queer – TOpoet

Cards For Pain

September 2, 2022 topoet3 Comments

Small town summer theatre has changed from the days when The Odd Couple or Hello, Dolly! were the offerings. Now one can see Mama Mia, or even The Rocky Horror Show – that’s right Rocky is now ‘safe’ enough for all. I’ve seen Rocky on stage a few times, most recently as part of the Stratford Festival. Like that one, the Stirling Festival Theatre incorporated the audience participation establish by the movie fan base. ‘It’s a step to the left.’

I loved everything about this production which successful tweaked the play a little. Some of the narrator’s dialogue was given to Sal Figliomeni drag queen Shirley Happening, who, after instantiuous costume change into Trixie, sang the opening & closing double-feature song with great energy. She also gave the audience instructions on when to participate resulting in Brad being called ‘asshole’ & Janet ‘slut.’ Is it misogyny that ‘slut’ was shouted by more people & louder than ‘asshole’?

But the gender philosophy of the play is better left to academics as we ordinary folk enjoy the dynamic singing & singing of the cast. As Frank-N-Furter dominated the stage from his first appearance I start with J.P. Baldwin’s great performance. He clearly enjoyed these songs, ripping into Wild & Untamed Thing full force. His treatment of I’m Going Home let the emotion of the song do the work, even as audience members tossed playing cards into the air.

Ryan Whittal’s Rocky (not on a slab) thanks to a funky little golden romper didn’t need a gender reveal party. The sets were simple & effective & made the show feel more like the original did when it also had little $ for production values.

The cast was excellent, energetic & many of them got to display unexpected vocal ranges, in particular Lousia O’Keane as Magenta. I loved that Dr. Scott rolled on stage with a snug Cape Breton tartan blanket tucked around his legs. Solid choreography & a tight band made this a great show.

I’d say ‘see this show’ but this was the final performance for it. If there was suggestion box I would recommend they tackle ‘Hair’ next season.

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No Morals Inventory

July 5, 2022 topoetLeave a comment

The dreaded, by many, fourth step in the recovery program calls on one to take a fearless moral inventory, which at first glance seems to be a list all the bad things we did. The lies, money we stole – if only it were that simple. Growing up queer I was confronted with things like ‘an abomination unto the face of the Lord.’ if one is an abomination to begin with what difference to those petty failing make?

I didn’t have any morals to begin with anyway. What I did have was a cultural encoded set of behaviours & expectations that were in place before I was even born. Men do this, women do this – not to conform was a no-no, to question those suppositions was also a no-no. If one was a bit of a girly-boy you got teased into manhood. To confront bullies was a step to manhood: violence = masculinity. Not to confront = cowardice.

In the lgbtqia world not to get married was to be a bad queer, to sleep around was to be a bad queer, not to fly the rainbow flag with the added trans chevron was to be transphobic. Assumptions & encoded expectations can’t be avoided – there is always a pressure to conform in the queer community or rather to ape heteronormative behaviours to be ‘acceptable’ – please no leather men at the pride parade, hide those drag queens, hide anyone over 60 (or it is 50 now) so we don’t scare the children or our corporate sponsors with the bare breasts of motorcycle dykes.

Getting back to my inventory, I eventually had to address deeper issues than a list of people I resented or who resented me for what I was. Some resentments are hard to get to the roots of, as my biggest abuser was/is the culture I grew up in & one in which I have to live. One result of doing this step several times over the past decades as guided me to confront those cultural encoded behaviours & realize that being the sort of non-conformist I am isn’t cowardice but bravery.

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Rainbows Flags and Dogs

June 25, 2022 topoetLeave a comment

Various lgbtqia+ rainbow flags around East End Toronto

Recap March 2022

April 1, 2022April 1, 2022 topoet2 Comments

The WP map shows where my top 10 hits have come from. Bangladesh finally tops India but that Bahrain does too is a surprise. I was glad to see ‘Behind Closed Doors’, one of poetry posts, was the top post of the month. Check it out if you haven’t already 🙂

Behind Closed Curtains

Picture Perfect: is up to 110 sections; about 158,000 words posted so far with at least another 30,000 yet to be edited & posted. I thought making deep cuts would shorten things but instead it gave me opportunity expand what remains to make it more plot forward. Such is the editing life.

Watched a couple of interesting movies. Deep Crimson: Mexican, La Ceremonie: French. Both more intriguing that great though both of them do have excellent performances & both of them involve blood baths, & both inspired by real events. Deep Crimson is a version of the Honeymoon Killers, La Ceremonie springs from the same murder that inspired The Maids. In both innocent people meet with dire ends. Deep is filmed with rich colours, La Ceremonie the colours are almost bleached out by the French sun.

If you think Zora Neale Hurston is the only black female author of note before Toni Morrison then it’s time to read ‘Works of Alice Dunbar-Nelson’ – her first two published collections of short stories & poetry from l890’s. The stories transported me to New Orleans with their rich descriptions of black life there at the time. The various class distinctions are the subtext for stories of romance, Mardi Gras, daily life & hope. The poetry is more maudlin than political. I read the eBook – one of good things about eBook is often out-of-print books are given new life.

Re-read Boze Hadleigh’s ‘Conversations With My Elders.’ Published in 1986. It includes interviews with actors Sal Mineo and Rock Hudson; directors George Cukor, Luchino Visconti, and Fassbinder; and designer, photographer, and author Cecil Beaton. Their conversations with the author reveal much about the lives and careers of these celebrities and how their homosexuality affected both. I bought the hardcover back in the day for the interview with Sal Mineo, which is amazing.

Reading it in 2022 I am amazed at the frankness of some of these ‘stars’; at their recognition things had to change & the various degrees of willingness they showed. Wiki tells me that Rock Hudson claimed never to have been interviewed by or even met Boze! I’m not sure if the book is still in print.

In the real world (LOL) recovery meeting shave been slowly reopening & I’ve gotten back to one f2f meeting, so far. Made reservation for some shows at the Stratford Festival: Richard III in May, Hamlet in June. More to booked soon.

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Universal Hunks

March 11, 2022 topoetLeave a comment

Universal Hunks – A Pictorial History of Muscular Men Around the World, 1895-1975 – David L. Chapman with Douglas Brown – Arsenal Pulp Press. A couple of the photos in this surfaced on a ‘vintage men’ twitter I follow, with a link to the book, which I ordered & have as paperback. Ebook was available but this is one I needed to turn pages.

It is an excellent study on the nature of masculinity around the world – masculinity seen as muscular strength. It also has a sharp subtext on colonization, race & male nudity. I recall in high school some of my male classmates were alway eager to go through the National Geographic Magazines in the school library to find bare breasted women. One guy got suspended for cutting those pictures out, (or maybe it was bra ads in Miss Chatelaine.) I was usually disappointed in how few tribal men got the same tender photographic attention.

Strength & masculinity & violence have been a standard of defining what makes a man a man. The books reminded of the old Charles Atlas ads that appeared in comic books & men’s magazine where skinny guy on beach get sand kicked in his face by the muscular bully – skinny guy buys the Atlas muscle building course & tosses that bully aside – the message being bullies deserved to be beaten – violence is the way to making oneself respected a man.Of course today if that happened in the USA one of them would merely pull a gun & kill the other in self-defence.

Universal Hunks takes us around the world outside of North America with a series of excellent photos of muscle men. Some became brand names for health products – eat these biscuits & you too can unbend horseshoes. Many enlarged their fame with postcard pictures doing stunts or merely posing in very tight garments or even bare chested.

The photos gave admirers the opportunity to look as long as they wanted. Many posed for sculptors & painters as well & some shots of those studio moments are included. Many of the photos are amazingly ageless & could have been taken of men last week. None of them deliberately eroticize their subjects, that is up to the viewer, in this case me 🙂

Suffocating

me face down flat on the floor

me: fifteen

the floor: high school gym

pine slats and the smell of socks

lift from the waist

me lifting sweating

I could do this much of the class

I felt safe in one spot

not facing anything anyone

now roll over

this was a little worse

I could see the other guys in my class

but I’m still safe

in one spot on the floor

I dreaded it all so much

I’d arrive at school in my gym clothes

to avoid the change room

okay on your feet boys and boys

we groaned up

jumping jacks

I was still safe in one spot

I could keep up with this

it was basketball that did me in

where I could never remember left from right

never could manage a lay up

traveling with the ball – whatever that was

I would pass whenever I could

sometimes I’d fall to get out of the way

but that fear was merely prelude

to what I dreaded the most

the showers

I’d yank my glasses off right away

soft focus everyone

into naked fuzzy forms

I would slink in as small as I could

rinse down

dart back to my locker

keep my eyes to the floor – to faces

but there was always someone too close

someone I couldn’t keep from focusing on

when I was trying not to look

at hair everywhere on some of them

asses backs around their balls

I would dress barely dried off

rush up the stairs and outside

to breath

to keep from drowning

in the damp desires

that were suffocating me

……

Check out my blog about this poem:

Suffocating http://wp.me/p1RtxU-1dQ

Valley of the Bras

September 26, 2021 topoet1 Comment

After reading Stephen Rebello’s Dolls! Dolls! Dolls! I was keen to see the movie, again, & had planned watch it on my own on a rainy day but after seeing the excellent ‘Hitch’ which was based on Rebello’s ‘Alfred Hitchcock & the Making of Psycho’ my partner read ‘Dolls! Dolls! Dolls!’ also wanted to see it again. So we dug out the 2 disc ‘Special Edition’ – loaded with great extras. I had reread the novel earlier this year so I was eager to rewatch the film.

Where to start? The movie pales in comparison to the novel & I understand why fans were disappointed in the adaptation that removed 3/4 of the book. The characters are reduced to stick figures – gone is the fact they women live together for a time – in the film there isn’t one scene of the three of them together. Gone is Anne’s friendship with Helen Lawson – in fact Helen is almost excised from the script – Hayward’s performance jump starts the movie whenever she appears.

Don’t get me started the those songs – we get a glimpse of the Lawson’s Broadway show number ‘I’ll Plant My Own Tree’ & it is clear that no one involved in the film every saw, or was involved with a Broadway show. The song is clunky & staged with all the Broadway stage reality of a Busby Berkeley number but absolutely no sparkle. Hayward lip syncs it well enough. No Broadway set designer would ever ever use a mobile that covered the star’s face constantly.

Patty was not pleased to be dubbed & as result released the lp Patty Duke ‘Sings Songs from the Valley of the Dolls.. Yes, I have it thanks to iTunes & it fits perfectly with the music misfire of the movie. It did nothing to enhance her reputation as a singer 🙂 Nor did the film do much to enhance her reputation as an actress. In fact none of the cast’s career potential was increased by the film. Such is the harsh reality of life in the valley of the dolls.

I felt for Barbra Parkins when I saw those beige ‘office’ costumes when they matched the beige every wall she stood in front of. I laughed at the fab cosmetics commercial montage – a product supposed for any woman while she looks like an alien. But as she climbs the ladder to success her costumes do improve even as they remain impractical.

Patty Duke bravely & brazenly barrels though Neely without taking a breath. Her few scenes with Hayward are rich – Duke noisily claws the scenery, Hayward demolishes it by simply putting on a scarf. Yes, this movie needed more Lawson. Sharon Tate is nearly invisible as her story line is gutted by the screenplay.

How these actresses where treated by the industry is worse than how the characters they play are treated by the industry. I really think the guys who made Feud should consider this Making of Valleys as their next project. Oh yes my title ‘Valleys of the Bras.’ There is nothing lurid in the film but Parkins, Duke & Tate, at different points in the film, spend an inordinate amount of time emoting in bra & half-slip.

Ready

it turns into a trade

this is what I want

this is what it’ll cost

is that the price I’m willing to pay

is the sacrifice worth the result

why can’t I have it my way

is that too much to ask

I’m willing to compromise some

but when is enough enough

can I say no

to losing more of myself

to gain something I expect to get

by saying yes to

what I want to say no to

can I say yes and no

at the same time

how will you do

when I say yes I want what you offer

but not with the conditions you offer it with

do I want to give up

the comfort of abstractions

for the sake of superficiality of the concrete

if I’m ready for my close up

do I want to stand in front of the camera

Pandemic Poetry Project

September 16, 2021 topoet1 Comment

I have two pieces in the Pandemic Poetry Project ed. David Bateman published by Buddies In Bad Times. I’m is good company as the anthology includes work by Patricia Wilson, Kathleen Whelan, Robert Standish, Neta Rose,Charlie Petch, Stedmond Pardy, Dianne Moore, Ashok Mathur, Merle Matheson, David Marshall, Marcy Rogers, Sri M., Peter Lynch, Amy Lester, Steve Keil, Brock Hessel, Sky Gilbert, SK Dyment, Judith Chandler, Philip Cairns, Ashley Bomberry, Marusya Bociurkiw, bill bissett, Paul Bellini, & David Bateman. A superb sampling of lgbtqia writers.

I was asked by David to submit a couple of pieces last year. I sifted through some recent writing & sent in the two that appear. At the time I was unaware that it was a ‘Pandemic’ project or I might have sent pieces with a lockdown subtext. It is a handsome little book the size of a cd case with 150 pages of insightful, silly, spiritual, sexy, political writing.

It can be bought for $19.95 , in person, at Buddies In Bad Times on Alexander St. Glad Day Bookshop also has it on the shelf or you can order it, but there will be shipping costs.

Buddiehttps://gladdaybookshop.com/item/kUIAuTpWhPwIbxRv1yQZuA

ISBN: 978-1-7775101-2-1

Reconnect

August 29, 2021 topoet1 Comment

Met up with Lizzie Violet, an actual f2f visit, with someone outside of my bubble for the time since the initial pandemic lockdown. I haven’t spent time with Lizzie since the unexpected demise of her Cabaret Noir a few years ago. We’ve had a few coffee dates with a group of writers but this was a one-on-one without distractions. The day proved to be hot, for me, to sit on a shady patio, so we enjoyed the a/c cool of my dining-room for a couple of hours. (http://lizzieviolet.com)

She writing a novel set during the 30’s set in Toronto & one of the characters is from the east coast. I was a natural resource seeing as my novel, Coal Dusters, is set near that time – there was little change in Cape Breton due to the depression after its own disastrous labour struggles with the coal/steel industries. They were already a hard-scrabble people making the most of what resources they had. But I digress, slightly.

I do get to talk ‘writing’ with one of my Loyalist crew every month or so but was great to do so with with an almost new face 🙂 I also got to share some of the books I picked up in my Cape Breton research & some of the things I discovered for other sources – things like the black miners imported from the Caribbean with promises of company houses etc only to arrive totally unprepared in the middle of a blizzard with no real place to live. There’s a book that needs to be written.

I also shared how I read novels written in the 20s/30s to get sense of the language used, I also read some boys adventures written at that time too. In Dusters I wanted my characters talk like 20’s people not like the over-articulate people of today. In rewatching the The Tudors recently I was dismayed at the over use of the word fuck – I know it existed at the time – but as a word of mocking not vulgarity.

Hopefully there’ll be opportunity to reconnect f2f with more of my writing/poetry community before the the lockdown rolls back to protect us from people who feel their personal rights supersede their responsibility to others.

from August 2008

Dreaming Of Me

you tell me

you’ve been dreaming about me

you think about me all the time

you think such talk is flattering

but because

we’ve only been together

three times

to me these are warnings

things too much too soon

from someone I don’t dream about

about whom my only thought is

how do I break this to you gently

you really are quite sweet

but being attracted to me

isn’t enough anymore

not that I think I’m so hot

that I can pick and choose

it’s just that I’m no longer

driven by opportunity

the way I once was

the longer you dream

the longer it will take

for you to wake up to the fact

that you aren’t in my dreams

I don’t fantasize about you

I don’t long for your call

I’m not hungry for your kiss

I didn’t want to say no thanks

too quickly

opportunities like this

don’t come often in my life

the last time it did

I was eager like you

for more of that mouthful of wonder feeling

but this time

I’m more inclined to keep my mouth shut

let someone else do the talking

then I’ll do the walking

I’m out of here

once I figure out how to tell you that

after all we’ve only been together

what three times now

not long enough

for me to consider it an investment

more of an investigation

a chance for both of us

to check out the goods

and as much as I’m pleased

with what lies beneath the sheets

I’m not drawn back for more of it

even when you tell me

you dream of me

that you waited all week for my call

the fact that I waited a week to call

should have told you something

if I was that into you

nothing would’ve held me back

I wish you sweet dreams though

feel a little flattered

some of them are of me

but I’m not selling

myself for a dream

anymore

My Five Year (Dead Friends)

July 4, 2021July 30, 2021 topoet1 Comment

With my AA anniversary this week (43 years on July 6) I’ve done some reminiscing about my early years in recovery. My memory is helped by the journals I kept at that time – this was before keyboards & morning pages. Handwritten & for the most part more a listing of events than reflections on those events. In my poetry archive I have pieces that I wrote then which are more about discovering the gay world than exploring sobriety.

One artifact I have is a cassette recording of my 5 year anniversary from 1983! I’m not sure if I have heard it since it was first recorded. I also have a photo taken of the occasion, plus some of the cards I was given! The photo brings back some memories. I listened the the tape a few months ago though before passing it on to the Archives for preservation as mp3.

It is, I’ve been told by the head of that committee, a piece of gay recovery history that shouldn’t be lost. I had to hear it first before letting it go. It was a bit embarrassing to hear myself praised, to hear my actual ‘acceptance’ remarks. It was bittersweet to hear these voices of members who, for the most part, are no longer with us. Dead friends. So many dead friends.

Some murdered by HIV, some who died of life itself, some who moved away to Vancouver or Calgary to struggle with their sobriety in different surroundings but didn’t make it, deaths I heard of eventually. Voices I still recognized. Voices that I was happy to hear again. I even recognized laugher of people in the audience.

I do recall the tape being made but don’t remember who made it. Side A says ‘Duncan’s Fifth – Key unknown – 7 July 1983.’ Side B ‘‘Duncan’s Fifth in AA major – 7 July 1983.’ Printed by the hand of the taper. I love the Beethoven reference. It is the entire meeting from opening serenity prayer, passing the basket & the closing prayer.

I was a little surprised that it played at all. Cassettes often dry out, loose their ‘dynamic tension,’ tape ends become disconnected from the spools. One of the reasons I was so happy to to move to from tapes to cds. There was nothing more dismaying than having the tape on your Walkman jam up & pulling it out with endless feet of tape dripping out of it. I may wait another 43 years before hearing it again though 🙂