SGN Jun 26, 2009 - Section 3

Seattle Gay News

Issue 27, Volume 37, June 26, 2009

SGN section 3 books

Stonewall

The riots that sparked the Gay revolution

by Shaun Knittel SGN Staff Writer 40 years ago this month, a revolution unlike any the world had seen before began in New York City's Greenwich Village neighborhood at a small mafiaowned bar – the Stonewall Inn. An army of Gay non conformists overpowered the police after a failed attempt to raid the Stonewall Inn incited a riot. Another riot took place the next night, and another several nights later. The world was given a crash course in Gay Survival 101: Yes, when backed into a corner, a drag queen will fight back, groups of effeminate young men can mobilize, and there are far more Lesbians than one may think. It isn’t strange and it isn’t odd, it’s a community – the Gay community. see stonewall page 22

courtesy of new york public library

The Stonewall Inn – taken September 1969

The sign in the window reads: “We homosexuals plead with our people to please help maintain peaceful and quiet conduct on the streets of the Village."

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Celebrating 36 Years!

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Girl disappearing The legacy of Seattle author Madelyn Arnold

by Marcus James SGN Contributing Writer

A DIFFICULT CHILDHOOD Born at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1950 to very bright but somewhat detached parents, her childhood was not easy. Her family was poor, her parents abusive, and yet a great push to learn, to create, seemed to permeate the air of the Arnold home. Her mother was educated, sang on the radio, had music published, and taught voice lessons up until the ‘80s. Tragically, the year her mother was supposed to start her dissertation, one of Madelyn’s brothers committed suicide, which forced her mother into a stupor for a while and left Madelyn floating with a sense of in-between.

Her father did things of “amazing cruelty. … We wished it could have been the alcohol, but it wasn’t. He was manic and quite possibly schizoaffective. When he wasn’t experiencing a manic high or low, he was gentle, a socialist, and really kind, except to relatives.” From the age of 8, Madelyn had the house to herself, cooking, cleaning, taking care of her siblings. Her father was gone throughout the week, returning on the weekends, and that, perhaps, was the best thing he could have ever done for them.

In school, Madelyn had a Spanish-speaking first-grade teacher named Mrs. Ogan.

She was a cruel woman who beat the children. She had taught college in Cuba, but had to leave to America as a refugee after being thrown out by Battista. She would beat the children regularly, especially on the knuckles – Madelyn’s still bear the scars all these years later. Once, while being beaten out in the hallway, Helen Dan, the mother

THE YIDDISH GIRL of one of Madelyn’s friends, saw what was Madelyn began to follow her, to find any occurring and came up behind Mrs. Ogan and exclaimed, “Don’t you touch that child, excuse to talk to her, took up Hebrew, doing those things that all young people do when experiencing those first moments of love, when it consumes you so deeply that you have no choice but to go with it. Madelyn didn’t want to be a Lesbian; she had learned what a homosexual was through her father’s criminology books. She learned that they were degenerates, perverted, sick, and depraved – things she knew she wasn’t, things that Madelyn did not want to be.

Through all of this anguish, things between her and the Yiddish girl became much more intense, their connection, their need bringing them closer and closer together.

There was no way to avoid it; they needed one another. It was something unspoken, the great tragedy of love itself, when it’s real, when its weight can be felt, at the same time that it’s removshe’s artistic!” Madelyn is quite sure that ing the constraints of gravity itself and you Mrs. Ogan heard “autistic,” but it worked, begin to lose yourself in that person comin any event. Years later, when her parents pletely.

On her 17th birthday, Yiddish Girl took committed her for the first time, Madelyn’s parents told the doctor that she was artistic, Madelyn to a rock concert. In the middle but as with before, the doctor most likely of the show, the band began making hugely misheard and followed Madelyn around, trying to figure out how exactly she was autistic.

She started college early, mostly because the college sought her out.

The university was impressed with her records.

Ball State, where Madelyn’s mother had taught years earlier, was desperate to change their image from a party school and a place for idiots. Out of this desire for a makeover, they offered Madelyn a full scholarship.

On her first day, Madelyn was run over by a bicycle and knocked flat on her butt, papers and books went everywhere, and the rider started bickering at her in Yiddish, while at the same time, helping her up off the ground and assisting her while collecting her things. It didn’t matter, though, not in that moment, where everything simply slowed down, and time itself seemed to decide to take a rest. The woman was striking, her features were slightly unusual. “She looked anti-Semitic comments, and this girl that like she belonged on the cover of a photog- Madelyn loved so much stood up on her seat raphy book,” Madelyn remembers. Sud- and began screaming back at the band, and denly it didn’t matter; all that mattered to then turned on Madelyn, calling her names, Madelyn was this girl, this girl who moved as if it was her fault that this had happened. with such amazing grace, in her own way, Madelyn fled, trying to get out, but the doors and Madelyn knew that she was in love. were locked. She felt everything inside

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June 26, 2009

There’s a fate shared among writers – writers of any type really, but mostly with the writers of fiction – where the identity, the tragedies, triumphs, euphoria, and heartbreak disappear into the quiet and are never heard from again. The storyteller somehow becomes lost in their stories, woven into the strands of letters that become words, that connect to others, till sentences flow like strands of DNA and soon it often becomes difficult to discern where the writer starts and the story begins. As a fiction writer myself, one who has been published many times, I have often wondered, sometimes with fear, especially at the age of 24, what will be perceived of me? Will I be perceived at all? Or is it better for my words, the portraits I have constructed in the minds of the reader, to be the thing that stands alone and survives me?

The terror that exists in this is the idea that we will leave this life forgotten, that we will get lost in the dustbins of used bookstores or simply vanish altogether. Here in our own backyard, we have an author who not only writes with a sharp understanding of language, but who has moved through this world with such commanding courage and bravery that for her to fade, for her to have a legacy that goes unknown, feels like one of the greatest tragedies of the literary world.

Her name is Madelyn Arnold.

I met her at her home on E. Republican St., an old apartment with hardwood floors, deep red walls, and, as with all writers, stacks of papers and books every which way you can see, as if to let everyone know that we have a terrible habit of not wanting to throw anything away because it may come of some use to us later. Madelyn is seriously ill. She has been so for quite some time, as a woman living with the AIDS virus, doing what so many Lesbians who worked in the medical field did during the crisis of the ‘80s; she helped her Gay and Bisexual brothers, treating them, and bravely trying to understand and combat a virus that no one really knew anything about. She became exposed by an accidental needle stick and consequentially became infected.

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of her drop, and as soon as the doors were thrown open, Madelyn raced frantically to Yiddish Girl’s room, grabbing her belongings and her car keys. Madelyn had made the decision then to ride into the river at the edge of campus. She wanted to die, the heartache she felt was immense, and it was then that Yiddish Girl returned, asking, in surprise, where she was going.

“You obviously don’t want me!” Madelyn said to her.

“Where did you get that idea?” Yiddish Girl responded. It seemed to be a game, a tease, as all things such as this come across as being.

“We have to stop seeing one another, or get to know each other better.” It was her last-ditch effort, offering not only a way out, but also her way of introducing the idea of sex. It wasn’t exactly smooth, but she was 17 and not well-versed in the art of seduction. Yiddish Girl smiled, locked the door, and moved to her with formal precision. She pushed Madelyn onto the bed and started kissing her passionately. Madelyn freaked, and when Yiddish Girl asked her what was wrong, Madelyn responded with “I think I hear my mother calling” and left the room.

Once the romance established itself and began to blossom, the girls found themselves completely entwined and engrossed with one another. “In the beginning it was good, in the beginning….” Madelyn says. In the autumn they went to Yiddish Girl’s home.

“It was a great fall day, the air smelled like wine, and we bought apple cider and pumpkin pie and ate it on the way there.” Yiddish Girl was five feet tall and her mother was shorter than that. “Four-foot eight in heels and four-foot five with guys,” Yiddish Girl’s mother would say with a strong Eastern European accent. As the relationship wore on, Madelyn began to unravel under the hotbed of scrutiny and rumors. Everyone watched them, everyone gossiped about what was going on, but the two girls were so drunk on their love, that they didn’t see the need to take the precautions that were necessary in those situations. They were simply attached at the hip, going everywhere with one another, and soon it was deciphered by a male grad student who came into the lab and showed an interest in Yiddish Girl – an interest she returned. Madelyn was horrified, and yet felt that she could not come between them as she did not have the courage to do so. She instead turned to a psychiatrist named Dr. Cock, who began seeing both girls. Aside from the fact that it was completely unethical, he was driven by his own perverted desire within the mental health field to be able to say he’s not only seeing one, but two homosexuals.

BETRAYAL OVER COCKTAILS In a Gay bar near campus, Madelyn ran into a girl whose father ran the Art Department, who took pity on Madelyn’s turmoil and offered her work, a full scholarship, and she went for a double major in biology and medical illustration. Between quarters, needing a rest, Madelyn returned home and her mother received a letter in the mail requesting her presence. Madelyn didn’t think much of it. “I thought it was about changing majors and scholarships.” The room was full of suits and department heads, the lawyers were introduced, and Madelyn was told that she could not return to school, this school where her very own mother had taught. When she asked why, all she was finally told was that she was not working up to capacity. Dr. Cock had ratted her out, and later, in a Gay bar, Madelyn ran into a friend from school that had catered one of the doctor’s parties, overhearing him speaking and laughing about the whole situation of Madelyn and the Yiddish Girl over cocktails.

That night, everything spilled out and her parents began questioning her and hitting her. Keeping her cornered in their room, a point always seems to come when you can no longer say no, when you can no longer deny it, and all you can do is start saying yes, admit to everything and expose everything that you are – your very insides, your bleeding, beating heart itself – at the feet of those who have been demanding it of you for so very long. Her bedroom had an exit to the back porch, which led to the garage roof, and the roof had a trapdoor. In the cold

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night, Madelyn made her escape and ran to the edge of town, trying to hitchhike away from a life that was suffocating her. She was fortunate when a Gay friend from school pulled over, picked her up, and took her to the Gay bar that was near campus. She tried making a living as “a lousy prostitute.” She was homeless, living on the streets in the freezing snow, she had no socks, but those things didn’t matter. “Being young was enough.”

She was picked up in a bar raid and taken to jail. She wasn’t allowed to be put with the other girls because she was “catching” and she was too young to be put with the women, so they simply chained her to the cellblock. They committed her to a mental hospital, and she knew that they gave shock treatments to homosexuals, and so she learned quickly to do whatever she could to avoid that. “They could do whatever they wanted to my body, but I would not let them get my mind.” She learned that murder is absolutely evil; to erase everything that is within someone is completely cruel. Violence is absolutely indefensible.

ised St. Martin’s one more book, and she hopes to get it out of her before this terrible virus takes her completely. This book will be about college in the ‘60s and what it meant to study science then. “I can’t write about now; I’m not in touch with now, I don’t exist. I don’t exist now, except on the page.”

Madelyn started writing as a little kid, moving through worlds in which she could work things out, a world in which people couldn’t lie. “In order to have this perfect world I was constructing, people couldn’t lie. They simply couldn’t.” As storytellers, as writers of fiction, we always run into those worlds, we never lose them, because in those worlds there’s a hope – not a hope for change, a hope for rights that were wronged, but simply a chance to exist, not on the other side of the glass that separates us from the

world, but to be part of it. To live as if we love.” can experience the world completely, and We parted then, and I as a 24-year-old not constantly be trying to understand it and young Gay man and writer, and she as a everyone in it. Just to simply be. woman who has seen so much, gone through so much, seemed to suddenly be standing on AN INFERNO IN THE DARKNESS that even ground, as writers, as Queers, who Madelyn and I began to come to the end had seen the deepest cruelties of those we of our conversation. We had spent hours to- love, suffered pains brought on by people gether, and she was growing tired and need- who had claimed to love us, and we still sured to rest. When I asked her what she wanted vived, and now we stand, and we write. We her legacy as a writer to be, what she hoped write because we have to, because we have would be seen years from now, Madelyn, no other choice. Madelyn Arnold is a writwith a slight smirk on her face and her big, er who should not be forgotten, her words soulful eyes wide and brilliant, said to me, should not be lost somewhere within time, “I want to be known for having conveyed but instead should burn like a bright flame, the phenomenon of great love. Love for the an inferno in the darkness. world, each other, and those individual and And I certainly think they will. consuming passions we feel for one another.

To have communicated an extra-average

THE BIRTH OF BIRD-EYES Eventually she made it to Seattle and began writing for the Seattle Gay News and the Zodiac News Service. She loved microbiology and scientific factoids, and like most writers, she was completely allergic to literature classes. At Indiana University, she had studied the sciences and languages and absorbed French, Latin, Greek, and German, and took linguistics and cultural anthropology. “I filled my requirements by taking everything but literature.” Years later, Madelyn would get her masters in creative writing from University of Washington. She spent the ‘70s and ‘80s working at every lab in the city, and entered into a relationship with a woman named Dee, a relationship that would last 17 years, a relationship she never thought would end. In class, she wrote an essay that would become her first novel, Bird-Eyes, a fiction-meetsreal-life account of being committed to an institution as a teenage girl. When the relationship with Dee ended – “because she was suddenly straight!” – Madelyn went back to Indiana, but had to return to Seattle because there was no work in her home state. She had no income, and really wanted to repair her life and make things better with Dee, which would not happen. She began cutting and drinking, and one night, filled with complete despair and heartache, she was going to slit her wrists and swim out into the freezing cold canal by UW’s campus.

Luckily she was jumped by the police and was then committed to Harborview Medical Center. She was locked up with people who were deathly ill, and one man, severely disturbed and suffering a brain tumor, tried to rape Madelyn. It took longer, longer than it would have today, to receive help, because no one would pay attention. Luckily the man was stopped in time before any severe damage could be done.

Madelyn had written Bird-Eyes and even had an agent for it, but he could not get it sold. Finally, Madelyn walked into Seal Press here in Seattle, and they bought it 12 hours later. “Aside from a few changes, it was still the same book.” The novel was awarded best first novel from the Lambda Literary Foundation, which recognizes excellence in GLBT literature. St. Martin’s Press became interested and bought Bird-Eyes from Madelyn, as the rights had been reverted back to her, and then it was re-released under their Stonewall edition imprints. They wanted another book from Madelyn, but she gave the option for it to Seal Press, who waited too long to respond.

When Madelyn called them herself, they told her, “we don’t publish pornography.”

Madelyn was floored. St. Martin’s bought the book, On Ships at Sea. THE RAVAGES OF ILLNESS Up until two years ago, Madelyn was writing every day, but the AIDS virus has moved through her body, and though the medicine has done much for her, it has not been able to stop the virus from wreaking havoc on her mind. She has one more book in her, though, and she said this with a youthful sparkle in her eye. She had prom-

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A Crisp reign in hell A look at the life of an inspirational Gay writer

by Marcus James SGN Contributing Writer

June 26, 2009

Perhaps no other contemporary writer in the world of modern Queer literature has held such deep appeal and has stated such prophetic and profound truths as Quentin Crisp, a writer who walked so heavily in the footfalls of Oscar Wilde, and yet his own path in the histories of Gay liberation and his contributions to the analogues of literature itself have lost themselves in the scatterings of the LGBT movement and the ever-present need for “the next big thing” that seems to motivate the minds and desires of American culture; a culture which, for Crisp himself, held such captivation and a love affair with a savage elegance which was so different from the prim ruthlessness of his native England. He would form his pathway through defiance and bold statements about freedoms of sex and of the mind, forever bending the laws of what it meant to be a man in the early twentieth century, and showing the world what it meant to move through it every day, defying gender roles and blazing a path in modern fashion that still resonates today.

Born Denis Charles Pratt on December 25th, 1908 in Sutton, Surrey, he was the fourth child of solicitor Charles Pratt and

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tin finally moved to America, and he never wanted to leave. He moved to New York and there it seemed he would be determined to stay, refusing many invitations in those early American years to return to England. Many television appearances, film roles, and books would follow the publication of The Naked Civil Servant, including Love Made Easy (1977), Chog: A Gothic Fable (1980), and How to Become a Virgin (1982). Each new work seemed to be something that opened doors inside the minds of anyone who took the time to pay even the slightest attention to what he had to say. Quentin moved through life eerily obsessed with death, and he often made serious statements that expressed his wish to go out in some terrible and dramatic way, preferring the idea of murder as the ultimate exit. Perhaps some of this had to do with his threatening parents. “Growing up, file photo

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“The very purpose of existence is to reconcile the glowing opinion we hold of ourselves with the appalling things that other people think about us.” – Quentin Crisp

file photo

Frances Pratt; a former governess. He was a precarious child, growing up in the cold damp of Sutton, which is situated 10.6 miles from Charing Cross. It was a town made possible by the Thanet sands, a narrow waterway, and thrived in the nineteenth century by the incorporation of the Sutton Water Company in 1863. As a child in the gray damp of Sutton, Denis endlessly thought up creative ways to seek attention from his parents, who did not suffer from poverty, but from debt. As a child, Quentin spent his days existing in a world of fantasy, a fantasy world which he was able to access through games with the little girls of his neighborhood, allowing him to first step into a land where boys could like boys, and the constraints of boyhood that so many of us understand only all too well did not exist for him. In this world he experienced what

dals, and pretty soon they were simply beathe called “an erotic swoon.”

“To me fantasy and reality were not mere- ing him up. Many, even now, would rethink ly different; they were opposed. In the one, their tactics, many would decide to conform, I was a woman, exotic, disdainful; in the to find a way to preserve themselves; that’s other I was a boy. The chasm between the two states never narrowed.”

He attended Kingswood Preparatory School in Epsom, where he suffered much teasing for his effeminate behavior and outlandish gestures.

In 1922 he won a scholarship to Denstone College, he left in 1926, and continued on to study journalism at renowned Kings College, but dropped out in 1928 and moved on to art school.

Throughout all of this, Denis was creating and adding the final touches on the entity that would become Quentin Crisp. He dyed his hair burgundy with henna, painted his eyelids, fingernails, and toenails gold, and was, as he put it, “blind with mascara and dumb with lipstick.”

In the meantime, living in Soho, he made a human nature, the need for self-preservation, living as a model, being painted by budding to keep themselves safe from harm, to avoid artists, and working as a prostitute, “looking circumstance that would hinder safety. But for love,” as he said in Quentin would have none of it. an interview in 1999, He saw himself as a missionary on a mis“but only finding deg- sion. He was declaring war on a society that radation.” His favorite told him that his very existence was wrong. place was the Black This mindset was spread, generation after Cat, a pub where he generation, like a plague, infecting the chilwould often spend time dren that would come after; now was the with another friend of time, and the great work of his life had behis, passing around gun. It wouldn’t be found in the words he each other’s lipstick wrote, the things that he said with sharp critand sipping gingerly on icism and slight disdain in interviews; all of their tea to make it last those were simply the aftershocks from the quake that was Quentin Crisp himself. No, for hours.

When World War II what he would accomplish, the great revolubroke out, Crisp, now tion that he would begin, would come from quite firm in his in- the simple act of walking out of his door carnation, attempted each day and walking through it, and findto join the army, but ing himself back home found it not to be his alive at the end of the fate when he was de- night, despite the vulnied by the medical garity that was thrown board due to “sexual at him – just to do it all perversion.” It was this over again. time that introduced Fast-forward to 1968. him to the culture that Quentin’s wickedly huhe would fall so madly morous autobiography, in love with. When The Naked Civil Serthose soldier boys, with vant, debuted, and he all of their American was no longer dwindling pride, came into Lon- in his “Soho poverty … don, those GIs did not [coming] from having stand a chance against the airs and graces of a Quentin’s charms, genius but no talent.” and as they took him The book made him about, parading him extremely famous, and on their arms in the was developed into a clubs of Soho, he found TV-movie starring John their carefree ways and Hurt as the writer himoverall acceptance intoxicating. It was this self. The film won many that began Quentin’s great love affair with accolades and awards, America, and it would become his goal to and made Quentin a one day come to the country that seemed household figure. He to hold such promise and hope for him – a found, suddenly, that country which, in many ways, seemed to be his opinions mattered, and his appearance, the stuff of dreams.

In the meantime, as the war went on with- the thing that had conout him, he continued to move through the demned him for so long, world exactly as he was, with little regard to yet in those moments those who felt offended by his appearance had also helped him and outlandish, almost theatrical manners. feel alive, finally liber“I paraded the dim streets of Pimlico with ated him and gave him my overcoat wrapped around me as though a sense of acceptance. In a 1968 documenit were a tailless ermine cape. I had to walk tary, the author revealed his own constant like a mummy leaving its tomb.” As expect- battle between the gender rules: though he ed, people reacted with disgust and outrage was absolutely unapologetic for being Gay, at his garish appearance and wild manner. he never stopped recognizing the conflict of They slapped his face as he waited for the what it meant to be a “man,” and the combus, they stepped on his toes if he wore san- plications that came from being unable to fit

into that tight little box. “The great barrier between me and the rest of the world … is my appearance.”

He developed a one-man show, which sold out the Duke of York’s Theatre in London in 1978. Crisp then took the show to New York. His first stay in the Hotel Chelsea coincided with a fire, a robbery, and the death of Nancy Spungen, the on-again-offagain girlfriend of Sex Pistols guitarist Sid Vicious.

It wasn’t until the age of 72 that Quen-

I was frightened from the word go,” Crisp wrote.

Crisp remained fiercely independent and unpredictable into old age. He caused controversy and confusion in the Gay community by jokingly calling AIDS “a fad” and homosexuality “a terrible disease,” and fa-

Celebrating 36 Years!

agnes mcbean

mously talked to the Atlanta Southern Voice in July of 1999 about the death of Princess Diana of Wales “She could have been Queen of England, and she was swanning about Paris with Arabs. What disgraceful behavior. Going about saying she wanted to be the queen of hearts. The vulgarity of it is so overpowering.” He was continually in demand from journalists requiring a soundbite, and throughout the 1990s his opinions were sought after for a number of topics.

Quentin died in 1999 at a friend’s house in Manchester on the eve of the revival of his one-man show, just 10 years shy of 100 – exactly what he had predicted jokingly to his friend and fellow actress, Penny Arcade.

It would seem his legacy would be simply that of an actor who had many bit parts in many films and television shows, and that of a storyteller, and yet this could be his greatest tragedy. In many ways, he has been a prophet, seeing the wave of things that would happen in this movement, and what has been lost to his legacy are the parallels between our world now and the way it was then. He talked of the phenomenon of the ‘60s with hippie guys and mod boys running around in tight trousers, growing their hair, wearing flashier clothing, tight shirts, and possessing a generally soft appearance, and while they were obviously not Gay, these young men were often hostile towards Quentin because of their own fears of being perceived as such – the irony being that their style came from homosexuals like Quentin himself. He often said, “The young always have the same problem: how to rebel and

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conform at the same time. They have now solved this problem by defying their parents and copying each other.”

We see this now, with “scene boys” and “hipsters.” A rejuvenation of mod influence and style, the suddenly too-pretty-for-theirown-good molding done by Abercrombie & Fitch in the ‘90s and early 2000s, and in this merging, it seems that we’re facing something that Quentin himself had mentioned often: the loss of our own unique identity and form as it is assimilated into the majority. Quentin often asked, “How much are we willing to hand over for simple tolerance?

Why should we hand over all that we are as homosexuals, just so we can get a stamp of approval in return?” As much as we would like to belong, to be seen in this world as the same as them, Quentin was an observant force, sitting somewhere on the very edge of culture itself, and from where he stood, he was granted a great vantage point to see everything for what it is, for what it could be, and what it shouldn’t be. He could see that the greatest power was in the fact that we weren’t like the majority; we were on the fringe. We were at the forefront of western culture itself, and in the end, the “majority” wanted to be us, so why did we need to give up all that has made us the unique outsiders that we’ve always been to simply fade into the masses?

It’s been 40 years since Stonewall, and it seems a lot of reflecting has been going on within this community, and that cannot be ignored by any of us; I know even for myself, with all that we’ve achieved and all that

we have been defeated with, this has been a time of contemplation, and I realize that we’ve been playing their game for so long, trying to assimilate to the majority around us, that we become in danger of losing the thing that has united us: our differences, the thing that has allowed us to walk through the fire, time and again, and has allowed us to find a home.

Quentin Crisp spent 90 years being different, refusing to fit in, walking the road not taken. He dared to be himself, as colorful as it was, in the time of “the love that dare not speak its name.” His life should be our inspiration now, especially in this time of uncertainty, when presidents who run on hope and change betray us, and we see a divide happen within our community. We should strive to get back to what has been our backbone, what formed us as a family in the first

place, and ignited us to take a stand 40 years ago in this country: our rich mosaic of color.

It’s the flag we wave, it’s the stickers we have on the backs of cars, and as buttons on our bags and shirts. As Quentin once stated, a statement which holds more weight today than perhaps, ever before: “In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis.”

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The 12 most important Gay books of all time

by Jesse Monteagudo SGN Contributing Writer As many of you know, I have acquired a reputation as an authority on Gay and Lesbian books. This came about because of my lifetime love of books; my personal collection of Gay literature; my work with the Stonewall Library and Archives in Fort Lauderdale; and my book review columns, of which “The Book Nook” (1977-2006) was the best-known. And while “The Book Nook” itself is gone, I continue to write book reviews in a monthly column that appears in AfterElton.com. In 1999, I contributed to the “Lambda Book Report” a 20th-century’s end list of “100 Books That Changed Our Lives,” which I will send to any reader who e-mails me a request at jessemonteagudo@aol.com. The following list is limited to what in my opinion are the 12 most important Lesbian and Gay books of all time.

legacy has shaped and even today informs the attitudes of Western man toward love of beauty and its sexual expression.”

4) LEAVES OF GRASS

by Walt Whitman third edition (1860) The 1860 edition of Whitman’s masterpiece first included the “Calamus” poems that “celebrate the need of comrades.” These poems of democracy and brotherhood did more than venture into “paths untrodden.”

They launched the “homosexual tradition in American poetry” that continued with Hart Crane, Allen Ginsberg, Robert Dun-

5) CITIES OF THE PLAIN (SODOME ET GOMORRHE)

by Marcel Proust (1921) “Cities of the Plain” is Part IV of Proust’s monumental “Remembrance of Things Past,” “one of the greatest works of the twentieth century and of all time” (J.E. Rivers). “Proust,” writes Warren Johansson, “was the first major novelist to deal extensively with the theme of homosexuality, and more than any other writer, he bears the responsibility for introducing the topic into the mainstream of modern literature”. By expressing his own “personal, cultural, and aesthetic paradoxes,” Proust took homosexfile photo

desire for woman,” writes Jane McIntosh Snyder. “Sappho,” writes Evelyn Gettone, “gave Lesbian love its classic literary expression.”

3) THE SYMPOSIUM OF PLATO (circa 389 b.c.e.)

Plato’s classic dialogue is not only the best exposition of “Greek love” ever written, but it almost made Plato’s teacher Socrates as synonymous with male love as Sappho is to Lesbianism. Socrates and his dinner companions formulate a classic theory of male love: “I know not any greater blessing to a young man who is beginning life than a virtuous lover, or to the lover than a beloved youth.” The Symposium, writes Byrne R.S. Fone, “is of ... paramount importance in the 1) THE BIBLE More than any other book, the Bible has formation, context, and understanding of shaped Western Civilization’s opinion of the homosexual imagination and its tradihomosexuality. Taken out of content, the tion.” Warren Johansson writes, “[Plato’s] (mis)interpretation of several Biblical passages were used as an excuse to murder, torture, imprison, rape, batter, ostracize, deride, and discriminate against Lesbians, Gay males and Bisexual people through the centuries. Less noticed are several passages of homoerotic passion: Ruth and Naomi, David and Jonathan, and Jesus and his “Beloved Disciple.”

2) THE POEMS OF SAPPHO (all circa 600 b.c.e.)

The “tenth muse” wrote about the love of women, and in the process made her name and her home (the island of Lesbos) synonymous with female homosexuality. Though most of her poems were lost or destroyed, what remains influenced the works of Amy Lowell, Renee Vivien, Hilda Doolittle, May Sarton, Olga Broumas, Judy Grahn and almost every other woman-loving woman writer that lived. “Sappho floats across the centuries as an island in the sea of writers of the past, a solitary example of a woman writer attempting to define woman’s 8

Seattle Gay News

Marcel Proust, author of Cities of the Plain

can, Thom Gunn, Edward Field and Gavin Geoffrey Dillard. “The historical Whitman is of no literary interest,” writes Robert K. Martin. “He can vanish and leave behind the spiritual Whitman, the eternal lover, the risen god of male love.” To Edward F. Grier, Whitman was “the poet ... of a culture bound together by love and religious faith in which each person could fulfill his or her own sexual nature.”

June 26, 2009

uality out of the literary closet.

6) THE WELL OF LONELINESS

by Radclyffe Hall (1928) Attempts by British and American authorities to censor this classic of Lesbian love made it more famous than it deserved. Hall, herself a masculine woman whose friends called her “John,” believed in the then-current “third sex” theory of homosexuality, and her hero, Stephen Gordon, evokes pity

Celebrating 36 Years!

but not sympathy. “Despite its shortcomings,” writes Jeannette Foster, “The Well of Loneliness made a heroic gesture for tolerance of Lesbian relations among persons of integrity”. Hall’s novel, says Evelyn Gettone, “helped to move Lesbianism into the consciousness of a public which ... had managed until 1928 to ignore the phenomenon almost entirely.”

10) LESBIAN/WOMAN

by Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon (1972) Many “Gay 101” books were written in the wake of the Stonewall Riots and the Gay, Lesbian and feminist movements. I chose Lesbian/ Woman for several reasons, the main one being the authors themselves. Lovers since 1953, Martin and Lyon founded the Daughters of Bilitis, the first Lesbian organization, in 1955. Lesbian/Woman, an early winner of the Gay and Lesbian Book Award, became

11) CHRISTIANITY, SOCIAL TOLERANCE, AND HOMOSEXUALITY: GAY PEOPLE IN WESTERN EUROPE FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA TO THE FOURTEENTH CENTURY

by John Boswell (1980) Though the late Professor Boswell’s classic history is an undoubted masterpiece, I include it here for its influence on GLBT studies. Before Boswell, Lesbian and Gay history was the province of self-taught historians like Jonathan Katz. Boswell, who taught history at Yale University, took the Gay science into the groves of Academe, where it has flourished. He and his book paved the way for Allan Berube, George Chauncey, John D’Emilio, Estelle Freedman, Lillian Faderman, Esther Newton and other Lesbian and Gay scholars.

the book that every Lesbian read as part of their coming-out process. Martin and Lyon write their way out of the closet and self-hatred, through Gay male sexism and feminist homophobia, to demand (take that, Newt Gingrich) “Not Toleration [but] Lesbian Liberation.” Though Del Martin has since left us, Lesbian/Woman remains as her literary monument. file photo

7) THE HOMOSEXUAL IN AMERICA by “Donald Webster Cory” (Edward Sagarin) (1951) Cory’s classic “is the result of a quarter of a century of participation in American life as a homosexual. ... The subjective approach of the book is intended not only to supply a reflection of the broader and more typical group, but to permit the expression of the opinion as seen from within that group.” By doing so, Cory took the topic of homosexuality away from the “experts” and into the hands of those who knew it best: Lesbians and Gay men. According to John D’Emilio,

9) THE SONG OF THE LOON by “Richard Amory” (Richard Love) (1966) Amory’s “Gay pastoral in five books and an interlude” made Gay history with its explicit depictions of Gay male sex, its positive portraits of Gay men and its poetic, almost mystical vision of a Gay brotherhood that transcended racial and cultural barriers. Activist Jack Nichols called Song of the Loon “an important contribution to Gay culture.” Critic Angelo d’Arcangelo described it as “fantasy ... more taking than the Tolkien books and funnier”, while Gayrotic writer Carl Driver, perhaps taking the novel’s mystical theme too far, called it “sacramental.” Song of the Loon spawned a film, two sequels, a parody, and the “Golden Age” of Gayrotic literature (1966-1974).

Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, authors of the 1972 book Lesbian/Woman

12) AND THE BAND PLAYED ON: POLITICS, PEOPLE, AND THE AIDS EPIDEMIC

by Randy Shilts (1987) Shilts was one of the first reporters to cover the AIDS epidemic, which eventually took his own life as well as that of too many other Gay writers (including John Boswell). “Now a major motion picture,” And The Band Played On is a powerful, though controversial, indictment of the denial, prejudice, apathy and foot-dragging that allowed AIDS casualties to mount. “The Band succeeds,” writes Jim Marks, “by weaving the events and people of the AIDS epidemic into a compelling narrative, an unfolding tragedy in which there are few heroes, much deception, and too many dead.”

“Cory’s book not only provided Gay men and women with a tool for reinterpreting their lives; it also implied that the conditions of life had changed sufficiently so that the book’s message might find a receptive audience.” Generations of pioneering activists were energized by The Homosexual in America.

8) HOWL AND OTHER POEMS

by Allen Ginsberg (1956) The Beat Generation, says D’Emilio, “presented a significant challenge to the conformist pressures” of the 1950s. “Through the beats’ example, Gays could perceive themselves as nonconformists rather than deviates, as rebels against stultifying norms rather than immature, unstable personalities.” Ginsberg dedicated Howl to his lovers, Jack Kerouac, William Seward Burroughs and Neal Cassady, and his poem is a “description of Gay male sexuality as joyous, delightful, and indeed even holy”. The authorities ensured the book’s popularity by trying to suppress it, but Howl survived it all, paving the way for franker depictions of male love.

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Jesse Monteagudo is a freelance writer and Gay book lover who lives in South Florida. Write him at jessemonteagudo@aol. com.

June 26, 2009

Seattle Gay News

9

Footnotes

by Richard Labonte SGN Contributing Writer

BOOKS TO WATCH OUT FOR There are reviews (critical assessments of new books), and there are blurbs (those quotes on the back of books). I’m asked to provide a dozen blurbs a year, and respond to a few – only books I quite like. Here are

durability of a teenager’s first real love, the ebb and flow of romantic friendship, the perplexities of maturing from boy to man, and the puzzle of how to fit Gay self into a straight world: these eternal Queer questions are explored with astute insight (and bracing erotic interludes) in McDonald’s sensitive sequel to Adam, back in print from BigFib… QUEEROES, by Steven Bereznai

million to establish The Jane Rule Endowment for the Study of Human Relationships, named after the Lesbian author and activist who died in 2007. Rule wrote the pioneering Lesbian romance Desert of the Heart in 1964, followed by a dozen more novels and nonfiction titles, including her final book, the Lambda Literary Award-winning essay collection Loving the Difficult, published last year by Hedgerow Press. The endowment will fund Queer conferences, support LGBT groups and foster programs on sexual orientation and gender studies… A&M BOOKS HAS published a 35th anniversary edition of Sarah Aldridge’s 1974 novel The Latecomers, the first book published

by Naiad Press – of which Anyda Marchant (Aldridge’s real name) and life partner Muriel Inez Crawford were cofounders. Both women died in 2006, within months of each other, after a relationship that spanned six decades. The new edition features heartfelt accolades from a bevy of writers, musicians and activists, among them Ann Bannon, Kate Clinton, Katherine V. Forrest, Jewelle Gomez, Ellen Hart, Lee Lynch, Holly Near, Leslea Newman, Radclyffe, Carol Seajay, Ann Allen Shockley and Cris Williamson... GAY AUSTRALIAN WRITER Christos Tsiolkas won the $15,000 Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for his novel The Slap, an eight-character story about the consequences of an adult slapping a young boy; one of the characters is a questioning Queer boy.

Richard Labonte has been reading, editing, selling, and writing about Queer literature since the mid-‘70s.

He can be reached in care of this publication or at BookMarks@qsyndicate. com.

three for new novels, imparting my enthusiasm… BETTER THAN EASY, by Nick Alexander (BigFib, $17.99): Can love last? Can Gay men find domestic contentment? Alexander asks and answers pesky questions central to the homo condition in this perceptive novel (part of a series, though it can be read on its own) that showcases the author’s warm wit, wry insight, and commendable knack for crafting Queer characters with real dimension… BLUE SKY ADAM, by Anthony McDonald (BigFib, $17.95): The

(Jambor Publishing, $19.95): The good and evil that bottled water can cause propels this smart story about teen bullying, Queer self-esteem, high school angst, the heartbreak of desire (and acne) and the limits of superpowers. Bereznai’s wicked hybrid of Heroes and Gossip Girl is an astute take on life lessons to be learned during the perilous passage through adolescence for girls and boys, straight or Gay. AN ANONYMOUS DONOR has given the University of British Columbia $1.7

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Celebrating 36 Years!

Risk shuns stereotypes, gains gravity working her way up the ranks at a paper supply store. They’re everyday dykes, characters with real dimension, not stereotypical rowdy cowgirls or tough detec-

tives. Dykewomon weaves many themes through a narrative that arcs from the mid‘80s to after 9/11: Fat acceptance, class and race consciousness, a mother-daughter connection, enduring friendships, lesbian empowerment, addiction and recovery and – most rewardingly – an inspirational account of the sexual pleasure and emotional suste-

nance two women can provide each other as caring years pass.

Richard Labonte has been reading, editing, selling, and writing about Queer literature since the mid-‘70s. He can be reached in care of this publication or at BookMarks@qsyndicate.com.

by Richard Labonte SGN Contributing Writer Risk

by Elana Dykewomon (Bywater Books, $14.95) Woman meets woman herein, and romance ensues. But this isn’t one of those dozens-a-year breezy reads crammed onto the Lesbian bookshelves of the nation. It’s a novel with depth and heart and wisdom, with political clarity and spiritual dimension and the promise of forever. Carol Schwarz is a downwardly mobile Berkeley math tutor and feminist activist with a penchant for betting on the horses and rolling the dice at casinos. Z.D., her lover, has an infectious laugh, deals dope and is slowly

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Seattle | Bellevue | Mill Creek 206.634.3400 • 1.800.335.READ

ubookstore.com

June 26, 2009

Seattle Gay News 11

Wry political sniping from I Told You So

by Richard Labonte SGN Contributing Writer I Told You So

by Kate Clinton (Beacon Press, $22) When reactions to a book range from wry smiles through gentle chortles and on to choking guffaws, what’s to say except “hurrah!” Humorist Clinton, speaking hilarious truth to self-righteous power for the past quarter century, has cobbled together 85 standup routines, blog entries, magazine articles and original essays to tart and tender effect. The book was originally completed last July, but the publisher wisely opted to delay publication so Clinton could train her eagle eye for nincompoopery on the election. For example, consider poor Palin:

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June 26, 2009

“Just as eight years ago when the bar was set low for Bush, if Sarah Palin did not burst into flames, she would be proclaimed the winner,” Clinton wrote of the debate. Hotbutton topics such as Gay marriage (not for her, but why the hell not if you want it?), Gays in the military and religious hypocrisy are fertile fodder for the author’s intelligently caustic ridicule. But Clinton also has the knack of spinning even the small moments of everyday life into comic gold.

Richard Labonte has been reading, editing, selling, and writing about Queer literature since the mid-‘70s. He can be reached in care of this publication or at BookMarks@ qsyndicate.com.

Celebrating 36 Years!

Catholic redemption in Christ Like

by Richard Labonte SGN Contributing Writer Christ Like

by Emanuel Xavier (Queer Mojo Press, $14.95) By his own admission, there’s a lot of Emanuel Xavier in Mikey X, the fiercely self-destructive Puerto Rican club kid, a semi-survivor of horrific boyhood abuse, who poses, vogues, drugs and whores his way through the late ‘80s and early ‘90s of the gritty Manhattan Gay Latino street scene the author depicts. First published in 1999 and revised for this 10th anniversary edition – “I have made it a bit more of a memoir, though it remains a work of fiction” – the book retains a jagged immediacy despite its chronological distance from the author’s younger experiences. The story’s setting is atmospheric and realistically raw, but there’s a softer side, too, as Mikey struggles to escape the numbing cycle of sex and drugs, finally finding redemption through engagement with a spirituality that’s the antithesis of his Catholic upbringing. As with Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance – the moneyed, white flip side of Xavier’s street-level demimonde decadence – the novel has evolved since its first publication into a seminal record of a particular Queer culture’s era.

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Featured Excerpt Mikey brought his party atmosphere to the lifeless West Village bookstore with a crank of the volume. He would pump the sound system, insisting that the Gay clientele preferred listening to house music rather than “that tired old elevator crap!” He was always on the phone with one of his sistas when he was not flirting with one of his preferred customers. Instead of asking customers if he could check their bags, he would yell, “Can we snatch your products, please?”

- from Christ Like, by Emanuel Xavier Richard Labonte has been reading, editing, selling, and writing about Queer literature since the mid-‘70s. He can be reached in care of this publication or at BookMarks@ qsyndicate.com.

June 26, 2009

Seattle Gay News 13

The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk

by Shaun Knittel SGN Staff Writer

Shilts. Much like Harvey, Shilts was a first; master storyteller.

The book is organized into four parts, each the first openly Gay reporter with a Gay “beat” in the American mainstream press. containing chapters applying to a particular He wrote for the San Francisco Chronicle time in Harvey’s life. The book is, as you’d expect from a journalist, in chronological order. Although the book numbers just under 400 pages, you’ll be done before you know it. Shilts has accomplished what few writers can: you become so immersed in the story that by the time you look over at the nightstand, the clock reads 2 a.m. You think, “Have I really been reading this book for three hours?”

Almost immediately following his death in 1978, Harvey Milk became an icon. A skillful puppeteer of the media even in death, Harvey grabbed headlines well into 1979. A statue of him was erected at San Francisco City Hall. Hundreds of thousands marched in the street by candlelight to mourn the fallen hero. When his killer received a mere slap on the wrist, his supporters sprang into action, demanding justice during the “White Night Riots.” A documentary, The Life and Time of Harvey Milk, was made in 1984.

There is a high school, plaza, even an opera named after him. Harvey became the ultimate martyr for Gay rights.

Last year, actor Sean Penn and director Gus Van Sant brought Harvey Milk’s story to a new generation with the critically acclaimed movie Milk. The film won two Academy Awards for Best Original Screenplay and Best Actor. Nearly 20 years after he was assassinated, Harvey has become a legend. He’s always been a legend for the Gay community perhaps, but he is now everyone’s legend – a distinction few from our community have been able to achieve.

But before the documentary and movie, there was The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk by Randy

for nearly a decade. When the book appeared in 1982, the idea of a Gay political biography was brand-new. One thing’s for sure: Shilts was the perfect person to write it.

The Mayor of Castro Street is an easy read, particularly because it feels like you’re at a San Francisco party full of Harvey’s friends and enemies while Shilts, as your host, walks you from person to person who tell you exactly what they think of Milk. The book is based off of hundreds of interviews Shilts conducted in the early 1980s; he’d become a freelance reporter unable to find a steady job as an openly Gay reporter. In his tireless search to find out just who Harvey Milk really was, he interviewed former classmates and basketball teammates, members of the Teamsters Union, and of course, those special few from Harvey’s inner circle.

Randy gives particular credit to Scott Smith, Harvey’s lover and the executor of the Milk estate, for helping to make the book a complete account of Milk’s personal and political life. A daunting task, according to Shilts, because Harvey loved good theater and often expounded upon a reality until it was a grandiose tale far from the version of the real truth. That’s what Harvey was, a

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THE YEARS WITHOUT HOPE The first four chapters in “Part I: The Years Without Hope” give us a look into Harvey’s humble beginnings in Woodmere, New York, on Long Island. He was born on May 22, 1930, to William and Minerva Karns Milk, Lithuanian Jews. You learn his grandfather, Morris Milk, helped to organize the first synagogue in the area, and how Milk was considered to come from “good stock.”

The Milks were known for being good people.

Harvey, like many Gay men, realized his homosexuality early on, but also realized it was something you had to keep an absolute secret in the 1940s.

He would become a closeted Gay man for nearly 40 years, courting many girlfriends, excelling in sports at both the high school and college level, and becoming a commissioned Naval officer.

As a child, he was teased for his protruding ears, big nose, and oversized feet – he was, by all accounts, the class clown. Under his picture in the high school yearbook, it read, “Glimpy Milk [his nickname] – and they say WOMEN are never at a loss for words.”

In the second chapter, Shilts covers the intense relationship between Harvey and Joe Campbell, a love affair lasting longer than any other relationship either man would have with anyone else. You learn that Harvey was a hopeless romantic who showered his lover with gifts, tickets to the opera, and love letters. After the demise of the Campbell affair, Harvey became suitor to Jack McKinley, to whom Harvey also bestows gifts, flowers, and love letters. McKinley is a tortured young man who shows signs of depression.

This sort of lover becomes the norm in Harvey’s life, with the exception of Scott Smith, who enters the book in chapter three.

All the while, Harvey is deeply in the closet and a stout Republican. The “America: Love It or Leave It” type. Somehow, in 1970, he began to change his political views, grew his hair long, and quit his well-paying insurance job for work as a Broadway producer.

The most interesting areas in Part I deal with Harvey, when after realizing he wanted men sexually, going to a local theater to troll for sex as an early teenager. He even got arrested when he was 17 years old for cruising men at a local park.

Still, nobody knew he was Gay. More than a few of Harvey’s teammates and former

classmates admit to Shilts that when news got back to Woodmere that Harvey was a politician, it was no surprise, but that he was homosexual was shocking. People just never suspected the former athlete and serviceman of being Queer.

THE MAYOR OF CASTRO STREET Part two of The Mayor of Castro Street, chapters 5-11, documents Harvey’s rise from closeted Republican to a proud Gay man who asks Gay and Lesbian people to come out of the closet and is elected as the first openly Gay man to public office. Undoubtedly the meatiest chunk of the biography, Shilts acts as a wonderful historian of not only the rise of Harvey’s star but the importance of Castro Street to the national Gay movement, Anita Bryant’s Orange Tuesday, and the hate and bigotry the LGBT community faced in those days of early struggle.

Early on in the book, Shilts points out Harvey constantly told different friends and political allies he wouldn’t live to be 50 years old and that he campaigned and worked as such, as if his time was, indeed, running out. Shilts backs up this claim with a number of paragraphs containing commentary from those closest to Harvey, telling them his time was limited. “It’s something I’ve known since I was a little kid,” he was fond of saying.

What I found to be most interesting in this part of this powerful biography was just how disliked by the mainstream Gay groups Harvey was. He was an outcast. They saw him as a troublemaker who was bound to set back their so-called movement – which, it becomes obvious, was moving nowhere.

Harvey begins to build his army of loyalists and radicals who quickly become known for their ability to mobilize, protest, and garner much-sought-after media coverage. Particularly during the Anita Bryant fight and Coors beer boycott, Shilts paints a very vivid picture of a man on a mission, and you’re ready to join him. You almost want to set the book down, walk over to the refrigerator, and pour out any Coors beer and orange juice you have.

The brilliance of the person to person commentary was provided to Shilts by the people who were in the room at the time Harvey was having such conversations; you never once get the sense that maybe it didn’t happen that way. This is important, I think, when reading a biography. I need to know this was true; I need to know that Harvey really did snub the mainstream Gays and say, “To hell with them! We are demanding civil rights in our city now.” In this case, Shilts could make a believer out of even the most avid skeptic.

As the legend of Harvey Milk takes place with Gay Castro as the backdrop, Shilts takes great care to make sure Harvey is still human. I learned so much about him as an average Joe in these chapters of the book.

His relationship failing with Scott Smith, his financial woes, and his fears are all brought to light. The legend, as it were, was more human than we often think.

Still, you can’t help but root for Harvey as he takes on San Francisco politics. It’s funny, in a way; you know Harvey is going to win, you know he is going to be elected after trying so hard, and you know he is going to change the course of history for LGBT people forever, but you get so caught up in the brilliance of Shilts’ writing that you actually forget all that and think to yourself, “Gee, I hope he makes it.”

SUPERVISOR HARVEY MILK As I entered the third part of the book, I reached the profound realization that in less than 100 pages of text, Shilts would document, in detail, Harvey’s days as a city supervisor and his senseless assassination. It sort of puts into perspective why Harvey always felt like he was running out of time; the time he was given to achieve what he did was minimal, yet his talent as a politi-

Celebrating 36 Years!

THE LEGEND BEGINS The shortest part of the book, “Part IV: The Legend Begins,” deals with the fallout after Harvey and Mayor Moscone’s murder. Acting mayor Diane Feinstein had to choose a replacement for Harvey, the trial of Dan White, the “Twinkie Defense,” and the White Night Riots are discussed at length, and the state of the Gay movement is rationalized.

Fearing he would be assassinated, Harvey recorded a message to Mayor Moscone in 1977. The now famous Harvey Milk recording, known as his political will, is eerily accurate. He describes the type of person who may kill him, and it is almost as if Dan White is in the room with him as he says, “A person who is deeply disturbed.”

Shilts concludes the book with a sort of “whatever happened to.…” section. He gives a 1983 update on Harvey’s political allies, his personal friends, and his lovers – most

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file photo

cian is celebrated because in a little less than a year he made a lasting impact.

A majority of text is dedicated to Proposition 6, dubbed the Briggs Initiative. Here is where Harvey shone brightest, publicly debating John Briggs up and down the California coast. In Briggs' neighborhood or in the Castro district, the two went head to head. Of course, in the end good triumphs over evil, but the Briggs Initiative pages are an energetic read.

Dan White, the disgraced city supervisor who ultimately assassinated Mayor George Mascone and Harvey, is picked apart. Shilts finds a number of people who go on record saying they always felt White was dangerous or that something always seemed wrong with him.

Leading up to the day he was shot, Harvey told more than one of his aides, “Dan White is a dangerous man.”

For the actual assassination, Shilts writes graphically. It is intense.

Ironically enough, the murder scene in Gus Van Sant's Milk is easier to watch than reading the absolute terror of Dan White’s actions on November 27, 1978. But, like with the rest of the book, you won’t stop reading. You won’t, in a sense, look away.

of whom committed suicide or died of AIDS. The book contains four of Harvey Milk’s greatest speeches in the epilogue. The speeches include a September 10, 1973 speech to the International Longshoreman and Warehouseman’s Union, Harvey’s January 10, 1978 Inaugural Dinner speech, his best-known March 10, 1978 Hope speech, and the That’s What America Is speech he gave to nearly 350,000 people at the 1978 Gay Freedom Day Rally. The epilogue also includes a transcript of the 1977 Harvey Milk Political Will recording.

AN IMPORTANT BOOK FOR AN IMPORTANT TIME The Mayor of Castro Street was Shilts’ first book. He would gain critical acclaim with his 1987 book And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (1980-1985), winning the author the Stonewall Book Award and literary fame. His last book, Conduct Unbecoming: Gays and Lesbians in the US Military: Vietnam to the Persian Gulf, was published in 1993. Shilts and his assistants conducted over 1,000 interviews while researching the book, the last chapter of which Stilts dictated from his hospital bed – the author was dying from Kaposi’s sarcoma brought on by AIDS. Shilts died at age 42 on February 17, 1994.

This book is as important today as it was when it first appeared on bookshelves in 1983. The Mayor of Castro Street: The Life and Times of Harvey Milk is the perfect gift for any high school or college-aged LGBT student. As a Gay man under 30 years old, I have to say it was an amazing history lesson on Gay life from 1940-1980, a time when so much happened so quickly. From Nazi Germany’s persecution of Gays to police raids to Stonewall, Shilts touches on it with factual accuracy.

I learned as much about Gay history as I did about Harvey Milk reading this book. It was refreshing to read about a so-called radical, a man of political action – a Gay superhero, if you will.

Milk giving his “Hope Speech” at the 1978 San Francisco Gay Freedom Day.

June 26, 2009

Seattle Gay News 15

Subversive anthology Fist of the Spider Woman

by Richard Labonte SGN Contributing Writer Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Fear and Queer Desire edited by Amber Dawn (Arsenal Pulp Press, $17.95) There’s a thin line between fear and de-

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June 26, 2009

sire, and the contributors to this woman-centric manipulation of the horror genre delight in erasing it. A few of the 16 contributions deal with traditional shivers: For example, Fionna Zedde writes, erotically, about Lesbian vampires, a clichéd theme handled here fiercely. A couple are more campy: Michelle Tea is afraid of … pubic lice. But a majority of the stories are deeper, darker and psychologically intense. Among them: Megan Milks’ creepy fantasy, “Slug,” about a woman having sex with that most slimy of creatures; Mette Bach’s “All You Can Be,” about the violation of trust between two women; Aurelia T. Evans’ “In Circles,” an unsettling story about an Intersex woman’s equation of genital corrective surgery and mutilation at the hands of a mystical Bloody Mary; and Suki Lee’s gripping “Sido,” about the emotional violence and physical sexuality of a predatory Parisian landlady.

What most tales have in common is their inversion of the stereotypical damsel-in-distress motif of horror fiction. There are no fair ladies fainting away in this subversive anthology.

Richard Labonte has been reading, editing, selling, and writing about Queer literature since the mid-‘70s. He can be reached in care of this publication or at BookMarks@qsyndicate.com.

Celebrating 36 Years!

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June 26, 2009

Seattle Gay News 17

Nude Male offers more men, more nudity studio use of props. The more recent style includes outdoor photos with the subject in the woods, at a lake or beach, even riding a skateboard naked through a neighborhood.

One interesting aspect – particularly among the 25 or so painters included here – is an awareness of the artistic tradition that was largely absent from the earlier period.

For instance, painter Ross Watson includes Caravaggio’s Eros Triumphant (1602-3) peering over the shoulder of his subject.

Robert Schwartz presents views of the city from above, or through a narrow aperture, reminiscent of the frequent practice of Ed-

ues than attractiveness in mind. The Spanish duo of Paco y Manolo seem to allude to the late 19th/early 20th-century photographer Baron Wilhelm von Gloeden’s (1856-1931) attempt to represent early Greek youths.

The positioning and focusing on the knees and lower legs of a model in Keith Rosenthal’s photograph brings to mind, intentionally or not, the similar focus on Narcissus in Dali’s Metamorphosis of Narcissus (1937).

Similarly, the arrangement of the legs in the Yugoslav Nebojsa Zdravkovik’s painting is strongly reminiscent of some of the ignudi (nudes) in Michelangelo’s ceiling fresco for the Sistine Chapel David Bolger, one of several painters here in the “magic realist” tradition of Paul Cadmus, Jared French and George Tooker, seems to appropriate elements from Cadmus’s painting The Bath (1951). Jake and Dinos Chapman’s photograph of two plastic mannequins fellating each other recalls Paul Cadmus’s still-life Manikin (1951), in file photo

by Paul Varnell Special to the SGN The Nude Male: 21st Century Visions collected by David Leddick (Universe/Rizzoli, $39.95) The male form, and the world’s perception of it, what makes it beautiful, even heartbreaking, has changed often within the past half-century, and of all the artistic windows that we have into this, it seems nothing has better expressed this than photography. The Nude Male: 21st Century Visions, selected

by David Leddick is the latest, and one of the most bewitching windows we have into this, containing the most recent depictions of naked men, and providing an opportunity to explore the contrasts and continuities between current male nudes and those of 4050 years ago.

In recent years Leddick has emerged as an expert on the male nude, publishing a halfdozen books on the topic. In its 256 pages, the new book offers nearly 250 images by 120 artists and photographers, most of them in color.

It contains photographs by such familiar names in the genre as Tom Bianchi, Reed Massengill, Duane Michaels, Jeff Palmer and Arthur Tress. But the book’s particular virtue is the inclusion of a large number of little-known but obviously talented photographers at work in the field.

As promised, the majority of the men are

nude, but not all. Some are wearing pants or shorts, pajama bottoms or bikini swimwear. Others are turned slightly away from the camera so the genitals are not visible.

This is not necessarily disappointing: This may be a holdover from the earlier period of physique photography, but there is an aesthetic (and erotic) quality to the not-quitedisclosed genitals.

A dozen or more of the men are photographed with robust erections, a marked change from the earlier period when such depictions were illegal. But most are photographed with non-erect penises, although some do seem to have been “fluffed” or partly aroused.

Most of the men are handsome, appropriate enough choices for an editor who has always stressed the importance of male beauty as well as erotic arousability. The remainder are generally interesting in some particular way.

Nor are genitals, revealed or not, the main focus on several photographs. There are a number of “butt-shots” of men’s wellrounded glutes or closeups of anuses. In several of the photographs, the model’s feet are thrust forward to be prominently visible or take up most of the photographic space.

Think of it as something for every erotic taste.

Some of the men are handling sports equipment or wearing chains, workbelts, cowboy hats, studded leather belts, or handcuffs, a continuation of the earlier period’s

18 Seattle Gay News

June 26, 2009

Collector of The Nude Male: 21st Century Visions, David Leddick

ward Hopper. And Jack Balas actually prints “Edward Hopper in Paris” across one of his paintings, although the point is obscure.

Joe Fanelli paints in a style reminiscent of Philip Pearlstein, although his models are male and better looking than those of Pearlstein, who apparently has more formal val-

which two wooden doll figures lying back to front are surrounded by several obvious homosexual references.

A major value of the book is that it creates a desire to see more of the work of several of these artists and photographers. The book offers just a taste of their work. Happily, a brief appendix gives the website or e-mail address of the artist or the gallery that handles his work. I have not seen this before and it is a welcome innovation.

Celebrating 36 Years!

Lake Overturn a colorful tapestry

by Richard Labonte SGN Contributing Writer Lake Overturn

by Vestal McIntyre (HarperCollins, $24.99) There is a Queer misfit kid at the core of this intricate debut novel about a tiny Idaho town. But McIntyre, author two years ago of an acclaimed short story collection, You are Not the One, has crafted something far more exhilarating than just another comingout account. The town of Eula, abutting a high-desert lake, is conservative to the core, culturally disconnected from mid‘80s America and bristling with religious peevishness – not an easy place for a lad to come to terms with himself. Enrique finds furtive sensuality with men’s workout mag-

azines and in a public bathroom, and adolescent solace in science – he’s a geeky Gay Hispanic boy. Meanwhile, he’s fumbling with an attraction to Gene, his befuddled peer in the trailer next door, with whom he teams up for an abortive science fair project. That’s just one thread among many in this deliriously colorful tapestry of a small town’s depressing poverty, pointless pettiness, quirky rivalries, domestic infidelities, desperate drug use, class and race divisions – and occasional quiet triumphs.

Richard Labonte has been reading, editing, selling, and writing about Queer literature since the mid-‘70s. He can be reached in care of this publication or at BookMarks@ qsyndicate.com.

Unmotivated at work?

Discover your hidden job perk.

by Keith Ferrazzi Special to the SGN People today are shortchanging themselves – that’s the unspoken tragedy of economic recession. The five to 10 percent of Americans who are unemployed and struggling lead the headlines, understandably.

But how about those with jobs? The crappy employment market reduces people’s expectations around satisfaction, advancement, and pay. “Just be glad you have a job” rolls off everyone’s tongue and suddenly you’re stagnating.

If you’re someone who feels stuck, here’s one suggestion: Don’t assume that your long-term professional goals can’t be served by your current job, even if it’s not your ideal position. As the most successful people out there know, everything is connected!

When juggling your personal and professional lives, work on blending the two, not striking a balance. Blend the demands of your day job with your long-term goals by doing what I call “drafting” – recasting current work goals to make them serve longerterm personal interests.

Drafting allows you to bring a greater percentage of your passion and interests to

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from your increased engagement.

Traditional performance goals can be motivating. The flip side is that, set inappropriately, they can be intimidating and sometimes even debilitating when we fall short.

People who are narrowly focused on performance goals tend to withdraw and perform worse during setbacks.

On the other hand, those who set learning goals, according to a study by Drs. Carol Dweck and Heidi Grant of Stanford University, are better able to cope, remain motivated, and achieve more when faced with the setbacks that inevitably occur. You can make good on a learning goal in any economic environment.

Imagine a saleswoman, Judy, who decides to add a personal learning goal to her company’s goal – to learn three new selling techniques from the top sellers in the company to help meet her sales quota. Her bottom-line goal is still to sell a thousand widgets. But work; it will also significantly increase your now, tucked inside that goal, is an additional energy for the job you have today. Along the personal accomplishment that Judy wants to way, it will help you to perform better, so achieve. I believe a company that encoureveryone wins! Do you have to tell others of your longer-term goals? Not for starters. Just do it. Take one goal that someone’s handed you, and turn it into a learning goal for your own benefit. Or call a friend and say, “Hey, I’m trying to find a way to turn my day-to-day goals at work into something that can really benefit my long-term career.

Here are my present goals at work. And here are my long-term goals in life. Can you help me?”

Creating our own personal learning goals (or even suggesting that our managers make it part of company protocol) to support the performance goals we’ve been given is an easy way to “draft.” Learning goals are exactly what they sound like – goals that aren’t focused on a specific outcome, but on learning a new skill or subject expertise, hopefully complimenting some kind of performance goal. The nice thing about learning is that it serves you as much as your employers. Company goals become tools in our own self-development. Think of it as a job perk that isn’t written in your contract.

Meanwhile, your employer will benefit

ages that kind of commitment to improvement should recognize Judy’s achievement for both goals. Even if it doesn’t, however, Judy’s improved skills make her a better professional for life.

In the long run, I recommend working with a partner to help define and achieve learning goals. You may need someone with more expertise than you to help you decide where to focus and what to learn. Even more importantly, you’re more likely to follow through if you have an accountability partner to keep you on track – or even better, what I call a “lifeline relationship” in my book Who’s Got Your Back. That’s a relationship so deep and trusting that the person will do whatever it takes to make sure you don’t fail – including kicking your butt when you need it.

June 26, 2009

Seattle Gay News 19

Keith Ferrazzi, the world’s foremost expert in relationship development, is the author of the #1 bestseller Who’s Got Your Back. For more info and Keith’s blog, visit keithferrazzi.com.

The perfect book for Nirvanaphiles

by Scott Rice SGN Contributing Writer

there is a guide to Nirvana in print and on film in part three.

The sidebars are nicely turned-out, even colorcoded. They also contain some of Gaar’s own photographs. In fact, I read the sidebars first like an appetizer and then went back for the main course.

The Rough Guide series covers everything from travel to movies to, yes, music. They are quick reference works with a popculture bent. Gaar’s book is not meant to replace more formal works such as Michael Azerrad’s Come As You Are or Charles R.

The Rough Guide to Nirvana by local Seattle author Gillian G. Gaar, is a fast-paced telling of Nirvana’s story. The focus, of course, is on Kurt Cobain, the disaffected son of Aberdeen, Washington who went on to briefly rule the music industry before his death in 1994. The book follows Cobain’s journey from beginning to end.

The 250 pages of The Rough Guide to Nirvana are packed with details that Nirvanaphiles will love: detailed bios, discographies, and play lists. Though there is plenty for the serious music fan to love, the book is also user-friendly for the less rabid and less knowledgeable fan like me.

The narrative is linear, concise, and moves along quickly. The more esoteric information is organized in part two, and

Cross’s Heavier Than Heaven. While I’m not enough of a Nirvana zealot to read those tomes, the Rough Guide to Nirvana was just perfect for my level of interest. I could easily find the stuff I was interested in and skip the rest. (I‘m sorry Gillian, I didn‘t read every word of part two, where the details of the music are documented.)

Gaar has been writing about music since 1979 including writing for the now defunct Rocket, various fanzines, as well as numerous magazines and anthologies. She’s also authored She’s a Rebel: The History of Women in Rock & Roll, Green Day: Rebels With A Cause, and In Utero for Continuum’s 33 1/3 series. Her favorite artists include Nirvana, the Beatles, Elvis, Danielle Dax, and the Monks. Right now, Gaar’s digging the new Green Day recording 21st Century Breakdown and sometimes you can hear Leontyne Price’s Carmen wafting from her windows.

Opening Merv Griffin’s closet

by Richard Labonte SGN Contributing Writer Merv Griffin: A Life in the Closet

by Darwin Porter (Blood Moon Productions, $26.95)

Darwin Porter tears the door off Merv Griffin’s Queer closet with gusto in this resoundingly researched biography. (With a personal connection: As a college senior, Porter hired Griffin to sing at a graduation dance, and the two developed a friendship.)

Though often overused, “page-turner” more than applies. Most every paragraph bristles

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with he-slept-with revelations about Merv, who schmoozed, seduced and made a play for every Tom, Dick and Harry in showbiz – emphasis on the dicks. Seduced as a teenager by Errol Flynn, he cavorted early on with such stars as Montgomery Clift and Marlon Brando (with brief detours to the beds of Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe) and, later in life, with hired hustlers and porn stars, all the while pretending to be the paramour of glamorous Eva Gabor. Sexual escapades aside, Porter’s insightful assessment of the man’s career arc – from brash boy who staged backyard entertainment, to struggling big band crooner, to king (or queen) of daytime talk shows, to made-byTV mogul – brims with insider gossip writ large, smart and with great style.

Richard Labonte has been reading, editing, selling, and writing about Queer literature since the mid-‘70s. He can be reached in care of this publication or at BookMarks@ qsyndicate.com.

20 Seattle Gay News

June 26, 2009

Celebrating 36 Years!

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June 26, 2009

Seattle Gay News 21

the Stonewall uprising. Carter said he wrote the book because, although information on continued from cover the subject was available, there was no inThe 1969 Gay riots that became known as depth account of the Stonewall Riots. the Stonewall uprising birthed not only the “I felt it was important that there be a full national Gay movement but also modernaccount of a historical event of such great day Gay Pride. The first Gay Pride marches importance, an event that was important for US history, but also for world history,” Carter points out. “Let us recall that Gay Pride events, which now take place around the world, were instituted in honor of Stonewall.”

Carter said that when he was writing the book, the feeling of fate was quite striking, how so many different elements of disparate natures came together at once, as well as over time, to create the Stonewall Riots.

“The place, the physical and social geography, the transportation routes, the time of year, the weather, the unique nature of the Stonewall Inn, and many, many other factors all coincided to create the Stonewall uprising,” said Carter.

Carter may be on to something. Police departments and vice squads – both uniformed and plain-clothed – had conducted thousands or raids on Gay bars since the turn of the century. But something happened at 1:20 on the morning of Saturday, June 28, 1969 when the policemen arrived at the Stonewall Inn’s double doors and announced, “Police! We’re taking the place!” The raid did not go as planned. Bar patrons refused to produce proper identifications, men dressed as women refused to go with a female cop to the ladies room to verify their sex, and within minutes between 100 and 150 people congregated outside. A scuffle between the police and crowd broke out, which quickly turned into an out-and-out riot.

The angry crowd, whose In 1979, pop sculptor George Segal was commissioned by the Mildred Andrews Fund to create a work that would commemorate numbers swelled to 500, the Stonewall Rebellion. The result was Gay Liberation, the first piece of public art commemorating the struggle of GLBTQ people for equality. overpowered the police It is in Christopher Park at the intersection of Christopher St., Grove St. and W. 4th St. in New York City's Greenwich Village neighborhood. and their reinforcements, sending them cowering inside the Stonewall Inn – setbacks, we have largely demanded civil the very bar they had dragged everyone out rights include our people by chanting in of.

“People like to say that Stonewall was inunison again, and again, “We’re here! We’re evitable, that if the event had not happened Queer! Get used to it!”

In a year such as this one, with “Don’t there and then, that it would have happened Quality maintenance and repair since 1973.

Ask, Don’t Tell” still an active policy, no elsewhere or at a different time, but this befederal civil rights laws that include the lief does not bear scrutiny; there were many 508 Denny Way, Seattle 206 443 1999 LGBT community, Prop 8 upheld, and raids before that night in June 1969, and www.fatcity.net a push for a referendum to take away our there were many after that date, but no other same-sex domestic partnership rights in raid resulted in a mass sustained uprising,” FAT CITY Washington State, it is paramount that we Carter said.

In order to write the book as an accurate celebrate what Stonewall gave us 40 years ago: a national voice and one vision. Equal- and in-depth portrayal, Carter conducted countless interviews with participants from ity! Now! Reader, our young LGBT brothers and both sides of the line – the rioters and the sisters do not learn about Stonewall in their lawmen.

“I met many interesting people, but the high school history class. We, as a proud people with a proud history, are not men- most interesting person I met was Tommy tioned during history lessons regarding civil Lanigan-Schmidt,” he said. “Tommy is one rights. This year’s Gay Pride month, which of the most fascinating persons I’ve met in marks 40 years since Stonewall, is the per- a lifetime in which I’ve been fortunate to fect opportunity for our LGBT – sometimes meet many amazing people, so much so that with an added Q for Queer & Questioning I say that I’ve been very lucky to not only – youth to learn that, no, Stonewall isn’t in have met, but to have worked with, three geSan Francisco, and yes, it did take place be- niuses: Allen Ginsberg, Peter Townshend, fore the world even knew who Harvey Milk and Tommy.”

Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt, a well-known was. What better way to learn than by getGay artist selected by the Whitney Museum ting “out of the bar and into the streets”?

I recently spoke with an expert on the sub- for the American Century Show, is recogject, David Carter, who wrote Stonewall: nized as being one of the most important The Riots That Sparked The Gay Revolu- living American artists. But, few know, he MERCEDES | BMW | PORSCHE | AUDI | VOLKSWAGEN tion. The book is an excellent source of in- was part of the crowd of Gay “street youth” MINI COOPER | LAND ROVER | VOLVO | JAGUAR formation about what transpired the night of who started the Stonewall Riots. took place in Los Angeles and New York in 1970, commemorating the anniversary of the riots. Today, the number of cities participating in Gay Pride marches is too high to count. This year in Seattle, on the anniversary of Stonewall, we celebrate 40 years of Gay Pride.

stonewall

Stonewall is important because for the LGBT community, it is our American Revolution. Stonewall is important because for the LGBT community it is the moment where the men who wore dresses dug their heels into the ground and said, “No more!”

Enough truly is enough and, minus a few

tony the misfit / flickr

FAT CITY

FAT CITY

We’re proud to celebrate PRIDE with you!

22 Seattle Gay News

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Celebrating 36 Years!

Smash the Church, from riot to revolution

by Richard Labonte SGN Contributing Writer

The cover of Time magazine, just four months after the Stonewall riots

“Life was so hard for these young men that only three, including Tommy, are known to be alive today,” Carter said.

Stonewall, as Carter views it, is very important for Gay youth to know about, because every community needs to have a culture if it is to survive and thrive, and much of the basis of having a culture is to have a shared narrative or history that gives the foundation for answering basic questions: Where do we come from? Why are we here?

Where have we been? Where are we going?

What are our values? What do we aspire to?

What do we stand for? It is, he said, very much a question of identity and of values. “[Stonewall] is a key event that every LGBT person should know about to some extent and particularly every Gay American,” Carter said, “I also think it is important to see this event as part of the narrative of American history and American civil rights history.”

Another reason that Gay youth should know this history, he said, is that they were the heroes of this story: against all odds, a group of young people no one in America wanted or cared about generated one of the seminal events of American history, changing both the nation and the world forever in profound ways. It was edgy, teenaged homeless youths who led the rebellion, and it was young Gay men and women who started the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance, he said.

“Stonewall would not be important had these two organizations not come out of the ashes of the riots to give birth to the Gay Liberation phase of the LGBT civil rights movement, superseding the homophile phase,” said Carter.

Will there ever be another Stonewall?

Carter doesn’t think so – at least, not in America.

“I hope there won’t be a need for another Stonewall in the US, but if there is, I hope and believe our community is up to the deed,” he said. “I think there may be a need for similar events in other countries in the coming decade or so, although I believe that the nonviolent approach to social and political change should always be used when possible. We should always do our best to avoid violence as a tactic.”

Like so many others from the Stonewall generation, Carter is proud of how far we’ve come as a community, but agrees that plenty of work still has to be done regarding LGBT

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civil rights. He said that back in the Stonewall era, he wouldn’t have thought we’d have come this far by now, and points out that it has taken a lot of courage and determinations to get here.

“On the other hand, if the average Gay person had gotten more involved even on a minimal level, we would have had all of our rights long before now,” Carter said, “As Harvey Milk said, everyone who has not come out should come out. As for those who think they can’t come out, then let them give some money anonymously to an LGBT group that is working for our civil rights.

There is always a way to contribute.”

It’s been 40 years since the last brick was thrown during the Stonewall uprising.

Four decades have come and gone since the “flame queens” and Gay “street kids” uprooted a parking meter and used it as a battering ram on the doors of the Stonewall Inn. Seven U.S. presidents have come and gone since the last police car was set ablaze during the nights of Gay angst on the streets of Greenwich Village. To say that Stonewall made a lasting impression is an understatement. Stonewall allowed us to become who we are as an LGBT community.

On June 1 of this year, President Barack Obama declared June 2009 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month. In a presidential proclamation, Obama cited the Stonewall Riots as a reason to “commit to achieving equal justice under law for LGBT Americans.”

So much has changed within the LGBT community post-Stonewall, yet little remains changed on a federal level. This is why, as we march through the streets of downtown Seattle Sunday on June 28, we must hold a special place in our hearts, as a city, as a community, as proud LGBT people, for Stonewall.

“I wish that every person who reads this article would call his or her representatives in the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate and demand that they pass a civil rights bill that includes us,” Carter said. “Forty years after Stonewall, we have the same federal civil rights protections we had four decades ago – zero!”

He said Congress has yet to pass a bill that gives us protection from being fired, leading Carter to ask, “People, where is your anger?”

Smash the Church, Smash the State!

The Early Years of Gay Liberation edited by Tommi Avicolli Mecca (City Lights Books, $17.95) The personal is riotously political and the history is tangibly personal in this anthology of diverse, down-toearth reflections on the early days of Gay Liberation, from both Queers who were there, and from others looking back 40 years later. Section one in particular, “Out of the Bars and Into the Streets,” reclaims and recalls the heady era of Stonewall, getting stoned and lobbing metaphorical (and actual) stones at our oppressors.

Other sections touch on the feminist movement, drag queens and Transgender Queers. In a closing essay demonstrating that activism shouldn’t ever die, Merle Woo declaims: “Stonewall was a riot – now we need a revolution.” Avicolli Mecca, himself a longtime activist who marched the streets of Philadelphia not long after the 1969 bar riot in Greenwich Village, has compiled a vivid, colorful history, blending original essays, poems and songs with reprints of several historical manifestos and brief biographical vignettes of activists no longer alive to craft a co-gendered collection that is by turns emotional, joyous, poignant, even sometimes contradictory – and always defiant.

I was 16 or 17, sneaking off to civil rights and antiwar marches. In the fall of 1969, I started college at Temple University, mainly to avoid the draft. Within no time at all I joined the campus SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), an antiwar group. Then I discovered that the Gay Liberation Front held weekly coffee hours. It was a perfect fit.

Filled with revolutionary fervor, I made the Queer movement my life."

- from Smash the Church, Smash the State!, edited by Tommi Avicolli Mecca Richard Labonte has been reading, editing, selling, and writing about Queer literature since the mid-‘70s. He can be reached in care of this publication or at BookMarks@ qsyndicate.com.

Featured Excerpt "My own coming out had all the drama of an Italian opera. How appropriate, considering I come from a working-class, immigrant, southern Italian family in South Philly. Despite a conservative Catholic upbringing, I became radicalized by the time

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Seattle Gay News 23

Features | Reviews | Events | Jobs DETROIT ANN ARBOR CHICAGO LAS VEGAS M I N N E A P O L I S S A N F R A N C I S C O S E AT T L E

www.meefers.com (866) 991.9518

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Celebrating 36 Years!

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Seattle Gay News 25

The Mariposa Club a teen classic

Prepare to play.

by Marcus James SGN Contributing Writer The Mariposa Club

by Rigoberto Gonzalez (Alyson Books)

26 Seattle Gay News

June 26, 2009

As they embark on their final year of high school, the Fierce Foursome – Maui, Trini, Isaac, and Liberace – decide to do something big, something that will memorialize their friendships for when they all go their separate ways and begin their new “adult” lives. Having been subjected to their own trials and tribulations for being openly Gay, they set out to create a legacy within the halls of Caliente Valley High School; its first-ever GLBTQ support group, the Mariposa Club. Soon a tragic, homophobic incident occurs, one that strikes the boys too closely, and in the end the entire school and the community itself turns to the Mariposa Club as a way to cope, and derive some sense of understanding out of something that is completely senseless.

Author Rigoberto Gonzalez has penned a classic young adult book in every way, and it follows in the vein of Alex Sanchez, and this seems to be the book’s unplanned backfire, because at times I would forget and think that I was reading another Alex Sanchez novel. Though written well, and speaking to things that are still current and still relevant, it’s also something that we’ve seen time and time again in young adult novels geared towards the GLBTQ community, and it would be nice to see something different.

As far as this novel goes, it is the perfect read for Gay youth, though the age bracket should be that of the younger set, but nevertheless, The Mariposa Club will surely become a classic for a teen already a member of, or creating, a Gay/Straight Alliance in their own school.

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Seattle Gay News 27

Fried Pickles

28 Seattle Gay News

June 26, 2009

Celebrating 36 Years!

Between Men: Volume 2

an amazing collection he receives help from Tony the tow-truck driver, who is not only straight, but Cicero’s friend from long ago. When Cicero agrees to spend the night at his old friend’s place, Tony reveals a deep, dark secret, a secret that is felt within the reader by the amazing power of Kenan’s words.

Between Men: Volume 2 is a must-read for anyone who appreciates the power of a wellconstructed short.

by Marcus James SGN Contributing Writer Between Men: Volume 2

by Richard Canning (Alyson Books) If you liked the first Between Men collection, you will love Between Men: Volume 2. This amazing collection of 19 shorts comes to us from some of the most prolific and groundbreaking authors in not just Gay literature, but literature in general. Richard Canning weeded through story after story to bring us a collection of tales that stand out and says something about modern Gay experience. Of all the stories I read, one stands out the most, and that’s Randall Kenan’s “I Thought I Heard the Shuffle of Angel’s Feet.” In this story, Cicero, on a trip to North Carolina, finds himself moving eerily down memory lane when his car breaks down and

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Seattle Gay News 29

Gay lit in a straight world Is there a future for Gay literature? Are the lack of newly published “Gay-themed” books a result of economic recession, or do they become obsolete as we enter mainstream society? Before the Gay Revolution (“Gay” representing the entire GLBT community), there was a necessity for these resources, but does acceptance mean losing our original identities and stories to join a societal melting pot?

The first hints of Gay lit appeared in the early 1960s, before Stonewall. These sordid stories of homosexual liaisons were often published under pulp fiction, offering tawdry tales (and covers) of forbidden love.

Our closeted forefathers discovered they were not alone in a world where homosexuality was illegal and a mental illness. “These early works are being rediscovered,” says Patricia Nell Warren, author of The Front Runner, “their literary value reassessed. Today, pioneering authors – like Ann Bannon – are finally being given their rightful place in the history of our literature.”

Soon, Gay bookstores began appearing in major cities: Lambda Rising in Washington DC, Giovanni’s Room in Philadelphia, and The Oscar Wilde in New York were just a few. The shelves were being filled with titles such as The Beautiful Room is Empty (Edmund White) or The Well of Loneliness (Radclyffe Hall). Our need for identification and a place to fit in started to appear in the writings we found. Pulp tales of forbidden love became stories of discovery such as James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room or Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice. “Being Gay is what all Gays have in common,” says author/editor Richard Labonte (Best Gay Love Stories 2008/2009). “The process of

coming to terms with that truth – whether in a passing comment or a full-length book – will always inform Gay lit.”

Patricia Nell Warren adds, “The ‘comingout’ story is a staple for us, like ‘first love’ is for straight literature.”

Our continual longing for self-identification will always be a desire in the written word as a need to recognize our selves in others, and as a way to alleviate our loneliness. But the danger here comes in saturation. While we all have our coming out stories, most of them have been told and so new ones with original voices are becoming rare as the Gay rights movement progresses.

THE PROBLEMS OF SELFDISCOVERY Along with self-discovery came problematic situations. The writings of Randy Shilts And the Band Played On or David Feinberg’s bitter comedy Eighty-Sixed appeared as ways of dealing with the AIDS crises. A void had been created that needed explanation and we sought out the writings of those who helped us to understand what was happening in the world around us.

Unfortunately, tales of seroconversion and loss became too common too quickly, and

eric andrews-katz

by Eric Andrews-Katz SGN Contributing Writer

as sorrowful voices cried from hundreds of pages, an overabundance of stimuli causes a shutting down of the mind and paves the way to apathy. As new information on the illness appears, it almost becomes immediately obsolete with the pace of research and discovery. The bigger challenge is how to present information that’s consistently mutating to a world suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder.

These factors gave birth to the liberation and legal movement. Books such as the Dr. Charles Silverstein/Edmund White The Joy of Gay Sex (first appeared before AIDS; revisions included it) made an appearance along with The Lesbian Couple’s Guide by Judith McDaniel. We, as a community began to look for our place in literature.

Groundbreaking books appeared such as Rosemary Curb’s Lesbian Nuns: Breaking Silence or the autobiography of Metropolitan Community Church founder, Reverend Troy Perry, The Lord is My Shepherd and He Knows I’m Gay. We found ourselves in practically every corner of the printed world and while there was still silence from some foreign countries, our perspectives of ourselves became wider.

BIRTH OF A NEW GENERATION New generations became aware at younger ages, and books were written for them.

Aaron Fricke sued his high school in 1980 and wrote about it in Confessions of a Rock Lobster. This paved the way for a new genre of Gay writing, the Young Adult. Books like Alex Sanchez’s Rainbow Boys found not only a home, but also a previously untapped audience wanting more. “A good Young Adult novel can be literature,” says Labonte, “if the quality of the plotting, the characters, and the prose is high enough.”

The Gay literature movement seemed to reach a peak by the early part of 2003. Less people were reading as other forms of media provided a faster gratification. Finances were shifting through out the country and although the desires may have been present, the actual need for books seems to have diminished. According to Amazon.com, there were over 35 pages of options for Gay literature published in 2005. By the year 2008, only 12 pages were offered.

But online shopping isn’t the reason Gay lit isn’t being published as much. The segregation in common mall bookstores may be one culprit for the decrease. It makes it easier to locate books, but does it cause hesitation for heterosexual counterparts to go in search of those titles? “A heterosexual reader [usually] isn’t going to casually browse the LGBT section for a novel to read,” says author/editor Lawrence Schimel (Best Date Ever: True stories that celebrate Gay relationships). But “a Queer novel

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June 26, 2009

shelved in general fiction is very often lost since the ‘core’ readership who would find it of interest most likely won’t find it.” So again, it comes down to how we define Gay literature.

DEFINING GAY LITERATURE “I think Gay lit is anything that is written for, or is of interest to, a Gay audience,” says Schimel. “Sometimes this is by a Gay author, sometimes it’s not.” Annie Proulx’s Brokeback Mountain isn’t any more or less important because the author is (assumed) heterosexual. The non-Gay novels of E.M. Forester are not discredited because of the author’s orientation.

While early Gay-themed books struggled for their places of recognition, others seemed to be receiving worldly attention. Gore Vidal’s The City and the Pillar and Truman Capote’s Other Voices, Other Rooms were both published in 1948 and heralded as classics – if controversial – by the general public.

Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, with its blatant homosexual overtones, was published as early as 1890, making scandalous and literary history.

Patricia Nell Warren’s The Front Runner became the first “Gay-themed” book on the New York Times bestseller’s list in 1974. It is taught in college literary classes across the country, and yet it is still largely considered “Gay literature.” Other books, such as Alice Walker’s The Color Purple or Michael Cunningham’s The Hours, have become recognized far beyond being Gay classics, despite the clear subject matters. But having a film made doesn’t mean crossing over. Christopher Bram’s book The Father of Frankenstein was renamed Gods and Monsters and won several Academy Awards but is still labeled as “Gay” literature.

THE FUTURE OF GAY LITERATURE The future of Gay literature seems to reflect the times. Erotica always seems to be present, and Gay memoirs/biographies are still in demand. But the simple view of “reading for escape” appears to be a dying genre. Insights to homosexual lifestyles under foreign rule are becoming more common, but are they catering to a subdivision within a counterculture? Politics and civil rights will most likely be at the top of the list until achieved, and young adult themes seem to be the next big wave in Gay reading. No matter what genre it is, it’s a matter of connection to the reader.

“In the long run,” says Patricia Nell Warren, “being Gay and out doesn’t automatically guarantee an author’s success. Writing about a character, means that you have to feel and suffer with that person. It’s a human thing, not a Gay thing.”

Celebrating 36 Years!

What We Remember a depraved mystery

by Richard Labonte SGN Contributing Writer What We Remember

by Michael Thomas Ford (Kensington Books, $24) As this flashback-powered mystery opens, small-town sheriff Daniel McCloud has been missing for eight years, leaving behind stoic wife Ada, determined at any emotional cost to hold her family together, and three numbed children, including Gay teenager Billy, destined to grow up Gay and confused. When his body surfaces, Billy’s older brother, James – now a big-city district attorney – returns home to handle the fallout, only to become the prime suspect in his father’s murder. James’ accuser? His surly brother-in-law Nate Derry, now mar-

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ried to his sister, who has borne a grudge ever since James, years back, dated Nate’s beloved – and suddenly pregnant – stepsister. With a chronology that hops nimbly between 1982 and 1991, and with overlapping points of view that spotlight the fallibility of memory and the treachery of lies, Ford’s intricate jigsaw puzzle of a novel zeros in on the sort of depravity – in this case, heterosexual depravity – that often rots the core of families which, on the surface, appear to be normalcy incarnate.

Richard Labonte has been reading, editing, selling, and writing about Queer literature since the mid-‘70s. He can be reached in care of this publication or at BookMarks@qsyndicate.com.

June 26, 2009

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