Who haven’t I PO’ed in recent weeks? Let’s get the Gays.

I’ve had this photo comparison in mind for two or three years, since I bought the Converse hightops my mother and dad said I couldn’t ever have when I was a kid, because what you have to have instead are tennis shoes, preferably Slazengers or Dunlops. Gorey’s artwork gave me permission. And, yeah, I always loved his Steampunk work. Before Steampunk was a word.

They’ve been languishing, I admit. Didn’t want to wear them new; they’d look like I’d never had any. Fished them out from under the bureau last night. They’re not new any more, and neither am I.

The comp above is me and Edward Gorey. Right away, I’ll say I have never posed as any other writer (though I’ve got a killer FSF sport coat I’ve never worn. A vanity buy. I’m too old to dress or pose like “This Side of Paradise.”) The mink coat was my mother’s, dead 15 years ago.  I’m not gay. Just the way things are. But I’m not too old to talk about how gays have done themselves no favors in the last 30 years. I have some very specific experience and insight about all this. I said in a related post I have lived and contested with Jews more than any goyim my critics might know of. I can say the same about gays. Especially the gifted ones who have always gotten all the best lines. I’ll explain later, but let’s begin with an archetype.

Edward Gorey was ostentatiously gay, but he wasn’t really advertising it in his work. What he was doing was mocking modern conventions, high and low, and the means, high and low, for how you could be an artist.

Here’s how he came to fame:

A quarter-inch thick novel called The Beastly Baby. It seemed like a tacit admission that terminations are acceptable and even desirable sometimes. The liberals thought he was fearless, satirical, and subtly on point politically. Not all babies are lifeworthy.

Then he published a work called The Gashlycrumb Tinies, which was all about killing children, alphabetically. This was a bit much for the common taste. Liberals understood the satire. Lots of the rest of America didn’t.

In fact, a lot of people didn’t like the Tinies, but you see, Gorey went to Harvard, and in those days it was understood that artists, even unconventional polyglot writer-illustrator artists, were allowed to register higher and lower than the common taste. The NYT and Harvard Magazine were both happy to take credit for his irreverence, wit, and humorously offbeat cruelty. Especially after he died. (They even said my Boomer Bible was “pretty funny” Damn nice, given that I was jeering at them out loud.)

Still, what does Gorey have to do with me, and gay artists in America?  Stay tuned for Part 2 of ‘Going After the Gays.’ 

The Phoenix SK Club. Teaser for Part 2: Why Harvard used to matter.

Kids always think they invented everything. You didn’t.

And we had this too. Stones, Doors, Lou Reed, Otis Redding, Johnny Cash. Back before Harvard. Mixed blessing. Lots of women thought I was Bowie. I told them I had a nicer nose.

A woman says, “I love you.” And I never even met her..

Lots of guys thought I was Dorian Gray. I was seventeen. Dorian was only a face. And I was a hero, continuously in love with Suzanne, Dolly, Cricket, and Barley. They loved and hated me both. Why they go for bad boys instead when the biggest bad boy is camouflaged by manners. I actually had a poem about that once upon a time...*

Still, they made me president of the Phoenix .When my learning curve began.

You stupid moron kids really think you made all this stuff up. You. Just. Didn’t. I saw everything you ever dreamed of. And I never did anything I didn’t want to do. A measure you should bear in mind. It still took me years, and Rachel, to hear this song:

Go on to Part 2 and Part 3.