A Song at Twilight (1966) on my own BBC home video collection (technical difficulty before; I thought they were unplayable). It is the best of the lot so far, Paul Scofield and Deborah Kerr are very fine actors indeed. Scofield is stellar as the ageing closeted homosexual Hugo Latymer, a character based on Somerset Maugham. The play is not only pretty perfect dramaturgically — with a startling climax at the end of the first scene — but it still rings true. Watching it, I was struck by how many ‘Hugo Latymers’ are still trotting around today, that is, so many gay men (older and younger) who are prudish and mean, and who curl their baby fingers at the very mention of sex or sexuality. In fact it used to be the old that were uptight; now it is the young (apparently birthrates were going down before COVID-19 because young people are no longer screwing as they used to — God knows what’s happened to those statistics now!). The transgendered youth are anti-sexual, very much like Hugo Latymer, they insist with stinging puritanism that gender is not about sex at all. And what if it was? I don’t know what to tell you but my gender is all about sex, I wouldn’t bother with gender if it wasn’t, I mean what’s the point of anything, but especially — of being a man — if it’s not at least, sexy? When I enter a den of dyed-haired, nail-painted, gender-binary youth (you often find tons of them working at Starbucks these days — ordering you to stand in a corner and not infect anyone, then smiling, and chirping — ‘No worries!’) I remember that to them I am not only dangerously old — they are afraid they will somehow catch it — but a magnet for disease — as I am associated with AIDS too because of my age — and also there is the scorn with which I generally treat mask wearing (I never wear one outside) — but I must under no circumstances make a sexual joke like a horny gay man (God forbid). Anyway, that is Hugo Latymer, every inch propriety, and Coward has great fun separating himself — through Hugo — from Somerset Maugham — who he considered old-fashioned and closeted, unlike himself. The irony is that Coward was closeted, and the very thing Carlotta (Kerr) accuses him of in the play Coward was guilty of — i.e. prattling on about big-busted beauties in his memoirs. I suppose Coward would insist the difference was that Maugham claimed to have had affairs with such women, whereas Coward took the 'baby step' of not doing so. But, for instance, when Coward introduces his friend Marlene Dietrich (it’s priceless you must hear it — on a Dietrich album) he manages to conjure up the notion that women are the only existing attractive sex objects in the universe. In A Song at Twilight Paul Scofield is always ‘making eyes’ at the waiter (something my mother told me never to do, on the very day I came out to her) and then acting prim and proper. Nowadays I am surrounded by queers like these — they are old and young, pretty and fading — but they all dye their hair, strangely enough, some to get rid of the grey, others in wokeish misplaced rebellion. (Does anyone but your mother really care if your hair is green?). Seeing this, I am stunned once again at how far we have not come, and how easy — as Coward said — it is to pass legislation, but you can’t legislate the human heart. I don’t know if I can write about Coward today. Mondays are always bad for me. I’m worried about my friends, they're sending me depressed emails bowing out of everything, and it isn’t just my own selfish need for them, I’m actually worried about them. I just spent a terrifying few moments on the phone with a nurse. I know we must assume they are all hard-done-by-suffering-saints but I’ve just about had it (if essential workers are such saints, why are air ambulance paramedics in Ontario threatening to go on strike? Shouldn’t they work for free? Isn’t this an emergency? Aren’t hospitals overflowing, and people dying in droves?). Anyway I have a bump on my head. It’s probably cancer, my father had a cancer bump on his head, so I’m not being facetious. When I phoned my family doctor the nurse said - “You should be able to get an appointment by calling the dermatologist directly, as you just saw him three months ago." I did, and the dermatologist's nurse started asking crazy questions “What exactly is the problem?” “I think it’s a wart” “Oh so it’s a new problem, then you might not be able to see him --" “I didn’t say it was a new issue, I don’t know what it is, it may be a cancerous bump, God knows!” “Please don’t raise your voice with me, sir!” You know when they say that, you’re in trouble. I immediately apologised, she put me on hold, and dutifully returned: “I have to check with the doctor — he may or may not see you, these are difficult times.” Well that did it, it triggered me “I know” I said, and I started sniffling “and I am dealing with COVID-19 myself and I am under a lot of stress, and I hope you will understand that this is very trying for me!” It was an Oscar winning performance. I almost wept. And when I hung up the phone (she said she would get back to me) my knees were shaking. I’m always amazed at how emotionally involved I get in such a performance. Perhaps Plato was right and acting is dangerous, infectious, we catch what we do. But then again I think I was crying about my own helplessness, the helplessness of us all, this deadly day, dark outside, nothing, no rain, no nothing, no friends, I’m having to pull old Noel Coward plays on DVD off my desk to find something to occupy my mind, no end in sight. There was a 100,000 person protest/ riot over COVID-19 in Montreal, but of course you won’t hear of it, only on Rebel News, which I know I’m not supposed to watch, but what’s a horny old ADHDish fag to do -- one who keeps on writing plays that no one will perform -- because no one will leave the house? I will cry! I enjoyed crying! Maybe I’ll spend the whole day crying. Screw Plato. He didn’t know what he was talking about anyway. A table is a table, okay Plato? I don’t care that its goddamn ‘pure essence’ exists in heaven. I'm about to have lunch on it. Now.
