MARY

2009-11-02T20:39:00.000-08:00

WE HAVE MOVED:

http://maryliterary.com/

xxxo
William

2009-10-26T12:01:00.000-07:00

MARY proudly presents:
A book chat with an artist we love!

Entertainer, singer, songwriter and Tony-nominated performer Justin Bond has been described as “a trans-Atlantic cabaret messiah’ by Time Out London and a “ bar of gold in the new depression” by The New Yorker .

After spending some time with Justin, I would describe him as an elemental cocktail of politics, pop-cultural commentary, and droll insight.

Imagine if a witty hyper aware- version of earth mother Gaea went radically queer and started singing cabaret to enliven the world weary masses: That would be Justin Bond.

Justin Bond took a moment to talk with MARY about books, the queerness of Patty Hearst and the power of glamour.

How did you initially get your start performing?

Growing up in Maryland, I started performing for my family’s church at a very young age. When I was high school and I started to prepare for college I wasn’t sure if I wanted to major in voice, or visual art, or acting. I ended up majoring in acting, because I felt it was the skill I was the weakest. In high school I really excelled in visual arts and received little awards and stuff and I took voice and piano lessons starting when I was really young, but I didn’t really have any acting training, so I decided go to college for acting. I went to Adelphi and got my BFA and also I studied Shakespearean theater at Lambda in London.

After I graduated, I felt I had a lot of training, but I did not really like performing other peoples work. Being a queer performer I didn’t see a lot of roles that inspired me or parts that I was interested in playing, so I decided not to act initially. I had the technical skills and I felt I had the talent to be an actor, but I did not see any roles that gave me the inspiration to want to act. I decided to move to San Francisco. I was planning on becoming a California resident, so I could go to a public college in Cali to get my masters. I was thinking about studying art and getting a degree in art history. When I moved to San Francisco it was doing the height of the AIDS crisis and there was lot of cutting edge performances going on. Political art, street theater, queer performance.

I had never been exposed to that before. I got really involved in Queer Nation. Queer Nation was about queer visibly and it ran on a parallel track to Act UP, but Queer Nation was more about Queer Visibility while ACT UP was primarily focused on getting access to AIDS medication and treatment. It was about 1986 to about 1992. It was during this time that High Risk Books formed and Michael Warner put out “Fear of a Queer Planet. “ It was the golden age of queer literature, queer zines and alt. queer self publishing.

I started working at A Different Light Bookstore in San Francisco and we had all these amazing people coming in to the book store. Kathy Acker, Paul Monette, Jon Rechy, Edmund White. People coming and going and doing readings. It was all sort of ground zero for queer politics. It was a meeting place outside of meetings. It was a really exciting hot bed of queer activism, just a really inspiring exciting time. So this is the environment my performances grew out of. I started doing work with these performers called “The Sick and Twisted Players” and we would do these crazy queer interpretations of pop culture movies like “Carrie,” “Wild at Heart” and “Rosemary’s Baby.” I was also doing my own solo work as Justin. Then I met up with Kenny and we eventually started Kiki and Herb and then eventually moved to New York.

I didn't know you worked at A Different Light? So early on literature had a big impact on your work?

Literature has always been a big part of my life and work. When I did my show “Lustre” two years ago it was inspired by the writings of Lillian Hellman and Joan Didion. I opened up the show by saying I was imagining myself as a Lady Authoress. And in certain way I live my life as if I’m writing a book to amuse myself. The choices I make, what I do, who I sleep with, is part of “me” telling myself a story about my own life. When I was young I was really into biographies and autobiographies of people like Clara Barton and Lillian Hellman. I know with Lillian people dispute the validity of her autobiography. My point is that who cares? For me it was simply a really good inspiring story

Certain celebrities’ biographies have really served as an important inspiration to me. People like Eartha Kitt, who were so very talented and political. Her life was actually much more interesting than the work she was allowed to do. And I have always been more interested in woman’s stories, because I identified more with women than with men. Also, I’ve always been interested in glamour, but the artifice of glamour. The way glamour is used by women to manipulate men, and the use of glamour by women to cut a wider swath and create these huge seismic impacts on the world. I have always been interested in glamour as a force of power.

So turning glamour into a sort of feminist power?

I feel glamour is casting a spell. Glamour is witchcraft. Literally it’s creating an illusion. It’s casting a spell by using words, actions, deeds and visual stimuli to bewitch people to get them to think in a way you want them to think. If you can get your thoughts into people’s minds; have them see things in ways they have never seen them before, they can go back to their old ways of thinking, but it won’t change the fact that they had those thoughts in their heads. They are going to have to deal with them somehow, one way or another. In terms of feminism, it was around 1969 or 1970 when I learned about the feminist movement on TV . I came to the conclusion that if a woman can get equal rights then boys who want to be women can have equal rights too (laughs). That was my logic. I think a lot of the ideology used to suppress feminism is homophobic and a lot of the ideology used to suppress homosexuality is sexist.

How do you feel about the state of queer activism? I hear a lot of older activist complain about the state of queer/gay activism?

I hear a lot of people complain and I don’t really have any complaints about it. I know a lot of really engaged, very astute, very vocal, young queer people. My art has always been political. The immediacy of seeing all your friends dying was a kick in the ass to go out and do something, but after a certain amount of time you become exhausted by it. Throughout history of activism one generation kicks in a bunch of doors, then there is a lull, then all of a sudden there is an inspiration for another generation to get active. Things have not been bad enough for young people to really experience what we went through and I am perfectly happy about that. Granted people are up in arms about gay marriage, but I don’t care that much about gay marriage. For me universal health care is a much bigger issue than gay marriage. I don’t have issues with the movement. I feel people will rise again when it is time. In a way I just hope it’s less about having a hetero-normative bourgeois existence. I don’t begrudge anyone wanting that mind you, it’s just not the life I want.

What is a book that you think a young gay person coming out should read?

“The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon” by Tom Spanbauer. It’s not a political treatise, but it addresses self-righteous religious zealots and their violence. It also addresses our storied American history in terms of dealing with race and gender.

He wrote another book "In The City of Shy Hunters" which is a great book, but it’s devastating. It’s a great document about what it was like living in New York during the AIDS crisis… They should read that book. It is really harrowing. It really does not pull any punches.

When you worked at Different Light did you meet any writers who made you feel a little star struck?

I was young and a lot of us working at the store were queer activists, and we were very arrogant (laughs). We were thrilled to have all these different people coming in, but working at Different Light you would look up and there was some fantastic person and you just got used to it. All these fantastic people coming and going. You would look up and there was John Rechy or Edmund White. I don’t remember being completely overwhelmed because most of us working there were to full of ourselves (laughs) to be impressed by anyone. In terms of authors, I think I would’ve freaked out a little if I met Joan Didion. I have been told at parties that I have been standing right next to her and you know she is so little and tiny and she probably just faded right into the wood work. I’ve been at parties and people would say later “I can’t believe you didn’t speak to Joan”. I mean I’m tall, so I must have towered over her, but I never met her.

Why do you think Gays love Joan?

Joan Didion’s writing is so precise, so glamorous, but it also contains a certain level of nihilism. I think the first book I read by her was “A Book of Common Prayer”. And I just loved this woman’s story. It was based on the Patty Hearst kidnapping. When I was young I had dreams about Patty Hearst. I was very young when she was kidnapped. I remember having dreams that Patty Hearst came and took refuge in my house and I became really good friends with her.

The idea of her story always fascinated me. This idea that there is a persona that your family believes is “you” and then there is another persona that the public imagines and neither of these perceived personas adequately sum up who you really are. So being a closeted queer person, who had gender issues, Patty’s story really resonated with me. Who is the real Patty Hearst? Is she the person who is voluntarily fucking kidnappers in the closet, or she is this person that has been taken away from her perfect Christian existence; a good girl who dresses perfectly and is happy to be a perfect extension of her parents egos. Also I loved how “The Book of Common Prayer” has no moral center, it is so obscure. It contains no easy answers.

The second novel I read by Joan was “Play It as It Lays” which is about this starlet and her relationship to her closeted gay friend. It’s all about materialism and the emptiness of fame and the disillusions that people create for themselves in order to survive. It is probably where I got my philosophies on living my life like “I am writing my own story.” I really do believe in what the main character in that story says…”in the end nothing matters but yet I choose to stay in the game”. I personally found no comfort or solace in the religion my parents were giving me and yet I knew that those religious parables provided them comfort and that is fine with me, but none of it spoke to me. I don’t know what matters, but I know it makes life more interesting to stay in the game, and live life like a story that amuses you.

Since shedding the Kiki persona do you feel that performing as “Justin Bond” is just another persona you are trying on?

That is an interesting dilemma. I spent so many years playing Kiki when I was with Kenny, and there was so much tension between us over the years. I think in hindsight I was diminishing myself in order to make Kenny comfortable. I think there were some jealousies and discomforts with the attention I was getting. When I got through with Kiki, I started to focus on myself and maintaining a voice that was authentically my own. I still take on personas, like I did in my show “Lustre”, when I take on the persona of a Lady Authoress, but I think the story I am telling is very much my own story. Now the focus is really about being more authentic.

So what are you currently working on?

I am doing four shows at Joe’s Pub in New York between now and November. I am curating a show at the La Mama Art gallery for the Performa Art festival with Hilton Als. We are curating a collection of visual work by performers. We are including artist like Theo Coogan, who is in Theo and Skyscrapers and who used to be in the LunaChicks, Rufus Wainwright is going to have some of his work in it, Tilda Switon, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Diane Keaton and Chris Tanner it will be opening November 7th. I am doing a Halloween show based around Persephone, and I’m also working on some Christmas shows.

What is the inspiration for the Halloween Persephone show?

Well I always had an affinity for the Greek myth surrounding Persephone. She was out picking flowers one day and Satan saw her and thought she was hot. He brought her down to hell and kept her in purgatory. Her mother, the goddess Demeter traveled the planet and got the other goddesses angry and told Satan, ‘you need to let her go’. So before he let her go he fed her pomegranate seeds and because she ate those pomegranate seeds for some odd reason that meant she had to come back to Hell and visit. Maybe Persephone got addicted to those seeds and the only place she found them was in hell. So half the year she was in the daylight and the other half she was in the underworld. Being a night club entertainer I’ve spent a lot of time in dark seedy bars, but on the other hand I love nature and I love being outside and outdoors. I am Taurus, so I have this very bucolic Ferdinand the bull with a gold hoop through my nose sitting in nature, doing nothing vibe half of the time and then other times I am in these insane dark night clubs doing these wild performances. They also say that Halloween is the thinnest veil between the underworld and the outer world, so I thought it would be appropriate to spin some Persephone inspired magic for my Halloween show.

One last thing, your work is both sincere and ironic at the same time. I imagine that is a difficult kind of thing to pull off?

I don’t think sincerity and irony are mutually exclusive, because the world is so absurd. I do think there is a way that you can express yourself with general emotion and at the same time be fully aware of the absurdity of those emotions. You can be sincerely upset about some horrible sequence of events and then look at the narrative and see how ridiculous the whole thing is. I remember several years back this young girl, Polly Klass, was kidnapped from her home in California. It became this huge national story and Winona Ryder became involved in trying to find her, and the whole media world was focused on this one girl. I was thinking there is this one girl taken from her house in California and it becomes this odd national tragedy, but there are children that go missing from more economically challenged neighborhoods everyday and no one says word one. So one night I was performing as Kiki and I was tripping on shrooms and I said to the audience “Let’s face it ladies and gentleman, Polly’s dead. She is in a shallow grave by the highway”. And we did this old folk song, “Polly Pretty Polly” which is this harrowing old folk song about a woman being kidnapped. It’s an old folk song, so it just goes to show how long these kind of horrible things have been going on, and the song opens with lyrics “Polly pretty Polly come go along with me…” We performed the piece with total earnestness and initially people laughed, but by the end of the song people were moved by this disturbing sad song. We were simultaneously commenting on the ridiculousness of the media attention this story was getting and how this awful terrible stuff keeps happening over and over and over. It’s never going to end. Eventually, It turns out the real Polly Klass was dead in a shallow grave by the highway. So I think in life sincerity and irony are often not mutually exclusive at all. I think it’s just a bizarre intricate combination of both.

Justin Bond will be performing two Halloween shows on Oct31 at Joe's Pub inNYC.
Support the arts and sodomy in one fell swoop, go see this show!

(Photo credit Justin Bond: Matthu Placek)

2009-10-20T20:40:00.000-07:00

MARY PRESENTS:
One of the greatest poems of the 20th century (or school is a drag man and my pops is a square from Squaresville).

2009-10-14T03:40:00.000-07:00

Scribes Make Suicide Pact
Gus Van Sant, Bret Easton Ellis team on film

By MICHAEL FLEMING (via Variety)

Gus Van Sant and author Bret Easton Ellis will team to write a feature about the double suicide of artists Theresa Duncan and Jeremy Blake.

PalmStar Entertainment, Celluloid Dreams and K5 Film have acquired screen rights to

"The Golden Suicides," a Vanity Fair article written by Nancy Jo Sales.
Van Sant, who helmed "Milk" and is prepping the Columbia Pictures drama "Restless," is involved only as writer at this point.

Ithaka Entertainment's Braxton Pope will produce with PalmStar's Kevin Frakes and Celluloid Dreams' Hengameh Panahi.

Duncan and Blake were a popular couple on the downtown New York and Venice, Calif., art scenes. She was one of the first videogame designers for girls, and his "digital paintings" -- kaleidoscopic images shown on plasma screens -- established him as a rising star on the circuit.

The couple descended into a paranoid spiral when the artists developed a consuming belief that government and religious organizations were conspiring against them. She killed herself in 2007. Blake found her body on the floor of their bedroom, and walked into the Atlantic Ocean a week later, ending his life.

See the Jeremy Blake directed Beck video here.

2009-10-01T20:17:00.000-07:00

From the homosexual vaults of time:

The Queen is Dead! Long Live The Queen!

Below is a link to novelist Michael Cunningham’s 1998 piece on ball queen legend Angie Xtravaganza. Reading this heartbreaking article is like watching a lost Atlantis rise to the surface. It is an elegy not only for Angie, but also for an aspect of New York City that now only exists in memory.

The Link is here

(And also photographer Brian Lantelme's pictorial/written history of notorious drag bar and Angie Xtravaganza hang out spot Sally's Hideaway here and here)

2009-09-22T07:59:00.000-07:00

Poetry Poetry Poetry everywhere!:
“Finding poetry in the Craigslist’s M4M missing person section”

The mundane is where it’s at!

In his critical essay “The Mundane, The Existential, and The Poetic" sociologist Rich Furman fervently advocates for the poetry of the commonplace. In his essay, Furman explores how verse pertaining to “mundane objects, mundane events, and mundane relationships” are perfect vehicles to explore existential notions of nothingness, authenticity, and the “I-thou” relationship.*

His essay is an analysis and defense of the developmental process by which a writer of ‘extraordinary’ poetry becomes a poet concerned with enlivening and illuminating the ordinary. Furman examines “how paying attention to what is mundane” can help lead the poet towards confronting existential truths and a higher beauty.

Since we are also fierce advocates for illuminating poetry, and since our lives are really pretty mundane, Furman’s essay holds a special resonance for us. (Honestly though we are not such big fans of existential truths. They tend be pretty scary. We prefer our truths to be like rainbows, fluffy kittens, and Anne Geddes’ baby photos: heartwarming, pretty and dumbly sweet natured.)

We here at Mary figured there is no better place to unearth poetry that elevates the mundane, and exposes deep existential truths of “nothingness and authenticity” then the M4M missed connection section on Craigslist.

We decided to share with our readers a cross section of the free verse poetry found on Craigslist’s M4M list serve. Nothing says mundane like cruising for trade and love on 8th ave!

Your Bagels Sucks
By m4m (Astoria)

You were arguing with your friends that the bagel shop sucked, they weren't having it...Before you got off I told you I agreed, you were hot and your pants were unzipped even hotter...I recommended somewhere for you to try. Where?...would love to buy you a bagel and try your kosher meat.
(Editor’s Note: This poem raises an interesting philosophical and religious query. Can a penis actually be Kosher?)

Christ sakes. Are there no tops in Brooklyn?
By m4m - 23 (burg)

Is it me,
or is everyone a bottom/cocksucker around here?
(Editor’s note: If this isn’t an existential cry into a dark , cold universe I don’t know what is. Simple and economic, yet imbued with a passionate visceral rage that contains multitudes.)

GMHC friday afternoon 9/18
By m4m - 28 (Chelsea)

I know this is the WEIRDEST PLACE to have a missed connection, and that's why I wasn't really conversational in the waiting room.
You asked me how long the process (HIV test) would take. You have a beautiful face, especially your profile.
I hope you got good news, like I did :)
Write and tell me what was connected to my bag...
(Editors’ note: While we find that smiley emoticons and the unadulterated anxiety of an HIV test usually don’t mix, this poem adeptly uses the absurdity of overbearing cheeriness to demonstrate the unyielding quest for solace in a pressure infused environment.)

I looked over and saw the biggest cock id ever seen what this you?
By m4m - 36 (nj exit 9 rest area)

I pulled up next to you at the rest area I looked over and saw you jerking the biggest cock id ever seen would love to see it again and work on it for you.
(Editors note: This poem exposes a horrible truth; once the mind has witnessed the uncanny it can never be soothed.)

To all the gays living at 23rd and 9th (sw corner of st)
By m4m - 29 (Chelsea)

I'm staying in a neighboring building for the next week. the last time I stayed here, i saw one guy watching gay porn on his computer; while two gay lovers undressed in the apartment next door to go to sleep. i'm hoping for a continuation of the show and possibly an invite to come visit you!
(Editor’s note: There is a strip of New York City that is less like a street and more like a horny buffet. This poem gives us a voyeuristic glimpse into that netherworld. The writer not only wants to attend the “show,” he also wants to invite the reader to the performance. The writer implicates the reader. The poet turns the reader into both a participant and a pervert. )

Sexy Juan HSBC Yonkers –
By m4m (Westchester)

Really sexy Juan the teller at HSBC in Yonkers.

I'd like to see you long, lean and nude.

I am one of your regular depositors
(Editor’s note: The” long lean and nude” stanza is beautifully taut. The double entendre of “I am your regular depositor” is deliciously naughty. This poem presents the reader with a milieu where commerce and love become interchangeable commodities)

The White Knight on Metro North
By m4m - 24 (Grand Central)

The nicest thing that's been done for me in awhile was done this morning as I left the Harlem line Metro North train into Grand Central.

Stuck in a three seater row, dozens filed past to get to their jobs without a moment's notice for the young temp anxious to buy some coffee before the daily soul-chipping subordination began.

And then you stopped the flow, and let me out.

You were fair, blond like Kansas wheat in summer, and aside from your slacks you were clad all in white. White shirt, white sweater with the word Soul on it (appropriate).

I smiled like a buffoon, and scampered off the train, thinking about Galahad the entire time. He was a Knight of the Round Table, a virgin knight (I have no illusions as to your own virginity) pure as can be, who defeated all he fought against, including his illegitimate father Sir Lancelot, 'The Best Knight in the World'. King Arthur's men considered him inhuman, as his feats and quests and demeanor suggested. When Arthur sent his Knights out to find the Holy Grail (trying to direct their Might to works of good) it was Galahad who found it. And in doing so, a magic boat appeared that he stepped on, and God took him away from us forever.

You see, when men attain perfection, they disappear.

So please, my Galahad, do something selfish today. I would like to see you on the train again someday.
(Editor’s note: The poet exposes the dangers of delusional high expectations. Wait till the poet finds out his “Galahad” is a married man from White Plains, who is a self hating drunk with a surreal ability to be both insecure and pompous at the same time. Trust me honey I’ve been there, you don’t want to go down that road.)

black guy on 19th & 8th
By m4m - 34 (Chelsea)

You were standing on the northwest corner talking to your friend in front of Starbucks; I was walking south and we caught each others eye...you said, "hello." I kept walking but looked back. I would love to finish that conversation. Hit me up if you want to.
(Editors note: Hey! I think this is totally me you are talking about…You were so cute!!!! Send me an email to my MARY account and tell me what I was wearing, so I’m sure it’s you.)

*In his 1923 essay I and Thou (Ich und Du), philosopher Martin Buber posits that human existence may be defined by the way in which we engage in dialogue with each other, with the world, and with God.

2009-09-17T07:21:00.000-07:00

DADDYHUNT.COM presents :

” The Christopher Isherwood Love Story”

Daddyhunt.com is a social networking website where older gay men can meet and greet other gay men of interest:

At Daddyhunt there's never any reason to lie about your age because Daddyhunt members appreciate and embrace men of all ages and types; hot older guys, hairy bears, silver daddies, chasers, younger guys and hunters of all ages.

On Daddyhunt, all users identify themselves as either a hunter or a daddy. In other words, you can be a daddy looking for a daddy, a hunter looking for a daddy, a daddy looking for a hunter or even a hunter looking for a hunter. You can be any age to be either. We have hunters in their sixties and daddies in their thirties.

This all sounds above board and I am sure Daddyhunt provides a much needed alternative to popular web sites like Manhunt ,or adam4adam, whose members tend to be more of the “chicken seeking chicken” or “GM32 seeking GM32” variety.

What's interesting is that the web promos for DaddyHunt are really classing up the joint by featuring the cross generational love story of artist Don Bachardy and famed author Christopher Isherwood.

Christopher Isherwood, the author of Berlin Stories (later turned into Cabaret) and other novels (see the Tom Ford post below), was 48 when he met the 16 year old Bachardy. Their relationship lasted over 30 years 'til Isherwood's death at 81. The relationship was the subject of a well received documentary several years ago. Daddyhunt celebrates this cross-generational love story in a series of web interviews with Bachardy:

Artist Don Bachardy Talks about Christopher Isherwood's Influence on his Later Relationships | DH Blog

Shared via AddThis

These are the most literary/thoughtful web promos for a sex/relationship/hookup website I have ever seen. (Next up Phillip Roth for Match.com )

So you never know gents, maybe if you go on Daddyhunt.com you might just meet Gore Vidal.

I ‘m creating my ad today: "Literary neophyte seeks brilliant Andrew Holleran type writer for vanilla sex and light copy editing."

2009-09-11T05:07:00.000-07:00

"Terrified" Tom Ford

Launches

Debut Film In Venice.

A film adaptation of

Christopher Isherwood’s novel

“A Single Man”

via Rueters/by Paul Casciato

The man credited with turning around Gucci before launching his own design line has traded fashion for film with his debut feature "A Single Man," starring Colin Firth as a middle aged gay professor mourning the loss of his younger lover.

Ford based the movie, which has its world premiere at the Venice film festival on Friday, on a novel of the same name by Christopher Isherwood.

"Really no one's seen it yet, so of course I'm terrified because in a way it's the most personal thing I've ever done and it's the thing that is the most expressive of who I am," the 48-year-old told Reuters in an interview.

"If you know me as a fashion designer, people would think that I'm one thing -- slick, sexy. That's something that I do as a product.

"This (film) for me was the first pure artistic expression that I've ever created so in that way it's much more personal to me and I'm more vulnerable in a way because it is so personal."

The early signs are good for Ford, with several critics in Venice praising the movie and tipping Firth to win the best actor prize at an awards ceremony on Saturday.

Ford said he shared some traits with the central character George, played by Firth, who contemplates suicide after his lover is killed in a car crash. Julianne Moore plays Charley, his former girlfriend, confidante and neighbor.

Living in the past, and unable to contemplate a future, his despair lifts when he befriends a student who reminds him of the beauty around him and the value of living in the present.

"I think most people come to the point in their life where they realize that maybe everything they had been working toward isn't really ultimately making them happy," said Ford.

"I think in our culture we are always living in the future, we're always thinking, 'when I get this house I'm going to be happy ... when I get that girl I'm going to be happy, when I get those shoes I'm going to be happy.' That's really the point of the movie, to live in the present."

"NOT A GAY STORY"

Ford said he based George's meticulous, even comic preparations for ending his life on somebody in his family.

"Someone did kill themselves in exactly that way -- went to the store, bought a gun ... went home and got a sleeping bag ... laid everything out, got into the sleeping bag, zipped it up and killed himself because he didn't want to make a mess."

Ford switches from sepia tones to bright colors to reflect George's changing moods, and glorifies the male body with slow motion shots of men swimming naked and playing tennis without shirts in the burning sun.

But despite the storyline and style of the shooting, Ford did not want his to be labeled a gay film.

"It's not a gay story," said Ford, who is openly gay.

"One of the things I always loved about Isherwood's books ... (is that) the gay character never struggles with his homosexuality, he's not beaten or mistreated by the world at large, it's not about being gay.

"He just depicts characters who happen to be homosexual going through the normal pains and pleasures that we all go through in life."

Ford said he was already writing his next movie, and planned to juggle film making and his fashion business long term.

(Editor's note;"[Ford] glorifies the male body with slow motion shots of men swimming naked and playing tennis without shirts in the burning sun." Not a gay story!? Sounds pretty gay to me!)

UPDATE: Below is the "MAD MEN" like trailer. Lets party likes it's 1962! Repressed Sexaulity and dry martinis for everyone!

2009-08-31T20:19:00.000-07:00

Truman Capote 1969

A PLAYBOY INTERVIEW

There was a point in Truman Capote's career when he became more interesting as an interview subject than as a writer.

But that's okay. Honestly I often rather read his interviews then other people's novels. Much more entertaining.

Link: here

2009-08-19T13:42:00.000-07:00

MARY Proudly Presents “An Interview with James Hannaham”

God Says No is James Hannaham’s funny, sad, and very touching debut novel.

God Says No tells the tale of Gary Gray, an over-weight, fervently-Christian, unmistakably-homosexual, black man from Charleston, NC. In his quest to rid himself of the “sin” of homosexuality, Gray hurtles through a 1980’s era southern landscape looking for solace, redemption and the occasional hot piece of trade.

Gary tries everything to quiet his torment and his conflicting man-on-man desires: exorcism, heterosexual marriage, reparative therapy, indulgence, prayer, avant-garde silent theater, and even multiple trips to Disney Land.

“From revival meetings to out life in Atlanta to a pray-away-the-gay ministry in Memphis,” God Says No takes the reader through one young man’s warped journey through Americana in hopes of finding self and salvation.

James Hannaham has written for the Village Voice, Spin, Blender, Out, Us, New York Magazine. His fiction has appeared in The Literary Review, Nerve.com, Open City and several anthologies. He currently teaches creative writing at Pratt Institute.

Mr. Hannaham was kind enough to grace MARY with an interview:

Who are some writers that you love and why?

Southern American writers have a lot of great raw material to grapple with, so I find myself really drawn to them, especially the ones with a wicked sense of humor. Flannery O’Connor, John Kennedy Toole, Richard Wright, Truman Capote, Ralph Ellison, Ellen Gilchrist, etc. Lately I’ve been enjoying Faulkner. But my North Star right now is Sherwood Anderson, the writer who mentored a lot of the more frequently read Modernists like Hemingway and Faulkner, and who they kept trying to imitate (and sometimes parodied). I also like great writing in translation—Yukio Mishima, Halldór Laxness, and I just read Five Spice Street by Can Xue—she’s one of China’s heavyweights—that I found really unusual and extremely funny. The kind of eccentric book an American probably wouldn’t write and would have trouble getting published. And my pals: Susan Steinberg, Anthony Tognazzini, Susan Briante, Jennifer Egan, Jim Lewis, Joshua Furst, Martha Southgate, Matthew Aaron Goodman, etc. And my students. And a ton of non-fiction writers. And anonymous people who write bad advertising copy. I never know where to stop with this question.

There is some very evocative and beautiful writing in your book; at the same time, the story is realistically told in Gary’s voice. No easy feat. How tricky was balancing the beauty of the word with the truth of the character?

Thanks for that compliment. One of the things writing a novel for such a long time does is that it teaches you how to write that novel. Gary’s voice is very particular and peculiar, it does things I wouldn’t normally do, and he often simplifies ideas I would ordinarily take more time and maybe larger words to say. You could say that Gary’s voice is a kind of a restraint that curbs some of my bad habits. A lot of the process of editing the book consisted of removing my own voice and doing something I called “Bill Clintonizing”—taking a complicated concept and distilling it into something simple and down-home. I didn’t think much about it being difficult work because it was fun to see the world the way Gary does, with his weird brand of innocence and wonder.

There is a genre of “coming out” books, like the memoir The Best Little Boy in the World, where the tracts seem to be pretty much the same: Attractive Boy comes from an attractive, prominent family; family has great expectations for Boy; Boy is full of self-loathing; Boy is depressed; Boy eventually finds his own voice and place in gay culture; Boy finds attractive boyfriend; and finally, Boy finds happy ending. But with this novel you upend that narrative. Do you feel you were offering a correction on the “traditional” coming out story?

I wouldn’t call it a correction, exactly, I’d call it a “new spin.” It seemed like the right moment for a book about making it through the Tunnel of Self-Hatred all gay people have to crawl through, but not one that necessarily emphasized political empowerment, positive images, or the healing feelings of self-acceptance; I meant to create something a sort of complicated and tragicomic, that had, perhaps, the ungainly texture, desperation, and tackiness of a real American life, where no one decision you make results in a completely satisfying and fulfilling “answer” to your problems, although you’ve hoped for that in an almost insane way.

As a writer born in Yonkers and now living in NYC, why was it important to make Gary Gray a Southerner? Do you feel a story like Gary’s can happen in a city like NYC?

I felt that he should be from Charleston, specifically, because of that city’s gorgeous and intense repression. The repression there is so strong that it’s architectural. This is a beautiful city where everyone downtown has a back garden filled with flowers, but keeps it hidden from public view with a high wall. The buildings themselves are turned away from the street. It’s a marvel of sensuality and denial; the two are locked in a fierce cage-match. There are many other reasons, though—sadly, I only have space here to name a few. A branch of my family comes from South Carolina, but the generation ahead of me has largely avoided too much direct discussion of family history there, so that has created a fascination for me. There’s actually a town outside Charleston called Hanahan (my last name was transformed by my grandfather, supposedly because we were children of Ham), and I haven’t found the connection yet, but I’m sure it has something to do with my last name, and I suspect that there’s a bitter slave tale to go with it. And here’s another reason: As I was growing up in Yonkers and going to its public schools, the Federal Government and the NAACP sued the school system for segregation and the City of Yonkers lost the case. This was in the 80s. My mother was a reporter who covered the story for a Westchester radio station, and every night I would hear her playing back tapes of black politicians describing Yonkers as “up South.” So the thought that the racism and discrimination people associate with the South couldn’t occur in the North was always kind of silly to me. Especially with the famous incidents that occurred in Bensonhurst and Howard Beach during my adolescence. So to make a long story short, a lot of the things that happen to Gary are based on things I heard or experienced from gay life in the North, but as fiction, they seemed more at home in the South.

Gary Gray loves Disney! Any ideas why Disney resonates with so many in the gay community? It does not seem to be a camp apperception or ironic.

At base I think it’s about attempting to return to innocence, being able to go, physically, but also mentally, to a place where you didn’t know how to be repressed, or that people might hate you for being who you are. There’s a sort of utopian atmosphere there. Years ago I wrote a piece for the Village Voice about going to Gay Day at Disney, the second or third year they did it, and it made a huge impression on me. It was like a massive Queer Nation demonstration done in a totally middlebrow, mainstream context. I found it utterly fascinating how everything took on a campier aspect just because of the context.

I read a review in which the writer mentions that she was skeptical about reading the novel because she had heard it was about a man on the “Down Low.” Is there a distinction between a man on the D.L. and Gary Gray—a man who struggles with the “sin” of homosexuality and actively tries to convert to heterosexuality?

Gary isn’t the sort of guy who would use that expression. He’s not enough in touch with hip things like African American slang to realize that he’s technically on the “down low.” He’s the kind of GBM who even other GBMs can’t quite clock because he’s mainstreamed himself out of visibility, on purpose. I thought that this was another very interesting paradox for him to have to face—how can you be a “normal guy” in America when you’re black and gay? Does “normal” need redefinition? Yet I feel like I’ve met black gay men who have done that, at least on the surface.

There is whole line of fiction/memoirs, some more nuanced then others, concerning the so called “DL” phenomena. You could say E. Lynn Harris popularized the form. These books are immensely popular with both men and woman. (I saw a woman at book fair this year selling a novel called I Got Pregnant from a DL Thug!, which is probably the apotheosis of the genre.) Do you have any ideas why these books strike such a particular chord with in the culture?

Black people love paranoia, don’t we? We have a lot to thank paranoia for. Paranoia, I would wager, is a big part of the reason we’ve managed to survive some of the more gothic aspects of black history. We’ve needed to imagine some really horrible scenarios in order to avoid having them happen to us. We have a tradition of paranoiac thinking to thank for getting us through many struggles, but fortunately paranoia can provide entertainment and education at the same time. So I guess these books serve the same purpose those Betty Wright songs from the 70s, you know, in which Betty tells her girlfriends to beware of “The Babysitter,” and “The Clean-Up Woman,”—they’ll get your man, so don’t sleep, ladies. They’re saying the same thing, only now it’s “The Clean-Up Man.” They’re cautionary tales—they allow us to revel in the scandalous story but also make us hip to something that could devastate our own lives if it takes us by surprise.

In your research for the novel, did you get a chance to visit any of the places that offer reparative/conversion therapy?

I decided not to do that, although I came close to going to a chapter in New Hampshire. I didn’t want to go under false pretenses, mostly because I knew that I’d be like Miquel in that last scene, cutting up and making lewd comments, and I didn’t think I could convince anyone that I was struggling with my feelings about homosexuality—unless that meant how I could get laid. So instead I found a listserv of guys who referred to themselves as “ex-ex-gays”—and after I wrote a draft of that section, I convinced one of the guys on the listserv to read it and give me notes.

Reparative/Conversion therapy has been in the news a lot lately with The American Psychological Association (APA) denouncing reparative therapy and James Dobson’s anti-gay Focus on the Family organization selling off its ex-gay therapy program called “Love Won Out” because of lack of funds. Do you feel the conversion movement is losing steam?

For the moment, it would seem so, but there could always be a backlash. Those of us with progressive politics often have a tendency to presume that progress goes in one direction only, but I have my doubts. (There’s that black paranoia coming in, eh?) Look at what’s happening with gay rights around the world—the U.S. is not perfect, but it’s certainly one of the safest places on earth to be gay. "Love Won Out" could open chapters in Iraq or Nigeria or Jamaica and revive their whole enterprise—not that I care to give them any ideas. But as far as their target audience, with all the information out there, especially on the Internet, it is much easier to find out that you are not alone as a gay man and that there are gay men who live perfectly happy lives and some of them are even religious. So as the general public becomes less ignorant about what gay people’s lives actually consist of, organizations like "Love Won Out" may find themselves drying up.

In the beginning of the novel, you mention the concept of simultaneously hating one thing/person more than loving another: “Russ hates me more than he loves Christ.” The central tension in your novel is seemingly that—one kind of love or one kind of hate trumping/fighting another. (And even in popular discourse this concept seems to surface: some people seem to hate abortion more than they love life.) Do you see a parallel with that concept and way some people view the world?

For some reason I was thinking today about the heady brew of confusion that incident sets off in Gary’s life. Because the problem isn’t simply that Russ hates Gary more than Christ, right, it’s that Gary also loves Russ and Christ. As I think about it now, I suppose it was a way of suggesting that Christ isn’t so much of an Old Testament guy, and that his messages of tolerance and admonitions against hypocrisy should really preclude hating people because of who they fall in love with. So what gives? Is nobody listening?

Most all of the characters’ sexual encounters occur in Parks or Bathroom stalls. I often wonder if the internet is killing off the culture of ‘Tea room’ and ‘Park’ encounters. In my head it’s an end of a historic outdoor cruising era. How would a character like Gary Gray interact in the age of cyberspace cruising?

Honey, the only way to test that theory out is to do some field research. Start with www.cruisingforsex.com, I’m sure you’ll have some wonderful sexual encounters in parks, in backrooms, and in bathroom stalls that will prove to you that gay public sex is still alive and well. You’ll probably find half the U.S. Senate in there—maybe you could get them to take a vote on repealing DOMA and Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.

In response to your article on Salon.com about the arrest of Dr. Henry Louis Gates, one reader wrote: “Personally I think Gates was hiding something (drug dealer or gay lover) and that's why he started to act up.” How would you respond to this?

I would say, “Jackass.”

In a TimeOut New York review, you told writer Sean Kennedy that you had friends who were “rewriting their novels in order to please their agents, surrendering completely their artistic merit in order to get published.” What advice would you give to a yet-to-be published writer who wants to maintain some artistic merit?

Maybe I’d tell her to go off someplace far from New York and work on her drafts and read writers who aren’t writing books whose stories sound like movie plots. I’d tell her not to worry about who got how much money for what book, or who went to school where or got what job or prize or publication. I’d say to her, the only real competition a writer is involved in is between herself and the grave. I’d tell her to consider her work in relation to what’s happening in other art forms—visual art, foreign cinema, architecture—and to know things, and to talk and think hard about current events and politics and the world, and have and cultivate opinions, to always have some kind of axe to grind, and to worry about writing good sentences and making good art of the sort that may not enrich you now, but will enrich others in the future. One of the most wonderful qualities of literature is that it gives the dead a voice in the present. Try to say something with your work, I’d advise this aspiring writer, that people will need to hear even after you’re dead.

Did you have to give up anything editorially to get this book published?

Not sure what this means, exactly. God Says No was edited very thoroughly, but the main elements remained in place. Nobody said, “Maybe Gary should be straight, or white, so we can sell this book to Hollywood,” and if they had, I would have gone elsewhere.

How did you get hooked up with McSweeney’s, a publishing house not known for showcasing gay themed literature?

Well first of all, I guess, by not looking for a publisher based on the thematic content of the book...? But seriously, my friend and den mother, the novelist Jennifer Egan, was instrumental in getting the manuscript to the three small-yet-reputable publishers we decided to send it to. At the time, I didn’t have an agent and we had become frustrated in our search, so we decided to cut out the middle man, as it were, and McSweeney’s expressed interest (as did the other two, to our delight) so we didn’t question their gay-theme track record. Or we figured it was something they wanted to try, or I guess we assumed they didn’t care if the book was gay—they loved it for who it was.

I went on Amazon.com and checked out what the people who bought your book were also buying. They bought Grizzly’s Bear’s album “Veckatimest”, Thomas Pynchon’s Inherent Vice, and The Evolution of God by Robert Wright. All wildly disparate picks, but the one that interested me the most was The Evolution of God. In the book, game theorist Robert Wright maps the continual transformation of faith from the Stone Age to the Information Age. Wright finds that over time, religions in general are becoming more compassionate, more moral, more humane. He feels religions are getting “better” with each passing eon. “The march of history challenges people to expand their range of sympathy and understanding, to enlarge their moral imaginations, to share the perspective of people ever farther away," he argues. Heady stuff. What are your thoughts on the evolution of religion within the last couple of decades, or even years? Are our religions really becoming more evolved?

I like the Grizzly Bear record, and I’m certainly flattered to be mentioned alongside Pynchon. The Robert Wright book sounds very interesting as well. Maybe I’ll become one of those also-buyers myself—though I have the Grizzly Bear album already, and quite enough copies of my own book. The biggest leap religion could possibly take would be the worldwide abolition of the monotheistic belief in one true faith. One of the worst ideas in the history of man. Sure, it’s good marketing, but you don’t have to be a Tutsi listening to a radio broadcast directed at Hutus to know to what evil purposes people can use marketing. It creates more converts to claim that your religion is the only real one, but it also brings people to a point where the only way to continue a conversation about faith is to kill each other. Religion could use a big leap or two right about now.

Support the arts and sodomy in one fell swoop, buy this book.

2009-08-07T12:44:00.000-07:00

Literary Divas: The results are in!

We asked. You told.

Well it turns out Diana Ross, Bette Milder, Gladys Knight, Nina Simone, Whitney Houston, Maria Callas and Madonna are not the only female deities homosexuals worship.

Mary's fans also have a vast array of literary divas that they call their own

“Oh, Diva worship by homosexuals is such a cliché,” some may say, but I have seen enough framed Janet Jackson posters on the bedroom walls of 42 year-old men to know that some clichés are true.

“No Joan Didion,” was my only caveat, because she is such an easy mark.

Below are some snapshots of the responses:

Ten Literary Divas
MFK Fisher--diva de la cuisine
Toni Morrison--diva of the haunted soul
Flannery O'Connor--diva of brutishness
Carson McCullers--diva of sadness and longing
Alice Munro--diva of the past and of the future
Lorrie Moore--diva of birds and feathers
Jamaica Kincaid--diva of the bottom of the river
Mary Gaitskill--diva of despair
Joyce Carol Oates--diva of housework
Louise Erdrich--diva of reservations

Oh, and one bonus diva--
Joan Didion, because you can't ask a bunch of lit queens to name
their divas, and not allow them to speak the name of the great
HER SELF--The diva of self-justification.

-Chris Wells

Before Toni Morrison and Terry McMillan, before Alice Walker and Audrey Lorde, there was Zora Neal Hurston. And by many accounts, this woman was a true diva, and a fashionable one, too.

Of the many accounts of her diva-like behavior, one struck most: At a 1921 literary awards dinner, Hurston strolled in late, and upon entering, yelled the name of her nominated piece. That piece, a play titled “Color Struck,” won second place that night, but, the story goes, because of that entrance, she was the buzz of the literary world for sometime.

But the ultimate proof is in her writing:

Springtime in Florida is not a matter of peeping violets or bursting buds merely. It is a riot of color in nature—glistening green leaves, pink, blue, purple, yellows blossoms that fairly stagger the visitor from north. The miles of hyacinths lie like an undulating carpet on the surface of the river and divide reluctantly when the slow-moving alligators push their way log-like across. The nights are white nights for the moon shines with dazzling splendor, or in the absence of that goddess, the soft darkness creeps down laden with innumerable scents. The heavy fragrance of magnolias mingled with the delicate sweetness of jasmine and wild roses.

- “John Redding Goes to Sea” 1921

During her career, she published four novels, an autobiography, two books of folklore, short stories, essays, articles and plays.

-Fritzroy Austin Sterling, Mary Editor at Large

Liz Renay! “ My Face for The World To See.”

Actually, I'm so ADD from the internet that like 1/2 of all Americans, I don't read 1 book per year.

-Lady Bunny

Editor's note: Liz Renay (1926-2007) was an insanely unconventional cult icon.
The Washington Post described her as “a gangster's moll, ex-con, author, painter, stripper, Hollywood Boulevard streaker, actress and charm school instructor.” She was apparently working on a cook book when she died. Now that’s a resume!

Why bell hooks of course! She's a compassionate, forward thinking, Buddhist practicing, fearless ambassador of integrated intellectual thinking and love meditations! She thankfully used her life as a curious and experienced woman of color to educate and remind us of our individual value to one another. Diva, I mean, diva personified.

-Bill Coleman

Stephen King. He was poor living in a trailer and working on his novel CARRIE. He didn't have confidence to finish it. His wife, Tabitha, picked the manuscript out of the trashcan and said, "I like it, please finish it." It went on to be a movie screenplay and put him on the map.

He really didn't think that after hours of hammering that typewriter, this one idea would actually turn out the way it did.
To me, this is a Diva Moment...
He sort of changed from "pocket change" to "I can really show the world a thing or two." after the CARRIE event.

-Timoth Gallagher

Editor's note: I’d say his wife, Tabitha King, an accomplished writer in her own right, is the real diva in this anecdote. By pulling that dirty manuscript out of the trash she went from trailer park to champagne kisses and caviar dreams! Bye-Bye Wal-Mart! Hello Neiman Marcus! Good looking out sister!

James Baldwin...Genius.
If that answer does not suffice, then - Octavia Butler.
I am an Ol' School Sci Fi geek, however Lady Butler mixed the magic and mystic with the spiritual, giving it historical context and soul. Her writings allowed for me to freely question ideas of religion, race, spirit, faith, love, and reality.
-Gregory Caldwell

Toni Morrison

- Joseph Mole

Editor’s note: Well, we received over twenty votes for Toni Morrison. You guys really like her!

Margaret Atwood. She has that cold cold cold cold penetrating dissecting eye that is uniquely Canadian

-Frank

V.C Andrews. I mean didn’t all children born in the years 1969 to 1983 read the horny parts of “Flowers in the Attic”.

-Chuck

Editor’s note: I remember everyone passing this book around the lunch room in 8^th grade. Page 131, or whatever, was earmarked because that was the scene when the brother and sister have sex. It was our middle school Tropic of Cancer. A lot of books were published by V.C Andrews long after she died, which leads me to believe her later books were written by some creepy family incest/ family intrigue loving haunted typewriter.

Literary Diva's- Interesting. I would have to say Mama Sonia, Angela Jackson, Audre Lorde, and Cheryl Clarke.

-Raymond Berry

Lorrie Moore! I have a non- sexual crush on her. I want to be her gay bff. We could trade ironic asides and travel the Midwestern landscape together!

-Ted Rumford

Editor's note: Favorite paragraph by Lorrie Moore:

‘And so she left Hollywood. Phoned her agent and apologized. Went home to Chicago, rented a room by the week at the Days Inn, drank sherry and grew a little plump. She let her life get dull--dull, but with Hostess cakes. There were moments bristling with deadness, when she looked out at her life and went “What?” Or worse “Wha-?” It had taken on the shape of a terrible mistake. She hadn’t been given the proper tools to make a real life with, she decided that was it. She’d been given a can of gravy and a hair brush and told, “There you go” She’d stood there for years, blinking and befuddled, brushing the can with the brush.’
-“Willing” 1998

2009-08-06T06:35:00.000-07:00

Mary proudly presents “The Brilliant Quentin Crisp”

After the publication of his book, The Naked Civil Servant, in 1968 QUENTIN CRISP was approached by documentary maker Denis Mitchell to be the subject of a short film in which he was to talk about his life and voice his opinions - which he did, brilliantly.

Mary, a literary magazine published quarterly, is currently seeking submissions for both our print publication. Submissions are welcomed in prose, poetry, or essay format. We are eclectic and amenable to diverse styles and genres, but we prefer work that offers lyrical and inspired takes on the gay/queer/ homophile “way of life.” We at Mary understand that tales involving the “gay lifestyle” ranges from the staunchly conservative, to the staunchly liberal; from those that are somber, to those that revel in camp; from that of the highbrow, to that of the very, very, very low. ; from that of the highbrow, to that of the very, very, very low. We welcome all. Mary’s mission is to emphasize aesthetics, not social or political affiliations. To quote Oscar Wilde, our patron saint, “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.”

Submissions should not be any longer than 5,000 words, and can be submitted electronically at maryliterary@gmail.com

2009-08-04T09:08:00.000-07:00

Mary wants to know: Who is your literary Diva?

Everyone has his/her own definition of a Diva.

R&B star Beyonce states that “A diva IS the female version of a Hustla….” (Hearing this Liza Minnelli begins throwing up gang signs and playing dice with the corner boys.)

VintageDiva.com states “Divas are women who are past their mothering time and have some serious life experience behind them.” (So that means Streisand you’re in; Johansson and Gaga you’re out).

According to selfgrowth.com “A diva is able to leave her past hurts and pains in the past in order to live a more blessed life in the future…”( Hillary have you been reading selfgrowth.com?)

But we want to know who do you, dear Mary fans, consider your literary divas?

Traditionally the definition of a diva is a “prima donna, a distinguished female operatic singer/star.” But the definition of the word diva has changed and become something more universal to reflect the times we live in. In current usage diva usually refers to a talented woman who possesses grand prowess or skill and often has the ambition or attitude to match.

Who do you consider a literary Diva? Why do you love them? (And don’t say Joan Didion. She is already taken fifty times over. Be creative people!!!!!)

Please send us your answers by email at maryliterary@gmail.com

The best answers will be posted on our gay/queer/bi-curious blog.

2009-07-30T08:38:00.000-07:00

MARY proudly presents "Gay Superhuman Playwrights we love: George C. Wolfe"

Director, writer, dramatist, producer and all around superhuman, George C. Wolfe has not only distinguished himself in the arts, but he has made me feel like the most indolent and shiftless homosexual in the known world.

Does this man sleep?

He has directed the Broadway version of Tony Kushner's Angels in America, written over six plays and musicals that have had successful runs on and off Broadway, served as the artistic director and producer for the Public Theater from 1993-2004 , had roles in numerous movies (catch his cameos in “The Devil Wears Prada” and “Garden State”), and currently directs for both TV and film.

Below is a scene from Wolfe's 1986 play "The Colored Museum "

The Hairpiece

2009-07-27T06:17:00.000-07:00

Mary proudly presents

“Gay poets that we love: Frank O’Hara”

Sometimes I run across a literary/artistic figure of the past and think, “Hey I wish I could have dated them or maybe just have slept with them once, or if failing that at least had small talk with them at a cocktail party or something…”

One of my biggest literary crushes has to be the poet/art critic Frank O’Hara. O’Hara was at the epicenter of the downtown poetry scene known as the New York School*(which included poets like John Ashbery and Kenneth Koch). Born in Baltimore in 1926 and raised in Massachusetts, O’Hara studied at Harvard and the University of Michigan. He moved to New York in the early 1950’s. Although primarily known for his poetry, O’Hara was also immersed in the visual art scene. He was an early champion of abstract expressionism and was on staff at the Museum of Modern Art from 1952 until his untimely death in 1966 (he was run over by a dune buggy on Fire Island!!!!).

Frank O’Hara seemed so urbane, hip, and nerd-chic sexy. In my fantasy, he and I would hang out in downtown 1950’s era New York, see avant-garde movies, and smoke weed in our paint splattered overalls while listening to Coltrane. We’d gossip about Merce Cunningham’s new boyfriend, and then later we’d make love while being serenaded by Anita O’Day, Annie Lambert and Sarah Vaughn, who’d magically stand on our fire escape and provide a jazzy Greek chorus to our love

O’Hara was a poet whose prowess was turning personal moments and feelings into a slapdash accounting of his life. O’Hara believed in immediacy. A lot of his poems were dashed off personal quickies. His style was often relaxed, clever, funny, ironic and knowing. He frequently combined tidbits of popular culture and his love for both high and low art into his work. And did I say he was funny. Smart funny! Jeez, O’Hara seems like he would have been such a great date.

Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

-From Lunch Poems.1964 Frank O'Hara.

* The New York School of poets often created poetry that was blithe, violent, and observational. Their writing style was often described as cosmopolitan and world-traveled.

2009-07-24T10:35:00.000-07:00

E. LYNN HARRIS
1955-2009

In a perfect world I would never have to write this letter. In a perfect world there wouldn’t be a need for it. In a perfect world this pain…absent. In a perfect world we would accept people for who and what they are. No strings, complete honesty, total acceptance, no matter what. In this imperfect world we live in, there is no longer dignity in telling the truth.

This is the hardest letter I have ever written. I know my revelation has caused you great pain. I know you have questions about how and why I’m bisexual. I’ve spent the last forty-eight hours trying to explain it to my father. I’ve spent the last eight years trying to understand it myself.

Sorry is such a simple word….yet it is the only word that comes to mind in expressing how I feel about what has happened with us. Love is such a simple yet powerful word, yet it’s the only word that describes my feelings for you.

-Invisible Life 1991
E. Lynn Harris

2009-07-22T04:06:00.001-07:00

Mary proudly presents“Beauty, Beauty Everywhere! Finding poetry on your internet porn fan site.”

It was the great Greek poet Aeneas (or was it Donna Summers?) who said “Beauty is everywhere”. I’m always pursuing the sublime in the commonplace. Poetry is everywhere if you look for it. Search hard enough and the lyrical can be found almost anywhere.

I belong to the Eric Manchester Internet Fan Site, which is a web based fan site/list serve dedicated to 80’s porn star Eric Manchester. The site allows members to post anything and everything about their shared fixation: Eric Manchester. Manchester was a modest gay adult film star in the golden age of Falcon video pac 62. He never reached the dizzying heights of say a Jeff Stryker or Steve Hammond, but neither was he a third tier star like Nick Cougar. His performances had an unpretentious and low key charm. He was simultaneously rough trade and boyish, a little dangerous but never “I’m gonna cut you” scary. He basically played the young tough mechanic type who happened to have a beautifully tender face. A hard candy with a soft sexy boyish center. He never over acted, nor was he overtly demonstrative in his scenes. He was a grunter not a screamer.

The internet fan site contains tons of Eric Manchester minutia.

The last known sighting of Eric was apparently talking to a parking meter (maybe high on drugs?) in San Francisco earlier this year.

He started his porn career at age 18.

The tattoo on his upper left arm is the Rolling Stones' logo.

Though never a huge star, Mr.Manchester has built up a cult following over the years. His fan site has over 1,400 members. Maybe people find Eric’s low watt performances and playfully delinquent persona arousing like I do, or maybe we all are obsessive perverts and every 80’s porn star has an active news group/website floating out there in cyberspace.

On this particular website there are hundreds of odes to Eric. Like some gorgeous fallen Roman solider he is extolled over and over again in a manner that makes Walt Whitman’s “ode to young men bathing” seem like a ride on the kiddy merry go round.

Here is a brief snapshot of the more fervent and expressive posting on the fan site, which I give to you dear readers, in an effort to demonstrate that the muse can be discovered in the most unlikely places, even in the skuzzy 80’s videos you have been masturbating to for the last ten years:

“Can you hear the sound of his sexy voice? Can you hear the sound of his sexy voice? And the sound of his balls slapping the hole? “-David (Editor’s note: Congrats David you evoked Eric with a beguiling simplicity)

“Eric, Eric, just the mere thought of him causes stomachs to flutter and dicks to engorge”- Ericnews (Editor’s note: The stomach fluttering is a little cliché, but “dicks to engorge” is a nice touch)

“The perfection, the beauty of a great man!”-David (Editor’s note: Incredibly succinct. This David character is good!)

“Eric is sleeping in my kitchen”- Frankcoko (Editor’s note: Surreal, abrupt and slightly eerie. I like it!)

“America can still be the land of hope in spite of the Republican party and the Religious Right. Thanks for the greetings”.-Stephen (Editor’s note: Stephen while political inspired uplift has its place; and you clearly know how to infuse your personal passion into your writing this is actually a cautionary tale on what not to do. Stay on task, this poem is about Eric Manchester remember?)

“I remember seeing this video a long, long time ago. The lighting was awful (at least in the VHS copy I had), and you could not see Eric a lot. Anyway, I think I do have this flick in digital format. As soon as I find it, I will upload the scene of Eric for you”.-Antonio (Editor’s note: Antonio this piece is a terrific demonstration of grafting the ideas of memory, remorse and action. Well done!)

“Some of your posts have been about him being in Las Vegas. All I have to say about that is "DAMNIT!"

I seem to be two steps behind him.

I just moved back to Seattle from Las Vegas.

If he has gone the way of most people in Vegas, I'm really sorry to hear that. Although I don't know what he looks like now, but I would LOVE to see him.

When people ask me which celebrity I would love to sleep with, I ALWAYS say, "Eric Manchester".-Richard (Editor’s note: Richard I get where you are going with this poem. I love the use of all caps for the defiant DAMINT. You are seemingly trying to reflect an obsessive love that is always falling out of reach. But sometimes ambiguity brings out depth in a piece. I like the idea but the execution is a little shaky.)

“My favorite Manchester scenes are in Mannequin Man - where he keeps saying he's "fixing to tear up your ass" to the guy in the back room. .....and then he does.” –James (Editor’s note: Awww James you carry with in you the heart of a true romantic. Bravo my good man!)

2009-07-21T09:19:00.000-07:00

Hilton Als on Michael Jackson.
A brilliantly queer look at The King of Pop.

Link here:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22951

2009-07-19T13:31:00.000-07:00

Mary proudly presents:
Homosexual interviews that we will never see on 60 Minutes.

Drag Queen extraordinaire Lady Bunny interviews writer/playwright and gay activist Larry Kramer.

(via "In The Life")

I think Lady Bunny’s bouffant contrasts nicely with Kramer’s politically minded rage.

2009-07-17T21:08:00.000-07:00

Mary proudly presents “An Ode to Essex Hemphill”

This was a late entry to the “what is your favorite gay/queer themed book” MARY blog post:

My favorite gay/queer themed book is Ceremonies (prose and poetry) by Essex Hemphill. In the early 90's, when I was searching high and low for my identity as a black gay young man. I desperately hungered for a face that looked like mine. In Oxford Books, located in Atlanta, GA, a reserved and bashful country boy discovered pages and pages of fire, life, joy and lessons contained in Essex’s book. Essex Hemphill is my hero. His work changed my life. His stories, poetry and his journey taught me how laugh out loud with my friends, to face the words faggot and sissy head on without fear or hastily fleeing, and finally to live and love freely.

-Eric Hall

I too loved Essex’s work.

Born in April 16, 1957, in Chicago, Illinois but primarily raised in the Southeast section of Washington, DC, Essex began to write poems as a teenager. Essex took on the endeavor of writing in the hopes of creating a narrative for a life that he was living, but had simply not read yet: the narrative of a contemporary black gay man. During his brief literary career he published over three books of poetry/prose/essays and edited several more.

His style of poetry was based on the African-American literary tradition of “testimony”; the literary and oral convention of giving (preaching) a “proper” accounting of the Black experience, via the use of rousing, highly stylized/dramatic language.

I know some of us have been testimonied to death by the onslaught of fair to middling poetry slams in the 90’s, but Hemphill skillfully circumvented the trap of “slam poetry clichés.” His work was neither unintelligible rants, nor boring expressions of narcissism.

Mr. Hemphill’s work was a moving, sustained attempt to reveal higher truths, both personal and political. The enhancing powers of the erotic. The love and loveless relations blacks have with one another. The dynamism of black sissies. The objectification of the black male body in white gay culture. The power of finding your own voice. Hemphill scrutinized topics that affected him, with an intelligent, poetic candor.

His inward wonderings were often used to beautifully uncover complex outer-truths; which in the end makes his work more art than rhetoric.

Essex died from AIDS related complications in 1995.

Heavy Breathing

I wanted to give you

my sweet man pussy,

but you grunted me away

and all other Black men

who tried to be near you.

Our beautiful nigga lips and limbs

stirred no desire in you.

Instead you chose blonde,

milk-toned creatures to bed.

but you were still one of us,

dark like us, despised like us.

-Essex Hemphill (From Ceremonies)

2009-07-15T20:45:00.001-07:00

Mary proudly presents: “A selection from a homosexual book we love!”

Crabs are the lamest STD of all, because you see them, dots on your body, and their pinchy needle legs squeal, “You are dirty! You are a whore! You are single!” Until you blast them

out with radioactive A-2000, which is so toxic it makes your skin throb, and then you sit there and glow like shameful uranium. Crabs are visual and concrete-not like the noxious, ever present fumes of AIDS. It hovers like gas. It is the air I breathe and surrounds my body. I monitor myself constantly-Was that a night sweat? Am I fatigued? Are my glands swollen? Is that what thrush looks like? Am I practicing “safe(r) sex? I lie in my bed the night after a sex act and ask question after question, putting myself through a brochure of risks until my terrifying investigation begins to tire me and I have to slump in a chair and find comfort in the idea that I will soon be too dead to care. Then I will wake up forgetful and go out and start all over again, giving blow jobs with the same mouth that says God I have to get tested again soon.

-Hornito MY LIE LIFE

by Mike Albo, 2000

Support the arts and sodomy in one fell swoop, buy this book.

2009-07-13T04:39:00.000-07:00

Mary proudly presents “Great (or at least interesting) homosexual book to screen adaptations”

"I am so immersed in my characters that their motives are my own. When I write about a thief, I become one; when I write about Captain Penderton, I become a homosexual man. I become the characters I write about and I bless the Latin poet Terence who said 'Nothing human is alien to me."
-Carson McCullers

In 1940, the southern writer Carson McCullers shot to fame with her debut novel The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. * At the startling age of 23, Ms. McCullers created a nuanced and empathic tale concerning a loosely connected band of stricken, lonely, heart sick characters. The characters fruitlessly searched for “contentment” in a world that had seemingly run out it (sounds a lot like the Splash Bar on a Monday night).

Her debut novel contained some pretty strong homoerotic over tones, but it was her second novel The Reflections in a Golden Eye that Ms. McCullers divorced the “sub” from the “text”, and undertook the issue of homosexuality head on. Released in 1941, The Reflections in a Golden Eye takes place on a southern army base located outside Atlanta. The novel primarily concerns a cowardly, closeted army captain named Penderton and his cheating temptuous wife Lenora. It can be said, without any doubt, that the army base in this novel is more Peyton Place, by way of Knots Landing, than boring old Fort Bragg.

There is the character of Private Williams, an odd introverted man, who after being in the service for two years is assigned to stable duty at the army base. While doing yard/stable work at the home of Captain Penderton, he sees Lenora in the buff and becomes obsessed with her. At night, Private Williams sneaks into Penderton’s house, and alternately watches Lenora sleep/ fondles the panties and bras in Lenora’s lingerie drawer.

There is Lenora's current lover, Major Morris Langdon, who lives with his depressed wife Alison, and her effeminate Filipino houseboy Anacleto. The manic Alison is recovering from the death of her and Langdon’s new-born child, and has clipped off her nipples with garden shears in anguish.

Meanwhile, Captain Penderton realizes that he has the hots for Private Williams, unaware of the private's longing for Leonora.

Basically the novel is nuts, but it is also so well written that McCullers (almost?) overcomes the odd plot contrivances with her humanistic touch and stellar lyrical dexterity.

This novel screams a lot of things, but it does not scream movie adaptation. In 1963, the out-there transgressive nature of the book did not stop director John Houston from giving it ago. The film starred Marlon Brando, as the not so latent homosexual Capt. Penderton , and Elizabeth Taylor , as the hot in the pants Lenora. The film is as crazy, tawdry and beautiful as the novel, which I guess is no easy feat. Below is the trailer:

Below is a scene of Lenore whipping her husband in anger after he has injured her prize horse:

One YouTube commenter suggested Ms.Taylor thought she was hitting Richard Burton. Oh you witty Gays! I love you!!!

*Whenever my friends call me with their tales of heartbreak and woe, I always inevitably reply “Well baby the heart is a lonely hunter….”

2009-07-10T06:52:00.000-07:00

Author Edmund White on 19th century poet Arthur Rimbaud
(Editor's note: Rimbaud is apparently like everyone's crazy 1st boyfriend)

Venus Anadyomene
by Arthur Rimbaud

As from a green zinc coffin, a woman’s
Head with brown hair heavily pomaded
Emerges slowly and stupidly from an old bathtub,
With bald patches rather badly hidden;

Then the fat gray neck, broad shoulder-blades
Sticking out; a short back which curves in and bulges;
Then the roundness of the buttocks seems to take off;
The fat under the skin appears in slabs:

The spine is a bit red; and the whole thing has a smell
Strangely horrible; you notice especially
Odd details you’d have to see with a magnifying glass…

The buttocks bear two engraved words: CLARA VENUS;
—And that whole body moves and extends its broad rump
Hideously beautiful with an ulcer on the anus.

Translated from the original French by Wallace Fowlie

2009-07-06T13:13:00.000-07:00

The Crypto Nazi vs. the Queer

A very special homosexual historical moment

brought to you by Mary.

History can be depressing. We all know how “history” is going to turn out, and it’s also disappointingly not so different from the present

In 1968 America was embroiled in The Vietnam War. An American backed militia raged against the Soviet Union sponsored communist Viet Cong for the hearts, minds and sterling property rights of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.

Some Conservatives (and not so conservative, it was partly JFK’s and Lyndon B Johnson’s war after all) felt the war was a valid fight for democracy and containment against an unholy threat, while many on the far left felt American participation in Vietnam was basically US nation building gone amuck. Hmmm sound familiar children?

During the ’68 Democratic National Convention, held in Chicago, local police violently cracked down on anti-war demonstrators who were protesting the Vietnam War in Grant Park. In his sedate ABC studio, newsman Howard K. Smith asked noted WASP, conservative thinker, gin drinker, and National Review founder William F Buckley and intellectual, novelist, MSM,* and professional "bon mot" dispenser Gore Vidal to comment on the fracas in Grant Park.

Vidal felt the Grant Park melee was a horrid representation of police brutality; Buckley felt it was a case of dangerous un-American proclivities/sentiment being held in check. The exchange between the two things got heated and personal:

The fighting between Buckley and Vidal went on for years and years and years, with libel suits between the two being thrown around like cheap mink coats. Vidal got the last word on the hostility with Buckley, because he simply lived longer. One of the grand perks of out living your enemies is that you can read your nemeses for filth and they can’t say boo. (Editor’s note: see also Cristina Crawford.)

When William Buckley died in 2008, Vidal released this statement:

Although Buckley was often drunk and out of control, he was always a spontaneous liar on any subject that his dizzy brain might extrude. When we were in Chicago during the Republican convention, the Chicago police decided it would be fun to attack the young co-ed demonstrators in Grant Park, not far from our studio. It was one of the worst displays of police brutality I’ve ever seen, and so I said on air; he liked what the police had done; in no time, the whole country was as shocked as I, but not Buckley. On air he was hissing like a cobra against the young people in Grant Park because, he said, they were egging on the VietCong to kill American Marines. They were not, of course. Buckley was a world-class American liar on the far right who would tell any lie he thought he could get away with. Years of ass-kissing famous people in the press and elsewhere had given him, he felt, a sort of license to libelously slander those hated liberals who, from time to time, smoked him out as I did in Chicago, when I defended the young people in Grant Park by denying that they were Nazis and that the only “pro- or crypto-Nazi” I could think of was himself.

*MSM=MEN WHO HAVE SEX WITH MEN. Vidal believes that “gayness” is an act, not necessarily a state of being.

KUSHNER RETURNS TO BROADWAY

2009-07-02T14:20:00.000-07:00

Mr. Kushner returns-
(story via AP) by Patrick Condon

With a sometimes bumpy Minneapolis test debut for his new family drama out of the way, playwright Tony Kushner is setting his sights on getting the play to Broadway by the end of the year.
"The Intelligent Homosexual's Guide to Capitalism and Socialism with a Key to the Scriptures" ended its run at Minneapolis' Guthrie Theater last weekend, meeting mixed reviews from local critics and requiring what Kushner called "steel nerves on the part of everybody involved" as he wrote and re-wrote the play even after it opened in previews.

In an interview with The Associated Press, the Pulitzer Prize and Tony-winning author of "Angels in America" said he's proud of the work and thrilled that the Guthrie gave him the opportunity chance to work out the new play on the stage. The Guthrie, praised by Kushner and others as a flagship regional theater, commissioned the new work and rolled out the red carpet by using it to anchor a three-month "Kushner Celebration."

"I don't think anybody involved has ever been through something coming together in quite this way," Kushner said. "The script was very much in process all the way through, to a degree that's new to me."

That may be why local critics complained the play had an incomplete quality, and suggested the Guthrie presented its audience with an unfinished work. But Kushner said it gave him the luxury to shape the play in real time in anticipation of a national debut — a rare chance for a playwright of his stature.

Kusher said nothing's been firmed up for a Broadway debut. But he said he's working with Scott Rudin, a heavyweight film and theater producer with five Tony Awards under his belt and a hand in numerous major Broadway productions in the last decade.
If he can't strike a deal for Broadway, Kushner said the play would likely debut off-Broadway at the Public Theater, with which he has a long association. "But I'd like to see it on Broadway," he said.
"The Intelligent Homosexual" tackled family relations, aging, homosexuality, religion and other weighty topics, and Kushner said he intended it to echo with similarities to the family dramas by some of his favorite playwrights including Arthur Miller and Eugene O'Neill.

Local theater critics were ambivalent about the result. Both daily newspapers had qualified praise, but the Star Tribune said it seemed "unfinished and uncertain of its purpose" and the St. Paul Pioneer press called it "mushy, melodramatic." The alternative weekly City Pages was more generous, pronouncing it "immensely entertaining."

Both daily papers also noted in stories that the Guthrie, on Kushner's behalf, asked national theater critics not to review the show. Kushner and Guthrie artistic director Joe Dowling bristled at suggestions that Minnesota audiences were subjected to an unfinished play.

"I don't feel we asked anyone to sit through an unfinished or unready piece of work," Kushner said. "We used previews the way they were meant to be used."
But he also admitted that weak reviews from national critics could have been "crippling to me" as he continued to work on the play. "The trick is going to be figuring out the things that didn't work narratively," he said.
Dowling said the play met the nonprofit theater's box office goals. He said in all, about 85,000 people saw one of the plays or somehow participated in a packed schedule of Kushner-related programming.
The theater reported that "Intelligent Homosexual" played to 69 percent of its capacity, while the other Kushner Celebration productions did better: "Caroline, Or Change," which got strong local reviews, played to 83 percent of capacity, while a series of short Kushner plays reached 76 percent.
"For us it was extraordinary, to see how we can engage this community and how people got into the whole idea of immersing themselves in the work of a single playwright," said Dowling, who's said he considers Kushner one of if not the most important living playwright.

Kushner briefly became a fixture in Minneapolis, giving speeches and local interviews and even letting his face be plastered on billboards and bus ads. When the city's mayor proclaimed "Tony Kushner Day" in Minneapolis, the playwright joked it would force him into "eleven more years of therapy."

Kushner said anyone who saw "The Intelligent Homosexual" in Minneapolis and revisits it in New York will find it "absolutely recognizable. It'll also be very different. The whole play is there, but it's packed so tight right now. Only I know what's in there for sure."

Books You Love!

2009-06-30T08:51:00.001-07:00

Well the results are in! You told us what books you loved, and we are happy to report that not only are you all literate, you also have good taste. Below is a snap shot of reader comments:

I've always been a fan of Christopher Baum's Gods and Monsters, but when you write, "the one you turn to again and again because it speaks to you on a visceral/emotional/personal level", I have to go with Tony Kushner's, Angels in America. Mr. Kushner presents some even more amazing, distinctly gay insight in his work, A Bright Room Called Day, but overall, I would not classify it as "queer-themed".

-Jonathan

The Lord Won't Mind, by Gordon Merrick
Young Man From the Provinces by Alan Helms
The Motion of Light in Water, by Samuel Delaney
The City and the Pillar, by Gore Vidal
Intimate Companions, by David Ledick

-Michael

(Editor’s note: Samuel Delaney memoir so vividly describes late 1950’s New York City that it makes me want to build a time machine. I would go back in time, and like Delaney, have insightful dinners with WH Auden and Albert Einstein, in-between mass gay orgies in fabulously skuzzy, movie theaters in Time Square. That is living!)

Loving in the War Years by Cherríe Moraga

-Ronak

My favorite book is Querelle by Jean Genet, with his Miracle of the Rose as a close tie. I read each about once a year. I love the passage in Querelle where Genet describes one of the character’s walk, “as if a ferocious dog were also walking between his legs.” Miracle of the Rose is such a poetic masculine masterpiece that it really is an inspiration for facing the world.

-Ricardo

Oscar Moore’s A Matter of Life and Sex came out at a time when I left home for the first time and was living in another continent, alone, at 19 so it stands out more than the other books. It made me want to be a rent boy (under my own impossible to uphold terms of course) and at the same time want to get a job, so that I would never have to be a rent boy. It’s hedonistic description of a middle-class boy defying his family’s social mores to go out on a limb and do whatever he wanted to spoke volumes to me at the time. A classic for any age.
My Brother - Jamaica Kincaid
The Bacchae - Euripedes
The Swimming Pool Library - Alan Hollinghurst
The Picture of Dorian Grey - Oscar Wilde
Before Night Falls - Reinaldo Arenas
Giovanni's Room - James Baldwin
The Man Who Fell In Love With the Moon - Tom Spanbauer

-Curt

Jean Genet’s Our Lady Of The Flowers.
It's just poetry. Poetry masquerading as prose,
beautiful words heartbreakingly rendered.
Simply gorgeous.
My runner up is titles are The Philosophy of Andy Warhol and/or the Andy Warhol Diaries by Andy Warhol by Andy Warhol.

-Joel

(Editor’s note: my favorite quote from Andy Warhol’s Dairies:

Sunday, September 10, 1978
...Truman (Capote) had told me we'd be having caviar and potatoes, but instead he had bad quiche. Truman was listening to records. Donna Summer, I think. The guy from California had joints and he and Bob (Colacello) and Truman smoked them, and Truman said that after the joint he would be really exciting and interesting but he wasn't. I was talking about the Gay Bob doll. Robert Hayes had one at the Factory, it's a doll that comes out of a closet and it's wearing an earing and a necklace and a plaid shirt and blue jeans and a handbag and a big cock, and I guess I said the wrong thing because everybody there was named Bob, but if you ever want to get anybody anything, get them that, it's so funny.)

The Farewell Symphony by Edmund White. Mr. White’s best book, because his ornate prose is injected with real harrowing emotion.

-Jason

The first that still speaks to me is The Whole World Was Watching by Romaine Patterson, it was truly moving and a great read. The next one is actually Permanent Partners: Building Gay and Lesbian Relationships That Last by Betty Berzon, this was high on my self help list and still holds true to its advice. Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, by Paul Monette, was a life changing book for me it solidified my sensitive to others as a young adult.

-Chris

The Salt Point by Paul Russell

Flesh and Blood by Michael Cunningham

The Uncanny X-Men (The Collected Phoenix Saga issues 131-136)

-Harold

(Editors note: Well I guess you could consider mutants a queer metaphor, and Kitty Pride is a great drag name.)

The Color of Summer by Reinaldo Arenas, the only queer book that gives Thomas Pynchon a run for his money. A Post-Modern novel without the emotion or heart or humor taken out, which is a rare thing.

-Will

Before Night Falls by Reinaldo Arenas. I fell in love with Reinaldo Arenas and still miss him
Landscape Memory by Matthew Stadler. This novel has a fuzzy bygone innocence and is cleanly sensual.
American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis, because it mentioned big mean straight weeping purple dicks

- Troy

(Editor’s note: straight weeping purple dicks? Oh my! I don’t remember that part!)

(Editor’s note 2: I used to love Bret Easton Ellis because his early novels revolved around angst ridden gay characters who listened to The Smiths and wore Armani sweaters over their Public Image Limited T-shirts, which pretty much summed up the entire male population of my undergrad creative writing program at Emerson .)

Hornito by Mike Albo. A perfect encapsulation of the late 90’s lower east side gay scene. Crowbar Anyone?

-AW

The Young and Evil by Parker Tyler and Charles Henri Ford. I revisit The Young and Evil quite often because it still seems so shockingly accurate in modern times. It's a surrealistic tale of two young gay men who move to New York City in the early 1930's and get sucked into the decadent Bohemia of the times. It's also a bit of a sadomasochistic love story that ends in an unexpected way. The prose itself is scattered and half-baked at some points, which can make it hard to follow. But it adds up to a compelling, idiosyncratic and sometimes shocking image of gay life in NYC, pre-pre-pre Stonewall. But what keeps me coming back is that I know characters like this in NYC today that live the same lives. The book is timeless, and I'm sure it wasn't intended to be so. I actually got to meet an almost 90-year-old Charles Henri Ford at his apartment in the attic of the Dakota building in 2002. But that's another long, long story.

-Josh

Traitor to the Race by Darieck Scott. Mr. Scott takes on race, sex, fame and politics with a style that is simply stunning

- Michael

To confine my choices to one book is a little daunting. Plus, most of the gay-themed work I have read, I have yet to re-read. So many books have been instructive at different time in my life, eg.
Evelyn Waugh's Bridgeshead Revisited.
Tennessee William's Moise and the World of Reason.
Reinaldo Arenas's Before Night Falls.
Andre Aciman’s Call Me By Your Name;
David Leavitt's Lost Language of Cranes;

Jeannette Winterson’s Written on The Wind.

Virginia Woolf's Orlando;
The Swimming Pool Library by Alan Hollinghurst knocked my socks off when I first read it, and his later book, Line Of Beauty is masterful. I think the latter book might have the edge.

-Roger

A Separate Peace, by John Knowles. I totally remember identifying with Gene since he was horribly jealous of Finny and in love with him at the same time. He did anything to please him...even things that he was terribly frightened of...and in the end it leads him to do something that results in Finny's death...and he still is in love with him at the end...and doesn't ever find peace.
House of Mirth, by Edith Wharton. Poor Miss Lily Bart spending all of her money and credit to look good. Constantly trying to do the right thing in order to improve her self. Hmmm, sound familiar? Dying of overdose or something in the end. You would think that I would have learned something from this book.

-Rodney

My favorite queer themed book would have to be Not Wanted on the Voyage, by the brilliant Canadian writer Timothy Findlay. The book is basically a retelling of the bible story Noah’s Ark, but from the perspective of many of the heretofore unmentioned characters in the original, such as Noah's wife cat. A fabulously queer Lucifer even makes a appearance. This book is pure queer gold not only because many of the individuals and creatures in this novel have questionable sexualities, but also because of the uncanny breadth of perspective contained in each character. Findlay includes creatures thought to be 'mythical' (such as unicorns and dragons) who end up 'extinct' through acts of pure human evil! Timothy Findlay is a true genius and a truly Canadian gay icon!!

-Zachari

Mary, a literary magazine published quarterly, is currently seeking submissions for both our print and web publications. Submissions are welcomed in prose, poetry, or essay format. Our mission is to showcase Queer/Gay writings of artist merit.Submissions should not be any longer than 5,000 words, and can be submitted electronically at maryliterary@gmail.com

Writers whose work is accepted will be awarded a small honorarium.

Favorite gay/ queer themed book?

2009-06-28T15:25:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends,

We want to know; what is your favorite gay/ queer themed book? When we say favorite we don’t mean the book you feel is simply superlatively written, but the one you turn to again and again because it speaks to you on a visceral/emotional/personal level. Please tell us what that book is and why? We at Mary will collect all the data, run it through our highly efficient homosexual super computers, and post the findings on our blog. You can email us at

maryliterary@gmail.com

regards
MARY

Mary, a literary magazine published quarterly, is currently seeking submissions for both our print and web publications. Submissions are welcomed in prose, poetry, or essay format. Our mission is to showcase Queer/Gay writings of artist merit.

Submissions should not be any longer than 5,000 words, and can be submitted electronically at maryliterary@gmail.com
Writers whose work is accepted will be awarded a small honorarium.

MARY

2009-06-19T07:10:00.000-07:00

”However I must caution you, love: Those things may be amusing to us, but who, after all wants to read about sissies?”

-“Dancer from the Dance”

Andrew Holleran

Who wants to read lyrical tales about men fucking each other in the butts and sucking cocks? And love? Who wants to read about men falling in love with other men? Kissing each others hair lined lips? Groping their lover’s smooth or hirsute or shaven or flabby or muscled chest? Who wants to read a detailed story about a queer driving to a disco to meet a date, or expressive verse about a gay man buying a pair of jeans? Who wants to read a haiku about a fairy eating another queen’s ass? Or inspired prose about a fag lobbying the state house for his rights? Or a macho cruising the bathrooms at Penn Station? Or giving himself an enema before a trick comes over? Or coming out to his emotionally-absent mother? Who in this very modern era wants to read extravagant tales about true male homosexual desire?

Maybe more then a few.

When I was fifteen years old I worked at the Greenburgh Public Library, located in the small suburban hamlet of Hartsdale, NY. My job duties mostly consisted of me pushing a rickety wooden cart full of books and shelving them properly in the library stacks. The job was tedious, but one of the perks was that I was often able to read some interesting books to pass the time. My taste varied. I read everything from the brilliantly cynical young adult novels like “The Chocolate War” by Robert Cormier, to the campy pulp opulence offered by Judith Krantz’s “I’ll Take Manhattan.” Amongst all the volumes of literary clutter I sorted through, there was one book that stood out in my rapidly developing (or deteriorating) homosexual mind: George Whitmore’s novel “The Confessions of Danny Slocum.”

“The Confessions of Danny Slocum” was a semi-autographical tale of an openly homosexual man dealing with his frustrating sexual impotence. Whitmore used the character’s sexual exploits not to titillate, provoke, or offer an opinionated screed, even though I’m sure it could have served any of those purposes in the right light. Whitmore’s primary purpose was simply to create a poetic simulation of how an out, slightly-neurotic gay man in the late 1970’s lived his life. The novel is a simple, beautifully rendered testament to the life he was living. I stole the book from the library, and for the past eleven years it has become a psalm-like touchstone of what I love to read: a lyrical snapshot of gay life that is often not considered for the established canon.

Mary is seeking to capture and examine these queer moments; to offer a surfeit of gay writings of artistic value and give them the showcase they deserve. Mary’s goal is to highlight writings that strive to reveal a perfect homosexual moment without any rationalization other than to skillfully reflect: this is the gay world or this is the gay world as we imagine it to be.

In Mary there might be political and social commentary, and maybe an indoctrinating manifesto or two; but none of these things will come before a beautiful phrase or a lyrical stanza that lay bare the lives of the seemingly disparate communities of queers, sissies, activists, “straight-acting”/appearing men who have sex with men, daddies, punks, tops, cubs, pigs, bangee queens, twinks, romantics and head cases. Mary is dedicated to gay writing that is not simply art for art’s sake, but art as a demonstration of life.

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Mary, a literary magazine published quarterly, is currently seeking submissions for both our print and web publications. Submissions are welcomed in prose, poetry, or essay format. We are eclectic and amenable to diverse styles and genres, but we prefer work that offers lyrical and inspired takes on the gay/queer/ homophile “way of life.” We at Mary understand that tales involving the “gay lifestyle” ranges from the staunchly conservative, to the staunchly liberal; from those that are somber, to those that revel in camp; from that of the highbrow, to that of the very, very, very low. We welcome all. Mary’s mission is to emphasize aesthetics, not social or political affiliations. To quote Oscar Wilde, our patron saint, “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.”

So write well and send it to us.

Submissions should not be any longer than 5,000 words, and can be submitted electronically at maryliterary@gmail.com

Writers whose work is accepted will be awarded a small honorarium.

Mary also accepts a small portion of art, photos, and illustrations to be published along side written work. Please contact us by email if you are interested in submitting your visual creations.