Ask Gay Dr. Bill

Keeping up with two blogs when I've got books to complete, care-giving duties, and a load of other things to handle is too much, so I'm combining this blog with my brother blog: Ask Gay Dr. Bill. From time to time, in addition to answering questions, I will act like the same opinionated bastard that I have been here at J.A.T.G.A.B.. with reviews, opinion pieces, and the occasional, hopefully helpful, rant. Thanks for reading, following and subscribing to this blog, and I hope you'll do the same with Ask Gay Dr. Bill.

Scotty Bowers is a Flaming Queen: A review of "Full Service"

SCOTTY BOWERS IS A FLAMING QUEEN: A REVIEW OF "FULL SERVICE: My Adventures in Hollywood and the Secret Sex Lives of the Stars." Scotty Bowers with Lionel Friedberg. Grove Press; 2012.

Oy vey! The lengths some people will go to to deny they're gay even while writing about all the guys they've been to bed with, and not always for money. Scotty Bowers, procurer for the stars and male prostitute in old Hollywood -- he is now 88 -- writes about many married men with wives and kids who were secretly homosexual, but seems to think because he keeps saying he really prefers women, adds one chapter about two women he was allegedly in love with, and has an [un-pictured] wife he married past the age of sixty, that this means he's not gay! One at least hopes he wouldn't resist the label "bisexual" although if memory serves me well he doesn't use it to describe himself in this pretty tedious book.

Look, we already know about Rock Hudson, Tyrone Power, Cary Grant and Randolph Scott, the phony "romance" between Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, and so on. The only thing that may be new in here is that both the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were bisexual [well on one page they're bisexual; on the next page they're "essentially gay."] Bowers claims to have had sex with both of them. You'd think he'd be embarrassed to admit it, but then this guy thinks Walter Pidgeon is "handsome."

If Gore Vidal and William Mann, who has written books on Hepburn and Gay Old Hollywood [hopefully not with Bowers as a major source], want to praise this piece of shit, let them, although I wonder if they wrote their endorsements before actually reading the book! It's not that many of Bowers' assertions about the homosexuality of Hollywood's leading players and the many closeted gays among the "straight" married community are false, but that Bowers is absolutely the wrong person to be relaying the information. First, rightly or wrongly, who takes whores and procurers seriously? Second, even if some of his claims are true, it's hard to believe that Bowers personally witnessed or experienced everything he says -- much of it actually sounds like second or third-hand knowledge [if not gossip and rumors]. Third, Bowers, despite his strong connection to the gay community [or the closeted variation thereof back in the day], does his unconvincing best to set himself somehow above and apart the "queens" he mostly writes about. He gives lip service to Gay Rights, but this is a guy who has fond memories of being molested at nine and of the men who molested him as well, which is just pathetic. Do we really want his support?

I suppose one could argue that his being molested [assuming the story is even true] made him sexually confused and non-judgmental about sexuality [and more adventurous], but he really just comes off like a self-deluding "old queen." [And in his book jacket photo, in which he seems to have Shirley Temple curls on his head, certainly looks like one, which is ironic.] He writes that when he read a piece Tennessee Williams [for a whore he certainly had a whole shitload of important "friends," all of whom, of course, were close confidantes] wrote about him, he urged the famed playwright to destroy it because it made him seem like the "fairy godmother of the entire gay world in the City of Angels." And that certainly wouldn't do for such a straight stud as Scotty.

While it may be entirely admirable that Bowers has a healthy, realistic and non-judgmental attitude towards different kinds of sexuality [although his acceptance of pedophilia is rather problematic to say the least!] his sensibility is still stuck back in the pre-Stonewall period. He talks about all the married men who like cock, referring to some of them as bisexuals, but then writes about many of the hustlers who had sex with his clients as "straight" guys just because they may have had girlfriends or slept with women. Duh! It's that whole tiresome "rough trade," allegedly "gay for pay" crap that in these days of "Out and Proud" just seems terribly unrealistic and dated, "sexual fluidity" be damned. Besides if his clients can supposedly be bisexual, why couldn't the hustlers be as well?

The book is so indifferently written that it fails to make any of these people come alive with any depth, and it certainly has no compelling erotic descriptions like well-written porn.

Amazingly, Full Service is kind of boring. I imagine unsophisticated straight people from Iowa [no offense,Iowa] may find this "juicy" but for everyone else I would recommend saving your money.  

Going Off Half-"Cocked": A Review of Mike Barlett's play "Cock"

COCK. [Or Bob and Rose Redux]. A play by Mike Bartlett.

[NOTE: This is a review of the published play, which originally appeared in London before being exported to New York, not of a particular production or performance.]

Well, after reading this play in its published form, I'm glad I didn't waste money going to see the new production. I just finished reading it and I'm jotting down my impressions quickly, because Cock is the kind of play you forget not long after seeing -- or in this case -- reading it.

The premise may seem new, but isn't. A man named John has been in a committed relationship with another man [simply called "M"] for several years but feels some dissatisfaction with his mate. During a brief "separation" John meets a woman [simply called "W"], has sex with her, and thinks he may have fallen in love, even though he's never had the slightest interest in women before. He goes back to M, however, but continues to see W. In a completely contrived situation [but then the whole play is contrived] John suggests that he, M, and W all have dinner together at M's home, where M's father [simply called "F"] also shows up to give his son moral support. Without giving anything away, John seems to make a choice but still seems conflicted at the end. For me a highly offensive note of the latest production is that the whole thing plays like some kind of boxing match, with Gay Man vs Straight Woman for the love of [unworthy] John. 40 years after Stonewall and we're still not past this shit?

Plays, stories and films about men being torn between women and other men are nothing new. [The movie A Different Story, the play Find Your Way Home, British TV's Bob and Rose are just a few.] The "new" wrinkle is the playwright's suggestion that John is bisexual, although it seems unlikely, even if he'd never had a heterosexual experience, that he wouldn't have realized long before that he was attracted to women. Surely in college he knew plenty of women, saw sexy ladies in advertisements, knew a few people who labeled themselves bisexual. His explanation is that everyone was congratulating him for coming out, he found a support network, etc., but this is all quite unconvincing. There was nothing to prevent him from dating/sleeping with women, as some gay men do on occasion, and he admits that he was always just interested in guys. Some may buy into the notion of "latent heterosexuality" but I think it's a crock.

John comes off less as a genuine bisexual than as a gay guy who's disillusioned with his lover [and therefore, ridiculously, with gay life], likes the way this rather desperate woman makes him feel like a man [whereas his lover makes him feel like a child], yet the play never examines the fact that there are plenty of men out there who don't feel as if they're "real" men unless they're fucking or involved with women. Playwright Bartlett simply dodges this aspect of internalized homophobia. Let's put it this way -- if John is bisexual, he definitely has a preference, and it isn't women. [It must be said that Bartlett does seem to capture the tiresome angst of some bi-identified individuals on the Internet, where he probably got most of his ideas and much of his dialogue.]

Late in the play John complains that it was his parents' generation who came up with "gay" and "straight" and who needs the labels now that "we have our rights," to which his lover wisely answers that we don't have all our rights and people are always trying to chip away at them anyway. John -- and perhaps playwright Bartlett -- may have a point that it shouldn't matter who or what you're sleeping with, but both miss the point that the disparity between acceptance of hetero and homo behavior is still wide, and Gay Pride has for years been one way of addressing and correcting that. Instead of Gay Pride, Cock gives us a gay man about to meet his boyfriend's female lover and saying it will be "THE ULTIMATE BITCHFIGHT!" Yuchh!

Just as big a problem is that Bartlett fails to create three-dimensional characters. I know we're long past the days of Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams, but Bartlett can't even give his characters names let alone real substance. M comes dangerously close to being a gay stereotype. W never explains why she clings so desperately to a man who's essentially queer [be he gay or bi] -- why can't she just let the fellow be gay and find a perfectly nice straight fellow -- just because of one bad marriage? F for Father, a gay-friendly straight man who loves his son and cares for John, delivers more of the Gay Lib stuff than his son does, but that's probably not a bad decision on Bartlett's part, but he, too, seems to exist just to make a few good points. I suppose the point could be made that John is a conflicted bisexual stereotype as well, as if he needs both male and female lovers when Bi advocates always claim that is simply not true of bi people.

One could argue that at least some of Bartlett's dialogue is clever, but that likely means he'd be better off writing sitcoms than serious theater. In interviews the unprepossessing Bartlett refuses to reveal if he's gay, straight, bi, or even A for Asexual. Again we get the "I'm against labels" argument, but I've always suspected that those who are against labels are just queers who are in the closet out of shame and embarrassment. Reading Cock, I got the impression that Bartlett simply did a little research on the Internet, watched some old TV shows, and threw together something that he felt would be provocative, giving it an attention-getting title [Cock indeed!], and hoped for the best. The reviews have been surprisingly favorable, perhaps for the actors or perhaps because straight critics want to seem trendy and gay-friendly and gay critics are terrified of being seen as politically-incorrect [whereas I don't give a shit]. I find Cock to be so generally clueless and superficial that it could easily have been written by some straight married guy who doesn't have the vaguest understanding of what he's even writing about. I mean this is a play in which a gay man and straight woman are pitted against each other [whereas in real life many gay men and straight and gay women have wonderful non-sexual relationships] and both are more or less presented as "bitches!" How progressive is that!

Reading the play gives you time to explore and go-over the dialogue, which you can't do in the theater. I have to say that ultimately it doesn't matter whether you think John is gay or bisexual, should stay with M or go off with W. The fact remains that Cock just isn't a very good play any way you look at it. A writer of some depth, intelligence and real talent might have made something of the premise, but more likely a writer of that stripe wouldn't start with such a stupid , rather offensive, and even somewhat homophobic premise to begin with.    

Review: Tennesse Williams' In Masks Outrageous and Austere -- or Two Dead Gay Guys

REVIEW: TENNESSEE WILLIAMS' LAST PLAY "IN MASKS OUTRAGEOUS AND AUSTERE" OR TWO DEAD GAY GUYS

NOTE: This review contains some spoilers. 

"I'd rather be dead than be a born-again Christian." -- Babe in In Masks Outrageous and Austere. 

The great American playwright Tennessee Williams was working on his last play, In Masks Outrageous and Austere, when he died in 1983. It is a fair assumption to make that the play was completed by others, but the playbill for the first production at the Culture Project on Bleecker Street in the east village of Manhattan, doesn't say who -- maybe the director, David Schweizer? There are sections that are clearly the work of Williams [or a parody thereof] -- dithery women rushing on breathlessly -- but other sections could be the work of anyone.

The play officially opened on Monday, April 16th 2012. [NOTE: This review is based on a preview I saw the week before.] There is every attempt to give the play a handsome production, hopefully to distract from the fact that In Masks Outrageous and Austere isn't very good. Williams was still capable of writing great plays in his late period -- Vieux Carre is a masterpiece -- but Masks probably didn't need to be completed or disinterred.

The plot, such as it is, is as follows: Wealthy "Babe" (Shirley Knight), her gay husband Billy (Robert Beitzel), and his boyfriend Jerry (Sam Underwood), who is employed by Babe, are all apparently kidnapped to an unknown place by men known as the "Gideons." There is a weird, evangelist-type neighbor, Mrs. Gorse-Bracken (Alison Fraser) with a "retarded" son named Playboy (Connor Buckley), who never speaks. Babe has an assistant named Peg (Pamela Shaw) who is carrying on with a grease monkey named Joey (Christopher Halladay). Other minor characters show up who add nothing to the show.

It's interesting to remember that in the decade before Williams died, Shirley Knight's husband John Hopkins wrote the Broadway play Find Your Way Home, in which a married man with a wife falls in love with a younger gay hustler; in other words a triangle situation similar to the one in Masks. Find Your Way Home was deeply flawed. but it was a better play than Williams' absurdist comedy-drama.

Babe is cut from a long line of Williams faded heroines and seems to have an interesting bisexual back story. We really don't learn much about Billy and even less about his younger lover. Billy simply seems to be a rather pathetic gigolo. The play's best scenes remember that there is a "situation" here and has wife confronting lover and vice versa, while weak Billy never really deals with anything.

At the end of the play the "Gideons" -- representatives of the outraged Moral Majority; who knows? -- shoot and kill both Billy and Jerry [after Babe walks off to the beach], so what we're left with basically is two dead gay guys. Great!

Williams must be given credit for opening the doors to depictions of homosexuality in American theater. The trouble is as Williams got older he didn't really stay up to date with the new attitudes of Gay Liberation, so some of his plays seem rather dated and pre-Stonewall in their dealings with gay characters and situations. Maybe he felt Find Your Way Home already dealt with the husband-wife-boyfriend triangle and wanted to do something different. Maybe he just wrote himself out and had little else to say. He tried to experiment and be modern as the decades proceeded, but only when he literally went back to his roots with Vieux Carre -- the play deals with his early life in a New Orleans hotel with various eccentric boarders -- did he produce a work of lasting merit.

Still, even a mediocre or bad Williams play has interesting things in it, and Masks is no exception. There are some good scenes and amusing, trenchant dialogue. I believe that most of the audience members were applauding not for the play but for the actors. Shirley Knight, a very gifted lady [and she looks great at 76!], is wonderful as Babe. She's so good that you wish she'd been given a better vehicle to perform in. Alison Fraser is also quite good, and it's not her fault if her role is so irritating that in the second act you cringe each time she appears. Beitzel's [presumably] put-upon southern  accent occasionally swallows his dialogue, but he does his best with an under-written role. [It could be argued that Billy is another in a long line of Williams gigolos.] Sam Underwood is quite effective as Jerry, the only character you really feel any sympathy for, despite his motives never being completely delineated. The supporting cast is quite competent for the most part. One of the best performances isn't live, but on video when Babe makes a phone call to her doctor, whom I believe is played very well by an uncredited Austin Pendleton. [If I'm wrong my apologies to Pendleton and whomsoever played the part.]

One utterly tasteless aspect of the morally-ambiguous play is the treatment of the mentally disturbed "Playboy," who is apparently a minor and is molested both off-stage and on by more than one character. 

In conclusion, Masks might have been a much more successful play if Williams had more fully developed the characters and examined the triangle situation with more depth and veracity, instead of going off on surrealistic tangents. Still, the audience seemed to be having a good time, which is not true for every evening at the theater.

The Culture Project, which produced the play, is "dedicated to addressing critical human rights issues." It appears that Masks was a bit of a stretch.
 

Some Things Never Change ...

So I'm on the subway heading downtown when I see two straight couples standing nearby. Late thirties, early forties. The women are both white, the men are black and white. The guys are average-looking, as are the women, who are dressing perhaps a bit too loudly to accentuate their sexiness and minimize their age. There is something rather common about both of them. The white guy seems to be a bit of a lout, while the African-American guy at least appears to be the most intelligent and best educated of the bunch.

However, as the train pulls into a stop in Greenwich Village, it is the African-American guy who decides --since this is "gay" Greenwich Village -- that he has to tell the story of how -- gasp! -- a gay guy came on to him at a subway stop in the area. [This is another example of how dated these people were, as it is Chelsea that is now considered the big gay neighborhood in Manhattan, not Greenwich Village. Of course, they don't quite get that we are everywhere.] It is almost a dating ritual when straight couples go down to any area that has more than three gay people in it that the guy has to make clear what he thinks of gays, and that he is definitely, positively, thoroughly heterosexual.

Believe me, this particular gay guy wouldn't have cruised the fellow telling the story even under the influence. Guys like this feign disgust and disinterest at gay attentions when you sense deep down that they kind of like the fact that somebody thinks they're attractive. One of the women, while wearing a nauseated expression, said "Why didn't you tell him to get the fuck away!"

Good question. Maybe the guy telling the tale was on the down low. But he was establishing his heterosexuality for his date, hoping to bond with the Jersey gal in their mutual homophobia.No, I didn't hear "fag" or any obvious slurs, but the disapproval and negative attitude were definitely there.

Just a reminder that not everyone is cool with gay people, even in liberal New York City, and it's foolish to think that they are.

Oh Those Queens!

I was at my favorite gay bar the other day when this guy I barely know saunters over to me and a friend and says, "Hello ladies, how are you, girls" and some such shit.

I didn't even turn around. I just said "Jesus, how pre-Stonewall can you get."

I don't want to make too big a deal of this, but aren't we past this business of gay men referring to each other as women or giving themselves pet female names or calling each other "Mary." [It's not just older guys who do this. I'll never forget when a thirty-ish editor of a paper I wrote for emailed me about the Gay Pride March and wrote "we need all the Marys we can get." Marys? [I may not be super-butch but a "Mary" I ain't.] Who the hell says "Mary" anymore?

So today I get an email from New York's Gay -- pardon me, LGBT -- center with a list of upcoming attractions and I read this little blurb. Get this:

"Simon Doonan knows that when it comes to style, the gays are the chosen people. A second anthropological truth comes to him midway through a turkey burger with no bun, at an otherwise hetero barbecue: Do the straight people have any idea how many calories are in the guacamole? In this hilarious discourse on and guide to the well-lived life, Doonan goes far beyond the secrets to eating like the French -- he proves that gay men really are French women, from their delight in fashion, to their brilliant choices in accessories and décor, to their awe-inspiring ability to limit calorie intake. A Gucci-wearing Margaret Mead at heart, Doonan offers his own inimitable life experiences and uncanny insights into what makes gay people driven to live every day feeling their best, and proves that they have just as much --and possibly better-- wisdom, advice, and inspiration beyond the same old diet and exercise tips. So put down that bag of Pirate's Booty and pick up this fierce and fabulous book. From slimming jaunts through Capri in the evening to an intrepid "Bear" hunt, Gay Men Don't Get Fat is the ultimate approach to a glamorous lifestyle -- plus, you are guaranteed to laugh away the pounds!" 

Hasn' t this Simon guy ever been to a bear bar [I suppose that's what the "bear" hunt is about, but he couldn't have absorbed much from the hunt]? I know this is all supposed to be just good fun, and Doonan might be a completely funny and lovely fellow, but all of  this stuff -- gay men are really French women!! Yuck! -- is so completely dated, so 1950's, so stereotypical and just plain old hat. I'm sure I'm not the only gay man who couldn't care less about hair dressing or make up or fashion or who has little desire in being a limp-wristed, glamorous "ladies accessory" while dispensing fountains of dopey alleged "wisdom."

Yes, big queens exist, god love 'em, and can be a fun and colorful part of the gay community. But, sheesh, they are not the entire community or even a very large part of it if truth be told. They just stick out a lot more than the average gay guy.

As I've often said gay men have spent decades trying to be accepted as men and this kind of stuff certainly doesn't help. Sure, Doonan has a perfect right to express himself and to camp it up and be a big ol' fabulous "faggot" if he wants to.

But honestly, haven't we come a little further than that in all these years since Stonewall?

BELATED HAPPY GAY YEAR!

J.A.T.G.A.B. will be back on track and published on a [hopefully] regular schedule very shortly.

2011 was quite a fuckin' year.

Looking forward to new challenges -- and new things to bitch about -- or celebrate! -- in 2012!

As for my other gay blog, Ask Gay Dr. Bill -- the doctor will be in and answering [a back load] of questions very shortly.

Have a Happy Gay Year!

Bill

It's Enough to Make You Grab for a Martini

Get me a martini, quick!

As I've posted earlier, I was a co-producer for a gay show entitled "4 Martinis" by Carfer Lamor which premiered at the fresh fruit festival in July. As publicity director, I contacted virtually every person of interest in my address book, including a goodly number of fellow bloggers. The play was about gay members of the Latino community.

After the play wrapped up its run, I googled to see if there had been any mention of it. Sure there was -- on this blog! Anywhere else? Nope. Sheesh, even the gay Latino bloggers ignored it.

Now this is what you call support from the community, LOL.

Regarding "4 Martinis," there are other items of interest. One of the stars of the show, a Trans Woman, turned into a Diva Suprema and became completely uncooperative. She eventually ran off with all of the clothing bought for her to wear in the show, literally ran right out of the dressing room with the booty in her hands. [Do I smell a lawsuit on People's Court?]

Not all of the cast members were gay [including the Trans Woman]. But I was pretty certain that this one guy was not only gay, but very gay; even had a "gay" name if you can believe it. While one straight actor unfortunately felt it necessary to "act" gay, this guy didn't seem to be acting as far as that was concerned. [May I quickly add that all of the performances were nonetheless excellent, including that of these two fellows.] On his web site and face book page he referred to the play as concerning Latino characters but left out the word "gay." His facebook page also alleges that he has a wife, but when you click on her name you find there is no photo uploaded and very little information about her. Plus on his web site there is absolutely no mention of a wife. Now I realize that some actors can be pretty self-absorbed -- when Robert Vaughn wrote his memoirs he only mentioned his wife and children on the dedication page and never again thereafter -- but this seems a little strange. Is he "in-ing" himself because he thinks he won't get parts due to his sexual orientation? He certainly went out of his way to publicize himself on gay blogs when he was seeking work as a model.!

Anyway, the playwright had to step into the role vacated by the Trans Woman at almost literally the last moment. He did a superb job, probably better than she would have done [we'll never know, thanks to her diva behavior]. The play was very entertaining, and well-received by those who bothered to come to see it [not nearly as many as I would have preferred].

While this was all playing out I was dating -- at least I thought I was dating him but he might have felt differently --  a very attractive younger man who simply departed from my life without a backward glance or even a kind word. That sucks, but what can you do? 

Maybe there's a play in there! Or at least a blog post. Stay tuned.

4 MARTINIS

I am a co-producer and publicity director for a new play by Carfer Lamor entitled 4 Martinis. The play will premiere at the the LGBT "Fresh Fruit" Festival [yeah, I hate the festival name, too] later this month. What is the play about? Well here is a synopsis from the Facebook page:

4 Martinis is a controversial and provocative new play about six gay Latinos in the art world. Everything goes bare when an Argentinean gallery owner celebrates after a successful art show opening. Along with his ex, a transgender Puerto Rican, his houseboy and her boy-toy, they invite a nudist artist and his lover to stay for the night at the SoHo loft they share. Their art talk is quickly deconstructed after they inject it with comments about racism, ageism, alcoholism and simple discrimination. These outlandish characters bare their souls, and themselves, while discussing their sexual attitudes and the problems that surface when their relationships are saddled with the strain caused by cultural differences. (Nudity.)

I couldn't have put it better myself. [Although I am publicity director I didn't compose that blurb, although I wish I had as it perfectly describes the play and is very well written besides.]

If you live in New York or will be visiting, here are the play dates:

There are 4 performances of 4 Martinis as part of the Fresh Fruit Festival:
Monday, July 18th, 9:15 p.m.
Tuesday, July 19th, 5:00 p.m.
Thursday, July 21st, 7:00 p.m.
Saturday, July 23rd, 1:30 p.m.
More performances to be announced.

Tickets are available now. They are a measly $18.00 Go to http://www.4martinis.com/trendy/ to order tickets.The show will be presented at the Barrow Group Theater at 312 W 36th Street, third floor.

The show has a wonderful cast, which is as follows:

Lee Bevins as Arturo
Cece-Suazo Augustus as Lupe
Bri Molloy as Gustavo
Craig Mark Wells as Frank
Kristoffer Infante as Eric
Jesuhan Malave as David

While 4 Martinis deals in part with LGBT groups that are not often covered by the media [including gay media] -- Latinos and seniors -- the cast and characters run the gamut from young to elderly, and the play deals with universal themes that can be enjoyed by all, regardless of age or ethnicity.

Hope to see you there!

PARTY!

This coming Saturday, June 11th, 2011, there will be a party at Boxer's Bar in Manhattan from 4 PM to 8 PM to benefit the play "Four Martinis" by Carfer Lamor. There will be drink specials, $5.00 absolutes, and $2.00 off a personal pizza. You can meet the cast of the play, as well as the playwright.

I am one of the co-producers of "Four Martinis" and the director of publicity. The play premieres this coming July and I'll be writing more about it in the near-future.

Boxer's is located at 37 West 20th street between 5th and 6th avenue.

Come and hoist a few and support gay theater! [And watch the Belmont races on the big screen as well!]

NOTE: There have been infrequent posts on JATGAB recently due to personal issues -- including my caregiving of an elderly friend -- but I am hoping to maintain a regular schedule very shortly. Thanks for your patience.

The Good Wife and The Gays

When The Good Wife -- a woman (Julianna Margulies) whose politician husband (Chris Noth) is disgraced by scandal and jailed goes back to work as a lawyer -- first aired I thought it was an interesting and excellent program. In its second season it's still a reasonably good show, but I've come to realize that virtually all of its characters are pretty unlikable.

But I'd like to spend a short time discussing the LGBT characters on the program. First we have Kalinda (Archie Panjabi, a woman), who seems to be an investigator for the law firm that the title character works for. Kalinda seems to wear nothing but the same leather skirt every day. We saw her kissing guys on some episodes and passionately making out with a woman on another. It wasn't clear if she was a lesbian who was struggling to accept herself and come out, or what was meant to be a bisexual (or at least bisexually active) character. Just a week or so ago she admitted she was bisexual with no preference, that she doesn't -- if I remember correctly -- distinguish between the sexes. The trouble is that some of her words and deeds on previous programs make her seem a bit skittish about her gay feelings and relationships. Whether this will ever be addressed on the show or not remains to be seen. Lily Taylor played an ex-girlfriend of Kalinda's -- she seemed to have her own issues -- but it was never made clear exactly how serious a relationship they might have had. Probably not very serious as far as Kalinda is concerned, but whether it was because Taylor wasn't the right woman or because she simply was a woman went unexplored. [Internalized homophobia anyone?]

There has been some sexual tension between Kalinda and a male investigator who joined the firm this season. Discovering that this guy was investigating her, Kalinda took a bat to his car [amazing that he never sued her or had her arrested!]. On a recent episode the two nearly got together, but just when you thought Kalinda was going to smooch the guy she fisted him in the stomach instead. I'm glad the show didn't go in the predictable direction.

A brief digression. I remember a lesbian on a message board who admitted that it bothered her when a bi-identified person in real life or a bi character on a TV show opted to enter into a hetero relationship. She bemoaned the fact that she was "biphobic" and felt she was no different from a redneck who hated gay people or blacks. I thought she was being politically correct to a ludicrous degree! She wasn't being biphobic, she was just being gay. It's perfectly understandable that she would relate better to and feel more comfortable with a bi person or character who decided it was Good to Be Gay -- in other words, who felt comfortable in a homo relationship -- just as a straight person, even a gay-friendly one, might respond more favorably if the bi person entered into a hetero relationship. [Gay/Bi or whatever actor Alan Cumming is also on the show but he's apparently playing a straight character, and why not?)

But back to The Good Wife. Recently the show has added a second queer character, the protagonist's brother, who is gay, but, alas, not in a good way. I really hate having to say this but honestly, if you looked up faggot in an old-fashioned dictionary this guy's picture would be there. That is to say he pushes all the stereotype buttons: epicene, bitchy, blase, unwholesome, unattractive, just arch and unpleasant and unmanly and well, untrustworthy, as gay men were often depicted and thought of as being [even today]. You wouldn't trust this guy as far as you could throw him and I can't imagine anyone even wanting to have a drink with him. He's just a big yucch. I have no idea of the personal life of the actor who plays him, if he's just doing a really good -- or bad -- acting job or simply playing his own reality, but if they had to have a gay man on the show -- not a bad idea, of course -- did it have to be this guy? The problem isn't so much with his whole demeanor, as negative as it is, but he just doesn't come off like a particularly nice or likable person. [For this show, maybe he's just joining the club.] Who am I kidding, it's everything about this guy.

But when it comes to gay characters in films and on TV it's always been two steps forward and three steps backward.

note: The Good Wife was created by Michelle King and Robert King.

Oy Vey! Gay Weddings and Sex and the City 2

The problem I've always had with the admittedly humorous show Sex and the City and the movies thereof was its decidedly stereotypical treatment of gay men. [Also the fact that lead character Carrie is rather shallow and uncultured. Supposed to go to the opera with a guy on one episode, she decides to forgo the Metropolitan and hit McDonald's instead. Huh?]

The two main gay characters on the show were both big queens [not that there's anything wrong in that], one of whom was kind of sweet and likable, and the other of whom was bitchy, grotesque and altogether repulsive. These two went out on one blind date and hated each other almost on sight. So what happens in Sex and the City 2? These two get married in the Big Gay Wedding that occurs early in the film.

Yes, yes, I suppose it's okay to poke fun at gay stereotypes at times, but am I the only person who's getting tired of references to gays and musicals, gays and Liza Minnelli (who officiates at the wedding, which is mildly amusing), and the like. Virtually every gay guy depicted at the wedding is a screaming queen. In one scene at the bar, Carrie's husband "Big" [I never quite understood what she saw in this guy, who is quite a bit older than her in addition to other problems] is hit on by a gay guy who is played by an actor who resorts to such "faggot" mugging that you'd swear you had temporarily switched to The Gay Deceivers or something along those lines.

Then the girls go to an Arab nation on a junket and are each assigned a kind of butler/personal concierge. The gay one is, of course, effeminate and nicknamed "Paula" after Paula Abdul. There are the usual tiresome jokes about gays and hairdressing, decorating, dressing skills, even though most the gay guys I know have little knowledge of any of that shit. It's the old gay-guy-as-straight-woman's-accessory all over again.

What makes it worse is that Sex and the City 2 -- which seems to go on forever -- was written and directed by openly gay Michael Patrick King, who I have to assume must be a Big Ol' Queen or Swishmeister Deluxe with that painfully awful old-fashioned queer sensibility that thinks and/or suggests that All Gay Men are limp-wristed hairdressers. [And a reminder here that even out-of-the-closet gays can be dealing with issues of self-hatred.]

Sometimes if you object to stuff like this you're told by gays and straight alike to get over yourself, because -- after all -- there are gay guys like this out in the real world. This is the justification for a lot of gay humor/fag jokes that can be well-intentioned or mean-spirited. But I mean, the world already knows that some gay men are Big Queens -- can't we just get past it? Surely there's some humor to be mined in the bear community with its chubby chasers and big fat guys strutting around like sex symbols? [Then again -- maybe not. There's a kind of bearish gay couple on a show called Modern Family but they seem to be a couple of Big Queens as well.] Let's see something different and more diverse, please!

The thing is that stuff like Sex and the City -- while it has a large gay following I imagine -- is not directed specifically at gay people. I know that I am tired of the constant linking of gay men with fashion and hair-dressing, transvestism, and "girlie" attributes -- and the snide attitudes this engenders in even gay-friendly straights, many of whom are much more comfortable with obvious gay men and lesbians they can feel superior to [don't get me started!].

Gay men have had a perpetual problem in being taking seriously as men and stuff like The Producers and Sex and the City 2 -- no matter how supposedly good-natured -- don't help at all.

Gay Perry Mason

When I was a kid I used to sulk like hell when my parents put on Perry Mason. The minute I heard the music I knew we were in for what is now known as "adult drama," nothing that could possibly interest a kid. I mean there were philanderers [what the hell was that?] and suspects and long, boring courtroom sequences, and people screaming "I did it, yes I did it" from the witness stand. Nothing to engage the limited attention span of a child.

Years later when I was all grown up I actually enjoyed Perry Mason. I thought some of the stories were clever, and I enjoyed the badinage between Perry, his secretary Della Street, and his buddy-private eye Paul Drake. Then there was the craggy Lt. Tragg and the always-losing district attorney Hamilton Burger.

Paul Drake, played by William Hopper, always flirted mildly with Della ("Hello, beautiful") but he never asked her for a date. Perry and Della had dinner frequently, but Paul was often there, or even Burger or Tragg, and they generally talked about a case. Neither Mason nor Drake were seen very often, if ever, with a female date.

Hmmm ... Paul and Perry? Why not?

I had always heard that William Hopper, Hedda Hopper's son, was gay [which may be just another of those Hollywood rumors, let me make that clear] but I heard nothing about Burr, who also went on to play Ironside in another successful series. After his death, of course, it came out -- pun intended -- that Burr had had a long-time male companion. I finally got around to reading Michael Seth Starr's [don't know anything about this guy, but jeez is that a "gay" name or what?] bio of Burr, Hiding in Plain Sight: The Secret Life of Raymond Burr.

Burr went so far as to fabricate a marriage [there was one genuine short-lived marriage], a deceased son, and military heroism, but on the other hand, he sounds like a kind-hearted man who was a friend for life if he liked someone. "Hamilton Burger" [actor William Tallman] was fired from the show after being caught in a nude party [apparently not a gay one] and Burr rallied to his defense and finally got him reinstated on the show. Plus there was his entertainment tours for servicemen, which he never publicized a la Bob Hope.

Some of the people quoted by Starr make rather ridiculous comments about Burr. There's some nonsense about how he supposedly greeted workmen in a shocking pink bathrobe, and other allegedly "gay" stuff that people think they can get away with because Burr was homosexual. (You can't blame Starr for this if that's what people told him.) As Perry Mason, Ironside, and as various heavies in film noir thrillers [including Hitchcock's classic Rear Window] Burr never came off as dainty or stereotypically effeminate.

Burr may have made some outrageous assertions to cover up his sexual orientation, but [except for one brief period] he didn't use a wife as a beard, but lived with his male lover for a very long time. The one and only time he got political in a gay sense was when celebrities were urged to boycott Colorado because of the state's passage of an anti-gay amendment. Burr didn't agree with the amendment, thank goodness, but he didn't think boycotting the state was the correct way of fighting it.

It's interesting to contemplate what Burr might have been like had he been born into a later generation. For nowadays it is not uncommon for actors, character actors at least, to come out of the closet once they've become established or even before.

Rednecks at the Gay Bar

I was at my favorite gay local watering hole about two weeks ago, when one of the patrons told me and a couple of others in my vicinity a joke.

It was the most vile racist joke I've ever heard in my life. It was not just "politically incorrect" or good-natured racial humor that everyone, black or white, could laugh at -- it's punchline was the "n" word. It is the kind of joke that debases the one who tells it, and also debases everyone who hears it. I was disgusted.

And this was in a gay bar in Greenwich Village in the 21st century!

What's going on here?

Yes, I know there have always been racist gays and homophobic blacks and so on and so on, but on the --mercifully -- rare occasions I encounter these troglodytes I still find it a bit startling. Basically this jerk was telling a redneck joke in a gay bar. His mind-set was the same as people who tell fag jokes. I made this point but I'm sure it went in one ear and out the other.

To their credit, the other people I had been conversing with -- all white -- were also appalled by the joke. The only one who laughed was a guy sitting on the other side of the "joke" teller. The two of them bonded in their thought of me as a humorless [yeah -- right!] person who couldn't take a joke. I and my friends were the assholes -- not them. Amazing. "It's all in fun," said the joke teller.

One of my friends said "If it's all in fun, then go tell that guy at the end of the bar [who happened to be African-American]. " Of course, none of us actually wanted this turd to tell the joke to anyone, but we also knew that he never would.

What creates a gay person like this? Self-hatred, of course. A well-adjusted man has no need to hate another minority group just to feel better about himself. You learn in sociology 101 that prejudice is generally the product of an inferiority complex.

Over the years I have, sadly, met gay men who had issues with Women, Blacks, Jews, and so on, although they are in the minority, let me make that clear. Generally they are not well-adjusted people, and they have issues over their sexuality. I'm sure without a doubt that the person who told the joke is in the closet, and that deep down he's ashamed to be gay. if his parents are still alive he's never told them he's homosexual [although they probably figured it out long ago.] He could probably benefit from counseling or therapy, but he'll never go get help.

He'll just tell his jokes, hoping to encounter the occasional sad stranger who's as fucked up as he is and will also find them funny.

The thing is, he's a middle-aged man who would probably resent being called an old fart. But his jokes -- which used to proliferate thirty years ago and more -- are "old fart," even redneck jokes. They don't make him seem hip or up-to-date, youthful, but very old and out of it. He actually seemed surprised by those of us who found the joke totally offensive. I hope he tries to pick up some younger man someday, tells his little jokes, and discovers just how hopelessly out of date he is. [There was a younger man in the bar that night who also found the joke completely reprehensible.]

It's shocking, shameful, that people like this still exist, but the good news is that where once many others would have joined in with the laughter, nowadays the joke teller is more often put in his place in no uncertain terms.

Schizoid Gays in a Quiet Place

A Quiet Place, an opera composed by Leonard Bernstein, was recently presented at the New York City Opera [not to be confused with the Met] where it got some surprisingly good reviews. A Quiet Place, which had very few American performances during Bernstein's lifetime, began life as a tuneful 1952 one-act entitled Trouble in Tahiti. With an engaging score and a pretty good libretto by Bernstein, Trouble told the story of the dysfunctional marriage of Sam and Dinah. It was a memorable short work, the title of which referred to a piece of "technicolor twaddle" that Dinah goes to see at the movies.

But Bernstein wasn't satisfied with Trouble; it wasn't serious enough, so -- working with librettist Stephen Wadsworth (whose personal life I know nothing of, except that he has a wife) -- Bernstein expanded his little one-act into a full-length opera entitled A Quiet Place, the title taken from one of Dinah's songs in Trouble. It made its debut in Houston in 1983. All of the music from Trouble in Tahiti was used in the new work in flashback sequences.

In the new opera, Dinah has been killed in an accident, and their little boy, Junior, is a schizophrenic. His lover, Francois, is now married to Junior's sister, Dede -- talk about making someone schizophrenic!

Now at this point I must interject that Bernstein was a married homosexual who -- like many married homosexuals do -- probably preferred to think of himself as a hip bisexual. Therefore the whole idea of Francois ditching Junior to marry his boyfriend's sister, may have just seemed like some trendy bisexual chic. In reality, it's an utterly cruel and grotesque situation, which librettist Wadsworth never really explores. I mean, talk about situations that would fuck a guy up. As I wrote in my book The Opera of the Twentieth Century, it's never made clear if Francois' falling for his sister exacerbated or actually engendered Junior's instability. It is suggested that Dede and Francois married out of their mutual love for Junior, who needs looking after, but Francois sings a [second-rate] aria reaffirming his love for and commitment to Dede. Poor Junior.

Perhaps something interesting could have been made of this, but Wadsworth's libretto is pretty lousy, being more pretentious than profound, and does little to illuminate these rather screwed-up characters [I mean, a woman who would marry her brother's boyfriend, and vice versa!], although there's a fairly moving wind-up and Bernstein's relentlessly non-melodic music [aside from the excerpts from Trouble in Tahiti] doesn't help.

What's more interesting is some of the comments Christopher Alden, who directed this latest production of A Quiet Place, made to Olivia Giovetti of Time Out New York Magazine. "There's a lot of Bernstein in many of the characters. [In Francois] there's that fantasy of bisexuality or a gay man suddenly turning straight." As for Junior, Alden says, "It seems a bit of a throwback to the past where anytime gay characters were presented, they had to be shown to be problematical people." While it might have been admirable to present some sort of gay characters in an opera some years ago, it's the Same Old Story when we see a shizoid fag and a "bisexual" man who opts to marry his lover's sister. Sheesh! No thank you, Bernstein!

A Quiet Life looks at homosexuality from the confines of the closet, where Bernstein and others like him resided for most of their lives. It doesn't present a hip look at bisexuality or "sexual fluidity" so much as to all intents and purposes it simply avoids the subject of homosexuality altogether.

"Brothers and Sisters" Straight Gay Couple

The ABC-TV series Brothers and Sisters, which has been running for a number of years now, admirably has a few gay characters, as I've noted in the past. The main couple is Kevin Walker (Matthew Rhys, on the left in the photo), who is part of the main family in the show, and his boyfriend Scotty (openly gay Luke Mcfarlane, on the right).

Although it also dealt with other issues, the main storyline for the past two weeks has been a crisis in the marriage between Kevin and Scotty. It's a question if the relationship will survive. It centers on something that Scotty did several months in the past.

Now you might wonder, what did Scotty do? Did he fall in love with someone else? Decide to become an ex-gay? Tell Kevin he was lousy in bed and wanted out? None of the above. The horrible, unbelievable, absolutely awful thing Scotty did was ---

-- have a completely meaningless one-night-stand with another man on a night that Kevin blew him off for an event that Kevin knew was very special to Scotty.

Did I say this was meaningless casual sex? No one caught any diseases. Scotty did not see the fellow again, he did not fall in love with him, he did not have a male mistress or a continuing romantic affair.

It was just one lousy night, sheesh.

But Kevin and Scotty and all of the relatives are acting just the way some straight couples do when there's an "indiscretion." [And let's not call this an extra-marital affair; it was one night or less.] Yes, they are a monogamous couple who had even planned to raise a baby and Kevin is all hurt and what-not, but even women whose husbands stray in this fashion can forgive and move on. Presumably that will be the case for Kevin, but all the fucking angst in the last two episodes, you would think Scotty had impregnated some gal and was planning to march to the altar with her.

It's just all so terribly conventional, so middle-class. Like an episode of Dr. Phil, where he counsels a fat, fifty-year-old housewife who's all hysterical because her husband had sex with a hooker [had sex, period!] or went to a strip club. You can see Kevin on the show whining to Dr. Phil about Kevin's infidelity, even though it happened months ago, that it meant absolutely nothing, that Scotty still loves Kevin, and Scotty only did it because he understandably felt abandoned by his somewhat self-centered and borderline bitchy lover.

Such angst, such hand-wringing! I mean, get over it already! The most (unintentionally) hilarious scene had Kevin's gay uncle Saul (Ron Rifkin), who is seventy and spent most of his life in the closet [he didn't even come out when he learned he had a gay nephew] daring to angrily lecture Scotty, who is such a sweet guy [borderline cloying at times] that it immediately seemed like massive overkill.

[Speaking of Uncle Saul, he didn't come out until he was seventy and he winds up with Stephen Collins as a boyfriend (Collins plays "Charlie")! Even at sixty-three handsome Collins is a mite out of Saul's league. Collins plays the role just a touch stereotypically.]

I recognize there is a movement to "humanize" gays and make it clear that we are just like everybody else -- how depressing -- but the fact is that the gay community has always had its own rules and a freer mind-set. Now that more gay people are coming out of the closet, we're getting the viewpoints and influence of more conservative -- more conventional -- gays. I'm all for the diversity of the gay community, and feel every gay person has the right, more or less, to live as they choose, but there's something a little disquieting about a major gay couple on a popular TV program reacting to what should be a minor incident the way that a stereotypical straight couple would.

No offense whatsoever intended to heterosexuals, but what the world doesn't need is straight gay people.

These two episodes were excruciatingly awful, never more so than when the guy Scotty had the one-night-stand with shows up at the restaurant he owns. The guy was depicted as slick and callow, and at one point he even gets punched in the face by Kevin's straight brother [this uncomfortably reminded me of a gay-bashing]. This happens after pathetic Kevin punches out a completely innocent waiter, confusing him with the other guy. None of this was funny or dramatic, just silly and quite desperate. Surely the writers of the show can come up with more dramatic developments for Kevin and Scotty than this hysteria over a one-night quickie? Even the straight characters on the show don't carry on so over infidelity!

It's great to have gay characters on TV, but when they're poorly handled it seems like a shameful waste of a great opportunity.

What's in a Letter?

Homosexual panic can strike at any age.

Take the case of an acquaintance of mine who has an Irish last name with a "Mc" in front.

Several years ago I co-authored a book with a friend of mine and this guy -- we'll call him Mc -- was listed in the acknowledgments.
Unfortunately his name was misspelled with a "q" instead of a "g" and when my co-author went to correct it on the page proofs he made the mistake of underlining the "q." The typesetter interpreted this as meaning to capitalize the "q" so now it was a "Q."

In other words, it looked as if the guy's last name was McQueer or something along those lines.

Now a normal person would understand this was just a typo. I mean, I'm openly gay, why would I want to call anyone a "queer?" This fellow and I were hardly good friends, but we had had no quarrels over the years.

Anyway, he and his girlfriend decided to host a publication party for my co-author and myself [I think this was more for my co-author than for me, and it was probably the idea of the girlfriend and not "Mc," but it was still a very nice gesture. And a very nice party]

Mc went so far as to post the proper spelling of his name on the front door where everyone could see it.

He then went through the book itself and spotted an error and told everyone that I must have been the one who made the mistake -- not my co-author. [The irony was that it was my co-author who made that mistake and also compounded the original typographical error by underlining it!]

As I was a guest in Mc's home, I couldn't say what was on my mind [very, very frustrating for me] so I simply ignored his tackiness.

It wasn't long after this that Mc and his long-time live-in girlfriend got married or became domestic partners or something along those lines. I guess he was scared that because of a simple, inadvertent typographical error everyone would think he was, like, McQueer.

Like I say, talk about homosexual panic [the fear that you are or people might think you are gay]! And this was no teenager but a middle-aged man bordering on senior citizenship!

Well, at least it got him to marry his girlfriend [a lovely woman by the way].

Disturbing Matters -- and the Stonewall Again!

It's a shame to realize that even in these much more [but not completely] enlightened times there are still young gay men (and women) killing themselves. There's the tragic case of Tyler Clementi [pictured] who committed suicide after his roommate at Rutgers and another "friend" taped him having a homoerotic encounter and then posted it on the Internet. These people may not have thought Tyler was doing anything wrong, they may have felt they were doing the right thing in "outing" him, but a.) they were committing a gross invasion of privacy [which would have been the case even had the encounter been heteroerotic in nature] and b.) they should have realized that "coming out" is a rite of passage that everyone comes to in his or her own time. Outing hypocritical homophobes is one thing; an 18-year-old college student is another. [The legal aspects of this are so, sadly, fascinating that you can bet this story will be used as the basis for a Law and Order:SVU episode as well as many others].

Tyler probably had other issues. He seems like a sensitive young man. He was not conventionally handsome but he had a sweet face and other qualities that may have in time attracted someone to share his life with him, had that been what he desired. His roommate took what might have been a tentative first step into finding and accepting himself and turned it, whatever his intentions, into a dirty joke. Tyler may not have killed himself over being gay, but it's clear that having his actions taped and displayed for all the world to see drove him over the edge.

Despite all the achievements in Gay Rights, gay teen suicide is still a very real and terrible issue.

As is homophobia in general. Although things are much better than they once were, there still are plenty of reports that remind us that to some people we're as hated as ever.

Just the other day a man was gay-bashed in the famous [or infamous] Stonewall bar here in New York. Not that this surprises me, as I had an unpleasant encounter there myself many moons ago. The victim was taking an honest piss when they guy beside him asked what kind of bar it was, and when he discovered he was in -- gasp! -- a gay bar, took out his aggression on the customer. Another straight guy joined in. Both of the gay-bashers were arrested.

What kills me is that the Stonewall is claiming they do everything to protect their customers, to have a safe environment for everyone. But how did this [probably] shit-faced straight guy [or self-hater] get into the bar in the first place? There used to be a time when bouncers in gay bars made sure that every customer, especially the straight ones who wandered in, were aware they were in a gay bar, so that they could withdraw -- or be refused admittance -- if their reaction was hostile or negative. Now most gay bars don't even bother to do this, the reason allegedly being that gays and straights mingle more today and no one should be excluded etc. etc. but which really has more to do with money. Years ago straight people entered gay bars with their gay friends, and they were generally cool and respectful. Now we get inebriated meatheads who bounce in, unaware they're in a gay bar or too drunk to care [until they're made aware of it], and gay customers wind up paying the price for it.

I hope the guy who was gay-bashed sues the straight owners of the Stonewall. [Yes, they are straight, don't let anybody fool you. They gave a gay bartender at their other place, the Duplex down the street, a piece of the action and made him manager so they can say it's "gay-owned," which is a trifle disingenuous in my opinion.] The Stonewall gets the overflow from the Duplex, and it's been said that Duplex employees encourage [are told to encourage] the mostly straight, generally drunken tourists pouring out of the Duplex to go to the Stonewall; sometimes they mix with the gay customers like oil and water.

One of the gay-bashers' lawyers claims it wasn't a hate crime. But even if the guy turns out to be homosexual himself, it doesn't matter. If you beat somebody up because they're gay and call them a fag all the while it's a hate crime, be assured.

The Bitch Is Back

A few months ago As the World Turns introduced a new character, a doctor named Dr. Reid Oliver [expertly played by Eric Sheffer Stevens, pictured].

Oliver knew he was an incredibly gifted surgeon and made no bones about making sure that everyone else knew it too. His chief expression was one of withering contempt.

In other words, he was sort of bitchy.

I remember wondering if the character would turn out to be gay, then immediately admonishing myself because I know full well that most gay men are not bitchy and I've certainly met some straight guys who definitely were, so I told myself to put that right out of my mind. [I also recognized that it wasn't that I thought gay men were bitchy but that this has been a prevailing and unfair stereotype for many years.]

Now I don't think it was because Oliver was a bit of a bitch -- at least I hope not -- but it turned out that the good doctor was gay. He was brought in to shake up the relationship between Luke and Noah, the gay couple on the show, among other things [his character has shaken up a lot of people actually]. Noah had lost his sight, and Luke importuned [or rather badgered] genius surgeon Reid to come operate on him. For many weeks, during which Noah kept pushing Luke away [he in part blamed Luke for his accident], the two -- Luke and Reid -- simply couldn't stand one another.

But you could cut the sexual tension with a knife.

As Reid began to fall for Luke and vice versa, the doctor started to become a little more human. The somewhat insecure man underneath the obnoxious shell began to poke through.

And finally, after days and days of teasing us, the two finally went to bed. [Okay, not that we saw much of that. Even progressive shows such as As the World Turns aren't progressive enough to handle that.] But I must say the two characters have had some sexy kissing scenes [all the more remarkable if the two actors are straight, which, unfortunately, would preclude their actually enjoying any of the action, more's the pity].

In the meantime, Noah, who had vacillated back and forth between Luke and other guys, finally decided he was still in love with his old boyfriend, but he was heart-broken when Luke told him he now loved Reid.

But just yesterday Reid was in a terrible accident and is now brain-dead. His heart is going to be implanted in another character. Luke was, of course, devastated. [I don't mean to quibble, but these sequences, while not bad, didn't seem to have the impact of similar sequences involving straight characters. Perhaps it was simply because Luke and Reid had not been together all that long. There are still many people, who despite being gay-friendly, don't quite see gay relationships as equal to straight. Perhaps this could have been explored on the show -- or will be. Everyone just stood around talking about how Reid was gone and let's get his heart prepped and so on while Luke stood there in shock; would they have just let the poor guy stand there if it had been his girlfriend who'd died? But then Luke didn't seem all that devastated; perhaps because he felt more of an infatuation for Reid than anything else? Or did the actor simply underplay too much for some reason?]

In any case, the openly and happily gay Oliver went out as a hero; the last thing he did before expiring was insisting that his heart be used for a colleague whom he died trying to help, and whom he didn't especially like.

Normally I would rail against the killing off of an excellent character like Dr. Reid Oliver [his being gay added an extra dimension to someone who was already quite interesting, in no small part due to Stevens' performance as well as good writing] but As the World Turns is going off the air for good later this month. The gay characters on One Life to Live are, I believe, no longer on that show. And I've already written how The Young and the Restless de-gayed itself, although minor gay supporting characters show up now and then to say a measly line or two.

So there won't be many or any gay characters on the afternoon soaps. Still, it looks as if As the World Turns will go out with its long-running gay couple, Luke and Noah, intact. Noah will naturally want to comfort Luke after his terrible loss [although he'll probably feel kind of funny helping him get over someone else]. Frankly, Luke seemed a little stupid blowing off Noah. Yes, Dr. Oliver was a very handsome guy, but even after he thawed out a bit he didn't exactly have Noah's sincerity and sweetness. And Noah wasn't exactly chopped liver. Still, it's hardly unrealistic for a young guy to fall for a pretty face, male or female.

As the World Turns may not have been perfect, but in general the show did a mighty good job of presenting mostly realistic gay characters of some variety and intelligence.

Party Animals

Many years ago I went to see the film version of the rock opera Tommy.

The movie was horrible. it would have been horrible even without its most offensive scene.

After Tommy's uncle (or whoever he was) sings about "fiddling" with the boy -- in other words, molesting him -- the actor playing the part picks up a copy of Gay News [or a similar gay paper -- it's been a few years] and begins reading it. Tommy's father, played by the imposing Oliver Reed, walks in and sets fire to the newspaper, wearing a look that could kill.

So there you have it in CinemaScope and technicolor: Gay man equals child molester.

Author Robert Hofler makes no mention of this scene in his book Party Animals, which is ironic considering the subject of the book is producer Allan Carr, who helped promote and market Tommy with a world premiere party in a New York subway station [where it belonged]. More ironic is that the openly and flamboyantly gay Carr tried to bring a gay aesthetic to his projects as well as a homoerotic ambiance to his parties [and orgies]. NOTE: Other projects Carr worked on in one capacity or another were Grease with John Travolta, Can't Stop the Music, the Village People singing group, the Broadway musical La Cage aux Folles [suave, borderline swishy-if-straight star Gene Barry was afraid to share an elevator with the chorus boys because he thought he might catch AIDS], and a famously disastrous Oscar telecast.

Interestingly Hofler does make note of the sad but not uncommon phenomenon that the stereotypically gay Carr was also full of extreme self-hatred, stemming in part from his body image and hard-to-hide effeminacy. Carr was someone who decided he would make the gay thing work for him without ever fully embracing his sexuality [except, of course, during sex, often with men for hire]. Hofler writes how Carr would often go out of his way to do just about anything and everything for the heterosexual men with whom he worked, but rarely did the same for his gay male friends and acquaintances. "Allan had a way of treating fellow homosexuals like mere employees and straight male friends like the brothers he never had," writes Hofler.

Which, of course, is why Carr probably wouldn't have given a shit about that scene in Tommy.

Hofler's book is quite interesting, even if the star of the book himself may not interest you all that much. Some of the negative attitudes expressed about Carr by people may have had to do with their homophobia but just as often with his glittering, often tacky, lack of substance. I never met Carr but I've met people like him. They can be fun -- until they think you've somehow crossed them, or their extreme self-hatred beneath the callow, "fabulous" exterior begins to come out through the cracks and then explodes.

Not a bad book of a certain time and place in Hollywood and New York, with a back drop of emerging gay rights and gay consciousness, as well as the terrible rise of AIDS.

And Hofler made me laugh out loud with the line: "In time matching John Travolta with a mate of the opposite sex turned into a cottage industry."