William Safire dissects the words ‘gay’, ‘lesbian’, ‘homosexual’, and ‘same-sex’ in his language column in The NY Times Magazine (11/6). ‘Gay’ he says has now evolved to mean just men basically. (Forget forever its meaning as light-hearted.) The word ‘lesbian’ is no longer capitalized. ‘Homosexual’ is now for the most part only an adjective with a slightly sordid (sick, criminal) background which Safire expects to wear off soon so that it becomes once again neutral and equal to ‘same-sex’.
A new flic Breakfast on Pluto reviewed in The NY Times (11/16) is directed by Neil Jordan (the gender-bending The Crying Game was his). This movie involves an Irish transvestite, the illegitimate son of a priest, who is mistaken for a terrorist. The movie heavily relies on sweet, sweet, sweet pop culture punctuated by disco bombings and the like. The main character seems to be afflicted with nearly terminal denial in his effort to avoid the Irish troubles.
Sarah Schulman might be characterized as a ‘difficult dyke’. The playwright, teacher, and novelist as profiled in The NY Times (10/23) has had feuds with other playwrights, real people comically portrayed in her works, the makers of Rent (she says it was plagiarized from her), male editors, and gay male writers. Yet she is greatly liked by reviewers and her students—her new play Manic Flight Reaction has been pronounced delightful. (Premise: a young woman discovers her mother’s ex-lover is now the wife of a Republican presidential candidate). Schulman has nine plays in various stages of developement and seems to be mending fences with some of those she has had difficulties with.
Wild Girls—Paris, Sappho and Art: The Lives and Loves of Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks, by Diana Souhami, as reviewed in The NY Times Book Review (11/3), is probably The Xmas present for the (intellectual, historically minded, lesbian) girl-of-your-dreams. If you thought that gay men had cornered the market on wild sex, check this volume out: Natalie ‘… slept with every fancy French woman she could get her hands on; it was said she even picked up new lovers in department store powder rooms.’ (Shades of Field’s washrooms!) ‘Reading about… [Barney’s] insatiable appetite for culture and sex is enough to make even a prolific and promiscuous woman wonder if she should get out more.’ Brooks was a painter—Truman Capote described her paintings of her and Barney’s friends as ‘the all-time ultimate gallery of famous dykes.’ They ran salons for every famous name in Paris in the early 20th century and in spite of fights and flings, they spent 55 years together. Cherchez la femme!