Utter Bravery

Donnie was not a close personal friend, but I feel this loss deeply. He is an icon of a time that this generation of young gay people don't know or understand.

It is on the shoulders of Donnie Jay and many men and women like him that we stand now, able to look the world straight in the eye - so to speak - and demand to be treated like equals. There are things that Donnie had seen in his lifetime that I cannot begin to comprehend.

Always the consummate entertainer, Donnie did some of the most hilarious (and at times, hilariously inappropriate and dreadful!) drag - even after losing half his foot due to diabetes. I heard him once quip that he was headed out on the town to "kick up his heel"...

And he just didn't care what the world thought - he is the personification of Stephen Sondheim's stunning "I'm Still Here" from Follies, but that's not the song I associated with his passing last week.

There are many definitions of bravery, and exponentially more quotes about it too...I found this one via Google, and didn't know the author's names so I googled that too. There's something deliciously fitting, and somewhat campy in the way that would tickle Donnie Jay - it's from Meg Cabot, author of the Princess Diaries.

“Courage is not the absence of fear but the judgment that something else is more important than fear. The brave may not live forever but the cautious do not live at all. For now you are traveling the road between who you think you are and who you can be."

Meg Cabot

Donnie Jay knew who he was - and lived and lived and lived. And the world is a little dimmer without his light. And here's what I have had playing in my head since hearing of his passing: George Hearn, and no other, singing "I Am What I Am" from La Cage Aux Folles.

Singular Saturday - Valentine's Day Edition 2009

HEART.

OK, so now that I have your attention,
it's time to groove out to
Blue Man Group and Venus Hum
with their rendition of "I Feel Love"!"

Moving

I love movies. I love music. And I especially love it when a director (and all the other parties involved) get it right in a movie, by combining the right music with the right scene and - wow!

Reaching into the Way-Back File, in 1990 (when I stilled had hair on the top of my head), I was asked out to the movies by this hot German au pair. Of course I said yes...did I mention he was hot?

So, he asked if I'd like to see Henry V starring Kenneth Branagh. I am certain I probably said something smooth and classy like, "uh-huh" as I starred into his dreamy blue eyes. So, off we went.

During the time we spent chatting before the movie started, I learned that he had aspirations to be a model, or model-actor...and had no other outside interests, abilities or talents. He had cultivated nothing but his looks. And, what he liked best about me was how handsome I thought he was...blech.

Thankfully, about that time the movie started - distracting me from how suddenly un-smitten I now was. Derek Jacobi took over and for the next 137 minutes, I was transported. I had my first introduction to Emma Thompson in this movie - sigh.

Then. Then came the Battle at Agincourt...

I remember sensing that something was coming. Something special. I just didn't know what.

Then. Then he spoke those words and one lone man starts singing the "Non nobis".

Within seconds, I was in tears - each chorus, each increasingly wider camera shot, each step across the battlefield. After walking across the field, carrying one of his fallen breatheren, Henry bends down to kiss him.

Years later, I cannot watch this scene without bawling - I don't see how anyone can me unmoved by this. (And yet the au pair was. Never saw him again after that.)

So, here is that scene. What movie/music combinations move you?

Bar Fights and SDAs

About 12 years ago, one summer Sunday evening, I was hanging out at Lafitte's in the French Quarter. This is not the Lafitte's Blacksmith Shop that many tourists are familiar with - but rather Cafe Lafitte in Exile, the oldest gay bar (they claim) in the US of A.

Sunday afternoons and evenings at Laffite's are all about Trash Disco. Now, this doesn't mean exclusively 70's disco music, but just about anything fabulously dance-able: there is a club remix of Petula Clark singing Downtown, Tammy Wynette fronting for KLF in Justified and Ancient, and the sensational remake/remix of John Paul Young's Love is in the Air, as featured in the marvelous movie Strictly Ballroom. The last one there even has audience participation of which Al Gore would disapprove. (At the big crescendo of the title, paper napkins are thrown into the air. Quite an effect in a crowded bar...)

So, this one Sunday, I was watching the videos and chatting with friends and being adorable not-40 yet...and an intro started. A very recognizable intro...Whitney Houston. I Wanna Dance with Somebody...

Well, there was a cute young man, standing in front of me, who just about wet himself when he realized what song it was. In fact, he was so excited he had an SDA.

SDA, you ask...what's that?

Spontaneous Drag Attack.

Very entertaining, if viewed from the correct distance.

I was right behind him...and he was about to perform. I didn't know that at the time, but I should have recognizd the signs.

So, when the music got to that first punctuated "Woo" that Ms. Houston does in the intro, the young man in front of me threw his arms up and out...making contact with my face.

My right eye, actually.

Thankfully, I have vodka in my system to help numb the pain and we laughed it off. It really didn't hurt all that much at the time...

The next morning, however...

I got up, made coffee, stumbled around the apartment...and nearly screamed when I looked in the bathroom mirror.

A lovely shiner, right where he'd hit me during his SDA.

Now, try explaining that to your co-workers. Somehow, they didn't believe the line, "Well, you should see the other guy..."

So, for all of you who need your own SDA today, here's Whitney.

Just be sure to check out who's around you before you start flailing your arms, OK? (The "Woo" in question here occurs around 38 seconds.)

Hypothetical Parenting

The following is just a random bunch of stuff with the merest of similarities: parenting.

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As a teen, I spent a great deal of my free time babysitting, and many parents (and friends of our family) commented with sometimes annoying regularity what a great dad I would be some day.

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When I first started coming out to my friends in my late teens and early 20's, I was on the short end of comment like, "Oh, what a waste..." and "Gee, won't you miss having kids?" and so on...

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Over the last 10 years or so, during any of my more "substantive" relationships, people have been very forward in asking if we plan to adopt (or opt for any of the less passive modes of obtaining a child - no, not kidnapping...). The subject even came up on my first date with The Beau (it'll be 4 years this May, but who's counting?). We are both firm in our conviction: we love and adore the kids in our lives - nephews, neices, children of friends and neighbors - and enjoy their company...in relatively short doses. We know our limits.

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We have developed a shorthand to signal when one of us (usually the Beau) is reaching a point where they can take little more. It started one day in the presence of a very tired child, acting like a very tired child who was not have the best day with a parent who was similarly not having the best day. It was not pretty, for anyone. The kind of day where we'd all like to request a do-over.

The Beau turned to me and said, "Tell that story again about how you don't want to have children..."

It has since been reduced to just, "Tell me that story..."

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Last Saturday, on the flight to Orlando for a company meeting, I met quite a number of parents and kids - some on their way to the Mouse, and others on the first leg of a trip to Washington, DC for the Inauguration. Quite a combination of similar, yet still disparate types of energy.

Most of the kids were wonderful during the flight - it could have been much worse. I overheard one dad talking to a mom he was sitting across the aisle from, extolling the rewards and virtues of being a parent. "There's nothing better in the whole world." He kept saying this, over and over.

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For him. Nothing better for him. I'd be willing to bet that some of the parents that might happen to read what I've posted so far have been mildly offended or put off at least by my tone and phraseology.

I am OK with that. Please understand that I love kids, I loved teaching and think it's great that the world is making more Gays without me ever having to lift a finger.

But.

There are other things in the world. Other things that are better for Other people in the world. People who don't have any interest or drive or desire to be parents.

Sometimes, we come up on an odd, reverse side of that. Certain groups tell us that we can't be parents because it's wrong/immoral/illegal/inappropriate/fill in the blank. Other people tell us that we just don't know what we are missing, not being parents, and that we'll never really be fulfilled as humans without that knowledge and experience.

Makes me bristle.

What happened to Live and Let Live? I love your kids. I think your commitment to raising your kids is stunning and wonderful and breathtaking and I know it's something I could not and would not do in my lifetime. Why can't that be OK too?

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Last weekend, a waitress who lived and worked in the French Quarter was murdered outside her apartment as she was coming home from work. There were a few witnesses who were able to supply the police with descriptions and assist in creating sketches that were distributed throughout the city.

By noon yesterday, all three of the suspects involved in this robbery-gone-bad were in custody after turning themselves in to the authorities.

Two 15 year olds and one 14 year old. Who prompted them to turn themselves in?

Their mothers.

These mothers saw the sketches, recognized them immediately and urged their kids, their children to surrender to the police, peacefully. And they did.

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Could you do that? Could you go to your child and ask them, plead with them to hand their lives over to the police, knowing that what comes next is the unknowable?

It's only hypothetical for me, who will never have kids of my own - so it's easy for me to say, "Hell, yes."

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What about you, moms and dads? What about you? Could you do that?

Well, I've Never!!

A few years ago (before BF), I had the misfortune of briefly dating a man who, it turned out, was absolutely nuts. Certifiable. I think it was on the third date - after a long and far-ranging discussion of like and dislikes, hobbies and talents, pet peeves and predelictions - that he exclaimed (and I am not joking here), "You're a freaking theatre fag!"

Why, yes...yes, I am.

It wasn't that he'd said it at all, it was how...some great condemnation of things I hold near and dear to my heart. Admittedly, I can recite Sondheim lyrics until I'm blue in the face, I did see A Chorus Line twice in the six months before it closed on Broadway, and I have always been a firm believer that it's a crime to have to use a body mike for a musical - if you can't sell it to the cheap seats, you don't have any right to be on the stage in the first place. (Courtesy of the Ethel Merman School of Belting 'Em Out)

All that aside, I thought about what he'd said for a long time, and weeks later (long after we'd stopped dating), it occurred to me that with so many stereotypes of gay men out there, I could live with being known as a theatre fag - even a freaking theatre fag - and that there were so many things I could have said in my own defense...if only I'd thought of them quickly enough.

So here goes...As I picture the moment now, I hear him say it, and I reply, "Well, I've never!"

I may be a freaking theatre fag, but...

I've never been to a Cher concert (or Madonna, Tina Turner, Bette Midler, Barbra Streisand, Donna Summer, Barry Manilow, Erasure, Pet Shop Boys, Patti LaBelle...)

I've never watched the movie Gladiator, even just for the spectacle of seeing Russell Crowe sweat...a lot...

I've never gone to a nude beach...even just to watch...a lot...

I've never been to Fire Island, San Francisco, or Key West...

I've never been to Gay Day at Disney World...hell, I've never been to Disney World at all!

I've never named a pet after Erica Kane...or any other Soap Opera character...

I've never married/slept with one of my fag hags...

I've never asked one of my fag hags to bear a child for me - nor have I been asked by one of my lesbian friends to donate sperm...

I've never subscribed to Advocate, International Male, Southern Living, Marth Stewart Living, GQ, Mens Fitness...

I've never been a member of any fan club for any celebrity, even when I was a teen..

I've never thought so much of my gayness and natural fabulocity as to offer to actually cut a friend's hair...or an enemy's hair, for that matter...

I've never been on a gay cruise...or a straight one either...

I've never watched Gone With The Wind for start to finish...

I've never had a facial or a manicure or a pedicure...that I didn't give to myself...

I've never blamed my homosexuality on my parents' divorce...or my pastor or my gym teacher or camp counselor...although prolonged early exposure to images of Patrick Duffy in that skimpy little swimsuit as The Man from Atlantis may have helped push me over the edge...just a little...

I've never bought/used Rogaine...yet...(a bit too late for that, eh?)

I've never had any body part waxed...yet...

I've never been disowned by a family member...yet...

I've never had a gym membership...(you were expecting a yet here too?)

I've never seen either of the Queer as Folk series...

I've never owned anything by Gucci, Versace, Armani, Hugo Boss...(If I can't find it at The Gap Mothership, then I probably don't need/can't budget it!)

I've never dressed up as any incarnation of Judy Garland, Liza Minelli, Patsy Kline, Dolly Parton, Bette Midler...

There's so much out there in the media today (pun intended) that makes up the American collected knowledge base of All Things Clearly Gay - that's just not me.

Well, not all of me, anyway.

I am curious. What is it for you, dear readers, that sets off your Gaydar?