After Orlando, Pride

“Time to paint up!” Porsche is wont to exclaim when she’s getting ready to put on a show. One of the most phenomenal vocal impressionists I’ve ever heard, Porsche wears a dress, heels, and a blond wig to work — as well as false eyelashes, lipstick, and foundation. Thus adorned, she sings: exactly like Eartha Kitt, exactly like Tammy Wynette, exactly like Debbie Reynolds. (Seriously. Who else does Debbie Reynolds?)

Porsche is a man, a former high-school football player from Texas. She also sings exactly like Elvis Presley.

You could take painted-up Porsche home to mother, and yet she is everything that some people want to eliminate. A gay man who dresses as a woman, works in gay bars, and drinks alcohol. (A necessary preparative for singing exactly like Janis Joplin.) She uses her artistry to express a range of feeling, but mostly to express and to inspire joy.

Her shows are a regular summer feature at the Ice Palace in Cherry Grove, Fire Island. Yesterday, as news reports about the massacre at Pulse were still coming in (and they’re still coming in as I write), Porsche had to paint up. By this morning, she’d learn that one friend had been injured in the attack. Another friend did not survive.

How do you put on a show, when all that is going on? How do you “address this,” as Porsche asked herself? You sing “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” is how. Because Porsche also sings exactly like Judy Garland, and when President Kennedy was shot, that’s what Judy sang. For gays, it’s not a hymn of Christianity. It’s a hymn of Judy-ism.

The performance wasn’t merely “the show must go on.” This was defiance, and once again, as at so many points in our journey, a drag queen was leading the way. We will go on — we will go marching on. Whether you respect them or not, we will continue to celebrate art, and pride, and freedom, and love, and life itself.

Porsche.
Photo by Jim McGann.

Again and again in recent years, I have asked myself how to respond. When — and how — do I move beyond grief and anger? And once I’ve done so, what do I do? Is it possible for me to make any gesture that represents what the fallen might have done, to pay tribute to their lost potential? “We don’t let the terrorists win,” okay, but in yesterday’s attack, there’s another factor. Daesh has been tossing homosexuals off of buildings for a while now, and as they bring their campaign to American shores, it was a matter of time before they specifically attacked gays and their friends. True, Daesh hates other people, too; their adherents could have gone after anybody. But Sunday morning, a man professing allegiance to Daesh went after the gays.*

Daesh isn’t the only outfit that calls for the punishment of homosexuality by death, and it’s hardly alone in its enthusiasm for violence. Around the world, governments call for much the same, as do groups and individuals. In the United States, some people invoke religion to demand the execution of homosexuals. During the primary campaign, the Texan Senator Ted Cruz gratefully accepted the endorsement of one such pastor, and Cruz’s own father, also a pastor, is an outspoken homophobe. Neither fellow is a Muslim.

Among the Republican politicians who tweeted their “thoughts and prayers” yesterday, I saw only one who referred to the scene of the attack as a gay club. It’s hard not to construe this across-the-board omission as a nod to social conservatives, who are eager to roll back the advances in civil rights made by gays in recent years.

For now, at least, we still have the right to marry. And even Texas hasn’t passed a law subjecting us to the death penalty. But in many states, gays can legally be denied housing, employment, and basic services, simply because they’re gay. Gays are subject to daily persecution, and in many states, a crime against them is not considered a hate crime under the law, no matter how many times the assailant bellows, “Kill all the faggots.” The Red Cross may not want our blood, but plenty of other people do. We are still second-class citizens.

At Boots & Saddle on Sunday.

While Porsche was singing on Fire Island, another man from Texas, Miss Victoria Chase, had to paint up in Manhattan. Sundays are karaoke night at Boots & Saddle. But yesterday wasn’t like other Sundays. Wary of a copycat attack, police officers in combat gear stood guard outside the door. They carried automatic weapons. As one of Victoria’s friends observed, it’s a sign of progress that the police are now protecting, not raiding, gay bars — the Stonewall is just around the corner from Boots. But the need for protection is unnerving.

How do you put on a show, with all that going on? By singing “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going,” Victoria’s signature number, which reliably brings me to tears. Leader of her community that she is, Victoria sang for all of us. No, no, there’s no way. We’re not going.

In some ways, “And I Am Telling You” may seem like the flip side of “Battle Hymn,” immobility versus marching. Yet both songs are about prevailing, refusing to submit, and staying true.

Victoria sang “And I Am Telling You,” she tells me, as part of her Pride Package, along with Aretha Franklin’s “Think.” Well, this is Pride Month, and we’re thinking hard. This year we’ll remember that the Stonewall Rebellion was a response to a violent attack. We’ll remember that Pride isn’t just a parade or a party. We’ll remember that Pride stayed strong even while thousands of us were dying.

It’s time to paint up, stand up, and raise our voices. Most especially for those who no longer can.

Miss Victoria Chase.
Photo by Jim Silvestri.

*UPDATE: After I posted this essay, reports began appearing to the effect that the Orlando shooter may have been a closeted and/or self-hating homosexual; his affiliation with Daesh never seemed close, though Daesh gladly took credit after the fact. The shooter’s mental health (and his relationship with his father) surely factors into his motivation and his crime, as well. It will probably be a long while, if ever, before we know even a substantial part of the full story. However, it occurs to me that it’s possible to be both radicalized and closeted at once, as the 9/11 attacker Mohammed Atta reportedly was. And if anything, the new reports about the Orlando shooter confirm the need to respond to the massacre with pride. The more we break down the closets, the more society admits our worth and respects our rights, the healthier and safer we will be.

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Writing the ‘Stonewall’ Screenplay

A scene from the film.

Director Roland Emmerich’s Stonewall opens today in movie theaters, having attracted controversy and threats of boycotting as soon as the trailer was released, depicting a clean-cut, all-American white kid at the center of a historic rebellion. While there were some white guys on hand (notably my friend Tree), lesbians and drag queens of color played the principal roles that night — they weren’t just background for a generic, “straight-acting,” white protagonist. By way of defense, Emmerich has explained that he needed to give straight audiences a character with whom they could identify, and screenwriter Jon Robin Baitz insists that this movie was never intended to be the only or final word on the subject.

Indeed, as the studio attempted to generate the broadest possible appeal, the Stonewall script went through lots of words, a few drafts, and possibly a few writers, before the cameras started rolling. I’ve obtained copies, and I’m pleased to share them with you now.

MEMO
Roland — Great news that you’ve started working on your picture for us. This “rebellion” seems like a great way to feature the kinds of explosions and action sequences you’re so good at. Concerned however that there’s no love interest for your main character. Focus groups indicate that “buddy pictures” are currently trending down. Could the hero’s friend be recast as a woman? Nice rom-com potential there.

STONEWALL: Draft 1

Interior: The Smith home in the town of Anywhere, in the state of Heartland. JOHN and MARY SMITH, a happily married heterosexual couple, are eating breakfast in their sunny American kitchen. JOHN looks up from his newspaper.

JOHN: Gee, honey, it says here that there’s been some trouble in New York City with the … “homosexuals.”

MARY: What are … “homosexuals”?

JOHN: I think it’s got something to do with milk.

MARY: No, that’s “homogenized.”

JOHN: Maybe the milk went bad? Anyway, there have been riots the past few nights.

MARY: I’m so glad that could never happen here!

JOHN: Amen to that! Say … the kids are at school now, aren’t they?

MARY: Why, yes, they are.

JOHN: What would you say to some healthy married intercourse between a husband and wife?

MARY (laughing): It depends whose husband and wife you have in mind!

CUT TO: Interior, Smith bedroom. JOHN and MARY make love.


MEMO
Roland — Focus groups respond very positively to your main characters, but there seems to be a lot of confusion about the events you’re trying to portray. Maybe another draft that brings the Smiths closer to the action? And where are the explosions?

STONEWALL: Draft 2

Exterior. Christopher Street, Greenwich Village, New York City. Nighttime. JOHN and MARY SMITH are walking along the sidewalk.

JOHN: Gee, honey, there seems to be something going on up ahead.

MARY: What do you mean?

JOHN: Up there, on the next block. A fight of some kind.

MARY: That’s quite a lot of people! Are those the “homosexuals” I’ve heard about?

JOHN: I don’t know — I've never seen one!

MARY: Should we call the police?

JOHN: No, the police are already in the thick of it.

MARY: It looks awful. Maybe we should go home another way.

JOHN: Yes, I’d hate to be delayed — I want to get you home so that we can have some healthy married intercourse between a husband and a wife!

MARY (laughing): It depends whose husband and wife you have in mind!

CUT TO: Interior, Smith bedroom. JOHN and MARY make love.

CUT TO: An alien spaceship blows up the Stonewall bar.


MEMO
Roland — Focus groups indicate that straight married couples are still confused about the rebellion, but they continue to identify strongly with your main characters. However, we polled those who are uncomfortable with homosexuals, and they say they wouldn’t see the movie at all, no matter how we handle it. Maybe we can afford to be a little more frank in the next draft?

STONEWALL: Draft 3

Exterior. Christopher Street, Greenwich Village, New York City. Nighttime. FRANK SMITH is walking along the sidewalk.

FRANK (to himself): Gee, there seems to be something going on up ahead. Up there, on the next block. A fight of some kind. Looks as if those may even be homosexuals — and there’s nothing wrong with that. The police are already in the thick of it. Maybe I should go home another way. I’d hate to be delayed — I want to get home so that I can have some healthy married intercourse with my wife!

CUT TO: Interior, Smith bedroom. FRANK and MARY make love.

CUT TO: An alien spaceship blows up the Stonewall bar.


MEMO
Roland — This is terrific — we’re almost there! The alien explosion really works, too. Want to discuss changing the title, though. Focus groups indicate that audiences in fly-over country expect a Civil War picture. What about calling the bar T.G.I. Friday’s? Nice product-placement opportunity there. Let’s give this one more try!

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I Vow Never to Make a Pizza for a Gay Wedding, If You Send Me $100,000

Behold, I stand at the door and knock;
if any heterosexual man hear My voice,
and open the door, I will come in to him,
and will sup with him, and he with Me.
(In a totally straight, bro-type way.)

In recent days, the owners of an Indiana pizza parlor announced that they would refuse to cater gay weddings, feeling that to do so would violate their faith. A horrible backlash ensued, including Internet bullying and unconscionable threats of violence; swiftly, the owners closed down their pizza parlor. But then, something wonderful occurred. People began to raise money to send to them, and the last I saw, they had raised $100,000.

That is why I want to take this opportunity to say to you that, if you will send me $100,000 — whether in a lump sum or in aggregate smaller individual donations via a crowdfunding network — I will never, ever make a pizza for a gay wedding, so help me, G*d.

It is true that never before have I made a pizza for a gay wedding. Never has anyone asked me to make a pizza for a gay wedding. In point of fact, I have never actually made a pizza, except for reheating the prefabricated, store-bought kind, whether frozen or refrigerated.

But I understand that making even a single pizza is a slippery slope. Just one pizza, and the next thing you know, I could be making pizzas for man–dog weddings, or just simply moving to Indiana. Thanks to your generosity, I will be able to resist that temptation to sin.

Making a pizza would violate many of my most deeply held personal religious beliefs. These include the commandments “Thou shalt not step within three feet of a brick oven” and “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s mozzarella,” and of course, the teachings of Jesus, who said, “Reserve the right to refuse to love thy neighbor as thyself.”

Yea, though I was born partially Italian, and though I would probably make a truly excellent pizza chef, I will shun those who ask me to make a pizza — if you will just send me $100,000.

And hurry, please. The rent is due, and tax day is coming up. Thanks.

UPDATE: I understand that supporters of the owners of the Indiana pizzeria have now raised close to $1 million. I’m not greedy: I’ll settle for $100,000. But if you want to give me $1 million, I won’t say no.

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No Federal Court Is Going to Rob Me of My Right to Discriminate Against Pharisees and Sadducees

Vipers, the lot of them.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about special rights for minorities, but one thing gets overlooked: my deeply held personal religious beliefs require me to discriminate against Pharisees and Sadducees. That’s why we need a law to protect my right to refuse to serve Pharisees and Sadducees in my small business, a law that, for the first time in American history, will uphold my freedom of religion.

As a Christian, my beliefs come into conflict with those of the Pharisees and Sadducees in a number of important areas, and I have only Scripture to guide me. For example, I know that, if a Pharisee or Sadducee comes into my family-style restaurant, he may test me by asking me to show a sign. Therefore, I will have to point to the sign that says, “We reserve the right to refuse service to anyone.”

Yes, it’s wrong to give in to temptation, but you have to put your foot down, and I know the Lord will forgive me.

Love thy neighbor, except when thy neighbor is of a different demographic group.

Now, say that a Pharisee or Sadducee comes into my bakery to order a cake for a Pharisee or Sadducee wedding. My Lord and Savior has commanded me to beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees. And just to make things extra clear, He added, “How is it that you do not understand that I was not talking to you about bread?” Obviously, He was talking about cake.

There is no yeast in cake! Everybody knows that! This is another trap set for Christians by the Pharisees and Sadducees! And so, if someone were to come up and say, “Please make me a big yeasty wedding cake for my big yeasty Pharisee or Sadducee wedding,” then I would have to reply, “My religious beliefs require me to call you a viper and tell you to get out of my bake shop. Have a nice day!”

And let’s not even get into the Pharisees’ and Sadducees’ conflicting ideas about the purity of spilled water — let’s just agree that my florist shop would be in big trouble if I tried to do business with any of them, no matter how many pieces of silver they offer me.

We know that Pharisees and Sadducees were very important to Jesus, because He talked about them so often. This isn’t one of those things He mentioned only a couple of times, like “Love thy neighbor” or cursing figs; it’s certainly not one of those moral questions that Jesus never even got around to mentioning. I honor my Lord and His agenda.

I realize that my faith-based behavior may cause pain to the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and their adulterous so-called “families,” but I must obey my Lord, who said, “Suffer, the little children.”

The Bible is the word of God, and I must follow it to the letter, excepting where pork, shellfish, and divorce are concerned, of course. I mean, really, Jesus Him Self called the Pharisees and Sadducees “an evil and adulterous kindred.” Can’t you see that to treat them kindly would violate my faith?

I don’t even understand how this Christian nation can have courts, when Jesus was very clear about “Judge not.” Yet federal courts and some legislatures are rapidly moving to the point where I’m going to have to treat everybody equally well. My faith won’t permit that.

After all, Jesus commanded me to cast the first stone, and He didn’t mean for me to cast it willy-nilly. He meant for me to cast it at someone, or possibly at some figs.

Meanwhile, I’m looking up what He said about wedding photography. I’m sure there are some important rules about that, too.

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In Praise of Boots & Saddle

“Welcome home,” Victoria Chase said to Kevin Daly one night when he walked into Boots and Saddle. Kevin had been going through a rough spell. He’d visited the bar only a few times, and that was months ago. Victoria was onstage, in the middle of her act, and Kevin was just some kid by the door. But she recognized him, sensed that he was looking for shelter from the storm, and she spoke up: “Welcome home.”

There’s been a lot of confusion about Boots and Saddle, a 40-year-old Greenwich Village gay bar now seeking a new location. Much of that confusion, it must be said, has been sown purposefully, maliciously and mendaciously, and it’s complicated the efforts to move the bar. So this seems a good time to tell you precisely — and honestly — what kind of place the bar is. Boots is a business, certainly, but it’s much more than that. It is a community, stronger and more diverse than any other I’ve found. When Victoria tells you you’ve come home, she means it, and she’s right.

Victoria Chase: One of the most remarkable people I have ever known, a gifted entertainer with a noble, caring heart.

Just look around the room. We don’t look like the crowd in any other bar, and we don’t look like each other. We are every age, every ethnicity, every class, and every sexuality. Yet there we are, together. So long as we play by the rules, we’re welcome, and the first rule is that we recognize and respect the worth of others. That’s why you don’t see a lot of attitude and posing. You see people talking to each other, even before Victoria takes the microphone and instructs us to turn to the person on the right and introduce ourselves — something she often does.

Boots got its start as a cowboy bar, but in recent years it’s evolved into a showcase for drag performers like Victoria, who in addition to her own shows books the other acts for the bar, a consistently surprising lineup of singers, dancers, and comics. Historically, Greenwich Village has welcomed boundary-breaking entertainment by young artists: Eugene O’Neill, Comden and Green, Billie Holiday, Lenny Bruce, Nina Simone, Barbra Streisand, Charles Ludlam. And just by painting up, the Boots artists align themselves firmly in the Greenwich Village tradition that launched the gay rights movement 45 years ago, when the drag queens fought back and set off the Stonewall riots.

So if you block a drag act, then you are the one who’s upsetting the status quo, “ruining the neighborhood,” and devaluing the reputation that brings visitors from all over the world. The first time I came to Greenwich Village, I wasn’t sure I was in the right place: it doesn’t look all that different from any other part of town. What defines the neighborhood is the people — and historically those people have been communists and socialists, artists and free thinkers, homosexuals and bohemians. In the post-Giuliani, post-Bloomberg era, I’m not sure what will define Greenwich Village now. Property values, maybe.

When did Helen Lovejoy move to Manhattan?

A side note here, to the Helen Lovejoys in the neighborhood so deeply, deeply concerned about the children: it’s possible that, in Springfield, no drag queen will rise up before an impressionable kid. But in New York, we’ve got posters for RuPaul on city buses. Here, drag is a fact of life, and the kids aren’t scarred, they’re better adjusted than you are. Consider the example of the little girl who came running up to Misty Meaner outside the bar and asked, “Are you a princess?” The acts can get a little raunchy, but most of the shows go on long after the library has closed and the kids have gone to bed. As another of the performers, Frostie Flakes, said the other day, “Drag queens are full of light, love, and color.” Heaven forbid we should expose our children to any of that.

As a person who lives directly upstairs from not one but three bars, I sympathize with the concerns of Boots’ neighbors. Bars can be loud, any establishment that serves liquor to crowds can get rowdy, and sometimes unpleasant behavior spills out onto the sidewalk. But Boots’ owners, Ron Silver and Robert Ziegler, take responsible steps, including a zero-tolerance policy for drugs and brawling, professional security guards, and a proactive approach to keeping not just their own doorway, but all of Christopher Street safe. I wish the bars in my neighborhood did the same. No, it’s not perfect, but nothing is (even in Greenwich Village). And the benefits Boots offers do a great deal to outweigh potential nuisances.

Above all, Robert has spent years fostering the community represented by the bar’s customers, staff, and artists. He’s done this not least by hiring Victoria and endorsing her vision of what Boots can and should be. He’s also committed the bar to important causes, taking an active role in the community at large, in a way that few other gay bars in New York do. Boots has raised money for political candidates, and organized the customers and staff to march against violence. Boots has sponsored events for homeless LGBT youth, for AIDS research and care, and for individual members of our “family” who were in need.

Kevin sings karaoke at Boots.

Moving to a new location means getting approval for a liquor license from the community board, which hears arguments on both sides before deciding. The customers, staff, and artists didn’t have to attend the first community board meeting, and yet we did, about fifty of us, in such a number that our opponents packed the next meeting. At that first meeting, I tried to explain that we were ourselves a community board, brought together in all our diversity because Boots and Saddle represents something that we can’t find anywhere else. We came to be heard, because we come to Boots.

When we are lonely, or bored, or in love, we come to Boots. When members of our community are in need — when our brothers and sisters are beaten and killed in the streets, and we are ready to march together — we come to Boots. When we are grieving or when we are celebrating a birthday or an engagement or a wedding — we come to Boots. When young artists reveal talents they could share nowhere else — we come to Boots.

Greenwich Village is synonymous around the world with the freedom to discover and to be our true selves. When we are ready to do the same — we come to Boots.

I’ve been to bars in four continents, and this bar is like no other place on earth. If some neighbors have their way, and Boots and Saddle moves to some other part of town, then Greenwich Village will be poorer for the loss.

My karaoke debut, imitating Dietrich
while singing “Falling in Love Again.”
(In German, mostly.)

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Please! Save Me from the Homosexual Menace!

by Tamar Iveri, Soprano
Special Guest Columnist

Recently, an open letter I wrote has gone public, attracting a great deal of criticism. In that letter, I asked the President of the Republic of Georgia — my homeland — to resist Western attempts to normalize the repellent practices of homosexuality. When I wrote, I used a wide variety of the rich poetic tradition of Georgian metaphor, including abundant references to poo-poo.

Since then, the public outcry has been so great that campaigns have begun to persuade opera houses to cancel my contracts. At Opera Australia, I am currently rehearsing the role of Desdemona, a totally heterosexual woman who, to her eternal shame and sorrow, is married to a Negro; later this year, I am scheduled to sing the role of Tosca, another completely heterosexual woman who would not be interested in having relations with any other woman, even if there were other women in this opera.

Many opera fans and supporters of filthy homosexual so-called culture are writing to Opera Australia to demand that I be dropped from the company’s roster. To them I say, “Thank you! But why stop there?”

You cannot imagine what an ordeal it is for me to work in opera. Do you realize how many homosexuals there are? I am surrounded! Constantly! It is not healthy, I say, and had I realized just how bad the situation was, I am sure I would have taken up another career altogether, such as automotive repair.

When I sing, there is a very real possibility that I may be singing with a homosexual. Many stage directors, designers, and orchestra musicians are homosexuals — even some conductors! Backstage, the technicians may be homosexual, and you can imagine that many homosexuals do my hair and makeup, and help me with my costumes.

Imagine! There I am, in my underwear, being clothed by someone who engages in intimate relations with a person of his or her own sex! And I have been put in this position again and again, for as long as I have been singing opera. It is unimaginable, really, and yet it is true.

What is perhaps most painful is the presence of so many homosexuals in the audience, at every opera house, everywhere in the world. There they are, applauding me, night after night. They love me! Can you imagine how this makes me feel, as a heterosexual artist? If homosexuals approve of me, then I must be a truly terrible singer — for, after all, what do homosexuals know?

Oh, how I long to withdraw from the world, to find a place that is pure and free of all traces of filthy homosexuality! I am still researching just where, precisely, that place might be, for even in the Republic of Georgia, there are two or three homosexuals — and that is too many! However, I am told that in Iran there are no homosexuals at all, so perhaps that is the place for me.

I say to you now, it is not enough that Opera Australia cancel all my contracts. Please, I beg of you, do whatever you can to force me into early retirement. I can no longer bear to be surrounded by homosexuals! Please, take pity on me! Save me! Save me now!

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Michael Sam Criticized for Having Hot Boyfriend

Shock waves raced through the Internet following Southeastern Conference defensive player of the year Michael Sam’s widely seen celebratory kiss upon receiving word that he’d been drafted by the St. Louis Rams. Sam will be the first openly gay player in professional football; the kiss was broadcast on ESPN, and reaction was immediate.

“It’s disgusting,” said one viewer in Texas. “I am a decent, God-fearing American, and I don’t want to see two men who are better-looking than I am kiss like that. If ESPN is going to force me to confront the fact that I will never be as hot as either of these guys, then I will switch to another network for my sports news.”

“Frankly, it makes me uncomfortable,” said one NFL player, who asked to remain anonymous. “When I realize that Michael Sam could potentially see me naked in the locker-room shower, and when I think that, on a regular basis, he gets to look at a guy who is much hotter than I am — it’s just not what God intended, I have to say.”

“They’re rubbing our faces in their hotness, just the way they rubbed cake in each other’s faces,” said a viewer in Mississippi. “I mean, I’m a football fan. If I want to see good-looking men together, I’ll watch soccer. Oh, Lord — now that there are gays in the NFL, are we going to have to start calling it ‘American football’? Jesus wept.”

“Tom Daley and Dustin Lance Black were bad enough,” said a viewer in Arizona, “but this is beyond the pale. When I think of attractive men, pressing their lips together in celebration, when I think of their fit bodies locked in a tight embrace, openly and proudly expressing their love, it makes my blood boil. Is it just me, or did it get hot in here all of a sudden?”

“It’s outrageous,” agreed a viewer in Louisiana. “I mean, can you imagine what they did later that night, after the television cameras were turned off? I mean, they were turned off, weren’t they? Has anything surfaced on the Internet yet?”

Women viewers expressed their outrage, as well. “What right does ESPN have to remind me that I will never have a boyfriend as hot as Michael Sam’s boyfriend?” one viewer said.

“Did you see how hot that guy is?” agreed another female viewer. “My boyfriend can’t compete with that. Now, whenever he wants to kiss me, mental images of Michael Sam’s boyfriend are going to flash through my mind.

“And the worst part is, whenever my boyfriend and I have cake, we just eat it,” she added. “We would never do anything cute or sexy with it, like smearing it on each other’s faces and then kissing off the icing. I mean, what a waste of cake! It’s disgusting.”

“I hear he’s a swimmer,” said a woman in Tampa. “He probably owns more than one Speedo. He’s probably all smooth and crazy ripped. And then he gets out of the pool all sleek and wet, slowly, and he has to reach back and discreetly tug up the Speedo a little bit because it’s kind of sliding off his tight little butt, and he grabs a towel and slowly, gently dries himself while the sun shines on his glistening muscles, and do you have any idea what my boyfriend would look like in a Speedo?”

Sam’s boyfriend has been identified as Vito Cammisano, 23, a swimmer and fellow University of Missouri alumnus.

“Oh, God, you mean he’s Italian, too?” said one sports fan. “Oh, man. This is just cruel.”

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Russia’s Treatment of Gays Not at All Like Nazi Germany’s, Putin Says

Russian President Putin.

MOSCOW -- Facing an onslaught of international criticism and threats of a boycott of the Winter Olympics in Sochi next year, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin today told reporters that recent measures restricting homosexuals and their supporters have been misunderstood.

“Everybody is talking about this as if we were the Nazis, criminalizing homosexuality and even banning speech in support of homosexuality,” Putin said. “This is not Germany in the 1930s.”

Under the terms of recent legislation, anyone suggesting that revered Russian composer Piotr Tchaikovsky was gay is now subject to fines and arrest on grounds of promoting propaganda. Gay or pro-gay foreign visitors are now subject to arrest and detainment for up to 14 days before deportation. These crackdowns on “nontraditional relations” are in no way similar to the Nazis’ treatment of homosexuals, Putin said, adding that thus far, no measure has been passed to require gays in Russia to wear pink triangles on their clothing.

“Homosexuals may walk freely anywhere in Russia,” Putin said, “so long as they don’t hold hands or, you know, skip or sashay or anything like that.”

Demonstrations like this one, in protest of anti-gay legislation,
put Russian homosexuals at risk, Putin said.

By statute and also in unofficial practice that has nothing to do whatever with conditions in Nazi Germany, gays in Russia no longer enjoy the right to assembly; civil authorities deny permits to Pride demonstrations, and against a backdrop of increasing numbers of homophobic attacks across the country, both Pride events and protests of the new legislation have been met with violence and police action in which the peaceful protesters themselves, and not their aggressors, were arrested.

“We do these things for the safety of all our people,” Putin said. “If an angry mob is attacking a homosexual demonstrator, the safest thing is to take that homosexual into custody. The proportion of police beating a demonstrator is much smaller than the proportion of a mob beating a demonstrator. While we Russians do not condone nontraditional relations, we do believe in a good, fair fight.”

Emphasizing his good intentions and his desire to improve Russia’s image abroad, Putin announced a new series of “vacation holiday camps” for homosexuals, mostly located in Siberia.

Gays will enjoy the rustic scenery, Putin said, in vacation camps so remote that “they can make as much noise — they can even scream — and no one will hear them at all.”

“Effective immediately, all homosexuals in Russia and their friends will be sent to these vacation holiday camps for a much-deserved break, free of charge,” Putin said. “Again, this is nothing like what the Germans did to their homosexuals. Special trains will transport the homosexuals and sympathizers in comfort to state-of-the-art facilities in tranquil, remote areas.

“We will treat our guests with the utmost courtesy,” Putin continued, “offering them special weight-loss diets and healthful activities. Housing will be co-educational, but you can’t have everything.

“Now can we please stop talking about the boycott?”

Just one of the many healthful activities offered at the camps.

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Your Constant Gaying Is Really Starting to Hurt My Feelings

An Open Letter to Homosexuals:

Oh, sure, you’ve had a lot to celebrate recently. Two United States Supreme Court decisions made it easier in some places for you to exercise your so-called “right” to marry and to violate the laws of G*d and nature. You’ve been on a partying binge ever since, gaying in the streets and all over the television and Internet, right there where everybody can see you. But did you ever stop to consider my feelings?

How do you think it makes me feel, every time another commentator tells me I’m “on the wrong side of history”? Or suggests that I’m some kind of a bigot — just because I believe you’re not my equal? Do you think I like being called “a square”?

Okay, granted, nobody has actually called me a square. But I can tell they’re thinking it, which is just as bad. It’s gotten to the point that I have to isolate myself from the news and any information and people that don’t conform entirely to what I already believe. Why, oh, why can’t you show me the same courtesy and tolerance that you demand for yourselves?

You all think that I have no sympathy for a little old lady who devoted most of her life to loving and caring for her so-called “partner.” And I don’t, actually, but there’s no reason for you to go around thinking about it.

After all, if I were a member of some kind of heathen minority, you’d be among the very first to stick up for my rights to believe in a deity who denies love. Admit it! If I believed in a G*d so puny and narrow that He can’t even write poetry and means for us to take Him literally when He says He created the world in six days — then you’d have my back, wouldn’t you? And not in that gaying way.

Why can’t you respect my respect for tradition? Marriage has always meant one man and one woman, and since the days of Adam and Eve, it has been practiced for the sole and exclusive purpose of procreation. It’s not as if marriage ever included one man and several women, or one nun and Jesus; it’s not as if it’s ever practiced by men and women who can’t or don’t want to have children.

For mercy’s sakes, if homosexual relationships had ever been celebrated by early Christians or Ancient Greeks, or Native Americans, or any other society in history — then things might be different.

And don’t go telling me that homosexual behavior is found in hundreds of other species. How many of those other species are going to sit at the right hand of G*d in the afterlife? I’m talking about natural law, thank you very much.

At least he understands how I feel!

Well, if I’m lucky, then Justice Scalia’s son is right, and homosexuality doesn’t even exist: it’s just some sinful idea you won’t let go of without months of re-programming. But then I see you again on TV, gaying away just as if homosexuality did exist. And so you ruin my day all over again.

You just keep on gaying. I’ve tried to explain to you before that Jesus won’t come back unless we’re all free of gaying sins. Why can’t you respect the reality that Jesus will come back in my lifetime, as opposed to any point in the previous 2,000 years or any point thereafter?

You can’t imagine what it feels like to be oppressed by a supernatural force that resides only in the minds of other people.

It’s all making me feel just terrible, and not one of you stops to say you’re sorry. No, you just keep on gaying. Fortunately, in most states in the Union, your unnatural “right” to marriage is still constitutionally banned, and I still have the G*d-given right to deny you housing and employment. And in many places, I can still bully you, beat you up, or kill you without anybody ever once whining, “That’s a hate crime.”

Hate crime. Such ugly, ugly words. Really, you should be ashamed of yourselves for being so inconsiderate toward my feelings.



EDITORIAL NOTE: Apparently I’m not the only one experiencing layout problems with Blogger these days; that’s why all the photos look huge, no matter what I do. But perhaps the gigantic images of gaying will help you to appreciate the enormity of this problem.

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The Wedding of the Century

All-star production: Dr. Stephen Gentle officiates.
Photo by Jim Carnahan.

Contemporary society is changing so fast! As he welcomed us to the wedding of Steven Bryant and Darren Woods on Sunday, Dr. Stephen W. Gentle of the Disciples of Christ admitted that he’d “never done anything like this before,” then paused. “It’s the first time in my 27-year career that I’ve officiated at the marriage of a couple who have been together for 32 years.”

He grinned, and we cheered. Darren and Steven have indeed been together a long time, and in Opera World they’re something of a hallowed institution unto themselves. You can’t say that by an exchange of vows on Sunday they made their relationship official, or even much different from what it was on Saturday — though because the ceremony was performed in Schroon Lake, New York, it certainly is legal now. Maybe when something is so right, so tested and true, people just need to acknowledge it, and so Darren and Steven did.

Of course, attending the wedding meant missing Pride in New York. Darren scoffed when I pointed this out. “This is a Pride Parade,” he said, almost like Miles Gloriosus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, and in the event the turnout was exceptional, great throngs of people who were as proud as they were joyful.

Steven W. Bryant and Darren K. Woods: The official portrait.
Photo by Ellen Appel.

The date was significant, just two days before the anniversary of Darren and Steven’s first meeting, on this very ground: the Seagle Music Colony, where the boys were students, and where Darren is now artistic director and Steven supervises wigs and makeup for the annual productions of opera and musicals.* No other day would do.

Moreover, I knew I’d see at least two gleaming torsos, even if there were no go-go boys (and there weren’t) on this Pride Day: Steven is launching a line of men’s formalwear accessories, gorgeous and brilliantly colored ties, vests, and cummerbunds.** Sure enough, both grooms were decked out in eye-catching finery.

I also knew the music would be spectacular, and it was. A chorus made up of this year’s Seagle kids lined the stage of the Oscar Seagle Theater, under the direction of Tony Kostecki, in numbers by Vaughn-Williams and Daniel Pinkham. And the evening’s other selections together constitute one of the most radiant highlights of my listening year.

Soprano Ava Pine, herself a Seagle alumna, delivered a melting, shimmering account of Barber’s Knoxville: Summer 1915 — which just happens to be the year that the Colony was founded — with Tyson Deaton on piano, for all the world as if he were at the head of a full orchestra. Ava and Tyson returned at the end for “Let the Bright Seraphim,” from Handel’s Samson, which Ava ornamented with more fireworks than any other Pride celebration in history has known.

And a little later in the evening, bass-baritone Daniel Okulitch sang a tender setting of Browning’s “Grow Old with Me,” written by Jake Heggie as an anniversary present for another terrific couple from Opera World, baritone Robert Orth and his wife.

Ava has amused Darren, possibly by mentioning that I’m still angling to join them in Daughter of the Regiment
at Fort Worth Opera next season.
Photo by Daniel Okulitch.

Thereafter, we set about partying, and we took this as seriously as you would expect from a group of conscientious, professional, artistically minded folks — who were over the Adirondack moon with happiness. What struck me almost immediately was that the party was as important as the ceremony: a celebration of a community that has been brought together by the love of these two men.

So many of the people here are dear to me, and dearer by the minute, and that’s pretty much because Darren and Steven willed it so. Darren talks often about the families we’re born into and the families we choose for ourselves: add it all up, and Darren’s family is vast. On Sunday I looked up and realized that I’m part of it, too.

I’m not alone: every person present must feel the same way. What an extraordinary achievement!

Lucky WVM with Ava Pine, Janice Hall, and Daniel Okulitch.
Trivia note: I have interviewed each of these phenomenal singers both for this blog and for features in Opera News. (Ava for her profile in the June 2012 issue, Janice for a profile of Darren a few years ago, and Dan for a preview of Shore’s The Fly in Paris.)
I believe Kurt Howard took this picture, using Dan’s camera.

I thought back to the afternoon, when I arrived early and barged into Darren and Steven’s house, though they had better things to do (ya think?) than look after me. Cool and collected before the Big Event, Darren observed — with a note of wonder, if not surprise — the enthusiastic reactions he’d received from everyone in and around Schroon Lake. Even people who weren’t attending the wedding knew about it and happily supported it. Everybody got into the spirit, notably including Dr. Gentle, whose speeches during the ceremony revealed a sense of humor that chimed perfectly with Darren’s and Steven’s.

All of this may have surprised Darren, but it’s no surprise to me. The guys have been part of the Schroon Lake community since 1980, and all the moreso since 1996, when Darren took over as general director at Seagle, which, as the Colony’s slogan puts it, has been “Bringing Music to the Adirondacks Since 1915,” no small thing. It only stands to reason that Darren and Steven would make friends with their neighbors, the way they’ve made me their friend, the way they’ve made their other friends my friends.

The next day, as he drove us to New York through relentlessly pounding rain and a brief hailstorm, tenor Scott Scully grumbled, “This is what happens when you let the gays marry.” He was kidding, of course.*** Scott knows, as I do, that what really happens when you let gays marry — even when you merely let them live together in peace and love for 32 years — is that you strengthen the fabric of society. Simply stated, we’re all better off because Steven Bryant and Darren Woods are married.

Anybody who tells you different, is full of beans.

Scott Scully and WVM.
Photo by Daniel Okulitch.

Darren and Steven suggested that, in lieu of presents, their friends make contributions to Fort Worth Opera or to the Seagle Colony. I’ve spoken often about Fort Worth Opera (and I believe I’ve even mentioned that I’ll make my company debut there in 2013). The Seagle Colony is notable not only for its history — it is the oldest summer singer-training program in the country — but also for its approach.

The Colony provides young artists with a safe environment to try new things. The goal isn’t to be perfect, but to learn and to grow. Darren has no patience for those audience members who show no patience toward his kids; he’s been known to eject forcibly folks who came in with a bad attitude. I underscore, however, that this is no amateur hour, and many of the most impressive young American artists you’ll hear these days are Seagle alumni.

Over the years, the Colony has also become an important proving ground for new work, as well as new voices. It’s a remarkable place, and worthy of your support, as well as mine.

Jonathan Blalock (Lázaro) and Wes Mason (Reinaldo Arenas) in Jorge Martín’s Before Night Falls at Seagle, 2008.
Both singers graduated from the workshop to the world premiere,
at Fort Worth Opera two years later.
Photo by Ellen Appel.

*NOTE: I believe that Steven will be in charge of wigs and makeup for the Fort Worth Opera Festival of Ariadne auf Naxos next May. So if I don’t look pretty when I take the stage as the Haushofmeister — you’ll have to blame him, not me.

**I expect we’ll have more to say about Steven’s formalwear designs when the business is closer to commencing full operations.

***Scully is also an excellent driver. Navigating the monsoons in Houston turned out to be just the training he needed to get us home on Monday.

ADDITIONAL NOTE: It’s through the good grace of Joyce Castle that I met Darren and Steven in the first place. Joyce was unable to attend the wedding, since she’s in Central City, Colorado, preparing for opening night of Oklahoma! (a work that deserves its exclamation point more than ever before, now that she’s playing Aunt Eller); she’ll also reprise her legendary interpretation of the title role in Menotti’s The Medium with Central City Opera for two sold-out performances later in the summer. As the ceremony began on Sunday, however, I sent a silent message to the Universe: “I’m representing Joyce. Amen.”

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Summer Nights

The death of Donna Summer comes just as the press is assessing the impact of President Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage. Many black churchgoers disagree with the President on this issue, and they’re making their feelings known, especially to reporters and pollsters: many resent the linking of gay rights to the civil rights movement, and many believe that the Bible’s proscriptions against homosexuality and promotion of heterosexuality (and, occasionally, of monogamy) do not permit Christians to support marriage equality. Black churches, along with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, were instrumental in the passage of Proposition 8, which ended legal marriages in California, even while Barack Obama won overwhelming support from blacks in the same November election in 2008.

What does this have to do with Donna Summer? The singer, whose first performances were in the church choir of her girlhood, was born-again in the late 1970s; a few years later, as the AIDS crisis exploded, she was quoted as saying that AIDS was God’s punishment of homosexuals. She denied making that statement, but the reputation stuck: namely, that an artist whose success always depended on gay men had no sympathy for her most stalwart champions. It took her years to recover, and even now some gay men are unwilling to enjoy her music.

Donna Summer learned in the 1980s what Barack Obama is learning now, if he didn’t know it already: that relations between black Christians and gays are tense and not easily reconciled, and that anything you say on the subject can alienate your loyal base.

Today, few people seem to remember much if anything about the rift between Summer and the gays — and even less about the flak she caught from Christians whenever she defended gays. (Which she did, many times.) Instead we’re recalling her as the high priestess of disco hedonism, presiding over an endlessly orgiastic night. She was the woman who simulated (or stimulated) 23 orgasms while recording “Love to Love You Baby” and who glamorized promiscuity and prostitution in song.

She was uncomfortable with this image, and yet what she really believed seldom seemed to matter, in those days. We saw her as a sex symbol, the mistress of revels for a generation obsessively committed to revelry. Blame the songs, if you will.

If indeed she never meant the things she sang, that’s perhaps why I can hear in her music a kind of detachment, a disembodiment even while ostensibly absorbed in the pleasures of the flesh. Her voice floats, high and serene, over the thumpa-thumpa instruments, the repetitive and inane lyrics, and the hangover melodies that drill into your head and don’t let go until sometime the next day.

I daresay she’s happier and far better understood now that she’s singing in the choir celestial. She was an unlikely denizen of Disco World, but that may explain why the dancers made her their queen — for a time.

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Merrick’s ‘The Lord Won’t Mind’

My recent rediscovery of James Kirkwood’s Good Times, Bad Times inspired me to seek out another forbidden text from my youth, this one so intimidating that never before ordering it from Amazon had I owned a copy. I used to read it in bookstores, ideally those far from any place where I might be recognized. Gordon Merrick’s The Lord Won’t Mind (1970) held within its pages the potential to undo me — I was certain. But I was quite powerless to resist its spell.

It’s hard to believe that only two years separated the publication of Kirkwood’s novel and Merrick’s, so vast is the difference in their treatment of the stories they tell. Both novels center on pairs of young men of much the same age — on either side of 20 — and of similarly privileged backgrounds and generous endowments. Both narrators begin by telling us they’re motivated by a desire to find “that one special friend,” but only Merrick is honest enough to admit that another kind of desire is at work, too. Whereas Kirkwood’s Peter and Jordan remain purely and improbably platonic, Merrick’s Charlie and Peter are tearing at each other by page 22.

The erotic power that scene held over me, when I was the age of Merrick’s protagonists, can’t be imagined. Not that much imagination was needed: the sex is nothing if not explicit. The scene begins with a corny, drawn-out seduction worthy of the cheesiest porn-movie set-ups — excepting of course that none of those movies had been made when The Lord Won’t Mind was written.

Charlie and Peter’s coupling is quick, ardent, and just the first of many in the book. Kirkwood’s boys share one and only one kiss on New Year’s Eve: two years and a revolution separate these novels.

Gordon Merrick: Here he looks much as he describes his characters, cousins who are said to resemble each other strongly.

It may help to think of The Lord Won’t Mind as the gay equivalent of a trashy, Harold Robbins- or Sidney Sheldon-esque story, in which rich, good-looking people get into soap-operatic scrapes and have lots of sex. Of course, most of those novels hadn’t been written yet, either, which may help us to understand how groundbreaking Merrick’s work really was.

According to Wikipedia, where everything is true, Merrick shared a number of traits with Charlie, the older and more experienced (and more profoundly messed-up) of his boys, including a theatrical background and an acquaintance with director–playwright Moss Hart that are reflected in The Lord Won’t Mind. He also had a very long-lasting relationship with another man. Indeed, the book may be viewed as a kind of veiled coming-out story: Merrick’s narrator gives us to understand, at the beginning and the end of the novel, that he and Charlie are one and the same person. At the start, however, he declares that it’s too difficult to tell this story without changing the names and detaching himself from the characters.

So be it: I won’t try too hard to draw biographical allusions. As a document of Merrick’s times, however, The Lord Won’t Mind is especially fascinating. The kinds of incidents Merrick depicts in the book had been going on as long as men have walked the earth, of course, but within his lifetime a new era of openness had begun. Remember, the Stonewall riots took place only one year before this book was published — when it became a New York Times bestseller.*

An early paperback edition

That success seems improbable to this modern reader, not least because the depiction of sex is, as I say, so far from most mainstream publishing of that era. Really, for equivalents you have to look in the darker corners of pulp fiction, which boasted a considerable subgenre of homoerotic literature set in prisons and reform schools that also seems to have inspired James Kirkwood to at least some degree.

An undercurrent of racism characterizes The Lord Won’t Mind and may account in part for the fact that the book has been out of print ever since Alyson Publications reissued it in 1995. Although Charlie is devoted to Sapphire, his grandmother’s maid (a very marginal character whose tolerant pronouncement gives the book its title), he’s nevertheless inclined to make casual observations that are anything but politically correct. Granted, Merrick is describing pre-World War II New York, when a certain kind of racism was even more widespread, and granted, too, there’s a payoff in the plot twist at the end of the book — but until you get to that point, you may be occasionally uncomfortable in your reading.

Even more pernicious is a broad streak of misogyny throughout the novel. The Lord Won’t Mind features two principal female characters, both of whom start out charming and end up absolute monsters. (I don’t want to spoil the plot, but really, commercial fiction doesn’t get more lurid than this.)

While I’d like to report that more recent generations of gays are entirely reformed and love all women like sisters or goddesses, I do occasionally still hear ugly sentiments expressed. But for the present discussion, what’s most telling is that, in an era when blacks, women, and gays were all fighting for their civil rights, these groups remained largely discrete. Common cause had not been made, and to judge on the basis of the vote in California’s Proposition 8, the struggles aren’t fully united yet, though the goals haven’t been reached.

The paperback editions of my youth looked like these.

Charlie’s attitudes toward women also point to his own deeply conflicted character: he’s unable to admit the true nature of his feelings for Peter, and all the plot complications stem from that denial of self. He goes so far as to marry Hattie, an actress who is for several chapters the book’s liveliest and most engaging character. But the constant repression of Charlie’s sexual identity takes its terrible toll on him, on Hattie, and on Peter (who from the first scene freely admits his impassioned love for Charlie), until all three are “acting out” in ways that, even now, are pretty shocking.

That level of psychological insight gives The Lord Won’t Mind whatever enduring literary merit it may have, and again, it points to the revolutionary tenor of the times in which the book was written. To the question “Why can’t you just stay in the closet?” (one that’s still being asked today), the novel offers the clear response: Because bad stuff will happen if I do.

The success of The Lord Won’t Mind inspired Merrick to write several more gay-themed novels, including two sequels in the story of Charlie and Peter. I haven’t read them, and because they’re out of print, they’re collector’s items now, some paperbacks (the Alyson books are rather flimsy) selling for upwards of $100 on Amazon. So I’m not likely to catch up any time soon on Merrick’s work.

He died in 1988, just as writers like David Leavitt were bringing stories of young gay love to a new level, equally open and much better written. The times had been changing, and they continued to change. And for my part, at least I’ve matured to the point where I can own a copy of The Lord Won’t Mind and keep it in my bookcases. My reading is no longer furtive, and I can take the book for what it is — which is not a radioactive scandal waiting to happen.

But page 22 is still pretty darned hot.

I have it on good authority that the characters do not in fact get around to talking about music. One for the Gods is part of the Charlie and Peter trilogy.

*NOTE: A friend tells me that, as a boy, he found Merrick’s novel on the shelves of the public library in the small town in Texas where he grew up. We have deduced that, because the book was a bestseller and because it had “The Lord” in its title, the librarians must have thought it was an appropriate addition to the collections; we can’t believe the librarians ever read it.

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Patsy & Edina Ride Again

Seems like old times: Bubble reenacts the Royal Wedding.
Left to right: Jennifer Saunders (Edina), Jane Horrocks (Bubble), Julia Sawalha (Saffy), Joanna Lumley (Patsy), Christopher Malcolm (Justin).

On the strength of the first of three new episodes of Absolutely Fabulous, Jennifer Saunders is back in form. That episode was broadcast in Britain over the Christmas holiday; immediately, it leaked to the Internet, where I watched it. The official U.S. premiere is Sunday evening, on Logo, a cable channel.

It’s great fun to be reunited with Edina Monsoon (Saunders) and Patsy Stone (Joanna Lumley), but especially so since many other AbFab specials have been such lackluster affairs. For a while, it even seemed possible that Saunders had forgotten how to write her show. Again and again, she’d resorted to a cavalcade of celebrity guest stars, whose turns were seldom as much fun as the misbehavior and interactions of the family/coven of Patsy, Eddy, Saffy, Mother, and Bubble. Moreover, the rich and famous stole time and focus away from those core characters. In short, we were cheated: promised AbFab but given something far less satisfying.

At least for the first new episode, Saunders has learned her lesson. We even get — bliss! — a long kitchen-table scene in which the women discuss the latest trends and gossip. Merely reading a magazine can lead reliably to a scene of great dialogue in this series, and here we get commentary on hot topics such as the Kardashians and Prince William’s wedding, brilliantly reenacted by Bubble. It seems like old times — and good times, at that.

Shopping, sweetie.

What makes such scenes funny is anger — of a sort that can’t quite be expressed when the real-life celebrity is standing next to you. Oftentimes, AbFab has struck me as an extended shriek of protest against the images of womanhood purveyed in popular culture. The central characters react accordingly: Patsy and Eddy try to keep up with every latest anything, Saffy lectures and abstains. When she allows herself the freedom, Saunders makes it all funny.

When the series first appeared in the United States, another analysis of AbFab held me captive: it seemed to be a show about two drag queens, bedecked in flamboyant costumes, prone to outrageous behavior and provocative conversation. (Small wonder that, from the first day forward, men started dressing up as Patsy and Eddy.) The catch was that women played the leads, making the show more palatable, if only a little less subversive, for a mainstream audience. Just as drag often comments on society’s notions of sex, so too does AbFab, and nowadays I hold to my original interpretation, if not quite so emphatically.

But that’s from the highbrow. From the heart, what you need to know about the AbFab reunion is that the familiar characters are delightfully true to themselves — despite some surprising new situations. (For instance, the person you’d least expect has just spent two years in prison.) That’s always been the strength of AbFab: taking two perfectly awful women and listening to what they say. We don’t really care what Elton John or Whoopi Goldberg says here; we care about Patsy and Eddy and their continuous collisions with the universe.

Eurydice Colette Clytemnestra Dido Bathsheba Rabelais Patricia Cocteau Stone

Plot is nearly superfluous in this show: what matters is never that Edina rents a house in France or drives her own car to the supermarket, but what she says (and what she drinks) when she gets there. As a writer, Saunders has sometimes misjudged her work, as when she decided that AbFab was really about a mother–daughter relationship, as if that were what set the show apart from anything that had ever been on television before. We’d seen plenty of mothers and daughters, but we’d never seen Patsy Stone.

One advantage, however, to Saunders’ long and sometimes erratic writing process is the development of character relationships that redeem the otherwise irredeemable Patsy and Eddy: this means that they’re still fun to hang out with. The ladies may take their sweet time getting around to it, but in the end, their devotion to one another (and even to Saffy) conquers all. At the same time, no matter how extravagant their excesses, we can see that Patsy and Eddy are admirable, in their way. There’s something courageous, even heroic, about their struggles to have a good time, to stay young forever, to get to the top and stay there.

The enduring alliance: Edina and Patsy

The first new episode includes some terrific scenes in which Eddy helps Patsy make sense of her finances (confronting a bureaucrat who, in earlier “specials,” would have been played by somebody famous), and in which Saffy is left a very long time wondering whether her mother will ever stick up for her in what is surely the direst conflict she’s had to face (with an ex-convict who, likewise, might have been played by a celebrity but is instead played by a highly competent actress).

All of the leading ladies look terrific, too. Jane Horrocks (Bubble) and June Whitfield (Mother) have aged most notably, but they’re still charmers — and mercifully, the Katie Grin character seems to have vanished. (Saunders devised Katie to give the chronically underused Horrocks more to do, as well as a more mature role than that of the adolescent Bubble — but I’ve always found Katie relentlessly unfunny, uninteresting, and unsatisfying.) Julia Sawalha looks exactly the same as ever, but they’ve given up any pretense to Saffy’s still being a schoolgirl. Now she’s creeping up on middle age — which of course is what she was born for.

Clearly, I’m not the only one pleased with the results of this reunion. In the press, Jennifer Saunders has begun talking again about an AbFab movie, to be set in the South of France. Much of the English-speaking world probably knows nothing of the terrible French movie that was already made, years ago. Having endured the French version, on an airplane from which, remarkably, I did not jump, I might not be enthusiastic about the prospects of a new movie — even an authentic one.

But on the strength of this reunion, I say, “Bring it on.” I can use a good dose of extravagance and audacity right about now.

What’s wrong with this picture? Everything!
Josiane Balasko as Eddie Mousson (French for “monsoon”) with Johnny Hallyday’s real-life ex, the great Nathalie Baye, as Patricia. Boy, she must really have needed the money. Absolument Fabuleux (2001) set back the cause of French cinema by approximately four centuries: now they’re going to have to invent movies all over again.

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I Always Cry at Same-Sex Weddings

Titanium: Their hands will go on.

Yesterday, after all the many happy occasions made unnecessarily bittersweet, all the countless connubial conclaves where I felt conspicuous — or left-out — or altogether superfluous — here at last, I thought, things would be different.

For once, I wouldn’t be the only one at the wedding.

Alas, Dan’s family quickly made it clear to me: I alone, out of everyone in the room, was not a St. Louis Cardinals fan.

The Gullers are perhaps the biggest boosters St. Louis has ever known. When Dan has come to Paris, we have had to visit all sorts of shrines to Saint Louis, which doesn’t leave time for much else but at least covers the Berthillon ice cream parlor on the Ile-Saint-Louis. Now we were in Connecticut, treated to little hors d’œuvres that, because they were so tasty, the cater–waiter explained, were called “St. Louis Ravioli.”

I resisted the urge to ask whether they were stuffed with cardinals.

The grooms and their parents.

Meanwhile, Eric, whose own, erstwhile career as a cater–waiter was long and distinguished, managed somehow not to jump in and start serving hors d’œuvres, too.

Beyond all that, however, I noticed plenty of people who are in many ways quite a bit like me. For this was the first gay wedding I’d ever attended, the legal union of my friends Eric and Dan.

Which is it? It all depends on whom you ask, I guess.

This at last was a bit — not all, but a bit — of what we as a tribe have spent years marching for and what we as a nation have been arguing over. Yet in the event, it didn’t seem like such a big deal. The earth did not at any point tilt off its axis. Sure, there was an historically premature snowstorm on Saturday, and Eric and Dan lost electricity at the home they share, but that didn’t seem like God’s wrath so much as a kind of warning: “See how much trouble I could cause if I wanted to bust up this party?”

No, the dead did not rise from their graves on Sunday, as Patrick observed, and the children present fell into temptations no more dire than the urge to sneak an extra piece of Halloween candy; the sun shone bright, and the skies stayed clear. All of Connecticut seemed to smile on the happy couple. This was a wedding not so unlike any other.

For once, the only one left out in the cold was this little fellow.

What made it distinctive was not that the couple joining hands was endowed with two sets of XY chromosomes. That didn’t matter — it couldn’t matter to anybody who saw the expression on Dan’s face when the rings were exchanged and he looked into Eric’s eyes: “We did it!” he seemed to say, in a way that made you want to — that made it impossible not to — celebrate along with them.

No, to understand what made this wedding its own special event, you had to look to the officiants, a rabbi and a preacher, because this is in at least one regard a mixed marriage, and because Eric and Dan believe in a God who believes in love.

The music made a difference, too. Both Eric and Dan have theatrical backgrounds, and both were part of the cabal that performs Forever Plaid, a musical in which the close harmonies demand a high degree of musicianship: you can’t hire just anybody, and at any given moment, there’s been a select pool of talent available. Eric and Dan never appeared in the same production of Forever Plaid, because both played the same role: Smudge, the left-handed geek of the quartet, who consistently leads with the wrong foot and gets all the choreography backwards.

A matched set, really.

So it was that we got terrific music, including “Can’t Help Lovin’ That Man” as sung by the cantor, tributes in song by several friends, and a chorus with half a dozen Plaid veterans; and, instead of any more conventional bridal march, we got “Three Coins in the Fountain.” And so it was that, to herald the couple’s arrival at dinner after the ceremony, we got a brilliantly executed music video, in which Eric and Dan performed the Bruno Mars song, “I Think I Wanna Marry You.”

While mystified as much as ever by the very concept of marriage, I also felt as happy as I ever have at any friends’ wedding. Yes, it’s true that in the past I always used to be an outsider. No matter the warmth of the embrace of my friends or the joy of the moment, I stood on the sidelines, looking on, a disinterested observer. Couples exchanged vows and rings and futures; these things have lasted or not, and yet I always knew that, whatever happened, it wasn’t ever going to be a part of my experience. Now — who knows?

And you know what? It Gets Better.

For as I watched Eric and Dan, I understood the mettle of their bond. Ask most people what that is, and they’re liable to mishear you: “It’s gold,” they’ll say, or in Eric and Dan’s case, “Titanium.”

And yet that’s not exactly their case, in fact, because the mettle was forged before Sunday, and if it’s a mineral at all, it’s graphite — a smudge, identical along two left hands that now bear rings. And be advised: it will last, but it will rub off.

Onto others.

For Eric and Dan, as for the rest of us, the adventure is just beginning.

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