"Invisible" Cruising

A few months ago I was in one of my favorite bars when a guy asked me if it were a leather bar. I quickly told him this place was more of a cowboy/bear bar and that he should go up to the Eagle on 28th street for the full leather experience. He thanked me and headed for the exit. I then noticed that an acquaintance I'll call Peter, who was sitting nearby, was giving me a really dirty look. I figured it had nothing to do with me, and an hour or so later he seemed perfectly friendly.

The next time I went into this bar, Peter was there and called me over. "I have a bone to pick with you," he told me. "You told the guy I was cruising to go up to the Eagle." Oops. Now I knew what the dirty look was about. Because I'm a nice guy (most of the time) I apologized to Peter, but afterward I wondered what the hell I was apologizing for. First of all, why didn't he simply say to the guy, "Hey, I"m going up to the Eagle, too -- wanna share a cab?" (Not that I can see Peter, a kind of theater queen, in a leather bar, but who knows?) Is it my fault if he didn't think fast or was afraid of being rebuffed?

But the amazing thing is that it didn't even look as if he were talking to the leather guy, let alone

cruising him. Yes, this was another case of what I call "invisible" cruising. And it works this way.

Guy # 1 sees a guy he's attracted to -- guy # 2 -- in a bar. He figures that as the evening progresses he'll eventually work up the courage to go and talk to him. He's marked guy # 2 as his target -- in his mind if nowhere else. But before he can actually make his move, another guy -- guy # 3 -- goes over to the first guy and begins cruising him. The third guy, in all innocence, is only trying to get a date like everyone else is, but guy # 1 immediately hates him for getting in the way. Poor guy # 3 has earned guy # 1's eternal enmity, especially if he scores with guy # 2. Some of these invisible cruisers never actually cruise anyone, they just assume the psychic waves they're sending out will force the guy, X-Files-like, to come over and say they wanna fuck them.

For heaven's sake, I can see someone getting annoyed if someone horns in when you're trying to cruise someone, but if you're sitting across the bar only thinking about it, all bets are off. And the amazing thing was that I wasn't even cruising the leather guy myself -- (hmm, a missed opportunity, because I recall he was rather hot) -- nor did I walk out the door with him and head up to the Eagle (which, frankly, is what I should have done, and boy would Peter have been pissed off then)!

Peter was plenty pissed off anyway. He sidled up to me that next time and said "People think I'm a nice guy, but if someone gets in my way, I destroy them, do you hear me, I destroy them!"

Okay.

Brrr -- was I quaking with terror or what? What would he do -- slap me across the face with a script? Now I liked Peter, but I thought he was behaving ridiculously, and I found him about as scary as Truman Capote in a muu muu. He was acting like he hadn't a date in years. I'm not saying that that's true, but if it is there's not a damn thing I can do about it.

So the next time you see somebody glaring at you with a look that can kill and you have no idea why, consider the possibility that at some point you innocently interfered with their sit-on-their-ass invisible cruising. While the rest of us actually put ourselves on the line and cruise, risking rejection -- nothing ventured, nothing gained -- these Invisible Men hate us for doing what they only dream about.

Worst GLBT Blog?

Okay, there may be worse blogs than this one I ran across today, but I haven't come across them yet. I was searching for forums strictly for gay men (or gay men and lesbians) -- as opposed to GLBT forums -- and came across something called "about.com" which had forums for gays, bi's and the like. I was curious -- "bi-curious?" -- when I saw a link about the "best bisexual blogs." Now what would this be, I wondered. [Let me make it clear that I'm gay, not bisexual; and I find the notion that every gay man who might once upon a time have had relations with the opposite sex is actually bi to be not only stupid but downright homopobic.] Jeez, if what I saw when I clicked the link were the best bi blogs, I really feel sorry for bisexuals. Generally they were about men who had been -- or still were -- married to women but also had sex with men (formerly we used to call these guys "married homosexuals"). I've seen quite a few blogs on this theme, but generally the men identify as gay, being bi only in the technical sense. This one blog -- One Life, Take Two -- concerned the life of a self-described bisexual and "pervert" (whatever that means) whose wife sent him packing. I just can't figure out why the powers-that-be at about.com (whatever that is) thought that this was one of the "top bi blogs" and would help people understand the bi lifestyle better. The blog consists of nothing but photos of sexy, scantily clad females (not a guy in sight) and the only halfway meaty post I could find had the blogger quoting a female friend about what a hot time she had when she went to bed with the guy. I mean, is this pathetic or what? I've heard of testimonials, but this is ridiculous. Is it just me or is a guy pretty much a total loser if he has to post what is probably a made-up story written from the pov of one of his female lovers just to prove how hot he is in bed? I mean, what exactly is "bisexual" about this blog -- it seems more or less straight to me, even with the alleged "bisexual" tag. It isn't well-written, doesn't illuminate the "bi lifestyle" in any manner whatsoever, and doesn't seem in the least "GLBT." So what's up?

Don't moderators, administrators, whatever you call them, even bother to read the blogs they link to?

I mean, this is a joke, right?

It's Not Me It's Those Pesky Gay Rumors

In a desperate quest for supposedly scandalous stories, the supermarket tabloids frequently come up with "gay"-themed material, quite often of the "this is really dumb" variety. The National Enquirer recently ran a story about how the actress Kirstie Alley blames lesbian rumors about her for a "rotten love life." According to her -- or at least the Enquirer -- no man will date Alley because he figures what's the point -- she's gay! Alley blames the gay Village Voice columnist Michael Musto for years ago intimating (without naming anyone) that Alley and her then-husband Parker Stevenson were involved in a sham marriage to hide the fact that one or both of them was gay. (Stevenson appeared in The Hardy Boys TV show and in the first film version of A Separate Peace, which many people now see as essentially a gay love story, as author John Knowles finally acknowledged. This, of course, does not mean the actor is gay.)

First of all, I don't know how wide a readership Musto has, but with the steady stream of gossip being generated day after day, year after year, I doubt if this blind item made much of an impression. For heaven's sake, there are straight-identified people these days working in gay bars and they manage to get dates with the opposite sex, so it makes no sense at all that Alley can't get a date because of these years-old lesbian rumors. Maybe it was because until recently she was pretty fat and there are "superficial" guys out there who won't date a chubby gal. Maybe off-screen she's too much like the neurotic, annoying characters she's played on TV.

I don't know, but somehow it seems like we gays are getting blamed for something else that isn't our fault.

As for Alley, I thought she was funny on Cheers. I thought Veronica's Closet was essentially unwatchable and Alley barely bearable in it. I thought she gave a surprisingly good dramatic performance in the remake of Village of the Damned, but generally is better at comedy than drama.

Maybe it's not that guys think she's gay. Maybe they just find her -- like a lot of actors and actresses -- a little overbearing?

Just possible, isn't it, perhaps?

The 24th Day: A Gay Misfire

LOGO has been showing a 2004 film called The 24th Day a lot lately. It comes off to me as a film that exploits gay and HIV subject matter, throws in some interesting tidbits, but doesn't really know what to do with them, mostly due to the insufficiencies of the screenwriter. Based on a play by one Tony Piccirillo, it was also written and directed by him. According to Piccirillo, he got the idea for the play after he got strep throat or something after a brief affair with a woman (sic), and a nurse suggested he should get tested for AIDS. He confronted the woman, who told him he was making too much of it. This somehow evolved into an essentially gay film (what -- heteros don't get HIV?) about a married-and-in-denial guy, Tom (Scott Speedman) who ties up an out-of-the-closet gay man, Dan (James Marsden of X-Men) because he thinks he gave him AIDS during an encounter years before. It turns out that Tom was married, and his wife committed suicide after learning she had AIDS. He claims that he is essentially straight and had only one sexual encounter with a man -- Dan. He feels that Dan to all intents and purposes murdered his wife and ruined his life. Dan says he didn't force him to commit adultery with a man and it's Tom's fault if he passed HIV along to his unknowing spouse. Tom takes a sample of Dan's blood, gives it to a friend to take to a lab, and says he'll set Dan free if he's HIV negative, and kill him if he's positive.

Yuchhh. First let me say that the main problem with the film -- and there are many -- is that we've got a situation where a self-deceptive, self-hating, homophobic closet queen somehow holds himself to be morally superior to an out-of-the-closet gay man. There doesn't seem to be any indication that Dan knew he was HIV positive (assuming he is) at the time of their encounter, and Tom himself takes no responsibility for having unsafe sex. Dan does suggest that Tom may well have had many more homo encounters than he's admitting to, and also advises him that since his wife had symptoms first, she actually might have given the virus to her husband. To be fair, this is an intriguing (if melodramatic) situation, but the movie doesn't make the most of it, going awry long before the conclusion.

Unwisely, the film tries to be trendy when it comes to sexual identity. Dan admits that just because he has sex with a woman now and then doesn't mean he's straight (or even bi), that he has absolutely no intention of giving up men and getting a wife. Fine. But he seems to agree with Tom that an occasional episode with a man doesn't make a man gay or bi, which is ludicrous at its core. If we didn't live in a world that was full of homophobia and yet devoid of heterophobia (which affects every gay person even on a subconsious level) I might buy this notion of "bicuriosity." On the contrary, I think it's bullshit. Bicurious men are men who can't quite accept their homosexuality, plain and simple, political correctness and bisexuality be damned.

Instead of really exploring this issue -- one of internalized homophobia -- Piccirillo gives Dan a ludicrous speech about not putting people in boxes, and how men who are essentially straight but also attracted to men have a more difficult time of it than women in the same (if opposite) situation. "It's totally messed up for guys who prefer women and have a slight curiosity about men. ... "

And : "Being with a man or wanting to be with a man doesn't make you gay ... "

Uh, sure.

Let me make it clear that this speech is not given to Tom, the closet case, but to Dan, the gay guy! But it's just the sort of thing that gay guys in denial are always saying. [Read my controversial post, Seriously in Denial.]

Now another problem with this project is that it doesn't seem to be the product of what you might call gay sensibilities. The two lead actors are apparently straight. All I know about Piccirillo is that he had a four-year-old son at the time of the film's release and once upon a time was afraid he'd caught AIDS from a girlfriend. And isn't it ridiculous that in the 21st century we still don't really know who's gay or who isn't or who's in denial and who's supposedly "bi-curious" and even if we do know we can't come right out and say because even though there's nothing wrong with being gay saying someone is gay can still be considered as libelous as saying someone is a serial killer or a terrorist. (All right -- take a deep breath after that sentence.)

That being said, I also must say that I have no personal knowledge of the private lives of Marsden, Speedman, or Piccirillo. Another truth is that The 24th Day comes off as the project of straight men who are totally out of their depth (and closet cases -- not that I'm saying that that's what we're dealing with here -- might just as well be straight due to their lack of any gay sensibility). One has to ask why Piccirillo couldn't have used heterosexual characters in the same situations - after all he supposedly got the idea from an encounter with a woman. Did he think The 24th Day might get more attention or support as a "gay" movie? Does he still think AIDS is a "gay disease?" It's like having a Caucasian writing a play about African-Americans and inevitably getting it all wrong. Sometimes going for publicity-generating controversy is the worst way to go. (By the way, the title refers to the fact that Tom learned he had HIV 24 days before the film proper begins.)

The film is also a disappointment on the artistic front. A really great play could have been written employing these two characters and dealing with the same themes -- certainly personal responsibility as well as responsibility to others is important these days when it comes to the HIV pandemic (but this is as true for straights as it is for gays) -- but Piccirillo is stepping out of his league in tackling these matters. As a director, he fails to imbue his film with enough thrills or tension (it's supposed to be a thriller, after all, but mostly comes off as a talky videotaped stage play). The performances of Marsden and Speedman are certainly not awful, but the actors aren't quite up to the script's challenges, and soft-spoken Speedman is often unintelligible. They don't really seem to understand the characters -- but neither does Piccirillo. [Does he relate at all to Dan? Does he relate to the pathetic Tom?] To be fair to Piccirillo, he makes an effort, but whether the problem is lack of identification or lack of talent or both, it just isn't enough.

And why on earth does Picirillo have the two men go on and on about the show Charlie's Angels, which these characters, given their relative youth, could only have seen on TVLand if at all? I have had countless conversations with gay men of all types and ages over the years but I've yet to have a conversation about Charlie's Angels, be it TV show or movie.

I don't know if Dan was originally conceived as a "pig," a gay man who will try just about anything, safe sex be damned. There's no denying that men like this exist, but they also have their heterosexual equivalent. But there are a great many gay men who are constantly conscious of safe sex, carry condoms at all times, and are responsible to themselves and to their sex partners. Straight characters [a widow whose husband died of AIDS confronts the male drug user who gave her HIV, for instance] might have actually made the play/movie even more controversial and timely, given how HIV infection is rising in the heterosexual community.

Given its subject matter, I guess I can't fault LOGO for airing the film so that the three or four people who've heard of it can make up their own minds. Frankly The 24th Day muffs so many great opportunities for drama and enlightenment that I can't think of a better place for it than at 5 AM in the morning. Too bad. Interesting situations and discussions are sort of frittered away in a two-man acting exercise where the uncertain actors sort of sink to the level of the exploitative material.

Oy Vey -- A Daily Variety of "mincing effeminacy"

The Kid from Brooklyn, a new musical about the comedian Danny Kaye, was reviewed in Daily Variety [December 17th 2007] by Bob Verini. Verini writes: "As for Kaye's psychological makeup, tantalizing hints (a cheek touch from Laurence Olivier) that his mincing effeminacy [italics mine]was no pose go unaddressed." [For the record, in his biography of Laurence Oliver, Donald Spoto suggested that the great tragedian might have had an affair with Kaye, but while this bit of info was fascinating, it wasn't really substantiated, alas.]

As you can see from the comical pose above, Kaye -- like most comedians -- could do the mincing (but not necessarily gay) business with the best of them, although I never really thought of him as "effeminate" (not that that would make him a bad person). Certainly this doesn't mean that he, Jerry Lewis, Bob Hope and legions of others were all gay in real life. When Kaye wasn't -- for lack of a better term -- camping it up, he always seemed perfectly "masculine," which certainly doesn't preclude his being gay. What bothered me is the way Verini suggests that if a man is gay any "mincing" he does -- even if it's only for the camera as part of some comedy routine -- is of course the way he actually is off-screen, all gay men presumably -- according to Verini's mind-set -- being "big swishes." Verini may not have meant it that way -- --the reviewer is a complete unknown to me, I know nothing of his personal life -- but this whole gay-man-as-mincing-faggot business is so incredibly out of date and irritating, given what we now know of the expansiveness of the gay male community, that it raises my blood temperature no matter who says it or how.

Even those gay men who are effeminate rarely "mince" in the way that alleged comedians portray them, and -- possessed of their own inner strength (if for no other reason than their having to deal with gay-bashing comments on a nearly daily basis) -- they absolutely do not deserve the disrespect that seems continuously poured over them -- and by extension all gay men -- in buckets. Comedy may in part be about exaggeration, but when you've heard the same jokes over and over and over again it gets old real fast.

Some straight men sometimes see/describe gay men as camping, mincing, being "light in the loafers," floating several inches off the ground, etc. even when the gay man in question is butch. Most straight men -- especially if they're insecure -- can't deal with the fact that there are gay men who are a lot more manly than they are. They can only comfortably deal with a masculine gay man if they imagine that no matter how he acts in public, when he's home alone with his friends suddenly his wrists go limp and he walks around with a decided wiggle. Even if they don't think that, they still like to think that the man is somehow feminine on the inside. And this applies to gay-friendly straight men who should know better as much as it does to the homophobes.

So -- was Danny Kaye gay? Apparently Hollywood insiders of a certain age say that there were rumors for years. One prominent Hollywood chronicler I know labeled him "bisexual" (at least in the technical sense as he was married with children). While I often found Kaye to be a little overbearing for my taste, he was a talented man and a likable performer.

If it turns out he was gay, so much the better.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell on 60 Minutes

ALL GAY MEN ARE 'BIG SISSIES' PERSISTS

Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes did a new report this past Sunday (December 16th, 2007) on the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy concerning gays. The gay soldiers (including mechanics, technicians and linguists) interviewed ran the gamut from cute, somewhat "sweet" young guys to very butch marines, all of whom seemed highly competent at their jobs, the point of which was made by Stahl and others. [The segment was produced by Karen M. Sughrue.] Cholene Espinoza, a lesbian combat pilot who now flies for commercial airlines and works to repeal the DADT policy, was interviewed, along with the usual homophobic suspects, such as General

Daniel Davis, who argued that military units are generally conservative and that "morally repugnant" gays who were open about their sexuality would, in essence, negatively affect morale.

Another idiot, Presidential candidate Duncan Hunter of the Armed Forces committee, claimed that gays just weren't tough enough to be in combat, more dumb all-gay-men-are-big-sissies stereotyping. He felt that the American military needed "hardened soldiers" more than the countries that permitted gays to serve! [No doubt Hunter thought it hilarious that the combat pilot was a lesbian. I have known gay men who were combat pilots and I have no doubt there are many in Iraq and elsewhere today, although they may not have been interviewed by Stahl.] I know Stahl was going for balance, but I feel she gave far too much air time to Hunter. The trouble was that it was undoubtedly difficult for her to find gay servicemen and women willing to talk on camera, for obvious reasons.

One of the gay soldiers said that about 100 people knew he was gay (he was not stereotypically gay) and felt that no one had reported him because they were his peers, "the Will and Grace generation," and didn't see homosexuality as a sickness. Even Stahl mentioned that perhaps he and the other soldiers were being a little naive. One of them mentioned how his petty officer told him that he found homosexuals to be disgusting on every level but "we still love ya," he assured him. Another man had faced much more discrimination and was discharged when it was discovered he was gay. The gay soldiers felt that the pentagon was out of touch with most Americans when it came to the DADT policy and Stahl said that indeed a survey indicated that 75% of the country felt it was okay for gays to serve in the military (that seems a little high to me).

In England gays are allowed to serve openly, and even allowed to march for Gay Pride. Admiral Sir Alan West (who I thought was terrific) made the point that the Spartans were plenty macho and, according to him, most of them were gay. He ridiculed Hunter's comments, saying one doesn't have to be all stereotypically gung ho to get the job done. Oddly, none of the group of military men who recently came out against the DADT policy were interviewed (maybe because their superiors wouldn't allow it).

This whole business of all gay men being weak sisters persists generation after generation. On The Late, Late Show a young comedian named Gabriel Iglesias recently told one of the most vile homophobic jokes I've heard in a long time. Telling about how he was on a plane when it suddenly dropped a great distance, he said "Now I'm a pretty tough guy but I went gay for three seconds," then proceeded to screech and squeal and wiggle in an effeminate manner -- acting like a gay guy, ha ha -- that many drag queens would have thought over the top. The host and the audience roared with laughter as if they thought it was the funniest thing they'd ever heard.

Now anyone would probably be terrified if they thought their plane were about to crash (not exactly a great topic for humor to begin with) but surely Iglesias could have made that point without doing the usual "faggot" routine. He never used the "fag" word, but he might as well have. Gay men -- along with lesbians -- remain easy targets, the last acceptable group to bash and make fun of. (In contrast, bisexuals don't even have their own slur word, and while drag queens get bashed -- as gay men -- transsexuals seem to be under the radar for comics, although that may change in the future as their visibility increases.)

I'd like to think that there were some straight people in the audience of The Late, Late Show who were also appalled by the "joke."

I can only imagine how any gay people sitting in the audience must have felt.

Truth Wins Out

Wayne Besen, author and activist, is executive director of Truth Wins Out (TWO), a group that is dedicated to exposing the lies of "ex-gay" groups who promote homophobia and self-hatred and who dupe confused homosexuals into believing they can turn straight. Numerous ex-gays who have appeared on talk shows to talk about how straight they've become have been caught cruising gay bars in town only hours later. Groups such as Exodus try to convince homosexuals that they can "convert" via a combination of prayer and what one might call "stupid pet tricks."

You can check out Truth Wins Out's website here.

Two has just released two Internet commercials which debunk the idiotic and offensive claims of the ex-gay moment. You can check out one of them here on youtube. [NOTE: the photo above is from the ad. That is not Wayne Besen but ex-gay survivor Nick Cavnar.]

Wayne crossed swords with a homophobic "ex-gay" in a comical fashion on the Daily Show. You can read my report of this amusing episode here.

I hope TWO gets all the support it deserves.

And I think Wayne Besen is great.

The sad thing is that many gays who don't keep up with things have no idea how many hate-mongering, homophobic assholes are out there, many of whom point to the bible to justify their anti-gay prejudice. The blog Good as You (GAY) has a link to a radio interview between "ex-gay" Charlene Cothran and a few other self-justifying homophobes which you can find here.

A Shot of Sheer Stupidity

MTV, the network that's brought us such intellectual programs as The Real World and Jackass, has now come out with another "gem," A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila. The modestly-attractive Tila [photo on left] is a reality show participant who's bent on stardom and -- even with the absence of any discernable talent -- will do just about anything to get it. She's started on a course that may remind some of Anne Heche, who used a relationship with Ellen Degeneres to kick-start her career.

Tila identifies as bisexual. Which is strange because she's said that her new reality show will help her decide whether she likes boys or girls (and here I thought bisexuals already knew that they liked both). The premise of the show is that Tila will date 16 straight men and 16 lesbians and then decide on who will be her lover. The twist is that the men and women will not be told that they'll be competing against each other until the second episode. (On this episode one gay woman wisely packs up and gets the hell out of there.)

I know there are people -- mostly the very young, stupid and possibly bi-identified -- who will say that the show is a breath of fresh air, so enlightened and liberated, fun for gays, straights and bi's.,that one would have to be an old meanie to object to it. Actually I think anyone would half a brain would see this merde for exactly what it is. A show that has absolutely nothing to do with gay (or even bi) pride and more enlightened attitudes and everything to do with simple exploitation and even homophobia, an even stupider show than Gay, Straight or Taken.

First of all, the outcome of this show was never in doubt. Did anyone seriously not think, in true Anne Heche fashion, that "bisexual" Tila would pick a guy in the final episode -- which is exactly what she does (wouldn't it be funny if he were a closeted homo?). Is there anyone of intelligence who does not see that the celebrity-seeking Tequila might be willing to neck with women to turn on straight male executives (and what is that about anyway?) but isn't willing to enter into a real live lesbian relationship for the cameras. [NOTE: Straight guys only get turned on by women getting it on together -- for whatever reason -- if the women are boobed babes -- as well as boobs -- and are definitely not total lesbians.] Tila is using a kind of mock bisexuality -- and this should insult the bi-identified as much as gays -- to be hip and different, to get attention, knowing as long as she suggests she's also or mainly into dick she won't be considered an icky "dyke." Going "straight" worked for Anne Heche, after all (does anyone think any of Heche's marriages to men will be particularly long-lasting?) If you want to believe that either Tequila or Heche are bi or straight, be my guest, but don't ask this doubting Thomas to agree with you.

So in the final episode Tila predictably picks a guy while the attractive lesbian gets to walk off into the sunset by herself. Gee -- this has nothing to do with the fact we live in a homophobic world? There is no talk about sexual identity, internalized homophobia, or any of the other factors that may have influenced her decision -- it's just show biz, as insubstantial and fluffy as cotton candy. Of course, let's not feel too sorry for the gay gal, who should have taken a hike as soon as she discovered the dumb deception behind the show (one woman honestly thought the program was a ground-breaking lesbian-only dating show and was proud to be part of it until she discovered the truth.)

I only watched the final episode, but gleaned other information from reviews and the like on the web. On one episode, one of the allegedly straight guys tells the other men that they shouldn't be upset that they lost an athletic competition to the lesbians because "they're really men, after all." Yes -- that's the level of discussion on homosexuality on A Shot at Love, which only manages to debase lesbians, especially those who aren't of the "babe" variety.

Bay Windows published an especially good review of the program by Linda Rodriguez, which can be found by searching their website. And there is an amusing write-up of the show by Susan Norfleet at the blog queersighted.

New York Blade 10th Anniversary Party

Went to a nice party on Wednesday November 28th 2007 at the Gay center on 13th street to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the local gay paper The New York Blade. A number of people agreed with me that it didn't seem as if the Blade had been around that long, but it may only seem that way because I became a regular reader only within the past couple of years. The Blade has published a couple of my rants in their letters column, and I did a piece on author/activist Wayne Besen for their annual pride issue this summer.

I met quite a few nice and interesting people, male and female, of all ages at the party, so many that it's hard to place a name (on a business card) with the face or conversation. There was Dirk McCall, the Executive Director of the Greenwich Village/Chelsea Chamber of Commerce, and Daniel Tietz, Executive Director of ACRIA (Aids Community Research Initiative of America). I believe one of these gentleman was the great, friendly guy who introduced me to nearly everyone he knew at the party, which seemed to be half of the people there! Conversations tended to be brief, as they usually are at cocktail parties (there was much more to drink than eat, not that I'm complaining!) but I had longer talks with a young lesbian (I didn't catch her name, unfortunately) whose spirit of activism reminded me of my own, as well as a nice conversation with another young woman who just started working for GLAAD (I had just reported to the group a vile joke told by an alleged comedian on the Late, Late Show -- more on that on another post). I told her that I basically did what GLAAD now does when I was with New York's Gay Activists Alliance years ago, but today's young career activists seem pretty much unfamiliar with GAA and all that it accomplished. Too bad. But the once militant days of the Gay Rights Movement have been replaced by the "nicer" (but not necessarily ineffective) tactics of the GLBT movement. I also met Karl Hampe -- hope I got the name right -- a cartoonist whose strip The Regulars details what "might happen if a gay urban attorney wound up running a coffee bar." I also met Trent Straub, the editor of the Blade, but we didn't have much of a chance to talk.

There were some highly attractive men in the joint, but I kept my flirting to a minimum, as this wasn't Ty's on a Saturday night. There were a couple of very bizarre moments, which I'll mention in more appropriate posts. I remember shaking the hand of a guy who was described to me as "an openly bisexual" politician of some sort or another, which for some reason I found amusing. I overheard him telling another guest that he was just too busy to date. Jeez -- not a bad-looking guy, presumably likes both men and women, and he's too busy to go out on a date!

Nice party, nice people. All good. Here's wishing the New York Blade many more years of success!

The Malevolent Munchkin of Christopher Street

OR SAD TALES OF AN OBNOXIOUS BARTENDER

In a bar in the West Village which has been around so long it’s practically an institution, but which has frankly seen better days, there is a diminutive bartender that lately I’ve been calling the "Miserable Munchkin" of Christopher Street. We used to have a cordial, even friendly, acquaintanceship, the munchkin and I, but it got to a point where I got tired of the melodrama he created and avoided him whenever I could. I confess I also thought he was sort of cute and the last thing I wanted was to develop any kind of serious feelings for him considering he was twenty years younger than me and oh so full of angst. And I’d heard stories ...There was one man who said they’d been friends but that M. no longer spoke to him and "was not a nice person." And the outraged playwright who told me one Halloween that the Munchkin "holds out the promise of sex" to get a part. [To a straight guy it may be networking, but to a gay guy it’s a date.] I later realized that my main feeling for the fellow was one of simple paternal affection and nothing more. But most of all, I just felt sorry for the guy.

Admittedly I’ve never been very comfortable with straight-identified bartenders in gay bars (I’ve often wondered what these fellows say to their friends or girlfriends -- do they laugh about the "fags" or "old queens" behind our backs to take off the "curse" of working in a gay bar?) And I doubt if most of them are completely straight [NOTE: See post on Gay-Friendly Closet Cases.] But I got used to the Munchkin because he at least seemed gay-friendly on the surface (remember these fellows work for tips). I never really bought into his straight act, which I imagine was a big bone of contention between us, although I didn’t bring it up very often and it seemed not to bother him when I did, until a later point. Tough. When he first started working there he went on and on one evening about the women he’d been fucking (those who talk about it the most do it the least) until I finally shouted "who the hell goes to a gay bar to listen to some straight guy talk about the women he’s fucking?" which practically got a round of applause from the other customers.

The vast majority of customers of the bar think the Munchkin is outright gay and closeted, bisexual, or just deeply conflicted. Some feel he’s a straight guy who hates the thought of anyone thinking he’s gay (which is in itself a kind of homophobia). It seems to me that any guy who has a horror of being perceived as gay would want to work anywhere but a gay bar – Duh! In any case, as we shall see, this is a man with serious issues. NOTE: Let me make it clear at this point that I am NOT saying this person is gay or bisexual and have no personal knowledge of his sexual orientation or romantic life, nor any desire to have any knowledge of same.

The munchkin is an aspiring actor (one reason why I pitied him, as there is no more merciless and hopeless profession) and one night I took a friend to see him in a play where he essayed a gay male stripper. My friend is an elderly man who is very hard of hearing, so we sat in the front row, as we usually do when I’m with him. The munchkin broke out in a broad grin, convinced we were there just to get a close up look of his assets, which I didn’t even care to check out. I found this display of ego rather amusing, however, and indeed to be fair to the munchkin he could, like most actors, be very charming when he wanted to be. There are customers who find him perfectly friendly, warm and pleasant, probably because they're lucky enough never to venture into the bar when he's in a nasty funk. When the Munchkin turns off the charm, there is no bigger bitch in a gay bar or anywhere else.

Not long after we saw the show – one of a few mostly forgettable epics the munchkin has appeared in off off off off Broadway – I went into the bar and asked about his next role. He told me he had been cast in a play in which he was a straight guy (naturally) who moves in with two gay men. When they refuse to let him leave, he murders them. Amazingly, he didn’t even seem embarrassed as he told me this plot. Did he forget he was in a gay bar and that I was a gay man?
Okay. I told him the play sounded pretty homophobic to me and he responded that the playwright himself was gay (if so, another person with issues?). He then had the unmitigated gall of suggesting that if he moved in with me and the elderly friend who’d attended the first play that we probably wouldn’t let him leave. (Let me make it clear that this guy isn’t that cute. And the average guy on the make at Ty’s on a Saturday night is a lot hotter.) I responded with equal hubris that if he moved in with either of us he wouldn’t want to leave (in which case I’d have to call the police to get rid of him). Anyway, about a year later I asked him again about this stupid play he’d told me about – which under no circumstances would I have gone to see – and he told me he had never been cast in a play like that and had no idea what I was talking about. In other words, he’d made the whole thing up. Was he "warning away" two gay men, neither of whom had any serious interest in pursuing him in the first place?

Let’s look at that plot again. Straight guy murders two gay men. Is this a guy with issues or what?

This was during the first few months of his employment at the bar, and I don’t think he ever tried anything quite so glaringly homophobic again -- at least not with me. Instead he would make comments, sweeping comments about the gay community, such as "gay men don’t want to be in the military" or something to that affect. When I protested he told me to "get real." I had no chance to discuss why we have a don’t ask/don’t tell policy if gays don’t want to be in the military, nor to mention that my aforementioned elderly friend had been an Army sergeant during the Korean War, that I knew lots of gays in the military and one of the regulars at the bar had even been a fighter pilot. It was the old "gay men are big sissies, they could never survive being in the Army crap" only it was coming from a bartender in a gay bar! And there were other incidents, other comments that went right up to the border of homophobia. There was the time when with withering disdain he complained about "all the old queens who come in here and say they're related to Judy Garland," or some such nonsense which I knew was utter bullshit if ever I heard it because the only time I have ever had anything close to a conversation about Judy Garland in a gay bar -- this or any other -- was on this occasion with the Munchkin. Few of the customers in the bar were "queens" and most were a hell of a lot butcher than the Munchkin. One time -- during gay pride week no less -- a perfectly nice and friendly "queen" from Brazil did come into the bar and in a cute way said that he "used to have a big photo of Madonna" on his bedroom wall. Now, maybe the Munchkin dislikes Madonna as much as I do, but couldn't he at least have had a smile on his face when he almost spat at this nice fellow "why am I not surprised?" Instead, smirking unkindly, he came off bitchy, snide, and decidedly not gay-friendly. Madonna may never have gotten much play in this bar, and this fellow was not a regular or even a typical customer, but he was a gay man, damn it, and this was fucking Gay Pride week. Needless to say, the Brazillian did not stay long in the bar, and who could blame him (he, too, thought M was in the closet)?

Once I told the Munchkin "you don’t know what it’s like to be a gay man." He responded "Yes I do." Hmmm. "Why?" I said, "just because you’ve worked in a gay bar for a couple of years? I’ve been openly gay for twenty-five years – do you really think you know more about the gay community than I do?" "Only twenty-five years?" was his rejoinder. What a bitch! But then maybe he thought I came out of the closet at five or something; I never thought he was out and out stupid, but apparently he’s not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, either.

As I review all this I remember what another patron once said to me about the Munchkin. "The trouble with him isn’t that he’s straight. The trouble is that he’s an asshole."

There were comical moments along the way. When the bar wisely hired an attractive young man who was actually openly gay (bravo!) – a beefy and very likable hunk straight (no pun intended) from Splash bar – with big sculptured biceps, the comparatively skinny Munchkin attempted to compete with him by taking off his pants and cavorting in his underwear. It actually looked kind of cute, like he was wearing a kilt, but when one of the customers told him "put your pants on, you look ridiculous," the Munchkin got mad and 86'd him. [I imagine people may have occasionally made unkind remarks to the Munchkin (or at least what he interpreted as same – he can dish it out but he can’t take it, sensitive to his own feelings but insensitive to others’) but I’d be willing to bet that in almost all occasions they were reacting to some remark he’d made to them first.] When the bar started hiring go go boys, the Munchkin jumped up on the stage when the pros were through for the evening and did a quick non-strip for his fan club. Yes, the Munchkin had his admirers, those who couldn’t see the mood-swings and unpleasantness lurking beneath the baby face, but there were plenty of customers who couldn’t stand him. (Some of these call him "Grumpy.") One turned to me on this occasion and said, "[Munchkin] doesn’t like it when any one else gets some attention." The night he wore his underpants somebody sitting near me shouted out for M to take them off. The Munchkin thought it was me (one view of his naked body in that play was more than enough), rushed over to where I sat, and almost spat in my face: "There aren't enough sheqels." [Yes, the sheqel is Israeli -- Jewish -- currency.]

Like most people in his twenties, the Munchkin is undoubtedly panicked at the thought that he probably won’t be rich and famous by the age of thirty. As the years went by and the big 3 0 grew closer, his angst increased and he seemed to become increasingly like the stereotype of the bitter middle-aged bartender whose dreams haven’t come true – you know the type – only he was only 28! The last time I encountered one of these creatures was when I attended a party out in Brooklyn. Leaving the party I was heading for the subway when I realized I had to take a pee. I went into an Irish pub on the corner that had seen better days, ordered a beer, and took a leak. Most of the customers were elderly men who were getting a little drunk to forget they were elderly and all of their other problems. The bartender was a man in his forties who made vicious, cutting, vile remarks to these men out of his own unhappiness and misery. Not only had none of his dreams come true (I mean, you could tell), but he was working in a dump with only half a dozen customers and probably had creditors up the kazoo. He was a powerless man, and the only way he could achieve any small measure of power, in his own mind if nowhere else, was to run the bar like a petty tyrant or pathetic dictator picking on people who could not fight back and probably felt comfortable in no other bar and couldn't leave.

The Munchkin, incredibly, began to remind me of this man, especially when months went by and he wasn’t cast in a play and his mood soured. As noted previously, the Munchkin and I used to get along for the most part despite his occasional dumb remark and my calling him on it. One night he came into the bar, drunk, with two women – it was his night off. I asked one of the women if she was his girlfriend and she said "But isn’t he gay?" [A couple of weeks later she was briefly kissing the Munchkin at the end of the bar – quick, get me an air sickness bag – so I guess she decided he wasn’t totally gay.] The Munchkin then sidled up to me and said, "I’ve never told you this but you’re one of my favorite people who comes in here." (I am now one of his least favorite people.) I admit I was a little touched by it at the time. Perhaps because of the misplaced pity and overly sentimental paternal affection I mentioned before.

Unfortunately, yet another straight-identified barback/bouncer was hired by the bar not long after this. Not only was he rather surly, but he didn’t seem especially gay-friendly. (When this fellow came in drunk one night he seemed at least as interested in other men as any other customer.) I turned to a man sitting beside me and said, "why does a bar that caters to middle-aged gay men keep hiring young straight guys? How can they relate to us and we to them?" The Muchkin overheard me saying this, and instead of understanding where I was coming from – which may be completely beyond him as he is extremely immature – decided to interpret it as a personal attack on him. And boy, did he make me pay for it. The fact that it coincided with his being left on the cutting room floor of a film he been an extra in – and I felt very bad for him because of it – only made things worse. [Months previously I had told an acquaintance of mine that M had worked on a film with and met Jack Nicholson, and as M walked away, this other fellow said "I bet he winds up on the cutting room floor." I remember thinking that I hoped M didn’t think I had made that remark, but apparently he did.]

To "get even" with me, the Munchkin was almost as nasty as that straight guy in the bar in Brooklyn. He would snap at me, be extremely unpleasant, make unkind jabs, refer to my being Jewish in a way that was borderline anti-Semitic, and one night even went so far as to "86" virtually every person who dared to talk to me with one excuse after another. [There is something outrageously vile, pre-Stonewall, and homophobic about a straight boy throwing a gay man out of a gay bar.] He announced that he hated working with one particular bartender because when he was there "all the boring old guys come in" – I guess he was suggesting that I was one of them even though I’m the author of 30 published books and he’s a wannabee with little of interest on his limited resume – and on and on and on. In other words he was a complete c--t. There was even a sadistic cast to all this because at the time the bar was one of the very few I felt comfortable in (because of many changes I rarely go there now and I avoid the Munchkin like the plague). Still feeling sorry for him over his big disappointment at not being in the movie I cut him some slack, but began thinking that this was someone I really did not to want to be around anymore. (What made it worse is that I went to see that fucking movie – which otherwise did not really interest me at all – on the day it opened, because I knew I’d be in the bar that night and wanted to be the first to tell M that I had seen him in the film. Unfortunately, he wasn’t in it. That was hardly my fault.)

People who work with the public, especially as waiters and bartenders, have to leave their problems at home. Many people go to bars to get away from their own problems, not to have to deal with the bartender’s. Certainly if there’s a crisis in a bartender’s life, he can tell the customers he’s closest to, but he should never turn into a monster just because things aren’t going well for him. I mean, we’re talking about people who work for tips, no? Why go out of your way to alienate people. (Let me say that most of the bartenders I've met and see on a regular basis are friendly and fun and professional.)

But there’s a deeper issue here, and it has to do with the Munchkin’s obvious homophobia. Does he try this shit – this "I didn’t like what you said so get the fuck out of here" business – with young straight guys in the straight bar in the east village where he recently started working a couple of nights a week (and a far more appropriate place for the little fucker)? Does he still think gay men are a "bunch of sissies" he can pull this shit on with impunity? Doesn’t he realize by now that most of the men in the gay bar, middle-aged or younger, are a hell of a lot tougher than the Munchkin only thinks he is.

I don’t know what will happen to this fellow in the future, but if things don’t work out for him I hope I never run into him in any bar where he might be working. Not because he scares me because believe me he doesn’t. But if he’s this obnoxious now, imagine how he’ll be ten or twenty – hell, even two or five – years from now? I still feel a little sorry for him (although I don’t know why the hell I do) – not every younger person is happy or has an easy life, and I’m sure in addition to the known pressures, there are others I have no idea about. But either he’ll get along or he won’t. It sure as shit ain’t my concern.

I’m a middle-aged gay guy. I have problems and pressures that I doubt would ever occur to the Munchkin, nor would he give a shit about them. I don’t believe that during the past four years he asked a single customer what it was like being gay or what their lives were like. He has no feelings for nor interest in me, but I also know that on a subconscious level he’s damned pissed that I’ve basically ignored him for months. Because people who suffer from NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder), which is basically most actors, don’t like to be ignored. After not seeing him for about eleven months, I went into the bar and he was even nastier to me than before. One customer quipped that "he’s probably hot for you and can’t handle it." Well, no, I don’t think he’s hot for me.

Maybe it’s just easier to hate other people instead of -- for whatever reason -- yourself.