Sunday, June 26, was Pride Day in New York City.  Close to 2 million people watched hundreds of thousands of marchers within about 485 contingents (groups and floats) make their way down 5th avenue, 8th Street and Christopher street, from Midtown to Greenwich Village.

Some years Ed and I watch the parade go by, some years Ed and I join the Quaker contingent (Ed is a Capital Q Quaker, to the manor born, and I as his husband am called a Friend of a Friend, as in I’m the significant other of a member of the Religious Society of Friends).

The Quakers are considered the first religious community to support the modern Gay Rights movement, having offered sanctuary and refreshments during the Stonewall Riots of 1969 and having marched in the very first Gay Pride Parade the following year.

When you march in the parade, you only get to see a small fraction of all the other groups marching.  However you do get to celebrate with all the many colorful, diverse, happy people up and down Fifth avenue and over to Christopher Street.  This photo diary shares that experience.

The director of “Speakeasy”, Lissa Moira, and I were conducting another one of our weekly meetings pouring over the script and discussing staging and production issues, when I mused aloud that in many ways “Speakeasy” is an expression of my bisexuality.

“You are bisexual?” Lissa asked.

“I thought you knew”, I responded, dumbfounded.

How could Lissa, who has known me for years, not be aware of that fact about myself?  It is not something I try to keep secret.  And she’s known me for decades.  But that is the problem with bisexuality.  It is so easy to keep hidden, even if there is no intention to hide it.  Society may not assume someone is heterosexual as categorically as society used to, but monosexuality – hetero or homosexuality – is nowadays still the default assumption.

Or is it?  Just these past weeks have seen a slew of studies showing that the upcoming generation of young adults are much more comfortable with sexual fluidity and placing themselves on the bisexual spectrum than older generations (see here and here and here).  Charles Blow has written profound editorials about bisexuality in the New York Times.  Entertainment websites keep posting lists of celebrity bisexuals (like this one or this one).

Except, those lists of celebrity bisexuals usually feature three women for every one male or must resort to listing men long deceased to beef up the ratio.  Out bisexual males are still very rare in our culture.  Even Alan Cumming, who so deliciously professed erotic desire for men and women not once but three times while hosting the Tony Awards this year has not embraced the “bisexual” label (as far as I can tell) but is more likely to use the word “pansexual” if he allows any label to define him.  And that is his prerogative.  Labels are limiting.  But the bisexual label seems particularly maligned and avoided, especially for men, at least until now.  Perhaps with the millennial generation apparently showing so much more acceptance of sexual fluidity and bisexuality than their elders, this might finally change.

Ed and I got married in 1998.  And again in 2011.  Then our marriage got federally augmented in 2013.  And now finally in 2015 the state of our union will be fully recognized in every state of the Union.   It’s been a long time coming but our day has come.

Let’s start the celebration with the original recording of “Our Day Will Come” by Ruby and the Romantics.

This Christmas one of my “stocking stuffers” from Ed was the gift that thrilled me the most this holiday season: a (battery operated) votive candle with an actual screen cell of Liza Minnelli singing the title song from the movie “Cabaret”.   I don’t pray, and I wasn’t raised Catholic, but I am tempted to use this votive candle as a way to make daily obeisance to the musical gods.

I could go on and on about what makes “Cabaret” not only one of the great movie musicals of all time but simply one of the great movies of any time, period (and I will probably come back to wax happily on various aspects of “Cabaret” in many future posts). It richly deserves every one of the 8 Academy Awards it received, and probably would have won 9 and not earned the distinction of being the movie that won the most Oscars without winning Best Picture if 1972 had not also been the year of “The Godfather”.

German TV showed “Cabaret” soon after its theatrical run. I don’t remember exactly how old I was when I first watched “Cabaret” curled up on a couch with my parents in our West Berlin basement TV room, probably with the fireplace crackling, but I must have been pretty young, because I remember it as the movie that first introduced me to many adult concepts about history and sexuality.

If “Cabaret” wasn’t my movie introduction to Nazis and Anti-Semitism and the history of the Nazis coming to power in the 1930s, it surely was the one that prompted my first questions to my parents about these concepts, seeing how deeply and intractably they effected all of the movie’s characters. And if “Cabaret” wasn’t my introduction to the concept of homosexuality, surely it was at least the introduction to the concept of bisexuality, as I clearly remember asking my parents to explain this explosive exchange between Sally (Liza Minnelli) and Brian (Michael York) about their rich friend Maximilian (Helmut Griem):

Brian: Ah, screw Maximilian!

Sally: I do.

Brian: … So do I.

(for the rest, click on the title)

I came up with the idea for “Speakeasy” while strolling in Prospect Park with Ed six or seven years ago. But I had the ideas that would lead to the idea for Speakeasy many years, even decades before that moment.

By which I mean before I had that incisive moment in the park that crystallized what Speakeasy would be, I had a whole bunch of primordial ideas: melodies that begged for an outlet, a staging concept that needed a story, and a strong passion to create a powerful Queer musical.

Like most songwriters I have an archive of unfinished songs, from melody snippets to nearly complete songs, sometimes with some lyrics attached, maybe just a title phrase, but usually without any words.   I call them “Orphan Songs” or “Orphan Melodies”, musical ideas that are still looking for “placement” in a musical or project, still needing an outlet to be shared. Some of these Orphan Melodies get written down and archived and then forgotten until I look them up again. Some “haunt” me by sticking in my memory, a tune I will hum to myself again and again, feeling its emotional content even if I didn’t yet know its actual lyrical content. Those songs especially nag at me, tugging at a subconscious sleeve, looking to be fully composed and performed somehow. Once they are “placed” in a show and are performed, they tend to stop tugging at that subconscious sleeve, no longer “haunting” me.

I noticed years ago that a lot of my orphan melodies felt like songs written in the 1920’s or 1930’s. And with that realization I started imagining a musical set in a nightclub, or rather that the nightclub was the staging area for a story set in the 1920’s and/or 1930’s: not necessarily every scene took place in a nightclub, but the nightclub “presented” every scene. That was all fine and well, but I still had no idea what the actual story might be for this possible musical using all those 1920’s /1930’s song ideas.

And then the masterful “Brokeback Mountain” lost to the deeply uneven “Crash” at the 2005 Academy Awards. Besides the relative merits of the two movies, media reports would detail how the “homo-ick” factor had kept too many Academy members from even seeing the Gay Cowboy Movie, let alone voting for it in the category that mattered most. To me Hollywood Homophobia was writ large in the moment Jack Nicholson read “Crash” off the Best Picture envelope and within moments I shouted at my TV screen: “You fucking homophobes. I’ll show you. I’ll write “Gay Sex, the Musical” and shove it down your throats!”

(for the rest, click on the title)

“a baroque burlesque ballet”

That is how AMDM Productions describes the luscious presentation of “Cinderella” currently playing at the Minetta Lane Theatre.  This undeniably adult take on Charles Perrault’s Cinderella (1697) by Company XIV, which deliciously blends “opera, circus, Baroque dance, vaudeville and cabaret styling to create a whole new spin on the classic” had me completely enraptured throughout its three sexy and sensational acts of incredibly accomplished singing, dancing and acrobatics, ennobling good-natured cheesecake and beefcake sauciness.

beautifully bared buttocks

bodacious balladeering belles

Part of the fun of researching 1920’s and 1930’s Queer subculture in New York City was coming across a wide variety of specialized slang and coded terms that flourished among homosexual men and women of the time.  Some of these terms are solely of their time, some have survived into the modern era, albeit often with modified meanings.

Not surprisingly, for a social group that for the most part did not conduct themselves openly in society, a lot of these terms constitute a kind of secret language available only to those “in the club”.  They describe sexual preferences and types, as well as particular places and activities important to homosexuals of the time.

Folding these terms into the libretto of “Speakeasy – The Adventures of John and Jane Allison in the Wonderland” was a lot of fun.  For the most part the meaning of the words should be clear in context.  However a little confusion can be fun too, as in this moment, when John Allison eavesdrops on a trio of Gay Florists and Julian Carnation:

FLORIST 1:

You can keep 42^nd Street.  Give me the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

FLORIST 2:

You and your seafood, Violet!

FLORIST 1:

That’s my crowd, Lily.  When I promenade there, no flag’s at half mast!

So, Logo is showing “Cabaret” tonight as part of their new “Cocktails & Classics” series.  This series started around the same time I launched this blog, and in that short time I have already gone on and on here and here how much I LO-oo-OOVE “Cabaret”, so I thought well, this might be an opportunity to take another quixotic step towards millenial modernity and do that thing called TV Recapping, or even more drastically and up to the minute, try to do it as Live-Blogging.  After all, it’s “Cabaret”, on Logo (a mere channel 179 on my cable dial), the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, a TV event bound to attract massive audiences and a clamoring amongst my massive social media following of, like, dozon(s) to share this cultural touchstone together, right?  Right?

(Can one hear crickets over the internet?)

Nonetheless.  This looks like it’ll be fun.  I don’t relish watching any movie with commercial interruptions, but “Cocktails and Classics” appears to be designed to watch a favorite movie we may already know very well with an extra twist, both in the drink and the company.  It’s not just curated, it’s queerated! Here from the Logo website:

Anyway, the show starts 7pm EST.  I will be “live-blogging” starting… NOW!

6:39pm  – I just took Logo’s Fuck / Marry / Kill poll, Cabaret edition.  My answers were with the minority throughout.  Now personally I would want to fuck and marry Sally Bowles, Brian Roberts and Maximillian von Heune, and not kill anybody, but that’s not how the game is played.  So, without giving it too much thought, I decided to fuck Sally, marry Max and kill Brian.  I asked Ed, my husband, and he said “I don’t like this game.”  Yes, yes, but gun to the head, he says the romantic in him would fuck Max, marry Brian and so long Sally.  The practical man in him would fuck Brian, marry Max, and face it Sally, you never had a chance with this Kinsey Six.

The centerpiece in Act Two of the new musical “Speakeasy – John and Jane Allison in the Wonderland” is the great drag ball at the Jefferson Lodge Ball.  Chet Cheshire presides over the festivities, attended by a sparkling variety of drag kings and queens, and watched over from the balconies by a who’s who of New York Society.  Duchess Bentley and Jane Allison arrive as a Victorian groom and bride, John Allison and Julian Carnation arrive as Prince Charming and Princess Cendrillon (Cinderella).

The Jefferson Lodge Ball is closely based on the historical Hamilton Lodge Ball of Harlem.  This annual ball and costume contest started in the late 1860’s and continued through the 1930’s.  Drag balls were held in major cities throughout the United States by the 1920’s, but Harlem’s Hamilton Lodge Ball was the most famous, reportedly attracting up to two thousand costumed men (and women) in drag and up to three thousand spectators watching from the balconies.

Participants of the balls are quoted in history books about queer culture of the time as saying “What we wear at the ball this year, you’ll see hanging in the shops next year” describing the fantastic ball gowns the men created for themselves to exhibit, as well as “Allowing the freaks their one night out makes sense for everybody” in wry reference to the (bribery greased) tolerance the police showed these balls at least until the end on the 1930’s.  I love both these quotes so much they have made it into the script of Speakeasy.

(for the rest, click on the title)

The Handmaiden – Paris 05:59: Theo & Hugo – Baby Bump – Where Are You Going, Habibi? – Different from the Others

Between writing my second piece on the Queer Baker’s dozen of LGBT films I saw at the NewFest Film Festival and starting this piece, I saw “The Handmaiden”, one of the best movies of the year.  And with “Paris 05:59: Theo and Hugo” being my favorite film from NewFest, I expect I had the pleasure of seeing the most sexually explicit lesbian movie and the most sexually explicit gay movie of this year (or maybe any year), as well as the two films that treat queer sexuality with the greatest narrative finesse.

OK, now that I got your attention with promises of hot yet artistic cinematic lesbian and gay sex, let me shoehorn in the other Newfest movies I saw that bear discussing too; we’ll get to the steamy stuff soon enough…

(for the rest, click on the title)

Be warned.  This will not be the Disney Musical Fairy Tale of your or anyone else’s childhood.  For one, Snow White is a recovering sex addict, and the seven dwarfs she meets all struggle with sex addiction and a variety of accompanying conditions: Dopey abuses marijuana; Happy is a loud drunk; Sneezy is a coke head; Sleepy is up all night trolling for sex on the internet; Doc is constantly catching STDs; Grumpy has anger management issues; and Bashful is a “sexual anorexic”, he has a porn addiction but can’t relate to actual people.

I quickly realized I was going to learn a lot of new things (and I know things now, many wonderful things, that I never knew before… wait, no, that’s a very different fairy tale musical) at this benefit performance of “Snow White and the Seven Hos”, a fundraiser for S.C.A. – Sexual Compulsives Anonymous, a support group that primarily serves Gay Men with Sex Addiction issues.  Ed and I were invited to attend by a friend who knows the amateur performers, all of whom are listed only by their first name and an initial in the program.  Evidently this fundraiser is an annual affair.  Previous musical appropriations included a legendarily hilarious “Sunset Boulevard” as well as “The Sound of Music” (with the Van Tramps).

Saturday night we attended the Lesbian & Gay Big Apple Corps Symphonic Band performing a concert at Symphony Space titled “Once Upon A Time … The Soundtrack to Our Story”, with music referencing and inspired by the history of the Gay Rights movement as well as individual stories presented first hand via representatives from The Generations Project.  It was a moving, festive, musically rousing affair.

The Lesbian & Gay Big Apple Corps Marching Band

The Lesbian & Gay Big Apple Corps is best known for their marching band, always a highlight at every year’s Pride March as well as many other public events.  While the marching band is very reminiscent of your typical All American marching band, except that it is far more fabulous, the Symphonic Band has a repertoire that, while including typical marching band arrangements of popular tunes, also embraces classically symphonic music.

The Symphonic Band, conducted by symphonic director Henco Espag, is as large if not larger-than-your-typical symphony orchestra, but instead of a string section – which usually takes up the majority of individual players in a classical orchestra – here there are more woodwinds, more brass and more percussion.  Specifically piccolos, flutes (over a dozen), oboes, english horns, bassoons; clarinets (about 20 “regular” clarinets, and then additionally:) E flat clarinets, alto clarinets, bass clarinets, contrabass clarinets; soprano saxophones, alto saxophones, tenor saxophones, baritone saxophones; trumpets (over a dozen), plus heaps of french horns, trombones, bass trombone (just the one), euphoniums, tubas, and finally nine percussionists and one guitar/electric bass player.  Around 120 players.

So at their best it can make for a very rich and dynamic sound.  And we got that aplenty Saturday.