Mister Cory

Thoughts on "The Homosexual in America," by Donald Webster Cory, written in 1951.


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When I first came out, I wanted nothing to do with gay history. I wanted to just live my life, date guys, have good times, and establish myself. And I did that. But as part of my new book project I've been reading a lot of gay history, and it's been crazy interesting and I can't put the stuff down. I think there will be a day when I'm glad to walk away from it all, but for the time being, this is good stuff.



Anyway, so this book is THE seminal American work on homosexuals. It was written under a pen name by a man married to a woman, during a time when gay men were literally denied the First Amendment Right of Assembly -- not only were gay bars illegal across the U.S., but even gay book clubs were broken up. In spite of this, the author of this book spent years interviewing gay men, talking to doctors and psychiatrists, and reading all the gay literature he could get his hands on and produced a book that, for the time, is pretty amazing. It's also encouraging to see how far we've come in the last 50 years, and discouraging to see that only 50 years ago, things were so fucked up. 50 years ago, if you formed any sort of gay group at all, you were subject to arrest, your property searched and/or confiscated, and you were subject to black lists and virtually unemployable.

Some gems from this book:

re fighting his urges --

"Compelled to solve the problem and convinced that the only way to solve it [being gay] was to rid myself of the homosexual urge, I visited a well-known psychoanalyst, who assured me that I could be helped. Gradually, as the long analysis proceeded, it became apparent to me that he was going to help me overcome my feelings of shame, guilt, remorse, rather than overcome the impulses which brought forward those feelings. I fought bitterly against this plan. I wanted my shame and was proud of it. In fact, I needed it . . . by feeling guilty and remorseful, I exonerated myself of all responsibility, proving to my own self that homosexuality was a compulsion carried out against my will; and this exoneration made it possbile to continue the very same homosexual life. But the price I was paying was severe."

The "desert island" example for straights:

"You might, for instance, [as a straight man] be isolated on an island inhabited only by persons of your own sex with the prospect of confinement to their company for the remainder of your life. All around, you see homosexuals well adjusted to their life. In the society in which you are placed, they are happier than you are. It is conceivable that you might force yourself, for the sake of release or material advantage, to enter into their relatinoships, but you could not possibly wish to become one of them to such an extent that you succeed in transforming yourself."

re tolerance --
" 'Being gay has taught me one thing,' a social worker for whom I have the deepest respect pointed out to me, 'and that is that 'tolerance' is the ugliest word in our language. No word is more misunderstood. We appeal to people to be tolerant of others - in other words to be willing to stand them. I don't want to be tolerated, and I can't see why anyone else should be struggling to be tolerated. If people are no good, they should not be tolerated, and if they are good, they should be accepted.'" Amen brother!




Check this book out if you've got the time. What's interesting to me is that even now, with hundreds of books written on the subject in the last 20 years, this book still has a presence and a voice that can't be dismissed. Donald Cory was apparently outed in the 1980s and was pretty upset about it. I should follow up on the story; I'm guessing the old man isn't around anymore.



And now, a song for today --

Magnetic Fields, "Two Characters in Search of a Country Song," one of the best "gay" love songs ever. Check it out.



My first ever gay relationship was exactly like this, two guys doomed from the get go, but MADLY in love. And it ended in a bitter gunfight that continues to do this day.

Lyrics to the song, if you're interested.



AND --

link to a Gay History web site, if this post interested you at all: Gay For Today

Kenny On The Floorboards

or, Auntie Rex Strikes Again



Kenny was dead, and his body was being cremated somewhere in the hinterlands of Missouri, or "Missoura" as the locals call it. Auntie Rex and Patrika (both men, of course, and proudly so, I might add) lived a few hours away in St. Louis and were charged with picking up the remains. Gay men being what they often are, without family, instead of relatives having Kenny buried somewhere or his ashes displayed in a hot pink urn on Mama's mantle, it was his gay sisters who were responsible for doing something with the remains. What would they do? We'll get to that.

Picture this: Rex and Patrika were two early-thirties queens at the time; Rex a sometimes platinum blonde and Patrika a lovely brunette. Rex, when comfortable, always has her shirt unbuttoned at least halfway down her chest, displaying wisps of chest hair and traces of a tattoo over her right breastplate and, when she is drunk, and getting loud, is known for holding her shirt open and showing off her pierced titties to all and sundry. Patrika is the quiter sort, more prone to sitting in the background and making unfinished comments like "Well . . ." and "Well . . ." in a wonderfully bitter, sarcastic tone of voice. Nowadays Patrika cuts a very slim and trim figure with clothes to match, but this wasn't the way she dressed when I met her, and on this trip to pick up Kenny I'm picturing Patrika in semi-tight jeans and a Pet Shop Boys t-shirt and short, cropped brown hair and, maybe, a pair of Skechers.

They take Rex's car but Patrika is driving; Rex sat in the passenger seat with her little dog Misty, a mostly black and barely tan dachshund. Rex often says, and said yesterday in fact, on Mother's Day, that she should get a card because she is, after all, a Mama of two black nigger chilluns (she has added another dachshund since 1995.) So Patrika is driving, and Rex and her black baby Misty are sitting in the passenger seat and it's late and they're driving like a bat out of hell because they were done with their lunch shift at the restaurant later than usual and had gotten stuck in St. Louis rush hour traffic and Rex keeps shouting "Hurry up you slow cunt you" to Patrika because she doesn't like driving at night and it's dark and the Missoura countryside just keeps getting darker and, of course, she has to pee. And there is no gas station for miles and miles and the dark, wooded countryside is pressing in and Misty can't get comfortable and is stepping all over Mama's bladder when finally Patrika spots an old abandoned gas station off to the side of the road. She looks at Rex who says simply "that'll work, it's gonna have to" and they pull over.

Now this is the Missoura countryside, and if you haven't driven through the Missoura countryside then I'll describe it for you -- hills and trees. That's about it. There are a few towns, here and there, and a few people, but mostly it is hills, and hills, and hills, and trees. So they pull over at the abandoned gas station and walk around to the back which butts up against a very tall hill. It's dark, and Misty is running around barking at whatever is stirring in the trees 20 yards away, and Rex and Patrika begin to relieve themselves against the back side of the gas station. It's a calm, dark night, punctuated only with the sounds of Misty's aggressive dachshund "I may be tiny but I will destroy you" barks and Rex's "shuuuuuuuut the Helllllll up you god-damned dog" and the pitter patter of two gay men peeing against the side of a building. It was pretty quiet, all things considered, for a night in the countryside, but it was about to get quiet enough to hear a pin drop.

What Rex and Patrika hadn't noticed when they dashed from the car to the backside of the gas station to have a pee was that at the top of the hill their backs were to was a police station, full of redneck cops just itching to harass two queens with their dicks out 100 feet below.
Floodlights came on from above while, simultaneously, seemingly from nowhere, a cop car drove into the abandoned lot, lights flashing and crunching gravel as it slowly came to a stop next to their car. It got awful quiet. Even Misty stopped barking, and I would guess that Rex and Patrika finished peeing in a hurry. And just stood there, zipped up, staring at the cop car, waiting. "Hands on the wall you god-damned queers" -- I can hear the cop barking, and Rex and Patrika following suit, only to have Misty rush in between their legs, standing in a puddle of piss, growling viciously at the cop and threatening to tear him apart.

Rex and Patrika were sober, and Rex smart enough to keep her mouth shut, so Patrika who can butch it up a bit when she tries calmly explained that they had to relieve themselves and hadn't been able to find an open gas station. So instead of being booked for public indecency, Patrika was booked for the four outstanding warrants for her arrest in the state of Missouri (all minor traffic violations), and Rex and Misty had to find a place to stay for the night while they tried to come up with bail.

Kenny, meanwhile, was finished being cremated, and waiting in an urn about 100 miles away.

Rex finally was able to spring Patrika and the three of them continued on their journey the next day, arriving to pick up Kenny with only minutes to spare before closing time. Rex is in a sour mood and Patrika isn't much happier and neither have had a shower or a drink and it's starting to rain and they're in a tiny town and are just ready to get the fuck home. So they pick up Kenny, get back in the car, and head back towards St. Louis.





It's winter and the sun is setting and Patrika is driving, still wearing her Pet Shop Boys t-shirt and blasting Cher at full strength, the album with "Jesse James" on it, which was the first CD I ever bought, in 1989, in 9th grade. Rex is sitting in the passenger seat, this time holding Misty AND Kenny, and trying to convince Misty to lie down in the floorboards, hoping to get Misty off her lap. But all to no avail -- Misty is jealous of the urn and, refusing to play second fiddle, squeezes in against it on Rex's lap. Hours later, they're still driving, it's black as pitch, and now it's pouring down rain. Patrika is hunched up against the steering wheel trying to see the road and Rex is in the passenger seat cursing all three of them, Patrika for driving so "god-damned all over the place," Misty for "wiggling all the fuck around like a nigger chile dancing for candy" and Kenny for "being so heavy you old slut you should've lost some weight before you went and died."

And they hit a bump in the road, and all hell breaks loose.

Kenny flies off Rex's lap, hits the dashboard, and the urn breaks and ashes and bits of bone explode all over the front of the car covering Rex, Misty, and even Patrika. Misty starts snarling and barking like she's seen a ghost and Patrika slams on the brakes, only to begin hydroplaning in the middle of the highway. And, eventually, they made it home all in one piece. Rex tells the story differently each time, and my favorite version is the one where they don't even stop, and Patrika just drives faster, and when they get back to St. Louis they leave the bits of the urn and bone and ash and Misty in the car and walk into the nearest gay bar, sidle up to the bar with ash on their faces and yell loudly "I need a drink and it better be a double" and don't say another word to each other until they've downed 2 or 3.

But the part of the story that never changes is that Rex owned that car for the next 3 years and never vacuumed the floorboards.

Kenny, in his next incarnation:


Here's a link to the first Auntie Rex post, called "Auntie Rex's BBQ" in case you want to play catch up. All the basic elements of these Rex stories are true by the way . . . I could never make up something this far-fetched . . . I just add details to make it easier to imagine. :) I have changed the names to protect the innocent, if Rex and Patrika could ever be called innocent . . .



Phew, what a looker!

Good ol' Leonard Cohen --

a little poem from one of my favorite songwriters:


Pardon Me

Pardon me, lords and ladies
if I do not think of myself
as the disease.
Pardon me if I receive the Holy Spirit
without telling you about it.
Pardon me,
Commissars of the West,
if you do not think
I have suffered enough.



I have a weird thing for covers of songs I love, good covers at least. This is one of 'em. God bless Lenny C.



Talk about the Holy Spirit . . .