From the “Literary-Trifecta” file, The New York Review of Books (Dec. 20) gives us gay Irish novelist Colm Toibin reviewing the Notebooks by (gay) Tennessee Williams, in which Toibin compares William’s relationship with his sister, Rose, to gay author Henry James’ relationship with his sister, Alice. James basically put his sister in his The Turn of the Screw and in The Princess Casamassima. William’s sister (and his mom, too) are in his The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire. Williams also used his lover, Pancho Rodriguez, as the model for Stanley (think Marlon Brando in the movie). In fact, one friend said “Tennessee behaved very badly toward Pancho … using Pancho for real life scenes … he created—and then transformed them into moments of A Streetcar Named Desire” (which, by the way, made Williams into Stella). Notebooks is a commentary on Williams’s memoirs and does seem to trace the genesis of William’s genius and problems. Toibin indicates it is well-written.
From the “Missed-First-Time-Around” file, we find Rolling Stone telling us in graphic detail the story of gay porn king Bryan Kocis, who became a millionaire snaring teenage boys to star in his epics, only (oh, the heartbreak!) to have one of the little angels apparently turn around and arrange to have him offed. Kochis’ specialty was “twinks”—”young boys who are the age of consent but don’t look it.” One of his hires, one Sean Lockhart (a.k.a. Brent Corrigan and Fox Ryder), went from exploited underage porn actor to dirty pic diva. Under contract to Kocis and wanting out of it, Lockhart and his new much older boyfriend talked to a couple of other potential actors who, the lovers say, took it upon themselves to viciously murder Kocis. The bad actors are in prison; Lockhart and lover are screaming at each other; and porn people types are divided as to whether Sean had anything to do with it. But Sean/Brent/Fox will never work in that town again—Kocis, right before his death, downloaded every bit of Sean’s “work” to free sites on the Internet, thus overexposing the porn star.
The Chicago Sun-Times (Dec. 16) highlights Chicago’s Kit Kat Lounge, one of a chain of nightclubs named after the major cabaret, the Kit Kat Club, in the book (and play and film) Caberet. Anything went in the Berlin bar, but Chicago’s is a little tamer—no mud wrestling but plenty of transgendered and/or tranvestite performers. Kayla, Traci, Angelica, Sandy and Madame X cavort and lip-synch to whatever female superstar is in. “Lemme tell you,” says an out-of-towner, “we have nothing like this in Detroit.”
From the “Didn’t-I-Know-That?” file, The Advocate (Jan. 4) says a new U.K. study reports that both women (including lesbians) and gay men use landmarks to navigate more than straight men do. Straight men take in spatial info faster than the other groups. [However, straight men, as we all know, won’t stop and ask directions if lost, which is why it’s always a good thing to have a gay man in a group since he will be glad to ask a (possibly good-looking) local person where here is.]