From the ‘Tap-Dance-of-Luuuv’ file, The New York Times (Sept. 29) reports that Minneapolis will spend $25,000 to add metal dividers to the (now-) famous bathroom stalls where Sen. Larry Craig was arrested for soliciting sex. The barriers will make close encounters of the lewd kind more difficult. The No Matter What Eschew Obfuscation blog (theytellus.blogspot.com) comments that Craig has a problem vis-a-vis Minnesota law: If a judge agrees to withdraw Craig’s guilty plea, then Craig becomes guilty of the crime of invasion of privacy—which the U.S. Senate will then investigate. (Listen folks, if there is no one out there in the gay community with a sense of humor, there ought to be. Imagine a Pride float with a giant replica of the two stalls, enormous feet protruding, doors occasionally opening to flash underwear-covered flashers and the whole business covered with graffiti: ‘The Idaho-Minnesota Friendship Club;’ ‘Sub-Committee of the Senate Ethics Committee;’ ‘The Idaho-ho Association;’ and ‘Wash-Room Attendants are People Too.’) By the way, one could solve this and a few other problems using a European method: washroom concierges. Older people are often public-washroom attendants there and sometimes even women are right there in the men’s room to keep order, decorum and cleanliness.
The ‘When-Experts-Talk…’ file has Roger Ebert from the Chicago Sun-Times (Sept. 28) telling us plainly that Capt. Renault (actor Claude Rains) in Casablanca is gay and that he’d jump Bogie’s bones in a heartbeat, ignoring that nothing tramp, Ingrid Bergman.
From the ‘Sort-of-a-Closet’ file, the Chicago Sun-Times (Sept. 30) offers us a list of couples with chemistry who are … straight guys: Clint Eastwood/Morgan Freeman; Penn/Teller; George Clooney/Brad Pitt; Ben Affleck/Matt Damon; Justin Long/Sam Rockwell; Justin Timberlake/Trace Ayala. Damon and Affleck have referred to each other as ‘my hetero life-mate.’ At least a few of the previous have had gay rumors tossed at them now and then.
From the ‘Beebo-Brinker-Lives’ file, The New York Times (Sept. 30) reports on the play ‘The Beebo Brinker Chronicles.’ Drawn from a series of 1950’s lesbian pulp fiction set in Greenwich Village, the McCarthy-era non-stereotypical characters are drawing people from all over the country to a tiny 72-seat theater in Manhattan. The (still-)pseudonymous author Ann Bannon spoke to the audience after the premier.
Edmund White’s new book, Hotel De Dream, is feverishly looked at in the New York Times Book Review section (Sept. 16). It is supposedly a lost novel by real novelist Stephen Crane about a syphilitic gay hustler in 19th-century New York. Reflecting past writers Oscar Wilde and Walt Whitman with cameos of Henry James and Joseph Conrad, it also mirrors the present-day AIDS epidemic.