to a reporter with the local CBS affiliate. “It did turn strange, but it wasn’t my doing, okay?” Then he added, artfully enough: “I won’t deny that he SEX TALKS TO GIRLS began to take his clothes off and propositioned me, but I will A Memoir deny, on a stack of Bibles with God as my witness, that I did MAUREEN SEATON nothing.” Get it? “I deny ... that I did nothing.” But we’re prob- “I was swept away with the feisty zeitgeist. ably giving Gregory too much credit here, as he went on to ...ReadingSex Talks to Girls joltedmetoa admit that he and the other man “meet up from time to time to fuller state of awareness.” play with each other”—totally shooting down the bit about —The Rumpus counseling. As for Gregory’s claim that the other man was entirely the instigator while he did nothing to respond, um, there THE BLACK PENGUIN is that small matter of the nylon rope. ANDREW EVANS Just Do It The notion that bondage in a car could be “therapy” The Black Penguin relays the ups and in the last story calls to mind the antics of “ex-gay therapy,” downsofthatjourney,buttheterra“ incognita Evans claims is his own pride.” whose practitioners are known to use bizarre techniques, in- —New York Times Book Review, “Summer’s cluding nudity, in their quest to turn gay people straight. The Best Travel Books” latest case involves one Melvyn Iscove, a 72-year-old psychi- atrist in Toronto who’s been found guilty of having sex with two of his male patients starting in their late teens. It seems Dr. Iscove subscribes to an archaic Freudian idea that homosexual fantasies are repressed desires that need to be brought to the surface—which he interprets to mean: acted out in real life. And press so, the rest of the trial was all about the therapy sessions and how they started with sexual fantasies and ended with sexual re- UWPRESS.WISC.EDU alities (number of times mutually masturbated, had oral sex,

10 Th Gay & Lsban Rvw / oRLdide etc.). Now, the idea that enacting one’s fantasies will make them go away seems wrong on the face of it, though it does bring to NEW FROM THE mind Oscar Wilde’s famous quip: “The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.” He forgot to add that the effect is temporary. In the case at hand, the plaintiffs continued to visit BOOKER PRIZE–WINNER Dr. Iscove for years before concluding that the medicine was- n’t working; their fantasies were as gay as ever. ALAN HOLLINGHURST Ode to Shiller The revolving cast of characters in Trump’s outer orbit hasn’t included too many gay ones, but who could forget Milo Yiannoupolos, the glamorous, openly gay politico who just last year held a powerful position at Breitbart News, got “A SECRET “DEEPLY a $250,000 book deal with Simon & Schuster, and had the ear of HISTORY OF ART PLEASURABLE... you-know-who? But then a tape surfaced in which Milo made light of sex between men and underage boys—that most ra- AND DESIRE.” BEAUTIFUL.” dioactive of topics—and it all collapsed into one big Warholian —VOGUE —HARPER’S heap. Milo had been accepted into that world as the token gay guy who made it seem possible to both look cool and love Trump. So, having lost everything—the news job, the book deal, “A QUEER CLASSIC “FASCINATING, the ear—Milo has resurfaced shilling vitamins on Infowars for SO ACHINGLY MAGISTERIAL... the arch-homophobe conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, whose rants include a recurring hallucination about lesbians killing women POWERFUL, CAPTURES to eat their brains and gay men transmitting HIV as part of a Sa- YOU’LL SAVOR THE NUANCED tanic plot. Meanwhile, in a separate story, Alex Jones is being sued by an ex-staffer named Rob Jacobson for sexual harass- EVERY PAGE.” TEXTURES OF LIFE.” ment over a thirteen-year period, during which Jones’ nickname —ENTERTAINMENT —NPR for Jacobson was “Beefcake.” The latter says in his complaint WEEKLY FRESH AIR that he felt Jones “was grooming me for homosexual sex.” So perhaps Milo was hired at an opportune time for Jones as he explores this new side of himself, who can say?

“How Gay Were the Olympics?” asked a headline in LGBTQ Nation. The easy answer is: the gayest ever. For starters, this time around the athletes came out before the games began. Of the fifteen out Olympians, eleven were lesbians, including U.S. speed skater Brittany Bowe, whose team won Bronze in their final race. Adam Rippon, the flamboyant figure skater who won a Bronze in the team event, became something of a media sensation as he shared his wisdom about competition and life in general on every TV outlet that would listen. Early on in the fortnight, slopestyle skier Gus Kenworthy, who won Silver in 2014, posed for a kiss with his boyfriend on worldwide TV. And here he is on the Ellen show showing off a bruise he received in a fall. As for Ms. DeGeneres’ demeanor, either she’s particularly squeamish about bruises or the nearly naked Ken- worthy is a bit more of an eyeful than she bargained for.

KNOPF

A SWEEPING, MULTI-GENERATIONAL EPIC

May–Jun$ 2018 11 GRAPHIC ESSAY Michelangelo’s Gifts to Tommaso

JAMES M. SASLOW EW YORK’S Metropolitan Museum of Art fresco The School of Athens—a group portrait of their famous recently mounted an unusually large and contemporaries dressed as ancient Greeks—as Heraclitus, the comprehensive exhibition of drawings and “gloomy philosopher,” writing on a sheet of paper propped up on writings by the Renaissance Italian master a sculptor’s block (figure 1). Michelangelo could, of course, be Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475–1564). cranky and depressive. One of his first poems, the autograph of Among the scores of drawings in the exhibi- which was displayed in the exhibition, complains about the dis- Ntion, titled Michelangelo: Divine Draftsman and Designer comfort of frescoing the Sistine Chapel ceiling, at the same time (which closed in February), one group forms an exceptionally that Raphael was painting him into The School of Athens just coherent and unprecedented ensemble of drawings that is only down the hall. Like many sheets from Michelangelo’s hand, it rarely gathered together. combines writing and drawing, in this case a cartoon of himself Between 1532 and 1533, the 57-year-old Michelangelo gave craning his neck awkwardly backward almost ninety degrees to six highly finished drawings on mythological and allegorical paint on the surface over his head. subjects to the art-loving young Roman nobleman Tommaso de’ Michelangelo was the first artist to be so deeply involved Cavalieri, who was the great love of the painter-sculptor-archi- with words as well as pictures, and the greatest until William tect’s long and often solitary life. Soon after they met in Rome, Blake in the late 18th century. For him, text and image were Michelangelo poured out his passionate desire for the excep- complementary weapons in his expressive arsenal: only visual tionally handsome, intelligent twenty-something in both visual imagery could capture the external beauty of one’s beloved, but and verbal arts. He showered Tommaso with dozens of love it took the specificity of words to convey his or her inner qual- poems, often closely related in theme and imagery to the draw- ities, the deeper reasons for emotional connection. I say “his or ings. The Met’s wall labels and Web posts dealt more frankly her” because Michelangelo did write to both men and women, and fully with the homoerotic significance of these works than and he gave drawings to both genders. But the Cavalieri gifts have previous presentations, though space limitations precluded deserve special attention as the first such multi-media love let- an in-depth analysis of this landmark achievement in queer self- ters, and as the first between men—an early landmark in the expression. gradual emergence of minority voices that have flowered fully Michelangelo’s dense cluster of gifts was doubly innova- only in modern times. tive. The so-called “presentation drawings” invented a novel The pictures and poems catalog a wide variety of responses genre: detailed, refined compositions that the artist gave only to his closest friends. These beautiful and elaborate works transformed drawings into an independent art form, not just for dis- posable preparatory sketches, and also into a medium for intimate personal communication. His poetry, too, was original and personal: the first substantial body of verses in a modern language addressed by one man to another. To find a voice for this passion, Michelangelo had to adapt and subvert the familiar tradition of love poetry from man to woman—epitomized by the verses of his literary hero, Francesco Petrarch, in praise of Laura—to address a male beloved. Taken together, these drawings and poems are a multi-layered, achingly honest confession, both a celebration and an analysis of Michelangelo’s intense yet conflicted feelings for Cavalieri. The glimpses that this creative cornucopia gives us into the artist’s psyche, including his intense religiosity, foreshadow the arc of his life and career over his final decades. Few people today know that Michelangelo was a poet as well as a visual artist, but his contemporaries were well aware of his devotion to the written word. As early as 1510, his arch-rival at the Vatican workshops, the painter Raphael, depicted him in his

James M. Saslow is professor emeritus of art history at Queens Col- Fig. 1: Raphael, The School of Athens, 1510, lege, CUNY, in New York City. detail of Michelangelo as Heraclitus.

12 Th Gay & L sban R v w / oRLdide This, lord, has happened to me since I saw you: a bitter sweetness, a yes-and-no feeling moves me; certainly it must have been your eyes.

Beyond the admiration of mortal beauty, deeper mes- sages of the Ganymede drawing are revealed in related poems. Texts and images are closely intertwined, re- calling the complementarity captured in the Roman author Horace’s phrase ut pictura poesis: a poem is like a painting, and vice-versa—two sides of the same psy- chic coin. Although the young, beardless Ganymede would correspond more closely in age and appearance to Cav- alieri, here he stands in for Michelangelo, who swoons in the transcendent grip of Tommaso’s godlike, inspir- ing beauty. In numerous poems, Michelangelo evokes that sense of exaltation, both physical and spiritual, through parallel images of wings and upward flight. This from poem 83: Fig. 2: Michelangelo, Rape of Ganymede, 1532-33 (copy by Giulio Clovio) I see in your beautiful face, my lord, to his infatuation for Cavalieri, from ecstasy to fear to concern what can scarcely be related in this life: for the two men’s public reputations. The first pair of images my soul, although still clothed in its flesh, he sent illustrate his complementary themes: the positive and has already risen often with it to God. negative aspects of love, which can induce both joy and pain, … every beauty seen here [on earth] resembles… rapturous delight and helpless terror. that merciful fountain from which we all derive [i.e., God]; …so he who loves you in faith Embodying the positive side of love is the handsome mor- rises up to God. tal shepherd, Ganymede (figure 2), who caught the amorous attention of Jupiter, the busily bisexual king of the gods. The first In other words, Michelangelo not only delighted in Tommaso’s drawing (of which only a copy survives) depicts Jupiter swoop- physical body, he regarded that sublime beauty as a reflection of ing down to earth, disguised as an eagle, and carrying the youth up to be his heavenly cupbearer and lover. Love’s negative side is represented by the primitive giant Tityus (figure 3), who attempted to rape the goddess Latona, for which he was chained to a rock in the underworld, where a vulture perpetually pecked at his liver. His grisly punishment symbolizes the condemna- tion of uncontrolled or forbidden lust. Presented to his beloved at the outset of their relationship, these paired drawings, and poems linked to them, announce the tragic ambivalence that Michelangelo suffered all his life toward love, toward the earthly beauty that stimulates it, and toward the created beauty of art. As he admitted to Tommaso in poem 76 (his autograph copy of which was in the show):

Fig. 3: Michelangelo, Punishment of Tityus, 1532-33

May–Jun 2018 13 this complex allegory, but that was the point: presentation drawings were designed to provoke careful examination and learned discussion, another form of communion between donor and receiver. On a more poetic plane, however, it shares with The Rape of Ganymede themes of the struggle between carnal and Fig. 4 (left): Giulio Bonasone, Symbolicarum quaestionum…, 1555, spiritual pleasures and the yearning to free the immortal soul emblem no. 78, engraving. from its temporary earthly prison. Fig. 5 (right): Michelangelo, The Dream of Human Life, 1532-33. The longsuffering Tityus represents the opposite pole of de- God’s eternal perfection, an uplifting foretaste of heavenly joy. sire, the lust that expresses itself through the body, not the mind. He imagines love as a ladder, on which the lower rungs of Two kinds of pain overlap in this image: the externally imposed earthly beauty can inspire the lover upward toward a similar but pain of punishment for illicit passion—a particularly resonant more profound union with God. His love for Cavalieri is justi- theme for a man loving another man—and the more internal fied and ennobled by this spiritualizing function. In the drawing, pains any lover feels when his beloved is absent or unrespon- we delight in the vision of a rapturous earthly emotion; in the sive. The poems lament his sense of helplessness: he repeatedly poem, we understand its divine overtones. calls himself a “slave” or “prisoner” of love who is “tortured” Michelangelo’s theory of love grew out of the popular Ren- and “martyred” by frustrated desire. He even puns on the name aissance philosophy of Neoplatonism, which attempted to rec- of the man who inspires this bitter sweetness (in poem 98): oncile Greek tradition and Christian values, often by finding If, to be happy, I must be conquered and chained, allegorical interpretations of pagan myths, especially their erotic it is no wonder that, naked and alone, elements. An engraved copy of his Ganymede (figure 4), made I remain prisoner of an armed cavalier. to illustrate a book of moralizing emblems, shows how these philosophers recognized their ideas in Michelangelo’s image Two further drawings in the Cavalieri series delve deeper and appropriated these ideas to enrich their own tradition. To into other painful consequences of love. In The Archers, Cupid them, the name “Ganymede” derives from the Greek words for naps in the foreground while his surrogate army of bowmen aim “enjoyment of the intellect,” and the mythic shepherd symbol- their unseen arrows into a male herm, a carved symbol of eros izes the pure, innocent soul drawn heavenward by the love of and fertility. Arrows and darts were conventional Petrarchan God, while the dog below stands for base earthly desires left metaphors for the hurtful pangs of desire; their fearful power is behind in that enraptured ascent. evoked in this sketch through a dozen Ganymede-esque nudes, Similarities of both form and content connect the Ganymede all piercing the helpless male with a burning desire that’s also to another of the Cavalieri drawings, The Dream of Human Life manifest in this poem (74): (figure 5), which also illustrates Neoplatonic ideals about the Who else is there who lives only on his death, soul’s ascent to the divine, aided by beauty. The thematic link As I do, on suffering and pain? is underscored visually by the central male nude, similar in body Oh, cruel archer, you know just the moment ... type and pose to Ganymede (four of the drawings feature vari- ations of this same smooth-faced muscleman). The swirling, In the drawing titled A Bacchanal of Children (figure 6), dreamlike figures around him represent the seven deadly sins, Michelangelo depicts a crowd of uncontrolled, cupid-like in- such as gluttony, avarice, and lust. A winged spirit, personify- fants indulging in riotous behaviors. One group at upper right ing beauty and chaste love, hovers over the youth with a trum- drinks from a huge vat of wine, while one of them urinates into pet, awakening him from worldly temptations to a transcendent a dish. A group at left fan the flames beneath a boiling cauldron, spiritual life. It is difficult to find a precise, literal meaning for while others struggle with a writhing wild beast. These crea-

14 Th$ Gay & L$sban R$v$w / oRLd ide tures stand for bodily instincts, de- tragic failure. void of reason, animalistic, like the As with any romantic drama, foreground figures, a half-goat satyr we all want to know how it turned mother at the left, and a naked man out in the end. Unfortunately, the passed out from drink. Phaeton drawing was prophetic: This nightmarish fantasy encap- Michelangelo’s ecstatic and terri- sulates Michelangelo’s moral fying passion gradually faded, as dilemma: he was torn between his it had to, for reasons of official desire for passionate union with an- morality and class barriers. As his other man and his deeply religious poems and pictures show, to fear that such passion could get out Michelangelo and his contempo- of control. He felt guilt and self- raries, the ultimate goal of this doubt because the Christian culture mortal life is to raise the inner soul he’d internalized labeled any phys- toward an ecstatic union with God, ical intimacy between men as not with humankind, regardless of sodomy, condemned as both a sin gender. In this struggle, mind must and a crime. No wonder he defen- triumph over matter, the spirit over sively denied several accusations of the body. sodomy and insisted in his poetry The artist’s last forty poems do that his love was “chaste” and “hon- not address either love or art, ex- est.” When rumors about the purity cept to disparage them as trivial of his intentions reached Cavalieri, pursuits, distractions from the quest a poem reassured him not to listen for sanctity and salvation, which Fig. 6: Michelangelo, A Bacchanal of Children, 1532-33 to such hypocrites, because (poem grew ever more consuming as the 83): “the evil, cruel, and stupid rabble/ point the finger at oth- artist lived on into his late eighties. At the end of his life, he re- ers for what they feel themselves.” Understandably, then, Cav- nounced both of his lifetime passions. He rejected art as “laden alieri was anxious about public exposure of his love gifts. He with error” and dismissed love as “gay and foolish,” concluding wrote to Michelangelo after a powerful Medici cardinal insisted (poem 285): on having the drawings copied, lamenting that “I did all I could Neither painting nor sculpture will be able any longer to save the Ganymede [from being copied].” To calm my soul, now turned toward that divine love A final drawing, actually a series of three, highlights a more That opened his arms on the cross to take us in. internal kind of fear: the anxiety a lover feels that his painful longing may be met with indifference or rejection. The sketch- Though the arms of Ganymede gave way to those of Jesus, ier first draft bears a written request to Tommaso either to send Cavalieri remained a lifelong friend, and even a colleague, com- it back if he doesn’t like it, or to ap- pleting Michelangelo’s designs for prove it for completion—suggesting the Capitoline Hill in Rome and com- that these compositions were not sur- forting him on his deathbed in 1564. prise gifts but rather, like the shared His native city, Florence, staged a conversations about their meanings, grand funeral. Among the large tem- something of a collaborative effort porary canvases erected to commem- between creator and receiver. orate his many achievements was one Phaeton, a child of the sun-god depicting Michelangelo crowned by Apollo, begged his father for per- Apollo and the Muses for his literary mission to drive the great horse- accomplishments. Now a long- drawn chariot of the sun, a herculean bearded elder, he is still shown pen- task for which the mortal adolescent ning verses on paper, just as Raphael was unfit (figure 7). Apollo regret- had portrayed him half a century ear- fully consented, and, predictably lier. His greatest fame remains his vi- enough, the arrogant youth careened sual art, but his writing was a serious wildly through the heavens until avocation, essential to appreciating Jupiter, higher still, resolved the cri- his most personal visual works. sis by toppling Phaeton with a thun- Michelangelo knew his older compa- derbolt. The ill-fated youth’s sin is triot Leonardo da Vinci, who was also hubris—overweening pride and am- a prolific writer; so perhaps he also bition—a vehicle for Michelangelo’s knew, and certainly would have con- sense of presumptuousness in daring curred with, Leonardo’s pithy decla- to “fall for” the godlike Tommaso. It ration: “Painting is poetry that is seen is as if to say: I fear that my love for Fig. 7: Michelangelo, The Fall of Phaeton, first version rather than felt, and poetry is painting you may end only in frustration and (British Museum), 1532-33 that is felt rather than seen.”

May–Jun$ 2018 15 ESSAY A Certain Gorgeous Bleakness

JAMES CASSELL AKING ART is difficult. Doing it when Aaron Burr, and the nephew of American author Gore Vidal. In you’re struggling with an illness you ways similar to Vidal, he considered all of this to be a very mixed know is going to kill you is a higher level blessing. He sought to make his way as a painter largely inde- of achievement. “How do I embrace this pendently of his social connections. This extended to numerous thing and make it OK, or make myself periods in his short artistic career as he struggled to pay the rent able to live with it and produce and go on on his rundown apartments that doubled as studios. Mfrom there? How do I live every day with despair?” wrote At first glance, a Steers painting is a tipoff that all is not painter Hugh Auchincloss Steers after he was diagnosed with right in the world. AIDS is often lurking, but to suggest that his HIV at age 25. The answer was: by constantly painting canvases paintings are solely about his own illness—a death sentence for depicting men who are ill, men in partial or complete undress, thousands of mostly gay and bisexual men in this period—is to ambiguously intimate in their private spaces. Steers did this for miss their broader significance. At the same time seeing them the remaining seven years of his life, almost up to the day he strictly through a political lens is equally reductive. If anything, died: March 1, 1995. as figurative paintings, they were anomalous if not retrograde at The raw force and beauty of Steers’ figurative painting is on a time—the 1980s and ’90s—when the fashion was more to- display in a solo exhibition of work not shown previously, at ward conceptual and performance art, or photography, as illus- Alexander Gray Associates through July 27th. The Chelsea trated by the popularity of Robert Mapplethorpe. Steers was gallery, which represents the artist’s estate, last exhibited Steers’ attuned to the art that was in vogue, but he was doggedly com- work in 2015. In fall 2017, two of the artist’s works were in- mitted to representational art and to depicting the male figure in cluded in AIDS at Home: Art and Everyday Activism, an exhibit a centuries-old tradition of the great masters, such as Caravag- at the Museum of the City of New York. In 2015, Visual AIDS, gio, Velázquez, and Goya (whose influence is evident in his a New York-based organization dedicated to HIV/AIDS aware- work), and of more recent artists like Edward Hopper and David ness through visual art projects, published Park. In a 1992 interview, Steers commented Hugh Steers: The Complete Paintings, Although the figures in on the mood in his paintings: “I think I’m in 1983–1994, a comprehensive look at Steers’ Hugh Auchincloss Steers’ the tradition of a certain kind of American work with accompanying essays, including artist—artists whose work embodies a cer- author Cynthia Carr’s profile of the artist. paintings are sick and tain gorgeous bleakness.” Carr discusses Steers’ artistic influences vulnerable, they are One of the bitter ironies of the AIDS epi- as well as the complexity of his personal his- imbued with a physicality, demic is that it began at the end of the very tory and the troubled relationships he had an erotic fire. decade, the 1970s, when gay men had cre- with his family despite his glamorous WASP ated a community for the first time, and on pedigree. As a gay man at Hotchkiss, an exclusive boarding a large scale. Gay liberation, though its roots ran farther back, school in Connecticut, Steers felt alienated. The friendships he essentially came out of the radical politics and cultural usurpa- made there were mostly with women who also felt as though tions of the previous decade. It flowered with Stonewall and in they were on the outside looking in. One new classmate came the fervor of gay pride celebrations on Castro Street, in the Vil- to Hotchkiss from a school in Madrid. On her first day, she fol- lage, and in other large urban centers. Gay publications such as lowed the custom of not bringing books into the dining room. The Blade in Washington, The Advocate, which originated in Seeing this, Steers went over to her and said, “You dropped your Los Angeles, and San Francisco’s Gay Sunshine emerged to books with such panache. I have to meet you.” Carr reports they meet the interests of a growing audience. A new, openly gay lit- became best friends. erature arose with books by young writers, such as Andrew Born in Washington, D.C., to Nina Gore Auchincloss and Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance and Edmund White’s Noc- Newton Steers, a mutual funds entrepreneur and later a U.S. turnes for the King of Naples. Congressman from Maryland, Steers grew up in the affluent sub- Tribalism had been an element of hippie sit-ins and be-ins urban enclave of Bethesda, Maryland. He was a graduate of and other gatherings in the ’60s. Parks were filled with young Hotchkiss and Yale, the grandson of financier Hugh D. Auchin- men and women dancing to guitars and drums, the air thick with closs, who owned Hammersmith Farm in Newport and who was incense and marijuana smoke. A little later, hordes of shirtless also the stepfather of Jackie Kennedy (Steers and JFK Jr. played gay and bisexual men would lose themselves in the crowd at together in Newport in the summer), a descendant of statesman all-night discos or flock to the beaches at Fire Island for entire weekends. Steers’ work, with its allegorical references—some James Cassell is a painter and visual arts writer who lives in Silver of the figures wear paper bags over their heads; black cats and Spring, MD. He last wrote about artist Martin Wong in these pages. crows enter these spaces—is a reminder of how drastically

16 Th$ Gay & L$sban R$v$w / oRLd ide men in relation to one another, is antithetical to the crowd euphoria of the pre-AIDS period. A Steers painting isn’t about “us”; it’s more about “you and I.” Nor is it about the anonymity of the baths or the music- and drug-induced highs of the bars. These men are fenced in, their lives intersect; they are con- signed to one another. They are lovers, or have been; or perhaps they were acquaintances brought together because, as a result of being sick, they were going broke. In many cases they appear to be dying. They inhabit a multi-layered emotional zone very different from that of the packed dance floors or the sun- drenched beaches of a few years before. The paintings draw the viewer into a private space: a bare room with a bed, or a bathroom with a tub, sometimes the old-fash- ioned clawfoot style, a symbol of luxury in the Victorian era. In many American cities you can Hugh Auchincloss Steers, Bath Curtain, 1992 still find them: in gritty, unreno- things would change. AIDS was sending men back into isolation vated apartment buildings, like the ones Steers lived and worked and darkness. The tribe was splintering. Does so-and-so have in, tubs left over from the early 20th century when the build- “it”? Could I catch it from him? These were questions that peo- ings were constructed. In Steers’ paintings, the “claws” can ple, both gay and straight, were asking themselves in the early seem animated and menacing. years of the epidemic. In Bath Curtain (1992), for example, a man in white under- The mood in Steers’ paintings, which usually involve two wear sits on a toilet, his back arched toward the bathtub. His wrists are thin in contrast to his thick, muscular torso. He is holding the hand of the man who lies in the bath, his face shrouded by a white shower curtain, his arms and one shoulder visible. The large (64- by 72-inch) painting’s composition di- vides the space diagonally so that the figure of the seated man pushes left into the viewer’s space, echoing Pierre Bonnard’s many great “bath” paintings that divide or flatten the plane, such as Large Nude in the Bathtub from 1924. But while Bonnard’s figures often have a kind of muted emotionality, Bath Curtain is infused with a tenderness wrung out of suffering. The love between the seemingly healthier seated man and the leaner one bathing is palpable. The influence of Bonnard can also be seen in Steers’ color palette, in the intermixing and soft suffusion of pale yellow, green, and violet tones on the windowsill, tub, and tiled floor. Yet there is a key difference. Bonnard’s female figures blend in with the walls and the other objects in the picture, as seen in Large Nude, while in Steers’ Bath Curtain, the harsh, hot, orange-red and brown flesh tones of the bent figure’s back are in opposition to the low-key colors of the surroundings. George Bellows’ boxing pictures come to mind, and also the use of a vibrant red for skin tones by Marsden Hartley, as in his Christ Hugh Auchincloss Steers in his studio Held by Half-Naked Men (1940–41), a painting that also has a

May–Jun$ 2018 17 strong thematic connection to Steers’ Bath Curtain. Although the figures in his paintings are sick and vulnera- Steers said this about his work: “A lot of my art has to do ble, they are imbued with a physicality, an erotic fire. AIDS is with that primal idea of drawing a painting of the hunt on the ruining their bodies and impairing their mental faculties, yet de- side of the cave. ... It’s like a conjuring. I would like to be able spite this loss of power, there is defiance, affirmation—even a to act or have someone care about me the way some of the peo- sexual affirmation. You can see it in numerous paintings in ple in my paintings act or care about each other. It’s as if paint- which a figure is wearing high heels. Steers had an interest in ing it will make it become real.” drag from a young age and used it symbolically as an antidote to defeat. An earlier oil on cardboard, Title unknown (ca. 1985), shows two pairs of bright red stilettos side Oh, This Was a Long Time Ago, by side. In one, a ripe pear appears in the foreground; in the other, the heel point of one of the shoes is stuck When I Was a Vampire in a jar of Vaseline. Steers wrote: “Shoes like that are an amazing thing. They are so structured and there’s for Sukie an architectural quality to them. They’re culture run There’s that picture of the two of us, me wild, and yet they’re linked to a very sexual quality.” Even in the late 1980s, the trappings of trans- and Lynda, posed and paused mid-quip, vestism were not always met with open arms, whether our younger skin paler than the paper on which in the gay world or the straight world. In 1994, the the photo is printed. We looked more than a little year before Steers died, he commented to art critic bemused and astounded. Wasted. Was it the hour? Holland Cotter that the commercial gallery that had Were the drugs wearing off? Perhaps it was the flash’s been showing his work in the ’80s was finding his brightening effect, betraying our modesty, the false more recent “I’m-gonna-wear-heels-and-fuck-you” attitude less acceptable. Steers subsequently began flattery of recognition. Who? Us? Really? We wore exhibiting with maverick gallerist Richard Anderson, a similarly staggered expression when we first saw who risked showing up-and-coming artists and was the photo, wrongly convinced that the photographer’s more receptive to the way that Steers’ no-holds-barred lens would never be able to capture our illustrious work was evolving. visages, evasive and precious as they were, in or out In Man and IV (1994), another large (65- by 47- offocus. You can also read disappointment on our inch) canvas, a tall, thin man wearing a white hospital gown that comes up well above his knees stands in features, the same startled manifestation as when white stilettos, hands on his hips, an IV attached to we glided past gilded mirrors certain that we had no his forearm. He stares down the viewer in such a way reflection. Who could that be then with my waxed as to say something like, “Yeah, I’m sick, and it and curled mustache, forelock, wide eyes and saucer sucks. But I’m not done.” Gender studies professor pupils, trademark nose-ring, wooden rosary bead James Smalls, in one of the essays in the Visual AIDS necklace, vintage vest and only one chin? When Lynda monograph on his œuvre, mentions that Steers saw the figure in this painting, part of the artist’s “Hospi- said we were vampires, no one believed it as much tal Man” series, as “a superhero fighting for the sex- as we did. But it takes more than donning pitch ual rights of the sick.” black clothes and hanging a vial of blood on a heavy At the end of his life, despite many friendships silver chain around the neck. So she sharpened her with both sexes, and having had intimacies with men sturdy nails into claws, routinely avoided sunlight, who might be described as lovers, Steers regretted kohled her eyelids, darkened her lips, over-dyed her that he had never had a “romantic” relationship. He was also quoted as saying that he never felt at home straight hair a gloomy shade of ink, thinned her frame, in the world, so it wasn’t that hard to leave. As a pos- and learned to stare through anyone who dared cross sible explanation, Carr mentions a line from Uncle our path. We only singed a little around the edges Gore’s Palimpsest: “None of us brought up in a when crawling through the grimy, pot-holed alleys world of such crude publicness tends to trust much behind smoke-choked bars en route to the nearest of anyone, while those who mean to prevail soon subway station, elevated train platform or taxi stand learn the art of distancing the self from dangerous involvements.” as sunrise threatened to erase us and the night, our ears What Steers did trust was painting. “There’s noth- ringing with gothic lyrics and music. Sleep the next ing like an exceptionally good passage of paint to murky act in the play we were writing even as we make me feel good,” he said. When he died, his ashes performed it for anyone willing to be a captive audience were divided, with some scattered at Newport, an- member, to applaud at precisely the right moment. other portion in Narragansett Bay. The remaining ashes were placed, along with his brushes and paints, GREGG SHAPIRO inside his painter’s box, which was buried in the Auchincloss plot at the cemetery.

18 Th$ Gay & L$sban R$v$w / oRLd ide ESSAY Of Maine, Men, and Marsden Hartley

PHILIP CLARK NE OF THE BEST-KNOWN images of The Lynes photograph is remarkable, but it is only a par- Marsden Hartley (1877–1943) comes to us tial truth. Hartley’s melancholy nature never left him, but by through the lens of the great gay photogra- 1943, he was not likely to be seen wearing a suit, cigarette in pher George Platt Lynes in a photograph from hand, in a New York photo studio, the picture of an urban(e) 1943, shortly before Hartley’s death. Hartley if rumpled artist. And yet, there was a time when this image slumps in a chair, his body casting massive would have been appropriate. Let’s go back to 1909, when Oshadows under the influence of Lynes’ harsh lighting. Hart- Hartley met famed photographer Alfred Stieglitz and soon had ley’s most marked (and remarked upon) physical feature—his his first show at Stieglitz’ pioneering 291 Gallery. Living in large, liquid eyes—appear haunted, his head resting heavily New York City, he became a leading Modernist painter with on one hand. works in the 1913 Armory Show and exhibitions at various Photographic historian Allen Ellenzweig draws a connec- galleries. He pursued a variety of artistic styles, from a version tion between subject and photographer, as Lynes had recently of Post-Impressionism to pure abstraction before developing lost his lover George Tichenor during World War II. Hartley, a unique style that combined realistic subject matter—mostly for his part, had experienced the death of a beloved World War figurative or landscape—with an often dreamlike intensity. I German officer, which inspired his most famous works, a se- Frequently on the move, Hartley had significant sojourns ries of abstract, symbolic object-portraits known as the throughout his career: in Berlin, Bavaria, Paris, Mexico, New “Berlin” paintings. In the background, a young male model Mexico, Bermuda, and Massachusetts. But he always returned leans against the wall just outside Hartley’s shadow, echoing to New York. the dual loss. After all that, he chose to go home to Maine in 1937, where he painted a variety of the state’s archetypal features in scenes of mountains, waves, rocky coastlines, lighthouses, and threatened industries like logging and lobster fishing. These are the years in Hartley’s career—along with an early period around 1910 that was similar thematically, if not stylistically—that are emphasized in the 2017 exhibition Marsden Hartley’s Maine , which was held at the Met Breuer in New York City and at the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine. The show and its accompanying catalog are impressive achievements in that they manage to hint perceptively at Hartley’s massive range of styles and subjects, even while restricting themselves to se- lections from his years in Maine. Although his very earliest paintings—direct portrayals of the woods and of Walt Whitman’s house in Camden—are straight realism and use restrained colors, Hartley quickly adopted the Italian Giovanni Segantini’s stitched brushstroke, whereby threads of contrasting colors create rich textures when laid down side-by-side. His depictions of Maine’s mountains and foliage using this method are riots of color, from bright yellows to deep purples. They have not always im- pressed critics—Clement Greenberg referred to them dismis- sively as a “fling at the high palette of the later impressionists and of the fauves”—but their visual verve dominates the Met Breuer exhibit’s early rooms. At the opposite extreme, Hartley’s “Dark Mountain” pictures foreshadow the onset of stylistic changes. The subject matter is still realistic, but the colors are muddy, and abstracted George Platt Lynes’s photo of Marsden Hartley, 1943 tree trunks loom and sway over tiny farmhouses. Scholar Jonathan Weinberg points out that Stieglitz, Hartley’s longtime Philip Clark is at work on a biography of gay publisher and First dealer, once said that Hartley contemplated suicide during the Amendment pioneer H. Lynn Womack. painting of the “Dark Mountain” series, and no other paintings

May–Jun$ 2018 19 in Hartley’s career are as obviously emo- phasis on regionalism in the 1930s art tionally turbulent. By the time of such Marsden Hartley’s Maine world also made “rootedness” a virtue. works as Landscape No. 14 (1909) and De- At the Met Breuer, New York City Hartley positioned himself as “the painter sertion (1910), bright colors and obvious March 15–June 18, 2017 of Maine,” with his most famous late se- representationalism had lost ground after a quence featuring the imposing bulk of Exhibition Catalog brief period of dominance. Even paintings Mount Katahdin juxtaposed against the that retain patches of Fauvist color, like by Donna M. Cassidy, Elizabeth ephemeral tableaux of the shifting sea- Kezar Lake, Autumn Evening or Untitled Finch, and Randall R. Griffey sons. Writing in the show’s catalog, Ran- (Maine Landscape)—two paintings both 184 pages, $50. dall R. Griffey proposes that this from 1910—feature rapid, dense, smeared “recurring focus in the late work on per- brushwork that push Hartley toward the abstract. manence and monumentality ... evokes Hartley’s own aspira- While Hartley followed this road to purer abstraction—as tion to achieve high stature and a far-reaching legacy as an can be seen in the critically acclaimed Berlin sequence par- artist.” Meanwhile, the seasonal focus may reflect Hartley’s tially inspired by his German lover’s death—he returned to the knowledge that his time was fleeting as he became older and representational later in his career. Hartley spent time in Nova suffered regular illnesses. These portraits of the mountain— Scotia in 1935 and 1936, boarding with the Mason family, remote, lonely, and isolated, often presented in rough-hewn, whose two sons Hartley was certainly in love with and whom unvarnished wood frames—certainly echo Hartley’s own self- he memorialized in a series of paintings following their tragic perceptions during this period. drowning deaths in a boating accident. This period was fol- The Mount Katahdin paintings were just some of Hartley’s lowed by his full-time return to Maine, where he settled in iconographic views of his native state, many of which empha- Portland before moving around the state to live and work in his size an archaic version of Maine. He often presented life in final six years. Maine as he wished it were still being lived rather than as it ap- His return seems partly motivated by the benefits it could peared during the 1930s. In their introduction, curators Donna have for his painting career, though Hartley also identified M. Cassidy, Elizabeth Finch, and Randall R. Griffey write that deeply with the Maine landscape. As a career move, an em- Hartley “observed Maine as an outsider always returning, as a traveler remembering his birthplace.” This meant that the influence of machines was excised, as when “paintings of woodlots and log drives allude to the lumber industry, with dramatic views of nature touched by workers, but no sign of the mills.” Mas- sive piles of logs are shown next to a simple hatchet (Abundance, 1939-40), a pair of hands grapples with thick ropes (Knotting Rope, 1939-40), or a group of lobstermen cluster near their traps (Lobster Fisher- men, 1940-41). These paintings serve to depict an ide- alized vision of pre-industrialized Maine, a place where hearty, masculine workers struggle with the natural environment. In these works, Hartley profited by being able to include homoerotic elements without attracting negative attention. The ideology of the common man in the 1930s, so often seen in the era’s WPA paintings and murals, helped to mask homoerotic content, sub- sumed beneath images of manly ruggedness and strength. Contemporary critics referred to his paintings as “masculine,” “primitive,” or “national.” Even paintings tightly focused on the male body, such as the stripped-down boxer of Madawaska—Acadian Light-Heavy (1940), did not provoke comment on Hartley’s sexuality. He benefited from reluctance to address sexuality as a possible element in his work, assuming critics were not entirely blind to it. Hartley did his part to encourage this critical reac- tion. For example, ignored his model William Moo- nan’s built but slim physique, instead turning him into the bear-like, aggressively muscled and masculine Flaming American (Swim Champ) (1939-40). Paul Cezanne’s Bather was an obvious prototype for Marsden Hartley’s Canuck Yankee Lumberjack at Old Orchard Beach, 1940–41 Canuck Yankee Lumberjack at Old Orchard Beach

20 Th$ Gay & L$sban R$v$w / oRLd ide (1940-41), but Hartley’s depiction is bulked-up, tanned, hir- ployed, giving them his own deep blue eyes, as is especially sute, and transformed into a monumental representation of an pronounced in Young Seadog with Friend Billy (1942). Thus American worker—even while wearing nothing but skimpy as he neared his life’s end, Hartley found an imaginative way bathing trunks. In paintings like Young Hunter Hearing Call to to become one of the manly young workers who populate much Arms (1939) and Down East Young Blades (1940), Hartley cre- of his late output. ated simplified, stylized versions of New England folk types. Even during his period of greatest success following his re- These paintings allowed him to focus on male bodies while tak- turn to Maine, Hartley was never convinced that his work was ing advantage of the patriotic cover provided by his glorifica- adequately appreciated. Constant complaints to Stieglitz about tion of working men and their labors. slow sales were a major factor in the end of Although the vast majority of the works their business relationship in 1937. The on display are landscapes, and the exhibit’s The ideology of the move to Maine enhanced his fame, induc- focus on Maine did not permit inclusion of common man in the 1930s ing museums such as the Metropolitan and the Berlin officer paintings, Marsden Hart- helped to mask the the Whitney in New York and the Phillips ley’s Maine addresses his homosexuality homoerotic content of Collection in Washington, D.C., to purchase throughout. While much of the work on dis- significant works, but it also displaced him play was inspired by the outdoor scenes of Hartley’s works. from the center of the art world in New York his region, he also had a fondness for paint- City and added to his feelings of loneliness ing young men in their element—outdoors, often in abbrevi- and bitterness. Nevertheless, whatever his personal struggles, ated attire or almost nude. Indeed, the “coverboy” for this he was vital artistically to the very end. His death in 1943 at age exhibition, Canuck Yankee Lumberjack, shows one such man in 66 prevents our seeing how an artist who was often one of the his prime, who seems to be taking a day off at the beach, clad most experimental pre-World War II American painters might only in a brief bathing suit. The influence of Hartley’s sexual- have adapted to the drastic shifts of the postwar period. The ity is particularly noted on his late male semi-nudes and paint- trajectory of his work as seen in Marsden Hartley’s Maine sug- ings inspired by the death of the Mason brothers. The catalog gests he would have navigated this new world with depth and notes Hartley’s self-identification with the models he em- intelligence.

ART MEMO On Being Changed by a John Wieners Poem

STEVI-LEE ALVER With its impeccable phrasing and powerful pears,” steers us toward the conclusion juxtapositions, this compact poem paints that he has been diagnosed “insane” due to FTER DISCOVERING the writ- vivid images of the nightmarish experience homosexual tendencies, and that he’s been ings of Boston- and San Fran- of homosexuality, mental illness, drug ex- receiving ECT to treat his sexual orienta- Acisco-based poet John Wieners perimentation, and institutionalization in tion, which isn’t working. (1939– 2002), I was left with a sense of mid-20th-century America. For me, the This piece of information, presented literary regret: Where have you been all words appear on paper as though they without self-pity, as just a fact, is never- my life? I knew that, from then on, my should be whispered, establishing a sense theless a romantic image of peaceful writing would not escape Wieners’ influ- of trust between the speaker and the reader. openness, which both contrasts and res- ence. My poetry would aspire to pay hom- The poem invites us into the darkness of onates with the shock of the first stanza. age to his subtle style, which embodies Wieners’ tumultuous reality. Though whis- The last line takes the beauty of men to postmodern detachment while painting pered, it is whispered with authority. This the heavens and perhaps refers to a psy- emotionally rich symbolic landscapes in a 27-word poem forces the reader to project chedelic experience, or perhaps to a modestly understated light. his or her own experiences, values, and in- dream of escape. The forward in Wieners’ Selected Poems: ferences of meaning in interpreting the John Wieners, during his tormented 1958-1984 was written by Allen Ginsberg. poem. It serves as an example of the poet’s life, viewed words as if they were bricks So, inevitably, I found myself comparing conviction that there is no one true or cor- and went about building his home out of Wieners’ poetry to that of Ginsberg, particu- rect way to experience a text. language, creating and existing in a lin- larly to Howl. Many of Wieners’ much In the first stanza, the intense images of guistically constructed reality. In his sparser poems evoke all the personal and hollow eyes and electric sockets produce a personal journal, he described his rela- political struggle of Ginsberg’s work. A per- tortured heaviness indicative of mental ill- tionship with language in this way: “If I fect example is Wieners” pithy poem “Two ness (perhaps drug-induced), the inhu- cannot speak in poetry, it is because Years Later,” which reads in full: mane treatment of the mentally ill, and the poetry is reality to me, and not the poetry standard practice of electroconvulsive we read, but find revealed in the estates of The hollow eyes of shock remain therapy (ECT) at this time. Again, a simi- being around us.” Electric sockets burnt out in the lar theme can be found in Ginsberg’s skull Howl. Even in isolation, this first stanza is Stevi-Lee Alver, currently based in Brazil, The beauty of men never disappears vividly striking and powerful, but the sec- is a poet whose work has appeared in Aus- But drives a blue car through the ond stanza is the coup de grâce. The first tralia and the U.S. Her chapbook Cactusin stars. line, “The beauty of men never disap- was published in 2016.

May–Jun$ 2018 21 GRAPHIC ESSAY David Hockney’s Great Yes to Life

STEVEN F. D ANSKY AVID HOCKNEY: An Exhibition is a global East Yorkshire, 2011 (twenty eleven) (figure 1), dominated the event, and it is the most comprehensive ret- lobby. The work, which depicts different aspects of spring, is on rospective ever devoted to the eighty-year-old 32 canvasses and measures twelve by 32 feet. Hockney has gifted artist’s career. The exhibition is mounted on a the painting, valued at $27 million, to the museum. grand scale, with more than 250 pieces, ranging from his early sketches made in the 1960s HOCKNEY’S WORK is a visual discourse on same-sex desire. Dthrough video installations constructed in 2015. There are pre- Coming out as gay as a 23-year-old student at London’s Royal viously unseen pieces, but also the works that made him fa- College of Art, he made sexual orientation an explicit theme in mous—double-portrait paintings, intimate homoerotic shower all of his early works, such as the four Love paintings (1960), scenes, L.A. swimming pools, and massive landscapes from the Queer (1960), and the etching Queen (1961). Each contains Grand Canyon and Mulholland Drive to the Yorkshire Wolds. autobiographical references to his crushes, fantasies, and yearn- The exhibition is a collaboration among three institutions: ings, often with alphanumeric codes, à la Whitman, that thinly the Tate in Britain, the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, and disguised a subject’s identity. In David Hockney (1981), by the Met in New York. The Tate announced when the exhibition Marco Livingstone, he commented: “I think it was both propa- closed that it had been seen by half a million visitors. There are ganda in the ordinary sense of the word, it was cheeky, and there two exhibition catalogs, one published by the Pompidou, edited was also an element of just ordinary excitement that you could by Didier Ottinger, the other by the Tate, edited by Chris deal with these things, that you’d reached a point where you Stephens and Andrew Wilson. To coincide with the exhibition, could make paintings about these things for yourself.” The Taschen published David Hock- ney Sumo, a signed collector’s edition more than two feet wide with a designer bookstand. Hockney is best known as a painter, to be sure, but he has also worked as a book illustrator, a photographer, a printmaker, a stage designer, and a videogra- pher. He has experimented with emerging technologies from the Polaroid to the iPad, including innovative video installations projected onto enormous screens conceived as a journey through Fig. 1 (above): David Hockney, The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate, East York- shire, 2011 (twenty eleven) the four seasons. Hockney’s œuvre is immense, spanning nearly Fig. 2 (below): David Hockney, We Two Boys Together Clinging, 1961 five decades and encompassing hundreds of one-man exhibitions and a hundred books and exhibition catalogs—including Dog Days (1998), a book of paintings and drawings of his dachs- hunds, and the thoroughly researched Secret Knowledge: Redis- covering the Lost Techniques of the Old Masters (2001). He has been the subject of various documentaries, such as The Illusion of Depth with illusionists Penn and Teller and The Colors of Music, a PBS “American Masters” episode. And, in 2014, he painted BMW Art Car, which is included in the auto manufac- turer’s art collection. Monumentality defines much of Hockney’s vision: making art on a gigantic scale; a fascination for the spectacular; epic pieces that force the viewer back from the work in order to see it. At the Pompidou, his painting The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate,

Steven F. Dansky has been an activist, documentarian, and writer for more than fifty years.

22 Th Gay & Lsban Rvw / oRLdide writing: “Water is the driving force of all nature.” The Bigger Splash (1967), which uses water to encapsulate the zeitgeist of L.A., is one of his best-known paintings. It delineates the result of an unseen diver’s leap from a diving board into a blue pool, disturbing the surface of the water. In David Hockney: Seven Paintings,anex- hibition catalog by Catherine Kinley, the artist ex- plained his brushstroke process: “The splash itself is painted with small brushes and little lines. ... It took me about two weeks to paint. ... When you photograph a splash, you’re freezing a moment and it becomes something else. I realize that a splash could never be seen this way in real life, it happens too quickly. And I was amused by this, so I painted it in a very, very slow way.” His brushstrokes became emblematic and have a per- formative function, recording the creative process of painting. They’ve been described by Christopher Simon Sykes as “French marks.” In Sykes’ David Hockney: The Biography (1975-2012), Hockney explains: “I thought the one thing the French were marvelous at, the great French painters, was making beautiful marks. Picasso can’t make a bad mark, Dufy makes beautiful marks, Matisse makes beautiful marks.” The French marks, Hockney’s signature Fig. 3: David Hockney, Divine, 1979 brushstrokes, are evident in the background of his Divine (1979, figure 3), a portrait of the actor (Harris Milstead) Third Love Painting (1960) incorporates graffiti from the made famous in John Waters’ films Pink Flamingos (1972) and Earl’s Court underground station restroom walls with such Female Trouble (1974), among others. lines as “ring me anytime at home” and “come on david admit it,” which surround a pink phallic form in the foreground. In We Two Boys Together Clinging (1961, figure 2), featuring two popsicle-like figures, he incorporates a line from Whit- man’s poem of the same name: “Power enjoying—elbows stretching—fingers clutching, Arm’d and fearless—eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.” In Adhesiveness (1960), whose title is likewise drawn from Whitman—his term for intimacy between two men—there are two crudely painted figures in 69 position, fitted together like a jigsaw puzzle. In Doll Boy (1961), a representational figure emerges rather than an abstract shape, a discernible male singer with musical notes streaming whim- sically from his mouth. The number 3.18 in the painting trans- lates as Cliff Richard (coded as CR in Queen), a rock ’n’ roll singer, England’s Elvis Presley, a heartthrob who was routinely mobbed at concerts by swooning fans. Hockney was infatuated with the singer and pinned photographs of him onto the panels of his cubicle at RCA.

HOCKNEY APPROACHES THE CANVAS as an arena in which to perform. In a short, seemingly uncomplicated video installation, he paints the words “Love Life” (2017) with a large, chiseled paintbrush dipped into a paint tray, and then unpretentiously signs it. This is Hockney doing artistic performance as have other artists, such as Jackson Pollack’s dance-like action painting in the Autumn Rhythm Number 30 (1950), or Keith Haring’s subway graffiti painting, such as when he spray-painted Fiorucci Walls (1983) in Milan in a two-day TV performance. Reminiscent of Leonardo da Vinci, the representation of water is an obsession and a conundrum for Hockney. In his Notebooks, da Vinci listed 64 words for the way water moves,

May–Jun$ 2018 23 Fig. 4: David Hockney, Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, 1968

IN ADDITION TO the frequent references to Whitman, Hockney Hockney had read John Rechy’s City of Night, which de- draws inspiration from other works of literature. For example, scribed L.A. as an exotic and homosexualized utopia: “In the stimulated by Wallace Stevens’ The Man with the Blue Guitar,he warm palmtreed Los Angeles night, restless they will feel the made a portfolio of twenty etchings. Inspired by C. P. Cavafy’s excitement.” The influence of this early gay novel cannot be work, he created Illustrations for Fourteen Poems (1966). In a overstated. Hockney told Martin Gayford in A Bigger Message: collaborative project with Stephen Spender, he illustrated China Conversations with David Hockney (2010): “I thought [it] was Diary (1982). His close friends Christopher Isherwood and Don a marvelous picture of a certain kind of life in America. It was Bachardy were the subjects of one of his major dual-portrait paintings (figure 4), which was painted at their home in Santa Monica Canyon, overlooking the Pacific Ocean, where Hockney was a frequent guest.

MONTHS BEFORE he arrived in L.A., Hockney painted Domestic Scene (1963), which shows a lanky man in a pink apron soaping the back of another man who is in the shower beneath a solid blue jet of water. Other shower-scene paintings with naked men include Two Men in a Shower (1963) and Man Taking a Shower in Beverly Hills (1964). The paintings were based on photographs from the bodybuilding magazine Physique Pictorial, which Hockney mined for images. Publisher Bob Mizer’s beefcake empire included a portfolio of more than a million images shot in fabricated domestic interiors made in his L.A. studio called the Athletic Model Guild. Some of the models included Joe Dallesandro, Jack Pierson, and Arnold Schwarzenegger before they became famous. The models wore posing straps and were never entirely nude; they were solo images and never portrayed or suggested sexual acts. The models represented an idealization of white American masculinity, completely excluding ethnic diversity. Fig. 5: David Hockney, Peter Getting out of Nick’s Pool, 1966

24 Th$ Gay & L$sban R$v$w / oRLd ide one of the first novels covering that kind pletely deaf, and wears two hearing aids. of sleazy, sexy hot night-life in Pershing David Hockney: An Exhibition He laments: “I haven’t had a really good Square. I looked at the map and saw that Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC hard-on since I had the stroke.” Wilshire Boulevard, which begins by the Nov. 20, 2017–Feb. 25, 2018 The trajectory of Hockney’s life extends sea in Santa Monica, goes all the way; all Exhibition Catalog from brash exclamations of same-sex sex- you have to do is stay on that boulevard. Chris Stephens & Andrew Wilson, eds. uality and audacious shower tableaus, But of course, it’s about eighteen miles, Tate. 280 pages, $100. through a tunnel, and into the woods, mak- which I didn’t realize. I started cycling. I ing suggestive landscapes referencing the got to Pershing Square and it was deserted; about nine in the power of nature. The landscapes are revelatory; they reflect mem- evening, just got dark, not a soul there.” ory, loss, and trauma. In a sense, he also paints from memory, be- Where others found banality, Hockney found freedom and cause his landscapes are metaphorical celebrations of self and the fantasy in Southern California. The ubiquity of stereotypical universality of the human condition. Hockney lived in all of the things—gas stations, swimming pools, parking lots, palm trees, “ground zeroes” of the AIDS epidemic—New York, London, and Sunset Strip—became objects of fascination for him to L.A., Paris. He remarked: “The first person to die of AIDS that I paint. (He painted swimming pools for eight years.) California knew was in 1983, and then for ten years it was lots of people.” was the voluptuous antithesis of scarred, austere postwar Eng- Over his lifetime, there were many subsequent losses—intimate land. In Hockney: A Film by Randall Wright, the artist recalled friends such as Isherwood, Henry Geldzahler, Jonathan Silver— of his World War II childhood: “We hid in a cupboard under the each of whom had a place in his past. He painted portraits of them steps. When the bomb drops on the street, my mother screams. all. When Geldzahler, curator of contemporary art at the Met, was You scream. You’re very frightened if your mother is fright- on his deathbed, he pleaded, “Draw me.” So Hockney did a se- ened. So, it’s something I’ve always remembered. It’s the first ries of poignant drawings before he died. memory I have. ... Rationing didn’t end until I was sixteen years Today, you might find Hockney during a morning drive in old.” He wrote on the back of a postcard that had the slogan, his Toyota pickup-truck, a cargo bed fitted with canvas racks, “Greetings from California: Playground of the Nation”: “Arrived stopping roadside beside an open field to paint landscapes en in the promised land 2 days ago. The world’s most beautiful city plein air during all seasons, no matter the weather. He has con- is here—L.A. You must come.” When Hockney met Peter tinued to make art tirelessly, always finding new subjects to be Schlesinger, they became romantically and sexually involved, excited by, and seems determined to make good on the mantra, and he immediately became the artist’s homoerotic ideal and “Love life.” preferred model. Hockney’s bold and emotional Fauvist colors became contextualized within identity, same-sex sexuality, and those trademark bubble butts and tan lines. In Peter Getting out of Nick’s Pool (1966, figure 5), Schlesinger emerges from a pool like the goddess in Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus, visibly disturbing the sunlit water’s surface with squiggly white lines.

THE THEME OF FLIGHT appears in the painting Flight in Italy- Swiss Landscape (1961) and in A Rake’s Progress (1961–63), a series of sixteen etchings that reinterpret William Hogarth’s 18th-century engravings to illustrate Hockney’s initial trip to New York. Hockney is the central figure, a young gay artist struggling to find his way in the city. The etching My Bonnie Join Our Vibrant Lies Over the Ocean (1961–62) is about passionate longing for Community of Pride another person. The Start of the Spending Spree and the Door Opening for a Blonde (1963) depicts Hockney becoming a and Belonging Clairol blond because “Blondes have more fun.” He moved to L.A. in 1964 and lived there for three decades, always return- A new 55+ LGBT-focused community located in ing to England for brief periods, eventually moving back to progressive and diverse Durham, North Carolina. Yorkshire, buying a house in Bridlington, a small coastal town • Light-filled cottages clustered on More Than on the North Sea, where he lived on and off for eight years. 15 beautiful wooded acres Half Sold! Hockney says that he sees the world psychologically. His • Privacy, community and nature landscapes are rhythmic and do not reproduce exactly the ap- at your doorstep pearance of nature. Instead, they grasp for an emotion or atmos- • Workshop, gardens, art phere. Hockney told Gayford: “Trees are the largest manifestation studios, and indoor/outdoor gathering spaces. of the life-force we see. No two trees are the same, like us. We’re all a little bit different inside, and look a little bit different outside. To learn more call Margaret ... There’s a moment when spring is full. We call it ‘nature’s erec- Roesch today at 561.714.8009 tion.’ Every single plant, bud and flower seems to be standing up straight. Then gravity starts to pull the vegetation down.” At Visit VillageHearthCohousing.com eighty, Hockney has suffered several strokes, is almost com-

May–Jun$ 2018 25 ESSAY Belated Vindication for John Boswell

NORENA SHOPLAND N HIS 1995 BOOK The Marriage of Likeness: Same- fourth-century high-rank- sex Unions in Pre-modern Europe, John Boswell argued ing Roman soldiers who, that in medieval Europe unions between same-sex cou- when suspected of being ples were acceptable under certain circumstances and Christians, were ordered even sanctioned by the Roman Catholic Church. He to worship at a pagan preferred the term “same-sex unions,” because the def- temple in order to test Iinition of marriage has changed so drastically throughout his- their belief. When they tory in general and that of the Catholic Church in particular. persistently refused, they “The meaning and purpose of marriage,” he wrote, was “pro- were chained, dressed in foundly different from its modern counterpart,” citing examples female attire, and pa- that showed how romantic love, an integral part of modern mar- raded around the town. riage, was rarely a consideration in the past. Marriage for the Bacchus was beaten to most part was about property, power, and children. death but the next day his Only months after Boswell’s book was published, it had spirit appeared to Sergius gone through four printings and sold in excess of 31,000 urging him to be strong copies, far more than most books on medieval history. Christian and reassuring him that John Boswell. Robert Giard Foundation. reviewers were on the whole negative, while most others they would be together forever. The following day Sergius was praised Boswell’s thorough research and applauded his open- also tortured to death. ing up this subject for discussion. Among his critics were those There is considerable doubt as to authenticity of this story, who questioned the accuracy of his translations and interpreta- but they became popular saints who were venerated widely. tions of a number of specialized texts. Then there were those Boswell argued that the relationship between Sergius and Bac- who condemned the book even before it chus contained a romantic element, citing the was published, suggesting that nothing Adelphopoiesis,“brother fact that the earliest text contains the word Boswell did could have won these critics making”in ancient Greek, “erastai,” which in Greek is the plural of over to his argument. was a medieval ceremony “erastēs,” which referred to a pæderastic rela- In the book, Boswell produced a large tionship between an older man and a younger assortment of examples from the historical uniting two people. Its man. Despite much criticism of Boswell’s annals around the world to argue that cus- meaning continues to be translations and interpretations, Sergius and tom and law recognized several different hotly debated. Bacchus have become popular in some cor- kinds of union that could involve two men. ners of modern LGBT culture. His main focus, of course, was on medieval Europe. Many of Included in Boswell’s book is a section on “Topographia Hi- the discussions concerned the meaning of the Greek word bernica” (“Topography of Ireland”), a 12th-century work by Gi- “Adelphopoiesis,” a category of relationship that was recog- raldus Cambrensis (Gerald of Wales). It is less a topographic nized by the Catholic Church. work than a history of Ireland, and a highly prejudicial one at Adelphopoiesis or adelphopoiia, meaning “brother making” that. Boswell’s translation of Gerald came in for special criti- in ancient Greek, refers to a ceremony uniting two people in a cism. The passage takes up only one of 390 pages in The Mar- Church-sanctioned friendship. The meaning and purpose of this riage of Likeness, but it brought forth an outsize volume of the type of relationship continues to be hotly debated. The Church ink in reviews as critics argued over what was going on in a me- maintains that it’s a celebration of friendship with no sexual dieval ceremony described by Gerald. The passage appears in component, while others argue that any same-sex relationship the third book of Topographia Hiberniae titled “Of the Inhabi- which is openly celebrated crosses the boundaries of manda- tants of Ireland” and bills itself as “A proof of the iniquity (of tory heterosexuality and suggests the possibility of deeper af- the Irish) and a novel form of marriage.” Boswell’s translation fections and romantic love. goes as follows: Evidence of these types of relationships can be found in Among many other examples of their wicked ways, this one is various Christian contexts up to the 18th century. One couple particularly instructive: under the pretext of piety and peace that became the stuff of legend was comprised of two men who they come together in some holy place with the man they want were later made saints, Sergius and Bacchus. The two were to join. First they are united in pacts of kinship, then they carry each other three times around the church. Then, entering the Norena Shopland is the author of Forbidden Lives: LGBT Stories from church, before the altar, in the presence of the relics of saints Wales (Seren, 2018). and with many oaths, and finally with a celebration of the Mass

26 Th$ Gay & L$sban R$v$w / oRLd ide and the prayers of priests, they are permanently united as if in desponsare shows similar results. In both Portuguese and Span- some marriage. At the end, as further confirmation of the ish, desposar, from the Latin root, also refers to marriage, as friendship and a conclusion of the proceedings, each drinks the does the English word spouse, meaning a marriage partner. other’s blood, which is willingly shed for this. (This, however, That said, it’s also true that far down the list of definitions they retain from the rites of pagans, who customarily use blood the words “contract,” “treaty,” “pledge,” and “promise” do ap- in the sealing of oaths.) pear. It is obviously these last definitions that early translators have concentrated on, ignoring the most popular definitions Alternative suggestions and translations have interpreted the rit- which are always listed first in any dictionary. Not being a Latin ual with a completely different emphasis. The most widely scholar, I sought expert advice from the National Library of available translation of Topographia Hiberniae is the Penguin Wales, the National Library of Ireland, and the British Library. Classics edition of 1969 by John O’Meara. He believed the The last two hold original copies of Topographia Hibernica. piece said: The people at the Wales and Ireland libraries responded that it A proof of their wickedness and a new way of making a treaty. might be more appropriate to approach academics, but the Among many other tricks devised in their guile, there is this British Library replied with information taken from R. E. one which serves as a particularly good proof of their treach- Latham’s Revised Medieval Latin Word-List: From British and ery. Under the guise of religion and peace they assemble at Irish Sources (1965). There desponsationis “gives the meaning some holy place with him whom they wish to kill. First they espousal, betrothal or marriage,” adding that “betrothal was as make a treaty on the basis of their common fathers. Then in legally binding as marriage.” But if this was being written in turn they go around the church three times. They enter the 1965, it means that John O’Meara must have ignored it in his church, and swearing a great variety of oaths before relics of 1969 translation—even though, according to the British Library, saints placed on the altar, at last with the celebration of Mass this standard reference for medieval Latin had laid out the evi- and the prayers of the priests they made an indissoluble treaty as if it were a kind of betrothal. For the greater confirmation of dence for a “marriage or betrothal” meaning, noting that a treaty, their friendship and completion of their settlement, each in promise, or contract of marriage was legally equivalent to mar- conclusion drinks the blood of the other which has willingly riage itself. been drawn especially for the purpose. The meaning of these Christian same-sex unions was ex- tensively considered by the late Alan Bray in his 2003 book It was this translation, which was republished in 1982, that re- The Friend. He considered many cases, including that of Sir mains authoritative. An earlier 1876 edition by John S. Brewer William Neville and Sir John Clanvowe, who shared a tomb in and James F. Dimock give the piece more-or-less the same Istanbul in the 14th century. When Clanvowe died on a military meaning. Boswell criticized these writers for their “artful mis- pilgrimage, Neville “died in grief for him,” and the image on translation and a general unwillingness to recognize something their tomb makes “even the casual visitor pause, for in the en- as ostensibly improbable as a same sex reading.” graver’s arrangement the helmets of the two men seem as if Boswell was accused of having an agenda when he trans- about to kiss.” lated Gerald, that of making it read more like a homosexual Bray acknowledges that Boswell’s works in places was marriage. However, if Boswell can be accused of having an flawed and that it cannot be known if these same-sex unions agenda, so can the other translators. In 1876, the death penalty were sexual or not. However, he warns against dismissing for homosexuality had been removed only fifteen years earlier, Boswell based on a narrow definition of “marriage”: “An un- replaced by ten years to life, so Brewer and Dimock would not qualified rejection of Boswell’s thesis in these terms is itself have dared to publish anything positive about homosexuality. open to the same kind of criticism. It reduces the range of what When O’Meara published his version in 1969, homosexuality we recognize today as being sexual to the narrow question of had only been partially decriminalized two years earlier. Men sexual intercourse, and it glosses over the historical disparity could still be sent to jail, and public opinion was predominantly that, in the past, marriage has been one, as it is not in modern so- negative. This could help explain O’Meara’s unsympathetic ciety, among several forms of what one might call voluntary translation, though an anti-gay bias becomes less easy to jus- kinship: kinship created not by blood but by ritual or a promise.” tify in 1969 than in 1876. Also, if the piece was truly about a treaty, why in certain cases, as reported by Dimock in 1867, was Ed McHale the page defaced in one version and cut out of another? Happy 65th Birthday Very few translations have appeared since Boswell’s time. A 2000 translation in the Medieval Latin Series from In Paren- theses Publications of Cambridge, Ontario, conforms to the “treaty” version. So, in order to seek some clarification on this somewhat esoteric but important question, I launched a small investigation into the matter of translation. The title of the piece in Topographia Hiberniae in its original Latin appears as “De argumento nequitiae, at novo desponsationis genere,” and the word that has caused the controversy is “desponsationis.” Throw the word into Google and the results will show that most definitions refer to betrothal, engage- With much love from your husband, ment, or marriage. A similar search on the singular term Rich Morgante

May–Jun$ 2018 27 That being the case, it seems to me as a practical matter that any riage of Likeness was published, so we are denied his responses new editions of Topographia Hibernica ought to be based upon to critics. Further research by others has explored the subject in the most accurate and up-to-date translations of key terms in more depth, but there is still a lively debate concerning the ter- the text. minology of ritual “brotherhood.” As Bray notes, marriage in This, however, is just the tip of the iceberg, and there needs the past has been just one form of voluntary kinship or union, to be a general acknowledgement that many historical texts have and it is that which challenges the heteronormative narrative. been translated and interpreted with the intention of diminish- Today, for example, the “bromance” has become common parl- ing or suppressing evidence of same-sex unions. There is also ance—from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid to Smithy and the problem of the “researcher’s cut” by those experts in cer- Gavin in the TV sitcom Gavin and Stacey—though, to be sure, tain languages who either deliberately exclude evidence or omit any hint of a sexual relationship is studiously avoided. At the it for lack of interest. (I touch on this in my book Forbidden end of the day, all we can really say is that a human institution Lives with regard to people like Gwen John.) such as marriage can have multiple meanings at any time in his- Boswell died from AIDS complications the year The Mar- tory, while its meanings can also change over time.

INTERNATIONAL SPECTRUM Zimbabwe after Mugabe: Few Signs of Progress

JOYLINE MAENZANISE senting adults of the same gender. However, proscription of sexual relations only applies the Criminal Law (Codification and Re- to men, and there is no specific provision HE OUSTING of Robert Mugabe as form) Act does so. In Chapter 5, Part 3 of that outlaws intercourse or private intimacy president of Zimbabwe in November the Act, one finds rules that govern the sex- between consenting adult females. Women T2017 was a cause for jubilation for ual conduct of LGBT folks under “Sexual will only be charged if the other party has many people, including members of the Crimes and Crimes against Morality.” Here not consented to such activity. Also unex- LGBT community. The hope and expecta- are some excerpts from the Act: plained is why the law punishes two men tion was that the end of Mugabe’s thirty- for engaging in anal sex but does not punish year dictatorship would usher in a new era Section 73—Sodomy a man and a woman for having anal sex. with brighter futures for ordinary citizens. (1) Any male person who, with the Surely this counts as discrimination based Some LGBT folks shared in the euphoria, as consent of another male person, know- on gender, which the Constitution prohibits their community has long borne the brunt of ingly performs with that other person (Section 56 of Chapter 4). so much intolerance fueled by our leaders. anal sexual intercourse, or any act in- Going back to the Constitution, Chapter A few days into the post-Mugabe era, one volving physical contact other than 4 (s56) stipulates that “all persons are of the nation’s leaders, army chief Phillip anal sexual intercourse that would be equal before the law and have the right to Valerio Sibanda, was reported to have urged regarded by a reasonable person to be equal protection and benefit of the law and graduating recruits to “protect the nation an indecent act, shall be guilty of that every person has the right not to be against homosexuality—a Western imposi- sodomy and liable to a fine up to or ex- treated in an unfairly discriminatory man- tion and threat to the nation’s conservative ceeding level fourteen or imprisonment ner on such grounds as their ... sex, gen- culture.” It is not clear what prompted these for a period not exceeding one year or der.” It is this particular clause that forms utterances, but it may have been a deliberate both. ... the basis for the argument that the Code move to dampen the hopes of the LGBT (3) For the avoidance of doubt it is de- unfairly discriminates against gay people, community and to send a message that the clared that the competent charge since there is a clear disparity in the treat- fight for equal rights is far from over. The against a male person who performs ment of sexual relations based on the gen- general’s utterances are tantamount to hate anal sexual intercourse with or com- der of the partners. speech and an incitement to violence. And mits an indecent act upon a young The LGBT community of Zimbabwe def- yet, much of the citizenry didn’t bat an eye male person — initely needs a champion for its cause. Since at these remarks. (a) who is below the age of twelve his swearing in as the country’s interim In 2016, Mark Gevisser, a South African years, shall be aggravated indecent as- president, Emmerson Mnangagwa has man- author and journalist, carried out a survey to sault or indecent assault, as the case aged to sway many with his words of love, assess the extent to which LGBT people ex- may be; or unity, and progress. One would be forgiven perience social exclusion in ten southern (b) who is of or above the age of for thinking that there could be a silver lin- African countries, including Zimbabwe. twelve years but below the age of six- ing in the cloud for gay people. However, Part of the survey included asking partici- teen years and without the consent of after his interview in Davos, Switzerland, pants if they would mind having a gay such young male person, shall be ag- where he said the cause of the LGBT com- neighbor. A majority of the Zimbabweans gravated indecent assault or indecent munity was not an important issue for the interviewed answered in the affirmative. assault, as the case may be. nation, one does not need more evidence to In light of these attitudes, what do the know that the interim president is not our Zimbabwe Constitution and statutory law As can be clearly seen, the law prohibits champion. And so, the fight continues. say about the LGBT community and its anal sex or any physical conduct between rights? Part 4 of Chapter 4 (s78) of the Con- consenting men. While it is commendable Joyline Maenzanise is a queer Zimbabwean stitution prohibits marriage between persons that the law criminalizes performance of writer. Her main areas of interest include of the same gender, but there is no further such acts on young people regardless of LGBT+ issues, socio-economic justice, and mention of sexual relations between con- consent, one can’t help but notice that the mental and sexual health.

28 Th$ Gay & L$sban R$v$w / oRLd ide ESSAY Squaring the Disability

DENISE NOE EOPLE WITH DISABILITIES face many prob- LGBT seniors say their physical activities are limited by dis- lems, some intrinsic to the disability, some the re- abilities, and twenty percent say they use special equipment sult of living in a world designed for those (canes, wheelchairs, special telephones, etc.) due to a health without disabilities, and some the result of preju- condition. The same survey found that, among senior citizens, dice. LGBT people have special reason to sym- 53 percent of lesbians, 51 percent of bisexual women, 41 per- pathize with the disabled, since there are inherent cent of gay men, 54 percent of bisexual men, and 62 percent of Psimilarities between the difficulties faced by both minorities. transgendered people live with a disability. Indeed, there is a significant overlap between the LGBT and Why are disabilities more common among LGBT people? disabled worlds, as disabilities are more common among LGBT Explanations for the greater prevalence among LGBT people people than among the general population. The converse is also include greater stress from living in a “heterocentric” world, true: disabled people are more likely to identify as a sexual mi- from outright discrimination to the many micro-aggressions that nority than are abled people. one experiences over the course of a lifetime. A wealth of re- Statistics tell a tale. American Journal of Public Health (Jan. search suggests that both gay men and lesbians have a higher 2012) reports that “approximately 25 percent of heterosexual tendency to engage in risky behaviors, such as smoking, exces- women” experience a disability, and the figure for both lesbians sive drinking, and the use of recreational drugs. Other research and bisexual women is 36 percent. It also reports that 22 percent has shown that LGBT people are disproportionately likely to be of heterosexual men have a disability, versus 26 percent of gay poor or barely managing financially, and all that this implies for men. Although the disparity is small between straight and gay access to health care and preventative maintenance. men, it is unexpectedly large between these two groups and bi- As members of two marginalized groups (at least), disabled sexual males, forty percent of whom have a disability. LGBT people can face special challenges in their quest for com- What’s more, behaviors and difficulties associated with dis- munity. Event producer and disability campaigner A. J. Higgin- ability are higher among LGBT people. Notes the study: “The son notes: “Being disabled and a lesbian makes you a minority age-adjusted likelihoods of current smoking, times two. Discrimination can come from frequent mental distress, and arthritis for As members of two different sources, even within the LGBT and both lesbians and women who are bisexual marginalized groups, disabled communities, the very places where are notably higher than for heterosexual disabled LGBT people face you would expect to find support.” She women.” Among males (adjusting for age), quotes a lesbian complaining, “I feel I belong gay and bisexual men are more likely than special challenges in their to two communities but don’t fit in either.” straight men to be current smokers. They are quest for community. In Queer Crips: Disabled Gay Men and also more apt to suffer from mental distress Their Stories (2004), co-editor John Killacky, and poor physical health. Of course, one of the largest issues who is partially paralyzed due to an operation that went wrong, for gay and bisexual men is HIV-related disabilities. According recalled a disheartening experience at a (non-gay) conference of to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), more than 600,000 disabled artists: “A quadriplegic comic derisively parodied gay and bisexual American men have HIV. Although many of Siegfried and Roy and the audience roared.” In the same book, these men are asymptomatic, there are some who are disabled co-editor Bob Guter, born with limb deformities, maintains: “As because of HIV-related ailments. queer crips, we’ve been isolated from society at large and even Disability should be of universal concern, since anyone can from one another, by underemployment, institutionalization, become disabled through accident, violent crime, or disease. The poverty, and internalized cripophobia.” aging process is such that people often become disabled as sen- A powerful example of the overlap of cripophobia and ho- ior citizens. Here again, the effect is stronger among sexual mi- mophobia is recalled in Queer Crips by George Steven Powell. norities. The website for SAGE, a membership organization for Growing up in a household of religious extremism, he came to older LGBT people, observes: “Recent studies have found that fear that his spina bifida was the result of his “sinful” gay de- LGBT older adults experience higher rates of disability as com- sires. He writes that “it took years to free myself of all the guilt.” pared to their heterosexual peers.” Equally troubling, research re- Dylan Orr observes that both LGBT and disabled people trigger veals that “many LGBT people delay care out of fear of a “fascination or discomfort-avoidance dynamic” in the major- discrimination from health providers.” ity population. The “discomfort-avoidance” manifests itself in SAGE notes that a national survey found that 44 percent of the perception that disability renders people asexual; the fascination leads to the fetishizing of disabilities. Denise Noe is a writer whose work has been published in The Human- Comments Higginson: “If you’re a disabled woman, you’re ist, The Literary Hatchet, and other periodicals. assumed not to be able to—or even desire to—have sex.” She

May–Jun$ 2018 29 argues that there’s a paradox here because “able-bodied lesbians wine,” he remembers. He found this scene jarring because al- often say there is more to them than the people they have sex cohol and the medicines he was taking do not mix well, so with” whereas “disabled women—lesbians and bisexuals in- drinking would have been “ill-advised.” The dinner scene was cluded—are fighting for recognition of our sexuality.” She be- followed by one in which the lady puts the gentleman on the lieves it can be a “continual struggle” to “find intimate partners bed and pulls him on top of her. Protests Killacky: “Insertion and even learn to accept our sexual orientation and bodies.” and thrusting aren’t possible for me. I thought it was the wrong Lesbian producer and performer Julia Trahan asserts: “My message. You have to find a new way: start with what you have sexuality never left me.” The beautifully brazen performer has and where you feel something.” Previously “quite phallocen- cheerfully swung her dildo onstage and danced in her wheel- tric,” his paralysis meant he had to “reorient” himself. Killacky chair. Judith Smith is another lesbian who dances in her wheel- found that “the unconditional love of my husband has allowed chair onstage. Founder and Director of AXIS Dance Company, new patterns to emerge: light massage and hugging are central she had been a champion horse rider before becoming disabled to our relating.” in 1977 at age seventeen. Not too long after becoming quadri- Similarly, Queer Crips contributor Steven Sendham, who plegic, she discovered a passion for dancing. AXIS was founded became paralyzed after an accident, wrote: “I lack sensation in in 1987 as a dance company boasting both disabled and non- my penis and testicles. ... But the hair—that’s something dif- disabled dancers, a genre called physically integrated dance. ferent! A light silk scarf or a cashmere sweater drawn slowly, Smith also believes it is unlikely that her sexual orientation ever so slowly, over the genitals creates exquisite sensations. ... is recognized by many people—partly because of her disability. A light touch is an erotic promise made and delivered. ... The “Being disabled is part of the reason people don’t think of me light touch is the lewd touch.” Or another example: Samuel as lesbian—although they would when I was with my ex-part- Lurie, a gay transman who trains healthcare providers in trans ner because she was very butch,” Smith explains. “I have long awareness, finds the “tremoring touch” of partner Eli Clare, a hair and present as fairly feminine. People see the disability be- gay transman with cerebral palsy, erotically hot. “Sensually, for fore seeing that I might be lesbian.” Disability inevitably affects me, Eli’s cerebral palsy is literally a gift,” he states. sexual expression, Smith continues. “Being disabled really lim- The counterpart to denying disabled people’s sexuality is its the number of people who want to date you or be in a rela- the fetishization of disability. In Queer Crips, Guter interviews tionship with you.” psychologist Alan Sable, who observes that “fetish” is a term Even in the Bay Area, where she lives, homophobia and “that says it’s unhealthy by definition.” However, he contends, cripophobia are “not non-existent. I face a lot of prejudice as a “ability is a socially-approved fetish, with those having less of disabled woman. People don’t consider you smart, don’t consider it tending to fetishize it in those who have more of it.” Sable you successful, don’t consider you sexual. There are still a lot of believes the non-disabled fetishize the disabled because “it’s a buildings and events that are not accessible.” Nevertheless, she way to care for someone” seen as “vulnerable.” There is also a sees things going in the right direction: “I think we’re starting to stereotype of a disabled person as a “saint” who has “suffered see more disability represented in advertising and in the media. a lot” and is therefore able to do something immensely positive Our disabled veterans are getting visibility, our disabled athletes for a partner. are getting visibility. But we’ve got a long way to go.” While Sable counsels being open to such overtures from the When John Killacky became paralyzed in 1996, he found able-bodied, it’s understandable that many disabled people find himself dismayed by the ignorance of therapists who could not such fetishizing a turn-off. After all, people often fetishize racial “explain sexual functioning after spinal surgery through a queer and ethnic groups due to stereotypes about them. Many people lens.” When he asked a rehab therapist about his prospects for on the receiving end of this interest would automatically rule recovery of sexual function, the reply he got was: “I’m not gay. out a relationship with someone attracted to them due to such I don’t know.” Killacky was shown a short movie about sexu- stereotypes. Similarly, many disabled people might regard ality after paralysis, but he found it most unhelpful. Not only fetishizing as an offensive manifestation of bigotry. was it completely heterosexual, but it included elements that he When disability strikes one half of a previously abled cou- thought irrelevant and unbelievable. “The film started with a ple, the relationship is truly tested. “When something like this man in a wheelchair and a woman having a lovely dinner with happens, it’s very complex for the partner,” Killacky remarks. “When I became paralyzed, there was no group for people in Larry’s position. Society had sympathy for me but not for my EGR Writers House husband.” Killacky directed a PBS documentary entitled Hold- Subsidized housing for writers in Augusta, Maine ing On that featured him and Connolly along with two heterosexual couples. The goal was “partly to focus on the partners of the disabled and what that is like for them.” In Holding On, Connolly says, “His disability is like a third character in the room with us.” For everyone, life itself is full of complexity. For LGBT people who are disabled, that complexity is multiplied. For most people, enjoying their sexuality is vital to happiness, so it is vital that therapeutic workers, and society at large, adequately address the special needs, including the sexual ones, of LGBT www.egrwritershouse.blogspot.com people.

30 Th$ Gay & L$sban R$v$w / oRLd ide ESSAY How to Be a Porn Star

ANDREW HOLLERAN RCH BROWN may be better known for his work in theater; he was part of the generation of playwrights (Jane Chambers, Doric Wil- son, Robert Chesley) who brought gay subject matter onstage in the 1970s. But before that he was a pioneer in another medium, Apornographic films. Brown’s A Pornographer: A Memoir is a book that was discovered among his papers after he died in Palm Springs in 2012; it was not published in his lifetime. Brown began writing it, so far as editor Jameson Currier can determine, around 1974, and submitted it to mainstream publishing houses in 1977, when Brown was still making films. (The later part of his life he devoted to theater, especially after the success of his 1979 play News Boy.) Most of what Brown claims he learned while teaching him- Arch Brown, frontispiece from A Pornographer: A Memoir self how to make porn films seems eminently sensible. It was- n’t just lighting, editing in the camera, knowing how long an country, a walk around the piers). A self-confessed romantic, he audience will sit still for certain sequences (about three min- always provided a happy ending, and he took pains with the utes), or mastering how to pan the camera so that the figures decor, lighting, color, and soundtracks. didn’t blur. He also learned to interview people in depth about For whatever reason, it worked. “Brown is doing something their sexual fantasies, to match them with someone who could new, complex and important,” wrote Interview magazine’s fulfill those fantasies, and to make sure they didn’t meet each critic in 1975. “Explicit sexual representation goes nicely in other until the day of the shoot. And never to have sex with any movies. It’s a wonder that all movies aren’t pornographic. of the performers in his movies. That’s what movies are for. Food should be Brown learned all this after being fired Success in porn, in Arch eaten, wine drunk, sex filmed.” In Brown’s from one of the jobs he took after moving to Brown’s view, meant view, the porn industry came out of the sex- New York with a degree from the theater de- learning to become the ual liberation movement of the ’60s. But he partment at Northwestern University, which was no militant. At one point in the book, a got him his first job at Circle in the Square. person one fantasized theater showing some of his early movies is After that, he seems to have been in adver- about—a process he raided by the police. The judge throws out tising and marketing for a time. When one called“The Transition.” the case against the three heterosexual films of his colleagues was fired for reading Play- that were seized, but not Brown’s homo- boy in the office, he resigned, at which point Brown bought his sexual flick—a double standard that he mentions in passing, first camera and began to wander the streets of New York. but no more. In 1970, those were some streets to wander. The piers were People who read this book for dirt on making porn films, still rotting on the Hudson River at the end of Christopher however, may be disappointed. This is not an exposé that takes Street, and the only reason one went to the meat-packing district you behind the scenes on specific shoots; it’s more of a was to go to the sex clubs. Brown was known from the start for thoughtful reflection on what Brown learned over the years by using such locations—and for the high quality of his films at a making movies. It’s based on the interviews he conducted with time when there was little demand for production values. In the people auditioning for roles—their sexual fantasies, physical early 1970s, gay porn films were simply backdrops for cruising attributes, insecurities, feelings about being filmed. (Some ac- in theaters like The David or 55th Street Playhouse. (Hetero- tors, Brown learned, didn’t even want to see the films they’d sexual porn films, ironically, were held to a higher standard, starred in; others were like the unnamed woman who gave a since the straight men who went to theaters to see those were ac- dinner party at which she screened one of her porn movies for tually watching the movie, not the other men in hopes of getting her guests.) laid.) Brown also gave the actors a plot or situation with which The actors are divided almost equally between men and an audience could identify (a day in New York, a visit to the women. Names are changed and personalities summarized, so the interviews read rather like case studies in a psychology text- Andrew Holleran’s fiction includes Dancer from the Dance, Grief, and book. “Gordon was also one of the regulars in my stable of sex The Beauty of Men. stars,” a typical section begins. “He was good looking in a bland

May–Jun$ 2018 31 blond sort of way and didn’t have the best body or the biggest ings and do something about them, and they were also aware cock. But everyone who met him was turned on by him.” Or: of their sexual fantasies and often did something about them, “Ricky had been brought up in Texas and was into cowboys. as well.” What made a good porn star depended on what made He had grown up in a big city but had seen and unconsciously a real movie star—good looks, ability to perform for the cam- dreamed of the tough guys in big hats that were a part of the era—but also, Brown believed, on an actor’s being at ease with Texas landscape.” Even when we encounter a memorable an- sex, and not just sex but the rest of life. ecdote, we don’t know who it was. One gay porn star liked to It all sounds a bit like How to Win Friends and Influence go to the theater where his film was showing and hang out in the People, or rather the gay uplift that followed Stonewall and pro- men’s room, so that he could startle the moviegoer who’d walk duced books like The Joy of Gay Sex. It is impossible to read A in to pee and find him at the adjacent urinal. Pornographer without being aware of the era in which it was These capsule summaries of actors prompt observations that written: the Me Decade. Gay liberation was underway, there one might find in a self-help book, or a manual on how to suc- was no such thing as AIDS, and homosexuals in cities like New ceed in life and porn. Success, in Brown’s view, meant learning York were aware that they were creating new forms of affec- to become the person one fantasized about—and the process tive linkage—couples who allowed each other secondary through which that happened he called “The Transition.” “I boyfriends, people who could have sex with strangers with no went through a big transition a couple of years ago,” one of his consequences, having learned famously to separate “sex and actors tells him. “The more secure I became the better work I sentiment.” was doing and the more friends I had and the more people began Like a child of the ’60s, he considered making porn movies to respond to me emotionally. Instead of being a helpless little a lot healthier than dropping bombs, and wondered when main- fag with nothing to offer anyone but clutching fingers and pos- stream movies would include sex. But this is by no means an sessiveness, I had all of a sudden gotten my act together. I began angry book. It’s in fact curiously dry—the grittiness of real life to think of myself as that knight on the white horse and I could eschewed in favor of a more cerebral tone. Even observations walk into a bar or party and not only have a good time, but meet like “Many men with exceptionally large penises have trouble new people and an occasional new boyfriend.” getting completely hard, as if there is not enough blood in their In other words, the person who’s successful at work, in his body to fill it, but Bernard had no such problems” have a pro- career, his friendships, is going to be successful at sex as well. fessorial tone. This may have been because Brown thought he’d “I came to realize that not only was the star personality usually have a better chance of getting a book like this published if successful in most aspects of his or her life and sexually free, soberly written, or because the nitty-gritty details of making but they could be aware of their own problems and shortcom- fuck films genuinely didn’t interest him. Whatever the reason, the book’s tone is surprisingly neutral. Or it is, until we come to the afterword by a man who happens to be the president of a foundation Brown created to award grants to gay writers: James Waller. Waller was Brown’s boyfriend when he was a graduate student at Columbia and Brown was living on 14th Street with his longtime companion Bruce Brown (whose last name Arch Kreuger adopted as his “nom de porn”). When asked by Waller what he did for a living, Brown said he was a “professional gay”—and, while ironic, this seems to have been the case. The relationship between Brown and Waller, separated by seventeen years, was among other things a sexual initiation. Here, for in- stance, is Waller’s description of the small apartment to which Brown took Waller after meeting him in the Barbary Coast, a bar at Seventh Avenue and 14th Street, one night in 1982—a trick pad-cum-studio that Brown rented upstairs from the large apartment that he shared with Bruce Brown:

Altogether, it was an eye-popping mise-en-scène for the likes of innocent little me. And my eyes would have occasion to pop again and again over the first week of our affair. The shower, for example, was outfitted with a coiled metal hose for anal douching—a device I’d never seen before. (Arch taught me to use it, of course.) In the bedroom was a huge blanket-chest filled with sex toys, including dildos ranging in sizes from index finger to fire hydrant, a variety of clamps and other pin- cers (e.g., plastic clothespins), sundry ropes and chains, and so on and on. For role-playing, there was a selection of hats— hard hats, workingmen’s caps, cowboy hats, etc. And beside The cover photo of Arch Brown’s memoir tells a story. the bed sat an ultra jumbo-sized can of Crisco—a lube of Published by Chelsea Station Editions. choice in those days. The bed itself was just a wooden plat-

32 Th$ Gay & L$sban R$v$w / oRLd ide form topped with a queen-sized mattress, which was covered moustache who lived downtown, the man one saw in the Ram- by a vinyl fitted sheet that Arch would clean, after sex sessions, rod, the Eagle, or the Spike. The can of Crisco—the greasy with Windex and paper towels. Sex with Arch tended to be a white stuff that made your grandmother’s apple pie crust so messy and often somewhat greasy affair, and the room had a flaky and moist—was instead glistening on the fist entering the vague but indelible odor combining bodily effluvia, Crisco and anus of the man in the leather sling—another version, one could ammonia. argue, of the can of Campbell’s soup and Brillo boxes that Here, in one paragraph, you have the 1970s. The “ultra-jumbo- Warhol had repurposed, an American staple that gay men had sized can of Crisco” was precisely what was scary to some of us made subversive in a way that gay life can no longer be. about “the professional gay” of that time—the man with the But this is what’s not in Brown’ memoir: the mess and the grease. Waller’s brilliant afterword is everything the memoir is not: personal and moving. We learn more about Brown in Waller’s reminiscence than we do in A Pornographer (which, to Riddle be fair, is not meant to be an autobiography but simply an account of Brown’s career in porn). We learn, for example, that I am the oddity that is un-strange. Brown “despised” his mother. Brown never came out to his Mid- I’m the silver that rhymes with orange. western parents, because, he writes, sex was never discussed in his family. Still, Brown’s life, in Waller’s version, seems like the Iamtheslow, paradigmatic story of a gay man of his time. He moved to New obstinate plant that grows York, found a longtime companion, had boyfriends on the side (an arrangement he wished heterosexuals could have as well), at the rate of sediments and then moved to Palm Springs, where he started a theater, and and infloresces extravagantly about once was ripped off by one of his male caretakers—a young man who ran up gambling debts on Brown’s credit card—before he died. a decade. To the sphinx, There’s enough there for a miniseries. my question made for raised wings, When Brown was working, he writes, there were only about twelve gay porn theaters in the entire U.S. Now people watch it squawks, and flight online without having to leave the house. But what effect is it into a bedroom mirror, in the light having on us? Brown mentions a heterosexual man he met who came in from New Jersey once a week to watch porn movies in of which was another face, another a theater in New York, and then went home to his wife and tried woman, whose rhyme of course we need out new things he’d seen done on screen. If, as the French apho- not further rism has it, we would not fall in love had we not read about it first, I suppose we learn how to have sex from watching porn, search for. Her wavering look: enraged, though life influences porn as well. Brown could not help notic- triste, and disengaged. ing how people were requesting kinky sex and drugs as the years went on—which was what was happening in gay life too. That her silver and orange but subfuse He acknowledges people who think watching pornography is a longings could not be entirely masked waste of time—time that could be spent having the real thing. But for those who can’t get the real thing, it’s a mercy. There’s by her marriage and her dire pretenses, an expression, “mercy fuck,” which means having sex with Iamtheliving evidence. someone you really don’t want to have sex with. But until this is legislated as an entitlement along with Social Security, most Justice, then, I’m a form of, of us will have to be satisfied with porn, since in real life two because I’m the shove things that rarely go together are sex and charity. of hidden desire into egregious shape, the moon’s dark side that rotates "Ricard offers a thoughtful debut... The narrative is endear- into view. I am the glare ing and impressively assured, of Is rather than the glare and it will be an entertaining treat for fans of LGBT romantic of Seems, a minor-key iction ... a warm, fun, character- driven tale about moving on and irritating line of melody and embracing life.” — Kirkus Reviews following a two-generationalfamily lie that was cacophony. Who am I?

DIANE FURTNEY www.russellricard.com

May–Jun$ 2018 33 BOOKS American Historian in a Dark Time

T ONE POINT in this account gay men, the death of his mother was a proof twelve difficult years in his DANIEL A.BURR found experience for Duberman. She had life, Martin Duberman describes pushed him to make something of his life. a 1981 encounter he had with a As he succeeded in this, he became increas- A The Rest of It: woman at a party. In his telling, Sally was a ingly aware of the opportunities she never self-described liberal, feminist, ex-Marxist Hustlers, Cocaine,Depression, had. He told her he was gay, but they were lawyer who owned a Manhattan townhouse and ThenSome, 1976–1988 never able to talk about it. His mother’s and employed “servants.” She had contempt by Martin Duberman death sent Duberman into a serious depres- for Martin Luther King, Jr., for promiscuity, Duke Univ. Press, 240 pages, $27.95 sion. To survive, he turned to therapies that and for people who lacked the drive to get included LSD and bioenergetics. He consid- ahead in life. She reserved her pity for people who had no chil- ered shifting his profession from academic historian to drama- dren. For two hours, Duberman listened to what readers will eas- tist. After listening to Duberman lament the end of a love affair, ily recognize as pretentious claptrap. When he got home, he wrote the critic Richard Poirier told him to start going to a hustler bar. in his diary that he should have “swatted the smug bitch.” Still, Later, another friend connected him to a cocaine dealer. None of she got under his skin, and he spent the night feeling sadness and this worked. What kept him going was writing, specifically gay guilt about his life as a gay man. scholarship, a field he deserves credit for helping to create. Throughout The Rest of It, the author re-creates experiences Structurally, the book alternates between chapters about Du- from his past in ways that seem calculated to exasperate his read- berman’s personal life and ones that could stand alone as his- ers. No doubt there’s a reason for this. Duberman, a distinguished torical essays about gay politics and gay studies. He was a historian, has described history as a person in the present engag- member of the founding board of the National Gay and Lesbian ing in a conversation with the past. This would seem doubly Task Force and active in the gay movement on many fronts. As true when the past with which one is conversing is the gay movement progressed from the radicalism one’s own. Included in this conversation are a of the 1960s to the hedonism of the ’70s to the number of unflattering portraits of people: AIDS epidemic of the ’80s, Duberman handsome but shallow lovers, glib ther- held firmly to two positions: gay “dif- apists, liberal academics, friends who ferentness” challenges the rigid as- failed him. But he’s not just settling sumptions of majority norms, scores. He describes his interac- especially those based on racial tions with these people in a fac- and gender privilege; and tual way so that we see what’s monogamy in relationships is happening. Placing himself in not inherently superior to sex- the midst of these encounters, ual experimentation. Both he re-experiences the sense of have become minority posi- being blind to the way people tions in the gay community. were treating him and helpless In 1991, after five years of to control his reactions. Using effort, Duberman established diaries and other personal rec- the Center for Lesbian and Gay ords of his life, he tries to reveal Studies (CLAGS) at the CUNY as accurately as possible the person Graduate School, which he con- he was decades ago in dialogue with siders one of his most satisfying the person he is today. achievements. By then, having bat- The book’s subtitle reveals much tled for many years with homophobic about its contents. In 1976, Duberman’s academicians, publications, and institutions, mother died from a malignant he was a major figure in LGBT studies. The melanoma. In her final months, sections of the book devoted to these topics there were misdiagnoses by doc- make informative reading, although tors, poor treatment in hospitals, they tend to interrupt the narrative of family disputes, and finally an early what’s going on in Duberman’s per- morning phone call with the news of sonal life. her demise. As is the case for many That narrative becomes particularly gripping when Du- berman describes his descent into addiction and a depression Daniel Burr, who lives in Covington, Kentucky, so severe that in 1984 he was hospitalized in a locked ward at is a frequent contributor to this magazine. Payne Whitney for a month. The story begins with a vacation in

34 Th$ Gay & L$sban R$v$w / oRLd ide Maine. Feeling abandoned by a friend, Duberman fled the outdoors for the familiar territory of New York. Once home, he returned to the routine of hustler bars and cocaine that had become part of his life. This is the point at which the personal and the political begin to collide. Duberman had always told himself that he was not suited to a monogamous relationship due to the psy- chic pain he’d experienced in his youth, and that sexual adven- turing, primarily by engaging hustlers, satisfied his needs. In his heart, however, he couldn’t escape a certain longing for an inti- Store Now Open! mate connection that friends couldn’t provide. In 1987, at a party for the ACLU’s Gay Rights Project, Duberman met a man named Eli, and they began a relationship that continues to the present. About this relationship Duberman writes: “The details don’t matter, aren’t part of this story.” This may be the case, but the en- weathering objections from the mentally unstable Paul Jr., Du- trance of Eli brings this book about a difficult period in the life berman published the Robeson biography in 1989. Many regard of a gay icon to an especially satisfying close. it as his masterpiece. In recovery, Duberman began writing his biography of Paul Martin Duberman has been a touchstone for a generation of Robeson. Asked to write the book by Robeson’s son, Paul, Jr., gay men, and, once again, he offers up his life experiences to Duberman had been researching it for five years. The routine help us better understand our own. The Rest of It is a lively book; and discipline of writing, something that Duberman loves to do, it forces readers to engage with the difficult, often contentious were the real source of his recovery. He came to see that the pain personality of a brilliantly accomplished gay man wrestling with he’d experienced early in his life had made him a survivor. After his demons. When Sex Was Metaphysical

HAT CAN a lay reader ex- mission. Ultimately, the author concludes pect to digest from this ALAN CONTRERAS that Marvell had a “sexuality of one” and dense and richly seasoned may not have been sexually active in the academic fruitcake of a usual sense. W Andrew Marvell, book? I suppose one could stop after the But what of Marvell’s interest in men? 27-page introduction, which alone has 78 Sexual Orientation and It is to the author’s credit that he has built footnotes and serves as a sort of encyclo- Seventeenth-Century Poetry enough of a factual foundation to conclude: pedia entry on the subject of Marvell and by George Klawitter “If Marvell were himself inclined to oppo- the sexual content of his poetry and that of Fairleigh Dickinson University site-sex activity, a reader could not guess it his contemporaries. The author has done a 269 pages, $100. from most of his poetry. ... [H]is only real superb job of looking at what has been said passion for another human being surfaces on the subject of Renaissance sexuality—a very complex in one poem, ‘The Unfortunate Lover,’ and a reader would be topic—and has added a broad yet detailed exposition of poetry hard-pressed to read that poem as celebratory of opposite-sex of the era. bliss or, for that matter, bliss of any kind.” We can hardly expect Klawitter has done everyone a favor by taking a nuanced a respectable member of Parliament, which Marvell was for a approach to a colorful subject and giving the reader an oppor- while, to flaunt his homosexuality in the 1650s. The author sug- tunity to consider the full range of plausible views of a given sit- gests that in some cases he used the “safe and satisfying, if uation. But make no mistake: this is ultimately a volume for sometimes frustrating, ploy” of having words mean more than specialists, a detailed library tour through the world of 17th- one thing, or perhaps several things, at once, as in “The Defini- century poetry built around Marvell and a few of his contem- tion of Love”: poraries and the various meanings of sexually loaded terms. What are the author’s theories about Marvell’s sexuality? In Therefore the love which us doth bind, But Fate so enviously debars, a nutshell, the poet did not have romantic attachments to Is the conjunction of the mind, women, did not fall within “heteronormative” desire for any And opposition of the stars. such liaisons, wrote about women from a chilly distance, and appreciated women’s role in life from a somewhat clinical view- Klawitter notes that we “are never told if gender plays a role in point. This is not to say that he couldn’t write well about the Fate’s jealousy: she could be jealous of the narrator loving a male-female norm; he did so many times, sometimes on com- man she wants for herself or she could be jealous of the narrator’s loving a lady other than Fate.” Complicating any explica- Alan Contreras is a writer and higher education consultant who lives tion of poems from this era is the problem of distinguishing in Portland, Oregon. sexual desire from “Platonic” love and an even more abstract

May–Jun$ 2018 35 category of “spiritual” love. der regard for another male.” This poem can be remarkably Marvell’s slightly scandalous “Young Love” has attracted physical, as the following lines show: comment, referring as it does to an ostensible fifteen- year-old of unknown gender to whom an amorous See how he nak’d and fierce doth stand, Cuffing the thunder with one hand; poem is written. The author suggests an alter- While with the other does he lock, nate interpretation having to do with the fif- And grapple, with the stubborn rock teen years Marvell had known King Charles. Recognizing that this interpreta- And what rhymes with “lock” and tion is new and not obvious, he also “rock”? Klawitter notes that “If indeed points out, referring to Shakespeare’s the poem is about a male ex-lover, one thirteen-year-old Juliet, that there’s can only hope that the creation of the nothing in 1650s England to suggest poem brought to the poet a therapeutic that a 15-year-old would be considered outlet for the feelings he could not ineligible for love, provided that we’re share with friends or colleagues.” The talking boy-girl. The author speculates author also notes some male attraction that “Marvell may well have lived a in “An Elegy upon the Death of my double life ... posing as celibate tutor to Lord Francis Villiers”: Maria Fairfax in the same year that he lusted after Damon, the mower of her fa- Never was any human plant that grew More fair than this and acceptably new ... ther’s fields.” And his unimitable handsomeness One of the most rewarding parts of the Made him indeed be more than man, not less ... book is the lucid, almost cheerful tour Lovely and admirable as he was. through “The Unfortunate Lover.” The author sets forth various facts and theories about this ar- In addition to Marvell, this book contains sig- guably homoerotic poem, noting that “Marvell dis- nificant material on many other writers of the period. Andrew Marvell, ca. 1655 tances himself from only adult opposite-sex Consider George Wither’s poetic regrets from the coupling, not all sexualities, because anyone who reads ‘The 14th segment of “Miscellany of Epigrams,” which reads in part: Unfortunate Lover’ should sense in the lines a strong and ten- But in our flesh we are, and must remain, Perpetual strangers, and ourselves contain From that embrace which marriage love allows, WeMetInParis Or else, I injure virtue, you your vows, And for a short unworthy pleasure mar Grace Frick and Her Life with Marguerite Yourcenar Those rich contentments which eternal are, by Joan E. Howard Of which I am in hope that always we Should in each other’s presence guiltless be. “A very engaging and thought-provoking por- The reader may be forgiven for thinking that the poet was in trayal of Grace Frick, who she was as a person and hope of something else entirely, yet defers to custom. how she worked with and One of the strengths of this book is that Klawitter examines for Marguerite Yourcenar to the subtle differences between Marvell and a few of his con- construct their life together temporaries in how they wrote about women—how warmly or and create the environment that allowed works like detachedly. This is especially intriguing when the work of Mar- Memoirs of Hadrian to vell, probably celibate, is compared to that of other writers come into being.” thought to be celibate but theoretically desirous of women. He — Francesca Counihan, is, for example, compared with poet Robert Herrick, whose author of L’Autorité dans l’oeuvre romanesque de work is presented as being more in sync with heterosexual lit- Marguerite Yourcenar erary conventions. And there are comparisons with other poets. Indeed, so many examples are set forth with such exhaustive “We will henceforth be care and thoroughness that we do not so much read them as obliged to count this biography of Grace Frick in the check them off. The author writes very well, in an academic forefront of biographies of style frequently sprinkled with humor, but there’s only so much Marguerite Yourcenar.” one can do to lighten the burden of such an extensive set of lit- — Bérengère Deprez, au- erary sources written in the language of the 1600s. thor of Marguerite Yource- nar and the USA: From As noted before, this book is probably not suitable for most Prophecy to Protest lay readers, even those with a modest awareness of Renaissance poetry, for whom pushing through this forest of literary vines Order at: www.upress.missouri.edu may well prove onerous. Specialists in this field, however, not For more info, email: [email protected] looking for low-hanging fruit, are sure to learn something they didn’t know.

36 Th$ Gay & L$sban R$v$w / oRLd ide BRIEFS

Conversations with Edmund White ways includes Nabokov (his early cham- their many intellectual descendants. The lat- Edited by Will Brantley pion), Colette, and Proust. Over the years ter include living poets, scholars, political and Nancy McGuire Roche he has also mentioned Gertrude Stein, activists, black women, lesbians, and the Univ. Press of Mississippi. 208 pages, $25. Ronald Firbank, Coleman Dowell, Christo- many combinations thereof. Reprinted from sources ranging from The pher Isherwood, James Merrill, and Alan When Lorde and Parker speak of the im- Paris Review to Granta—and including Hollinghurst. Non-gay writers would in- portant work they have done—the journals three interviews that were originally pub- clude Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, edited, the events organized—they’re not lished in this magazine—this collection of Chekhov, and Thomas Pynchon. just speaking of their individual achieve- talks with Edmund White runs from 1982, MARTHA E. STONE ments; they’re talking about an entire when White’s third novel, A Boy’s Own movement that owes no small part of its ex- Story, was published, to 2016, with the pub- SisterLove:The Letters of Audre Lorde istence to their efforts. Many readers will lication of Our Young Man. The book offers and Pat Parker, 1974–1989 no doubt come to Sister Love for exactly many insights into his creative process. Edited by Julie R. Enszer this reason: to be part of that conversation When writing novels, White often follows A Midsummer Night’s Press. and that movement. Others will come for Flaubert’s command to “marinate”: to lie on 128 pages, $14.95 the window into these poets’ private lives the couch for a long time and daydream be- “Warmth from a cold place,” begins the that this book offers. Much of the women’s fore setting pen to paper. After that he first letter in Sister Love, dated October 12, correspondence consists of filling each writes quickly but for short periods of time. 1974, and sent from Audre Lorde’s house in other in on the events of their lives, re- The interviews are presented in chrono- Staten Island to Pat Parker’s home in sunny counting the readings, vacations, and trips logical order, allowing the reader to follow California. In this simple greeting, the to the hospital that occupied their time White’s evolving thoughts on same-sex reader detects intimacy, affection, a certain when they weren’t writing. In the second marriage, LGBT assimilation, gay litera- amount of exhaustion (Lorde goes on to de- half of the book, Lorde and Parker both ture, and the AIDS crisis, among many top- scribe the “deluge of work” she just waded reckon with cancer and the knowledge that ics. Inevitably, there is some repetition, through). Reading through the letters, one death is stalking them. Their reflections on especially when he talks about his child- has the sense of eavesdropping on a conver- mortality alone make this a worthwhile hood and adolescence in the Midwest. sation that started long ago (they met in book. In the end, Sister Love is a f ascinat- White enjoys discussing other writers, espe- 1969) and will continue for years to come, ing, if slim, addition to Lorde and Parker’s cially those he admires. The short list al- as their narrative threads are picked up by bodies of work. R UTH JOFFRE

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May–Jun$ 2018 37 A Playwright Converses with Himself

INCE THE EARLY 1970s, the graphical wallflower.” Sadly, this is also the British writer Alan Bennett has PHILIP GAMBONE decade of terrorist bombings on the Tube, kept “a sporadic diary,” extracts police misconduct, riots, and increased from which have been annually drug addiction, all of which Bennett com- S Keeping On Keeping On published in the London Review of Books. ments on. The diaries are yet another winner among by Alan Bennett The diaries chronicle numerous outings the many books, plays, and screenplays that Farrar, Straus and Giroux and excursions: to art galleries and muse- the enormously talented Bennett—whose 722 pages, $40. ums, antique stores and architectural sal- works include The History Boys, The Mad- vage shops, gardens and doctors’ offices, ness of George III,andThe Habit of Art—has turned out during funerals and memorial services. He and Rupert are especially his fifty-year (and still going) career. keen on poking around historically important churches, so much Over the years, these diary entries have found their way into so that on one occasion they break into the gated ruins of a me- three volumes of Bennett’s collected prose. The American edi- dieval abbey: “an illicit delight.” There are lunches to attend, tion of the third volume came out last year. This installment (di- interviews to give, radio programs to participate in, alterations aries from 2005-2015), written when Bennett was in his to their house to supervise, opening nights to appear at. In short, seventies, finds him “beginning to tidy up a bit.” In addition to his life is “a bit of a fullock ... one thing piled on another.” Hap- his reflections, the tidying up includes several occasional pieces: pily—wonderfully, really—all of these activities, the quotidian introductions to his plays, program notes, memorial minutes, as well as the festive, are engagingly narrated. What a captivat- prefaces to exhibitions, and a sermon preached at King’s Col- ing dinner companion Bennett must be! lege Chapel. The latter he calls “a hazard”: “One isn’t supposed Bennett’s alertness and powers of description—about every- to preach and gets told off if one does.” The book—all 700-plus thing from hens (“fastidious in their footwork”) to waiters in pages of it—is rounded off with the complete texts of two plays that were “put away in a drawer” and never staged. But it’s the diaries that are the real delight of this volume. Bennett once said that his diaries comprise bits of conversation with himself. What a pleasure to eavesdrop on these conversations, which are full of mordant wit, verbal panache, and straight-up honesty. And while this installment of the diaries is more candid about his gay life (“nowadays no one seems to mind”), for this reader the real interest Alan Bennett with the movie cast of The History Boys lies in the activities and thoughts of a particularly intelligent, observant, witty, and prin- Rome (“looking like dentists or professors of philosophy”)— cipled man of letters, one who just happens to be gay. are magnificently trenchant. Looking at Van Gogh, he’s in awe In the course of the decade, Bennett wins a Tony for Best of how quickly and recklessly the artist painted, so much so that Play, enters into a civil partnership with his long-term compan- “any sense of painterly self-preservation is abandoned in the ion Rupert Thomas, and donates his papers to Oxford’s fever of getting it down.” And then he adds, “This has a message Bodleian Library. “Lest it should be thought there had been any for me at this late stage in my life.” sort of competition, this is the only enquiry I’ve ever had,” he Frequently mentioned in the diaries is his reading life. We notes. “One offer in forty years makes me some sort of biblio- never find Bennett without “a book on the go.” Reading The Se- cret Life of Cows (2017), by Rosamund Young, he wonders that Philip Gambone, the author of four books, has been keeping a diary the author “never mentions any idiosyncrasies when the cows since 1968. go with the bull.” This reticence, he surmises, may be “a meas-

38 Th$ Gay & L$sban R$v$w / oRLd ide ure of her respect for her charges, feeling that cows are entitled decade of the self-interested and self-seeking, ready to sell off to their privacy as much as their keepers.” This pitch-perfect what’s left of our liberal institutions and loot the rest to their admixture of wit, intelligence, and good common sense has own advantage. It’s not a government of the nation but a gov- been a hallmark of Bennett’s writing throughout his distin- ernment of half the nation, a true legacy of Mrs. Thatcher.” Of guished career. the former prime minister, whom he “detested,” he says that “no Especially delicious is the way Bennett rails against the one [has] done such systematic damage to the North since mediocrity, dishonesty, and tastelessness of so much of modern William the Conqueror.” British life. He execrates the “wholesale destruction of Victorian As one might expect from someone in his ninth decade of buildings” and the conversion of decent Victorian villas “into life, Bennett also writes about aging. The diary frequently takes models of white and modish minimalism.” The demolition of note of the death of friends. Of his own aches and pains (in one old London at the hands of big money—the banks and the City particular case, a bad ankle), he says: “I still have the absurd corporations—is, he says, worse than that wrought by Hitler’s notion that, as with any other ailment, age and infirmity will run blitzkrieg. “By comparison ... the Führer was a conservation- its course and I will recover from it. That there is no recovery— ist.” Likewise, he denounces the privatization of institutions like or only one—doesn’t always occur.” the railroads, utilities, and even the probation service. “The no- In the introduction to his play The Habit of Art (2010), tion that probation, which is intended to help and support those Bennett ruminates on the poets W. H. Auden and Philip who have fallen foul of the law, should make a profit for share- Larkin, neither of whom, he says, was “much fun ... at the fin- holders seems beyond satire. ... I never used to bother about ish.” For his own part, Bennett seems determined not to go capitalism. It was just a word. Not now.” that route as the end approaches. This volume, despite its Bennett’s politics are a congenial and feisty mixture of doorstopper heft, is a great pleasure throughout, and often a “backward-looking radicalism and conservative socialism.” lot of fun. In this era in American life when bombast, dema- Contemptuous of what he sees as the “Torification” of British goguery, and bald-faced lying have shoved aside the old val- life, he finds that Britain has become “a state that gets away ues of civility and honesty in public discourse, Bennett stands with doing as little as possible for its citizens and shuffling as as a model of those virtues, along with intelligence, reason- many responsibilities as it can onto anyone who thinks they can ableness, decency, humanity, aversion to cant, and a scrappy, make a profit out of them.” no-nonsense irreverence for bullshit. On his eightieth birth- The election of a Tory government on the day before his day, his neighbor remarked, “It’s great that you can still piss eighty-first birthday dismays him: “Now we have another people off however old you are.” When Women Rise

HIS BOOK packs a punch—or ory and the politics of its transmission. She rather, multiple punches—re- ROSEMARY BOOTH has curated numerous exhibitions on the flecting the power and energy of women’s movement. women’s struggles for political The Feminist Revolution is an oversized T The Feminist Revolution: and social equality in the 1960s, ’70s, and book with a standout red, white, and black ’80s. Like a quilt stitched by a sewing cir- The Struggle for Women’s cover. Morris and Withers describe it as not cle, The Feminist Revolution depicts a Liberation a history but rather a “representation” of dizzying array of actions that show the by Bonnie J. Morris and D-M Withers one era of women’s struggle intended to scope and variety of women’s efforts in Smithsonian Books celebrate the “political, strategic, and cul- those years. The work is told from an 224 pages, $34.95 tural diversity” of the whole movement. Anglo-American, Western perspective and Refreshingly, photos from familiar events, is illustrated with striking black-and-white archival photos am- such as Hillary Clinton’s speech before the U.N.’s 1995 Fourth plified by grassroots activists’ words. World Congress on Women in Beijing, are outnumbered by pic- The authors’ narrative essays in ten thematic areas recount tures of more obscure yet equally riveting events, such as the events set mainly in the U.S. and Britain. Bonnie J. Morris is Wages for Housework campaign that arose out of a women’s professor of women’s studies at Georgetown and also teaches at collective in Italy in 1972. Even buttons can convey a power- George Washington University. She has written The Disap- ful message: “Ordain women or stop baptizing them”; “Viva pearing L: Erasure of Lesbian Spaces and Culture (reviewed la Vulva!”; and “Do women have to be naked to get into the in the March-April 2017 issue) as well as novels and plays, and Met?” has received three Lambda Literary awards. D-M Withers, a re- What is feminism? British philosopher Lorna Finlayson de- search fellow in media and film at the University of Sussex, fines it as a movement that recognizes the fact of patriarchy and England, is a respected theorist concerned with cultural mem- “wants to abolish that state of affairs.” Morris and Withers em- phasize the diversity of feminist efforts and their connection to Rosemary Booth is a writer and photographer living in Cambridge, social justice goals. Common demands in the 1960s were ac- Mass. cess to birth control, abortion, childcare, and gynecological

May–Jun$ 2018 39 health care, and the inclusion of women in historical research ters: one depicting the energy and commitment of lesbian fem- and history courses. Feminists used protests, conferences, teach- inists; another showing the powerful conviction of African- ins, and political lobbying to get their message across. They set American and Latina feminists; and a third illustrating up consciousness-raising groups, crisis centers, shelters for feminists’ spirited opposition to militarism, nuclear arms, and women and children, publishing houses, recording studios, and war. bookstores where women could be heard. Organizing for lesbian equality had begun with Del Martin The next decade saw two significant gains. In 1972, the and Phyllis Lyon’s founding of the Daughters of Bilitis in San U.S. Congress ratified Title IX, outlawing discrimination by Francisco in 1955. Lesbians became more visible and vocal in any educational program receiving federal assistance. Title IX the larger women’s movement in the ’60s, but they often found has had an outstanding impact on women’s participation in themselves marginalized by heterosexual feminists. For exam- sports at the secondary and college levels. In addition, abor- ple, in 1969, Betty Friedan, president of the National Organi- tion—which had been allowed (with several restrictions) in zation for Women (NOW), famously warned members against Great Britain since 1967—was legalized by the U.S. Supreme “the lavender menace” that lesbians posed for attaining NOW’s Court in its landmark 1973 decision, Roe v Wade. During the goals. (Her phrase spawned the formation of a radical feminist same decade, women boldly argued their cause in a profusion group called the Lavender Menace.) of books and magazine articles, theater and street perform- Undaunted, lesbians went on to become leading figures in ances, art exhibitions, dance shows, and musical celebrations. the women’s movement, among them poet Adrienne Rich, ten- For example, the Womyn’s Music Festival, held in Michigan nis champion Billie Jean King, and astronaut Sally Ride. Mor- from 1976 to 2015, was the largest such women-only gathering ris and Withers focus on the labors of less famous lesbians, too, on the planet. such as the Combahee River Collective, a Boston-based move- Not surprisingly, women’s gains often prompted a backlash. ment in the mid-1970s that voiced opposition to “racial, sexual, The Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, first in- heterosexual, and class oppression.” With lesbian prodding, a troduced in 1923, finally passed both houses of Congress 49 NOW resolution of 1971 termed the oppression of lesbians a years later, but intense opposition by antifeminist lawyer Phyl- “legitimate concern” of feminism. lis Schlafly and the ultra-conservative John Birch Society The Feminist Revolution shows African-American femi- helped to defeat state-level ratification. nists fighting not only sexism but also racism, including from The Feminist Revolution shows how feminist strivings for many white feminists. Black feminists made their voices heard, social justice persisted, especially in three remarkable chap- but it took extraordinary effort. A U.K. organization renamed itself the Abasindi Cooperative after a Zulu word meaning “survivor.” In the U.S., Rep. Shirley Chisholm became the first Join Other Readers of The G&LR for black person and the first woman to seek a national party nom- ination for president, campaigning in 1972 under the strident motto “Unbought and Unbossed.” Gay Europe 2018 Some feminists were committed pacifists. Morris and Withers recall Jeannette Rankin, the congresswoman from Celebrate the gay side of history and Montana who helped ensure ratification of the 19th Amend- art with Oscar Wilde Tours! ment granting women the right to vote. Rankin joined other Explore the gay side of Europe’s great legislators in voting against World War I, and in a vote taken capitals, learn about the gay heroes after Pearl Harbor in late 1941 was the sole member of Con- of Ancient Greece, and meet the gress to vote against war. In the post-war period, pacifist fem- geniuses of the Italian Renaissance. inists protested military buildups and nuclear weapons in the Donatello’s U.S. and the U.K. In an astonishing photo from 1983, women All trips are David designed and led by from the U.K. Greenham Common movement can be seen Prof. Andrew Lear, dancing atop silos at the RAF Base Berkshire, at dawn, on the founder of New Year’s Day. Oscar Wilde Tours. In the end, did these years of feminist struggle make a difference? Gender, race, and sexuality remain grounds for routine DATES OF TRIPS IN 2018: discrimination. In the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere, women lack parity in political representation, access to jobs, and pay, while Dublin Gay Theatre Festival — May 10–14 reactionary crusades to nullify women’s rights, such as the right Oscar Wilde’s London / Paris — August 14–22 to abortion, continue. Sexual harassment and abuse go unpun- Gay Greece fom Achilles to Alexander — Sept. 26–Oct. 4 ished. Racist violence persists. LGBT people lack basic pro- Gay Italy from Caesar to Michelangelo — Oct. 5–14 tection from discrimination in many states. That said, developments such as the growing “Me Too” DISCOUNTS AVAILABLE FOR G&LR READERS movement and women’s large-scale marches here and abroad are heartening. In that respect, The Feminist Revolution is a For itineraries, dates, & prices welcome reminder of the important gains that have been made, Visit: www.OscarWildeTours.com as its stunning material testifies to the undiminished spirit that women continue to bring to the work.

40 Th Gay & Lsban Rvw / oRLdide Out Came Jann

ANN WENNER is one of those peo- ing zipper. (The thighs and package filling ple who seems to have emerged from JIM NAWROCKI out those jeans were said to belong to Joe the womb knowing exactly what he Dallesandro, the sexy actor of Warhol’s wanted to do. He had journalism in films.) Even for the early 1970s, the J Sticky Fingers: his blood early on. He not only created a cover’s blatant reference to male mastur- neighborhood newspaper as a child but also The Life and Times of Jann Wenner bation was audacious. It was also the start sold subscriptions to it. As the founder, ed- and Rolling Stone Magazine of treating male rock stars as sex symbols, itor, and driving force behind Rolling Stone by Joe Hagan a practice that Jann Wenner, a closeted gay magazine, Wenner made a unique imprint Knopf. 547 pages, $29.95 man, made sure to capitalize on in his mag- on American culture and managed— azine. In 1972, Rolling Stone featured a through moxie, good timing, and sheer luck—to create what tantalizingly racy photograph of teen idol David Cassidy on its has become a media legend. He could not have done it without cover (the Annie Leibovitz photograph made it clear that Cas- grand ambition, cockiness, and a nearly ruthless drive to suc- sidy wasn’t just shirtless) and a suggestive centerfold inside. ceed. And he could not have done it alone. His ability to court Though Leibovitz soon regretted the photo, the issue sold thou- the right people at the right time was a key element in Rolling sands of copies, setting a record at the time, and Wenner was Stone’s early success. But Wenner also made a lot of ene- delighted with it. He correctly intu- mies along the way. Joe Hagan ted that there were many young chronicles nearly every minute men who lusted after male rockers of the story in his undeniably as much as the girls did, and he fascinating biography. was happy to give them all some- A brief scan of the dust- hing to dream on. jacket blurbs gives a taste of the Many people at the time as- famous names (and infamous sumed (and perhaps many still stories) contained within the do) that the magazine was named book’s 500-plus pages. The cast after Mick Jagger’s band, but of characters includes Hunter S. Wenner insists that the idea came Thompson, Bruce Springsteen, from an essay on youth culture, Annie Leibovitz, Elton John, “Like a Rolling Stone,” written Mick Jagger, Truman Capote, by his friend and mentor Ralph John Lennon and Paul McCart- Gleason, who borrowed the ney, Bette Midler, Bob Dylan, phrase from the Bob Dylan Bono, and David Geffen, among song and suggested it for the many others. Rolling Stone didn’t magazine. Wenner agreed, but just cover the music scene and Jagger, a shrewd businessman, youth culture; it helped to shape wasn’t convinced, and he and and define them. Wenner danced back and forth Many of the magazine’s early for decades before eventually writers—the roster included Ben aying to rest a legal dispute Fong-Torres, Joe Eszterhas, P. J. over rights to the name. O’Rourke, and Matt Taibbi—be- Hagan’s biography is a came stories in themselves. Hunter monumental effort. Wenner Thompson and Tom Wolfe were the was nearly obsessive about standardbearers of the “New Jour- maintaining his image, and nalism,” a long-form genre that em- he amassed an archive of journals, press ployed novelistic techniques. A clippings, photographs, and other materials to back it up (at one significant portion of their work first appeared in the pages of point, he even built a nuclear-blast-proof vault to house the Rolling Stone. In this way, Wenner was instrumental in chang- trove). Hagan had access to all of it. He also conducted inter- ing the face of cultural and political reporting. views with hundreds of celebrities, Rolling Stone staffers, and The book’s title is a reference to the notorious 1971 Rolling others who knew and worked with Wenner. Stones album cover by Andy Warhol, which featured a black- The picture of the media titan that emerges is not always and-white crotch shot of a pair of jeans, complete with a work- flattering. Wenner was widely regarded as brash, egomaniacal, and self-serving. He could be downright nasty. In an afterword, Jim Nawrocki, a frequent reviewer in these pages, is a writer based in Hagan notes that many suggested he steer clear of Wenner and San Francisco. not do the book. It is to his credit that Wenner agreed to be in-

May–Jun$ 2018 41 terviewed for this warts-and-all biography. Wenner was also said to have bedded many women, among One of the most fascinating elements of the story is the long, them Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. troubled marriage and business partnership of Jann and Jane Hagan writes Wenner’s story with the flair of a novelist. As Wenner. Most of the trouble resulted from Jann’s closeted sex- if channeling the techniques of the New Journalists, Hagan uality and many gay liaisons. This appears to have been an open often opens his chapters with deftly drawn scenes that capture secret, though many close friends claim to have been surprised a particularly dramatic moment. He can be equally effective when Wenner finally came out in 1995 after he left Jane for Matt with cliffhangers at chapters’ ends (“He flicked on the televi- Nye, a handsome young fashion designer. Hagan’s book is re- sion. John Lennon was dead.”). Rolling Stone was a part of plete with juicy tales of Wenner’s exploits, including his arrest, many watershed cultural moments, and the cast of characters in at age twelve, for some apparently gay “horseplay” at a library the magazine’s history, from the bit players to the megastars, with the son of the local sheriff. In the decades that followed, ru- would be a daunting task for any biographer to manage, but mors proliferated about romances, or at least hookups, with Hagan pulls it off. Sticky Fingers is a valuable chronicle and a Mick Jagger, Pete Townshend, Richard Gere, et al. Of course, superbly entertaining book. Wilde after the Sentence

E MAY HAVE canonized life. Yet this is no dry academic exercise. Oscar Wilde for his proto- FREDERICK S. RODEN Frankel weaves the information into a story gay life and martyrdom in about a man who remains a hero. Copious late 19th-century England, notes are useful for readers who want more, W Oscar Wilde: but we tend to treat the very end of his life but the text is thoroughly accessible, in the with either morbid fascination or awkward The Unrepentant Years tradition of Richard Ellmann’s definitive lit- avoidance. Wilde’s premature death after by Nicholas Frankel erary biography. In reclaiming the final serving his two-year jail sentence is some- Harvard. 374 pages, $29.95. years, Frankel has recovered the man and re- how our own: an individual and collective defined his legacy. gay failure. Our god died in his third year after prison instead of Frankel describes Wilde’s later life as “entirely unapologetic rising on the third day. It causes us to doubt our faith, if not in and uncompromising.” He claims that the narcissistic and aris- Wilde’s iconoclastic gospel, then in the hagiography of the mod- tocratic Bosie showed neither “lack of love” nor “failure of ern LGBT movement. We don’t want Wilde to be a camp, tragic sympathy.” He asserts that Wilde continued a prolific, more au- figure whose crucifixion and death are bathos, but rather a thentic artistic life after prison. He argues for the formal merit charismatic savior who died for our equality of The Ballad of Reading Gaol, notes that movement. Wilde revised plays for publication, and In Oscar Wilde: The Unrepentant Years, shows that he lived a more openly gay life Nicholas Frankel proposes that we consider while in exile. He details the material condi- Wilde’s final years outside of time, apart tions of prison life as well as his subject’s from what came before and what will follow. reading and writing resources. He gauges He also hopes that we will look at Wilde Wilde’s moods with respect to Douglas in his honestly in all his failings, and that we’ll re- famous prison letter “De Profundis.” Frankel spect his personal agency during that period counteracts doubts about their mutual love rather than assume he was a broken man or and expectation for reunion. Bosie’s plaything. Frankel’s Wilde is human, Wilde lived and loved with Bosie in real, and didactic. The focus on Wilde the Naples. Evidence suggests that their sexual prisoner and lover humanizes him. Bosie relationship had ended years earlier, but Douglas, typically portrayed as Wilde’s Frankel describes something more poignant: Judas, comes closer to a beloved disciple in they become a gay couple. We usually dis- this version. miss Bosie as a selfish opportunist; David Frankel is an extraordinary textual scholar Hare’s excellent 1998 play The Judas Kiss who gave us the best recent edition of Dorian leaves us with this viewpoint. Through a sen- Gray (2012), recovering its full homoerotic sitive reading of both of their writings, Wilde and Douglas in 1893 resonance from Wilde’s original work. Frankel describes two men in love, strug- Throughout The Unrepentant Years, he cites Wilde’s published gling with circumstances that pulled them apart. He posits their letters, draws from global archives, and invokes intertextual ref- cohabitation as a radical gesture. erences across a matrix of virtually everyone in his post-prison After going broke and losing Douglas, “Wilde’s very exis- tence was a calamity.” Even so, Frankel reclaims The Ballad of Frederick S. Roden teaches literature at the University of Connecticut. Reading Gaol as a “moving and unapologetic reassertion of He edited a guide to Wilde studies for Palgrave Macmillan. Wilde’s sexual orientation.” The remaining 33 months of his

42 Th$ Gay & L$sban R$v$w / oRLd ide life, spent in Paris, “offered a greater sense of personal and sex- which he used to capture the world and glimpse himself. His ual freedom.” This was Wilde’s most “out” period as a gay man, final days were a new via dolorosa. though he continued to suffer great feelings of loss over his The tendency to deify Wilde is palpable in Frankel’s ex- wife’s death and his permanent separation from his sons. traordinary book. Moving away from his fall from grace, Frankel faces the realities of Wilde’s decline: his lies and ir- Frankel refuses to see him as a “martyr to Victorian morality” responsibility over money, excessive drinking and whoring, and or as “Alfred Douglas’ victim. To view Wilde this way is to rob physical weakness. Frankel does not whitewash. His portrait him of all agency.” While some readers will resist the essen- provokes more compassion for the broken human than any other tialism inherent in Frankel’s view of Wilde as a proto-modern that I’ve read. Hope and despair, being seen and not seen, are gay man, the author has made a convincing case for extending developed through Wilde’s late fascination with a camera, the heroic image into his final years.

AUTHOR’S PROFILE Mark A. Roeder’s Youths of Indiana

ROBERT CUMMINGS NEVILLE united in 2009, and shortly after this, Percy nostalgia for the good that is lost and guilt suddenly receives custody of his Goth because of one’s own evil, and the future N THE FALL OF 1980, two sixteen- nephew Caspian (Boy Trouble, 2012), a gay because of fear of loss and bad outcomes. year-old boys in Verona, Indiana, fall in homophobe who’s rescued from self-hate So Roeder’s characters come to learn the Ilove, are outed and abused in a bigoted by Tyler, the son of Percy’s rediscovered freedom of living in the present. More often community, and commit suicide on the same lover. Then Caspian in turn rescues Brayden than not, this freedom is exercised in mov- day, despite the desperate efforts of their few who is in despair and rage at the suicide of ing from mere lust to love and loyalty. So friends. Their fictional story, his own lover shortly be- many of the characters, gay and straight, be- in Mark A. Roeder’s young fore (The New Bad Ass in come friends. The novels set in the 21st- adult (YA) novel, The Soc- Town, 2013). century are celebrations of long-lasting cer Field Is Empty (1999), is But I have only begun friendships and loving relationships. the root from which author to sketch Roeder’s world. Roeder’s novels are narrated in the first Roeder has created an intri- Three of his best novels person by one or several of the characters in cate tapestry of tales of are set in Blackford, in alternating chapters. There is often a sense young, mostly gay men, southern Indiana, in the of tension over whether the author is speak- some of whom he tracks 1950s (Outfield Menace ing in his own voice or that of his charac- through middle age. 2005, Snow Angel, 2008, ters. In The Vampire’s Heart, Roeder Roeder has two sets of and The Nudo Twins, successfully writes in the voice of a thir- YA books about Blooming- 2013). Three more novels teen-year-old, but there still is a tension in ton, Indiana. The first is are set in Blackford in the most of the novels. As the characters ma- about the Verona boys of 1990s: Phantom World ture, the tensions lessen. the 1980s who go to college (2004), named for an Roeder seems obsessed with parties and there, beginning with Bren- amusement park owned food. In nearly all of the novels there are den (Temptation University, by the rock band Phan- picnics, holiday celebrations, and large din- 2011), Brandon and Dorian (2013), Nathan tom; Second Star to the Right (2006), about ners. Much of Roeder’s dialogue is set in and Devon (2014), Scotty and Casper a rock-star wannabe, Cedi, who joins the restaurants with detailed descriptions of the (2015), and Tim and Marc (2015). One of Phantom band; and The Perfect Boy (2008), meals each person orders, including what Roeder’s most moving books, set in Verona about a very poor, fat, bullied boy who goes into a sandwich and the toppings on a at the same time, The Antichrists (2013) fea- leaves home, shapes up, attains success as pizza. Part of ‘living in the present” is artic- tures Elijah, younger and very small brother an escort, and returns to Blackford to woo ulated by careful attention to the season of of Tom and Mitch who play football with the only boy who had been kind to him. the year and transitioning to the next. This Brenden in Bloomington. Elijah struggles to Roeder began writing for a teen-age audi- is a kind of detail that Percy advises Tyler, a make the junior varsity football team and ence of “gay youth” with stories of coming high school author, to use in order to give succeeds, only to develop an untreatable out and surviving homophobia from class- life to writing (Yesterday’s Tomorrow). brain tumor that quickly is killing him until mates, parents, and in particular religion. Mark A. Roeder’s Indiana is a literary ar- he is miraculously healed at the last moment Throughout most of his novels runs the tifact of fascinating complexity. He has by Jesus, who is temporarily a student at theme of love and support from friends written 55 novels by my count, and some of Verona High School, helps Elijah’s religious overcoming the hatred in homophobia. But them are double novellas. Roeder’s charac- parents accept Elijah’s homosexuality. Why struggles with the supernatural raise ters are interesting studies and the novels not bring Jesus in? Roeder’s novels above the genre of teen-age stand up to rereading. My advice would be Also set in Bloomington is a series begin- coming out stories, and he is a master of the to sit down with a stack of his books before ning with Yesterday’s Tomorrow (2011) mysteries of crime, villainy, and intrigue. a fire with a pot of tea at hand, as he might about a writer, Percy, who, somewhat like Roeder believes that death is not the end describe the scene. Roeder himself in 2009, lives in Blooming- and that the afterlife can be angelic, and ton. He flashes back to a summer camp in even redemptive. Robert Cummings Neville, professor of philos- 1989 when he fell in love with his first Nevertheless, he constantly emphasizes ophy, religion, and theology at Boston Univer- boyfriend, whom he had not seen since they living in the present because the past and sity, is the author of books and articles on graduated from high school. They are re- future can bind you: the past because of religion, value, and Confucianism.

May–Jun$ 2018 43 Generations Change, and So Does Art

LAN HOLLINGHURST’S and ’41. Some will go to war to die or be- novels are unusual for a few FELICE PICANO come RAF heroes, while others will toil in reasons. First, no two are alike. intelligence factories hidden under castles. From The Swimming Pool Li- We follow their fortunes, sometimes quite A The Sparsholt Affair brary (1988) to his new book, The Spar- loosely, up to their funerals—which serve sholt Affair—with The Folding Star (1994) by Alan Hollinghurst as excuses for old pals and frenemies to and The Stranger’s Child (2011) in be- Alfred A. Knopf. 432 pages, $28.95 gather and catch up. Hollinghurst is nothing tween—each has its own ambience, tone, if not clear-eyed in his view of “society.” subject, and structure. Second, Hollinghurst doesn’t seem to be As always, it is the writing that counts. Hollinghurst has a gift in any kind of dialogue with gay novels written in the U.S. or, for succinctly summing things up, as in: “I was very glad to see for that matter, in the U.K. His subjects and topics simply dif- her, but the atmosphere, which had taken on a hint of deviancy, fer too much from those of, say, Adam Mars-Jones or Patrick rather changed when she came into the room. She hadn’t the ben- Gale to invite comparison. efit of ten years in a boy’s boarding school, with all its ingrained The Sparsholt Affair could be said to resemble his second depravities.” Or, when talking about a picture book: “published novel, The Folding Star, in being about artists, both real and before the war ... not yet thirty years old but a peculiar gel of ro- fictional. The new book can be said mance seemed to fix the scenes fur- to be about the effect of World War ther back. ... [W]hen no one was II on English society, for good and about, small boats bobbed at their ill, just as The Stranger’s Child was moorings and no car or coach was about the effects of World War I. seen on the pink and fawn ribbons of Like the latter, The Sparsholt Affair the roads.” is a family novel, even odder than its Because Sparsholt’s son Johnny is predecessor because it’s about a fam- a major character, we see him at ily whose main characters are all gay. twelve, at nineteen, at forty, and at sixty. The great joke of the title is that He becomes a portrait painter of note, the “Sparsholt Affair” itself, which is which allows the author to make use the family name, happens entirely of his exceptional ability to write offstage, as in a Greek tragedy or a about art. Here Johnny is restoring a Baroque opera. We are led right up small painting: “Never before had to it at the end of book’s second he paid such minute attention to a part, and then learn that the “affair” painting, certainly not to one of his happened well in the past. It doesn’t own—he saw it decompose itself even play a central role but serves under the lens, he had a view of it not rather as a leitmotif, to be brought up even the artist had had, although ele- at various times and in several con- ments in the design, which the artist versations as the plot progresses. must have understood, refused to give Hollinghurst quickly establishes up their secrets.” interesting, believable voices and Even everyday life becomes a sub- Jamesian “centers of consciousness” ject for art, as in: “Johnny went out to and gets them busy. Just as an al- the window, stepped out, a bit test- most throwaway pre-Great War ingly, onto the thin strip of balcony, poem by a poet felled in a trench in with its delicate wrought iron fence. France provides a linchpin for The It was curious, the little altitude Stranger’s Child,inthenewnovel above the pavement, the island of it is a pen-and-ink portrait of the title public garden with holly trees and benches, character in his youth that centers things. Illuminating one of and then the road, the balcony trembling when the lights changed Hollinghurst’s themes, the portrait conveys that every genera- to amber and the juggernauts started their rumbling ascent through tion looks at art differently and for its own reasons, challenging the low gears.” Note the abrupt sensory shift from sight to sound. the idea that art is “eternal.” We never get a complete picture of the title character, not What the author also does well is to establish a peculiar even from his son, with whom he maintains a complex but group of people bound together by a shared past, in this case a never intimate connection. A war hero, physically beautiful and short period of time at Oxford University during the years 1940 strong to the end, a subject of scandal, a successful engineer and capitalist, his many parts never quite add up to an intelli- Felice Picano’s latest book is a memoir titled Nights at Rizzoli (OR Books). gible whole.

44 Th$ Gay & L$sban R$v$w / oRLd ide part of a “futuristic movement.” In an effort to be “transparent,” Gumbs explains: “Yvonne Welbon, the editor and initiator of this book, and other contributors have participated in the activities of A Visual Minority both or one of these projects, and this is as it should be. The future of Black lesbian filmmaking is not something about which JEAN ROBERTA we can be objective; it is something we do.” Some might criticize this bold rejection of detachment, but, as a number of the contributors remind us, those engaged in creating cultural visibility Sisters in the Life: can’t afford to make critical distance a priority in their work. A History of Out African American Lesbian Media-Making Black-and-white photos of actors, artists, scriptwriters, di- Edited by Yvonne Welbon and Alexandra Juhasz rectors, and panelists break up the pages of prose. Even a ca- Duke University Press. 296 pages, $26.95 sual viewer of film and television dramas is likely to come across a few familiar faces. Despite the academic tone of most N HER INTRODUCTION to Sisters in the Life, editor of the essays, the collection as a whole conveys the energy and Yvonne Welbon explains the significance of the “minority camaraderie of artists in the midst of revolutionary change. Igroup” under discussion, namely African-American lesbian This is an eye-opening study that seems likely to become a filmmakers: “Since the 1922 theatrical release of Tressie Soud- classic in its genre. ers’s A Woman’s Error, approximately one hundred feature films ______have been directed by African-American women. Almost one- Jean Roberta is a widely published writer based in Regina, Canada. third of those films were directed by black lesbians. Statistically about four percent of the adult American population is likely to identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender, but over thirty percent of the feature films have been directed by this minority Catalyst Provincetown population.” Who knew? The editor goes on to say that Ava DuVernay’s current Hollywood film, A Wrinkle in Time, now has the biggest MARTHA MILLER budget ($100 million) of any film directed by an African-Amer- ican woman. This scholarly book is clearly intended to fill a gap The Off S eason in film studies as they have traditionally been taught. Both of the by Amy Hoffman editors remark that this is the book they needed to read when Wisconsin. 200 pages, $24.95 they were fledgling students and filmmakers looking for evidence that women who resembled them in any way had ever FF SEASON in Provincetown: cold, harsh, and beautiful created a cinematic legacy. all at once. The days are short, the tourists are gone, and The anthology is divided chronologically into two sections: Othe townies remain. New to P’town are Nora and Janelle, “Part I: 1986–1995” and “Part II: 1996–2016.” Essays in the lovers who have a common dream to live there through the off- first part include an analysis of panel discussions, visual art, and season, a place where they can mend their bruised relationship, sculpture, as well as film, and all discuss the need for queer where Nora can pursue her art, and Janelle, her beautiful African- black female authenticity. In the title of “Birth of a Notion,” American partner, can recover from cancer treatment. filmmaker and academic Michelle Parkerson refers to the noto- In an effort to grow stronger, Janelle walks on the beach. rious 1915 silent film The Birth of a Nation, which featured Always thinking of Nora, she develops a knack for finding sea white actors in blackface and showed sympathy for both the glass, which Nora uses to make jewelry. Nora, the struggling Confederacy and the Ku Klux Klan. Parkerson’s essay is subti- artist, worries aloud about the financial inequality between tled “Toward Black, Gay, and Lesbian Imagery in Film and them. Janelle answers, “Do what you need to do, sweetheart. ... Video,” and it explores the challenge of overcoming the invis- I’ve got us covered.” Nevertheless, Nora sets up a booth at the ibility and stigmatization of LGBT characters within the annual Thanksgiving craft fair in hopes of making money. There African-American community. She sees a “new generation of she meets Baby Harris. gay and lesbian filmmakers of color” on the horizon. Right on page one, Nora has admitted that she’s a cad, and The interdisciplinary, multimedia approach of the editors al- she later repeats this confession. Still, nothing that we know lows them to include a diversity of voices. There is some discus- about her would predict that she would soon choose, for no par- sion of the work of heterosexual and gay male artists and artistic ticular reason, to blow up her life. But when Baby Harris pursues representation, and this material places lesbian filmmakers in a Nora, they end up in the home that Nora shares with Janelle, broader cultural context. On the other hand, it does dilute the spe- who’s expected home soon, which doesn’t prevent Baby from cific focus on African-American lesbian filmmakers. seducing Nora. When Janelle comes home, she knows immedi- The last essay, “Creating the World Anew: Black Lesbian ately what has happened. Nora’s shirt is buttoned unevenly and Legacies and Queer Film Futures,” by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, there’s a lipstick smear on the collar. After a short and bitter ex- discusses two projects: the Queer Women of Color Media Arts change, Janelle shoves Nora out the door. Homeless and without Project in San Francisco, and the Queer Renaissance and Black her belongings, Nora has to manage on her own, and this is the Feminist Film School Project in Durham, North Carolina. Both story that ensues. are described as efforts to provide training in film production as Nora’s task of making a new start involves surviving the win-

May–Jun$ 2018 45 ter in Provincetown, which means finding shelter, finding a job, and meeting some townies. To do that, she gets Modern Life in the Levant involved in a movement to clean up the polluted water, CHARLES GREEN because statistics are showing an abnormal cluster of The Diamond S etter cancer in the area. All of this by Moshe Sakal may sound like a tall order, Translated by Jessica Cohen but now that Nora has been Other Press. 304 pages, $15.95 kicked out of her home, things seem to be laid at her HIS INVENTIVE, engaging novel from Israel, inspired feet. She quickly befriends by true events, traces the history of two families through Miss Ruby, a woman on a Ttheir connection to a piece of a famous blue diamond broken-down scooter who known as Sabakh. Along the way, it explores the history of Is- has an extra bedroom. Some rael and the state of the country today, mainly through the cities Amy Hoffman problems make staying with of Tel Aviv and Jaffa. Miss Ruby difficult. She has an uncounted number of cats, Sakal writes in an afterword that the book is “an amalga- smokes incessantly, and, despite her poor health, does little to mation of historical facts, family stories, and the fruits of my change her diet or habits. Financially, this resembles the set-up imagination.” The story begins in Menashe’s jewelry shop in with Janelle, albeit far less pleasant. Nora starts painting in a Tel Aviv. A longtime customer is returning a piece of Sabakh to neighbor’s shed that Miss Ruby says she can use. Eventually, Menashe that had been robbed from the store years earlier. The the neighbor comes home and tells Nora to leave. Nora contin- perspective then switches to Tom, Menashe’s nephew, who’s ues to see Baby, in an open relationship. With luck on her side, working as an apprentice to the jeweler. A writer as well, Tom she falls into one part-time job and then another. narrates most of the story while writing a novel called The Di- The narrator tells the reader about her sins and atonement, amond Setter, involving much of the same plot as the novel he which would usually make for a good story, but the reader is appears in. This “meta-narrative” is done in a playful way, and left with questions. We’re told, for example, that Nora was a allows Tom and others to make amusing comments about writ- teacher before coming to Provincetown, but what and where ers and the creative process. was she teaching? Her first-person account involves mostly ex- Another narrative thread enters when Fareed, a young man ternal things—the world of people and activities—but she offers from Damascus, crosses the border illegally into Jaffa. There to little about her inner thoughts. What demons are at work? Of see the city of his family’s stories, he joins Tel Aviv’s gay scene her breakup with Janelle she muses: “One day, I was half of a and protest movement. He also carries with him a piece of peaceful, loving couple; the next, apparently, a libido driven Sabakh, given to him by his grandmother, which he returns to maniac.” But why? Is there something in her past that she’s not Menashe. In a clever twist, he gets romantically involved with telling us about? We know so little about Nora’s background Tom and his boyfriend Honi, a soldier in the Israeli military that her motives are opaque. working in the communications department. The Off Season moves along at a swift pace with short, titled The novel offers a fascinating glimpse into Israel’s attitude chapters. P’town is brought to life with vivid descriptions of the toward homosexuality. While Fareed visits a vibrant gay bar, town and its maritime surroundings. I felt less of a connection one character remarks that “most gay Palestinians are clos- to the protagonist, though, whose personality, background, and eted,” while another warns Fareed of “pinkwashing,” the idea motives are not fully realized. that “Israeli society accepts us, supposedly,” while treating ______Palestinians as second-class citizens. Someone else remarks Martha Miller is a Midwestern novelist and playwright. that “nothing scares the Israeli army more than an unarmed Arab.” Tom and Honi conduct their relationship in secret, with My roommate and I were forced by the Honi bringing Tom, and later Fareed, to his office late at night, Phillips Exeter Academy in 1962 to un- explaining to the guards that the men are helping with his news dergo psychiatric treatment to be cured of reports. Honi’s sister Ayelet is the only one who know about our homosexuality, with the result that he his gayness, though later in the book his father Amiram acci- committed suicide and I became a schizophrenic. Another schizophrenic, the Ger- dentally discovers it. Amiram is “overcome by an inexplicable man theologian Paul Tillich, thought that sense of closeness to his son,” while remembering “all the I was the Second Coming of Christ. drama classes and flute classes they’d sent Honi to,” wonder- Rejecting this label, I told my first lover, ing if he should have “insisted on something more masculine, Mark Frechette, that he was the real Christ. After Mark starred in Antonioni’s like soccer.” film Zabriskie Point, he was crucified in At the heart of the book are the life stories of the many char- prison in 1975 at the age of 27. acters in Menashe and Fareed’s families, told one chapter at a time. There is Menashe’s Aunt Gracia, a chanteuse so beloved www.barnesandnoble.com by the Ottoman sultan that he gave her Sabakh. Her sister Mona,

46 Th$ Gay & L$sban R$v$w / oRLd ide blind but beautiful, would become Menashe’s grandmother. cated for women’s rights to suffrage and birth control. He Gracia’s lover Sami, born in Jaffa in 1900, remembers the un- worked tirelessly to repeal Paragraph 175 of the German penal usual Clock Tower Square, with two clocks set to two different code that criminalized homosexuality. (It was finally repealed in time zones. Menashe eventually tells the story of how his piece 1994.) In 1897, he founded the Scientific Humanitarian Com- of the diamond was stolen, which comes off in a funny style. mittee, whose major campaign was to advocate for the decrim- While the family connections can be difficult to follow at times, inalization of homosexual acts. their stories are enthralling, full of powerful dramas. Hirschfeld’s most important project was the establishment This is Sakal’s first novel to be translated into English. His of the Institute for Sexual Science, which lasted from 1919 to language flows easily in Jessica Cohen’s translation. A quietly 1933. The Institute’s main focus involved research on sex and affecting novel, it offers an unusual perspective on a thorny part sexuality, including the study of sexual diversity. Hirschfeld be- of the world. lieved that homosexuality was a naturally occurring biological ______phenomenon on the continuum of sexuality. He posited that les- Charles Green is a writer based in Annapolis, Maryland. bians and gay men were an “intermediate sex” or “third sex.” When the Nazis came to power in 1933, the Institute was closed down and its research and books were burned during one of the Nazis’ book burning sprees. Hirschfeld fled Berlin and Hirschfeld by Himself died at age 67 in Nice, France, in 1935. Long before the work of Alfred Kinsey or Masters and John- son, Magnus Hirschfeld attempted to study sexuality and gen- IRENE JAVORS der in a nonjudgmental, scientific context. Berlin’s Third Sex offers a window into a moment in history during which we can Berlin’s Third Sex observe the beginnings of modern LGBT identities taking by Magnus Hirschfeld shape. Hirschfeld’s personal motto was: “per scientiam ad justi- Translated by James J. Conway tiam”—“justice through science.” In this era of fake news and Rixdorf Editions, 150 pages, $24. alternate realities in Washington, Hirschfeld’s motto has a particular resonance. TEACH a graduate course in sex and gender for students ______in a counseling program at a university in New York City. Irene Javors, LMHC, is a psychotherapist in private practice in NYC. IAn essential component of the course is a module on the history of psychotherapy with LGBT people. Most of my students have no knowledge of how psychotherapy has been used in the past as an instrument of social control designed to “ad- Payment Is Optional just” individuals to what was considered “normal” expressions when you give a gift subscription of gender and sexual orientation. Students are often shocked by the long history of psychiatric theories and practices that were to your favorite nonprofit organization. applied to “cure” LGBT people of their sexual orientation. In- The G&LR is reaching out to student organizations with free sub- deed many students have little comprehension of the epic strug- scriptions to the magazine. gles that led to hard-won gains in LGBT civil rights. When I received a copy of Berlin’s Third Sex by Magnus Please join us in this effort by giving a subscription to your alma Hirschfeld (1868–1935), I immediately decided to use the book mater’s LGBT student organization or any other worthy nonprofit. as a reference for my class. Written in 1904, Hirschfeld presents Spring for the sub or allow us to cover the cost — your choice! a picture of gay and lesbian life in Berlin at the turn of the 20th The G&LR is itself a nonprofit organization. This offer is part of century. We learn about the tea dances, hustlers, drag kings and our Student Outreach Program. queens, lesbian bars, cruising, campy humor and kitschy aes- thetics, blackmailers, police raids, and gay ghettos. We learn Visit about the vibrant gay subculture that existed way before the famous (or infamous) Weimar years of the 1920s. www.GLReview.org This volume was the first of many works produced by publisher Hans Oswald (1873–1940) as part of his “Metropolis Call Documents” project. The project ultimately encompassed 51 ti- 844-752-7829 tles that were focused on marginalized groups—the homeless, vagrants, homosexuals, prostitutes, political radicals, and so Scan on—in short, all those who did not conform to the prescribed roles of German society. Hirschfeld’s study of what he termed the “third sex” was designed as a plea for greater tolerance and normalization for those who did not conform to the heterosexual binary. He was a pioneering activist for sexual diversity—lesbian and gay as well as transgender identities. And Hirschfeld strongly advo-

May–Jun$ 2018 47 The Miseducation of Cam eron Post (Desiree Akhavan) Drama Cultural Calendar set in 1993 about a teenage girl who’s forced into conversion therapy after she’s caught having sex with the prom queen. Readers are invited to submit items at no charge. Must have rele- AMoment in th e Reeds (Mikko Makela) Drama follows Leevy vance to a North American readership. E-mail to: [email protected]. from Paris to his native Finland to help on his estranged father’s Be sure to allow at least a month’s lead time for any listing. farm, where a handsome Syrian refugee now works... Studio 54 (Matt Tyrnauer) Documentary tells the ’70s story of Festivals and Events “the greatest club of all time” through the eyes of its founders, BFFs Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell. FILM FESTIVALS Seattle Trans/Lations. May 3–12. Theater / Dance Hartford, CT OutFilm Fest. June 1–9. Weekend OUT Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival’s LGBT weekend is San Diego Film Out. June 7–10. Aug. 3–5, with a G&LR-sponsored brunch on Sunday, Aug. 5th (see Provincetown, MA International Film Fest. June 13–17. ad, p. 2). The dance festival in Becket, Mass., runs all summer. San Francisco Frameline. June 14–24. The Boys in the Band Broadway revival of Mart Crowley’s 1968 play will run for 15 weeks from April 30th, at the Booth Theatre. Palm Springs, CA International Short Film Fest. June 19–25. Skintight Off-Broadway play about a woman jilted by her husband Kansas City, MO Out Here Now Film Fest. June 21–28. who moves in with her famous father, only to find he’s involved with EVENTS a man of twenty. At the Roundabout Theatre from May 31. 2018 LGBT Health Workforce Conf. A call to action. To be held ALettertoHarvey Milk Off-Broadway musical examines the life in NYC, May 4–5. Visit: www.bngap.org/lgbthwfconf/ of the San Francisco selectman through the eyes of a friend, ten years after Milk’s murder. At the Acorn Theatre thru May 13th. IGLTA Global Convention International travel extravaganza will be held in Toronto, May 9–12. Visit www.iglta.com/ Angels in America The two-part theatrical journey returns to Broadway in an acclaimed production from the National Theatre. Espirit Conf. Changing lives and creating self-respect for anyone Thru July 1st at the Neil Simon Theatre. who is transgender. Port Angeles, WA, May 13–20. Sex Tips for Straight WomenfromaGayMan Play within a play Sticks & Stones Europe’s largest job and career fair for LGBT finds a hunky stage assistant helping a shy woman to follow her people, in Berlin, on June 2. www.sticks-and-stones.com dreams. Thru June 30 at the Roy Arias Stages/777 Theatre in NYC. Yellowstone LGBT Retreat Connect with the environment at Log Cabin Comedy starts with a tight-knit circle of married gays Lamar Buffalo Ranch in Yellowstone National Park, June 19–22. and lesbians and throws a rakish transgender friend into the mix, ig- Start at www.shop.yellowstone.org/ and search. niting fireworks. June 1–July 15 at Playwright’s Horizon in NYC. GoldenCrownLiterary Society Conf. For lesbian readers, writ- Six Characters in Search of a Play Del Shores’ one-man show ers, and publishers. July 4–8 in Las Vegas. www.goldencrown.org with six zany creations. June 6–10 at the NCTC in San Francisco. Divas Play with opera music finds nine great divas from the ages Feature Films locked together in the afterlife. June 21–30 at the BCA in Boston. 1985 (directed by Yen Tan) Drama about a young man who goes Art Exhibitions home for Christmas and struggles to reveal his dire circumstances to his conservative family. Peter Hujar: Speed of Life Extensive collection of the photogra- BPM: Beats Per Minute (Robin Campillo) French drama spot- pher’s work, from portraits of the famous to East Village life in the lights a Paris ACT UP group in the early 1990s as they agitate for 1970s and ’80s. At the Morgan Library in Manhattan thru May 20th. action by government and drug companies. Out for the Camera showcases the photographs of Leonard Fink, The Cakemaker (Ofir Raul Grazier) German-Israeli drama follows who documented gay life in New York in the 1960s and ’70s. Thru a German pastry chef as he travels to Jerusalem in search of the Aug. 5 at the Leslie-Lohman Museum in NYC. wife and son of his deceased lover. David Bowie Is Retrospective of the artist’s extraordinary five- Disobedience (Sebastián Lelio) Drama centers on a woman who decade career. March 2–July 15 at the Brooklyn Museum. returns to the hometown that once shunned her for her attraction to Trans Cuba Photographer Mariette Pathy Allen’s photographs doc- a childhood girlfriend—who still lives there... ument the lives and families of transgender women in Cuba. Thru The Happy Prince (Rupert Everett) The story of Oscar Wilde’s last July 15th at the Stonewall Museum in Ft. Lauderdale. days as he looks back with ironic detachment upon his life. Lizzie (Craig William Macneill) Psychological thriller plumbs the CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS – THE G&LR depths of Lizzie Borden’s complex psyche, including her intimate The Gay & Lesbian Review accepts unsolicited manuscripts and connection with the family’s Irish housemaid. proposalsonall LGBT-related topics. Especially sought are propos- Love, Simon (Greg Berlanti) Comedy/drama about coming out in als on the following themes for issues in development: high school, with a twist: Simon is having an email fling with guy • Sound of Music: From Bernstein to Billy Budd and beyond in his class named “Blue,” but he can’t figure out who it is. • Alternative Sexualities from “heteroflexible” to roleplay. McQueen (Ian Bonhôte) Documentary looks at the rags-to-riches • Long Before Stonewall: LGBT culture from BC to the 19th c. life story of uber fashion designer Alexander McQueen. Please e-mail your proposal to the Editor at [email protected].

48 Th Gay & Lsban Rvw / oRLdide FILM The Man Behind Those Big Happy Boys

INLAND’S official selection for The second half of the film goes from Best Foreign Language film at the JACK NUSAN PORTER gray to full color with Laaksonen’s arrival 90th Academy Awards in 2018 is in Southern California. An American porn the untold biography of one Touko distributor named Doug and his lover Jack F Tom of Finland Laaksonen (portrayed by Pekka Strang), get a copy of Laaksonen’s drawings, and known to the world, albeit only to the gay Directed by Dome Karukoski his new pseudonym, “Tom of Finland,” is world, as “Tom of Finland.” Laaksonen’s born. Tom’s drawings depicting men erotic drawings shaped the fantasies of a generation of gay men heavy with leather and slickly polished boots, having huge who had lived in the closet for decades. muscles and sex organs, become a global hit, giving hope to Born in 1921, Laaksonen served in World War II as a lieu- gay guys who saw themselves as weak and puny. Tom of Fin- tenant in the Finnish army. Finland was on the Axis side, fight- land’s hypermasculine men even add fuel to the nascent gay ing against the Allies, which included its old enemy Russia. liberation movements. This, however, comes at a cost: Tom is When Russia invaded Finland, Laaksonen’s platoon was de- later blamed, and blames himself, for stoking the AIDS epi- fending the country from Soviet air attack. In one of the most demic by enticing gay men to put themselves at risk. How- graphic scenes in the movie—startling for such a gentle man— ever, his leather friends forgive him in some of the movie’s he kills a young Russian parachutist who has just landed, tak- most poignant scenes. ing his enemy totally by surprise and stabbing him to death. The This powerful film has some elements that are surprisingly Russian’s traumatized face is a sight that Laaksonen can never un-PC. The porno moguls are unabashedly Jewish and venal, get out of his mind. But the soldier’s face is not all that he re- interested in only one thing—the almighty dollar. The only pub- members; there was also that uniform... lisher willing to touch Tom’s work in the age of Reagan is a Laaksonen becomes obsessed with uniforms and powerful men in leather. His first sexual encounter takes place in the woods with his own squad leader, Captain Herriki, and the relationship becomes a lifelong bond. Laaksonen soon falls for a handsome young dancer named Veli, who has also caught the eye of his affectionate yet unenlightened sister Kaija, with whom he shares a flat. Like the rest of Europe in the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s, Finland was sexually repressed, and gay men were hounded and hunted by the police, who raided night clubs, tea rooms, and cruising areas. Anyone caught in a restroom soliciting sex was the object of a beating and jail. The images of the repressed ’50s and ’60s in Europe are gray in color and tone, and that mood is captured perfectly. Laaksonen goes on a trip to Communist-con- trolled Berlin in the 1960s, his erotic drawings hidden in a secret compartment in his suitcase. In a gay bar, he meets a man who says he’s an American publisher who can help him get dis- Pekka Strang as Touko Laaksonen in Tom of Finland tributed in the USA. But after a night of sex, Laaksonen awakes to find not just his drawings but his passport and wallet stolen. Hassidic L.A. man and his daughter. “We could go to jail for He runs away from the hotel without paying and is quickly this,” he remarks. “Plus I need help. I only have my daughter.” caught by the German police. They suspect not only a thief but “Don’t worry,” Doug replies; and in the next scene dozens of also a homophile. leather-clad “Toms” are helping with the binding and packaging However, as a Finnish citizen, Laaksonen cannot be jailed if of 10,000 copies of Tom’s new book. He was by now globally the Finnish embassy will vouch for him. An embassy official is famous—though his enjoyment of this status would be short- unimpressed with his tale and doubts that he’s even Finnish. In lived. Laaksonen died of emphysema in 1991. desperation, he mentions the name of his captain and says that Finnish director Dome Karukoski, with the help of Scan- he will verify that he’s an Army veteran. By chance, his captain dinavian and German film commissions footing the bill, has is now a diplomat, and at great risk to his career, he gets Laak- produced a film that joins a growing body of movies about sonen out of Germany, and even invites him to come to his par- the 1970s porno world—the 1997 movie Boogie Nights and ties in Helsinki. 2013’s Lovelace come to mind—and a fascinating world it was. Tom of Finland’s contribution to this world went beyond Jack Nusan Porter is a Boston-based sociologist who writes widely on the basic raison d’être of erotica, bringing together a new sexual politics and World War II. community of gay men that hadn’t existed before.

May–Jun$ 2018 49 ART Only the Interesting

HOTOGRAPHER Peter Hujar and ’80s: the nascent gay liberation move- (1934-1987) finally gets his criti- JOHN R. KILLACKY ment, burgeoning avant-garde perform- cal due with a sumptuous exhibi- ance and drag scenes, and early devastation tion of his extraordinary œuvre at from the AIDS epidemic. And he pho- P Peter Hujar: SpeedofLife two museums this year. Peter Hujar: Speed tographed men, in all states of nudity and of Life is currently on view in New York at The Morgan Library & Museum, NYC arousal, at the infamous Christopher Street The Morgan Library and Museum through Jan. 26–May 20, 2018 Pier, backstage, or at the photographer’s May 20. It then moves to the Berkeley Art loft. The exhibition catalogue quotes him Museum from July to October. Exhibition Catalogue as saying: “I photograph those that push Hujar is known primarily for the un- by Peter Gefter, Joel Smith, Steve Turtell themselves to any extreme. That’s what in- abashed, erotic intimacy of his male nudes Aperture. 248 pages, $50. terests me, and people who cling to the and the glorious theatricality of his drag freedom to be themselves ... I want people icons, but this important show also features searing photographs to feel the picture and smell it.” of urban detritus and stark cityscapes, as well as tender portraits Transgender Warhol superstar Candy Darling invited Hujar of artists, friends, and animals, in addition to mummified remains to make a portrait of her in the hospital as a “farewell to my fans.” in Italian catacombs. Augmenting the 160 pictures are contact Hujar wrote of the shoot that Candy was “playing every death sheets, correspondence, ephemera, and tear sheets from early scene from every movie.” His classic photograph is an exquisite commercial work in Harper’s Bazaar, GQ,andThe Village Voice. capturing of a fully made-up and coiffed Candy, a pre-death mask Hujar’s æsthetic standards were uncompromising. Shooting of imploded beauty. She died of lymphoma at the age of 29. in black-and-white with his twin-lens reflex camera, he was a Candy Darling on her Deathbed (1973) became one of Hujar’s consummate perfectionist. His handmade prints are flawless, signature images, and the most reproduced during his lifetime. Photographer Nan Goldin said this about Hujar: “His photographs become the most honest, haunting, and sustaining record of our vanishing tribe.” While quite influential to artists such as Goldin and Robert Mapplethorpe, he was defiantly ret- icent and remained an outsider, eschewing the limelight and alienating curators, gallery dealers, and collectors. Fran Lebowitz said at his funeral: “Peter was incapable of being nice to anyone who could do him any good.” Although revered artistically, he was destitute when he died from AIDS-related pneumonia at 53. One important relationship that Hujar sustained was with visual artist David Wojnarowicz, who was twenty years his junior. They were briefly lovers, but Hujar soon became more of a mentor. In Cynthia Carr’s 2013 biography of Wojnarowicz, Fire in the Belly, he talked about how central Hujar was in his life: “Everything I made, I made for Peter.” When Hujar died, Woj- narowicz photographed the face, hands, and feet of “my friend ... my brother my father my emotional link to the world.” About his legacy, Peter Hujar once mused: “I want to be dis- Peter Hujar, Candy Darling on Her Deathbed, 1973 cussed in hushed tones. When people talk about me, I want them with a clarity of resolution, as he worked to achieve a perfect to be whispering.” Now, three decades after his death, Peter balance of saturated black and gentle grays, distilling each image Hujar: Speed of Life ramps up the volume for long overdue down to its unadorned essence. While technically intricate, the recognition of this singular photographic genius. photos themselves are playful, with subjects casual and sponta- For those who want to delve even deeper into Hujar’s work, neous—evidence of a warm rapport with his subjects. There is check out the two monographs Night (2005) and Love & Lust no critical detachment here. Hujar sought to take “uncompli- (2014), published by the Fraenkel Gallery in San Francisco, cated, direct photographs of complicated and difficult subjects.” long a stalwart of his work. Night is revelatory, including 43 During his lifetime, Hujar captured the zeitgeist of the in- ravishing photographs of desolate architectural streetscapes, choate cultural scenes in Manhattan’s East Village in the 1970s men in parks cruising, and Halloween celebrants. Hujar’s self- portrait in a jockstrap on the cover of Love & Lust captures this John R. Killacky is executive director of Flynn Center for the Per- collection described in the catalogue as visual meditations on forming Arts in Burlington, VT. “arousal, erection, and orgasm.”

50 Th$ Gay & L$sban R$v$w / oRLd ide

A panoramic view of gay rights, gay life, and the gay experience around the world. In Global Gay, Frédéric Martel visits more than fifty countries and documents a revolution underway around the world: the globalization of LGBT rights. From Saudi Arabia to South Africa, from Amsterdam to Tel Aviv, from Singapore to the United States, activists, culture warriors, and ordinary people are part of a movement.

Learn more at mitpress.mit.edu/global