September–October 2024 The Scientists $6.95 US, $7.95 Canada WILLIAMBENEMANN Pervert Patient Zero WENDY FENWICK How Evelyn Hooker Rattled the APA DAVID L. CHAPMAN AKeeper of Atomic Secrets VERNON ROSARIO The Origins of Transgender Science Three ‘Song Languages’ BYJOANLARKIN Byron’s Sexual Mutations BYANDREWHOLLERAN ‘I always had crazy boyfriends.’ —BRUCE LABRUCE Bruce LaBruce GLRk
DukeU Newfrom University Press BloodLoss A Love Story of AIDS, Activism, and Art KEIKOLANE ING QTR A Journal of Trans and When Monsters Speak A Susan Stryker Reader SUSAN STYKER edited by MCKENZIE WARK 2024 may 1:1 INTRODUC dukeu A new open-access journal dedicated to expanding knowledge about the rich and complex connections between religion, gender, and sexuality Queer Studies in Religion JOSEPH A MARCHAL and MELISSA M. WILCOX, editors upress.edu
The Gay & Lesbian Review September–October 2024 • VOLUME XXXI, NUMBER 5 The Gay & Lesbian Review/WORLDWIDE®(formerlyThe Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review, 1994-1999) is published bimonthly (six times per year) by The Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc., a 501(c)(3) educational corporation located in Boston, Mass. Subscription rates: U.S.: $41.70 per year (6 issues). Canada and Mexico: $51.70(US). All other countries: $61.70(US). All non-U.S. copies are sent via air mail. Back issues available for $12 each. All correspondence is sent in a plain envelope marked “G&LR.” ISSN: 1077: 6591 © 2024 by Gay & Lesbian Review, Inc. All rights reserved. POEMS &DEPARTMENTS The Broken Dandy 10 ANDREWHOLLERAN Lord Byron transcended all boundaries of sexual taste and morals “I always had crazy boyfriends.” 13 BRUCE LABRUCE Phil Tarley talks with a (very) independent filmmaker Pervert Patient Zero 16 WILLIAMBENEMANN In the 1880s, US medicine was discovering a new sexual anomaly How Evelyn Hooker Rattled the APA 20 WENDYFENWICK Her landmark study upended the medical model of homosexuality The Birth of Transgender Science 23 VERNONROSARIO Endocrinologist Harry Benjamin grasped the role of hormones Secrets & Truths & Claude Schwob 26 DAVIDL. CHAPMAN The chemist’s gayness was an open secret at the Manhattan Project CONTENTS FEATURES REVIEWS CORRESPONDENCE 5 BTW 8 RICHARDSCHNEIDERJR. POEM— “The Faultline” 22 ALFREDCORN ART MEMO—The Front Runner at the Fifty-Year Mark 25 NIKOLAI ENDRES POEM— “Pearl Bar, Cinco de Mayo.” 32 JSA LOWE POEM— “The Bolognese” 40 FREYAJACKSON ART MEMO— Discovering Gisèle Freund, Photographer 41 EMILYL. QUINT FREEMAN CULTURAL CALENDAR 44 RuPaul—The House of Hidden Meanings: A Memoir 29 MICHAELQUINN Cynthia Carr —Candy Darling: Dreamer, Icon, Superstar 30 HANKTROUT Books of poetry by Michael Klein, Christopher Soden, and Tony Leuzzi 31 JOANLARKIN Michael Nott —Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life 33 JOHNR. KILLACKY Kenneth Elliott —Beyond Ridiculous 34 RAYMOND-JEANFRONTAIN Diarmuid Hester —Nothing Ever Just Disappears 35 CHRIS FREEMAN Will Brantley, editor —Conversations with Sarah Schulman 36 ANNE CHARLES Édouard Louis —Change 37 EDUARDOFEBLES Musih Tedji Xaviere —These Letters End in Tears 38 MONICACARTER Emily Garside —Seasons of Love: Why Rent Matters 39 JEANROBERTA Chukwuebuka Ibeh —Blessings 39 TERRI SCHLICHENMEYER BRIEFS 42 Luca Guadagnino, director —Challengers 45 COLINCARMAN Zach Meiners, director —Conversion 46 ALLENELLENZWEIG Four independent films 47 RICHARDSCHNEIDER JR. Jane Schoenbrun, director —I Saw the TV Glow 49 PETERMUISE Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris, 1900-1939(exhibit & catalog) 50 CASSANDRALANGER WEBSITE: www.GLReview.org • SUBSCRIPTIONS: 847-504-8893 • ADVERTISING: 617-421-0082 • SUBMISSIONS: Editor@GLReview.org Editor-in-Chief and Founder RICHARDSCHNEIDER JR. Literary Editor MARTHAE. STONE Poetry Editor DAVIDBERGMAN Associate Editors SAMDAPANAS PAULFALLON JEREMYFOX MICHAELSCHWARTZ Contributing Writers ROSEMARYBOOTH DANIELA. BURR COLINCARMAN ANNE CHARLES ALFREDCORN ALLENELLENZWEIG CHRIS FREEMAN PHILIP GAMBONE MATTHEWHAYS HILARYHOLLADAY ANDREWHOLLERAN IRENE JAVORS JOHNR. KILLACKY CASSANDRALANGER ANDREWLEAR FELICE PICANO JAMES POLCHIN JEANROBERTA VERNONROSARIO Contributing Artist CHARLES HEFLING Publisher STEPHENHEMRICK Webmaster BOSTONWEBGROUP WebEditor ALLISONARMIJO ______________________________ Board of Directors ART COHEN(CHAIR) EDUARDOFEBLES ROBERT HARDMAN STEPHENHEMRICK HILARYHOLLADAY DAVIDLAFONTAINE JIMJACOBS ANDREWLEAR RICHARDSCHNEIDER, JR. (PRESIDENT) THOMAS YOUNGREN(TREASURER) STEWARTCLIFFORD(CHAIR EMER.) WARRENGOLDFARB(SR. ADVISOR EMER.) WORLDWIDE The Gay & Lesbian Review® PO Box 180300, Boston, MA 02118 The Scientists WORLDWIDE September–October 2024 3
ill” but the very legitimacy of the APA’s claim to jurisdiction over people’s sexual orientation. While “homosexuality” was dropped from theDSMin1973, the “T” in LGBT has remained. “Gender dysphoria” refers to a mismatch between one’s current gender identity and one’s assigned gender at birth. Vernon Rosario reveals that the crucial research on this topic was undertaken by German-American physician Harry Benjamin. Trained in endocrinology in the early 20th century, he started out promoting slightly crackpot treatments for sexual disorders but became intrigued by the connection between gender and hormones, and found himself working with Christine Jorgensen in the 1950s, which launched his pioneering research into transgender healthcare. Claude Schwob was a radiochemist who’s the only known LGBT scientist to have worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II. While working with Robert Oppenheimer on the testing of materials to be used in the first atom bombs, Schwob had a steady boyfriend and made no attempt to hide his gayness, which apparently was an open secret. David L. Chapman argues that Schwob was remarkably free of shame throughout his life, even when the FBI went after him, and he spent much of his later life photographing young men in various states of déshabillé and sexual entanglement. His vast collection of photos is preserved in the GLBT Historical Society archives. RICHARDSCHNEIDERJR. “THE SCIENCE of homosexuality” has headlined two issues of this magazine to date. This issue is more about the scientists themselves and their times, though most of our subjects did in fact make important contributions to LGBT science. Sexuality as a subject of scientific inquiry can be traced to mid-19th-century Germany. Part of the impetus was the discovery that there were sexual anomalies to be explored, including the newly minted “homosexuals.” As William Benemann documents here, this approach was finding its way to the U.S. by the 1880s, when physicians began to publish papers about patients who suffered from what was seen as a nervous disorder: a sexual attraction to one’s own sex. And while the doctors prefaced their research with the obligatory moral outrage, they tended to regard these patients as a curiosity to be explained—the better to find a cure for what ailed them. The neurological model soon gave way to the psychiatric paradigm of Freud and his followers, as “sexual disorders” were annexed by the psychiatric establishment and catalogued in the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM)—which is where “homosexuality” remained for many decades. In the 1950s, along came Evelyn Hooker to carry out a study that marked the beginning of the end for the pathological model. As Wendy Fenwick argues, Hooker challenged not only the notion that homosexuals were “mentally Fall Rising: The Scientists FROM THE EDITOR 4 TheG&LR OUT I OCTOBER —EDMUND WHITE —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY —MATTHEW STADLER NOW IN EBOOK ear with y Curious Y s shby My omyA amang o IndraB.Ta R T REBOTCO !I TUO I the course of his life. surrealism” changes with “the father of America globe-spanning relationshi A young Nepalese man’s K an ip The Autobiography of ” “A furtive treasure of the Am avant-garde. KOOBENIW ON merican ” “I love this book. Available e rywhere books www.turtlepointpress.com %$(%!# ')"*% '(#&& ver MATTHEW STADL “A remarkably realized work PUBLISHERS WEEK “ s are sold m ER ” KLY kof art.
San Antonio in the ’70s: Being There To the Editor: Thanks for the article about San Antonio in the 1970s [July-August 2024 issue]. Lucas Belury recounted the story of bar owner Hap Veltman’s legal actions to stop the Military Police from entering his bar in search of military personnel, demanding to see people’s ID’s. This was during the Vietnam War era, and soldiers were everywhere. There were something like ten or twelve military bases around the city. Hap’s bar was the popular, trendy San Antonio Country, which we called The Country. His 1973 success in opposing the MP’s helped not just his own bar but of all the bars in the city. There were even more gay and lesbian bars than there were bases! San Antonio had a thriving gay nightlife. It even dubbed itself “the Drag Capital of the World.” Veltman’s influence went well beyond his ownership of a gay bar. He and his father, a real estate developer, were key to the modernization of San Antonio. Hap owned a couple of downtown restaurants. He flipped the front entrances from street level to downstairs river level (which had been the back door to the garbage cans), thus improving and commercializing the River Walk—which today gives the city its character. A bronze plaque proclaims: “‘Hap’ turned an underutilized river into the vibrant district that it is today.” In 1980, The Country was forced to close in a homophobic legal challenge brought by the energy company nextdoor, whose new building needed a parking lot. What seemed like a defeat proved a major upgrade. The money from the sale of The Country bought the historic building on Bonham Street, named for one of the heroes of the Alamo, which became the Bonham Exchange—with its naughty pun on “bottom”—next-door to, but facing in the opposite direction of, the Alamo. The Bonham was much larger and more visible, with theater and ballroom space for community meetings and events, a de facto community center. Belury quotes from the 2019 documentary Hap Veltman’s San Antonio Country by filmmaker Noi Mahoney (available on YouTube). The comment about San Antonio being “hush-hush and low key ... because you have a Hispanic community, a Catholic community, and a heavily military presence,” was said by my partner Kip Dollar. That is certainly how it felt back then. The account of The Country doesn’t mention Michael Stevens. Stevens had been a very popular antiwar political science professor at U.T. San Antonio in the ‘70s. When he split with his wife and came out gay, he was denied tenure. In a progressivestyle retaliation, he organized the San Antonio Gay Alliance (SAGA) and started a community newspaper calledThe Calendar. I moved back to my hometown from San Francisco in 1981 to be a gay therapist. I quickly became Michael’s protégé and Secretary of SAGA. Hap Veltman was on the board of SAGA. He was very publicly gay and expected respect and influence for who he was. And he was very helpful and generous with the community. During the Gay Alliance period in the ‘80s, an out-front community formed with such staples as a business association, a chorus, the AIDS Foundation, Gay Pride Day picnics and marches, and the annual “Gay Fiesta.” SAGA tried hard to be racially and sexually inclusive. I want to note that the Latina women’s and lesbians’ community developed in parallel under the leadership of Graciela Sanchez of the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. We were all trying to address the very issues that Kip cited: we strove to achieve visibility and thereby overcome those conservative forces. That Lucas Belury reports that he grew up feeling accepted as mixed-race, Hispanic, and queer suggests that we were successful. Toby Johnson, Austin, TX To the Editor: As a native San Antonian who came of age in the late 1970s, I enjoyed Lucas Belury’s article on the San Antonio Country nightclub. Although formally opened in 1973, the bar was named after an earlier gay bar located several miles outside of the city, literally in “the country.” The remote setting of this predecessor bar allowed it to operate with less scrutiny by civilian and military police. Legend has it that in this former bar, same-sex couples danced together openly, but a lookout kept watch at the door. If police arrived to raid the bar, the lookout would blow a whistle and each dancer would quickly find an opposite-sex partner to dance with until the police left. When Hap Veltman opened “The Country” in the middle of San Antonio, he took the name of that former hidden establishment and proudly asserted the right of LGBT+ people to gather openly in the middle of our city. I met my now-husband when he was stationed at U.S. Army Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio in the 1980s. He quips that the U.S. Army’s “off limits” list in those days was more useful in finding gay bars thanBob Damron’s Address Book!One wonders who in the U.S. Army was charged with doing the required “research” Correspondence September–October 2024 5 FOR ITINERARIES, DATES, &PRICES Visit: OscarWildeTours.com Look for site on Facebook / Instagram All trips designed and led by Prof. Andrew Lear, founder of Oscar Wilde Tours. $200DISCOUNT FOR G&LRREADERS! OWT Trips in 2025 UPCOMINGTOURDATES: LGBT History of India: Feb. 28 - March 11 Really Gay Paree: May 5 – 13 Northern Italy: May 17 – 27 Michelangelo: The Dying Slave
to find all the local gay bars for this listing. Although there is more progress to be made, we’ve come a long way since the difficult days described in the article. Still a “military city” and now the seventh largest city in the U.S., San Antonio welcomes active-duty personnel at its LGBT+ establishments. Thankfully, raids by the military police are a relic of the past. Jim Germann, San Antonio, TX Allen Barnett Is Worth Knowing About To the Editor: Walter Holland’s recollection of Allen Barnett [in the July–August 2024 issue] is greatly appreciated. I thinkThe Body and Its Dangers is one of the great works of AIDS literature, and have been frustrated that Barnett seems to have been forgotten by gay letters. Holland’s personal recollections provide biographical information not available elsewhere. Twenty years ago, I repeatedly hit a blank wall when conducting research for an encyclopedia article on Barnett, only to receive a letter from the late Michael Denneny offering some of his memories of Barnett—but only after the article had appeared, so this material arrived too late for me to use. Raymond-Jean Frontain, Conway, AR Charles Silverstein’s Achievement To the Editor: Thank you for the obituary for my dear friend Charles Silverstein, PhD [MarchApril 2024 issue]. For the record, he was a psychologist, not a psychiatrist as stated in the obituary. Furthermore, Charles was still in training and had not yet received his doctorate when he made his case for removing homosexuality from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). The fact that a fledgling psychologist helped bring about changes in the DSM is, to my way of thinking, an even more impressive accomplishment than it would have been had he been a psychiatrist. Jack Drescher, MD, NYC An Opening Night in Hartford To The Editor: Regarding an article titled “The Making of Longtime Companion” that appeared in the May-June 2024 issue: whenLongtime Companionwas released in May 1989 and premiered in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Chicago, it also premiered in Hartford, Connecticut. Mark Lamos, director of the Hartford Stage Company and an actor in the film, had contacted me about having “an event” in Hartford. I was the founding member of the AIDS Ministry Program of Connecticut and the Connecticut AIDS Residence Coalition. That night, we held a fundraiser. The message was: enjoy the film at the local Hartford cineplex and then come back to the Hartford Stage Company for an afterparty reception. Mark Lamos and Stephen Caffrey spoke about making the movie and about our efforts. We raised thousands of dollars to help provide housing for people living withHIV/AIDS, many of whom had lost their housing because of discrimination. Over the years, wherever I’ve been working, I have proudly hung the signed poster in my church office. The Rev. Thaddeus Bennett, Conway, MA Corrections In the May-June 2024 issue, a piece titled “The Making of Longtime Companion” refers to a play by Terrence McNally as Our Sons. The correct title is Mothers and Sons. Also in the May-June issue, a review of Conversations with Terrence McNally changed the preposition in his play Frankie and Johnny in the Claire de Lune. 6 TheG&LR upress.state.ms.us New from the University Press of Mississippi Thirty years of interviews spanning the career of the novelist, playwright, and gay activist whose works include Rat Bohemia, The Child, andLet the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993
Michael Barrett Allen W. Bernard Thomas Bower Bill Brinnon & Ron Dhein Samuel D. Brown Michael Carson & Ron Steigerwalt, PhD Art Cohen Stanley Ellis Cushing & Daniel W. Lyons Randall Arndt Gary Arthur TomBaker Kenneth C. Beachler Michael Beek Terry Belanger Steven B. Berlin Charles Bjorklund & Sted Mays Matthew Black William R. Bonsal Steven Bourne JerryBoyd Dale Boyer & Scot O’Hara Ronald Neil Campbell Vic Carlson Linton Carney & Jay Welch Stephen Carney Jim Cassaro Patrick Cather William J. Cavanaugh Roberto Ceriani Robert Chaloner Gary Clinton Robert Cloud Peter Cohen & Jeff Sposato Mitch Crane John H. Adams James Doig Anderson Michael Anderson James Arthurs James Henry Avila Bruce Selden Babski Michael Bacon Michele Aina Barale William Barnaby M.D. Joseph Bell Jerry Bernhard LarryBest David Bjork Rosemary Booth & Jerry O’Leary Michael Boro Peter Brenner JimBrogan Antonio Calcagno Peter Cameron Andy Ball & Jason Cannon James Carnelia Frank Carson Larry G. Carter, PhD Paul Cawein Paul Cellupica Burton Clarke Steven McCollom Bryan Mershon Al Monetta & Bruce Voss Mark Mullin Robert Nicoson Trent Norris & Jack Calhoun Michael G. O’Connell III Brian Oleksak & Gonzalo Avila Jack Padovano & Phillip Baker SueReamer James & William Harrison James Hess & Robert Herald David. E. Hopmann & James W. Taul Jr. Mike Jarvis & Craig Larson John C. Knepper Harold Koda Carroll Edward Lahniers William Lauch Charles W. Leslie Edward J. Donahue III James J Dowd Jr. Heyward Drummond Sacramento Community Fndn. In memory of Jacob Trumbower Clifford L. Gregory Seth Grosshandler & Kim Wainwright John Hager & Ron Geatz Brock A. Harring Curtis Scribner Wm. H. Jackson-Wayne Skala Trust Jim Stepp & Peter Zimmer Jim Thomas & Fred Provencher Douglas J. Warn Robin Weingart & Claire Zeppieri Louis Wiley Jr. Thomas A. Zanoni Eric Allman & Kirk McKusick Richard Alter & Eric D. Johnson Harry Anderson Rodney Boren Kevin Burns Ulla Dydo Charitable Fund Dennis Christofi Donald J. Cimilluca Stewart Clifford RayCoe Harold F. Cottman III Michael Craft David J. Klein Steven Kowalik GaryKrivy David LaFontaine Paul Loeffler & Mike Sullivan Vic Marriott Fred Martin Thomas Huish & John Mathewson Raymond Matta M.D. Marshall R. McClintock Joseph Melillo James Gother Wm J. Gracie Jr. Mikel Gray Leland Hall M Brian Hartz Robert Heylmun John Hudson Michael P. Hughes & Mark A. Plants Charles L. Ihlenfeld Alice Jay Jeffrey Johnson Daniel Jones Rolf Danner Robert Dockendorff Jack Dodson Carl Duyck Bradley Paul Edin FredFejes Kenneth Fulton David Garrity Thomas Gerber Robert Giron & Ken Schellenberg Thomas J. Gormly Bill Gorodner Roderick F. O’Connor Roger Parris & Michael Longo Andy Perry & John Sistarenik In memory of Larry Phillips Bruce Pray Rex Roberts Harry Rosenberg G. Louis Rowles RonSeidle Laurence Senelick Doug Serafin John S. Shaffner Nicolas Shumway William R. Powell Charles Popper in honor of Leland Perry Martin D. Quish JerryRehm Stuart L. Rich George Robb Charles Roberts & Craig Combs GaryRod Robert Ross Stephen T. Russell Sam Sanders Kevin Schack Paul Schilling Michael Schwarz Dr. Milton M. Seiler, Jr. Camilla Serrano In memory of Victor Shargai A.V. Shirk, in memory of Bill Costley Harvey Silberman Eric Slater Ray M. Smythe Richard C. Snider Neil Spisak Andrew Stancliffe Elliott Mackle Gerald Markovitz / Cameron Jobe Clayton Marsh / George Villanueva Wayne P. Marshall Alberto Martin & Jerry Popolis John W McKenna Robert Melton Virginia Merritt Martha Miller Enrique Moreno Skip Moskey & Kevin Hamilton James A. Mueller David Murdock Anthony Napoli Gordon Nebeker Ken Nimblett John T. Nolan Kurt Ollmann Joseph Ortiz & Paul Hinkle M.A. Ortiz & N.J. Cassun Michael A. Pargee Daniel A. Pavsek, PhD John J. Pellegrini Allan Phillips Stan J. Pogroszewski Michael Hammett Robert Hanna Scot Hedrick Kenneth Heger JohnHeist Bob Hellwig & Gordon Whitaker Charles D. Hewett Ted Higginson Steve Hoffmann Josh Howard Ronald Hunt Jeffrey Alan Johnson Kent Johnson PhD Dr. Michael R. Kauth Stephen Kelley Michael Kelly Brian Kieley Clay King & Iain J. King John A. Kosartes William Kupsky William Kux David Lane & Gerald Mager Joel Leander Jim Lipsett & Paul LaRiviere JohnLloyd Robert Lobou Grant Crichfield PhD David Crocker David Curry Laurie Cushing Gary Domann G. Dryvynsyde & M. Porta Nicholas Edsall Irv Englander John Finley & Stan McGee Mark Friedman Robert Funk David Furlano Ken Furtado Michael William Galligan John A. Gibson Blackbaud Giving Fund Robert Gordon DanGrace Stephen Grahan Harlan Greene Frederick Griffiths Dennis Groenenboom Robert Gross & Eloy Garcia Paul Grzella James W. Haas Dennis Hall Franklin Mosher Thomas Nash Russell Needham Michael Neisen David Noskin Bart O’Brien DonaldOtt Charles Jud Pannaci Dean Papademetriou Homer Payne Lee M. Penyak Ted Pietras Pisgah Press Edward Pollock Timothy Prueser Richard Quintana Thomas Raffin James Ramadei Bruce Ramsdell Luana Rathman Ed Reeves & Bill Fish MarkReina Mark Reisman Alexander Roche Steven Roehling Daniel Ross William Rubenstein RonLong Daniel Lowen Coy L. Ludwig Patricia Lutsky / Sally Jordan Bernard Lynch Wayne MacPherson JohnnyMah James Malatak Tony Mangiafico Joel Martin Danny Matherly Kenneth Mayer Bill Mayhan Michael McAdam George McCarter Kris Rust / Hugh McGough David McKellar James J. McPeak Richard Meiss Jon Cloudfield Merkle Greg Mermel Andrew Miller & Bell Yung Robert S. Miller James Moore Thomas Morbitzer Gerald Morin & Michael Davidson John Ibson / Steve Harrison Charles Edward Jackson Heinz Jacobson Karla Jay Richard T. Johnson Wayne T. Johnson Ricky Kamins Michael Kelly / Robert Hohl Leonard Keyes Henson Keys William Knodel LeeKramer JanKrc DickLand Stewart Landers David Lane / Grayson Sless Mark LaPole Rick Lawrance JamesLebo Arthur Leonard Scott Leonard Maurice Levenbach Richard Levine OwenLevy TageLilja David Wn. Livingston & Charles J. Storey Rodney Estes Philip Evans Eduardo Febles Steve Fernandez-Brennan Jason Fichtel Charles S. Frazier Bradley W. Fritts Phil Funkenbusch James A. Fuqua Sterling Giles Eric Gordon Brad Graber George Griffin Michela Griffo John Guidry Roland C. Hansen John Healy Adams Marilyn & Sharon Hedges-Hiller James Heitzler David Hensley James Hilderbrandt William Hollings Norman A. Horowitz & Robert Tomasik Richard Hoyt-McDaniels Scott Hunter Sherman Clarke Gerald Coon John Corlett/Doug Van Auken Donald Cornelius Lilly Correa Rodney Courtney Frederick Cowan Fred Cummins Patrick Curtin Reed Darmon Daniel Davidson MarkDavis Raymond J. DeAngelo George Dearani John DeMilio John Deneen Samuel Dixon Karen Doherty Jack Drescher Suzanne Dreyfus Bill Dubay DanEaston David Eidelkind & Len Sanginario Edward E. Eliot Davis Elliott & Tom Jolley J. Yusuf Erskine FRIENDS OF THE REVIEW FRIENDS OF THE REVIEWare readers who donated $150+ toThe Gay & Lesbian Review, a 501(c)(3) educational corporation, in 2023. All gifts are fully tax-deductible. SUSTAINERS ($600–1,199) BENEFACTORS ($1,200–4,999) SUPPORTERS ($150–299) SPONSORS ($300–599) LEADERSHIPCIRCLE ($5,000+) Robert Starshak, MD Dennis P. Stradford Sebastian Stuart DanStuder John Swaner John David Tekian John C. Thomas Morris Thompson Lyle Timpson Jim Toledano Paul Travis Andrew Turrisi Dr. R. O. Valdiserri Darlis von Adkins Stephen Wall Martin Webb / Charles Venable Richard Weeks / Robert Shavin Michael Weidemann Marc Weiner Lyndon Wester Dr. Robert C. White Jr. Ed Wittrock George E. Wolf Michael Wood, MD Michael Worley Michael Ruvo / Steve Lachs Jeffrey A. 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high femme” and “the scenario ... incorporates our position as voyeurs mirroring” those in the picture itself. AgingOut Celebrity gossip isn’t our usual stock-in-trade, but if it were, surely the name Matt Bomer would have popped up more than once. The dreamy actor is openly gay and isn’t afraid to take roles in gay movies (such as the remake of The Boys in the Band) in addition to his “mainstream” roles (think Justice League). Well, Matt is reported to have signed on for a role in the forthcoming parody of The Golden Girls! (Needless to say, it won’t be the first! There have been numerous parodies over the years, including many high Camp versions with the four female roles played by guys in drag.) Anyhow, now that the news about The Girls has settled in, what’s up with that casting? Nathan Lane makes sense, but Matt Bomer is young enough to have played one of the “Kens” in the recent Barbiemovie. And yet, he’s poised to step into the role of Rose (as “Jerry”). Apparently 46 in gay years (Matt’s age) is equivalent to 63 in Betty White years (her age when she started as Rose). Nevertheless, if they’re still planning to go with the lovable dummy routine, Matt as gay Rose is probably toooldfor the part by now. Trey’s Fifteen Minutes Meet Trey Samuel Fetzer, a twentyyear-old Ohio State University student who’s seen here urinating on a rainbow flag that apparently he spotted on someone’s front porch one night last winter in the Weinland Park neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio. Trey was caught in the act by a surveillance camera and can be heard saying “Fuck the gays” repeatedly while relieving himself of one-too-many beers, we assume. The perp faces charges of criminal In Our Mailbox There could be any number of reasons for us to display this cover of The New York Review of Books from May 9, 2024, one of which is slightly sentimental. The NYRB has been a role model for this magazine from the start, something to aspire to: a relentlessly intelligent biweekly that reaches a readership of the literate and the curious, reassuring us all that such a readership exists. And yet, it could also be said that this love affair with theNYRBhas been somewhat unrequited: For all its coverage of every topic known to humans, matters of particular interest to LGBT readers have not always been front-and-center. That’s why this cover came as such a shock (and the illustration inside was way more explicit, though no frontal nudity). One strains to recall a past cover that even hinted at male hotness in this way, and by an icon of gay male sexuality, Tom of Finland, whose works are recognizable to virtually every gay man in America above a certain age (fifty?). One suspects this is not the case for the bulk of the NYRB’s readers, for whom the article provided a helpful tutorial on Tom’s men and the things they do, in language that allowed for references to “beautiful buttocks” and “the sailor’s dick”—not to mention a brilliant analysis of Finland’s art, with observations like “it’s so hypermasculine that it bends toward BTW 8 TheG&LR Two Gift Subscriptions For the Price of One! Use the envelope in the centerfold Or call 847-504-8893 Find us on-line at www.GLReview.org Use Code: 2for1
mischief, disorderly conduct, and criminal trespass, which could add up to a big fine and probably probation. If there’s an irony here, it is that several still photos of Trey went viral, which is to say that his penis became an object of interest for the millions who voyeuristically caught this act of vandalism. How Trey would feel about that is hard to gauge. “What would Freud say,” as we used to ask, about a guy who whips it out on a Klieg-lit front porch and pees while uttering “fuck the gays”? No doubt he basked in the virality of the moment; in the Age of TikTok, it’s all about getting your fifteen minutes. Follow the Sex Three separate items in this cycle’s BTWincubator seem worth noting without too much fanfare, but together they point to a grander theme: • The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) voted to officially oppose in vitro fertilization (IVF) and fight to have it outlawed. • More states in the South and Midwest passed laws that seek to limit transgender rights, including access to medical care or to appropriate restrooms or other facilities. • The rate of abortion in the U.S. has actually risen since the Dobbs decision gutted abortion rights in 2022. What they have in common can best be observed in the SBC’s reasoning on the need to avoid “the unethical circumstances that happen when sex and conception are divided.” With that in mind, consider the jump in U.S. abortions from 82,000 per month before Dobbs to 86,000 today. The best explanation is that Dobbs acted as a stimulus for the production and use of self-administered abortion drugs, which can now be bought at your local drugstore (often OTC) or online. Their use continues the trajectory started by “the pill,” which expressly decoupled sex from procreation. In a related vein, the original argument against “sodomy,” which goes back centuries, was based on the assertion that all non-procreative sex was off limits and sinful, and it remains the underlying taboo: namely, the notion that sex can be an end itself, just for the hell of it. The persistence of the anti-sex ideology in the U.S., notwithstanding the late Dr. Ruth, is a vast mystery, to be sure, one that has real-world consequences both expected and un-. Meta ban The widening net of books being banned in school libraries is bound to swallow up some unexpected and even ironic titles. As noted previously, a number of districts have banned the Bible for its violence and sexual situations. In the latest incident, a Florida school board has banned a book titled Ban This Book, a children’s title by Alan Gratz that was removed from shelves in Indian River County school libraries by order of the county school board. The irony was not lost on the reporters and commenters who cited this incident—but it also makes perfect (non-ironic) sense. The message of Gratz’ 2017 book is that book-banning is wrong and should be resisted, which is just the kind of message that any book-banning official would instinctively want to ban. Also, of course, the book’s title seems to be a direct taunt aimed at just such officials. What the board may not have foreseen is that banning a book called Ban This Book would be catnip for precisely the kinds of people who buy books. Sales on Amazon soared and the number of ratings had leapt to almost 1,500 at press time. So, ban away; it only makes the book look sexier. THE POWER O Y MIDLIFE OFGAY e d i o h l m September–October 2024 9
GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON was not only a brilliant correspondent but something that seems no longer possible, at least since the death of Rod McKuen—a best-selling poet—though Byron, as an aristocrat, refused to accept the money earned from Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. It was only his debts and his desire to finance a campaign to free Greece from the Ottoman Empire that forced him to demand his royalties years later. Byron is probably not read today the way he was in the early 1800s. Keats, who envied Byron his success, is considered the great Romantic poet these days. But it was Byron who was the famous genius during that period in early 19th-century England known as the Regency. And now, the 200th anniversary of his birth has brought forth a burst of books like Andrew Stauffer’s recent biography, though Byron may be of interest today more for the rainy summer he spent on the shores of Lake Geneva in a villa near a house rented by the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and his wife Mary Godwin Shelley than for his own work—a summer made famous for Mary writing Frankenstein and Byron’s doctor John Polidori writing the short story “The Vampyre”— two landmarks in the history of Gothic fiction. Byron was born with a deformed foot—turned inward—a handicap that, a friend said, was something he thought of every day of his life. He compensated, perhaps, by taking very long swims—heroic swims, quite literally, since they were inspired by the ancient story of Leander swimming the Hellespont to be with Hero, one of the legends Byron discovered as a youth who read voraciously. In the water he must have felt his handicap disappear. On land he was enraged when he overheard one of the women he was pursuing ask her maid: “Do you think that I could care anything for that lame boy?” Yet when he grew up, that lame boy was catnip to women. His face transfixed them—though it’s hard to tell from the many illustrations in Stauffer’s book what he really looked like. The paintings turn him into a swarthy sheik. Only one drawing, seen from behind, conveys good looks. The others are all over the place. He had, for instance, a tendency to put on weight, which led to strict diets and purges he called “Reductions.” But women were mesmerized by his wit, reputation, appearance, and conversation. He used the word “motility” to explain his extreme mood swings. By this he meant his acute impressionability—he felt too deeply—but feeling is what the Romantic Age was all about. He was variously kind, generous, egotistical, arrogant, effeminate, depressed, gay (in the old sense), and possibly bipolar. His friend Lady Blessington said that “if ten individuals undertook ESSAY The Broken Dandy ANDREWHOLLERAN Andrew Holleran’s latest novel is The Kingdom of Sand. His other novels include Grief andThe Beauty of Men. the task of describing Byron, no two of the ten, would agree in their verdict describing him, or convey any portrait that resembled the other ... and yet the description of each might be correct.” In her own estimation, she wrote: “were I to point out the prominent defect of Lord Byron, I should say it was a flippancy and a total want of natural self-possession and dignity.” Which we can take to mean that he was funny. He loathed what he called “cant” (hypocrisy), and all one has to do is read his satires to appreciate the stinging sense of humor. He mocked his fellow poets for their “rabies of rhyme” in a book he published early in his career attacking the Scotch and English critics who had dismissed his youthful endeavors. But Byron’s poems rhyme as cleverly as those of his predecessor Alexander Pope, though their subject matter is very different. His two long narrative poems, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage and Don Juan, were taken to be what we would call autofiction—a thinly veiled record of the author’s life. And this made Byron 10 TheG&LR Thomas Phillips. George Gordon Byron (1788–1824), 6th Baron Byron, Poet. Government Art Collection (UK).
the original Byronic man—“mad, bad, and dangerous to know,” in the famous words of Lady Caroline Lamb, one of his many conquests as a “broken dandy” (his own self-description) in the adulterous roundelay of Regency London. Like his father, whose nickname was “Mad Jack,” Byron committed incest, fled abroad to escape his debts, and died at 36—though his father was probably a suicide, while Byron died of a malarial fever in Greece, exacerbated by the bleedings and purges ordered by doctors that Byron detested. He had been molested as a child by a nurse who not only imbued him with Scottish Calvinism’s sense of innate sinfulness, but also, when Byron was nine, “used to come to bed to him and play tricks with his person.” This went on for two years before she was discovered and dismissed. His first great love was for a youth named John Edelston, who sang in a private choir created by a friend of Byron’s at Cambridge, which led classmates to wonder: “What does he do with those choirboys?” Before that, there was a circle of friends Byron called The Band of Thebes—friends he made at Harrow before matriculating at Cambridge (from which he graduated without ever having to take an exam, simply because he was an aristocrat). Erotic friendships at Harrow were hardly unusual; such crushes were part of an English upper-class education. But Byron went on to have a yearlong affair with a Greek-born French teenager named Nicolo Giraud when he moved to Athens, which was after an affair with his half-sister Augusta in London. The latter caused a scandal. § ANDREWSTAUFFER’S extremely readable biography Byron: A Life in Ten Letters is based on a simple but very effective design. Stauffer, who seems to have read everything there is to read about his subject, has selected ten letters (out of 3,000) that Byron wrote at different stages of his tumultuous career, and has then proceeded to tell us what was going on in Byron’s life when he wrote them. In Stauffer’s view, Byron was attracted to taboo sex. The orgies with prostitutes and actresses that he took part in as a young rake were standard fare for the time, but youthful frivolity gave way eventually to adultery with married women, until Caroline Lamb’s vengeful novel about her own obsession with him (along with rumors of sodomy) ruined his reputation in the drawing rooms of London. So he fled to the Continent. In Italy, things were reversed: you could have sex with a woman as long as she was married, but not before, which would ruin her prospects. The love of Byron’s life was an Italian countess whose husband allowed Byron to live with them in one of the many villas Byron moved among over the course of his brief life. Byron was always ambivalent and at times tortured by his failure to achieve what Stauffer sees as his desire for a stable family life. It was this search for a home, in Stauffer’s view, that led Byron to marry the heiress Annabella Milbanke, with whom he had a daughter Ada, who was removed from his influence not long after their marriage, after his half-sister revealed the truth about their affair. Once Byron left England, he was even freer, as an English lord, to do what he wanted. In Athens he had the affair with Nicolo Giraud. And when he really began to travel—to Greece, Albania, and Turkey—he discovered the pleasures of the Turkish baths: palaces of “sherbet and sodomy.” But his real enthusiasm was for married women, especially Italian ones. He was attracted to dark skin—and tight vaginas, we learn in one youthful letter—though he had a phobia about watching women eat. Still, the bisexuality, the incest, the sheer sexual appetite (“I fucked her twice!” every day, he boasts of his first Venetian affair in a letter to a friend), seem superhuman. Lady Caroline Lamb was not the only one to call Byron “mad.” Wordsworth said he was insane and warned that his epic poemDonJuanwas a threat to the English character. His half-sister Augusta assured his estranged wife that Byron was “a maniac.” The poet Percy Shelley called Byron both “mad” and a “genius.” Goethe agreed with the latter. Part of the madness was what seems to have been a sexual mania. Sex was linked in Byron’s life to what he considered the two pillars of his being: a love of freedom and a hatred of “cant.” Sex was life—“Is it not life,” he asked a friend about something he had just written, “is it not the very thing?”—no matter how many people got hurt in the mêlée. The most touching case was his illegitimate daughter Allegra, who was handed off to various people as a child and finally stashed in a convent, which, at the age of five, she begged her father to visit; instead he left town. This led to a great depression when she died soon after that of cholera Byron went on to have a yearlong affairwitha Greek born French teenager named Nicolo Giraud when he moved to Athens. 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while still in the convent. Children could be inconvenient. Because homosexual acts were punishable by death in England, those who could afford it had to live abroad during those years, and Byron was among them. But he was notorious even in a society that was especially venereal (gonorrhea is mentioned frequently in his letters). And then there was the drinking and the gambling. Byron was in almost constant debt for most of his life. Like the Bloomsbury set whose members were hopping from bed to bed a century later without regard to gender, Byron refused to be confined by middle-class morals. Even today, it’s hard to reconcile the man who could write that pæan to the vagina with the one who fell in love with fifteen-year-old choirboy John Edelston, and later with Nicolo Giraud. Perhaps homosexuality gave him some sort of freedom that he couldn’t find in relationships with women. How often he frequented the Turkish baths and brothels is unknown. But on his final trip to Greece to help finance its war of independence from the Turks, conscious of his fading powers, he returned to adolescents—including a fifteen-year-old page named Loukas Chalandritsanos. Loukas, though happy to accept Byron’s money and favors, did not return the poet’s amorous interest. § SO WHAT DO WE MAKE of Lord Byron today? Was Byron simply the first sex tourist—an oversexed British aristocrat fornicating his way across Europe? Tennessee Williams put him in his play Camino Real as one of several figures from literature to whom Williams was drawn. (Proust’s great homosexual character Baron de Charlus was another.) But what Byron stands for now, if anything, is debatable. The Romantic movement, which Byron epitomized, is usually characterized as a reaction to the 18th century’s Age of Reason and the Industrial Revolution. We too are living in a scientific age, of lithium batteries and algorithms, and are so industrialized that we cannot find ways to dispose of the products with which we have trashed the earth. But we’re not as comfortable with sexual mutations as Byron was. Contrast any of his letters with an essay The New York Times recently ran on polyamory, which read somehow as if an open marriage was a new way to prepare meatloaf. Gone are the days of Boyd McDonald’s Manhattan Review of Unnatural Acts! Each addition to the LGBT lineup (Q, I, A, et al.) seems to make us less free, not more, because they all turn into identity politics, and there’s nothing less fluid than identity politics. Byron seems unimaginably slippery in comparison. All that we know for sure is that, when he made an effort to settle down and married Annabelle Milbanke, he soon discovered that he couldn’t stand the uxorial role, and he gave up his wife and their baby daughter (Ada Lovelace, who grew up to be a mathematician responsible in part for the development of the computer). He was, to say the least, conflicted: a man whose sex life still astounds us for its plenitude and indifference to societal norms. And yet, while described as having an effeminate voice by one of his observers, his masculinity seems never to have been questioned, even when he was in love with a beautiful young man (he was never attracted to older men). Was he ever penetrated, or was he always the penetrator? Byron may have escaped the binary by just ignoring it. But what aspect of Byron’s sexuality is heroic today? Adultery is commonplace, bisexuality is still regarded with skepticism and rarely discussed, and trans issues have come to be the new battleground. Byron was his own sexual identity. He and the nonbinary movement may have nothing to do with each other. Yet Byron’s indifference to sexual classification, along with his lordly command of the English language, makes his life and work rejuvenating today—and shockingly contemporary. Today he may seem like a character in Bridgerton, but consider the following excerpt from Canto the Eleventh of Don Juan, in which Juan is presenting his credentials to the diplomatic establishment of England: Juan presented in the proper place, To proper placemen, every Russ credential; And was received with all the due grimace By those who govern in the mood potential, Who, seeing a handsome stripling with smooth face, Thought (what in state affairs is most essential) That they as easily might dothe youngster, As hawks may pounce upon a woodland songster. Unless I’m crazy, he’s describing in the last two lines what we would call chicken hawks. BYRON A Life in Ten Letters by Andrew Stauffer Cambridge University Press 401 pages, $29.95 12 TheG&LR
Phil Tarley talks with a (very) independent filmmaker BRUCE LABRUCE’S CINEMA occupies a liminal space between haute couture pornography and experimental narrative film. The prolific artist-provocateur is releasing his new book, The Revolution Is My Boyfriend, to coincide with his fifteenth feature film, The Visitor. LaBruce is also a savvy cultural critic and contributed an article titled “Notes on Camp—and Anti-Camp” to this magazine in 2014 (March–April issue). A hallmark of his sui generis œuvre is the delightful metafictions of his cosmology. One of his first big films, Hustler White, references Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, and his new feature film, The Visitor, pays homage to Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Teorema. A fan of his moviemaking, I must confess I also collect his still photographs. My favorite LaBruce movie, L.A. Zombie, INTERVIEW BRUCE LABRUCE Phil Tarley’s essays and photography have appeared in LAWeekly, The WOW Report, The Advocate, Out magazine, Genre, and others. starring mega-pornstar François Sagat is mega-hard to stream. The plenitude of pithy penises often mark LaBruce’s films as too dirty for narrative platforms and too arty for porn sites. I interviewed LaBruce in his Toronto home from my West Hollywood apartment via Zoom on May 1st. Spencer Toulouse, my assistant, facilitated the research, recording, and transcription of the interview. Phil Tarley: My sources tell me that you grew up in or around Toronto—are they right? Bruce LaBruce: I grew up on a farm 150 miles northwest of Toronto. I came here to study film and dance. PT: I think of you as a highly transgressive artist, as much of your work flagrantly violates conventional morality. What inspires you to take on the standard rules and norms? BLaB: Outsiders and misfits—the kind of people who test the conventions of society. In the 1980s, I was in the punk movement, and I always had crazy boyfriends, like hustler boyfriends, and I lived with female strippers. I surrounded myself with people who inhabited the fringes of society. These are the characters who interest me. Many of my films are based on fetishes. Fetishists tend to be outsiders. But everyone has a fetish of some sort. Even with a fetish that seems really perverse, you can have a romantic connection to the fetish object. Even if it’s an amputee stump or a dirty foot, you can still feel an almost religious devotion to it. These characters and their fetishes have always interested me. PT: What, may I ask, are your fetishes? BLaB: I’m a basic foot fetishist. I have a hustler fetish. I have a skinhead fetish. Most of my films feature skinheads in one form or another, whether they are skinheads, monks, or punks. It’s the actual shaved head that sets me off. PT: Interesting. Even though your characters do nasty, kinky things to each other, they’re often very tender, and there’s a love between them, a light and airy sweetness. Can you talk about that? BLaB: Well, part of it is like what I was saying about fetishists. People think they’re nasty and dirty, and they don’t have any real human emotions. I always found them very human, and spiritual. Just because you look like a mean, aggressive punk or skinhead doesn’t mean that you don’t have a gentle or empathetic side. Insane characters actually have a heart as well. InHustler White, Piglet, the skinhead hustler— all he wants is a kiss. He doesn’t care what anyone does to him, all this extreme sadomasochism, choking, and autoerotic ‘I always had crazy boyfriends.’ September–October 2024 13 Bruce LaBruce, 2024. Above and cover photographs by Amanda Majors.
asphyxiation—all he really wants is a kiss. A French critic who reviewed Hustler White wrote: “In a world that’s characterized by extreme fetish, Sadomasochism, and violence, the last taboo is tenderness.” PT: Queer curator Ruben Esparza and I were talking about all the movies you’ve shot here in Los Angeles. What’s the attraction to L.A.? BLaB: Well, it’s really an old-school gay thing. My parents were farmers with only a grade-school education, but they loved Hollywood cinema, which made them much more liberal and sophisticated than they otherwise would have been. We lived on this isolated farm. Their love of Hollywood movies rubbed off on me. That was my escape. Watching the “Late Late Show” was my window on the world. It sophisticatedme. I was a baby gay; I got my queer education from watching Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Sunset Boulevard, and All About Eve.My identification with these tortured female stars was my emotional outlet. I had to repress my sexuality for a long time, until I moved to the city. PT: Tony Ward [the star of Hustler White] wanted me to ask if you would please put him in a new film. He also wanted to know when you’re coming back to L.A. to shoot again, maybe “Hustler White, Part Two”? BLaB: He just messaged me on Instagram with his new boyfriend. It made me think how much I loved shooting Hustler White in L.A. and L.A. Zombie—Tony had a cameo in that one, as a homeless person. I’d love to work with him again. I’ll see what I can come up with. PT: Hustler White is very Warholian. Tony Ward reminds me of Andy Warhol’s “It boy,” Joe Dallesandro. BLaB: I just interviewed Joe for Interviewmagazine. PT: I was reading the passage in your Dallesandro interview where you asked him about writing a part for him. Maybe you could put Joe Dallesandro and Tony Ward together. BLaB: That’s a great idea. It was discussed back in the day. WhenHustler Whitecame out, some people tried to think about projects for them. In my interview, Joe was talking about his crazy childhood. His mother was a car thief, and with all the crime going on and rough times—he and Tony have been through the mill. They’ve been through so many crazy experiences, but have both remained these very centered, sweet kind of men. I like the idea that these are tough guys who still have hearts of gold and are just salt-of-the-earth characters. PT: You recently directed a remake of Pasolini’s 1968 filmTeorema titled The Visitor (2024). Why a remake of the Pasolini film? BLaB: I’m interested in the basic narrative, an archetypical Searchers narrative that Schrader and Scorsese are obsessed with—Fassbinder and John Houston, too. Loner characters where a girl or a vulnerable person is kidnapped, and they must go on a journey to save this innocent person who’s been taken by a kind of savage element. InThe Visitor, the family is taken over by an outsider, coded as a kind of hustler. The interloper descends on the family unit and ends up fucking them all and somehow transforming them. The Visitor is a political allegory. I’m intrigued by this disruption of the nuclear family by an outsider character who’s queer. PT: In Hustler White, L.A. Zombie, and The Visitor, it seems people are always popping out of suitcases. What’s the symbolism here? BLaB: The suitcase is kind of the key. It’s the part standing in for the whole; it’s symbolic of all refugees. Just this basic suitcase—somebody who’s been exiled or who’s been forced to leave their country, and they’ve arrived. The suitcase is used by all travelers who are between places. It’s a symbol of never being at home or in any one place, constantly being forced to leave your home and find a new one. In Hustler White, it’s a symbol of death. The hustler gets chopped up and ends up in a suitcase. It represents the transition from life to death. I’ve lived my whole life making movies, spending so much time in hotel rooms, traveling, and never really 14 TheG&LR A scene fromThe Visitor. Courtesy of Berlinale.
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