Gloria's Gay Equation

Ok....having decided that one has to live out loud and in colour, one also takes responsibility for ones own opinions and musings.Such is so that I have thought to question the 'gay' equation...Gay for me has always been apolitical point of view and not one of sexual preference.The fact remains just having sex with the same sex doesn't actually make you gay queer or anything of the sort.Merely human.
So what is the gay equation.
To my mind it is the constant trying to prop one's self esteem up against what runs paralell to the norm.Times have changed for sure if one takes note of current movie and television trends.The happy homosexual has moved from campy hairdresser and gossip columnists to men without apparent neon signs making out on television. But does that change how..the gay scene' works.
To often I have heard that anybody trying to market the pink dollar is in for a hard time.Mainly due to the fickle nature of a community and it's makeup.Or is it because we have to put ourselves in the shop window,or in as many shop windows before we can settle to a relationship in the 'burbs'...and compare real estate investments as if they were children.
Also,the most common complaint is how the bar industry ,is so bad served by barstaff who are more intent on ticking the 'jewish' typewriter than giving service to customers.
Where being loud and in colour has become a paralell to other countries...where the colourful world of drag seems to be something to draw attention in major cities but rarely sees itself in the local small town environment.So much for the example of 'Priscilla'
But really it doesn't matter how we treat ourselves.....or how we try to educate the masses. If we were to have a healthier attitude to sexual experience,and stopped masking our needs and wants behind the world of the 'cottage' ..the internet..and other conduits...we might have a chance to normalise...
After all looking at a man's crutch isn't always best way to introduce oneself.
So....I ask...and my quest has always been...what is it..and why amI questioning the fact that,despite outward appearances....we fail to grapple with our base instincts..
Pride is for parades.
What makes a gay eaquation...I am still searching for the clue

oh and did we forget you...Here's to the Gorgon

and talking of gay old things.Did I miss you out Truman.
No I wasn't looking over your outstanding talent...it is just you always managed to tell that to the world yourself....but everybody whether they like it or night imagines what it is to have Breakfast at Tifanys....but did they get it right....
Holly Golightly...hmmmm did they not figure that that was.............A drag queen...
SO..what next..In Cold Blood.....Genius...and then if the muses are heard you attack those who were most dear......Now I do have a similar theory..about how a gay man reacts to criticism.....and you certainly had the one liners.....but lest we forget..he was the most beaitiful boy of his age
Truman Capote

Gore Vidal

The Last of the Mochicans

Now if I do things in three.I save the best for last.
I would have to vote for this author as an all time American.
He's everything I would believe that America stood for,stands for...from freedom of speach to wry commentary of the lives of american politics this is the well from which I believe modernist American thinking can be garnered.
Gore Vidal.
From the City and the pillar...to the outrageous Myra Breckinridge
and thats on that little finger...here is an author who has made it his
personal ambition to log and file the human condition and in fact has raised awareness
of....the mores of the western world...So tell me I am wrong...but may his scathlingly funny appocolyptic novel 'kalki' never come to pass....
Politics
Sexual Behaviour
and the ambition of civilisation....
Now how do they make sound bites like that without getting it wrong

Okay....it was....Glass

Okay for sheer poetry actresses worth their pin money have clamoured to be part of Tennesse Williams heroine list....Subsequently I dived deep into directing his epic Streetcar named Desire when I had more sensibility for the Glass Menagerie.....but that and a theatrical lifetime aside.What did he give us.
Fragility.The ability to put plainsong into poetry.
But like many varied as his heroine might have been it was hisshort story in which grande guigol style a submissive is eaten by contract by a muscle builder...ok it reeks of Suddenly Last Summer.Here was a man with an eye to depravity as well as studied beauty.....A character as tragic as his verse.
As he would have it..Life is a slapstick tragedy between bourbons

What ever happened to reading a book The Gay Equation

Just recently I pondered what had the last century given us in the way of literature.Wryly thinking that in this technology driven generation lying with a good book might be something seen as a past recreation,I thought to look at the gay authors....but having shaped literature and thinking of the last century.I wondered if the Gay Equation has created it's own icons....to which I see that time passes...and their writing let alone their thinking might take some thought.
Case in point. Edmund White. Forgetting Elena.Beautiful formed work.All Shite.Total twaddle.....of a variety not seen before or since....
....and to have thought that his musings might amount to something this gentleman of American letters, still takes up space in library shelves. Total wanker.
Or was it when I dived into the pool of your brilliance I was shattered by the reflecting mirrors.
And yes there has to be a certain vanity to be a writer....but a responsibility to be literate. This technology generation will have it summed up.Nice life.Did we care.
I have laboured with this author's work....and have often wondered if they be the sum of all parts

Lost in Translation

In this day and age it seems difficult for the generations of the now to contemplate, the mores of any previous generation. Often lessons are passed down, but some of the amusement in the confusion, is often missed in the translation.

Such is the innocence of age and the naivety of my own mother when faced with daily life.

Les was the town fruiterer. Of course his name wasn’t Les. His father was born in mainland China, before the century could spawn communists.Les had been so named because as he saw it and it soon became apparent. He sold for less. That being his work motto and ethic seemed enough for him to embrace it. His children attended the local primary school, in store bought fashions and assimilation was assumed.
His coy wife was seen with other matrons of the town being outfitted by the town couturier.
The town couturier, requires his very own notes, but suffices to say the symbol of one
Tailored item was a matron’s calling card. To which one expect spring invitations, and late summer inclusions at local events and weddings.
Les and other main street businessmen were known to extol the joys of Chinese whisky. Such forbidden delight. Toasting good luck and a finish to a business week, amongst island banana boxes and headed lettuce seemed common practice. This town had the virtues of prohibition, and a wry eye at its policing. Often an older relative lay prostrate in an anteroom with an elongated pipe and a wooden block for comfort, but this as some many things was a hangover from a time gone passed.
Because of his entrepreneurial skills, the kiwi know how of his late night business companions considered, Les began home deliveries in a modest van. Loaded it up it resembled something more akin to a banana republic.
It also a point of sale for other and sometime personal items. These items, of course in a modern world, can be grabbed from a supermarket shelf. In the day, one practiced several versions of coitus interuptus, embarrassed oneself at the chemist or had the barber slip it to you in the sports pages after a weekly haircut. Any business selling the top shelf became of local legend, as was the fruiterer of the day.
Interestingly enough, he, a generation’s assimilation, had yet to drop the almost comic patois of a second language. Despite best efforts and good intentions this often led
To occasional moments of sheer farce.

My mother ,heavily pregnant and standing at the curbside had a mid winter craving. Lettuce Salad. To expect a lettuce in weather best accompanied by soup, was an unusual enough request. But my mother had been rest assured by many of her neighbours over the clothes line that Les could be relied on for fresh lettuce what ever the season

Braving a chill, that was reported to be straight off the mountain and the remnants of an early morning fog; she waited for the familiar sight round the corner.

Ten.am.Right on time, she thought.
The Van swung into the side of the country road, its occupant all smiles.
Always ready to install his customers with joy and often with tales of his last stop
Les was strangely silent as my mother made her request for one of his special items
His special fresh lettuce.
The eyes twinkled in the fruiterers mind as his smile broadened.

Ah Mrs. Shirl.You asks for my special fresh lettuce. Usually it is the men who are asking for my fresh lettuce before; the horse is out of the stable.

Looking to my mother’s extended stomach his humorous intention was made clear.
Gales of laughter and cheeks of embarrassed delight sprang between the housewife and her green grocer.

A lesson missed in translation.

That a condom is French
And while a Trojan is a metaphor for a horse.
The French letter is now a supermarket object and not at the discretion
of lessons messed in translation.