Band of Thebes

Where the Heart Beats by Kay Larson

Published by Penguin two weeks ago, Kay Larson's Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists [Kindle] integrates gay life into the narrative better than did a recent Cage biography, which received far more attention. If you have any interest in the composer, his circle of friends, Eastern religion, or the making of art, seek out this book. The Boston Globe critic writes:

"For much of his life, like a Zen disciple, Cage sought to make art that honored the transitory sounds and events of everyday life. His rule-breaking forays into what became known as installation, performance and conceptual art paved the way to the avant-garde movements that still perplex audiences today.

"Consider his friends and followers: Robert Rauschenberg, Jasper Johns, Morton Feldman, Yoko Ono, Bruce Nauman and his longtime partner Merce Cunningham, to name a few. Larson convincingly argues that they walked on a shining path blazed by Cage."

 

Born June 27: Cazwell

40, yo!, same as Eminem will be in October. Raised in Worcester, Luke Caswell started singing with the Boston hip hop band Moreplay, but moved on from the city and the genre. He says, "I know a lot of gay rappers that really consider themselves hip hop and want to be accepted by hip hop producers, and my point of view is, 'Why bother? Why spend all my time and energy trying to make a culture who hasn’t acknowledged my existence for the past twenty years accept me?'" Now a New Yorker, he djs and hosts weekly club nights downtown. He was an opening act on the Cyndi Lauper/ Debbie Harry/ Erasure/ everybody True Colors tour in 2007, played Dior Hommes after party in 2008, judged RuPaul's Drag Race, and has had his songs played on LoGo and True Blood. To date his biggest hit is the sweet and sweaty ode to all things oral, Ice Cream Truck. The DIY charm of that suckadelic jingle is missing from his most recent release, a duet with Peaches called Unzip Me. His next will be Rice & Beans, a gay romance with an uptown Dominican hottie. This summer he plays Albuquerque, Greensboro, Vegas, Norfolk, Barcelona, and Indianapolis. Read a recent interview.

[On some internet pages Cazwell's birth year has been changed from 1972 to 1979. Maybe the older date was a mistake, or possibly this is a professional nuance between Cazwell and Luke Caswell, in the same convoluted way that Queen Latifah "isn't gay" but Dana Owens is a lesbian.]

Eurovision 2012

The ugliest act at the 57th Eurovision Song Contest was neighbor Iran teasing host country Azerbaijan that the event would include a gay parade, and their indignant response trying to prove how much they hate homosexuals.

In their fear of flamboyant fanfare they might have been imagining Ireland's Jedward, the twin bros who say they are not gay, rather than Iceland's Jonsi, who has been out for many years. Tough call, but the gayest backup singers either were from Italy, wearing a full rainbow of colored shirts, or from France, going one better by going shirtless.

Sweden's Loreen won in a landslide for an unconvincing club song called Euphoria.

Jay-Z, Will, Ellen, and Jeanette

Decoded author Jay-Z has come out strongly for gay marriage, saying, "It's no different than discriminating against blacks. It's discrimination, plain and simple." The Week wonders if this endorsement from Beyonce's husband is more influential than Obama's. Not so long ago Jay-Z was rapping about fags and faggots. Now he says of anti-gay marriage homophobia, "I’ve always thought of it as something that is holding the country back. What people do in their own homes is their business and you can choose to love whoever you love. That’s their business."

Ditto Will Smith.

The Kennedy Center announced it will honor Ellen DeGeneres with the 15th Mark Twain Prize. Board member Cappy McGarr (!) said they are not making a political statement by selecting a married lesbian. “This has nothing to do with any political issue,” he said. “But she’s brilliantly shined a light on society, and that’s what Mark Twain did.”

Manchester University has named Jeanette Winterson professor of creative writing for two years. She will teach undergraduates and masters students, and she will do four public events a year. She takes the position after Colm Tóibín's one-year stay, following four years of Martin Amis.

Born May 16: Liberace

Denial wears many faces, and six gaudy rings. Liberace’s titanic flamboyance and volcanic success as a popular pianist — his tv show outranked I Love Lucy, he sold more than two million albums in 1953 alone, the Guinness Book of World Records listed him as the world's highest paid musician and pianist, and he has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — was punctuated by his repeated protestations, in court, that he was not a homosexual and had never engaged in a homosexual act. In 1957, he sued a British tabloid for libel for implying he was gay and won $22,000. In 1982, when his live-in boyfriend/chauffeur Scott Thorson sued him for $113 million in palimony, Liberace continued to claim he had never had sex with a man. Thorson got around $95,000. Even as Liberace was dying of aids in 1987, he stridently denied he had aids (instead blaming his drastic weight loss on a watermelon diet) and he still maintained he had never had gay sex. In his final months, somehow still believing that his fans were ignorant of his homosexuality, he worried to his manager that if they knew, “that’s all they’ll remember about me.” Steven Soderbergh's upcoming Liberace biopic, Behind the Candelabra, has been downgraded from a feature to an HBO movie next year. Filming begins this summer with Michael Douglas as Liberace and Matt Damon as Thorson.

Born May 7: Tchaikovsky

Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, Sleeping Beauty, Eugene Onegin, The Queen of Spades, the love theme from Romeo and Juliet, the 1812 Overture, Symphonies 4, 5, and 6 — what would the world listen to without Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky? Unfortunately, his private life was less sublime than his music. At 37, although he knew he loved men, he agreed to marry a female fan, Antonina Miliukova. Within two weeks of their wedding he tried to kill himself, hoping to catch pneumonia by soaking himself in the Moscow River. At the urging of his doctor, he fled to St. Petersburg and never saw his wife again, although he continued to support her. (The cost of the closet can be seen all around him: Miliukova had several children by other men, gave each infant to an orphanage and spent her final twenty-one years in a home for the certifiably insane. Tchaikovsky's brother Modest was also gay, and he too made an unhappy marriage.) Tchaikovsky enjoyed great renown during his lifetime and among his countless honors two days before he turned 51, he was the conductor at the opening night of Carnegie Hall. When he died at 53, sixty thousand people applied for tickets to his funeral, which for only the third time in Russian history was paid for by the Tsar.

Born April 23-24: Wonner, Benson, Halston, Jónsi

An abstract expressionist of the Bay Area Figurative Movement, Paul Wonner (1920-2008) maybe wasn't Diebenkorn but his early and middle works endure. Above are his Sarah Vaughn Singing (1963) and Woman with Flowers (1961). For more than fifty years he was partners with Theophilus Brown who, at 91, is said still to paint every day in San Francisco. In the 1960s they lived in Santa Monica and were friends with the locals, William Inge, Andre Previn, Isherwood and Bachardy, Eva Marie Saint and her husband. The Guggenheim, SFMoMA, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum are among the many institutions that collect Wonner's work.

You think you got a big diary? A.C. Benson’s was bigger. Humungous, in fact. His lifelong journals stretched beyond four million words (or, five times more than Shakespeare's collected works), until his death in 1925. He taught at Cambridge and wrote a bestselling collection of essays called From a College Window, as well as many other books. Undoubtedly he is best remembered today not for his poetry but for writing the lyrics to the patriotic song Land of Hope and Glory. Benson was one of six children of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Edward White Benson; none of the children ever married and two of his brothers were also gay.

Born in Des Moines, graduated from a high school in Evansville, Indiana, Roy Halston Frowick had shed the Midwest along with his first and last names by the time he designed Jackie Kennedy’s iconic inauguration pillbox hat when he was twenty-nine. Soon after, he began designing clothes, which were standouts for their elegance and simplicity. As famous for his perpetual partying at Studio 54 as he was for his fashions, Halston was the first designer to understand the power of licensing his brand. His name appeared on everything from scarves to eyeglasses to perfume to the uniforms for airlines and rental car companies, yet because he was a perfectionist unable to delegate any designing to his staff, he cracked under enormous pressure. The firm that bought his company asked him to design a clothing line for J.C. Penney, and when he did so, Bergdorf’s stopped carrying his clothes and many longstanding clients decamped to other designers. Ultimately he was fired from his own company and legally barred from designing under his name. He left New York for San Francisco and died of aids in 1990.

Who’s that playing his guitar with a bow like a cello? And who sings the end credits song "Sticks and Stones" in How to Train Your Dragon? Why, it’s Jónsi, of course, the lead singer of that other Icelandic musical sensation, Sigur Rós. They followed the worldwide success of their 1999 post-rock album Ágætis byrjun, with 2002’s album called ( ), which was sung entirely in Vonlenska, or Hopelandic, a made-up language of nonsense syllables. Because it sounds similar to Icelandic, it’s an open question whether people in other parts of the world could tell any difference, but those fans would at least have noticed that the accompanying lyrics booklet was left blank for listeners to write their own meaning of the words. Sigur Rós’s songs have been used in movies by Greg Araki, Cameron Crowe, and Wes Anderson, as well as on numerous tv shows, and they’ve sold more than two million albums. Jónsi is 100% supergay and in 2009 released an album called Riceboy Sleeps with his boyfriend under the moniker Jónsi and Alex [Somers, an American]. He released his first solo album Go in 2010. Last year he reteamed with Cameron Crowe, scoring his feel-good family film We Bought a Zoo starring Matt Damon.

Born April 20: Takei, Forrest, Vandross

When he was five in 1942, Los Angeles-born George Takei and his family were sent to an Arkansas internment camp for Japanese Americans. Relocated to a camp in Tule Lake, California, they were not allowed to return to Los Angeles until after the war. Takei attended Berkeley and graduated from UCLA, where he stayed on to get his masters in theater. He speaks English, Japanese, and Spanish fluently. In addition to his career-defining role as Sulu on Star Trek, he ran for mayor of Los Angeles in 1973. Of seventeen candidates, he came in second, behind Tom Bradley. Since 2006 he has been the official announcer on Howard Stern’s satellite radio show. He met Brad Altman, his partner of twenty-two years, at Frontrunners. They were married in California in September 2008 at the Japanese American National Museum, which Takei co-founded. He is 75 today and currently on Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice.

Novelist Katherine V. Forrest, 73, writes the Kate Delafield detective books, often cited as the first lesbian mystery series. Her debut novel, Curious Wine, has become an lgbt classic, selling more than 300,000 copies. She has won three Lambda awards, including their Pioneer Award. Forrest also writes science fiction novels, most notably the Daughters of a Coral Dawn trilogy. She and her longtime partner Jo Hercus now live in Palm Springs.

Preeminent among R&B and soul singers, Luther Vandross won eight Grammys and sold more than 25 million albums worldwide. Initially Vandross preferred to stay in the background, writing songs, producing, and singing backing vocals for Barbra Streisand, Bette Midler, Carly Simon, Chaka Khan, Chic, Diana Ross, Donna Summer, and for Roberta Flack, who finally insisted he sing for himself. After two unsuccessful albums with his group Luther, he released his first solo album, Never Too Much, which went double platinum. From then on he has been a major presence on R&B charts and radio. Among his greatest hits are “The Glow of Love,” which spent sixteen weeks at number one, “Power of Love/Love Power,” “Here and Now,” “Best Things in Life Are Free,” with Janet Jackson, and “Dance with My Father” which won four Grammys including Song of the Year. A diabetic suffering from hypertension, Vandross struggled with his weight which sometimes exceeded 300 pounds. In April 2003 he had a stroke and never regained his health, dying in July 2005. Although he avoided questions about his personal life, his homosexuality was a wide open secret.

Born April 17: Chavela Vargas

Celebrated queer birthdays since Saturday: Leonardo da Vinci, Henry James, John Gielgud, George Platt Lynes, Don Roos, Merce Cunningham, Essex Hemphill, Thornton Wilder, Lindsay Anderson, and my little bit awesome sister Angela who very early on proved herself the smartest member of my family by asking herself aloud why our father had roped the bicycles to the top of the car before backing out of the garage.

Chevela Vargas, 93 today, did not release her first album until she was 42, didn't officially come out as a lesbian until she was 81, and didn't debut at Carnegie Hall until she was 83. What was she doing all those years before recording Noche de Bohemia in 1961? Well, she dressed as a man, often in her signature red jorongo, smoked cigars, drank heavily, and packed a pistol, so obviously she was busy with more than singing rancheras in the streets. And yes, she had an affair Frida Kahlo (as Josephine Baker had). Since that first record, she has released more than eighty albums. Her great fame of the 1960s and 70s subsided when she retired to battle her alcoholism. She returned to performing at 72 in 1991 in Mexico City. Since then her music has been widely used in films and she has appeared singing in several movies including Almodovar's Flower of My Secret, Taymor's Frida [below], and Innartu's Babel. All I can say is buy her, beware: The first time you hear Chavela unleash her power midway through the quiet Paloma Negra you might drop whatever you're holding.

Born January 8: Winnaretta Singer, David Bowie

Isaac Merritt Singer, father of the modern sewing machine, also sired 24 children, the 20th of whom was music patron and lesbian Winnaretta Singer. (When Isaac made his first fortune of $200,000 in 1839 with an invention that drilled rock, he retired and returned to acting, touring with his own theater troupe for five years. In 1849 he developed a wood carving machine and in 1851 he obtained a patent for improvements on someone else's unwieldy sewing apparatus.) Winnaretta was born in Yonkers, but the family soon moved to Paris, then to London, before settling in Devon where Isaac built a 115-room mansion modeled on the Petit Trianon at Versailles. When she was ten her father died and their mother moved them back to Paris, where, in her late teens, Winnaretta was open about her lesbian relationships. At 22 she married Prince Louis de Scey-Montbéliard and within hours established a no-sex rule: On their wedding night she is said to have climbed atop an armoire and informed her surprised husband that she would kill him if he came nearer. She continued her affairs with women and within five years their marriage was annulled. Among her many lovers were goddaughter (or daughter) of Edward VII, Olga de Meyer, painter Romaine Brooks, pianist Renata Borgatti, and novelist Violet Trefusis.

When she was 29 she agreed to marry happily and platonicly the 59 year-old Prince Edmond de Polignac who shared her deepest love of music and, it seems, her homosexuality. Their famous salon in their mansion on what is today Avenue Georges-Mandel hosted first performances of new work by Debussy, Fauré, and Ravel with frequent guests Proust, Cocteau, Colette, Diaghilev, Monet, and Isadora Duncan, who had a baby by one of Winnaretta's brothers. Eight years into their marriage, the prince died and Winnaretta commissioned more than seven compositions in his honor including works by Stravinsky, Satie, and Weill. Winnaretta played the piano and organ, and she painted, but her greatest contributions to the arts were as patron to individuals, ballets, operas, and symphonies. In 1911 she built a public housing project and during WWI she and Marie Curie transformed private limousines into rolling radiology units to aid the injured at the front. Born in New York during the Civil War she died in London during WWII, in 1943 at 78 living with her lover Alvilde Chaplin, 34. Winnaretta is included in Diana Souhami's Wild Girls: Paris, Sappho, and Art and is the subject of Sylvia Kahan's biography Music's Modern Muse.

Light years ahead of the pack in his androgyny, bisexuality, theatricality, and his music, David Bowie today turns 65. This year marks his 20th anniversary with Iman and the 40th anniversary of his Carnegie Hall debut, which was only his third show ever in the U.S. The critic for Newsday, Robert Christgau, called Bowie "an English fairy" and complained that songs like "Andy Warhol" weren't manly enough for American rockers. Of course, Bowie had sunk to his knees in front of guitarist Mick Ronson and simulated oral sex. Bowie's son Duncan, 41 this year, directed the movies Moon and Source Code. Bowie's daughter Lexi is 11.

Born December 28: F.W. Murnau, Manuel Puig, Socalled

After studying art history at the University of Heidelberg and flying as a combat pilot in WWI, F.W. Murnau directed his first film The Boy in Blue in 1919 when he was thirty-one. Before his death in a car crash at forty-two, he became one of cinema's early giants -- (said to be 6'9" tall) -- with a prodigious output in Germany, most famous of which is Nosferatu from 1922. After four years and many more successes (The Last Laugh, Faust) Murnau moved to Hollywood and made what many critics consider one of the greatest films ever, Sunrise, which shared the top prize at the first Oscar ceremony. Sunrise is #82 on the AFI 100 Greatest Films list but in 2002 the British Film Institute ranked it #7 of all time. He made two more movies -- Four Devils (lost) and Our Daily Bread (released as City Girl) -- before his final picture, Tabu, a loincloth romance shot in Tahiti that won a cinematography Oscar for Floyd Crosby (father of David Crosby who is biologically the father of Melissa Etheridge's children). He died a week before Tabu's premiere. Because humans are easily titillated, and because some are snickering homophobes, the baseless rumor persists that Murnau's fatal car crash was the result of his performing oral sex on his chauffeur.

Born in central Argentina in 1932, Manuel Puig first wanted to be an architect then became a film archivist with hopes of becoming a screenwriter. His love of movies infuses his first novel, Betrayed by Rita Hayworth, published when he was thirty-six. Praised in Latin America as that work was, his international reputation rests on his fourth novel, published in 1976, about a gay man and a political prisoner sharing a cell: Kiss of the Spider Woman [[Kindle]] also became an Oscar-winning film in 1985 and a Tony-winning Broadway musical in 1993. The buoyancy of his early books, mixing high literary art with the low-brow style of telenovas, gave way to a bitterness in later books that reduced their popularity. A leftist exile in Mexico City for decades, he died there at fifty-seven suffering a heart attack after gall bladder surgery.

 

Who brings the funk, da noise, and the klezmer? That's right, the super original Jewish Canadian rapper Josh Dolgin aka Socalled. If you think Ukrainian music from the 1930s won't mesh with drum n bass, you haven't heard his Ghettoblaster. His trippy "You Are Never Alone" video became a YouTube sensation with 2.5 million views, and last year he was the subject of a feature documentary by Garry Beitel. In a world of timid, homogenized, market-driven art, Socalled is a standout. Which doesn't mean everything he tries works, but when he hits, he's genius. I met him and loved him after the NYC screening of the documentary. Not to brag, but after talking a while I did the very best thing one man can do for another... insisted he read Tatyana Tolstaya. Check his upcoming tour in February and March.

Born December 10: Brian Molko

Raised by strict parents who disapproved of artistic expression and tried to steer their son toward a career in banking, the teenage Brian Molko was no better understood by select classmates at Luxembourg's European School where rampant bullying ultimately led him to withdraw and enroll at the American International School. It was the 80s so naturally he wore eyeliner, lipstick, and black nail polish. Just as predictably, he studied acting at college in London and started a band. But unlike millions of other alt/punk/glam/goth wannabes, Placebo had it. Their demo got them gigs opening for Bowie and their debut was a hit across Europe, thanks to touring with U2 and their own breakout single, Nancy Boy. Bowie also invited Placebo to play his 50th birthday party at Madison Swuare Garden and he dueted with them at the BRIT Awards. Molko appeared in Todd Haynes' Velvet Goldmine as the lead singer of The Flaming Creatures. Every two or three years since 1996 Placebo has released a new album, all of which have peaked in the top 10 in the UK and the past four of which have reached #1 in France. Molko sings, writes their songs, plays lead guitar, says he has done every known drug on earth, came out as bi, lived with a woman, had a son named Cody, and separated. Five years ago he told an interviewer he regretted coming out and wished he had been more "quiet" like Michael Stripe and Morrissey:

"I was open about my sexuality because I was filled with a great deal of musical bravado when Placebo started. Coming out of the closet seemed to be important to me in terms of making a stand. Unfortunately, we became this faggy band in dresses in the eyes of the media. People started to talk about that and not the music as a by-product."

Next month the band headlines a concert at Sundance. They will be back in the studio, recording a full-length release for 2012.

Born November 29: Peter Cameron, Billy Strayhorn, Simon Amstell

Not to imply that movie adaptations are the ultimate yardstick of artistic merit but of Peter Cameron's five novels, three have been made into feature films. The stories he tells resonate deeply with other types of storytellers. And with readers. And with critics. The New York Times Book Review said, "The Weekend [[Kindle]] echoes Virginia Woolf, E.M. Forster, D.H. Lawrence, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose brilliant narrative critiques of material culture open, again and again, to the metaphysical, to that dimension where the known world cedes to mystery." The London Times wrote, "If The City of Your Final Destination were eligible for the Man Booker Prize I would be pressing for it to be on the shortlist. It has all the qualities currently undervalued on the literary scene: understatement, humour, and a dispensing with pedestrian naturalism... it has the dream-like mistiness of somewhere in one of Shakespeare's late plays." The Philadelphia Inquirer hailed Andorra [[Kindle]] as "a nearly perfect book . . . a work of remarkable and sustained invention and imagination." The Toronto Star said Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You [[Kindle]] is "considerably more sophisticated, subtle, and rewarding" than Catcher in the Rye. Peter has also written a play, two marvelous collections of short stories, and in his spare time he publishes extremely elegant handmade books in very limited editions at his Wallflower Press. His disquieting, engrossing, and beautiful sixth novel, Coral Glynn, will be published next March. I read it in October and am still enslaved to its understated power.

Jazz genius Billy Strayhorn spent his life in a jam: professionally, he couldn’t live with or without Duke Ellington. Gay in an intolerant time and homophobic musical subculture, he was lucky to be able to live and work openly behind the protective band leader. Yet Ellington took credit for Strayhorn’s music and made him work without a contract. Duke’s highest earning number, his signature tune, the holy grail of the era, Take the A Train, was, unknown to everyone at the time, written by Strayhorn, who never received any royalties. Ellington got rich. Strayhorn worked mainly to be able to work, without recognition or reward. But what work it is: Lush Life, Day Dream, Rain Check, Satin Doll, Chelsea Bridge, Lotus Blossom, Clementine, Johnny Come Lately, and many songs recorded by his dear friend Lena Horne, including Maybe, Something To Live For, and the double-edged Love Like This Can’t Last. As for his own “love like this,” within his first year in New York he and his boyfriend Aaron Bridgers moved in together and lived openly as a couple in Harlem, brave for 1940, when he was twenty-four. And, after a life of heavy drinking and constant smoking, when he died of cancer of the esophagus at fifty-one, he died not in Lena Horne’s arms as an oft-repeated story has it [she was in Europe], but with his partner Bill Grove. Although that was two years before Stonewall, Strayhorn worked in the early gay rights movement. Proving the depth of the prejudice he struggled against, even now the official Billy Strayhorn website completely de-gays him. We've had the prestigious biography for fifteen years; where is the Hollywood biopic?

Do you think Simon Amstell knew he was gay before or after he knew he was funny? At fourteen he appeared on a British morning chat show impersonating Dame Edna. The sweetness and malice stuck. Now 32, Simon's humor is sometimes branded "mean" or "horrible." (He prefers "cheeky.") True, he teased Amy Winehouse about her drinking, but as the host of Popworld from 2000 to 2006 he was often criticized for asking famous singers exactly what viewers wanted to know. One "notorious" incident was when Britney Spears appeared on the show long after rehab, court hearings to determine her stability, and public displays of erratic behavior, like shaving her head. Simon asked if she thought she'd "gone a bit nuts?" Britney cried, and people attacked Simon. To closeted Savage Garden singer Darren Hayes, Simon asked, "So, when are you going to come out, then?" Hayes said, "Excuse me?" Simon said, "You're obviously gay. Why won't you come out?" This was cut from the aired version. Hayes calls the incident pivotal in his finally coming out two years later and still refers to Simon as a "total prick." From October 2006 to January 2009, he hosted the comedy quiz show Never Mind the Buzzcocks, winning top category prizes from the Royal Television Society, the British Comedy Awards, and the Broadcast Awards. The Times named the show (during Simon's era) one of the best forty programs of the decade. In 2010 he co-created, co-wrote and co-starred in Grandma's House, an award-winning sitcom in which his hapless, neurotic, adorable character, a former quiz show host named Simon, returns to live with his cheerful, middle class family. It's now filming its second season.

Below, John Barrowman challenges him to a gay-off on Buzzcocks and a clip from Grandma's House. Click through for cheekier clips lampooning acting coaches and Ben Whishaw.

 

Born November 17: Rock Hudson, RuPaul

Winnetka's Roy Scherer Jr was renamed and remade by a Hollywood gay impresario and total mess whom you can read about in dastardly detail in The Man Who Invented Rock Hudson: The Pretty Boys and Dirty Deals of Henry Willson. Although in his first movie, Fighter Squadron, the 6'5" hunk needed 38 takes to nail his only spoken line, with coaching he became an affable, natural superstar. He reached a new high with Douglas Sirk's Magnificent Obsession in 1954 and the next year barely dodged certain doom: The tabloid Confidential threatened to report his secret gay affairs. Instead, Willson gave them dirt on two of his other, less lucrative clients, Rory Calhoun (prison stint) and Tab Hunter (arrested at a gay party five years earlier), and shoehorned Hudson into a sham marriage with his secretary. In 1956, Hudson and fellow closet case James Dean both earned Oscar nominations for Giant opposite Elizabeth Taylor, who would 29 years later be galvanized by Hudson's death to force an unwilling nation to confront AIDS. As much as his public acknowledgement finally "gave a face" to the disease that had already killed thousands, it also fueled a panicked distrust of all gay men because he had hidden his status from his sex partners like Marc Christian and his kissing co-stars like Linda Evans. Succumbing just before he turned 60, he would have been 86 today. He lives on in celluloid glory and in the pages of his friend Armistead Maupin's Further Tales of the City as the virile icon Blank Blank.

Like any other future drag star born in 1960, RuPaul Andre Charles spent his childhood in San Diego lipsynching Supremes songs, being called names, avoiding sports, and winning the two most important prizes in junior high: Best Dancer and Best Afro. High school didn't go as well (he was expelled for not attending), until he moved to Atlanta with his brother and sister-in-law at sixteen. He began to blossom, thanks largely to drama class, though his attendance in every other subject was still a problem. Eventually he dropped out, got his GED, started community college, and quit. When he was twenty-two he appeared on the American Music Show with two girls as RuPaul and the U-Hauls. When he was thirty-two, the nation was coming down from twelve years of Reagan-Bush, grunge was peaking, and RuPaul put on her best blond wig, her brightest jewels, her fiercest heels, and taught the whole world to sing, "Sashay, chante!" "Work it, girl!" and "You better work!"

Oddly, that hit, Supermodel, only reached #45 on the pop charts, but it remained in heavy rotation on MTV forever and became a cultural moment. Whereas most drag representations before her were catty and bitchy, RuPaul's message was love everybody; everybody, love! Subsequent singles milked the same bouncy vibe but failed to catch on with the masses, though Back to my Roots is an essential history of black hairstyles in three danceable minutes. Adding to her list of drag queen firsts, RuPaul became the face of MAC cosmetics and sang a duet with Elton John. She co-hosted KTU's popular morning show for two years and hosted her own tv show on VH1. Season four of her popular RuPaul's Drag Race begins on Logo in January 2012 with 13 contestants and more episodes (18) than ever before.

Born November 2: Luchino Visconti, k.d. lang

Born a count in one of northern Italy's six richest families, Luchino Visconti was adrift until he was thirty, when Coco Chanel decided he should work in movies and got him a job as third assistant director on a film by Jean Renoir. His own debut as a director came after seven years, during which time he learned the trade and dated the photographer Horst. Of his twenty films, most praised are The Leopard, The Damned, The Stranger, Rocco and his Brothers, with its open subplot of the boxing coach who pays young fighters for sex, and Death in Venice, from Thomas Mann's #1 novel of the all-time 100 best lgbt books. At sixty-nine, Visconti died of a heart attack in Rome, survived by his partner of more than ten years German actor Helmet Berger, who appeared in four of Visconti's films, most notably The Damned and Ludwig. (And here bare.) Sandy Leonard, an expert on such matters, says Visconti worked through his opening-night jitters at Covent Garden by making out in an elevator with Alain Delon. 

Before Melissa, before Ellen, before George Michael, before Adam Lambert, k.d. lang came out way back in 1992. Although that was fairly groundbreaking at the time, her coming out did nothing to hinder the sales of her multi-platinum album Ingenue, nor did it prevent her from winning another Grammy, being made an officer of the Order of Canada, or getting named to VH1's 100 Greatest Women in Rock n Roll and CMT's 40 Greatest Women in Country Music. In fact, she sparked a much angrier backlash in rural areas by supporting a vegetarian campaign called Meat Stinks. From 1997 to 2000 she took a break, fell in love with The Murmurs singer Leisha Hailey, moved to Los Angeles, and came back with her happiest album, Invincible Summer, quoting Camus: In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer. Three years later she won her fourth Grammy for her collaboration with Tony Bennett and also released an album of covers by Canadian composers. In April she released Sing It Loud, a cd with her Siss Boom Band. In September, Tony Bennett released Duets II, featuring another cover with k.d., this time "Blue Velvet."

Paul Russell Reads from The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov

Tonight at the B&N on Broadway at 82nd St., Paul Russell reads from The Unreal Life of Sergey Nabokov [[Kindle]], his sixth novel and his first to reimagine the life of a gay historical figure. From St. Petersburg to England to Paris to Berlin, Sergey meets Diaghilev, Stravinsky, Magnus Hirschfield, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, Cocteau, and Picasso, yet remains eternally overshadowed by his brother Vladimir. PW said, "With compelling characters and steady prose, the reader will breeze through this pleasurable, heart-breaking account of the other Nabokov." Fifteen authors have blurbed the book, including Christopher Bram who knows a thing or two about using fiction to rescue forgotten gay figures of the 1920s-50s: "A miraculous novel, witty, sexy, dramatic, and profound, the deeply involving story of a young man who experiences too much love, beauty and history in the first half of the twentieth century. It is Paul Russell's masterpiece."

 

If you can clone yourself, also see Chic superstar Nile Rodgers tonight at the Union Square B&N reading from his memoir of writing, producing, and performing megamonster hits with Diana Ross ("Upside Down"), David Bowie ("Let's Dance"), Peter Gabriel ("Walk through the Fire"), Duran Duran ("The Reflex"), Sister Sledge ("We Are Family") and Madonna ("Material Girl," "Like a Virgin"). Rodgers says he was in a Manhattan bar's restroom with five Diana Ross impersonators when he realized he should write a song specifically for her gay fans. The result was "I'm Coming Out." His book is called Le Freak: An Upside Down Story of Family, Disco, and Destiny [[Kindle]].

Born October 13: Kele Okereke

Liverpool born, London raised Kele Okereke was twenty-three in 2005 when Bloc Party released their million-selling debut Silent Alarm which peaked at #3 on the UK charts. Although by that point Kele had been in bands for five or six years, he kept his musical exploits secret from his "super Catholic" Nigerian parents until the album's release. Despite his newfound fame, he continued to study at university, specializing in English literature. Through two more successful albums and subsequent touring, Kele kept his gay life largely hidden, though he did compare himself to Bowie, Molko, and Morrissey. Bloc Party went on hiatus on Halloween 2009 and Kele came out in a March 2010 interview with Butt. Three months later he released his solo album The Boxer. In a few weeks he'll release his second solo effort, The Hunter. Said to be shy, it hasn't stopped him from publicly feuding with Oasis, "the most pernicious band of all time." Today, he's thirty.

Born September 12-13: Nell Carter, Leslie Cheung

Black, Jewish, lesbian, Republican Bush supporter...Gimme a Break! star Nell Carter fit a lot into her 4'11" frame. Her NYT obit quotes her wanting to be ''Judy Garland without the tragedy.'' She must have meant on stage, where she exuded a sunny, sassy, saucy persona in musicals like Ain't Misbehavin, for which she won a Tony and later an Emmy. Cast as Effie in the original production of Dreamgirls, she quit in preproduction to take a role on the soap opera Ryan's Hope, leaving all the accolades for Jennifer Holliday. Two months before that musical opened, Carter's famous sitcom debuted and lasted six seasons of Carter playing housekeeper and de facto mother to the white family of a widower police chief. Stephen Holden wrote it "revived the archetype of the mammy," and Carter had a fractious relationship with the show's producers who were eventually replaced. In the final season, the cast included a young Rosie O'Donnell, who was still closeted, and apparently things were quite frosty on set between the two comediennes. In the 1990s Carter was cast as Miss Hannigan in the revival of Annie and publicly suggested it was racism that caused the producers to use a television commercial featuring a white actress in that role. In her private life, her struggles were vast. At sixteen she was raped and became pregnant, giving birth to her daughter Tracy. Later when she wanted to conceive, she had three miscarriages. Trying to adopt, she was twice thwarted at the very end of the process, once by a young woman who changed her mind and wanted to keep the baby, once by seeming amateur extortionists. She succeeded in adopting two boys. She battled a cocaine addiction. In the early 80s, she attempted suicide. In the late 80s, her brother died of aids. In 1992, she divorced her husband, had two aneurysms, and married her second husband, whom she divorced the next year. In 1995 and in 2002 she declared bankruptcy. She died of heart disease, complicated by diabetes, in 2003, at 54. She is survived by her partner Ann Kaser, who became guardian to Carter's children.

Leslie Cheung was a pop superstar, a movie idol, and he had a loving boyfriend named Hok-Tak Tong, so his millions of fans were stunned on April 1, 2003 to learn he had jumped off a twenty-fourth floor balcony of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Hong Kong. His suicide dominated the headlines of Asian tabloids for more than a month, searching every aspect of his life for clues. The youngest of ten children of a Kowloon tailor, he was educated in England and returned to Hong Kong to sing. He released more than twenty-five very successful albums and his hit “Monica” was named Song of the Century. Two years after his death, China Central Television named him The Most Favorite Actor In 100 Years of Chinese Cinema for his work with directors John Woo, Kaige Chen, and Wong Kar-Wai, among others. Unlike many closeted actors in America, Cheung enthusiastically played gay characters, notably in two of his most famous films, Farewell, My Concubine and Happy Together. He came out in 1997 and his career thrived. His albums from that year on were extremely popular, as were his concerts, and many of his movies. He tried to kill himself in 2002 and succeeded the next year, when he was forty-six. His suicide note read,

"Depression! Many thanks to all my friends. Many thanks to Professor Felice Lieh-Mak [his psychiatrist]. This year has been so tough. I can't stand it anymore. Many thanks to Mr. Tong. Many thanks to my family. Many thanks to Fei-Fei. In my life I did nothing bad. Why does it have to be like this?"

Born June 27: Cazwell

If you think 39 is a trifle old for a white rapper to be dropping rhymes about facials or finding Beyoncé at Burger King, remember that Cazwell was born the same year as Marshall Mathers III. Raised in Worcester, he started singing with the Boston hip hop band Moreplay, but moved on from the city and the genre. He says, "I know a lot of gay rappers that really consider themselves hip hop and want to be accepted by hip hop producers, and my point of view is, 'Why bother? Why spend all my time and energy trying to make a culture who hasn’t acknowledged my existence for the past twenty years accept me?'" Now a New Yorker, he djs and hosts four weekly club nights downtown. He was an opening act on the Cyndi Lauper/Debbie Harry/Erasure/everybody True Colors tour in 2007, played Dior Hommes after party in 2008, judged RuPaul's Drag Race, and has had his songs played on LoGo and True Blood. To date his biggest hit is the sweet and sweaty ode to all things oral, Ice Cream Truck, with more than 3.3 million views. (If blocked, try here.) The DIY charm of that suckadelic jingle is replaced by hardcore (goof)ballin in his most recent really repetitive release, Get My Money Back. Next month he plays Toronto, L.A., and Houston.

Born June 22: Kevin Aviance

There was a moment 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. Last year he sang at Fort Lauderdale Pride along with Jennifer Holliday.