Tired Old Queen at the Movies: The Boys in the Band

It's June 26, a very gay day indeed: the anniversary of the Lawrence, Windsor, and Obergefell decisions.

Steve Hayes reviews the groundbreaking film version of the 1968 play, which portrays gay life as it was fifty years ago (OMG has it really been that long?):  before Stonewall happened, when the closet doors were still shut tight, "gay pride" hadn't been thought of, AIDS was nonexistent, and gay marriage was an entirely whimsical thought, as unreal and implausible as time travel.



As it happens, a summer revival of the play, with an all-gay cast, is running on Broadway now. I have no desire to go to New York, but I hope somebody films that production - it would be fascinating to see what the current generation does with it.

I was in high school and had only recently put the words homosexual and me together when I first heard of this film.  I think it played a single week in the city where I lived, but I would have sooner jumped off a cliff than go see it back then:  both for the fear of being seen and identified as "one of them" as well as the fear of actually meeting "a homosexual" - homo, homo, homo - I actually used to pray that God would never, ever let me meet one of those awful, horrible, depraved people, who would surely tempt me to sin, and ruin my salvation (already in tatters due to my constant, ever-failing battles with - oh woe is me! - the deep, dark, godless sin of masturbation).

Sounds so silly now, of course: but at the time, it was a deadly serious thing for a young, isolated gay boy who knew what he was and hated it with every breath.  That kind of fear and self-hatred is something straight people never go through - and I have yet to meet one who really "got it."  It does bad things to you inside.  Really bad.  Some guys didn't make it.  That could have been me, too.  Or you, perhaps.  But as my truckbuddy Frank remarked to me the other day, we managed to live thought all that, we are survivors - and that is surely something to be glad of.

I finally came out a decade later in college, and yes of course I had already shed all that fundamentalist crap - but between all that and the bullying in school, and the constant fear of being "found out" I was badly injured - as I know so many of my truckbuddies were too.  A stupid, awful, inhuman thing to put people though - for no good reason whatsoever.  I was about to rejoice that all that is history - but is it really?  We only had to deal with bullies in person back then - now there are cyberbullies and all sorts of public invective on the airwaves that wasn't possible in those days.

And the scars still hurt.  They will always hurt.  Like the pain of losing a loved one.  But life goes on, regardless of all your hurts, and in time you just learn to make the best of things.  Nobody gets through life unscathed, though some work really hard at hiding the fact.

One more note: when I finally got to see the video, say around 1985, and also found a copy of the play in a used book store, I was struck with how true to life it was, and still is - kudos to playwright Mart Crowley, a fellow Southerner, now 82 - a microcosm of the gay world that still rings true to me. I don't mean the clothes and the music and the slang, which are ever-changing, but the way gay people talk and act among themselves, when there's no need to "butch it up" or mind your manners or pretend to be straight - which for the men of my generation and before was, and still is down here in the provinces, our automatic default mode in public.

I saw the video again a few years ago, and while this time I didn't see the ending as being quite so bleak and depressing as I had the first time, I still thought the dialogue, the essential gayness of the characters was spot on.  Because human nature in general does not change, and by corollary, the sub-category of gay nature does not change, either - that's my view of things. (If human nature were not a constant, we would have changed into some other kind of critters long ago. But human nature is the same from age to age - just as is dog nature, cat nature, monkey nature, etc. - all capable of infinite outward variations, yet inwardly still the same.) But another thing that straight people don't get, unless they are very wise indeed, is that gayness is not only about who you sleep with - there's a nature, a character, a spirit, a whatever-you-call-it that comes with being gay, that is part of the package.

No, I don't mean effeminacy, necessarily - oh stop it, Mary - I have known (in both senses of the word) bricklayers, truck drivers, doctors, lawyers, football players, and Marines, none of whom had a touch of nelly queen about them, though they probably thought I had more than a touch, sometime or other.  But there's a certain beingness, for want of a better word, that I recognize in other gay men, butch or femme, or somewhere in between.  I mean a certain ambiance, if you will, a certain way of encountering the world and looking at it.  A certain attitude and rhythm of being that is neither straight-guy nor straight-girl but something else again - a third mode of being that partakes of both the others, but is itself, by itself, complete, and not merely an imitation of the other two:  something else again.  Something that is neither good nor bad but just IS - and is no strange thing, but simply belongs here in this world, like any other part of nature, human or otherwise.  We just are.  No explanation or justification needed.

At least that's how it seems to me, but I'm afraid I have neither the vocabulary nor the patience to write out a full exegesis of gaiety at this time.  Instead, why don't you fellas just go watch the video again, and I dare you to come back and tell me you don't see yourself in at least one of the characters, or several, or maybe all!  At least, you'll be reminded of one important thing - it's so so so important in this preachy, self-righteous, broomstick-up-the-ass modern world to be able to laugh at ourselves.  That too is an essential part of the human condition, and one we disown at our peril.


PS - I don't presume to speak for all the other letters of LGBTQIXYZ and whatever - they can certainly speak for themselves if they please.  I can only speak of what pertains to my existence and experience on this planet.  And of course my existence, my beingness, does not in any way preclude theirs.  I really, really don't want to run anybody else's life; I simply want everybody else to leave me the hell alone and let me get on with mine, on my own terms, and not those of some puritans of the left or the right.

LIVE FROM LOS ANGELES: Prop 8 Play

Beginning at 9:45 pm, Texas time (is there any other kind?) via YouTube or AFER.

Featuring an all-star cast including George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Martin Sheen, Jamie Lee Curtis, Jane Lynch, Kevin Bacon and others, "8" is a play written by Academy Award winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black and directed by acclaimed actor and director Rob Reiner. It is a powerful account of the case filed by the American Federation for Equal Rights (AFER ) in the U.S. District Court in 2010 to overturn Proposition 8 [LINK], a constitutional amendment that eliminated the rights of same-sex couples to marry in the state of California. Framed around the trial's historic closing arguments in June 2010, 8 provides an intimate look what unfolded when the issue of same-sex marriage was on trial.

11:15 Texas time: The play's over, but it will be posted soon on YouTube and I'll repost it here on the Blue Truck when it is available.

I must admit, I'd heard this play was in the works months ago, but I couldn't imagine how anyone could make a lengthy court proceeding into a play without a lot of boredom; yet the writer, Dustin Lance Black, did just that, and the all-star cast was great.

I have to tell you, boys, when all those big stars walked out on stage at the beginning, your Head Trucker lost it for a moment or two:  in some sense I felt they were coming out for me, and for my Cody, and the little dog, and that life we had together for a flicker of time, in that tiny little town far out on the prairie - that this play was ultimately about us, and the millions of others like us, who wanted, and want, nothing more than to live a quiet, happy life just as the relatives and the neighbors do, a life protected and respected by the laws, a life of equal dignity and honor under the Constitution and the noblest principles of this Republic.

A life free from fear and free from interference: the equal protection of the laws, the pursuit of happiness. A life of Yes, not of No - of sunshine, not of shadow - of I Do, not of You Can't.

Just like everyone else. And bless God, that day is finally dawning for us all in this land - may it come quickly.

Update:  Here's the complete play, which runs an hour and a half; when the red button appears on the screen, click it to get started at the right place.



And one of the most memorable lines tonight was not in the script: after the play was over, attorneys for our side Ted Olson and David Boies were called onstage, where Boies remarked: "We put fear and prejudice on trial, and fear and prejudice lost."

Gay Jesus Play Nixed Again

So on Wednesday, Fort Worth's Rose Marine Theater announced it would allow the cancelled student production of Corpus Christi to be performed on its stage.

And then on Thursday, after receiving at least one threat of violence, the theater's board of directors withdrew the offer.

Meanwhile, Gallaudet University in Washington, D. C., is putting on three performances of the play this weekend.  In which the Christ-like figure is not only gay but deaf, too.  Imagine that.

Naturally, the rightwing homophobes up there are protesting too, but Gallaudet officials have not backed down.

By coincidence, I suppose, playwright Terrence McNally, who grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas, made news for a different, but serendipitous reason this week, as the Washington Post reports:

Married: Terrence McNally and Tom Kirdahy Tuesday in Washington. The Tony-winning playwright, 71, and lawyer, 46, tied the knot on the banks of the Potomac near the Kennedy Center, which is running a series of McNally's plays. The couple had a civil union in Vermont seven years ago, but wanted a marriage: Rev. George Walker of the People's Congregational United Church of Christ performed the ceremony -- Kirdahy read a scene from McNally's play "Corpus Christi" -- and actress Tyne Daly served as a witness. The couple live in New York City.

Today in Texastan: "Gay Jesus" Play Cancelled

In the face of outrage from the local Christianist Taliban and criticism from the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, not to mention security concerns, student director John Otte's professor has cancelled the workshop performance of Terrence McNally's Corpus Christi, which was to have been performed this morning at 8 a.m. before a small audience of classmates and family members on the Tarleton State University campus in Stephenville.

Kudos to university president Dr. Dominic Dottavio, who while asserting his belief that the play is "offensive, crude, and irreverent," nevertheless firmly upheld academic freedom and the student's First Amendment right to produce the play.

Otte:  "Never did I choose this play to attack Christians. I am one."

If you can bear to sit through the painfully amateurish TSU student news broadcast below, you will hear interviews with local mullahs preachers, Dr. Dottavio, and Otte himself.

And get a pretty good idea of the backwards, small-minded, fundamentalist-controlled world your Head Trucker lives in out here on the prairie.



Story begins at the 4:10 mark.

Update:  Houston ABC news report interviews Tarleton State students, who say "Homosexuality is the one unforgiveable sin in our society."

And that, my friends, is what you're up against if you're a gay man living in Texas in the year 2010.