Gay Literature – Brian Ferrari's Blog

Kurt Bieber: From Little Me to Colt Model

You may already know this, but anyone with an affinity for self-indulgent grande dame memoirs and/or the camp humor of Auntie Mame needs to seek out the 1961 book Little Me, The Intimate Memoirs of That Great Star of Stage, Screen & Television Belle Poitrine, as told to Patrick Dennis. The book spawned a Broadway musical starring Sid Caesar in 1962, which was revived with Martin Short in 1998. However, the book is an animal of its own. The 2002 reprint with a new foreword by Charles Busch may be out of print, but affordable copies are easily found online.

Of course the whole thing is a parody – classic camp fiction created by the Auntie Mame author and illustrated with over 150 photographs by Cris Alexander, an actor who appeared in Auntie Mame while transitioning into his second career as a photographer.

Actress Jeri Archer embodied Belle Poitrine in the photographs with a cast of characters playing her co-horts. Among the familiar faces in the company are character actresses Dodie Goodman and Alice Pearce, author Patrick Dennis (as Cedric Roulstone-Farjeon) and his wife Louise (as Pixie Portnoy). Cris Alexander also appears in various roles alongside his lifelong partner, ballet dancer Shaun O’Brien (as Mr. Musgrove). Miss Rosalind Russell makes an appearance as well.

The role of Letch Feeley, Belle’s hunky paramour and costar, was played by Kurt Bieber. After the publication of Little Me, Cris Alexander wrote, “Shaun and Kurt generated an unprecedented amount of fan mail, all sent to the publisher’s office.”

Letch Feeley & Belle Poitrine, aka Kurt Bieber & Jeri Archer in Little Me

Kermit Henry Bieber was born on January 5, 1929 in Allentown, Pennsylvania. A 1946 graduate of Emmaus High School, Bieber worked at the local Sears before serving in the Army during the Korean War.

After his discharge, he headed to New York, where he studied drama, dance and voice at The American Theatre Wing. Roles in summer stock soon followed, with ensemble work in Can-Can, Happy Hunting, Oklahoma! and Wonderful Town.

The Morning Call, *Allentown, PA (6/21/1960)*

It was his work in a regional production of On the Town that took his career to the next level. Cris Alexander later wrote, “Ross Hunter may have discovered Rock Hudson, but I discovered Kurt Bieber during a summer package of On The Town (Pittsburgh ’58).” By October of that year, Bieber was back in New York playing a sailor alongside William Shatner in the original Broadway production of The World of Suzie Wong.

More regional work followed, including a stint in the play Teahouse of The August Moon with Red Buttons. It was around this time that Cris Alexander began to shoot the photos for Little Me, casting Bieber in the role for which he is best remembered.

In Uncle Mame: The Life of Patrick Dennis, author Eric Myers writes “Most memorable to a certain contingent of the book’s audience was actor Kurt Bieber, who… displayed plenty of muscular flesh in nearly all of his photos.”

Following the success of Little Me, Bieber continued acting as well as modeling. He found work as a “posing strap” model for Male Today and other physique magazines. He was an early subject for Jim French, a photographer who was starting up a photo studio under the name Rip Colt. An early Colt film loop lists Bieber as one of the performers – a softcore scene with three muscular models lathering each other up in a shower – but none of the models appear to be him.

In 1969, Bieber had a bit part as a Times Square street hustler in Midnight Cowboy:

At the dawn of the 1970’s, 40-year-old Bieber – no longer a young chorus boy – opted for a new look. He transformed himself into the quintessential gay clone: an urban cowboy/mustache and Levi’s/hanky-code persona that would characterize the gay scene for the next decade. His photos for Colt studios now typify that era of gay erotica.

He was quoted as saying “I love being photographed in the nude. I’ve always been an exhibitionist. To be an actor, you have to be. Besides, I got to choose the models. I chose hot men that I could get off on. That’s why they gave me Dakota.”

While major film roles never materialized, Bieber appeared in several commercials and continued to garner background work in films like Last Summer and Chapter Two. He can be seen offering poppers to a cohort at The Eagle in the controversial Al Pacino film Cruising (1980):

His appearance in Cruising landed Bieber on the cover of the February 1980 issue of Mandate Magazine. In his interview, Bieber mentions that he played Letch Feeley among other acting roles. He differentiates himself from the other Cruising extras, some of whom were cast off the street. “I want to stress that I did it as a professional… It’s just a job.”

As for those rumored to be having sex on camera in the leather bar scenes; “On the set, some people were having sex for real, but (director William) Friedkin didn’t ask anybody to. No way I would suck cock in front of a camera,” he says. He doesn’t mention his work with Colt Studios, although some photos with Dakota were reprinted in Mandate a few months later.

The epilogue of Uncle Mame: The Life of Patrick Dennis (2000) notes that Bieber “has been an extra in almost every movie ever filmed in New York City. Kurt says he is ‘still around and still cruising Christopher Street.'”

Decades later, Little Me fans would still recognize him. “Even today, I’ll sometimes walk into a store and someone will say ‘Wow! Letch Feeley!’ How they recognize me after all these years, with my white hair, I’ll never know.”

Kurt Bieber passed away at age 86 on December 31, 2015 in New York City.

Truman Capote in Mandate (1986)

Truman Capote is the subject of this article from the February, 1986 Mandate magazine. The piece was written by Boze Hadleigh just over a year after Capote's death.

Continuing with our theme from the last post, Truman Capote is the subject of this article from the February, 1986 Mandate issue of magazine. The piece was written by Boze Hadleigh just over a year after Capote’s death.

The infamous book jacket photo of Truman Capote from Other Voices, Other Rooms. One critic commented, “He looks as if he were dreamily contemplating some outrage against conventional morality.” (1948)

Donald Windham on Truman Capote: Christopher Street (1988)

Donald Windham and his partner Sandy Campbell were two of the subjects of my recent collaboration with the Fire Island Pines Historical Preservation Society. The Fire Island Muses of George Platt Lynes and The PaJaMa Collective focused on the subjects of their photography and artwork, specifically during summers spent on Fire Island.

Donald Windham (with Paul Cadmus) & Sandy Campbell in PaJaMa photos of the early 1940’s.

I recently rediscovered this piece written by Windham for a 1988 issue of Christopher Street. I bought the magazine at a West Village newsstand back in the day, and it has remained in my possession all these years, proving yet again why I never throw anything away. Because you never know…

Back in 1987, Donald Windham had published Lost Friendships: A Memoir of Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Others. This article was written the following year in response to the publication of Gerald Clarke’s 600+ page biography Capote, which Windham describes as “misguided.” Clarke’s book would later be adapted into the 2005 film, with Phillip Seymour Hoffman winning an Oscar for his portrayal of troubled Truman.

Note that the photos accompanying the article are credited to Sandy Campbell.

*This photo appears in several places on the internet misidentifying Capote as Sandy Campbell with Donald Windham, Piazza San Marco (1948)*

*Capote with Sandy Campbell at the Kansas border, October 1964*

Zombie Divas

Marlene Dietrich is slumped in a wing back chair chain smoking in the corner of our living room. She is clad in her trademark top hat and tuxedo, although the ensemble is far from crisp and clean. I am on the leather settee across the room, drinking my second cup of coffee while reading the Sunday New York Times. I embraced technology and began to read the newspaper on my iPad last year, but recently I had to switch back to the hard copy. Marlene is strangely drawn to the light of the iPad. As soon as I open it, she starts hovering around, trying to paw at it. She got her hands on it once when my partner Tim carelessly left it open on the credenza. This resulted in considerable damage, which of course I had to pay for. Now I keep it locked in my briefcase and only use it for work purposes.

Sometimes Tim and I talk to Marlene, but she rarely responds. When she does, it is with incoherent mumbles shrouded in a thick German accent. Most of the time she just sits there, staring off into space with a look that might be described as profound sorrow or excruciating boredom. It’s open to interpretation. What is certain is that she is constantly smoking cigarettes. She smokes like a … well, like a fiend. There’s no other way to put it.

The constant smoke is pretty offensive, even if it does simulate that hazy effect in which she was photographed for her films. When Tim and I realized that the acrid smoke was masking a more ghastly smell of decay, we stopped complaining about it. Tim always liked to burn incense and scented candles anyway; now he has gone full-throttle with air fresheners, perfume oils and room deodorizers. There is an apothecary on Lafayette Street that sells $150 cheesecloth bags of a special potpourri blend created specifically to eradicate the stench of the divas. Tim visits there pretty much every week, although I can’t help but think that Emiliano, the part-time model behind the register might also have something to do with the frequency as well.

I tried to explain to Tim that we can’t afford this extravagance – the nightly news suggests that a simple $1.49 box of baking soda would do the trick. But as with all matters financial, he doesn’t like to talk about it. He seems to think that as long as our credit cards are not declined, then we have the money to pay for anything.

I go to the kitchen to refill my coffee cup. Tim is standing at the stove, scrambling eggs. His shoulders are tensed halfway to his ears, his mouth a taught crimson bowtie as he shuffles the eggs around the pan, shaking his head slightly.

“She drank the rest of the gin.” he says curtly.

“How do you know it was her?” I ask. I turn to the sink and begin to nonchalantly rinse out the crystal goblet which I had used for the previous evening’s nightcap.

“Just look at her.” He nods towards the corner by the garbage can, where Edith Piaf is rocking back and forth on her feet, twisting a tortured handkerchief in her fists. The empty bottle of gin is lying in the recycle bin next to her, right where I left it the night before. She will burst into song shortly, most likely “Non, Je Ne Regrette Rein.” It was quite jarring at first, but now we see the signs: first the rocking starts, followed by the handkerchief twisting, then the low, guttural moans begin and eventually form the familiar tune that used to flood through our home on many a Sunday afternoon. I have grown accustomed to it. Tim, however, has not. “Fucking lush,” he mutters.

From the living room, I can hear the sounds of Marlene on the move: Every day, like clockwork, she heads out on a quest for cigarettes – dragging her filthy shoes across the antique Persian rug. Tim and I used to be fanatic about trying to maintain all of the fine furnishings we had purchased when we moved into this apartment together. Here, we had created our dream dwelling: a chic little paradise with an art deco design scheme. We were setting the stage for an endless series of sophisticated cocktail and dinner parties that never materialized: these are different times. Besides, we were working too hard to even think about entertaining. And then the divas showed up. Now there are stains and cigarette burns and everything is hopelessly caked with mud and ashes and god knows what else. Our broken Dyson vacuum lies in a heap underneath the baby grand piano.

“Why doesn’t THAT reanimate?” Tim cracked. I thought it was funny but I didn’t laugh. I wasn’t in the mood.

I return to my newspaper with a fresh cup of coffee. “See you later Marlene,” I say with faux exuberance. She flicks her hand over her shoulder as a sign of vague acknowledgement. At the front door, she softly begins warbling “Fawwing in wuv again… nevuh wanted tooooo….”

Theories abound as to the cause of this phenomena – 24 hour news channels devote considerable programming to speculative hypothesis involving a century of electronic sound, radio, and television waves intersecting with static electricity and wifi hot spots or possibly some other random factors that resulted in these reanimated corpses taking on the forms of our dear departed divas.

The idea that the subject has to be deceased is cause for even more speculation. There are no reports of Madonna, Britney or Cher zombies. It’s those that have been mourned and continue to be revered. Conspiracy theorists are having a field day.

I should also explain that these are not your garden variety “shoot ‘em in the head to kill ‘em” movie type of zombies. Go ahead and destroy your Lena Horne – by dawn the next day, another one will be back in a glittering pantsuit, angrily shout-singing “Stormy Weather” around the apartment.

There’s no point in maiming them, either – our friends Thomas and Ed had a Dusty Springfield that kept gesticulating wildly, smashing knickknacks and bric-a-brac with every dramatic swoop. They accidentally tore off her arms while trying to restrain her before she destroyed every last piece of their precious mercury glass collection. The next morning they awoke to a ghostly rendition of “You Don’t Have To Say You Love Me” as a fully intact Dusty zombie hurled, one by one, the remaining contents of their china cabinet down the hall towards their bedroom.

Our Judy is perched on top of the dresser in the corner of the master bedroom – she wears a fedora, black tights and a dress jacket…. eternally snapping her fingers to the intro of “Come On Get Happy.” She rarely ever sings, but ya gotta give credit to that corpse: she’s got rhythm. Even as the flesh wears away on her fingers and falls onto the floor, she keeps steady time.

It’s not really them – we have to remind ourselves that. And some of these zombies are cast wildly against type for the roles they are now inhabiting. I saw a TikTok of a little old Asian Mama Cass that really had the moves down. But it’s not the same.

Our divas disappeared – often prematurely, tragically, suddenly. What we were left to comfort ourselves with were their images, movies and recordings – these are the trappings that most likely brought them forth in their most stereotypical and obvious incarnations. Now that they have been among us, even in these imperfect decaying forms, we can’t go back to having them at arm’s length. Not anymore.

Provincetown PaJaMa Party

During vacations from the 1930’s through the mid-1950’s, artists Paul Cadmus, Jared French and his wife Margaret Hoening French photographed each other on the beaches of New York’s Fire Island as well as Nantucket and Cape Cod, Massachusettes.

Last summer we focused on their early years on Fire Island. The photos in this post are primarily from Nantucket, Provincetown and other locations on Cape Cod during the summer months of 1946-1948.

Usually nude or donning simple costumes, the artists also used found objects as props to create stark, surreal and/or erotic images. They passed Margaret’s Leica camera around, taking turns as subject and auteur. This collaborative authorship was reflected in the umbrella name they chose for this work, utilizing the first two letters of their first names: PaJaMa.

Years later Cadmus explained, “After we’d been working most of the day, we’d go out late afternoons and take photographs when the light was best. They were just playthings. We would hand out these little photographs when we went to dinner parties, like playing cards.”

The dynamic amongst the trio was complicated: Jared French and Paul Cadmus were lovers – a relationship that continued during his marriage to Margaret. All three lived and worked in a townhouse at 5 St. Lukes Place in Greenwich Village.

The PaJaMa collective expanded in 1945 with the inclusion of Cadmus’ boyfriend, George Tooker, an artist 16 years his junior. Cadmus would later explain “I had Jerry (Jared) in the daytime and George at night.” Although his name was not added to the PaJaMa moniker, Tooker was an active participant in the collective from 1944-49.

George Tooker with Paul Cadmus in Nantucket and Provincetown PaJaMa photos, (1946-48)

A 2015 New York Times review of a PaJaMa exhibition noted that their photos “breathed eroticism.” While some of the hundreds of photos are masterpieces of magical realism, others appear to be figure studies for their painting.

*Tooker, Cadmus & French, Wauwinet, Nantucket (1946)*

As when they vacationed on Fire Island, the collective were joined on Cape Cod by various friends and lovers, fellow artists and writers that were part of their New York social circle.

Dancer/choreographer Todd Bolender was the subject of a series of PaJaMa photos taken in Provincetown (1947)

Museum curator/publisher Monroe Wheeler is seen in 1947 Provincetown photos with French, Tooker & Cadmus. His lifelong partner Glenway Wescott was more prominent in the Fire Island PaJaMa photos of the early 1940’s.

Writer Christopher Isherwood with his then-boyfriend, photographer Bill Caskey, Provincetown (1947)

*Photographer George Platt Lynes (left, wi/ Monroe Wheeler) joined them on Fire Island and later in Provincetown with his own camera.*

*PaJaMa photos are part of this tribute to playwright Tennessee Williams, displayed at Provincetown’s Atlantic House, one of the oldest gay bars in the U.S.*

*Provincetown, 1947 (l-r): George Platt Lynes, Monroe Wheeler, Paul Cadmus and George Tooker*

On Cape Cod, the collective occasionally experimented with color film, which gave their work a different texture.

The quartet toured Europe in 1949 and by the end of the trip, Tooker had split from Cadmus. He later said “I was looking for a relationship and my relationship with Paul always included Jared and Margaret French.” Tooker would soon find a partner in painter Bill Christopher, with whom he remained until Christopher’s death in 1973.

Back to a trio, the PaJaMa collective would return to Fire Island for their summer getaways in 1950.

*Paul Cadmus & Margaret French, Jenny Lind Tower, North Truro* (1947)

As with George Platt Lynes’ male nude photographs, the PaJaMa photographs did not receive much notice or recognition until the 1990’s. They are now frequently exhibited in galleries and selections are a part of the MOMA collection.

Introducing Bindle #1! Summer 2023

Back in January of 2022, I posted about “Circle,” a poem that I contributed to Jonathan Russell’s quarterly Monkeyshines zine. My partner Toby Hobbes was also a frequent contributor of mixed media to the publication. Since that time, Toby and I got hitched and he has officially changed his name to Tobias Fox Ferrari.

Meanwhile, Monkeyshines has also undergone a name change and is now Bindle Zine. Tobias and I are both happy to be included in the brand-spankin’-new Summer issue, which you can find here. Toby’s artwork “Holding My Tongue” is the centerfold, while my contribution is the essay “100 Centre Street, Part 79.”

100 Centre Street, Part 79

The industrial clock groans through the afternoon in its 46th year on the wall of Part 79.

The Judge plods through a mandatory speech entitled “Jury Selection As Public Service.” His arms make sparing gestures beneath billowing robes. The sound of his own voice still arouses him.

The microphone buzzes through each pregnant pause.

The court stenographer faces the gallery, swiveling slightly in her chair, crossed legs protruding from a skirt cut above the knee. Off to the side, her fingers type furiously as her expressionless gaze floats off high in the air.

Bailiff #1 casually checks his watch and shifts his weight on aching feet. A trickle of sweat snakes down the center of his back, beneath a damp bulletproof vest.

Bailiff #2 flexes a hand to examine chipped blue nail polish. The sleeve of her uniform creeps back to reveal a wrist tattooed with vines and flowers.

Fingers of dust wave frantically from the cooling vent behind the jury box.

Juror #1 stares at the judge with an expression of rapt attention as he contemplates evening plans with his girlfriend.

Juror #5 fights off sleep after a heavy lunch and two draughts. His belt pinches against his protruding flesh.

Juror #6 makes sideways glances at Juror #5, whose aroma she finds most offensive.

Juror #9 slowly, carefully slides his phone out of his pocket in an attempt to check his email.

Juror #11 is awaiting test results and trying not to think about it.

Their bags and briefcases are gathered around their feet, containing both crucial and inconsequential pieces of their real lives, all impatiently waiting to be addressed.

The prosecuting attorney sits in front of a stack of documents and folders, one of which contains graphic crime scene photos that will visibly upset Jurors #2, 6 & 11.

Ziplocked bags labeled “Forensic Evidence” wait inside a cardboard box marked “Case #26294.”

The defense attorney holds up a folder to obstruct the view as he leans in to quietly talk to his client.

The defendant rocks slowly in his chair, the angry voices now muddled by medication.

His brother sits behind him in the gallery. His jaw aches through clenched teeth.

A woman in the gallery clutches a wrinkled picture of her deceased daughter. There is a tissue balled up tightly in her fist. Her husband, in a freshly pressed suit, keeps his arm around her shoulder.

I wrote “100 Centre Street, Part 79” back in 2013 when I was just finishing up a class at The Writer’s Studio. I was summoned for jury duty and ultimately chosen to participate in a six week murder trial that ended in a hung jury. I hadn’t thought about this piece until this Spring, when I received another jury summons – let me tell ya, that 10 years went by fast. This time around I was dismissed on day one, which gave me conflicting feelings about not being picked and wondering why I wasn’t. Was I giving Liz Lemon vibes without even trying?

Congratulations to Jonathan Russell on the revamped zine. You can read it online or get a hard copy by emailing your mailing address to subscribe@bindlezine.com. It’s free!

bin•dle (noun): a bundle of clothes or bedding, stereotypically carried on a stick by runaway children and transients

“We all wander through our lives, and we collect memories, possessions, and relationships. Bundle them all together, and you have yourself a bindle. Our zine represents a collection of writing and art and photography – a bindle of creativity that we send across America, a tramp in search of a mailbox.”

Fire Island PaJaMa Party

During vacations from the 1930’s through the mid-1950’s, artists Paul Cadmus, Jared French, and his wife Margaret Hoening French photographed each other on the beaches of Fire Island and later Cape Cod. Usually nude or donning simple costumes, they would also use found objects as props to create stark, surreal and/or erotic images. They passed Margaret’s Leica camera around, taking turns as subject and auteur. This collaborative authorship was reflected in the umbrella name they chose for this work, utilizing the first two letters of their first names: PaJaMa.

The dynamic was complicated: Paul and Jared were lovers – a relationship that continued during Jared and Margaret’s marriage. All three lived and worked in a townhouse at 5 St. Lukes Place in Greenwich Village.

*Paul Cadmus & Jared French, Fire Island, PaJaMa (1941)*

A 2015 New York Times review of a PaJaMa exhibition noted that their photos “breathed eroticism.” While some of the hundreds of photos are masterpieces of magical realism, others appear to be figure studies for their painting. And then there are simple snapshots of nude men frolicking on the beach, enjoying the sun and surf.

Right: Jared French on Fire Island (1940) Left: Paul Cadmus’ etching “Youth With Kite”, 1941

Jared French and his considerable wares are the most frequent subject of the photographs, with entire rolls of film devoted to his nude poses and posturing. Cadmus and Margaret are slightly more demure although we do not know who was giving direction from behind the camera at any given time.

These three artists were joined by various friends and lovers through the years, fellow artists and writers that were part of their New York social circle.

Dancer/Model José “Pete” Martinez appears in PaJaMa photos of the late 1930’s with Paul Cadmus

1938 PaJaMa photos of writer Glenway Wescott sometimes appear online mislabled as Paul Cadmus or Ted Starkowski.

Writer Donald Windham (with Cadmus & French), 1938

Photographer George Platt Lynes was a frequent guest with his own camera.

Artist Bernard Perlin captured by the PaJaMa lens on Fire Island (1939)

*Jared French in Saltaire after the devastating hurricane of 1938.*

West of Saltaire, the Fire Island Lighthouse served as a frequent backdrop.

Jensen Yow, Bill Harris & Jack Fontan, ca. 1950

Alexander Jensen Yow recently recalled the circle of artists, as well as his participation in PaJaMa photos of the early 1950’s. “Paul posed us and took the pictures. I was never out there with Jerry (Jared). There were plenty of personality conflicts all scattered around with these people, but I never knew what they were or anything… Jerry was always nice to me though. But his and Margaret’s was a strange relationship… She was crazy about Jerry but she was always in the background, you know. Always there. Jerry did what he wanted to do, and she tagged after him. I was so green when I met these people that I didn’t know how to act…. I tried to be discreet but it wasn’t easy.” (NOTE: Jensen Yow died at age 95 in September of 2022)

*Margaret French, “The Moon by Day”, 1939*

As with George Platt Lynes’ male nude photographs, the PaJaMa collection did not receive much notice or recognition until the 1990’s. They are now frequently exhibited in galleries and selections are a part of the MOMA collection.

We Got Hitched

The warmth of your love
is like the warmth of the sun…
This will be our year
took a long time to come…

“How come you don’t write about me? Or maybe you do.”

His eyes narrowed suspiciously. Or, I assumed they did. He texted this to me, so it was virtual skepticism that I sensed.

My partner of 9 years is artist/musician Toby Hobbes. He is also my editor/proofreader and the person who set up this blog 5 years ago and told me to get to work. While he does get an occasional mention from time to time (see Circle In Monkeyshines or Scenes From A Pandemic), any essays specifically about him or our relationship remain unfinished.

This was one piece I started:

It was our second date. We were heading out to dinner after a few pre-game cocktails at Nowhere Bar in the East Village. I pulled him over by the side of a building to get out of the First Avenue foot traffic. I had something that I needed to tell him and didn’t want to keep it a secret any longer. My gut was telling me that we were heading into a relationship, so there had to be honesty. And he was new to this – at 37, this was his first same-sex dating experience.

I took a deep breath and said; “Listen there is something that I need to tell you before this goes any further…” I was still holding onto his hand. He looked concerned.

I continued on, talking fast just to get it over with. “I know I told you I was 39 years old. Well I’m not. I am 44. I know. It’s stupid. It’s just a number. But 44 sounds so much worse and I didn’t want you to feel like it was too big an age difference. So now you know. And I hope it’s not a big deal.”

The concern faded into puzzlement. “Why would I think that was a big deal?”

I went off on a diatribe about gay men being ageist and that I had shaved off exactly 5 years when I ended up single again at 40, which seemed to be a big cutoff number for most men on Match and Grindr and Scruff and Growlr and Fluff and Squirt and…

Toby let go of my hand and took a step back. “I have to tell you something too,” he said. “I have a kid at home. Well, he’s my nephew. I’ve had custody since he was 10 and he’s 17 now. I didn’t say anything because I was afraid that you wouldn’t want to deal with all that.”

In that moment, my opinion of him – of his character, his heart – went right through the roof. He was a responsible adult.

Besides his nephew, there were also two dogs, a cat, and the long shadow of the ex-girlfriend that had left his finances in a shambles. On our first anniversary, we agreed to move in together. This was partly out of necessity and also because we felt like we were ready. For me, this meant leaving Manhattan after 22 years, as there was no way we could afford adequate space for our crew. We settled in Forest Hills, Queens, which I highly recommend.

At the time, people would congratulate me for being “selfless” or ask how I could take on so much responsibility. For me, there was no choice – no question about it. I realized that I loved Toby very quickly. And he loved me with a totality that was unlike any of my previous relationships. I felt like the last 4 years of frustrating dating experiences were just The Universe’s way of keeping me in a holding pattern until he showed up at my apartment with a six pack of Sam Adams.

________________________________________________________________

Fast forward to July 30th 2018: I proposed to him on The High Line above West 23rd Street with my family hiding in the bushes taking pictures nearby. We made no immediate plans for the wedding but assumed that we would be married the following year.

Then Toby got accepted into a program at the International Culinary Center (formerly the French Culinary Institute) and we decided to wait until he graduated. Then I was suddenly unemployed. So we waited again. And then there was the pandemic.

In the spring of 2021 we started to look at wedding venues. I was determined to get hitched before we celebrated our 10th anniversary as a couple. Besides, after this pandemic, we all needed a party. To celebrate LIFE. Also, neither of my sisters ever got married, and my mom was itching to finally have a wedding for one of her kids. We secured a venue and set a date: Sea Cliff Manor, May 19th, 2022.

About that pesky pandemic… I thought; “Ohhh – surely that will all be behind us by then! Just a masked blur in our rear-view mirrors.” Silly, silly fool. I failed to remember that objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.

In the months prior to the wedding, it became clear that COVID was not going to be gone, so we decided to specify on the invitations that attendees needed to be vaccinated. Imagine our surprise when this turned out to be a deal breaker for some, as a few formerly enthusiastic friends and family members suddenly ghosted us.

We went into planning this wedding with the awareness that, at some point along the way, we might encounter people who were a little more churchy than we realized and they might object to our Big Gay Wedding. Thankfully that did not occur. As it turned out, our big ethical divide was not religion. It was science.

Ultimately this was for the best. Better to know who people really are when their masks come off.

The three weeks before the wedding are bound to be stressful, as anyone can tell you. We were finalizing the guest list, DJ setlist, photographer, tuxedos, favors, seating charts, menus, programs, obtaining the marriage license and wedding rings. And the vows! We had to write the vows.

But then other stuff started happening.

On Saturday April 30th, Toby cut his finger on a meat slicer at work, requiring 12 stitches on his left pinky. Three days later, I got sick with COVID. The next day, while taking the final reception payment to Sea Cliff Manor, my mom & stepdad were in a car accident. Thankfully, nobody was injured. Two days after that, on his birthday, Toby got COVID as well. We were both vaxxed and boosted, so it was more of an inconvenience than anything else, although we were starting to feel like some homophobic anti-vaxxer was practicing voodoo shit.

We soldiered on. This wedding was going to happen whether we were ready or not.

The big day arrived and everything went off without a hitch. It was a family affair with Toby’s nephew as his best man and my sister as my best woman. My mom & stepdad walked me down the aisle.

We asked my friend Merri to sing The Zombies’ This Will Be Our Year. When I chose the song last year, I thought it was a pretty obscure choice. Turns out to be a wedding standard as well as the jingle for Target’s “Back To School” ad campaign. Ah, well. The chorus of “This will be our year / It took a long time to come” certainly struck a chord with us.

While the planning was crucial and paid off in the best way, it was actually a spontaneous moment that I keep revisiting from that day. Luckily we opted to live stream the ceremony, so there is footage to look back on. When Toby and I joined hands to say our vows, he started to bounce up and down with excitement. It was the defining moment of the day. I turned it into a gif captioned “Life Goals: Marry someone who is this excited to marry you.”

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And now it’s done. After nine years, we are hitched. Married. We tied the knot and jumped the broom. It took a long time to come.

Len & Cub – A Relationship In Photos

A new book gives insight into a same-sex relationship in rural Canada a century ago.

*Tinted photo of Leonard “Len” Keith (1891-1950) & Joseph “Cub” Coates (1899-1965) on a trip to Jemseg, New Brunswick (1916)*

If it weren’t for the advent of the self-timing camera, we would not know anything about the relationship between Len & Cub. There are no surviving notes, letters or documents to provide any further evidence. Luckily, Len had an interest in photography and documented their intimacy in a trove of images spanning nearly 15 years. These photos serve to illustrate their story in the recently published book Len & Cub: A Queer History (Goose Lane Press) by Meredith J. Batt and Dusty Green.

Len & Cub features Len’s photos of the duo between 1916 and 1930 and tells the story of a relationship in early 20th Century rural North America. These photos provide the oldest known photographic records of a same-sex couple in New Brunswick, Canada.

The term “queer” seems a bit ill-fitting to describe the actions of individuals a century ago, when even the terms “homosexual” or “gay” were not part of the vernacular. The choice of language is explained by the authors, who dedicate the book to the queer youth of New Brunswick. As Green states in his preface, “… the record of their lives is a testament to the resilience of queer people and an affirmation that we belong in any place we choose to call home.”

Leonard “Len” Keith was born in 1891 in Butternut Ridge (now Havelock), New Brunswick. His family enjoyed a moderate amount of wealth as the owners of a match factory and later a grist mill. Joseph “Cub” Coates was born 8 years later, the son of a farmer who was a neighbor to the Keith family. Together Len and Cub shared a love of the outdoors and documented their outings in photos. The pictures taken during hunting and canoe trips with their arms around each other or lying in bed together make clear the affection they held for each other.

When Len was called to service during World War I, Cub signed up as well, and the two trained together in Quebec.

*Cub and Len in training at Saint-Jen-sur-Richelieu, Quebec (1918)*

Photos of the duo are less frequent in the late 1920’s. Len’s camera captures several other unnamed male companions that accompanied him on trips and other outdoor adventures.

Len was also a car enthusiast and eventually opened a garage, which he later converted into a pool hall. Cub continued to make a living farming and then as a butcher.

In 1931, Len was forced to leave Havelock, allegedly due to his homosexual activities. He signed over control of his business and finances to his sister Lucy and headed to the United States. He later settled in Montreal, where he resided until succumbing to cancer in 1950. His sister arranged for his burial in Havelock.

It appears that Cub was not caught up in the scandal that forced Len out of town. He stayed in Havelock until 1940, when he married Rita Cameron, a nurse from the neighboring town of Chatham. After he served in WWII, the couple relocated to Moncton. He would go on to become a prominent figure in New Brunswick’s harness racing circles before his death in 1965.

The photos were donated to the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick by John Corey, a local historian who purchased them at a Keith family estate sale in 1984. Corey’s father had been a classmate of Len’s and knew both families. When he donated the collection, John referred to Len & Cub as “boyfriends” and also identified a photo of an individual who was instrumental in driving Len out of Havelock.

As some of these photos began to circulate on the internet several years ago, curiosity about Len & Cub’s story grew. In addition to the recent publication of the book, the BeaverBrook Art Gallery in Fredericton, NB is featuring an exhibition of the photos from April 2 – July 29, 2022.

Click here to watch a short video about Len and Cub from the CBC.

Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me: John Weir

John Weir is pissed off. Rightfully so.

He has a new book out. An award winning book. It’s called Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me (Red Hen Press). It is described on the cover as “linked stories” and won the Grace Paley Prize for short fiction. God forbid you call it a memoir or a short story collection. But we’ll get to that later.

This month, his two previous novels: 1989’s The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket and 2007’s What I Did Wrong are back in print with Fordham University Press. You can easily order any of these titles on Amazon or Barnes Ignoble. However, if you want to throw your business to an indie book seller, or more specifically a gay bookstore, it appears that you will have to go to one that he has personally walked into and asked them to stock his books. He’ll come back and sign them, too.

The Strand also does not have copies in their store. He went there and asked. Something to do with distribution, although you can order them from their online warehouse.

*John Weir on the cover of The Advocate (1990)*

I have been a fan of John Weir’s work since Eddie Socket‘s original release. I purchased a copy at, uh, Barnes Ignoble, and was thoroughly captivated by this groundbreaking book – winner of the 1990 Lambda Literary Award for Best Gay Debut Novel and one of the first to address the AIDS crisis.

The book kept me company on a miserable theater tour in the fall of 1991. I strongly identified with the protagonist, and when he contracted AIDS halfway through the book, it scared the hell out of me.

I wrote some of my favorite quotes in my journal:

Though he didn’t think that God existed, still, it was nice to just sit somewhere with people who believed that he did.

And

My feelings are clichés and that bugs me, so I try to hide it with other slicker clichés, and with everything in quotes, at least I can remind myself that I know better than my feelings, which are really the drippiest, most sentimental, self-pitying things.

I pored over it for so long that one of my cast-mates finally said “What the hell is with you and that book?!”

John Weir was working with ACT UP on The Day of Desperation in January, 1991 when he and other activists (including fellow writer Dale Peck) interrupted the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather:

It’s interesting to hear him mention his mother in the clip above, as she is the subject of several stories in Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me, written 25 years later, after their relationship had evolved into an adult child/caregiver situation.

In the intervening years, Weir was Contributing Editor at Details magazine and published nonfiction pieces in The New York Times, Spin, and Rolling Stone, among other publications. In addition to his writing, he has been an associate professor of English at Queens College since 1993.

I have been following John on Facebook for years. He would sometimes post new material and share extended witty, hysterically funny conversations with his mother. I also followed Sukey Tawdry, Mrs. Weir’s beloved pooch who had his own Facebook profile and passed away just days after she did in 2018. (John’s tribute is posted here.)

For all of the platform’s faults, John’s connection to Facebook is evident: he dedicates Nostalgia to his 5,000 followers.

Weir has a crankier social media alter-ego, whom he refers to as “The 3am Guy.” This allows him to rant about various topics at all hours of the night and then perhaps soften the edges or clean up the mess the following day – a tactic more people should adopt, IMHO.

It was Weir himself and not The 3am Guy who posted the following – a stinging encapsulation of what it is like to be a gay author of a certain age, on the first day of Gay Pride Month, just trying to get his work in front of its target audience.

This is his entire post, which I have reprinted with his permission:

The Self-Pitying Author Asks: Why Are None of My Books on the LGBTQ+ Pride Table at My Local Groovy BKNY Bookstore, Next to *The Town of Babylon* and *The Guncle*?

It’s LGBTQ+ Pride Month, and I plan to spend the month ashamed! Mostly because I have this new book out and I haven’t done enough to promote it. Here’s a funny thing about the book:

*John Weir Photograph © Beowulf Sheehan*

What’s its genre?

Is that like asking a book its pronouns?

Maybe!

Well, *Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me* calls itself “linked stories” on the cover. That’d mean it’s a collection of short stories: fiction.

Somebody said maybe it’d get more notice if I had called it a novel, “because it reads like a novel” (presumably because the same dude is the narrator of all 11 stories, and the stories follow him – not in order! – from like 1974 to 2014); and the thing is:

It got published because I submitted it to a writing contest – the Association of Writers & Writing Program’s (AWP’s) Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction.

I submitted to a contest, which I’d never done before, because: my agent wasn’t interested in the manuscript, which meant I no longer had an agent; and of the *12 agents whom I queried to see if they’d represent me* – well: None. Of them. Even. Replied. Not even their harried assistants wrote back to pretend they were the agent and say, “No thanks.” No one. Not an email, not even a form-rejection email.

Then in fear and self-loathing I sent the manuscript to a friend, who is also an agent (generally, I don’t think it’s a good idea to have an agent who’s a friend), and they said, “Love this, can’t sell it.”

So I submitted to a contest.

Which specified: “Short Fiction.”

*Author Grace Paley, photographed by Jess Paley*

Like the kind of stories Grace Paley wrote. A prize in her name! And I was all, “Well, I’m not Paley, and not that the judge has to pick a Paley-esque collection, but: I do sort of do the thing Paley does of writing stories as if they were just what happened that day.” (Not to put myself on her level of genius!)

A lot of Paley’s stories are written as if they were unstructured suit jackets, they fit fine but without the expected ribbing: her work feels impromptu, copied from everyday ordinary life (even if that ordinary life is extraordinary); and so but then you realize that every word is deliberate, she has a distinct aesthetic and a project, her writing isn’t random, nor is it cinema verité, though it’s often presented as if a quirky documentarian were given a camera to record whatever is in front of her.

So my collection got picked for the Grace Paley Short Fiction Prize, the reward for which was its being published by a small press that partners with the AWP: Red Hen Press.

So it won a Story prize, so it’s Stories.

I guess it was my idea to use the phrase “linked stories,” because short story collections don’t sell that well, and I thought maybe people would be more likely to buy it if they thought it was gonna feel like a novel.

I don’t think it’s a novel. I don’t really care if it’s a novel. I don’t know what it is; but then some people have been:

It’s a memoir. It’s autobiography. It’s a series of essays with a dude in the middle saying “Ow.” It’s nonfiction misnomered as fiction!

“How dare you misgenre me!” it’s thinking, sitting un-bought on a low shelf in the Fiction section at your neighborhood Barnes Ignoble.

Well, but back to Paley: I can’t call it nonfiction because I lied about stuff; compressed 6 real people into one fictional character; took scenes from real life and put them in a different month, with other weather; invented conversations; collapsed 8 different events into one; made shit up; gave all my best lines to other people; left things out that’d make me look bad if you thought I committed them; mis-remembered the past; manipulated my mis-remembered past to satisfy narrative arcs. Gave stuff tidy endings that, in real life, are never-ending.

I used techniques of fiction, in other words.

But I wanted it to read as if it were happening right in front of you, happening *to* you, right now, in this moment that you’re reading it.

I wanted it to read like nonfiction. Or like a Frederick Wiseman documentary, maybe.

I wanted you to think, “He must have just written down what happened.”

“Why not say what happened?” Elizabeth Hardwick said to Robert Lowell, when he was stuck on a poem; and then he emptied all her letters into his book! Her aggrieved, enraged letters about his leaving her for another woman.

Sleep with a writer, wake up in print.

So I can see a person’s assigning my book in a course in, like, I dunno, “Personal Narrative?”

Argh, I think the term these days is “Autofiction,” which I hate. I always hear, under that name, the accusation that all a particular writer ever did was obsess about themselves; and that an “auto-fictionalist” was deficient because they could not make shit up.

Is there a notion lately that a “writer” is a person who works entirely from “imagination,” and that to base a story on true events is somehow not to be as glorious as a person who works solely from imagination?

As if “saying what happened” did not involve using your imagination.

As if “autofiction” is somehow ethically suspect because you’re invading the privacy of people whose lives your work is based on. But there is such a thing as an emotional autobiography, where the arc of feeling is lifted from your own life, if not the events. And even a science fiction writer is surely modeling characters on people they know in real life (see Philip K. Dick’s books where one of the main characters is clearly based on Bishop James Pike of California).

Argh, anyway.

And then there is this thing of, If you’re a homo-dude like myself over age like 55 and you’re writing about stuff that happened in the first 15 years of the global AIDS crisis, 1981 -1996, you are automatically *historical*, and your writing is going to have no useful application to stuff that is happening today, it’s gonna be retrograde at worst, merely “interesting” at best, yet another traumatized recounting of an era that properly belongs in a theme park, AIDSWorld.

O and alas. Call my book what you want, it doesn’t have a genre. But if it reads like nonfiction, that doesn’t mean it’s without an aesthetic; and if it reads like a novel, that doesn’t mean it’s not a series of stories carefully revised and assembled in a particular order; and if it reads like memoir, don’t expect it to be telling the truth about everything; and if it’s just some Wicked Aging Sodomite not letting go of the past, well:

Maybe we live in a country and moment when we are deeply aware of having *let go too quickly of the past*; and maybe the refusal to account for the past is a right wing strategy; and maybe the past is not even past, as Faulkner says; and maybe a book is not a weighted blanket, maybe it’s not meant to help you fall dreamlessly to sleep, maybe its point is to fling you into a stage of inconsolable grief at 3 in the morning.

Follow him on Facebook. Follow him on TikTok. He’s @jwierdo on Twitter.

Buy the fucking book.

Category: Gay Literature