32 Years Ago On This Day- May 18th

Boom!

We had only been a couple for a few months. The BF (decades away from being the Husband) & I only knew one other male couple in the world, friends from the theatre world.

Our first apartment was a breathtaking find, the top floor of a late 19th century mansion in the Browne’s Addition neighborhood of Spokane. Our living room was the vast former ballroom with a large balcony, & the rest of our digs were the former servants quarters, a warren of small rooms tucked under the eaves. This section of the apartment ended with a large screened in summer porch. We paid an unheard of $200 a month to live in this luxury. Our friends thought we were nutty to spend so much.

We wanted our male-couple friends to see our unusual, exclusive penthouse, & they were invited to brunch on a beautiful, warm spring Sunday morning. This couple was impressed with the living quarters & the meal. As we walked them to their automobile & hugged good-bye, we all looked at the western horizon. In the distance, the sky was a curtain of an uncommon grey & green. We all remarked at the weird weather coming our way.

We would soon learn that at 8:33am, Mount Saint Helens had blown its top in an unprecedented (in modern times) eruption of an active volcano in the PNW. Within an hour, the city’s street lights had come on & by noon it looked like midnight. At 3pm the ash was mid-calf deep & covered everything. We were getting conflicting directives from emergency authorities: don't drive,  wear a mask or protection- it will get in your lungs, don’t sweep it, don’t get it wet, hose it down, sweep it into piles, don't panic, it can kill you. The fire stations issued masks. We were quick to get to the store & stock up on wine & pizza.

We spent 3 days locked in our place, listening to music, drinking wine, & making love. The ash would eventually permeate everything. It got into my considerably large album collection, including all of my obscure Original Cast recordings of Broadway & West End Musicals. The ash got into the sleeves of the LPs & scratched the vinyl. The volcano’s spewing would lay waste to my music & ruin my future husband’s work computer (which was the size of a large room). We could spot drifts of the ash on the side of roads in Eastern Washington for decades. The only good news: the ash was the perfect compound for pottery making, & an entire Mt. St. Helens ashtray industry was born.

The eruption was the deadliest & most economically destructive volcanic event in the history of the USA. 57 people were killed; 250 homes, 47 bridges, 15 miles of railways, 185 miles of highway were destroyed. The eruption caused a massive debris avalanche, reducing the elevation of the mountain's summit from 9,677 feet to 8,365 feet & replacing it with a 1 mile wide horseshoe-shaped crater. The ash was carried east all the way to Europe. It made for spectacular sunsets for more than a year.

That night on May 18^th, 1981, when we went to bed & physically expressed our love for each other, my future husband, bit my ear gently & whispered: “Did the earth move for you, baby?"

We have a peek-a-boo view of the Mount Saint Helens from our place- Post Apocalyptic Bohemia, & we spy it often while driving around Portland. Mount Hood, also an active volcano is even closer to Portland. It is one of 5 active volcanoes in a hundred miles of our house. The Husband & I have aged 33 years since the big boom. We are considerably older & not nearly as frisky, but you never know when the mountain will blow again...  "Did the earth move for you, baby?"

Born On This Day- May 18th... Don Bachardy

3 films come to mind today as I consider Don Bachardy on this birthday: Cabaret, A Single Man & the unexpectedly uncommon documentry- Chris & Don: A Love Story.

Christopher Isherwood has been one of my favorite writers since high school when I learned the Cabaret connection. The Berlin Stories was a revelation to read at the start of the gay liberation movement in the early 1970s, with Isherwood leaving England & traveling to Berlin in 1929 to meet boys. Isherwood’s enthusiasm for the boy bars & cabarets gives unfading allure to his look at bankrupt Germany entertaining itself during Hitler’s rise to power. As a gay man, Isherwood identified with the crushed, the criminal, the cast-off, he had to hide aspects of his personal life; defying convention to find love.

By the time Goodbye To Berlin (the basis for the play & screenplay of Cabaret) was published, Isherwood was living in the USA.  In 1939, Isherwood had published 4 novels, 3 plays, a memoir & a travel when he landed in NYC in 1939 with his lifelong friend-  poet W. H. Auden. Auden settled in Manhattan & Isherwood went to Hollywood. Isherwood had been a movie fan since childhood & he soon became a well-paid screenwriter.

Isherwood had many friends & lovers in his new country, many of them famous. He met 18 year old Don Bachardy at the Will Rogers State Beach in October 1952. Bachardy began visiting the Santa Monica beach in the late 1940s with his older brother, Ted. Bachardy: “At first Chris was attracted to Ted. But Ted was a manic-depressive schizophrenic. During his 3rd breakdown, I was distressed to realize I could no longer rely on him. Chris felt sorry for me & he was so successful in cheering me up that we formed a special bond.”

Within months they had initiated an intimate relationship that lasted until Isherwood's death in 1986. They were an actual high profile, openly gay couple during the era of McCarthyism, when homosexuals were being driven out of the government & the film world.

Isherwood & Bachardy seemed to live an enviably enchanted existence in their hillside Santa Monica home, where they entertained the leading figures of the world of arts, literature, & the movie stars that Bachardy once sought out for autographs. Yet, the documentary- Chris & Don: A Love Story reveals that the couple worked hard & long to achieve their bliss.

From the start, the men's relationship was challenging: Bachardy was 30 years younger than Isherwood & was so boyishly handsome he seemed underage. A student of theatre at UCLA when they met, Bachardy soon felt overwhelmed by Isherwood's vast array of famous friends. Isherwood encouraged Bachardy's talent for drawing & eventually Bachardy became an internationally acclaimed visual artist. Bachardy: “I was 18, Chris was 48. He had to move out of his home because the owners, close friends, were very uncomfortable about the age gap, blatantly accentuated by my callow appearance. Chris had other friends who disapproved, too, & he broke with them because of me"

Teaching Bachardy gave Isherwood sizable satisfaction. Bachardy: “We were intensely close while I went to college & then art school. I decided I wanted to be a painter, & Chris encouraged me right from the beginning.”

In a 1960 entry in his diary, Isherwood wrote: “Don matters more than any of the others. He imposes himself more, demands more, cares more, about everything he does & encounters. He is so desperately alive.”

Isherwood’s success & his affairs with Stravinsky, Tennessee Williams, Stephen Rutledge, Truman Capote & others, his experience & his demanding nature made their relationship troublesome to the younger partner:  Bachardy: “I needed to establish my own identity. Some of Chris’s friends were kind, but mostly they treated me as the young boyfriend or even just a bit of fluff.”

Bachardy moved to London to study painting. His first shows in London & NYC attracted all kinds of admirers & good reviews, plus he was talented, together, & temptingly young.  Bachardy: “Chris had always had sex friends outside our relationship, & he had been frank with me about his sexual adventures in the years before he knew me. Since I had very little sex experience before Chris, I began to feel deprived. I told him it was unfair to deny me the freedom he had enjoyed. I was usually discreet about my adventures, but I know he was tormented. We had a couple of really difficult years & in 1963 I considered leaving him. We did split up for a few months.”

In his misery Isherwood wrote A Single Man; the theme of emotional loss reflected Isherwood’s fear that Bachardy would leave & that he would die alone. Ironically, Bachardy thought up the title- A Single Man. He has a cameo in the film version, & is credited as a creative consultant.

Bachardy & Isherwood survived the 1963 break-up. Bachardy: “Chris allowed me the freedom to have sex with other men, & the comparison favored Chris. I saw more clearly what a great treasure I had in him.”

They were together for 33 years. Chris & Don: A Love Story ends with a several scenes of Isherwood, dying of cancer, sitting for a series of portraits by his partner.  Bachardy: “Chris was in a lot of pain towards the end. But he had sat for me so often over the years, & I knew this was something we could still do together. Each day, I could be with him intensely for hours on end.”

The last of the series was completed when Isherwood was already dead. Bachardy remained alone with the body, producing some of his finest works when he himself was newly a single man.

Bachardy still lives in the Santa Monica house, his residence for over 50 years, where he paints portraits. Bachardy did indeed become an esteemed artist in his own right. He has painted portraits of most famous folks of the past 50 years including: Fred Astaire, Bette Davis, & Montgomery Clift. He works every day, for hours at a time, with the passion & perseverance of someone much younger. He's one of the only portrait artists in the world who only paints live; he never uses photographs or even work from memory. Once the model has left the room, he puts down his brush.

One of Bachardy's most notable works is the official gubernatorial portrait of Governor Jerry Brown hanging in the California State Capitol. The California state official biography page for Jerry Brown features a photograph of the painting.

I think highly of his work & I have a nice coffee table book of his portraits. Still strikingly handsome at 79 years old, Bachardy can be spotted riding his bicycle around LA. He remains a prolific artist. Bachardy is fond of saying that he is completely Isherwood's creation, but Isherwood's writing also was shaped through the openness of their relationship. I rather love him.

A portrait of the pair by David Hockney

Self Portrait

Governor of California- Jerry Brown

Recent self portrait

Born On This Day- May 17th... Howard Ashman

Despite spending my childhood, adolescence & young adulthood as an A+ berserk Musical Theatre Queen, living & breathing musicals, collecting the original cast albums for the most obscure shows: Something’s Afoot, Allegro, Salad Days, Dear World, Kean, Goldilocks, The Rothschilds, Two By Two, It’s A Bird, It’s A Plane, It’s Superman, Subways Are For Sleeping, The Robber Bridegroom, 70, Girls, 70, Smile, The Golden Apple, The Apple Tree, Juno… I got off that Musical Theatre ride in the early 1980s. I was less than enchanted with the offerings; I didn’t move easily into the Cats & Miss Saigon era.  I found more enjoyment in appearing in a musical than listening to one. My personal listening taste moved towards Elvis Costello, The Police & The Clash & away from Sondheim.

The big exception to my new frame of mind was Little Shop Of Horrors from 1982. I listened to this show until the LP was worn through. I knew every song from the score & I was convinced that I could play any of the roles. I always wanted to do Somewhere That’s Green in my act, but never got the chance to work it up. It remains a favorite musical of mine, certainly in the top 10 of all time.

I honor lyricists & Howard Ashman is one of the best. Ashman collaborated with his artistic partner- Alan Menken on several notable animated features for Disney, Ashman writing the lyrics & Menken composing the scores.

Howard Ashman first worked with Alan Menken on a 1979 musical adapted from Kurt Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater. They next collaborated on Little Shop of Horrors with Ashman as director, lyricist, & librettist. Ashman left the team once, as director, lyricist & bookwriter for the 1986 Broadway musical, Smile, with music by the late, great Marvin Hamlisch.

The Menken & Ashman team would go on to win 2 Grammys, 2 Golden Globes & 2 Oscars for their songs. Just days after he won the Oscar for Under The Sea from The Little Mermaid, Ashman confided in Menken that he had AIDS. His illness was made him weaker every day, but Ashman never stopped writing songs. He wrote the witty & warm lyrics for Beauty & The Beast, & turned out more songs for a 3rd Disney animated musical- Aladdin. Ashman’s last Academy Award in 1992 was awarded posthumously for Best Song. It was accepted by his longtime partner, Bill Lauch.

Ashman died at the age of 40 in NYC, during the making of both Beauty & The Beast & Aladdin.

He was posthumously named a Disney Legend in 2001. Beauty & The Beast was dedicated: “To our Friend Howard, who gave a mermaid her voice & a beast his soul, we will be forever grateful. Howard Ashman 1950-1991”. His headstone reads "O’ that he would have but one more song to sing". Ashman would have been 63 years old today.

Born On This Day- May 17th... Erik Leslie Satie

In the early autumn of 1976, I had a brief, but very intense affair with a still world famous classical guitarist. A class act, he spirited me away from NYC to Cape Cod for 3 days of hot sex, guitar playing breaks, food & wine, & more hot sex. During our rest periods he would play for me. One of the compositions that really struck me & made me temporarily forget his other gifts was Erik Satie's Gymnopodie #1. This piece was written for piano & the arrangement for guitar was by the object of my lust. I still listen to his recording of it & I can remember the smell salt air & sweat from our extended weekend of love.

Dadaist/Absurdest French composer & pianist Erik Satie was born on this very day- May 17^th, in 1866. Satie was contemporary of Ravel &a Debussy. He collaborated with Jean Cocteau to create the ballet Parade (1917) for the Ballet Russes, with set designs by Pablo Picasso. He knew, worked with or influenced most of the artists, writers & musicians in Paris when it was the cultural capital of the world. He is credited with nearly every avant-garde movement of the 20th century. Satie was influential in the fields of minimalism & ambient music, & pioneered the use of piano music-to-film synchronization.

Satie referred to himself as a "phonometrician" (meaning someone who measures sounds) preferring this designation to that of "musician", after having been called "a clumsy but subtle technician" in a book on contemporary French composers published in 1911.

In addition to his body of music, Satie also left a remarkable set of writings, having contributed work for a range of publications, from the magazine- Dada 391 to the American culture chronicle- Vanity Fair.

Satie was an incredibly private & eccentric man. He was known to enter a room & sit without removing his hat, coat or gloves, & always with a brand new umbrella.

After his funeral 1925, his friends entered the tiny room he had occupied for 27 years but had never allowed anyone else to enter. Along with dust & cobwebs, they found huge quantities of umbrellas, many never used, as well as large numbers of unknown compositions hidden all about the room.

Born On This Day- May 16th... Wladziu Valentino Liberace

“You know that bank I used to cry all the way to? Well, I bought it.”

Here is the craziest part, The Husband & I briefly lived in Las Vegas (long story), & even nuttier, we didn’t have an automobile. I would actually walk in the 100 degree heat to the theatre where I was in rehearsal. There were no sidewalks. It was just me & the lizards. My route took me right by the Liberace Museum, just a few blocks from our condo. I always glanced in & I enjoyed the camp factor.

When someone seems obviously & outrageously gay, & yet people in my life seem to not get it, my response is often: “He attended Liberace Community College”.

Overheard on the Max Train:

Older Gay Guy: “That guy is so gay.”

Other Guy: “Totally gay.”

Older Gay Guy: “Liberace gay.”

Ironic then, the man spent his life time hiding the truth & denied being gay to the very end.

Liberace was an international superstar dating back to the early 1950s. He averaged $5 million a year in income for more than 35 years. In the 1970s, The Guinness Book of World Records identified Liberace as the world's highest paid musician.

He was born Wladziu Valentino Liberace in a Milwaukee suburb in 1919 to poor parents. He was classically trained on the piano as a youth & made his concert debut as a soloist at age 11. As a teenager during the depression, he played piano in speakeasies to make money for his family.

In 1940, Liberace moved to NYC. His charm & piano skills paid off. Within a few years he was touring the hotel clubs. The story might have ended there, except that Las Vegas & TV discovered Liberace’s charms. By the early 1950s he began playing extended runs in Las Vegas. He would appear at the casinos in regularly for the rest of his life. As Las Vegas grew, so did Liberace's fame.

Liberace appearances on TV cemented his superstar status. In the early 1950s, Liberace had a variety show on TV, where he would play his elaborate piano, sing & dance a little, praise his mother Frances, who was always in the audience, & make jokes about the show’s band leader his brother- George. His TV show was a huge hit, carried by more stations than I Love Lucy.

In 1954, the year I was born, Liberace played to capacity crowds at Carnegie Hall, Madison Square Garden, the Hollywood Bowl, & Soldier Field in Chicago. In 1955 he opened at the Riviera in Las Vegas for $50,000 per week, becoming the city's highest paid entertainer. Liberace became a true superstar. He bought lavish mansions, remodeled them extravagantly, & filled them with ornate pianos, antiques, & over the top furniture. He even had a piano shaped swimming pool.

Liberace's musical repertoire included a unique mix of classical, movie themes, cocktail jazz & sentimental ballads. He knew thousands of songs & could play almost any request from the audience. He would edit his classical pieces to under 5 minutes: "I took out the boring parts. I know just how many notes my audience will stand for. If there's any time left over, I fill in with a lot of runs up & down the scale."

He commissioned more elaborate costumes as the years went by. Eventually he was spending $40,000 every year on bigger, flashier, more opulent costumes. On various tours, he wore a cape made with $60,000 worth of chinchilla, a tuxedo embedded with diamonds spelling out his name, & a King Neptune costume covered in pearls & sea shells weighing 200 pounds. He had large rings shaped like a candelabra & a grand piano, each studded with diamonds. He was the Elton John of his time.

He added showgirls, jugglers, singers, giant water fountains, light shows, a full orchestra, &even an elephant to the act. During many of his shows he flew above the stage from a cable in a feather cape. He toured with a grand piano covered with thousands of glittering mirror tiles.

Liberace emphatically denied his homosexuality throughout his career. He evidently thought that coming out of the closet would hurt his popularity, & his female fans refused to acknowledge the obvious. But his denials unraveled when Liberace was sued for palimony in 1983 by his “chauffeur”- Scott Thorson, who had been living with Liberace for years. Liberace had Thorson on the payroll, dressed him up like himself, & paid for plastic surgery to have Thorson look like a young version of himself. But even this bizarre scandal didn't put a dent in Liberace's popularity. The case was eventually settled out of court for less that $100,000.

In the 1970s, Liberace moved to Las Vegas, where he was the highest paid performer in the city. Las Vegas is a city built on fantasy, superficiality, & unbridled spending, Liberace's calling cards. Both Las Vegas & Liberace proved the same motto: “Nothing Succeeds Like Excess”.

Liberace was at the apex of his career in the mid-1980s. At Radio City Music Hall he had 3 extended engagements. From 1984-86, he sold out 56 straight shows. Liberace called his Radio City shows "the fulfillment of a dream & the culmination of my forty years in show business." Liberace’s massive fortune continued to grow. He owned houses all over the world & had all of his clothes made especially for him. He even had the front of a Rolls Royce attached to the back of a VW Beatle so he could drive both of his favorite cars at once.

Liberace was in a steady relationship with Jamie Wyatt when the gay world was shaken by AIDS. Liberace discovered that he was HIV+.

In the press, he attributed his weight loss to the popular watermelon diet. After a last tour to promote his new book- The Things I Love, Liberace fell gravely ill. He spent 4 days in hospital before it was decided that the best thing would be for him to go home & die comfortably in his own surroundings. Liberace spent his last days at home with his 27 dogs, watching episodes of The Golden Girls. His family & partner were by his side when Liberace died on February 8th 1987. Only then did the world find out about his hidden life & his illness.

Liberace chose a life where showmanship & flamboyance was his mainstay. His lust for everything fabulous, his showmanship & his talent, touched the hearts of his legion of fans & influenced a long line of artists from Elvis to Adam Lambert. Liberace proved that being fabulous can be a life unto itself.

Steven Soderbergh's movie version of the Liberace/Scott Thorson story- Behind The Candelabra starring Michael Douglas & Matt Damon debuts on HBO next Sunday. I will be watching. Will you? I am ready for just a little sparkle.

Born On This Day- May 15th... Jasper Johns

I have a passion for 20th century American art, & I have always been fascinated with the NYC in the 1950s, when these geniuses produced their astonishing works while closeted, but whose gayness was really an open secret: Montgomery Clift & James Dean, Paul Cadmus, George Platt Lynes, Andy Warhol, Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, James Baldwin, Truman Capote, Christopher Isherwood, W.H. Auden, James Merrill, Frank O’Hara, Allen Ginsberg, Lincoln Kirstein, Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Virgil Thomson, Ned Rorem, Langston Hughes, Philip Johnson.

 Jasper Johns was a Southern Gentleman from South Carolina. In 1953, after a stint in the army, he moved to NYC with the notion of becoming of an artist or writer. Within just a few years he had created the iconic- Flag, & White Flag & within a half a decade he would have 4 paintings in the permanent collection of MOMA. Within a decade, he would be considered the greatest living American artist.

Jasper Johns fell in love with fellow artist- Robert Rauschenberg, who became an inspiration to the younger man. Rauschenberg: “We gave each other permission.” Spurring each other on creatively, Johns painted many works of familiar objects: numerals, letters, maps, flags, & letters that captivated the art world, when NYC was the center of all things art. Johns & Robert Rauschenberg were lovers from 1955-1961, the era of their best & most important work. They had living/working lofts on the same building & went freely between their spaces. Although the men lived & worked together, it was Johns who received the most acclaim.

 Jasper Johns: “I don’t want my work to be an exposure of my feelings.”  He painted conventional subjects, which left the critics to ponder the explanation of his rough brushstrokes & saturnine surfaces. Johns’ work is about tension between knowing & not knowing, the explained & the unexplained. His paintings carry a secret.

His 1955 work-Target With Plaster Casts consisted of 9 wooden boxes with hinged doors, each box held of a body part. One of them was a detailed penis. A representative of the Museum of Modern Art, asked I if it would be acceptable if that particular box stayed closed? Johns: “It would be all right to keep the lid closed some of the time but not all of the time.”

In NYC, Johns met musical composer John Cage & his partner choreographer Merce Cunningham, significant contributors to the modern dance world concert stages. Johns collaborated with Cunningham’s work by designing sets & costumes, & he became an artistic advisor to the company. Johns, Cage & Cunningham collaborated in 1973 on Cunningham’s piece- Un Jour ou Deux. These 4 gay men never displayed explicit homosexual content in any of their works.

Johns & Rauschenberg split up because of the discomfort of being recognized as a couple outside of their circle. Rauscheberg: “What had been sensitive & tender became gossip”.  Johns recalled the time he was reading Gertrude Stein’s The Autobiography Of Alice B.Toklas, & Rauschenberg stated: “One day they’ll be writing about us like that.” Johns was not pleased by Rauschenberg’s comparison to the lesbian couple.

Their breakup was so bitter that they both left NYC, & they both returned to the south for an extended period. They didn't speak for more than a decade. In 1961, as the relationship was ending, Johns produced a painting- In Memory Of My Feelings, Frank O’Hara, taking the name from a poem by O’Hara about gay love & the price paid for suppressing it. The poem's first line: “My quietness has a man in it.”

Johns became reclusive, & moved to an estate in Connecticut. He almost never gives interviews. Johns’ & Rauschenberg’s relationship was the deepest & most important of their entire lives. Rauschenberg died 3 years ago this week.

 Robert Rauschenberg: “Jasper was soft, beautiful, lean, & poetic. I have photos of him then that would break your heart.”

Born On This Day- May 15th... David Byrne

David Byrne is a very important musical artist & a major influence on The Husband & me as individuals & as a couple. In 1977 at a partY, I heard a song- Psycho Killer that actually changed my mind about the way I listened to music. At that time my musical menu was full of Sondheim, & my high school & college favorites: Carole King, Carly Simon, James Taylor, Paul Simon, & lots of old school R & B. When I heard my first Talking Heads single, I am sure I was quite high, but the song made a very strong impression under any condition. I had never heard something so raw & primal & yet tuneful. I have remained a lifelong fan.

The Husband & I saw Stop Making Sense in the theatre several times. It was playing in the Pike Place Cinema at the time that we lived in the Pike Place Market in Seattle. I sort of remember eating mushrooms & dancing in the aisles… actually I am sure I did that. Brilliantly directed by Jonathan Demme, it may be the best concert film of all time, different from other concert productions through its carefully scripted performance, framed by references to Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, employing few quick cuts, audience shots, applause sounds or unnecessary props (apparently Byrne insisted all objects not central to the movie be painted flat black). It is most famous for Byrne’s eccentric & electric showmanship, choreography, & The Big White Suit.

I have every album: Talking Heads, Tom Tom Club, Byrne's solo work, his collaborations with Brian Eno- The Catherine Wheel & My Life In The Bush With Ghosts & his Oscar winning score with Ryuichi Sakamoto for The Last Emperor. I have never stopped listening. 3 David Byrne songs are in my Top 25 All Time Favorite Songs. My #1 favorite song of all time is Once In A Lifetime & I still get shivers every time I hear it by accident.

David Byrne’s post Talking Heads work includes:

• The Catherine Wheel, a ballet written for Twyla Tharp (1981).

• Movie & TV soundtracks such as The Last Emperor (Oscar, Best Original Score) & Big Love for HBO.

• Re-released & he remixed My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts with Brian Eno for its 25th anniversary in 2006 with 2 songs fully available for sampling & remixing by anyone.

• 2002, he created a giant flowchart to cover scaffolding at Saks Fifth Avenue in NYC, called Everything Is Connected, that attempted to show how designers & their brands could be connected to various trends & people in pop culture, notably, he connects Donna Karan with Karl Marx & Prada with Reality TV.

• Byrne gave multiple lectures at universities, festivals & museums on the relationship between culture, art & advertising, 2002- 2005.

• Here Lies Love, a musical about Imelda Marcos, in collaboration with Fatboy Slim, debuted at Adelaide Festival of Arts in Australia, 2006 & then was performed at Carnegie Hall, NYC in 2007. It is currently running at The Public Theatre in a new production.

• His album- Everything That Happens Will Happen Today with Brian Eno is released in 2008.

• Love This Giant, collaboration with St. Vincent is released last autumn (2012).

Byrne is known for his activism in support of increased cycling, & for having used a bike as his main means of transport for most of his life, especially cycling around NYC. He has a regular cycling column in the NY Times. He does not own a car. Byrne has written widely on cycling, including a 2009 book- Cycling Diaries.

Byrne has designed a series of bicycle parking racks in the form of image outlines corresponding to the NYC neighborhoods in which they were located, such as a dollar sign for Wall Street, a gay gym bunny in Chelsea, a desperate chorus boy at Time Square, a Jewish Intellectual on the Upper West Side & a dead hipster in Williamsburg.

I have every reason to believe, although it has never been discussed, that David Byrne is the Husband’s favorite musical artist & the biggest influence on his psyche & his own art.

We have seen David Byrne in concert many times thrugh the decades & the experience was always transcendent. In 2009, I had given The Husband 2 tickets to see David Byrne in concert for his birthday (hoping he would take me as his date). The concert was called- Songs Of David Byrne & Brian Eno, all songs associated with their collaborations. I was overcome with relief when, post-concert, while walking down a South Park Block street, the Husband turned to me & said: "Am I wrong, or was that the best concert we have ever seen? & we have seen quite a few concerts in our 30 years together.” I could tell that the Husband was feeling quite & quietly moved.

Born On This Day- May 14th... Richard Deacon

I know that Modern Family will join this list, but that show is only in the fourth season, & I am still in the first stages of love, all dizzy & blurry & unable to be objective:

Top 10 Sitcoms of All Time:

1. I Love Lucy

2. The Dick Van Dyke Show

3. The Mary Tyler Moore Show

4. Rosanne

5. Will & Grace

6. Friends

7. Frasier

8. Arrested Development

9. Newhart

10. The Bob Newhart Show

He appeared in hundreds of TV shows & films, but I loved him best as the dour Mel Cooley on The Dick Van Dyke Show. At the start of his career, Richard Deacon was advised by Helen Hayes to abandon all hope for becoming a leading man. She encouraged him to chase a career as a character actor. Hayes gave me the same advice.

Big, bald, bespectacled & bass-voiced, Deacon heeded Hayes' advice, & was able to survive in show business far longer than most of the leading men. Usually cast as a sourpuss, Deacon was a valuable & highly regarded supporting cast commodity for films: Desiree (1954), Invasion of The Body Snatchers (1956), The Spirit Of St. Louis (1957), The Young Philadelphians (1959) & The Birds (1963), among many others. Virtually every major star who worked with Deacon paid compliments to his skills. His biggest admirers were Lou Costello, Lucille Ball, Jack Benny & Cary Grant, no slouches in the comedy department.

He proved even better on TV. His resume his head-spinning. He guest starred on nearly every sitcom of his era. Deacon had the distinction of doing 2 sitcoms at the same time in the early 1960s: he was pompous suburbanite Fred Rutherford on Leave It to Beaver, & the long-suffering Mel Cooley on The Dick Van Dyke Show. Deacon also co-starred as Kaye Ballard's husband on the delicious- The Mothers-in-Law (1968) with Eve Arden, & enjoyed a rare leading role on the 1964 Twilight Zone installment The Brain Center At Whipples. In his last decade, Richard Deacon hosted a TV program on microwave cookery, & published a companion book on the subject.

Deacon appeared in the long-running Broadway production of Hello, Dolly! as Horace Vandergelder (a role I played to great acclaim in the late 1980s), opposite Phyllis Diller from 1968-1970. Deacon continued appearing on TV & in films until his death from heart disease at 67 years old.

On The Dick Van Dyke Show, I always wanted him to have more air time, I thought him to be so funny. His work on this show had a certain influence on my comedy style. My favorite Deacon moments were as Tallulah Bankhead’s butler on an episode of I Love Lucy.

Deacon was a barely closeted gay man; his was an open secret in Hollywood.  Deacon: "Not even gays would guess. Most would be surprised. Only because what you see on TV, a serious guy in a suit, unsmiling, isn’t how anyone thinks of gay males. I'm nearly the exact opposite of a Paul Lynde."

 Melvin Cooley, what a cool name, huh?

I would love to know your favorite sitcom of all time. Care to comment?

Born On This Day- May 13th... Armistead Maupin

Armistead Maupin: “We’ve always pined for the old days, & people now do it about the 1960s & 1970s. I don’t do it. I really don’t.”

 Maybe Maupin doesn’t, but I do. His Tales Of The City books are the very essence of my halcyon days of gay liberation & the years before the advent of AIDS.

A summer day in 2007, I was lying naked at Collins beach on Sauvie Island, just outside of Portland. Because I am, or rather was, a redhead, I need to be in part shade or dappled sunlight. I was surrounded by dozens of hot gay men, gathered at their little setups on the beach, alone & in groups. I didn’t want to be doing it. I was embarrassed. I wanted to appear hot, yet cool. But, I had burst into tears & was whimpering like a little girl while reading Armistead Maupin’s new installment of the Tales Of The City series- Michael Tolliver Lives. I was shedding tears for the reunion with some of my favorite characters in literature, but also for my own loss of innocence & the glance at my own mortality. But mostly, I was crying for the beauty of the writing, & the pleasure of having the main character- Michael Tolliver still be alive after a presumed early death from HIV.

I read the original Tales Of The City in the serial installments from the San Francisco Chronicle, alerted to them from friends in the city. I savored each one. Maupin revived the Dickensian serial novel, which makes you laugh, makes you cry, & makes you wait for the next episode. I had a real romance with San Francisco in the 1970s, & spent as much time there as I could muster. I was living in LA, & PSA Airlines (now long gone) had a “Midnight Flyer”, a no reservations, stand in line, $20 flight from LAX to SFO. I would take advantage of the deal. The Midnight Flyer was my introduction to the Mile High Club. Only in the 1970s, could a young man travel to the City By The Bay to get laid, & then have it happen on the flight there. I didn’t even need to touch ground.

As each new book in the series would be released, I would get myself to the Different Drummer Bookstore (in the 1970s & 1980s there were actual Gay Bookstores) on Capitol Hill-Seattle & I would purchase the latest installment of Tales Of The City. I wouldn’t read it though. I would go back to book #1 & start at the very beginning. It was 18 years between Sure Of You & Michael Tolliver Lives. It was great, if slightly emotional, to be back with my friends from Barbary Lane.

Armistead Maupin is a Southern Gentleman born to a conservative, Christian family in Washington, D.C., & raised in North Carolina. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Maupin worked at WRAL-TV in Raleigh, a station then managed by future U.S. Senator Jesse Helms. Helms nominated Maupin for a patriotic award, which he won. Maupin says he was a typical conservative & even a segregationist at this time & he admired Helms, a family friend. He later condemned Helms at a gay pride parade on the steps of the North Carolina State Capitol. Maupin is a veteran of the US Navy; he served several tours of duty including one in Vietnam during the Vietnam War. Maupin claims he was gay since childhood but didn't have sex until he was 26 & only decided to come out in 1974.

Maupin's former partner of 12 years, Terry Anderson, was journalist & gay rights activist. Ian McKellen is a friend & former lover, & Christopher Isherwood was a mentor, friend, & influence as a writer. He was once a fuck buddy of Rock Hudson: 'I'm the age now that Rock was when he picked me up, so I can understand how he felt, how his fame limited his freedom. You get kinder as you go along.”

I was born across the bay in Oakland, & I have spent a lot of time in San Francisco, including the entire summer of 1972. When I mention this to gay men of a certain age, a dreamy faraway look will come over their faces & they will tell about how much Maupin’s Tales meant to them. I once knew someone that had asked to be buried with his copies of his books.

Maupin has an uncanny ability to gently point out how alike we all are, gay or straight, liberal or conservative: we all need love, we all ask for a little kindness, & we're all in it for the long haul. In summer of 2011, I savored Mary Ann In Autumn, the latest in the series. It had me so engaged, I had to force myself to read just a short chapter a day, just to draw out the experience of being back with my beloved characters once more. Maupin continues to take me by surprise, amuse, & touch me. This novel made smile, laugh out loud, & gave me a crazy cathartic cry at the end.

Maupin is married to Christopher Turner, a website producer & photographer whom he saw on a dating website & then "chased him down Castro Street, saying, 'Didn’t I see you on Daddyhunt.com?'" The Maupin/Turners were married in Vancouver, BC in 2007, though Maupin says that they had called each other "husband" for years prior. They live in Santa Fe with their labradoodle.

Born On This Day- May 12th... Katharine Hepburn

Post Apocalyptic Bohemian favorite writer- Gore Vidal vouched for his buddy- Scotty Bowers, who claims that he set Katharine Hepburn up “with over 150 different women” in his dishy, juicy book- Full Service: My Adventures In Hollywood & The Secret Sex Lives Of Stars, which I read in 2 sittings last spring.

Vidal flew in to LA to be part the book’s release event. He wanted to assure attendees that Bowers is totally telling the truth. In a speech, he told party-goers he’s never caught Bowers in a lie in the 60+ years he’s known him, noting that in Hollywood “you can meet 1,000 liars a day". I think there is a difference between never catching someone in a lie as opposed someone has never told a lie, but I am going to take Vidal & Bowers at their word: Katharine Hepburn was a very sexually active with women. That closet door is now open.

If you don’t want to go with Bower’s version, try noted film historian- William J. Mann's Kate: The Woman Who Was Hepburn, published in 2004.  Mann tells that the epic romance of Katharine Hepburn & Spencer Tracy was a fable cultivated by Hepburn to hide their bisexuality. The pair of stars were sexually complicated screen legends that had an enduring companionship but were only briefly passionate & never lived together intimately.

Hepburn fostered the belief that she & Tracy could never marry because he was a devout Catholic committed to Louise Treadwell, his wife of 43 years & mother of their deaf child. Mann used documents & interviews with people who wouldn't talk while Hepburn was alive.  8 years before Bower’s book, Mann insists that it was at gay director George Cukor's estate that he met a Hollywood hustler identified as "Scotty," a mechanic who staffed his gas station with "handsome young bucks, just home from the war" who for $20 were "happy to wash their hands (or not) & take a trip with a client to the back room."

Mann writes that Scotty related: "Tracy would always be drinking when I arrived. He'd get so loaded. He'd sit there at the table drinking from five o'clock in the afternoon until two in the morning, when he'd fall onto the bed & ask me to join him. ... in the morning he'd act like nothing happened."

According to Mann, Hepburn's notorious relationship with American Express heiress Laura Harding wasn't "lesbian," but it sure was sexual. Mann: "Hepburn admitted as much to friends like James Prideaux, cutting him off with a shrill 'Of course!' when he asked about Harding ... as if the subject were simply too obvious & boring to belabor."

There is a famous story about the making of the film adaptation of Tennessee William's notorious Suddenly, Last Summer that starred Elizabeth Taylor, the very gay Montgomery Clift & Katharine Hepburn. Hepburn, as Violet Venable was so obsessed with her dead son, Sebastian, that she wants to have her niece, played by Taylor lobotomized rather than have it revealed that he was homosexual.

Apparently Hepburn was clueless that this was a film about homosexual lust & the director, Joseph Mankiewicz, & screenwriter- the very gay Gore Vidal, had to explain it to her. Meanwhile, she nailed the role as the disturbed, evilly controlling mother.

This anecdote works against the image of independent, smart Hepburn, the Connecticut feminist Yankee who supposedly seduced Hollywood’s leading men- Spencer Tracy, Gary Grant, Humphrey Bogart & James Stewart.  In her real life, Hepburn followed in the footsteps of her mother who pioneered reproductive freedoms & the right of American women to vote.

 

In the 1930s, where of the strict studio system made & crushed careers, Hepburn challenged studio execs & made it work for her. She grew as a businesswoman, commanding salaries & negotiating roles at a time when it was just not done.  She was a symbol of a true American original who could accomplish anything.

Hepburn's career spanned decades & her range was legendary, even while her roles were always secondary to her own personality.

Was there ever a gayer film than the1937 camp classic- Stage Door in which Hepburn perfected the screen ingenue, uttering the line: "The calla lilies are in bloom again."  Cast opposite Gay Icons Eve Arden, Lucille Ball, Ann Miller, & Ginger Rogers, she played it broadly & autobiographically, as the daughter of a wealthy businessman who wants a career in the theater with no prior training. It remains a favorite Hepburn performance at Post Apocalyptic Bohemia,

Hepburn excelled in screwball comedies like Bringing Up Baby with bi-sexual Carey Grant who uttered the famous line: "I’ve turned gay all of the sudden!" For gay audiences, Hepburn inadvertently developed an androgynous image in such roles as the cross-dressing Sylvia Scarlet.

After being victimized by studio mouthpieces & being branded "box office poison" by the press, Hepburn refused to be ignored.  She starred on Broadway in Philip Barry‘s The Philadelphia Story, purchasing the rights to star in the film. More than any other actress of the period, Hepburn controlled her own career.

In the 1940s & 1950s, Hepburn launched a classical stage & film career, transitioning beautifully, at a time in her career when most stars would retreat to predictable vehicles that would showcase them. Among other projects, she tackled Shakespeare onstage while in her 50s, at the same time becoming the first lady of American cinema, eventually nominated for 12 Best Actress Oscars & winning 4 times, a record.

She bravely stood with her colleagues Humphrey Bogart & Lauren Bacall during the trials of the Hollywood 10, screenwriters, actors & directors called before the Senator Joseph McCarthy's House on Un-American Activities Committee in protest of their unconstitutional Senate investigations, without risk of guilt by association. Hepburn made The African Queen (which is not about RuPaul) with Bogart.

Hepburn is a true Gay Icon. She was a tough-minded authority liberal thinker. Gay men & lesbians love her equally, if for different reasons, & even if she didn't acknowledge he won gayness, it is impossible to ignore Hepburn’s impact on Gay culture, Gay minds & Gay hearts. Hepburn was Fierce.

I only saw her live once, in LA circa 1971, in a mess of a musical- Coco, playing Coco Chanel, with a book & lyrics by Alan J. Lerner & music by Andre Previn, with sets by the very gay Cecil Beaton, choreographed by  the very gay- Michael Bennett, with a  cast that included: René Auberjonois, George Rose, David Holliday, Bob Avian, Jon Cypher, Suzanne Rogers, Graciela Daniele,& Ann Reinking. To prepare for Coco, Hepburn received singing coaching with MGM’s very gay muscial producer- Roger Edens. She was simply brilliant & breathtaking in the role. I loved her & ran out to by the cast album. I do a terrific imitation of Hepburn singing the title song. Ask me sometime.

My favorite Hepburn role is in 1975’s Love Among The Ruins with Lawrence Olivier, although I have studied every moment of The Philadelphia Story. The Husband’s choice is The Lion In Winter. What is your favorite Katherine Hepburn performance?

There Once Was An Old Queer Named Lear

The Owl and the Pussycat went to sea

In a beautiful pea green boat,

They took some honey, & plenty of money,

Wrapped up in a five pound note.

The Owl looked up to the stars above,

& sang to a small guitar,

'O lovely Pussy! O Pussy my love,

What a beautiful Pussy you are

You are,

You are!

What a beautiful Pussy you are!'

Pussy said to the Owl, 'You elegant fowl!

How charmingly sweet you sing!

O let us be married! too long we have tarried:

But what shall we do for a ring?'

They sailed away, for a year & a day,

To the land where the Bong-tree grows

& there in a wood a Piggy-wig stood

With a ring at the end of his nose,

His nose,

His nose,

With a ring at the end of his nose.

'Dear pig, are you willing to sell for one shilling

Your ring?' Said the Piggy, 'I will.'

So they took it away, & were married next day

By the Turkey who lives on the hill.

They dined on mince, & slices of quince,

Which they ate with a runcible spoon;

& hand in hand, on the edge of the sand,

They danced by the light of the moon,

The moon,

The moon,

They danced by the light of the moon.

It is as simple as ABC to take joy in a gay 19th century writer named as the notable innovator of nonsense.

Today marks the 199th birthday of Edward Lear, an important English illustrator & landscape painter, but more widely known as the writer of an original kind of nonsense verse & for his perfect limericks. His genius is clear in his nonsense poems, with a world of peculiar, phantasmagorical, preposterous creature in nonsense word, with a dash of deep underlying melancholy. Their quality is matched in the limerick & his pen &ink drawings.

Lear was a homosexual who suffered all his life from ill health & depression that he named- “The Morbids”.

He mostly lived abroad. Even though he was naturally timid, he was a constant & courageous traveler who explored: Italy, Greece, Albania, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, India & Ceylon. An indefatigable artist, he produced great number of pen & watercolor sketches of great topographical accuracy. He made his living from these pieces & large oil paintings.

After his nomadic life he lived with his celebrated cat –Foss in San Remo, on the Mediterranean coast, at a house he named "Villa Tennyson." For companions he counted on a circle of friends, correspondents, & his chef- Giorgis. Foss died in 1886 & was buried with some ceremony in a garden at Villa Tennyson. After a long decline in his health, Lear died at his villa in 1888. Lear's funeral was a sad, solitary affair; not one of Lear's many lifelong friends being able to attend.

In his lifetime, Lear published 3 volumes of bird & animal drawings, 7 illustrated travel books, 4 books of nonsense: The Book of Nonsense (1869), Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany & Alphabets (1871), More Nonsense, Pictures, Rhymes, & Botany (1872), & Laughable Lyrics (1877), plus a posthumous release- Queery Leary Nonsense (1911).

There was an Old Man on a hill,
Who seldom, if ever, stood still;
He ran up & down,
In his Grandmother's gown,
Which adorned that Old Man on a hill.


The Post Apocalyptic Bohemian: Stephen
He liked men for no tangible reason
A frontal lobotomy
Cured him of sodomy
But ruined his plans for the season.