How the Homosexuals Saved Civilization - Cathy Crimmins [6]
Here are a few things I’ve learned about searching for the gay sensibility:
1 . Elton John was right: There is a Circle of Life.
Sir Elton, a famously once-closeted, now openly gay man, wrote the lyrics for the song “Circle of Life,” featured in the Disney animated film The Lion King, and later more lyrics for the famous Broadway show of the same name, which many homosexual as well as straight families attended. The song describes the inevitable Circle of Life, and it might as well be describing the inevitable transfer of gay trends to straight culture: “It’s the leap of faith/It’s the band of hope/Till we find our place/On the path unwinding.”
Time and again, as I examined the influence of gay men and the homosexual sensibility on straight life and rituals, I saw a circle, a straight-to-gay-to-straight-again circle. Things that seem heterosexual were once gay; likewise, many factors of culture that seem gay were once straight. I’m thinking earrings on rednecks, boys in baggy cargo shorts, Methodist picnics with pesto. The Circle of Life poignantly identifies how much gay culture has influenced our daily lives
The Circle of Life approach can be a helpful template for seeing how trends move back and forth through what can only be described as the permeable membrane of American culture.
Likewise, there is an American Circle of Life when it comes to trends. The trendiest trends pass from those who have been most marginalized in society—from gays, blacks, Asians, and other minorities to the more mainstream straight, white-bread culture. And when something overtly homosexual or incredibly cool comes on the scene, there is always a progression from the gay audience to the female audience to the straight male/female, or “breeder,” audience.
Ted Allen, the food stylist on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, described this very same progression of awareness to the Chicago Tribune in talking about how he and the rest of the Fab Five first started getting noticed in public.
First it was the gay guys in Chelsea. . . . And right about the same time, it was the single women. Then we started hearing from ladies my mother’s age, you know, around 60. Now we’re starting to get high school boys and college guys, straight guys, in airports coming up to us and saying, “Dude, thanks for that shaving tip, man.”
2 . There is always the Tallulah Factor.
Although it might be apocryphal, I’ve always loved a famous Tallulah Bankhead line, much quoted in gay circles. When asked if one of her husbands had been gay, Tallulah said, “I don’t know. He never sucked my cock.”
There’s a difficulty in tracking who was what, and who did what to whom. There are so many obviously gay guys who have never come out of the closet, and so many closeted gay men who maintain marriages. How can one ever really determine a sexual orientation? And are the nitty-gritty details of a person’s sex life all that important?
For the most part, I have decided to identify as gay any man who has been consistently outed in several sources, even if that man spent his life married to a “devoted” female spouse. But I’ve also learned much about the gay sensibility from the literature, music, and art of men who have refused to be identified as gay but definitely embody or embrace the gay sensibility.
3 . The Liberace Syndrome may always be invoked.
Like all straights, I have suffered from the Liberace Syndrome, a failure to acknowledge something totally gay even when it slaps me in the face. Many Americans born before 1960 have this problem. Even Liberace himself seems to have suffered from it. He sued a London newspaper once for saying he was homosexual. (And for those of you born way past 1960, let me tell you that Liberace was a flamboyantly gay Las Vegas performer. He played the piano really well, and wore white suits with sequins. He was like Siegfried or Roy without the tigers.)
It’s almost embarrassing, looking back, to see how much Americans denied the gay inflections of our society. The Liberace Syndrome continues today in pockets throughout our nation, and especially