I have always wanted children. I love playing with them. I love talking to them, but not down to them. I love the things they say. I’m fascinated and tickled and moved by the stuff they come up with. I’ve always felt this way. When I was five, my parents were very close with our neighbors on 17th Street, and my sister and I loved playing with their toddler. Even then, knee-high to a grasshopper myself, I happily assumed a nurturing role with a younger child. It was like playing house or playing with dolls – although completely unlike the Aaron Spelling-esque dramas I used to stage with my sister’s Barbies. In the years that followed, there was a succession of family friends’ little kids that I loved and was “good with.”
Was Michael Jackson gay? Well, he never sucked my cock, darling . . . but even if I’d had a personal sexual experience with him, the answer, as always, depends on the definition of gay. Perhaps a better question is whether Michael Jackson might be “queer.” One needn’t look too hard at any picture of Michael Jackson (particularly since the early 90s when he added the heavily made-up female face to an already uber-flamboyant appearance) to acknowledge him as at least “Gender Fuck.”
I don’t wish to address the questions of Michael Jackson’s alleged pedophilia or the sexual molestation charges made against him. I am interested in Michael Jackson as a “queer” artist and in what his work means to me as a New Old Gay. I’m thinking back on my first Pride Parade. I would love to say “Pride March,” but as I reflect upon my annual bacchanalian celebrations of gay liberation, “parade” is a much better word for whatever it is, exactly, I’ve been doing the last Sunday of the last 14 Junes. In San Francisco in 1996 (the end of my sophomore year at Berkeley), I spent my very first Pride with close friends, a pair of gay twins. They came to my apartment the night before to prep me (being from San Francisco, they had been attending Pride since High School). We spent the night on my terrace, in drag, singing and dancing along with Diana Ross & The Supremes as well as the black girls from Little Shop of Horrors, to the horror of the homeless people walking around Berkeley at 3 AM. Screw ‘em. We were having a blast, and we were proud.
My Sandra Bernhard obsession has continued growing on into this week as I’ve not only been rediscovering the pleasures of her albums, but also reading her books for the first time. I’m just walking around in, as she would say, “a deep Sandra moment.” Whether she’s talking about politics or celebrities, or her favorite sushi delivery in Chelsea, there’s a passion and an uncompromising specificity. Minus the depth and insight of Sandra Bernhard, Kathy Griffin is another funny lady who would sooner tank than beat around the bush. Kathy changed up the format of her show to include a different guest star every week. She said she needed to because she wasn’t in the same place she was five years ago when the D-List first came out, and she didn’t want to pretend she’s not as successful as she is. The best part is that Kathy is still as excited about the stars as we are and she was. A major part of the appeal of Kathy Griffin has always been her everyman quality.
Thank you so much for all the wonderful feedback on last week’s post. A lot of people were confused as to the meaning of The New Old Gay. Ha! Welcome to my life, as I try to figure out what Old, New, and New Old mean to me. The term first came to my awareness (and the world’s?) via a New York Observer piece from last year titled, of course, “The New Old Gay.” At the time, I was making a random appearance onstage (in the words of Mary in Merrily We Roll Along, “I only perform at dinner.”) with some Jewfag journalist friends in an all-male reading of Wendy Wasserstein’s The Sisters Rosensweig at the Duplex, complete with interpolated showtunes. No, really. Anyway, the article generously mentioned our reading, and one of the aforementioned Sisters forwarded it to the group.
The good news is the Tony Awards are still gay. Even in this day and age of increasing LGBT visibility in pop culture, few shows can compete with the Tonys’ queer quotient of dancing boys in tight clothes, crying girls in designer dresses, and Liza.
The Tonys this year were not poised to be rife with the kind of instantly legendary “Moment Like This” moments, like last year when Patti LuPone gave her diva-worshippers and haters alike an unforgettable showstopping performance (and I’m just talking about her acceptance speech – “Shut UP! It’s been 29 yeeears!!!” – and don’t even get me started on that balls-to-the-wall “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” ) or the brilliant, hilarious and moving Lin-Manuel Miranda’s brilliant, hilarious and moving rapping of his speech, immediately securing his place in the pantheon of distinctive Broadway stars. Still, though, the gay Super Bowl did not go straight and the 2009 Tony Awards included more than a few moments to satisfy this new old gay. |