BijouBlog

Interesting and provocative thoughts on gay history, gay sexual history, gay porn, and gay popular culture.

So Long, Farewell ...

The Bijou Theater, the oldest consecutively running gay porn movie theater and sex club in the United States, officially closes its doors on September 30, 2015, at 9 a.m.

 

Bijou has become an icon representing that time in gay history, the 1970s, where gay men, long hidden in the shadows, emerged as both liberators and the  liberated. The nonstop mansex party had begun.

The AIDS crisis of the 1980s threatened to turn the lights out for a community still struggling with its identity, but it regrouped and continued its fight for justice,  focusing now on political and social equality and confronting directly the new Religious Rights and its allies, culminating in the historical SCOTUS ruling that  legalized same-sex marriage throughout the United States.

Even though the lights will literally go out and the music turn off at the Bijou Theater next week after 45 years, remember that the sexual freedom Bijou represents ultimately transcends a physical location.

The next time you find the right guy with whom to enjoy the hottest mansex, think of the Bijou and what Dorothy said at the end of The Wizard of Oz, “But it wasn't a dream. It was a place. And you and you and you - and you were there. But you couldn't have been, could you?...No, Aunt Em, this was a real, truly live place. And I remember that some of it wasn't very nice, but most of it was beautiful.”

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Come to the Cabaret

Come to the Cabaret

“Come to the cabaret ...”

I watched the movie Cabaret when I was in high school under adult supervision (I guess it was beyond my parents to figure out that Sally Bowles was not at all judgmental about her gay friends).
 

The I graduated in college to the gender bending Victor, Victoria, much of which takes place in nightclubs/gay bars which seem to be pretty much be synonymous with cabarets.

Live entertainment … torchy songs around the piano … lamps with shades on the tables … people smoking … all dressed up in evening gowns and tuxedos …. scenes that were also commonplace in mainstream Hollywood movies of the 30s and 40s, except in those movies, they were pretty much heterosexual, though the usual sultry contralto (low, almost masculine) voice of the lead female singer singing songs usually about elusive romance and hidden passions and perhaps a “sissy” waiter hinted at gender bending.
 

When I first came out in the eighties, there was a big gay bar that I guess you could also call a cabaret in Chicago, called Gentry. It was rumored to be the place to pick up a rich husband. Now, apparently, such places were not at all uncommon in Chicago, strictly gay cabarets often featuring drag performers, as far back as the 1930s.

According to Lucinda Fleeson in an article called “The Gay 30s,” there was place called Diamond Lil's, at 909 North Rush Street (get the reference to Mae West?), that was so popular people ended up being turned away. And the high society people flocked to those places; the Chicago Gray Line Sightseeing Company included gay pick up venues such as Bughouse Square in front of the Newberry Library as part of its package, appealing to the allure of what is strange, different, “queer.”


Yes, Chicago was Sin City, until mayor Edward Kelly decided to “clean up” the nightlife, and the moral panic of 1936 (everyone was a potential sex predator; remember the 1980s Satanic day care crisis? Same mentality) pretty much ended what was called “The Pansy Craze.”

Tastes have changed, and cabaret seems to have become a more specialized entertainment, not because of its audience, but because of its musical appeal. Some claim that piano bars/cabarets in general declined by the late eighties because of the popularity of electronic music, disc jockeys, bands, and even live karaoke.

In fact, I can't think of a specifically gay cabaret in Chicago since the closing of Gentry (it tried to revive itself in Boystown after leaving the Rush Street area, but it has since closed). There's a place called Davenports in the hipster area Wicker Park which is a piano bar not specifically gay (I noticed on its schedule a gay tribute for Pride Month, focusing on gay icons of the past, but no drag acts), and Mary's Attic, a gay venue in the now heavily gay area of Andersonville often puts on cabaret acts.

 

Perhaps the fascination with retro for these demographics might have something to do with the popularity of these venues … but tastes (and gay icons) have changed, or one might even claim, they've become more eclectic, especially for millenials who can stream practically anything in a millisecond.

Still, it's awesome to be able to find places in Chicago that keep cabaret, now taking on the status of a tradition, alive in the Chicago area.

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The Real Benefit of Same-Sex Marriage: Human Dignity

The Real Benefit of Same-Sex Marriage: Human Dignity

 

This scenario is unfortunately all-too familiar: a gay man dies, and his partner ends up having to fight the “blood family” for property, a dwelling place, even a burial space. Unless a gay couple takes extraordinary, expensive legal measures, which in some cases means even adopting each other (see this link for a famous case), they are not legally protected, which protections and benefits would happen automatically if they were a heterosexual couple.
 

I know one person the above scenario happened to. He had to leave his dwelling of twenty-five years. His partner's homophobic family banned him from the funeral, and stole the burial plot. Why? He was not legally protected.

 

In another case, another friend of mine was much more fortunate. They lived in Florida, a state notorious for its homophobia (hello, Anita Bryant). Luckily, the partner's sister and brotherin-law were on good terms with him and followed his instructions about the sale of the house and other matters of the estate. Regardless of the financial situation, they respected the relationship. Their respect showed they saw my friend as a person, not an enemy “other” or an impersonal commodity.

The Edie Windsor case publicized and created much-needed discourse at the highest level the fundamental injustice of our defining only by gender civil marriage (yes, civil, not religious/sacramental). Edie would have had to pay an astronomical amount of inheritance tax on her wife's estate (yes, wife) because, as above, they were not a heterosexual couple. In response to this case, the Supreme Court struck down DOMA.

In other words, the civil society essentially treats those who do not fit heteronormative social structures as second-class citizens in a country which purports (and has failed and still fails to do) to operate under a claim that all people are created equal.

What I've said so far is not new, but I think it is really about not just the issue of same-sex couples being able to enjoy the economic, social, and psychological benefits of civil marriage, but about human dignity.

Human dignity transcends the physical ties of blood and the laws people make to be able to live together (which often results in people using each other as commodities, rather than persons). We experience human dignity by showing empathy and compassion for a person outside yourself, which means being able to find a piece, however difficult that may be, of that person in you, a process of growing, really becoming. To use the language of the famous Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, we need to enter into an I-Thou relationship, rather than an I-It one.
 

It's unfortunate that many of the benefits that those who enter into marriage are commodities (and in the past, remember, the wife [and the children] were essentially property of the husband), but I am hoping that we will get to the point that marriage equality is not just about a legal transaction. It's the recognition of the dignity of each human person as a complex, imperfect, non-binary becoming.
 

 
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Weird People on the Bus

 

I've seen them on television and the movies, and I've even been in them (well, when you're from Cicero, Illinois, you've got to do something), but what exactly is a dive bar? Or more specifically, a gay dive bar?

The ones I have seen on television and the movies sometimes seem like parodies of these places which in some cases are identical with what used to be called neighborhood taverns. You know, the place where working class guys like Archie Bunker and Ralph Cramden would hang out at; remember Kelsey's on All in the Family?
 

All in the Family

Or the one in Valley of the Dolls that Neely O'Hara (on a booze and pills binge in San Francisco) gets kicked out of; this scene (starting at 1:17:16) pretty much parodies the “dive;” tacky or nonexistent décor, which sometimes involves dark wood paneling; aggressive, bawling customers who begin with beer and end up doing shots; lots of smoking; and a jukebox, all as a backdrop for the inevitable fight.

In some neighborhoods of Chicago, in the early part of the last century, there were often three of these places on every block to accommodate thirsty workers from various manufacturing jobs who wanted in to delay going home to overcrowded two- and three-flats filled with screaming children and nagging wives. They weren't necessarily dives, but they weren't doing a high-class clientele, but the local “average Joe.”

Now gay bars, of course, for the greater part of the last century, had to take often extraordinary measures to just survive. The couldn't exactly be open watering holes for Mr. and Mrs. Bunker. (Well, other open holes existed there, but that's another blog.) And to survive often meant being a dive (or pay off the police or the Mafia), because that's all you could afford being, plus looking “rough,” though it could attract a less “classy” clientele, often kept away bigots.Leather Bar, 1978


Early leather bars like the Gold Coast certainly were dives physically, but in cases like that, the “dive” look was a deliberate part of their appeal: rough sex, rugged guys, bikers. The old Touche bar in Chicago on Lincoln Avenue perhaps was more strictly kink and leather (think piss trough), but the beers stacked up by the entrance and the generally seedy surroundings (I remember the floor was dirty, and it was caked in; no comment on how I would know such detail) certainly proclaimed “dive.”


Wells Street, Chicago, 1970s

The Glory Hole on Wells Street when that street was the gayborhood was perhaps more of the pure “dive:” not only the totally rough, thrown-together look, but the backroom (and bathroom) for quickies and more. Perhaps some of the bars that used to bill themselves as “leather and levi” rather than strictly leather (with a dress code) could be defined as more strictly dive, like the now-closed Rawhide in Chelsea, or still thriving, the Second Story Bar right off the Magnificent Mile (yes, it is still there!) and the Granville Anvil on the Far North Side of Chicago, somewhat distant from the trendy, touristy Boystown.

In fact, the Granville Anvil bills itself as a dive bar. From what I gather, based on their Yelp reviews and Facebook page, they've “spruced up” the décor. Did the owners take out the paneling and the plastic flowers covered with dust hanging in baskets from the ceiling, I wonder? I know, because I was there in the nineties, and yes, there was a jukebox playing Cher's song “Half-Breed,” and also, there was a fight in the bathroom. I was indirectly involved. The friend I went with was in the fight. I found out he was pissed because some guy would not leave me alone (those were the days), and then started bugging my friend as well. That night, I also won some lottery tickets as a prize for getting Bingo. I didn't win the lottery.
 

The Granville Anvil

I wonder, in these days when other “divey” places like 24-hour grills and diners have disappeared and were replaced by big box stores and chain restaurants, if the authentic dive bar can survive. Neighborhood taverns evolved into sports bars, and hipsters have set up “divey” places as part their deconstruction of retro; but what will happen to the gay dive bar? I have a feeling it's been replaced by the seedy underbelly of craigslist, minus, so sadly, the both fun and dangerous social interaction in a place where ultimately, a gay man could both hide from and enjoy himself. And share that identity struggle with others over a shot of whiskey while listening to Judy Garland singing “The Man That Got Away” on jukebox that still played vinyl.

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Alexander the Gay

Alexander the Gay

“326 BCE – Gay/bisexual military leader Alexander the Great completes conquest of most of the then known Western world, converting millions of people to Hellenistic culture and launching the Hellenistic Age.”

I found this on a gay timeline someone sent me, and it caused me to wonder.

No doubt Alexander managed to conquer most of the known world in record time (and he couldn't have done it if he didn't exert a special charisma over his male army), and he apparently did enjoy a close relationship with his friend, general, and bodyguard Hephaisteon.

Apparently his grief when Hephaisteon died was boundless, and the writer Aelion compared it to the grief of Achilles upon the death of Patroclus (another male couple whose relationship has been interpreted as sexual).

b2ap3_thumbnail_alexanderandhephaisteonmovie.jpg

But, here's the rub. Gay sex or no gay sex, Alexander married twice: Roxana , daughter of the Bactrian nobleman Oxyartes, out of love; and Stateira II, a Persian princess  and daughter of Darius III of Persia, for political reasons. 

He apparently produced two sons, Alexander IV of Macedon of Roxana and, possibly, Heracles of Macedon from his mistress Barsine. He lost another child when Roxana miscarried at Babylon.

He also kept a harem, Persian-style, perhaps more for show. He was more concerned with consolidating his newly vast power base. But it was part of the culture, a culture where a conqueror was entitled to the women previously owned by the conquered king.


The parallel with Achilles exists, even though Achilles dates from a much earlier period. Achilles wanted Briseis, a captured woman, as concubine. He couldn't have her, because she was the pick of Achilles' superior, the general Agamemnon. Achilles, insulted by this affront to his status (and he may have actually fallen in love with Briseis, but that's unclear), decided to sit out the war sulking in his tent (with his “friend” Patroclus). Yet, par for the course, women were deemed property, essentially child-producing livestock.

It's interesting that in the case of Alexander, there is mention of a love relationship with one of his wives. Why? It seems that the deeper emotional (not necessarily sexual) relationships in Greek culture in the period before Alexander were male on male, especially in both Athens, where married women were confined to the home (at least in aristocratic circles), and Sparta, where the sexes were rigidly kept separate because of its birth to death military culture. Sanctioned female-male relationships in both cultures were directed toward one end: procreation.

b2ap3_thumbnail_olympiasandzeus.jpgAnd to add a possibly Freudian twist to Alexander's relationships with both men and women, his mother, the formidable Olympias, insisted her son was the son of the king of the gods, Zeus, not her husband. Olympias later ordered Eurydice and her child by Philip II to be murdered, in order to secure Alexander's position as king of Macedonia.  She did not get along with her husband, Philip of Macedon, Alexander's father, and supposedly had him murdered. That is one Greek woman who managed to wield power, but only by denying that her connection to it was via a man.

Alexander may not have been totally gay in the sense we know it (perhaps more bisexual), but he seemed to understand the fraught relationship between sexuality and power, and in his case, his intense emotional reaction to the death of his beloved Hephaisteon may have contributed to his early death.

 

You can't conquer the world like Alexander did if you are guided not only what makes you hard, but the feelings that produce and enhance that sensation.

 

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