Band of Thebes

More Designer Nihilism, Bored Torture from Bret Easton Ellis

Imperial Bedrooms, Bret Easton Ellis's brand new, 25-years-later sequel to Less Than Zero, opens with some stomach-churning grotesqueness: no, not the snuff film he references immediately, but the way his first lines deliberately echo The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, also a sequel. To quote Tom Sawyer, "O.M.F.G.!" The 169 airy pages cover a daisy-chain of betrayals, some murders, and an oh so bored torture sequence in which the bi/gay protagonist rents two very pricey prostitutes (one male, one female) and does things even worse than making them read this book. BEE is not without talent (amid much ridiculousness, parts of Glamorama are actually moving; many smart readers love Lunar Park) but as The New Yorker says of this one, "The plot is incoherent and the insights such as they are fail to give resonance to the mounting horror." Then again, PW called it sublime and stellar. 

Didn't Bret come out in the documentary--- oh, who cares. But, yes, he is, and like E. Lynn Harris and David Sedaris he offers further proof that gay books can sell.

Born June 26-28: Brontë, McCauley, Inman, Kopay

Is it unforgivable to call Branwell the fourth Brontë sister? Born a year after Charlotte, a year before Emily, and three years prior to Anne, Patrick Branwell Brontë was kept home for schooling while the girls were sent off to boarding school. A child of great promise, he trained as a painter and, not surprisingly given how things turned out, his most important work is a portrait of his three writer siblings. (That bizarre gap in the portrait is where Branwell put himself; following a quarrel, his father rubbed him out.) To support himself, Branwell took a job tutoring a Lancashire family's sons, a railway clerk position, and another job tutoring a boy named Thorp Green. From each employment Branwell was dismissed. He returned home, drank heavily, contracted tuberculosis, and died at thirty-one. For a "marvelous free and direct telling" of his life, read the novel Branwell by Douglas A. Martin. PW says the book "offers a tender, tragic portrayal of a doomed artist and homosexual avant la lettre" and "this volume's beautiful declarative sentences are perfectly fitted to this famously imaginative, headstrong family; they bring Branwell Brontë's world to light."

Over twenty-three years novelist Stephen McCauley has expanded the boundaries of comedies of manners with his wit and his insight foremost; the fact that his protagonists are out gay men fully integrated in the straight world is secondary, and wonderful. The book you need to read most urgently, to follow what everyone is talking about, is his brand new Insignificant Others. McCauley's very best novel is True Enough and his best known is his bestselling debut, The Object of My Affection, another dazzler. You must also read his riveting, knockout piece, "Let's Say," about his uneasy truce with his difficult, antigay father in Patrick Merla's collection Boys Like Us. A couple as handsome as they are talented, McCauley and longtime partner Sebastian Stuart (who won the Ferro-Grumley Award this year for The Hour Between) live in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Stalking is never, never right but maybe readers need to stage a vigil there until McCauley agrees to write a novel about his blog character Sean Michael, who could be to self-absorbed gay twinks what Holly Golightly is to party girls in little black dresses.

A stage actor from the time he was thirteen in 1948, John Inman had to wait another twenty-five years for his biggest success, the immortally camp Mr. Humphries in the department store sitcom Are You Being Served? His many awards for the enduring role included BBC Television Personality of the Year. After the series ended he continued to enjoy a great following in Britain for his work as a pantomime dame, often playing one of two homely sisters with comedian Barry Howard known for his work on Hi-de-hi! From 1972 on, Inman lived with Ron Lynch. They married as soon as the UK allowed civil partnerships, in December 2005, and when Inman died of hep A two years later he left Lynch his entire estate valued at nearly three million pounds.

Thirty-five years ago when Dave Kopay became the first former NFL player to come out, the newspaper that ran the groundbreaking interview (The Washington Star) and tv newscasts that reported the story, received vociferous hate mail. Kopay had played eight years for San Francisco, Detroit, Washington, New Orleans, and Green Bay. Since 1975, he has been an enormous inspiration through his lectures, public appearances, and especially with the publication of his 1977 memoir The David Kopay Story which was a New York Times bestseller. However, the NFL has ignored him. To this day, they will not even hire him to be a diversity speaker to the league. And the total number of former NFL players to come out in the thirty-two years since Kopay said he’s gay is two: Roy Simmons in 1992 and Esera Tuaolo in 2002. Unable to get any sort of coaching job, Kopay worked for twenty years at his uncle’s flooring business, Linoleum City, in Hollywood. He has been involved with several sessions of Gay Games, most recently administering the Participants’ Oath in Chicago. A real hero, he announced he's leaving one million dollars to the University of Washington's Q Center.

Thirty-five years ago when Dave Kopay became the first former NFL player to come out, the newspaper that ran the groundbreaking interview (The Washington Star) and tv newscasts that reported the story, received vociferous hate mail. Kopay had played eight years for San Francisco, Detroit, Washington, New Orleans, and Green Bay. Since 1975, he has been an enormous inspiration through his lectures, public appearances, and especially with the publication of his 1977 memoir The David Kopay Story which was a New York Times bestseller. However, the NFL has ignored him. To this day, they will not even hire him to be a diversity speaker to the league. And the total number of former NFL players to come out in the thirty-two years since Kopay said he’s gay is two: Roy Simmons in 1992 and Esera Tuaolo in 2002. Unable to get any sort of coaching job, Kopay worked for twenty years at his uncle’s flooring business, Linoleum City, in Hollywood. He has been involved with several sessions of Gay Games, most recently administering the Participants’ Oath in Chicago. A real hero, he announced he's leaving one million dollars to the University of Washington's Q Center.

Francis & Witeck on HuffPost: Smithsonian Sticks Gays in the Vault

Charles Francis and Bob Witeck have published an important essay today on the Huffington Post criticizing the National Museum of American History for hiding from public view the Mattachine pickets that the Smithsonian was so eager to add to its collection in 2006. They write:

"A dozen picket signs on old wooden sticks carry the DNA of the gay civil equality movement in America. Forty-five years ago, this month, in 1965, these pickets were held high by men and women considered among the first generation of LGBT activists in front of Lyndon Johnson's White House.

"With the men wearing jackets and ties and tailored skirts for the ladies, all arrived neatly dressed to disarm the looks of fellow citizens, while their hand-lettered signs proclaimed unimaginable things like "First Class Citizenship for Homosexuals". Despite their professional appearances, this handful of men and women on this history-making picket line, knew perfectly well that their conduct literally put themselves and their jobs on the line, in broad daylight.

"Today, however, those brave pickets are stored in the dark of a Smithsonian vault, where they have been held for they past four years, ever since they first were presented to The National Museum of American History...

Continue reading at the Huffington Post.

Kleinbaum, Appiah, Siciliano, and Gambone Discuss LGBT Lives

(From left: editor Philip Gambone with subjects Carl Siciliano, Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum)

Of the 102 people Philip Gambone interviewed about their lives, 44 made it into his new book Travels in a Gay Nation: Portraits of LGBTQ Americans, and of those 3 appeared with him this week at the 82nd St. B&N: homeless lgbt youth advocate Carl Siciliano, Princeton professor Kwame Anthony Appiah, and Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum. In a wide-ranging, non-linear conversation the panel discussed lgbt history, visibility, coming out, community, religion, homophobia, and the evolution of post-70's New York.

Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum was very funny about her memories of coming by bus to Manhattan from New Jersey alone when she was twelve in 1971 and, as soon as she turned eighteen, "applying for asylum in NYC." She was blunt about religion being "the most powerful force in antigay rhetoric" and inspiring in how "the damage religion has done demands of us to push back to create a force of liberation."

Kwame Anthony Appiah said, "Most of the change in this country over the last few decades has come about just from people being visible."

Carl Siciliano lamented, "Young people come to us so often profoundly damaged by families who've bought into antigay religious doctrine" and that he struggles to make the larger lgbt community recognize homeless queer kids as our kids.

The 44 interviewees in Gambone's book are Dorothy Allison, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Tammy Baldwin, Christopher Barnhill, Alison Bechdel, Mandy Carter, Jennifer Chrisler, Beth Clayton and Patricia Racette, Kate Clinton, Judy Dlugacz, Arthur Dong, Mark Doty, Zoe Dunning, Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd, Lillian Faderman, Barney Frank, Malik Gillani and Jamil Khoury, Hillary Goodridge, Judith (Jack) Halberstam, Kim Crawford Harvie, Scott Heim and Michael Lowenthal, Jennifer Higdon, Frank Kameny, Randall Kenan, Sharon Kleinbaum, Andrew Lam, Joan Larkin, Stephin Merritt, Greg Millett, P. J. Raval, Gene Robinson, Richard Rodriguez, David Sedaris, Carl Siciliano, Dean Spade, George Takei, Rachel Tiven, Urvashi Vaid, Modesto "Tico" Valle, Russell van Kraayenburg.

The 58 interviewees axed from this volume are in terrific company, among them: John Amaechi, Don Bachardy, Kate Bornstein, Alexander Chee, Judy Grahn, Kevin Jennings, Michael Lucas, Armistead Maupin, David Mixner, David Plante, Ned Rorem, Paul Rudnick, Alex Sanchez, Marc Shaiman, Bob Smith, Ed White, and Bob Witeck.

Born June 25: Larry Kramer, Rictor Norton, George Michael

Larry Kramer was nominated for an Academy Award for his screenplay of Women in Love, losing to Ring Lardner Jr., for M*A*S*H, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for his play The Destiny of Me, losing to Tony Kushner for Angels in America. His controversial novel Faggots more or less predicted aids and has sold one million copies, huge for a gay book. He has been hiv+ for more than twenty years (he believes it is thirty years). Kramer is nothing if not a fighter and survivor, although in 1953, as a freshman at Yale, he tried to kill himself by swallowing 200 aspirin. He will be remembered for starting GMHC and ACT-UP, which not only changed the course of aids treatment but utterly transformed the nature of direct action political groups in America. As Michael Specter wrote in his essential profile of Kramer, “Public Nuisance,” in The New Yorker in May 2002, “It is difficult to overstate the impact of ACT UP.” His offer of millions of dollars to endow Yale with a permanent professorship in lgbt studies was rejected, but in 2001 his brother donated $1 million to start the university's Larry Kramer Initiative for Lesbian and Gay Studies. It was shut down in 2006. Kramer's long forthcoming opus, The American People, will reclaim the overlooked gay history of everything from Jamestown, George Washington, and Lincoln, to the present day.

In 1972, when almost no universities endorsed gay studies, Rictor Norton published his doctoral dissertation, The Homosexual Literary Tradition. Since then, he has illuminated gay history through several books including the seminal Mother Clap's Molly House: The Gay Subculture in England 1700-1830, and My Dear Boy, a collection of gay love letters through the centuries. He maintains a terrific website devoted to gay history. Having lived in the United Kingdom since the early 1970s, in 2005 Norton formed a civil union with his partner of thirty years.

Tight jeans, a black leather jacket, blond highlights, one big earring, three days’ stubble, and five or six killer hooks. With these weapons Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou conquered a decade. As late as 1995 Londoners voted that their favorite song of all time was Careless Whisper. Say what you will about the habitual public cruising, the drugs, and the  but, George Michael knows his way around a pop song. He has had twelve #1 hits in Britain, ten #1 singles in the United States, and has sold more than 85 million records worldwide. Long before Eminem or Justin Timberlake, George Michael was the first white male to top the black music charts, the first white male to duet with Aretha Franklin, and Wham! was the first Western pop act to tour China. His first serious boyfriend was the Brazilian designer Anselmo Feleppa, who died of aids within two years of their meeting. Although George Michael remained closeted to the public, Feleppa’s death spurred him to come out to his family and to write his #1 hit song Jesus to a Child. The entire cd Older is dedicated to Feleppa’s memory. For the past eleven years, George Michael has been in a relationship with Texan Kenny Goss. Although his career may have waned in the United States, he remains hugely popular overseas. Last June he became the first singer to perform at the new Wembley Stadium for 70,000 fans and on New Year’s Eve 2008 he was paid $3 million dollars to perform a one hour set in Moscow for 300 guests of Vladimir Potanin. Allegedly a new album is on its way, though it has been 18 years since he topped the US charts.

One Year Later

For those of us who would always choose prison before Broadway, the Filipino lockdown in Cebu City makes perfect sense. Security Director Byron Garcia brings the discipline of dancing to his eager inmates and when 1,500 of them performed Thriller it became a YouTube supersensation seen more than 42 million times. Never one to pass an opportunity for exploitation, Sony sent a choreographer and three principal dancers to lead the inmates in a promo for This Is It! Watch now on this, the first anniversary of Michael Jackson's death, or opt for the lower tech flashmob MJ tributes in Stockholm, Paris, Berlin, Hong Kong, and Seattle.

Born June 24: Vladimir Luxuria

Wladimiro Guadagno moved from Foggia to Rome in 1985 when he was twenty, and twenty years later she ran for a seat in the Italian Parliament. Now Vladimir Luxuria, she won, becoming the world's second trans MP, after New Zealand's Georgina Beyer. Prior to her victory she had been an actress, cabaret entertainer, and party promoter, organizing Rome's first gay pride in June 1994. A member of the Communist Refoundation Party, she lost her re-election bid in 2008 and bounced back from defeat by appearing on "the Italian answer to Survivor," a celebrity reality tv contest show called L'Isola dei Famosi which took place in Honduras. Faced with fierce competition from this supermodel dating this soccer star, Luxuria triumphed, winning the hearts of Italy in the decisive public poll. Required to make a charitable contribution of fifty-percent of her 200,000 euro winnings, she did not choose a T, B, G, or L nonprofit but instead selected UNICEF because she won't have children herself. Although she exclusively uses the feminine pronoun, has had rhinoplasty and partial breast construction, and "lives as a female," she has chosen not to have sex reassignment surgery and "remains physically and legally male." Today she's 45.

The Village Voice's 2010 Queer Issue: Lost in Generica

Forty years on, from this...

...to this

The Village Voice's annual Queer Issue came out today and it's a timeless artifact, because everything in it could be from the 90s or earlier. Their big stories for 2010 are: an aids death from 2001; a successful white gay man considers joining the GOP; gay print media is in trouble; straight men with body hair are sometimes friends with gay guys; a woman explains that longterm lesbian couples really do have sex; and the cover story enlightens us that Jersey trade enjoys getting laid (photo).

So, the final score of the LGBT pride issue is 6 G, 1 L, 0 B, and 0 T. Nothing is more 80s than that. Not to mention that the articles are void of any significant Latino, Asian, black, elderly, or student presence, or any aspect of what is quaintly called The Arts. Or sports. Or religion. Or business. And at most only two of the stories are connected to NYC.

The best piece is Fred Sargeant's memories of the first Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day in 1970, an event his partner Craig Rodwell helped to start in part as a reaction against Frank Kameny's strident conservatism and the Mattachine's mania to be "unthreatening." After years of Vietnam protests, after Woodstock, after the riots, Kameny was still insisting they dress like McCarthyites. And when two lesbians on the picket line in Philadelphia held hands Kameny separated them declaring, "none of that!" Rodwell realized the gay movement needed something completely different and brokered many local homophile groups into marching one year after Stonewall. The only abstainer was New York's Mattachine.

The Voice would have created a more relevant issue if it had used the 40th anniversary of that march to explore what it means to the lgbt movement that by and large the assimilationists have prevailed. Readers might learn more from a hard look at what we've lost and won from that path, as well as sparking to the next generation of widespread apathy and standout rebels, from GetEqual to angry hardcore queer artists.

Generic as they are, most of the articles do offer something of interest. But not the Straube GOP piece which is just too shallow. He cites Laura Bush's recent second-thoughts on gay marriage as proof of party progress, whereas that was a purely cosmetic gesture timed to be newsworthy as her book went on sale; she has done nothing to advocate for same-sex marriage. The fluff Straube considers hopeful signs are impotent against the Republicans' entrenched antigay agenda evident in every single congressional fight, that awful Texas platform, and echoed from the pulpits of all conservative, politically active religions.

Tony Phillips' The Guido Ideal Goes on the Down Low in Jersey.

Winnie McCroy on The Myth of Lesbian Bed Death.

Fred Sargeant's look back at the city's first gay pride march The Christopher Street Gay Liberation Day.

Michael Lavers' examines Gay Newspapers, Party Mags on the Wane.

Steve Weinstein's Aids Killed My Partner--But It Was His Decision To Die.

Joe Erbentraut's study of Straight Bears.

Trenton Straube's A Gay Man Considers Joining the GOP.

Born June 23: Alan Turing, David Leavitt

Anyone calculating the cost of Britain's horrific homophobia must include all the things Alan Turing didn't solve or invent because he killed himself at 41. The brilliant mathematician had already broken the Germans' Enigma code during WWII, become an OBE, laid the groundwork for the modern computer by designing the Automatic Computing Engine, and devoted himself to a field of mathematical biology called morphogenesis (specifically, discerning the Fibonacci numbers in plant structures). In 1952 his home was burgled by two men, one of whom was a 19 year-old Turning had slept with, and as a result of their break-in he was charged with gross indecency under the same 1885 law that felled Oscar Wilde. To avoid prison, he was forced to undergo painful injections of estrogen as a form of chemical castration. He died by eating a poisoned apple. His mother strongly believed the cyanide in the fruit was accidental, owing to her son's legendary carelessness, but his death was ruled a suicide. Timothy Ferris points out that Turing's favorite fairy tale was Snow White. The best short biography of him is The Man Who Knew Too Much.

Raised in Palo Alto, David Leavitt graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Yale at 21, by which time he had already published a gay themed short story in The New Yorker. His first collection, Family Dancing, appeared the following year and was nominated for an NBCC (losing to Louise Erdrich) and the PEN/Faulkner Award (won by Tobias Wolff). Since then he's published seven novels, the most recent of which, The Indian Clerk, was also a PEN/Faulkner finalist (won by Kate Christensen); three other collections of stories or novellas; his collected stories; a brief book on Florence; and, because karma is king, the short biography mentioned above of gay birthday-mate Alan Turing. He is a professor at the University of Florida, where he and his partner Mark Mitchell co-edit the literary journal Subtropics whose fiction is regularly selected as among the year's best. Leavitt and Mitchell also co-edited an anthology of gay fiction from 1748 to 1914, Pages Passed From Hand to Hand. They divide their time between Florida and Tuscany and in their spare time have co-written two other books about Italy. Today Leavitt turns 49.

Box Office Results: Stonewall, Prop 8 So-So; Joan Rivers, Love Soar

The two gay documentaries released last week struggled to find a sizable audience over the weekend. The American Experience episode turned feature documentary, Stonewall Uprising (above), played in 4 theaters with an okay per screen average of $3,932, while 8: The Mormon Proposition played on 16 screens with an average of $2,660. For comparison, the Joan Rivers documentary opened a week ago on 7 screens with an average of $23,479. This weekend it quadrupled its screen count to 28 and averaged $8,079. Earlier this year the Banksy doc Exit Through the Gift Shop opened on 8 screens and averaged $21,345. (As for narrative features, the comedy Cyrus debuted Friday on 4 screens with an average of $45,429, almost catching the year's highest, Polanski's The Ghost Writer.)

For whatever complicated social / economic / mystical reasons, exclusively lgbt-themed works in film and books lately are failing to attract significant numbers of customers. Maybe it's the long tail phenomenon, maybe it's a form of post-gay indifference, or maybe in this case the potential audience, like all Americans, are burnt out on bad news right now. Nevertheless, supporting lgbt work is the only way more lgbt work gets made.

Happily, my favorite movie of 2010 so far, I Am Love, the ravishing film starring Tilda Swinton as a misplaced Russian who married into an oppressively elegant Italian dynasty and lunges for real love outside, appeared on 4 screens earning a nice $15,188 average. I'm not linking to the rave review from Anthony Lane in this week's New Yorker because it's wall to wall spoilers, but I will say there's an enchanting small but crucial queer subplot. This spring when I saw the director interviewed at Lincoln Center, he said it's his attempt at Buddenbrooks. If there's something deeply wrong with you and Tilda herself isn't enough to get you there, the movie's sets, clothes, music, and men are exceptional.

E. Lynn Harris's Posthumous Novel, In My Father's House

Released today, intended as the first in a series about Bentley Dean, a Miami modeling agency owner and son of a prominent Detroit family who was best friends with his dad until he came out and was disowned, E. Lynn Harris's In My Father's House has earned strong advance reviews. The good notices appear to be more genuine than the sympathy praise that posthumous novels often garner. The prolific Harris would have turned 55 two days ago, on Father's Day, apt because critics say of all this novel's crisscrossing plots with his ex, Warren, and his dalliances with his models, and his concern over the 18 year-old Jah whom he's mentoring when the boy gets snatched up by a closeted married movie star, the man Bentley is most interested in reconnecting with is his homophobic dad. Needless to say, this being an E. Lynn Harris novel, there is also a beautiful, smart, stylish, successful, strong black woman who fully accepts and inspires the gay protagonist: here, she's Alex, co-owner of the modeling agency.

PW says, "Harris's wry tale about second chances highlights what readers have long loved about his work: his ability to depict the pursuit of love and self-respect, regardless of societal and family pressures."

Kirkus considers it, "A sudsy melodrama, to be sure, but one that offers a rare glimpse into the world of gay black men and the challenges they face."

Library Journal writes, "Full of romance, intrigue, and betrayal, Harris's novel will attract readers of gay fiction, African American fiction, and, of course, his many fans."

Born June 17-22: Kevin Aviance, E. Lynn Harris, Barry Manilow, James I

There was a time in nightclub life when Kevin Aviance, so inventive, so ahead of his time, seemed he might be the next Josephine Baker. His sensational song “Din Da Da” is timeless, as fresh today as the first time he performed it while Junior Vasquez was spinning at Arena. It was #1 on the Billboard dance chart, as were four of his subsequent singles, “Rhythm Is My Bitch,” “Alive,” “Give It Up,” and “Strut.” He has appeared in the movies Punks and Flawless, as well as America’s Next Top Model, The Tyra Banks Show, and in a leopard-print bodystocking in Madonna’s oh so smooth Harlem-based video for “Secret.” In June 2006, leaving the Phoenix after midnight, Kevin was brutally attacked by four young men ages 16, 18, 20, and 20, yelling anti-gay slurs. Two weeks later, fiercer than ever, Kevin appeared in the pride parade wearing a white top hat with his broken jaw wired shut. He was unable to sing for months. In March 2007, his four attackers plead guilty and were sentenced to prison terms ranging from six to fifteen years. Two days ago he sang at Fort Lauderdale Pride along with Jennifer Holliday.

In 1990, no publisher would take a chance on a first novel about a man torn between his girlfriend and his secret boyfriend, all of them black. Undaunted, the author, a successful IBM salesman who was used to breaking barriers, having been the first black editor of the yearbook at the University of Arkansas and the first black male Razorbacks cheerleader, decided to publish it himself. At black bookstores, book clubs, and beauty salons around Atlanta, he sold thousands of copies to gay men and straight women. A local sales rep mentioned the book’s popularity to the publisher of Anchor/Doubleday, which quickly republished that novel, Invisible Life, and all ten subsequent books by the phenomenal E. Lynn Harris. Every one of his books has been a bestseller. His sixth and seventh novels, Not a Day Goes By and Any Way the Wind Blows both debuted at #2 on the New York Times list. His author events regularly attract 900 people or more. Upbeat, optimistic, and romantic, his books never gloss over life’s struggles and pain. His memoir, What Becomes of the Brokenhearted, included his own coming out story as well as bouts with depression, drinking, low self-esteem, and a suicide attempt just before he decided to start writing. His career was booming last summer, between the release of his Basketball Jones in January and Mama Dearest in October, when in late July the 54 year-old Harris was found dead of heart disease in his Los Angeles hotel room. His books have sold more than four million copies.

When you think of early Bette Midler, singing for the gay men at the Continental Baths, do you think of Barry Manilow? He was her piano accompanist, helped produce her first two albums, and directed the music on her Divine Miss M Tour. At the time, he was a successful advertising jingle writer and musical director of the CBS show Callback. On tour, during Midler's intermission Manilow performed three songs from his first album, but it wasn't until Clive Davis saw him open for Dionne Warwick that his luck really changed. Davis and a reluctant Manilow fought about including Mandy on his second album; Davis won; hit after superhit followed: It's a Miracle, I Write the Songs, Tryin To Get the Feeling Again, Looks Like We Made It, Can't Smile Without You, Even Now, and of course Copacabana, which was so popular it inspired a TV movie starring Barry ("His name was Tony...") Twenty-odd years later Manilow still enjoys a large and devoted following. He headlines at the Paris Hotel Las Vegas and Oprah says he's one of her most requested guests. Manilow has lived with his manager Garry Kief for more than twenty years in homes they share in Bel Air and Palm Springs.

If anyone deserves the designation Father of our Country, isn’t it James I, who granted the Virginia Company charter 126 years before George Washington was born and for whom both Jamestown and the King James Bible are named?

When his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, was pregnant with him, his father successfully plotted to murder her private secretary. Within months of James’s birth, his father was killed, and three months after that his mother married the likely assassin, which hastened her falling popularity. She was forced to abdicate and James assumed the Scottish throne at age one. When he was fourteen, he fell in love with Esme Stewart, 1st Duke of Lennox, who was thirty-eight, and accordingly to eyewitness accounts, was “in such love with him as in the open sight of the people oftentimes he will clasp him about the neck with his arms and kiss him." The disapproving Scottish nobles first made Lennox choose between James and his Catholicism (he chose James) then eventually forced Lennox to flee to France.

In 1603, when Elizabeth I died and James became King of England, his exploits with men were well known and Londoners snidely said, “Elizabeth was King, now James is Queen.” Right away he faced two conspiracies against him,

In 1990, no publisher would take a chance on a first novel about a man torn between his girlfriend and his secret boyfriend, all of them black. Undaunted, the author, a successful IBM salesman who was used to breaking barriers, having been the first black editor of the yearbook at the University of Arkansas and the first black male Razorbacks cheerleader, decided to publish it himself. At black bookstores, book clubs, and beauty salons around Atlanta, he sold thousands of copies to gay men and straight women. A local sales rep mentioned the book’s popularity to the publisher of Anchor/Doubleday, which quickly republished that novel, Invisible Life, and all ten subsequent books by the phenomenal E. Lynn Harris. Every one of his books has been a bestseller. His sixth and seventh novels, Not a Day Goes By and Any Way the Wind Blows both debuted at #2 on the New York Times list. His author events regularly attract 900 people or more. Upbeat, optimistic, and romantic, his books never gloss over life’s struggles and pain. His memoir, What Becomes of the Brokenhearted, included his own coming out story as well as bouts with depression, drinking, low self-esteem, and a suicide attempt just before he decided to start writing. His career was booming last summer, between the release of his Basketball Jones in January and Mama Dearest in October, when in late July the 54 year-old Harris was found dead of heart disease in his Los Angeles hotel room. His books have sold more than four million copies.

When you think of early Bette Midler, singing for the gay men at the Continental Baths, do you think of Barry Manilow? He was her piano accompanist, helped produce her first two albums, and directed the music on her Divine Miss M Tour. At the time, he was a successful advertising jingle writer and musical director of the CBS show Callback. On tour, during Midler's intermission Manilow performed three songs from his first album, but it wasn't until Clive Davis saw him open for Dionne Warwick that his luck really changed. Davis and a reluctant Manilow fought about including Mandy on his second album; Davis won; hit after superhit followed: It's a Miracle, I Write the Songs, Tryin To Get the Feeling Again, Looks Like We Made It, Can't Smile Without You, Even Now, and of course Copacabana, which was so popular it inspired a TV movie starring Barry ("His name was Tony...") Twenty-odd years later Manilow still enjoys a large and devoted following. He headlines at the Paris Hotel Las Vegas and Oprah says he's one of her most requested guests. Manilow has lived with his manager Garry Kief for more than twenty years in homes they share in Bel Air and Palm Springs.

If anyone deserves the designation Father of our Country, isn’t it James I, who granted the Virginia Company charter 126 years before George Washington was born and for whom both Jamestown and the King James Bible are named?

When his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, was pregnant with him, his father successfully plotted to murder her private secretary. Within months of James’s birth, his father was killed, and three months after that his mother married the likely assassin, which hastened her falling popularity. She was forced to abdicate and James assumed the Scottish throne at age one. When he was fourteen, he fell in love with Esme Stewart, 1st Duke of Lennox, who was thirty-eight, and accordingly to eyewitness accounts, was “in such love with him as in the open sight of the people oftentimes he will clasp him about the neck with his arms and kiss him." The disapproving Scottish nobles first made Lennox choose between James and his Catholicism (he chose James) then eventually forced Lennox to flee to France.

In 1603, when Elizabeth I died and James became King of England, his exploits with men were well known and Londoners snidely said, “Elizabeth was King, now James is Queen.” Right away he faced two conspiracies against him,

When you think of early Bette Midler, singing for the gay men at the Continental Baths, do you think of Barry Manilow? He was her piano accompanist, helped produce her first two albums, and directed the music on her Divine Miss M Tour. At the time, he was a successful advertising jingle writer and musical director of the CBS show Callback. On tour, during Midler's intermission Manilow performed three songs from his first album, but it wasn't until Clive Davis saw him open for Dionne Warwick that his luck really changed. Davis and a reluctant Manilow fought about including Mandy on his second album; Davis won; hit after superhit followed: It's a Miracle, I Write the Songs, Tryin To Get the Feeling Again, Looks Like We Made It, Can't Smile Without You, Even Now, and of course Copacabana, which was so popular it inspired a TV movie starring Barry ("His name was Tony...") Twenty-odd years later Manilow still enjoys a large and devoted following. He headlines at the Paris Hotel Las Vegas and Oprah says he's one of her most requested guests. Manilow has lived with his manager Garry Kief for more than twenty years in homes they share in Bel Air and Palm Springs.

If anyone deserves the designation Father of our Country, isn’t it James I, who granted the Virginia Company charter 126 years before George Washington was born and for whom both Jamestown and the King James Bible are named?

When his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, was pregnant with him, his father successfully plotted to murder her private secretary. Within months of James’s birth, his father was killed, and three months after that his mother married the likely assassin, which hastened her falling popularity. She was forced to abdicate and James assumed the Scottish throne at age one. When he was fourteen, he fell in love with Esme Stewart, 1st Duke of Lennox, who was thirty-eight, and accordingly to eyewitness accounts, was “in such love with him as in the open sight of the people oftentimes he will clasp him about the neck with his arms and kiss him." The disapproving Scottish nobles first made Lennox choose between James and his Catholicism (he chose James) then eventually forced Lennox to flee to France.

In 1603, when Elizabeth I died and James became King of England, his exploits with men were well known and Londoners snidely said, “Elizabeth was King, now James is Queen.” Right away he faced two conspiracies against him,

NYT: David Levithan & John Green's New Gay Novel "Miraculous"

Reprising the coauthors-writing-alternate-chapters formula that made Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist a hit, David Levithan, this time with John Green, has created a novel "so tightly woven that it begins to feel miraculous," according to NYT critic Regina Marler. Will Grayson, Will Grayson, on sale now, is about two teenagers who have the same name. "One is a gay misanthrope who thinks he’s found his soul mate on the Internet, and the other is the nebbishy straight best friend of Tiny Cooper, a giant in every sense of the term: a 6-foot-6 football player, out and proud since the fifth grade, and the star of his own enormous life...Tiny Cooper feels not a moment of shame or alienation. When yet another boyfriend breaks up with him — by phone, by text, by Facebook status — he weeps publicly. He’s writing a musical about his life called Hold Me Closer, in which his best friend figures as “Phil Wrayson” and all 18 ex-boyfriends are depicted onstage." 

The Kansas City Star critic says, " it's a heartwarming read that will make you feel like you're not quite so alone."

In her review, Reginia Marler pairs Will Grayson, Will Grayson with another novel about lgbt students mounting a high school musical, A Love Story Starring My Dead Best Friend by Emily Horner. The narrator, Cass, "a short-haired, athletic, math-loving senior" is apparently the only person in school who isn't positive she's a lesbian. Says Marler, "But the strength of this promising novel is its emotional reach, from mourning through identity crisis through new love."

Kirkus praised Horner's debut saying, "More than a love story, this is a tale of survivors coping with the death of a friend, a girlfriend and the glue that held them all together. Bittersweet but never mawkish and punctuated with just the right amount of teen hipster humor. "Ninjas can divide by zero," the cast sings while flinging food-coloring-and-corn-syrup blood at the audience, and both Cass and readers laugh through tears."

Horner is a librarian in Brooklyn. Marler is the editor of Vanessa Bell's letters and the anthology Queer Beats: How the Beats Turned America On to Sex.

Texan GOP Platform Full-Scale Attack on Gays: Criminalize Homosexuality, End Partner Benefits, Stop Acceptance

The GOP in nation's second largest state has released its 2010 platform calling to criminalize homosexuality, to jail anyone who issues a same-sex marriage license, to prohibit any form of partner benefits, and to stop acceptance of gay people. Among other fearmongering, the platform states that homosexuality, "leads to the spread of dangerous, communicable diseases."

Read these excerpts from the Texas GOP platform so you know what we're up against. (More at Towleroad.) Don't fool yourself that you live in a world unconnected to Texas. Their governor Rick Perry (pictured) wants to be president; it's happened four times in the past twelve elections. And the audacity of their sweeping antigay position will embolden homophobes everywhere.

"Homosexuality – We believe that the practice of homosexuality tears at the fabric of society, contributes to the breakdown of the family unit, and leads to the spread of dangerous, communicable diseases. Homosexual behavior is contrary to the fundamental, unchanging truths that have been ordained by God, recognized by our country’s founders, and shared by the majority of Texans. Homosexuality must not be presented as an acceptable “alternative” lifestyle in our public education and policy, nor should “family” be redefined to include homosexual “couples.” We are opposed to any granting of special legal entitlements, refuse to recognize, or grant special privileges including, but not limited to: marriage between persons of the same sex (regardless of state of origin), custody of children by homosexuals, homosexual partner insurance or retirement benefits. We oppose any criminal or civil penalties against those who oppose homosexuality out of faith, conviction, or belief in traditional values.

"Texas Sodomy Statutes – We oppose the legalization of sodomy. We demand that Congress exercise its authority granted by the U.S. Constitution to withhold jurisdiction from the federal courts from cases involving sodomy.

"Marriage Licenses – We support legislation that would make it a felony to issue a marriage license to a same-sex couple and for any civil official to perform a marriage ceremony for such.

"Family Values – We affirm that this section is a response to the attacks on traditional family values. These include well- funded, vigorous political and judicial attempts by powerful organizations and branches of the government to force acceptance, affirmation and normalization of homosexual behavior upon school children, parents, educational institutions, businesses, employees, government bodies and religious institutions and charities. These aggressive, intolerant efforts marginalize as bigots anyone who dissents."

Looking forward to the Annise Parker's response as the mayor of Houston, a Democrat, and a lesbian.

The Twin Wins IMPAC Dublin Prize

For the third year in a row, a relatively unknown first novel has won the IMPAC Dublin award, making The Twin's author Gerbrand Bakker the tenth consecutive male writer to take the world's richest fiction prize. His book tells the story of a Dutch man named Helmer who is forced to return and run his family's small farm after his twin brother dies in a car accident. His companions are his ailing, aged father and, later, a wayward teenage boy sent to the country to straighten out. The IMPAC judges comment:

"Though rich in detail, it’s a sparely written story, with the narrator’s odd small cruelties, laconic humour and surprising tendernesses emerging through a steady, well-paced, unaffected style. The book convinces from first page to last. With quiet mastery the story draws in the reader. The writing is wonderful: restrained and clear, and studded with detail of farm rhythms in the cold, damp Dutch countryside. The author excels at dialogue, and Helmer’s inner story-telling voice also comes over perfectly as he begins to change everything around him. There are intriguing ambiguities, but no false notes. Nothing and no one is predictable, and yet we believe in them all."

Archipelago press published The Twin in the U.S. last August to little fanfare.

The other finalists were:

The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barberry

In Zodiac Light by Robert Edric

Settlement by Christopher Hein

The Believers by Zoe Heller

Netherland by Joseph O’Neill

God's Own Country by Ross Raisin

Home by Marilynne Robinson

Montana / Wyoming Postcard

 

In the high winds, the light moves rapidly across the very, very green plain. Below, two favorite metalworks. Click all to enlarge.

Last night my partner and I attended a dinner for about two hundred people at the TE Ranch, once home of William F Cody aka Buffalo Bill. By undeserved great good luck we were seated next to a former Wyoming governor and his terrific wife, my favorite kind of people -- no-nonsense western Democrats, East Coast educated (she), outdoorsy, travelers, and great readers. She's currently in the middle of Anthill by E.O. Wilson, whom she studied with, and stories by William Trevor, whom she met when they were ambassadors to Ireland in the final Clinton years.

 

One Shot Only: Tonight's Orgasm Photo Exhibit

If I weren't back in Wyoming (in ferocious windstorms that have felled trees, knocked out power at my hotel, and shoved me off the walking path) I would be at the Robert Goff Gallery tonight for the Fearless Project's first exhibit, a photography show called Instant capturing men's faces at the moment of sexual climax.  Tonight's artists include Stuart Sandford, David Buisan, John Arnsenault, and Fearless Project founder photographer Justin Violini. Gio Black Peter performs at 8:00 pm.

Open to all, 6:30 - 9:00 pm June 17 only, at Robert Goff, 537B W. 23rd St, NYC.

The Fearless Project's gay photography is not to be confused with Jeff Sheng's photography project Fearless in which he captures openly gay student athletes. The Fearless Project aims to be a "cultural initiative bringing together artists, outsiders, thinkers, musicians, designers, writers, and creatives."

Born June 16: Jaime Manrique

Born illegitimately in Colombia of an adulterous union, Jaime Manrique was not publicly acknowledged by his rich, prominent father who soon moved on to another mistress. His childhood struggles are just one facet of Manrique's landmark queer Latino Lit book Eminent Maricones: Arenas, Lorca, Puig, and Me. Some of the same early memories also surface in his book of poems, My Night with Federico García Lorca. His mother moved the family to Florida, where she became a domestic servant and Jaime excelled at school, earning his BA in English from the University of South Florida. After two more or less bisexual novels that got a lot of attention in Colombia, Manrique's first openly gay novel Latin Moon in Manhattan made a splash here in 1992. Five years later he edited Besame Mucho: New Gay Latino Fiction, which features seventeen short stories by Guillermo Reyes, James Canon, Erasmo Guerra, Jaime Cortez, Larry La Fountain-Stokes, Alex R. Silva, Adam Griego, Manrique himself, and nine other writers. He's won a Guggenheim for his nonfiction and three years ago he made a foray into Isabel Allende and Tomas Eloy Martinez territory with Our Lives Are the Rivers, his long-promised novel about Simón Bolívar's mistress Manuela Saenz. It won the International Latino Book Award for best historical novel. His next novel is called Cervantes Street.

Fabulous Beekman Juggernaut Hits Airwaves Tonight

 

A reminder that the premiere of hot couple Josh Kilmer-Purcell and Brent Ridge's reality show about their move from NYC to an upstate goat farm, The Fabulous Beekman Boys, airs tonight on Planet Green. It's easy to find the channel in your area. Charming as the gay farmers are, it's possible that the real stars of the show are the goats. Or their llama named Polka Spot. Or their bearish caretaker, Farmer John. Lots to love there. If like me you're living tv-free, read Josh's book, The Bucolic Plague: How Two Manhattanites Became Gentlemen Farmers: An Unconventional Memoir.

Two weeks ago when I was in Alaska, reader Chris Phillips gamely agreed to sub for Band of Thebes at the Beekman Boys event at ABC. He wrote: 

"Both the book and the show show a tender, honest relationship, but it seems "post gay" somehow. They are playing around with the idea of "camp" -- the promo for the show is a mini-musical with dancing girls and a llama named Polka Spot -- letting a wider straighter audience in on the fun. To me the most interesting character is their caretaker Farmer John. If I say too much about him, I think I would ruin it, but I can't wait to read and watch more."

For another take on the Fancy Gays Go Country phenomenon, check out the newly released paperback of Wade Rouse's At Least in the City Someone Would Hear Me Scream: Misadventures in Search of the Simple Life.

New Memoirs: Batt, Benatar, Belinda, Grier, Lavin, Clegg, Chely, Nellie

Big month for memoirs:  

Gay Mad Men star and home furnishings businessman Bryan Batt, She Ain't Heavy, She's My Mother.

Gay literary agent Bill Clegg who blew his $70,000 savings on crack and hustlers, Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man.

Pop culture critic and daughter of a lesbian Helena Andrews, Bitch Is the New Black. 

Blaxploitation superstar Pam Grier, Foxy: My Life in Three Acts.

Little House on the Prairie's blond pigtailed priss, Alison Arngrim, Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated.

Lesbian country singer Chely Wright, Like Me: Confessions of a Heartland Country Singer.

Folk singer Christine Lavin, Cold Pizza for Breakfast: A Mem-wha?.

Go-Go's lead singer and mother of a gay son Belinda Carlisle, Lips Unsealed.