to Baby Doll — what was all the fuss about? It was the Catholic Church’s Cardinal Spellman who denounced the film from the pulpit in apparently unprecedented fashion, calling it a “moral danger.” Yes there is something shocking in it, but there was something much more shocking about Warner Bros changing the title of Tennessee Williams' play 27 Wagons Full of Cotton to Baby Doll. Then there’s the publicity photo they decided on -- Carroll Baker (a 25 year old woman) curled up in a baby’s crib sucking her thumb. Okay, so this is all about sexualizing children (bad). Or is it just ubiquitous? Are we not all hypocrites? What healthy heterosexual male doesn't find teen-age girls attractive? I was standing at a bus stop the other day in Montreal. There was a young woman wearing a plaid Catholic schoolgirl skirt. She looked young enough to be a schoolgirl — but she was also wearing an exemplary pair of ‘Mary Janes’ -- a schoolgirl's buckled shoe -- which I immediately recognised as a fetish object, as a male friend of mine used to get orgasms simply from putting them on. So she could very well have been a prostitute. No, children should not be sexualized by adults, but we fetishize youth — that’s just the way it is, so stop pretending it never happens. But Baby Doll is not about feshizing youth — it is about a young woman discovering her own sexual desire, moving from being objectified by her older husband (Karl —the nose! — Malden) to a loving relationship with the handsome self-confessed ‘wop’ Eli Wallach. The scene which shocked so many people is the one where Wallach woos Baker. There is nothing wrong with it; it's a celebration of a young woman's sexual maturation. It’s also incredibly hot (it made me horny). We pretend we are shocked by sexualising children, but what really shocks us is the the idea that a woman might urgently desire a handsome man. Interesting though, that the priest who denounced this film (Francies Spellman) in the name of the Catholic Church also happens himself to have recently been denounced by Michaelangelo Signorile as "one of the most notorious, powerful and sexually voracious homosexuals in the American Catholic Church's history.” The sight of a ‘sexually voracious’ closeted homosexual priest attacking a gay playwright (Tennessee Williams) triggers me. I’m in Montreal. And I have spotted my nemesis the Toronto Reverend Brent Hawkes. I say ‘my nemesis’ because I’ve always detested him -- first because he made virtue signalling popular even when no one else was doing it -- disguising himself as a paragon of moral purity while at the same time getting up to some pretty suspicious activities with underage men. But that’s not why I hate him. I will never forget about 35 years ago (and I don’t hold on to a lot of grudges, I don’t) when Buddies in Bad Times Theatre (my own theatre at the time) was in deep trouble because Toronto city councillor Rob Ford and Christian Right Activists were blocking us from taking over what would become our home at 12 Alexander Street. We knew that public support from the ‘Right Reverend Hawkes’ would be crucial for us -- as the Christian numnuts had labelled me a misogynistic sadist, and called our theatre an orgy palace and den of sin and debauchery (something which we attempted to be but could never quite achieve). Hawkes refused to come out in support of our theatre; for him (and some of the gay community) we represented s/m, promiscuity, and camp, all of which they hoped would go away (it did pretty disappear quite soon, as what Hawkes represented has now come into vogue for queers everywhere — virtue signalling, TVSAFE-unsexy-RuPaul drag queens, church attendance, support of the police, and the adoption of children. Well everywhere I look I see Brent Hawkes. He hasn’t turned up at the baths yet thank God — but I saw him and his ubiquitous partner walking down the street. And lo and behold I was sitting in Le Stock (my favourite strip bar) and they were right behind me. He has been known in the past to come up to try and apologise to me — mumbling something to the effect of “Sky why this negativity —." Oh dear.Well this negativity ain’t goin’ nowhere, baby. If you are gay and in Montreal (living or visiting or whatever) it is likely for one reason; you are an inveterate slut, a low-life, looking for nefarious nelly and non-nelly males to have you way with. I would have no problem with anyone else being here for that reason, but I can't abide Hawkes here, still pedaling his hypocritical, unpalatable, public display of virtue. My old friend Christopher Newton once described the type of play he was forced to schedule at the Shaw Festival just to fill seats and keep the board happy. He called it ‘the Vicker’s Knickers.' At one point the vicker runs ends up running around with his pants around his ankles chasing some screeching wench. When I see Brent Hawkes I can’t get that image out of my mind. On the positive side, last night at the baths I met the same man I caught balancing a cookie on his you-know-what last summer. At least I think it was him, I don’t forget such a gorgeous prodigious member easily, And he was the same; tall, tattooed with an inch of his life, lean, muscled OMG! I choked on that monster for as long as I could, and then stupidly I tried to insert the thing my you-know-where but that was impossible — which I think he realized — he’s probably tried that with others before to no avail — as such a venture would be like shoving the Leaning Tower of Pisa into a paper straw (I’m thinking about the environment, even now). I’ll never suggest we try that again. I hope he comes back. When I’m choking in that particular fashion it wipes the image of Brent Hawkes clear out of my mind. Like Carroll Baker in Baby Doll I defend to the death my right to desire the ‘wop’ of my choice.
