From the ‘You-Heard-It-Here-A-Year-Ago’ file where it was suggested that the New Yorker Magazine ought to have a gay cartoon book to go along with its dog cartoon books: the latest issue (1-27) has a football huddle on the cover and number 42 has his large hand planted firmly yet gently on number 5’s butt. The title? ‘Lateral Pass.’
According to the Chicago Reader (1-24) in a review of a revival of Tennessee William’s play, The Rose Tattoo, Williams managed a Trojan Horse number in the script; the story line is entirely heterosexual, yet the gay playwright named one character Mangiacavallo which is Italian for ‘eat a horse.’ This is a risque reference to William’s longtime companion, Frank Merlo, called by Tennessee his ‘little horse.’ ‘Williams biographer Donald Spoto writes that the nickname was inspired by Merlo’s handsome, equine features, but I suspect the anatomical analogy didn’t end with his face.’
365.Com (1-24) reports that ‘Postal 2’ a computer game which allows the player to shoot various characters including gay people will go on sale in March. The manufacturer defends himself by saying that killing gays is possible but is not the point of the game. It has been banned in several countries already.
365.Com has a story on eating disorders in gay men. Apparently besides the usual divas gays admire, Karen Carpenter is included in the lineup. Nearly 14% of gay men are bulimic and 20% appear to be anorexic. Very few heterosexual men are so inclined. Body image appears to be more important to gay men than straight men.
The N.Y. Times (1-19) has a story about a rather different N.Y. city gay bathhouse. The Mount Morris Turkish Baths in Harlem is A.) for men only (gay and not), B.) has operated continuously since 1893, C.) is owned by a straight man, Walter Fizer, D.) has catered to the likes of Joe Louis, Sam Cooke, French tourists, straight businessmen and Hasidic Jews, E.) has an education director who arranges lectures on gay issues, F.) has an in-house G.E.D. program for drop-outs, and G.) allows homeless men to sleep there at night. The article has a wonderfully snarky quote: ‘These days it [the bathhouse] is one of the few vestiges of Harlem’s gay life, which reached its apotheosis when the poet Countee Cullen married Nina Yolande DuBois, the daughter of W.E.B. DuBois, in 1928, but two months later sailed off to Europe with his best man.’