BijouBlog

Was the Will and Grace duo (gay guy and his “BFF” straight woman) that epitomizes, for many heterosexual audiences, a slice of gay life really that much of a groundbreaking novelty? Yes it was, because the show was aired on national TV, so it created a lot of discussion about that type of relationship. But believe it or not, in a late-sixties publication called Sex Play: A Marital Guide for the Gay Male (from our extensive collection of gay sexual history materials) there is an hilarious article on the gay guy and his “BFF” straight woman.

In the late sixties, once the Post Office lifted censorship restrictions about showing full frontal nudity, homoerotic publications started showing not only cocks, but couples in a variety of sexual positions (still rather risky for that time period). In order to continue to cover their asses, these publications advertised themselves as “how to” or “guide to” material, and often included articles on various aspects of gay life that may or may not have had anything actually to do with the sucking and fucking going on in the pictures. Thus, this supposed marital guide, though offering relevant articles about gay couples getting married (yes, they did at this time period) and why it is beneficial to be a homosexual, is billed as “educational material not to be sold to minors.”

But why is there material on, as the term on the street labels them, “fag hags,” in this publication? In accordance with its educational mission, the article “Living It Up Together” purports to offer a heterosexual reader a glimpse of the “homosexual life,” which includes feelings of love which can result relationships not dissimilar to “straights,” the author claims (including marriages in “homosexual churches”). But the author also claims to offer insights into some a special relationship prevalent when gays and straights mix in social settings (apparently a more common occurrence during that time period, though either group would be in the minority depending on the party). That relationship is the gay man-straight woman. The article proclaims:

Many “straights” get a tremendous charge out of the company of inverts and actually prefer associating with them rather than their own crowd. Older women are constantly added to the list as patronesses or benefactresses because they adore the flattery and attention lavished up them after the “normal” society has given up complimenting their fading egos. They are caught up in the gaiety and effervescence (more sham and pretense, but usually convincingly so) of the seemingly light-hearted, brilliant conversationalists and exhibitionists of which this (gay) crowd is comprised.

Pretty heady, campy stuff! I won't get into the use of the term invert (now an old-fashioned word for gay, meaning that somehow the usual sexual attribute and desires of one's gender are inverted, turned around, even reserved in gays and lesbians), but what I find really interesting is the now-offensive stereotype here in full force, one that was assumed, hinted at, but not necessarily shouted from the rooftops for many years. For example, gay icon Joan Crawford surrounded herself with gay men (her best friends were a gay, by all practical purposes married, couple, William Haines and his lover Billy), but the darker side of this relationship also applied to her. According to some of her biographers, a few gay men, then called “starfuckers,” supposedly took advantage of her good will as she aged.

I think there's more going on here than “times have changed” since the late sixties. Straight women apparently (so I've heard from private sources) can hang out in gay bars with their gay friends and not be derided as “fag hags” as the core parts of what used to be the “homosexual lifestyle” become assimilated into the mainstream. But is the stereotype totally dead? After all, there is a show on the LGBT Logo channel called "1 Girl 5 Gays," in which five “outlandish, fabulous” gay men tackle topics ranging from love and sex to celebrity pop culture, with a female host acting as “ringleader.” Is this show more like entertainment or reality, I wonder...

Whatever the reality, I wonder if we finally are starting to realize that whatever relationships end up coming our way, we need to see ourselves as whole persons, not get so bound up in dualisms that lend themselves to potentially harmful stereotypes like gay guy/straight woman.

When ABC premiered his first prime time special, “The Barry Manilow Special” in 1977, one would have thought the second coming of Christ had occurred in our house.

(By the way, Barry is Jewish. I found out his name was originally Barry Alan, the son of Edna and Harold Pincus. Harold deserted the family when Barry was two. Manilow was his mother's maiden name, which he adopted at his bar mitzvah. )

My poor mother. She didn't now that so many of her favorite artists were/are gay. As I said above, Barry never came out as gay, but she was quite enamored of the openly gay Village People. (If youtube had existed at that time, I am certain her YMCA dance might have gone viral.) She also liked Saturday Night Fever. Yes, John Travolta … still in the closet.

Now, I am not trying to denigrate the very talented Manilow (I just don't get his music), but what I find fascinating is the attraction Manilow holds for women of a certain age. I don't know of any girl going to high school at that time who liked him (or admitted to liking him). It was always someone's MOTHER who loved him.

I remember reading somewhere that Barry's most fanatic “fanilows” or “Maniloonies” are British homemaker types. Manilow himself proclaimed his “love affair” with the United Kingdom fans, lauding them for their loyalty.

There was even a 48 Hours special on these fans, but I found out that Manilow himself was not thrilled about it; he wanted to ensure people knew younger people liked him too, not just the Mums.

I wonder if my mother still likes Barry Manilow.

I know I'm not about to confess, like on the show Family Guy, a secret love for him.

And congratulations to Barry, who is also doing his final tour this year.

 

It started in Chicago, as long ago as 1972 (only a few years after the Stonewall revolutionary event), on a pool table at the Gold Coast Bar. The first leather contest. The winner was John Lunning.

Chuck Renslow, now a legendary figure, was the driving force in the development of the whole gay leather culture. After this event, he soon discovered that one way to put a public face on what was going in the backrooms and other shadowy places was by founding what some claim was (and still is) a “leather beauty contest.” Think: kind of a Mr. America take-off but add bdsm-related gear and activities; anything to grab the audience's attention (and cocks). In fact, one anecdotal source claims that at the first contest “slaves” were dragged onto the stage.

Soon the contest became so popular that it outgrew the bar, and in 1979 the first official International Mr. Leather contest occurred at a local hotel.

A dozen candidates in full leather and swimwear (changed to jockstraps in later years), paraded before an audience of about 300 men.

David Kloss, an oil rig worker (now that's once macho occupation!) representing The Brig bar in San Francisco, won the first title.

According to Jack Fritscher in the September 1979 issue of Drummer Magazine:

“The other men, daring to put their pecs and ass on the world’s toughest Chorus Line, were: Terry Hunter, Carol’s Speakeasy, Chicago; Reg Simpson, RR, Miami; Donald Rahn, Foxhole, Denver; Stan Masterson, Landmark, Daytona Beach, FL; Daan [sic] Jefferson, Gold Coast, Chicago; Jim Kazlik, Wreckroom, Milwaukee; Harry Shattuck, South Town Lumber Co., Denver; Bill Maggio, Harder Than Hell Productions, Chicago; Jesse Capello [second IML Runner-up], Café LaFitte in Exile/Coral Bar, New Orleans; Durk Dehner [first IML Runner-up who was a Drummer model from Lou Thomas’ Target Studio, and future founder of Tom of Finland Foundation], American Uniform Association, L. A.; Bruce Wachholder, Touche, Chicago; David Kloss, the Brig, San Francisco. The judges were Chuck Gockenmeyer, General Manager of Leatherman Inc, New York; Robert Dunn, Advertising Director, Drummer magazine; Dom Orejudos (Etienne); Tom Gora, In Touch magazine; and Lou Thomas, Target Studio, New York.”

The list above seems a roll call of both men and organizations who have now become iconic in the leather community.

The contestants, Jack Fritscher wrote in the September 1979 Drummer Magazine, typified “the new homomasculinity.”

The seventies were indeed the era of “gay macho,” popularized (and perhaps even satirized in the Village People phenomenon). But rather than just thinking of it as an era of “guys gone wild,” one also needs to understand that also during this time guys into leather/bdsm were establishing their own communities. The seventies saw the foundation of the Chicago Hellfire Club (its first Inferno event took place in September 1976 to celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Club). Other organizations that began in this period was M.A.F.I.A. (a club for guys into fisting) and Rodeo Riders, a social group for guys who enjoy sex, gear, and each other in a variety of social settings. These three clubs are still going strong now!

Chicago, with is unique mix of Midwestern communal values and gritty individualism, apparently was the ideal place for this movement to take shape.

Thanks to jackfritscher.com and the Leather Archives & Museum for much of the material in this blog.

If you're in or traveling to Chicago for this year's IML, don't miss Men's Room at the Bijou, presented by the Leather Archives, on Saturday May 23!

Just think: not too long ago, Chicago's landscape was covered with filthy, lumpy ice.

Now, in the Middle Ages, people really celebrated spring: so many songs about flowers blooming and animals and people screwing:
 

That was a time when life was much more precarious, and so when the inevitable cycle of nature began anew after a long winter (often a time of deprivation but also semi-hibernation, depending on the state of the autumn harvest). When spring arrived, the people celebrated, but they also had to participate in that cycle by literally sowing seed: a cycle of work and pleasure.

We've lost that intimate working connection with the land; thus our bodies and souls can't really hibernate or prepare to rejuvenate the way nature intends.

Sex in front of a fireplace in the dead of winter is wonderful, but if one is exhausted from commuting across windswept tundras, a cup of steaming hot tea is more enjoyable. (I wonder how the inhabitants of lands near the Arctic Circle fare with their long, sunless winters and short summers.)

T.S. Eliot claimed April is the cruelest month. I might say March is more cruel, which lately seems like the last, often vicious in-your-face blast of winter rather than a harbinger of cute lambs, bunnies, baskets of pussy willows, sprouting crocuses, and dewy grass. The weathermen Tom Skilling on WGN-TV Chicago actually called the month “schizophrenic” because of its extreme weather contrasts.

But there's one day, usually in early May, when I wake up and it everything has bloomed, like it happened overnight through some miraculous intervention.

It's unexpected, like the best sex. I want it to happen, but I won't know it has happened until it actually has happened!
 

 

Are euphemisms for sex or bathroom actions becoming dead words?

Now, when types of slang words that have been stigmatized as obscene have become pretty much prevalent in a majority of social situations, why, to use another euphemism, beat around the bush?

In fact, that sound that bleeps out the offending words seems to be occurring more and more on television (on some reality shows, that sound seems to drown out the dialogue), perhaps showing we don't bother to even code anymore language that refers to those taboo sex/bathroom actions.

Too bad, I say, from just a creative standpoint. The richness and humor of coming up with ways to convey pooping and fucking ... it was a linguistic freedom that flourished within oppressive constraints, and some of the words mockingly confronted such oppression.

Here are some awesome euphemisms from The Big Book of Talking Dirty:

catch a horse (20thC) (Aus.) to urinate

fie for shame (19thC) the vagina; from the image of the vagina as something shameful

four­legged frolic (mid 19thC) sexual intercourse

gentleman of the back door (18thC) a homosexuality

get one's hair cut (20thC) to visit a woman for sex

give the Chinaman a music lesson (20thC) to urinate

give one's gravy (19thC) to give someone an orgasm

hundred­and­seventy­fiver (1990s) a homosexual (para. 175 of the German penal code outlawed homosexuality)

massaging the one eye'd monk (1990s) masturbation

One a much more serious note, there's one taboo area I still think we still use euphemisms for, because, in a time when any sign of aging can supposedly be quick­fixed by botox and billions of dollars are spent on prolonging life (not to be confused with finding cures for diseases): death. We're more and more uncomfortable with it, even when it happens naturally.

Often the young try, like the young of generations past, to sublimate their fear with a carpe diem attitude, or they end up scapegoating older people, inflicting a social death upon them, because they see in them their own future.

We all fuck and piss and shit and die: that's the reality all human culture confronts in a myriad of ways.

How many ways can you say that?