For Frying Out Loud (5 page)

June 2007

GAY, GAY, GAY, GAY, GAY, GAY, GAY

Is there anything gayer than standing in front of the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in New York's Greenwich Village? I was there on Thursday, and never felt more gay. It felt good.

During Rehoboth's July 4th Fireworks, I listened to patriotic songs and desperately tried to separate them from the mess over at the U.S. Executive Branch, where Dick Cheney may or may not work (what does he do, have a desk on the Pennsylvania Avenue median?) and where W. just poked his finger in the eye of our entire Judicial Branch. Rehoboth may be Gayberry RFD, but by July 5th I needed a great big dose of Urban Gayboys and that Isle of Lesbos off the East River.

Get thee to Manhattan and the 14th Street B&B where we checked into a room adorned with a six foot head shot of Audrey Hepburn. Pretty darn gay.

If that wasn't enough, I read through the B&B welcome letter and noted that the special security code to get you in the door if you forget your key is Judy Garland's real name. That's so gay, in the very best sense of the popular phrase.

In fact, it reminded me how the Stonewall riots really happened. It wasn't particularly political or born of a well-oiled plan. It erupted because after Judy Garland's funeral that morning a contingent of gay fans and drag queens went to the Stonewall Inn to drown their sorrows. When cops raided the place for the umpteenth time that month, those queens rose up and said “not tonight, Josephine” or words to that effect and the bottle throwing began. On that hot, humid day, June 28, 1969, a lot of sad, soulful mourners turned into pissed off queens and kicked some serious police butt. Some say the uprising really launched the entire gay rights revolution. It's a daunting history for an unpretentious looking watering hole.

From that historic monument we strolled up Christopher Street to the Oscar Wilde Bookshop, the City's only exclusively
LGBT bookstore. I was delighted when the proprietor instantly greeted me by name even though I looked tubbier and more disheveled than I do on my Photoshopped book cover. Oscar Wilde is a great bookstore and, like other independent bookstores, is having a tough go of it.

Suppertime found us uptown dining with an old friend of mine and his husband. I
love
writing:
“his
husband or
her
wife.” Those word combos are starting to sound natural. I remember being blown away reading an obit which referred to the deceased being survived by “his husband.” Way to go,
Newsweek
, but after all, the couple lived in Boston, where same-sex marriage is legal.

My dinner companions ordered très gay cocktails (Manhattans, Cosmos, and Kir Royals) along with a fine meal and non-stop dish. And by “dish,” I mean several yummy courses and nonstop gossipy gay chatter.

Then there was Broadway. The Great Gay Way. My reputation as a show queen is often at odds with my lesbian credentials. I adore those Broadway divas along with the boys, and I admit (just a bit embarrassed) that I would rather be in the third row cheering for Audra McDonald or Chita Rivera than Melissa Etheridge.

As for 4-time Tony Award winner Audra, we saw her give a stunning performance in
110 in the Shade
, a dusty, creaky old musical made splendid by her electric performance. Theatre queens from the balcony to the orchestra stood and shouted “Brava!”

Friday night found us seeing
Grey Gardens
, which just as easily could have been called
Gay Gardens
. It's gayer than
La Cage Aux Folles
. Not in the literal sense, but this musical, fashioned from the cult documentary film about lesser Kennedy relatives (Jackie's Bouvier cousins) living in squalor in East Hampton, fairly screams “gay!”

Mary Louise Wilson stars as nutty Edith Bouvier Beale and Christine Ebersole as her daughter Little Edie, a walking fashion police violation with delusions of sanity. Singer wannabe Edith's
bachelor piano accompanist would have made Noel Coward look butch. You should have seen the boys lining up to give homage at the stage door.

It was great seeing Wilson again. I last saw her on stage playing the Stripper Tessie Tura to Angela Lansbury's Mama Rose in a 1974 production of
Gypsy
. Why do I know these things but cannot remember my computer passwords? Oh, right. I'm a gay man trapped in a lesbian's body.

And speaking of Lansbury, we saw her on Saturday night in
Deuce
, an anemic play about two aging tennis stars, where she played opposite Marian Seldes. Here's another gay connection–Marian played the long-time partner of Vanessa Redgrave in a brilliant but heartbreaking one act play televised as part of the movie
If These Walls Could Talk
several years ago.

But Angela Lansbury is royalty. To most folks she's that busybody from
Murder, She Wrote
, but theatre queens worship at her feet for her bitchy turns in the films
Gaslight
and
The Manchurian Candidate
and her Broadway musical comedy triumph in
Mame
.

And if all that isn't gay enough, she's done Sondheim. Enough said.

Deuce
was nothing more than a vehicle for two legendary actors (there are no actresses anymore; my adoptive gay son informs me that we're supposed to call them all actors, but frankly I'm more used to saying “his husband” than calling Angela Lansbury an “actor”) and it shows these two tennis stars pondering their careers, regrets, and relationships (not Sapphic, but that didn't stop them from talking about the lesbians on the courts and in the locker rooms). To say the play was a gay old time would not be a stretch.

Also during our long weekend we visited the Museum of Modern Art – inextricably gay. Dozens of male couples held hands as they browsed among Picasso (not gay), Van Gogh (did he have a thing for Gaugan?) and Andy Warhol (see title of article).

We dined at the new museum restaurant called Modern (not an innovative title, but an exquisite establishment) and three quarters of the incredibly attentive staff was surely gay.

Wrapping up the weekend, we visited New York's LGBT Community Center on 13th Street, which was in the thralls of celebrating a $9 Million grant from the City of New York to kick off their capital expansion program. The funding came from the Mayor and City Council. Oh my. Would that something like that could happen here at home.

By Sunday we piled our gay selves back in our gay car (Diesel for diesel dykes) and headed south toward Delaware's Oz.

If you are in the mood, New York can surely be all gay, all the time. In today's political climate it's good to have a total immersion gay experience every once in a while. It reminds us to be out, loud and proud.

And you don't really have to go to the Big Apple to experience it. In fact, when we pulled back into town, there was disco music emanating from any number of establishments in the community, with gaggles of guys and gals all over.

I'm as much for integration of gay and straight as the next person, but you know, it's great to retreat into an all-gay space every once in a while, if only to gather strength to fight for our rights.

Like little Frances Gumm (that would be Judy Garland) once said, there's no place like….

July 2007

A WHOLE LOTTA UGLY FROM A WHOLE BUNCH OF STUPID

I was wrong. Very, very wrong.

Recently, a controversy has been raging over the new musical film version of the fairly new Broadway musical of the old non-musical film version of
Hairspray
. Who says America doesn't recycle?

For the vehicle that began as an edgy John Waters movie, then made a huge splash on Broadway and is now at your local multiplex, it's been quite a ride. But following an opening shot from the
Washington Blade
, which seeped into the nation's blogosphere, there has been a dispute between a variety of gay spokespeople, official and otherwise, over the casting of John Travolta as Edna Turnblad in this latest
Hairspray
.

The Blade
editor wrote that gays should boycott the movie specifically because Travolta is a Scientologist. Responding, John Waters defended Travolta as a joy to work with, a fantastic actor, and not in any way anti-gay.

(Disclaimer: I think Travolta has done some pretty decent film work, but his connection to Scientology, with their much publicized intolerance toward gay people and prescription medications bothers me and tars and feathers Travolta in my eyes. Then there's the maybe-he-is-or-maybe-he isn't-a homo aura to his personal life. But neither the actor's acting chops, nor his choice to stay in the closet if he is a homo, plays much of a role in my feeling about this particular dispute.)

The Travolta clash morphed from a discussion of whether a Scientologist should play Edna, to a secondary dispute regarding the history of the story and the gender of the actor who has, in the past, been cast as rotund Edna Turnblad. Edna is rotund Tracy's mother, and Tracy dances her way into the hearts of 1960s Baltimore and simultaneously manages to integrate the town.

If you are not a
Hairspray
groupie, in the original John Waters film Edna was played by portly drag queen Divine, who starred in Water's early, really edgy, well, very edgy, kinda disgusting films.

But 1998's
Hairspray
introduced Divine (and Rikki Lake as Tracy) to all manner of mainstream households through Waters' very sweet movie. It was funny, had a message, and no one did any of the revolting things they did in the earliest Waters' films. (Google
Polyester
or
Pink Flamingos
). One of Waters' films was called
Pecker
, and despite its nasty title was a charmer. I adored writing a review with the headline “I loved John Waters'
Pecker
.”

Following in Divine's considerable footsteps came iconic gay actor Harvey Fierstein to play Edna in the Broadway musical
Hairspray
. He was fat, raspy-voiced and absolutely charming as Edna, with his gay icon pedigree adding to the excitement.

While nothing in the
Hairspray
script ever says Edna is a drag queen, and nothing is intended to denote any homosexual storyline, the original film and subsequent musical always had an elusive gay sensibility.

Although Harvey Fierstein readily admits he was just playing the role of a woman, much as Travolta said he was doing in a recent interview, lots of folks have their knickers in a knot because the casting of Travolta robs the new film of its undocumented and somewhat ethereal gay sensibility.

Originally, because of my admitted prejudice against Mr. Travolta and partially because I didn't spend much time thinking about the subject, I too, was pissed that Harvey or another out-of-the-closet actor was overlooked for the new
Hairspray
in favor of the
Grease
-y Travolta.

Well, I was wrong, wrong, wrong.

I saw the movie last night and I am still smiling. Travolta is a very sweet, exceptionally funny Edna.

More importantly, whatever gay sensibility was lost to casting is still alive and well everywhere in the film. Yes, the story is about racial prejudice in the 1960s and yes, yes, yes,
Tracy scandalizes the town by integrating not only the barely fictitious
Corny Collins
TV show (Baltimoreans, remember the
Buddy Dean Show
?) but all of a barely fictitious Baltimore as well. Tracy manages this by socializing with her “African American” friends. I use the quotation marks because in the film, Corny Collins allows those friends to dance on his TV show once a month for Negro Day.

At the film's first mention of Negro Day, there was a palpable sense of embarrassment in the theatre. If people didn't actually suck air, their faces felt hot as they remembered how horribly this country treated African Americans just a short time ago. Of course, I wouldn't call our nation's current race relations hunky-dory (or should I say honky-dory?) but at least it's no longer acceptable to openly discriminate – and the U.S. Government no longer officially codifies prejudice with state-sponsored discrimination against African Americans.

But wait! In exactly the same way as the citizens and government maltreated African Americans in
Hairspray
(and for real) gays and lesbians are now being maltreated.

Ba-da-bing! This movie has gay sensibility written all over it.

Trust me, the musical is hilariously funny, with great choreography, joyous music, and laugh outloud comedy schtik. There are awesome performances from the entire cast, including a surprise turn from Michelle Pfeiffer. Attention lesbians: if you swooned over her as she slithered across the grand piano in
The Fabulous Baker Boys
, her character here is not as alluring!

But apart from the terrific entertainment, the truth is, when I saw a candlelight march on screen, led by Queen Latifah and John Travolta, it was hard not to think, for just a minute, about that San Francisco vigil after Harvey Milk was shot, and the one in Wyoming after Matthew Shepard died. It reminded me of the marches we have made along Pennsylvania Avenue, chanting for our rights.

Hairspray
is about intolerance, and since gays are the current and officially sanctioned piñata for intolerant people, I can only hope for a day when we get our
Hairspray
moment.
I want people in a movie theatre to get queasy, flinching when they hear how inequitably the nation treated gay people back in 2007.

As the inimitable Queen Latifah explains to a white teenager and her black boyfriend, “You've got to get ready to face a whole lotta ugly from a whole lotta stupid.”

Well I'm afraid that gays are going to face a lump of ugly from a gang of stupid in the 2008 elections. I'm praying for an enlightened victor. And I hope our wait for equality and tolerance doesn't take more than half a century.

But in the meantime, let that Saturday night fever overtake you and go see
Hairspray
. You'll smile from start to finish, laugh a whole lot and feel good all over when the lights come up. It's great to watch a whole lotta stupid get their just rewards.