I too, am

The Wrong Man. Like Henry Fonda in Hitchcock’s film I have been unduly punished for a crime I never committed. I am innocent. I recently watched the engrossing Truman and Tennessee (a new film about Capote and Williams in their own words) and was shocked to hear that Williams' sexual history is not unlike mine. At one point, when interviewed by David Frost I think (dear me, what were people watching on televisions back then!) Williams says ‘I never masturbated.” And then later he admits something like ‘The first time I actually had sex with a man was when when I was 27 - no — 28.’ This is exactly my story. Precisely: I didn't touch myself until I was in my late 20s, I used to rub up against the bed (I could pretend it was not happening) and I slept with women until I was 28. What I’m realizing now, being in Montreal and stepping out of my COVID-19 cocoon (yes I am somewhat like a butterfly now -- while I was dour, creeping, and furry in an unattractive way during lock down) is that having sex with men constantly (which is my wont) changes the way I look at men, generally. When I was in the closet I was not just not having sex with men, I was punishing myself constantly for wanting to -- for desire -- writing in my ‘journal’ about how to stop fantasizing about men, about how I was a good person and didn’t need to give in to my emotions (i.e. sexual desires). This meant a daily exercise in which I saw men on the street who aroused me but I tried not to be aroused. Also; much more horrifying, my resolve was never to be gay, ever -- which meant I could never partake of these impossible pleasures, though that banquet was laid before my eyes, daily (men are beautiful). So until I was 28 years old I viewed all men really with regret — they were something that I wanted but could not have. When I started having sex with men, suddenly I allowed myself to be attracted to them. This is a proof of my essential puritanical nature; it just didn’t make sense to me that I would desire and not act on that desire. So why desire at all?  When this lock down happened, it was impossible for me not to fall prey to the same exact feeling once more, to fall back into the dark pit of repression. So for months I have been gazing at men, feeling attracted to them, and then feeling bad about myself. I can’t have sex with them, so I will not desire them; as before. (Please don’t ask why it is so necessary for me to have sex with men constantly in order  to give myself permission to desire them; leave that to my therapist, but the point is that after 28 years of being a puritan in the closet, it became a kind of habit.) Anyway, when I was walking along St. Catherine last night I noticed that I could relax, that I could breathe again, look at beautiful men and desire them; because later I would have one. And I did. Last night -- he was as delicious as an ice cream cone and twice as sweet, and I melted under his lips into helpless, messy pleasure. He had skin as pale as — but I won’t go on. But "rough winds do shake the darling buds of May" and I’m sure one day he will be older. (Fortunately I got to him before that all happened. Sigh!) The Wrong Man is fascinating because it is Hitchcock’s attempt at realism (he actually filmed on location, something he didn’t like to do) and it is the very opposite of films like The 39 Steps which are sheer candy floss. (How many German spies are missing the top of their left baby finger? How many times does a flock of sheep interrupt an arrest? And try hiding under a waterfall, geesh…) But there are things that are not real in The Wrong Man, for instance the credits say that Fonda’s wife in the film (Vera Miles) recovered from the insanity that was induced by the wrongful accusations and temporary imprisonment of her husband. In fact Manny Balestrero’s  wife never fully recovered. Hitchcock couldn’t resist giving us a happy ending after showing us this nightmare. Also Henry Fonda is very good at just thinking,which is a rare quality in an actor. Finally, what I find fascinating about this film  is that the real Manny Balestrero was almost jailed due to eyewitness accounts of his ‘robberies’ (when he was in fact somewhere else -- apparently a quarter of all eye witness accounts of crimes are bogus). So much for trusting your eyes. Hitchcock includes the icky scene in which the two women who swore that they had for sure seen Henry Fonda rob them, are confronted with Henry Fonda after the actual robber is brought to justice. They of course avoid his gaze. Don't trust your eyes. Trust your dreams instead. And definitely don’t trust a soul who says 'I saw it!' Or worse yet 'I have proof!' Or (mostly found in those who claim to want safe sex)  -- 'I’ve had the HIV test and I’m negative!'. I saw a robbery with my own eyes last night at the bathhouse, or rather I should say, I had finished my lovely business and was attempting to exit the place, when someone started screaming ‘Voleur!’which even with my pigeon French I know means 'Thief!' I think he was accusing a meth addict. I immediately felt guilty because I had allowed some guy to smoke his pipe in my room on my first night there. First, I guess I should not do that, and second, I apologise. Jesus who am I apologizing to? You’re certainly not there -- and God doesn’t exist -- so I guess I’m apologising to my mother. Sorry Mom, for letting a meth addict smoke his pipe in my room at the baths, but frankly I wanted to suck his you-know-what and that was the only thing that would make him stay. They leave, all of them. I don’t mind. I prefer it that way. They do leave me with a warm heart though. I get along a lot better with my lover now that we are both getting laid.This may seem odd to you -- but frankly I don’t care, because you don’t exist. You may insist that you do.  But I press on disbelieving you because what I share here is private, and should never be read by anyone, and certainly never believed.

It is sheer

entertainment; sheer joy. I return to The 39 Steps, first just to wonder what so enchanted J.D. Salinger — it was his favorite film. It’s clear to me that there are two reasons for this. One, the essential innocence of the film. It’s sweetness. It’s one of Hitchcock’s early sound films, made before he went to Hollywood, and in it he seems to be laying before us all his concerns -- quite exuberant about what he has discovered he is capable of doing, about what he is going to do. The film begins with  ‘Mr. Memory’ performing at a music hall. Hitchcock is obviously in love with this atmosphere (he brings it back at the end with The London Palladium). He loves the interaction between audience and performers — the uninhabited candour when they are dissatisfied with the show, but — this is all in good faith — he says — take it with good humour. The audience might complain, but no one really dislikes the show or the performers — we’re all in this together — we just want you to know you’re being fooled, and, ultimately, it’s all foolishness. This kind of goodwill would not have been lost of Salinger, who — for all his faults — was remarkably innocent, or at least thought himself to be so -- a child really -- whose fate was to be disappointed, then destroyed, by evil. The film proceeds with many delightfully unlikely adventures. Like Shakespeare’s Pericles — or any of his romances — it is about transformations, about the uncertain relationship between the outer and the inner self, and how do we find the truth inside? Robert Donat is certainly meant to be handsome — I do not find him so really -- but his too carefully groomed mustache gives this away. Madeleine Carroll is handcuffed to him half-way through the film, and their spirited banter is grand — you know they are attracted to each other, but unlike Hepburn and Tracy we know it would be impossible for her to be in love with him — as he is supposed to be a murderer (but he is not). My favorite moment is when they are handcuffed together in bed, and just before going to sleep he gleefully recounts his crimes — all lies of course -- and she can’t help laughing (she turns her head away so he won’t see). Of course she is in love with him; somewhere deep down she knows he is good. Because we all know, don’t we, the fundamental difference between good and evil? This kind of trust in the redeeming power of love would have appealed to Salinger. So would the hero’s mistaken identity as killer. Salinger grew to be a kind of criminal — first for falling in love with women who were inappropriately young, but really for daring to detest his fans. This is what I take from Salinger. Nothing I write here -- or anywhere — is for you. It's for me. One or two people may read it now and then, but I owe you nothing. Only this, because it’s all I have. It’s appropriate that I should be watching The 39 Steps (O I just have to tell you one more moment, when Carroll and Donat touch secretly at the end, as they are watching the capture of the German spy. Their hands drift together, quite naturally of course, and no one can see it but us. And Donat still has the chain dangling from his wrist. What does that mean?) Yes I am in Montreal. And I can’t quite believe I’m writing these lines. My lover said that he was tired of me being unhappy; all I could say was “It isn’t likely to change until I have a real weekend in Montreal.” I’ve had it; and we’re still here. Now I know what it is I missed. Men. The everything of men. The smell of them, from stem to stern. The way they strut around — men strut their stuff you know, they know what they have down there, and many of them know how to wield it, and they are proud of it too. They are even proud of what’s behind. I must tell you that I haven’t had quite so many men sit on my face — one after another — for quite a long time. This is what I missed, most of all; it’s always been, for me, amazing, just giving into the sheer ‘mannness’ of men, by letting them take advantage of me in that particular manner. No one has sat on my face for approximately a year. The very few strangers I have met online — well I didn’t feel comfortable doing that with them; there has to be something really gorgeous about you if I am to submit to you in that way. The first one was hairy and muscular and sweet (adoring) and was pretty intoxicated by calling me ‘Daddy' and having ‘Daddy’ tell him to do things. The second was a young man — who, it took me a few seconds too realize— was pretty hypnotized by his own butt, and it only took me a few minutes to be hypnotized by it too. This is where I was meant to be, and what I was meant to do; I realize now what I suspected. And I’m sure it’s true for many queers. During COVID-19, I went back into the closet for a year. It’s been just like it was back then; the trauma of this is pretty severe, I think it’s probably why people are ODing on drugs like clockwork, committing suicide and shooting each other. Not because they are queer — though I’m sure some queers have joined that club — but because whatever particular nightmare is your worst fantasy, has -- for many of us -- come true during this time. If you have read this far (God help you!) you will probably understand what I’m saying. But many will not. “What in God’s name are you whining about?," they say. “You don’t have it that bad.” It’s like the husband who says “Why are you divorcing me, after all, I don’t beat you." A quote: “Ever allow the implacably objective to come to power, and that will spell the end of compassion and imagination on earth.” (Jakob Wassermann) We have been ruled by ‘reason,’ by left brain fanatics who have given us twenty thousand reasons for not loving each other, not hugging each other, and not sniffing each other’s private parts. Like dogs we will now take to the streets, and reclaim our destiny— because what is human about us is that we are animals. The problem is only when we dare to  imagine — even for one moment -- that we are completely 'objective.' That is a kind of fatal fooling.

Rebel Without a

Cause is about masculinity, it can best be understood in light of Shakespeare’s The Two Noble Kinsmen. The imagery and symbolism are chivalric in nature — the questions ‘how can one be a man?’ and ‘what is a man?’ are asked often, and this is James Dean’s central issue. It’s amazing to see how times have changed; it mattered very much in 1955 whether or not your father was a good father, but it does not so much matter now. Being a good father nowadays means simply being a good human being; being kind and gentle and understanding, etc.. But In 1955 being a good father meant instructing your son about 'how to be a man' (terribly important — and very different from raising a daughter -- well perhaps she would need to learn from her mother: ‘how to be a woman’). In Rebel Without a Cause being a good father is about men and boys (although Natalie Wood’s father mistreats her -- he won’t kiss her because he considers her ‘loose’ --  back then what happened to her is of less importance). What is of primary importance in this film is the look on James Dean’s face when he questions his father Jim Backus: “If you had to do something, and it was dangerous, and it was a question of honour, what would you do?” This question means little to us today, and in fact would not be asked by a young man, as we live in a culture which has rejected the orthodoxy of masculinity, and indeed we consider masculinity to be fundamentally toxic. In The Two Noble Kinsmen as in Rebel Without a Cause -- men must be noble. This means that they respect their enemies, even love them — the men they may kill in battle the next day -- it’s all about honour, which means acting bravely together, whether on the same team or on opposing sides. When Dean is about to race a car to the edge of a cliff with another boy — to see who jumps out of the car first —  he and the boy talk, quite respectfully — man to man. The boy says to Dean “I like you.” And Dean asks ‘Why do we do this?” And the boy replies “You gotta do something, don’t ya?” It’s evident that strong young men must use their bodies, fling them about, compete, and sometimes kill each other. It’s a matter of honour. It’s all about men, and it all has deeply queer implications, to those of us sensitive to that sort of thing. Nicholas Ray himself was a homosexual; his marriage with Gloria Grahame was a strange sort of sham, he was a drug addict, he hated himself. He tried to insert a scene in Rebel where Dean and Sal Mineo (Plato) kiss. Apparently it was actually shot (where is that footage?) but ended up on the cutting room floor. Everything about Plato is tied up in his name — platonic love — ideal love that can only exist between men, because it is by definition the purest love, and has nothing to do with women’s bodies. Women’s bodies  -- according to early modern sexuality (and still, to some degree today) are mired in blood, and mud, and deeply attached to the ground. Women’s sexuality is not pure— however men’s can be, that is if they do not habour excessive desire for women, but only procreate. The two noble kinsmen (in the play of the same name) love each other purely, as warriors, until they both fall in love with the same woman. The woman, of course, comes between them, drags them down with her body -- which is of the earth. Similarly in Rebel Without a Cause the relationship between Natalie Wood and James Dean is only pure, is only acceptable, because it is ‘platonic’ they talk a lot about love and kiss once, chastely, with their faces only, their bodies are not involved. But their love is also inextricably tied to Plato, it is somewhat about him; they can love each other purely because they both love Plato, who of course must die, because he is an angel, and not of this world. What are we to do with all this, today? The ‘moral’ of Rebel Without a Cause is that Jim Backus (famous for voicing the myopic, nerdy, cartoon character Mister Magoo) is dominated by his wife, and men must never be dominated by women, they must always be strong, and brave, and fight with honour. As I said above, presently our values are reversed. We live in a feminized culture that essentially rejects masculinity — except in it’s least ‘masculine’ forms. Am I a ‘men’s libber' standing up for male rights? Of course not; I’m would not be very happy in the world of Rebel Without a Cause, as in that world the gay boy always dies; and Dean and Mineo can only love each other chastely. This old veneration of masculinity is an anachronism. On the other hand -- though we must protect women and embrace feminine values — it will not do any good to assume that all masculinity is toxic: this will merely drive masculinity underground (QAnon) where it becomes a cult of fascism and male worship. This is the danger of trans theory, which is anti-sexual, anti-body, and homophobic. We all have bodies. Men have bodies, male bodies, strong bodies, they are stronger than women, and they have too much testosterone; it effects us emotionally and spiritually. This does not mean we have a right to abuse, it means that if you do not allow us to be masculine — which means to be, proud, brave, strong, compete in extreme physical activity — then yes we will most certainly turn toxic and destructive. The world of masculinity is alien to me; I am an effeminate gay man and a drag queen; I’ve never understood masculinity, masculine men are generally alien to me, and scary, I’m not even attracted to them. I prefer femininity. But just as I think I should be able to express my femininity, I think that men should also be able to express their masculinity -- and women too! Lastly, the most plaintive cry in this film comes when Plato, disillusioned, screams at Dean “You’re not my father!” Everyone in Rebel Without a Cause is looking for a family. COVID-19 has ripped many queers from their non-biological families, for many these are the only family we have. Some of us are wandering about -- right now -- wide eyed, lonely, like Sal Mineo -- we can only hope the guns we carry are not loaded.

This will be

 a tribute to my friend ‘H’, one of the many lost to COVID-19. By that I don’t mean that she died, I mean that she disappeared from my life. There are so many like that. Anyway, maybe I’ll send her this blog, maybe I won’t. As soon as I started watching The Bat, I thought of her. An awful movie. 'H' is a lesbian and a huge fan of film noir (as many lesbians are -- but ‘H’ is a very special lesbian). Since we are on the subject of lesbians — wow, apparently Agnes Moorehead was one. Wikipedia says there was much speculation about her sexuality, and Paul Lynde said "Well, the whole world knows Agnes was a lesbian – I mean classy as hell, but one of the all-time Hollywood dykes.” That explains a lot. The only reason I chose The Bat was because of Agnes Moorehead — Vincent Price bores me, and yes, it’s about a killer called ‘the bat’ (yawn) who is terrorizing the town, there is a very complicated plot which I didn’t even bother to follow, and it was taken from a stage play, and they’re all in an old house, and he’s killing people. Kind of Agatha Christie without Agatha Christie (who you really do need, if you’re 'doing' Agatha Christie). Anyway, at the centre of it all is Agnes Moorehead, who plays Cornelia Van Gorder — a mystery writer who buys an old spooky mansion. (It sounds like a great plot idea but nothing comes of it.) However, Agnes gets to prance around and be Agnes Moorhead. First of all there’s something enormously strong about her — which means she played a lot of spinsters and teachers etc., but then when she gets to play the lead you see what an amazing actress she is. She’s in an awful lot of movies with bad actors, like -- let’s say Rock Hudson -- and all of a sudden when she walks in the screen comes alive. Immediately you know something is up with Cornelia Van Gorder — she’s got something on her mind, always, I can see Moorehead’s actress mind working on the character mind of Cornelia; I presume Moorehead’s approach would have been ‘Well she’s a writer, so she’s always plotting things. Very pragmatic, down to business, everything serves a purpose, she gets things done.” How can I explain it, Moorehead always comes up with something that drives the scene. In Bewitched, where she played Samantha’s mother Elvira -- it was disdain, she was simply disdainful of everything, and she was the funniest thing on the show. 'H' is writing a play about Cornel Woolrich, so now I will write about how obsessed both of us are with him. Cornel Woolrich is a little known American mystery writer; he is little known because he was gay, okay? Yes he was a very sad little alcoholic gay man who lived with his mother all his wife (I identify, as I drink too much, and my mother took up residence in my psyche long ago -- and refuses to move out). Probably the most interesting thing about Cornel Woolrich is that Hichcock based the leading character in Psycho on him. (I may have written about this in another blog, but at this point, I don’t give a you-know-what). You see Rear Window was based on Woolrich’s short story, and Hitchcock saw him on the set, and well -- how could he resist? Woolrich was a very gaunt, shy, sallow, half-dead looking sort of person. He in his mother lived in a hotel — in the days before apartment buildings, when you could to that sort of thing. (My mother lived in a hotel — Sutton Place in Toronto— people who live in hotels are very special people, or at the very least they think they are, which is much the same.) The details of Woolrich’s life have kind of left my brain, but I know after his mother died, he was devastated and continued to live in the same hotel room for awhile, and then moved to another hotel, where he drank himself to death. There were many movies based on his books, including Truffaut’s The Bride Wore Black. He wrote as well -- or better -- than Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett, but he wasn’t heterosexual or dashing like them, and often wrote from the point of view of a female character -- so everyone ignored him. What captured Hitchcock’s imagination about Woolrich was a man who was in love with his mother. I was once in love with my mother so I get it. (I’ve written about that over and over. I just wrote another play about her.) Suffice it to say that I believed that she could read my mind. I told my therapist when I was 19 that I wanted to tell my mother to f-off — just in my head. And the therapist said -- 'well why don’t you?' and I said, 'because I’m afraid she’ll know I cursed her in my head' and she said -- 'but your mother can’t read your mind.' This was a huge revelation to me; I started to tell her to f-off in my head all the time after that, and then actually did it to her face which she didn’t like at all. But I’ve abandoned 'H' (which if you knew the rest of the letters in her name, would be a very poetic statement). I love 'H' very much. You know those COVID-19 friends you lose for awhile— you didn’t used to see them very much, maybe once every two months. But after COVID-19 she moved out of town and of course no one was supposed to see anyone. 'H' is tall, lanky and looks just like a boy, even though she is definitely a girl. I think the reason I am a little in love with her is because she is -- like me --completely unsuited to live in the world. There is a sense that she wouldn’t know how to turn on a tap if her lover didn’t tell her how to do it. I have the same relationship with my partner. He imagines that I am totally inept and dysfunctional without him and — it’s not true! It’s simply not. He says I would still be living in a hovel over the Kentucky Fried Chicken Take-Out at Church and Wellesley, if it wasn’t for him. This is only partially true, and anyway I really didn’t mind living there. But 'H,' like me, really understands nothing but the fictions she makes up in her head; she kind of lives in there, and when she has to suddenly do something in the world (you see this sometimes when she’s thinking, and then turns and looks at you) you realise she’s saying to herself ‘Oh yes, life! I have to deal with that, don’t I?' I identify. For people like us it's a difficult life, but unique in a way that you perhaps will never know.

Why it’s called

Purple Noon I’ll never know, the original title in French is Full Sun, which makes a little more sense; the main thing about this movie is it stars Alain Delon, who I’m vaguely familiar with, but I can’t remember what I’ve seen him in. Oh yes — and Patricia Highsmith’s comment on the film — it was the first adaptation of her novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, and she called the suggestion at the end that Ripley would be brought to justice a betrayal. It is. Highsmith wrote several novels about Ripley. I’ve read most all of them; she had the uncanny knack of getting inside a twisted brain. Her killers are most often cultured fellows, and certainly sympathetic — they just have one ‘quirk’. Many of her novels though — not the Ripley ones — present really interesting moral dilemmas. In one of her novels a young woman falls for a Peeping Tom. The Peeping Tom is kind of a nice shy guy; she is more predatory than he, so she invites him in. In another one of her novels a man sets out to kill his wife, but is not able to carry it out, then she dies. Is he somehow then guilty of murder? Purple Noon has been called sun-drenched, and indeed it is. I am trying desperately to remain calm, but I’m supposed to be going to Montreal on Saturday, and yet again the whole trip is fraught with anxiety. Will it live up to expectations? Will life begin there again? Will I be sun-drenched, or just desperately lonely for life the way it once was? My therapist says I have to come to terms with loss; I’m certainly not very good at it. My best friend tonight reminded me that it is going to happen to all of us — death — because her ex-husband just died of brain cancer. Then she told me that she would be there to take care of me when I passed away. I’m not even sure I believe her — not because she’s a treacherous person but because she has also told me before that she is categorically not good at that. But with her ex-husband, she was. She just sat downstairs and drank -- with the knowledge that he was dying upstairs -- helped him as much as she could, and did the most beautiful thing you can imagine. For she said to him “Are you afraid of death?” And he said “No. I’m just afraid of leaving this house.” So he never did — that is, he died there. She did take care of him, so perhaps she will take care of me. At any rate it’s the thought that counts. Dear me what brought that on; well I’m somewhat ill — nothing serious it appears — but I never like to get ill before travel, and then there is my own mortality which keeps staring me in the face. I mean when am I actually going to start living again? Enough of that. So, Alain Delon plays a luscious Mr. Ripley, less guilt-ridden and certainly less gay then Matt Damon. And far far prettier. He’s quite unbearable to look at him; he is perhaps the most beautiful man I have ever seen, and that says a lot (or does it because I call a lot of men beautiful.) There is the blue of his eyes, which matches the sea, and those cheekbones, and the firm line of his jaw, the casual straight hair, his lean body and yes the bulge in his bathing suit (I think they didn’t even notice of such things in the 60s. Elvis’ bulge is quite out of this world in some of his movies — did no one notice?). The thing about Alain Delon is that he reminds me of Tim Guest. I don’t know if I have ever told you the story of Tim Guest. He was another one who was too beautiful for words. He was too beautiful for me; I never had sex with him, I wouldn’t have known where to start. I had heard of him, he was famously the lover of Felix Partz — part of General Idea. I remember looking at photos of Felix Partz and wondering how Tim could have been in love with him; but back then I had no idea how strange love can be. I moved into 67 Homewood and Tim lived there. We hung out quite a bit; I had never met someone quite as brilliant and quite as beautiful. It was odd because everything he said was interesting and complex and somewhat sarcastic in a gay sort of way, and at the same time he was so drop dead gorgeous that you wanted to just  drop to your knees and worship him. The only thing I remember — besides the long list of beautiful young men he dragged to his room — were his comments on them: “I like to watch the very very clean boys get dirty” and then at one point: “Don’t you love it when your screwing them and they look surprised?” (I had experienced the first thing but not the second.) He was an art curator, and later he curated performance art for Rhubarb! (at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre — the theatre that I used to run). This is so Tim Guest: he said  -- “I have this fabulous piece — it’s a homeless guy (I think he would have called him a ‘rubby’ back then) and he takes a bath in front of the audience! That’s the whole piece!” This was Tim’s sense of humour to a tee. The piece was performed at Tarragon Theatre, and I remember the bigwigs there -- Urjo Kareda and Mallory Gilbert -- were not amused. I liked it. I felt morally compromised watching it; but I thought, that’s the point, isn’t it? After all, the guy was getting paid, and he got a bath, and he seemed to have a good time. (Nowadays you would probably be run out of town for it for programming this.) Then Tim moved to New York, and found another lover and I was so happy for him — that seemed like the perfect ending. And then suddenly I heard that he had mouth cancer, and had died -- just like that. This devastated me. I didn’t want to think of him as anything but the most beautiful boy in the world. Sorry this blog has been so much about cancer. It’s strange the way COVID-19 makes me, at least, think less about COVID-19 than just dying in general. Because it is a kind of death. All the crime going on everywhere, and the ODing, and just the look on people’s faces - or just the faces you can’t see  because of those damned masks, or the fear of each other. That’s it. We are all of afraid of each other in a way we weren’t before, ever, and that’s a kind of death in life. Sorry. Best not to think about all this, I guess.

Ah! Mamma Roma

is devastating. Most artists only dream of being protested by fascists — Pasolini was. (What would the equivalent be today: getting bashed by QAnon on social media?). Pasolini was first and foremost an antifascist. His Christ, in The Gospel According to St. Matthew, is a revolutionary, Marxist Christ, trashing the merchants in the public square. And in Mamma Roma it is the city of Rome that stands for fascism — the oppression of the poor: those ugly, naked, monolithic apartment buildings looming in the distance — below them the fragments of ruins — grotesque, phallic, crumbling -- like Pasolini imagines fascism to be. But Pasolini found his ‘proletariat’ in the faces of the boys — they belonged to him — the boys of Rome, the young suburban ne’er do wells -- their grubby mischievous faces — playing soccer, loitering, stealing stuff, plotting to lay the neighborhood tramp. Pasolini loved them in more than in just a political way; although his adoration might be deemed economic, as it was those boys that he paid to have sex with him every night. And one of those boys (Giuseppe Pelosi) killed him (although his friend Laura Betti insisted that it was the fascists who really did it.). Let’s face it — for a lot of people Pasolini represents the apotheosis of evil. In private, with his boys, he was the ‘king of shit’ —he wanted them to do their ‘business’ on him; they were forever his tasty, nasty brethren. Pasolini refers to his sexual predilection at the end of Mamma Roma, when Ettore, the son of prostitute Anna Magnani, is strapped to his bed in jail — the bed where he dies — and his fellow inmates are joking about the 7th ring of Hell which apparently (sorry, I’ve never read Dante) is shit. How did Pasolini’s pickups feel about being asked to take a dump on him? I’m sure it mattered not at all to them really, he was just an old guy who gave them money to do gross things. But the fact that Pasolini was an admitted human toilet seems to have hurt his literary reputation somewhat. I remember when I first found out about all this from Peter Day. Peter was a gay man — a Brit, very witty, very smart, kind of dashing too. He had a lovely young boyfriend (who I still know). Peter committed suicide a couple of years after I met him; he was on the board of my theatre company, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. I remember walking up to him in Glad Day Bookshop about 40 years ago (the gay bookstore in Toronto) and telling him that I had written a play about Pasolini. Peter said, blithely, savouring every word: ‘You know what Pasolini was into, don’t you?” “No,” I said innocently — for I was somewhat innocent back then — “Shit. He liked boys to shit on him.” I didn’t know quite what to say. I was disappointed, partially because I hadn’t included this in my play, and also frankly because it took Pasolini down one notch from the very top of the pedestal where I had so carefully placed him. (But I was also a bit frightened by how much Peter enjoyed making me feel like an ignorant prude.) Certainly Pasolini is my ideal. A perfect artist, and shockingly amoral in real life. On the streets — he was a scatalogical outlaw, on the screen, a puritan aesthete. All that mattered to him was beauty. In Mamma Roma Pasolini's ex-lover Franco Citti plays Magnani’s ruthless ex-pimp, and an oddly gorgeous boy with the face of a 10 year old — a tiny pug nose and pouting mouth — Ettore Garofolo (a second glance at Ettore Garofolo makes you feel like a pederast ) is Magnani’s gawky adolescent son. (Garofolo appeared only in two movies after this.)  Pasolini loved each of these young men ostentatiously, the camera worships their faces, their very ordinary sex appeal, their imperfect masculine charm. Then there is Magnani, simply a force of nature. In her first scenes she is dragging pigs to a wedding — presumably to make fun of the hick girl her pimp Citti is marrying. In every scene she laughs or cries or screams or dances — or all four — she’s eternally shaking her voluptuous body — not just with abandon, it’s a commitment to animality that is all too frighteningly human. She’s terrifyingly real; and gives quite a new definition to words like femininity and ‘woman.’ The bond she has with her son is primal, her friend asks if she would die for him. She says ‘like Christ on the cross.’ And though she quits hooking — in order to ‘bring Ettore up right’ — there is absolutely no hope for her, or him. The forces of capitalism are against them. Rome will eat her son — the way Magnani would like to, obviously. She says ‘look at him, isn’t he a prince?” (If only it was possible for any of us to love anybody, without killing them just a little.) She watches him working in the restaurant, and Pasolini captures the aching essence of a young buck at work, an anter-less stag strutting about boldly on his skinny legs, grinning sheepishly at his mother and hauling food from table to table, as in love with her as she is with him. Mamma Roma’s dream of respectability is in vain; the pimp Citti reveals to Ettore that his mother is a whore. Ettore then steals a dying man’s radio in a hospital (in anger), the next thing you know he’s in the seventh circle of Hell, strapped to his bed in prison. “I’ll be good” he pleads, but it’s too late, the system has already chewed him up and spit him out. I wrote a play once called Why We Tortured Him for Theatre Aquarius. Susan Clements --a fascist, law and order freak -- trashed it in The Hamilton Spectator, without either reading it or seeing it. The play was cancelled by Theatre Aquarius  It was a play about the relationship between poverty and crime. It’s not something you’re supposed to talk about. Pasolini does. But you will not find this type of truth in Niagara Falls, stitched on a pillow. You might find it one night in Rome, when you’re being screwed against an ancient ruin. If you're like me, you will gaze up at the stars, and suddenly realize that ruin is you.

Bonjour Tristesse is

a beautiful movie. After viewing it I went directly to Wikipedia. I was confirmed; the American critics hated it — the film resembles none of the Hollywood slop that was being dished up in 1958. Everyone associated with the film must have felt privileged to work on it, because it’s about something important. It deals with human evil in a matter of fact way; Jean Seberg and David Niven drive Deborah Kerr to suicide — both Seberg and Niven are charming, beautiful and simultaneously odious people — and they get away with it. The only American film comparable to this is Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanours, in which the anti-hero gets off scott free after committing murder. Jean Seberg’s character and Martin Landau’s character (in Allen’s film), both experience remorse, but also relief that they can never be implicated. This is in contrast to the scores of Hollywood films in which good is rewarded and evil punished. That is the way Oscar Wilde defined fiction. It is something that hardly ever happens in real life — i.e. truly evil people like Donald Trump more often end up being worshiped like Gods. Stanley Kauffman (an idiotic American critic famous for an article in which he castigated Williams, Albee, and Inge for undermining American culture with their ‘homosexual influence’) found  Bonjour Tristesse ‘tedious.’ Seberg was also ripped to shreds by critics, the British Film Institute accused her of merely 'speaking' her lines rather than acting them (it's called naturalism). There nothing to justify the  general hatred of Jean Seberg, or her harassment by the FBI (they may ultimately have been responsible for her death). The FBI harassed her because she supported civil rights and and made contributions to the Black Panthers. The FBI's method of destroying Seberg’s life is worth noting; they spread rumours that her child (fathered by her husband Romain Gary) was actually her child by a member of the Black Panthers. She was characterised as not only a lefty but a whore; a double-misogynist whammy. The child in question subsequently died, and Seberg insisted on an open coffin so that the press could see that her child was not black. All this foreshadows social media;  we destroy people today the way Vladmir Putin and J. Edgar Hoover did&do, that is -- not by shooting them with guns -- but by spreading lies about them on social media. Which brings us back to evil. I will make the argument here that all great artists are bad people — or at least deeply flawed. It is necessary for artists to know evil intimately in some way. This runs counter to the latest trend — that artists must be nice, good, moral people — i.e. not Woody Allen or Roman Polanski. Alfred Hitchcock and Otto Preminger (he directed Bonjour Tristesse) were also infamous — not for molesting children — but abusing actors; Hitchcock tortured Tippi Hedren by demanding she be locked in a room with live birds (for The Birds) and Preminger fired Tom Tryon on the set of The Cardinal -- in front of the whole cast -- and later on told him denied it ('Didn't you know I was just joking?’) I have said before that I think we must not see the evil artists do in their lives as a reflection on their work as -- if we did --  there would be no  art anymore. But I am going a step further by stating that a familiarity with evil is necessary for any great artist. Yes, that means artists are necessarily evil. I don't know if artists have to be 'evil incarnate,' but they have to have done bad things, and what is particularly important is that they must at the very least be fully conscious of — or at best plagued by guilt over -- their misdeeds. The does not necessarily redeem them as human beings. If you do something awful it only matters in a court of law if you are sorry, in real life one might find your apology irritating, frustrating or even a nightmare to listen to. I'll use myself as an example. I’m very ashamed of being a homosexual. That’s why I go on and on about how wonderful homosexuality is; it’s why the Black Panthers said that black people were better than white people, it’s why Lytton Strachey went on about ‘higher sodomy’ (he preached that homosexuality was superior to heterosexuality). I will always think it’s wrong to love a man, or to suck his you-know-what. I was born in 1952, for Chrissakes. Yes I go on and on about gay liberation and how wonderful gay sex is, but that is just overcompensation for my self-hatred. I have not done too many bad things (at least as far as I know), but what I have is a heightened sense of guilt, so that I am constantly accusing myself of wrongdoing, and I feel bad about everything in kind of a Lutheran manner (Lutheranism is the most poisonous religion of all --  original sin that can never be wiped away.) The reason a familiarity with evil is important for artists is that evil is the only thing that it’s important to write about — but the only reason an artist will write about it, is if he or she is appalled by their own evil deeds, which leads them to detest all human hypocrisy, and ergo, the artist tries to destroy hypocrisy by exposing it. (Hypocrisy is rampant nowadays; everyone thinks they are a good person, it’s what’s destroying the world.) Jean Seberg is a pretty cheery young French girl — but she ain’t no Gidget — she is perfectly willing to destroy someone’s life if she can’t get what she wants. This means she must welcome sadness into her life (i.e. 'bonjour tristesse!'). Perhaps what Francoise Sagan is saying in her novel — and Preminger in this film — is that being an adult means welcoming the sadness which comes with the loss of innocence. I still like to imagine though, that I am innocent, when I get naked with another man -- or kiss him -- but usually I am drunk -- so all is soon forgetten. Sad perhaps, that this is far too true for so many gay men; we are enslaved by our addiction to forgetting.