My first trip to Provincetown occurred over Memorial Day weekend in 1980, which was a week after my 23rd birthday. I went with a fellow I was dating at the time who I had met in March at the Everard Baths. Gordon was older, i.e. around 30, and lived in Poughkeepsie where he managed a Best Western motel.
After work on Friday I took the train up to Poughkeepsie from NYC and we drove to the Cape that night. Rather than stay at one of the charming and much livelier guest houses in town, we stayed at a sterile Best Western (Gordon got a discount). It was a bit secluded but at least it was close to the beach.
Two popular dance tunes I remember dancing to at the A-House were Funkytown and Call Me (by Blondie). The weekend was also memorable because it was the first time I tried marijuana - but it wasn't a great experience. Rather than smoke it Gordon put in a Pepperidge Farm chocolate sandwich cookie (no longer made). After ingesting it I became paranoid and was convinced that two female friends of Gordon's who we went to a lesbian bar with were witches. Later that evening, Gordon wanted to bring someone back to the hotel with us but I was still feeling out of sorts and nixed the idea, which annoyed him.
Another memory I associate with this first visit was the eruption of Mount St. Helens in the Pacific Northwest. It monopolized news headlines that entire week - and there was another eruption over the weekend.
The trip back on Monday was trying because of heavy traffic on the only road leading off the Cape. (NOT a good idea to leave in the early afternoon at the end of a holiday weekend.) Then there was another major bottleneck around Hartford. This made Gordon very testy and we barely spoke for the rest of the trip. In total the trip took seven hours (1-8:00), three hours longer than Friday's stress-free drive to P-town.
Between 1980 and 1995 I'd vacation in P-town seven times (the other visits were a lot more fun). Then, beginning in 1996, I took a share at Fire Island and began spending many summer weekends out in the Pines - and I haven't been back to P-town since.
I'm not much of a book reader but I just finished reading one that had me captivated. The book is Running in Bed . No, it's not a sequel to Running With Scissors, but rather the semi-autobiographical debut novel by Jeffrey Sharlach which arrived in bookstores a few weeks ago. It recounts the life of gay protagonist Josh Silver during his early years as an adult living in New York between the years 1977-1987. It touches upon coming out, work life, sex, romance and the AIDS crisis.
Since I often write about my own memories and experiences on my three blogs it was refreshing to read someone else's, especially since the character Josh's experiences were somewhat similar to mine, e.g. we both moved to New York in the late 70's to work in advertising and we lived in Greenwich Village. One big difference was that he immediately took a summer share in the Pines while I waited until the mid-1990's.
The book mentions lots of familiar places, e.g., Sandolino's restaurant, Uncle Charlie's Bar, Balducci's, Company restaurant, the Ice Palace disco on 57th St., Driftwood Walk in the Pines et al. However, although the storybegins during the hedonistic, sex-fueled late 70's, Josh doesn't explore the baths or Fire Island's Meat Rack, which were rights of passage for many gay men back then - and key plot devices in Larry Kramer's and Andrew Holleran's acclaimed novels Faggots and Dancer from the Dance, respectively.
The story would have benefitted from more scrupulous fact checking. For instance:
The disco hits I Will Survive, Ring my Bell and Move on Up were popular in 1979, not 1978.
The Monster bar/disco on Grove St. in Greenwich Village wasn't around in December 1979. It opened its doors in 1982.
The royal wedding of Prince Charles and Diana didn't occur on a weekend but rather on a Wednesday. (However, Diana's funeral was held on a Saturday.)
The entire winter of 1982 wasn't mild since January 1982 was, in fact, one of the ten coldest Januarys of the 20th century.
Nonetheless, despite these quibbles, I thoroughly enjoyed reading the book and found it time well spent.
We've probably all seen the TV infomercials for Time-Life Records' various music compilations, e.g. "Love Songs", "Groovy 60's", "Mellow Moods", etc. I've bought a number of them, and am glad I did, because they introduced me to some great songs. One in particuar was Secretly by Jimmie Rodgers. It entered Billboard's Top 40 today in 1958 and became a #3 hit. (Rodgers is best known for the song Honeycomb which topped the charts for four weeks the year before.)
It's a pleasant tune, typical of so many songs from this vanilla decade, but what got my attention was its gender-neutral lyrics. In my interpretation the song tells the story of two men who, due to the mores of the 1950's, must conduct their romance "secretly". Here's the chorus:
"Wish we didn't have to meet secretly
Wish we didn't have to kiss secretly
Wish we didn't have to be afraid to show the world that we're in love
'Til we have the right to meet openly
'Til we have the right to kiss openly
We'll just have to be content to be in love secretly."
Of course, these lyrics could also apply to a West Side Story situation between a boy and girl of different races or ethnicities. Still, I thought the hidden message was a bit daring for the conformist 1950's. (Reminds me of the secret delight I got when I first listened to the Village People's innuendo laden songs.) I'm curious whether the song was popular with homosexuals at the time.
Of course, there have been other gender neutral songs such as Secret Love by Doris Day and the Beatles' Do You Want to Know a Secret? but their lyrics don't have an air of illicitness to them. One that does, however, is the disco classic by Madleen Kane, Forbidden Love, from 1979. In the song's opening line Kane sings, "How can you stop a trembling hand, reaching for another hand, even though it is forbidden love?"
Here's a wonderful video/photo montage from a website called "GayTwoGether" that has been set to the very song discussed here:
Always one to push the envelope, Madonna was able to cross out "perform on Broadway" from her to-do list on May 3, 1988 when she co-starred with Joe Mantegna and Ron Silver (who won a Tony for Best Actor) in David Mamet's play Speed-the-Plow. It was an early example of a show hiring a popular non-actor to draw an audience. Plow ran thru New Year's Eve.
Madonna played the role of Karen, a temp in a Hollywood studio who turned out to be a smooth operator. At the time she was in between albums, 1986's True Blue and 1989's Like a Prayer.
I saw the play six weeks after it opened, on June 14, with a fellow I dated briefly. (The day was blisteringly hot with an afternoon high of 96.) We had great seats, sixth row center, and were surrounded by other excited teen girls and gay men waiting to see their idol.
Madge's performance was uninspiring, and in my journal I wrote: "It was a wooden performance, her delivery seemed unnatural and it seemed as if she was reading for an audition". Still, it was fun to see her close up. And props to Madonna for going out beyond her comfort zone of music videos.
20 years later the play was revived with Jeremy Piven, Raul Esperaza and Elizabeth Moss (Peggy from Mad Men). The revival made headlines a few months after it opened when Piven dropped out after claiming he was suffering from mercury poisoning caused by eating nothing but sushi for years. He turned out to be more high-maintenance than Madonna!
The Saint was the nation's (perhaps the world's) premiere gay dance club during the 1980's and its closing party began on April 30 1988 - and continued until Monday morning, May 2. Although I love dance music I was never part of the Saint crowd; however, I'd go once or twice a year. My first time there was in June 1981 a few weeks before it closed for the summer; the last time was two weeks before the final weekend. And it was more than just a dance floor - there were a lot of other places to explore and "experience".
An ex-lover of mine, Rick, went to closing weekend in two shifts. During his second shift he got into a bit of medical trouble because he bought some bad GHB and collapsed on the dance floor. He woke up in the special triage unit set up at the club for these type of "situations".
Here are five songs I most fondly associate with the Saint:
Hills of Katmandu - This beautifully tribal song is the one I associate most with the Saint. The club's renowned planetarium projector that rose out of the middle of the dance floor projected images of stars that swirled on the circular scrim-like ceiling above the dance floor. To me, this effect along with the glow from the burnt orange lighting evinced a feeling of being out on the savannahs of East Africa. Such a gorgeous song.
Your Love - This was played during my first visit to the club. It was the group Lime's first hit. While we danced to it my boyfriend at the time passed out after taking a hit of poppers.
Dracula's Tango - A great dance song with a Halloween theme.
Eve of the War - This song is on par with the Hills of Katmandu in terms of its mystical/tribal vibe. What a beautiful orchestral opening. The only verse was, "Chances of anything coming from Mars are a million to one he said. Chances of anyone coming from Mars are a million to one - but still, they come!". A number of years after the Saint closed I came across the 12-inch single among a pile of records someone was selling on Christopher St. What a find!
Tonight is What it Feels to be Young- From the soundtrack of the 1984 rock movie Streets of Fire.
The not-a-care-in-the-world vibe of the club was brought home to me during a visit in October 1983. It was a week after a truck bomb ripped apart a U.S. Marine barrack in Lebanon killing more than 250 servicemen. As I pranced on the dance floor at 3AM I thought of all the serious things going on in the world and how here on this fabulous dance flooor I was insulated from all of it.
Stephen Sondheim's musical Company had its Broadway opening on April 26, 1970. The story revolves around Bobby, a swinging bachelor in his mid-30's, and the three married couples who are his close friends. The wives are concerned about him still playing the field while the husbands are somewhat envious of his freedom. I often wondered if "Bobby Baby" might be gay. In fact, there is a scene in which one of the married guys lightly propositions him - but Bobby demurs. At the time the show was considered groundbreaking because it was the first to explore "modern" themes.
Nowadays if a show opens in late April it qualifies for that year's Tony's in June, but 40 years ago the Tony Awards were held in March or April. In fact, the ceremony in 1970 was the week before Company opened (how peculiar for a show to open a week after the Tony's!) Therefore, Company wasn't in the running for a Tony until one year later, but it was hardly forgotten as it received 14 nominations - and won six awards for Best Musical; Direction; Book; Lyrics; Score (the first of Sondheim's six Best Score Tonys); and Scenic Design. However, Michael Bennett didn't win for Choreography nor did the six actors who were nominated.
Although I didn't see this original production I've seen three others. The first was a benefit performance for an actors fund held at a theater in Times Square in the autumn of 1991. Then in October 2003 I saw an NYU student production at the university's newly opened Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. And last summer I saw a filmed concert version that had been staged at Lincoln Center a few months earlier. Additionally, I rented the excellent documentary about the recording of the original cast LP (most memorable perhaps for the scenes of Elaine Stritch's excruciating multiple attempts at The Ladies Who Lunch).
During the rare occasion when a boyfriend became annoyed by something I did I'd sometimes bring up the song Being Alive and point out its message that only when you are inconvenienced by the compromises a relationship requires do you truly experience living. This didn't necessarily win them over, but I was pleased with my cleverness.
April 1979 was a milestone month for me. I had just moved to New York to start my first job out of college (ad agency Scali, McCabe, Sloves) and I was living on my own for the first time. I was starting my second week at the new job when this issue of TIME Magazine hit newsstands (cover date of April 23).
The story was a positive portrayal of the state of gay America. This was in contrast to a cover story published 10 years earlier titled "The Homosexual" which painted a more dreary picture. (My first ZeitGAYst post reported on that cover story.)
The influence gays had in gentrifying formerly undesirable urban neighborhoods; starting fashion trends; and introducing disco to mainstream America was mentioned. One gay New Yorker commented that he'd first seen Adidas sneakers and white painters pants being worn as casual wear out on Fire Island a few years before they caught on with the rest of the country.
One observation in the article seemed like it was written today rather than 32 years ago: "A few younger gays, especially in the cities, have never hidden their identities". And even in 1979 thirty-nine cities and towns had already enacted ordinances prohibiting anti-gay discrimination in jobs and housing (NYC wouldn't pass such a law until 1986). Furthermore, 120 companies, including ATT and IBM, had anti-discrimination policies as it pertained to hiring or promotions.
Later that year I came out to a friend I worked with, Marina, and she told me she wasn't surprised and mentioned this cover story. It seemed that I kept that particular issue of TIME on my desk for a while and she thought I was making a subtle statement.
I bought the Village People's eponymous first albumwithout having heard any of its songs. I did so because their medley San Francisco/Hollywood had been high on Billboard's dance chart for months so I figured it was worth taking a chance on. I was in my junior year at Penn State and I bought the LP at the record store in State College. (The first disco album I bought was Donna Summer's double-LP Once Upon a Time the previous summer.)
The late 70's were my formative coming-out years and the songs on this album, e.g. Fire Island,Key West and San Francisco, provided me with somewhat of an education about gay life. I'd get a frisson of excitement listening to these songs' lyrics about places I'd yet to experience.
The dorm complex I lived in at University Park, West Halls (pictured), was where many members of the school's Nitany Lions football team lived; some players on my floor occasionally asked to borrow this LP for their parties. Despite the fact that the Village People were embraced by gay men and their song lyrics were filled with gay double entendres, they managed to cross over to the oblivious general market, who seemed to get a kick out of the group's "camp pop".
The first Village People song to chart was Macho Man, from their seconnd album,followed by the ubiquitous YMCA, which spent three weeks at #2 on Billboard's Hot 100 in the winter of 1979. Their third album Go West was released in the spring of 1979 and the single In the Navy went to #3. Rolling Stone Magazine even put them on its cover. However, overexposure soon ensued and the group "jumped the shark" in 1980 with their embarassingly bad movie Can't Stop the Music.
Other Village People-inspired posts found on ZeitGAYst:
Three years after their first hit single, Waterloo, ABBA got their one and only #1 hit in the U.S. this week in 1977 - Dancing Queen. Although it stayed on top for just one week - Thelma Houston's Don't Leave Me This Way was breathing down its neck - it became a beloved classic.
Despite their wild popularity worldwide, here in the U.S. ABBA managed to have just four top-10 hits. (They had ten other singles that peaked between #12-#32.) It was a similar fate met by other singers from foreign shores such as Kylie Minogue, Robbie Williams and Boney M.
A few years after Dancing Queen, ABBA had a string of dance-oriented tunes that became big hits in gay clubs: Voluez Vous; The Visitors; Lay All Your Love on Me; On and On and On and Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight). A lasting memory of my first visit to Fire Island Pines, in July 1982, was dancing to The Visitors at the Pavilion.
Even if you find yourself strolling along Fire Island Boulevard today you're certain to hear Dancing Queen coming from at least a few of the houses in the Pines (or in Cherry Grove). At my house it was a tradition to play it whenever we celebrated a housemate's birthday after the cake was presented. But while the song's lyrics are certainly appropriate for "the gays", I never thought the beat was fast enough to make it particularly danceable (at least for my taste).
I planned to show a video of ABBA performing but, unfortunately, they're such wooden performers that instead I chose one of Kylie Minogue performing Dancing Queen at the closing ceremonies of the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney.
Every card-carrying homosexual remembers his first Broadway show. Mine was On the 20th Century, which I saw on March 16, 1979 with my older brother a few days before it closed - our orchestra seats were $17.50 apiece. (The show was winner of the Tony for Best Musical in 1978.)
Since I'm not a native New Yorker it wasn't until I was 21 before I saw my first show. However, once I moved to NYC upon getting a job I went to the theater on a regular basis. And while I don't consider myself a "theater queen", I manage to see about four or five shows each year (I have the Playbills and ticket stubbs as proof). My peak year was 2002 when I saw thirteen. And of the 150+ shows I've seen, On the Town was the only one I walked out of.
My most favorite shows: Evita; Anything Goes; Damn Yankees (a great shower scene); Music Man; and 42nd St. Off-Broadway productions I've really enjoyed: Oil City Symphony; Take Me Out (an even hotter shower scene than Damn Yankees); Eurycides; Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson; Oil City Symphony; and Musical of Musicals: The Musical (which I saw 3 times).
Some memories that stick with me:
During a July 1995 performance of Hamlet a rainstorm during the second half was so torrential that water steadily dripped onto the stage.
The haunting scene in the very short-lived Coram Boy (which closed after just 30 performances in May 2007) where dead babies were exhumed from little graves scattered around the stage.
Sideshow's awkward scenes in which the Siamese twin sisters discussed how to coordinate sex with their fiances.
The night I saw How to Succeed in Business (the '95 revival with Matthew Broderick) was Sign Language Night and I became distracted by the signer who I could see from the corner of my eye.
I was seated in the front row at a performance of Xanadu and at one point in the show Cheyenne Jackson's character (right) came down from the stage and did a little dance in front of me.
Not until I sat down and opened my Playbill did I discover that Amadeus wasn't a musical!
The heartbreakingly beautiful last story of Metamorphoses in which the elderly couple became two intertwined trees.
The audience's excited anticipation before the curtain went up at a preview performance of The Producers a week before it opened.
Most of us have experienced the heartache of discovering the little white slip in their Playbill annoucing a featured actor isn't appearing in that day's performance. My disappointments have included: no Jennifer Holliday in Dreamgirls; no Sutton Foster in The Drowsy Chaperone; no Kristin Chenoweth in Wicked (at least Idina Menzel performed) and no Douglas Hodge in La Cage.
I'm not a big fan, but I've managed to see Nathan Lane in five shows: The Lisbon Traviata; Guys & Dolls; Love, Valour, Compassion!; A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum; and The Producers. Patti LuPone has starred in four that I've seen: Evita; Anything Goes; Pal Joey; and Gypsy. And although I've seen nine Steven Sondheim musicals I never saw Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods or A Little Night Music.
Finally, "huzzah!" to gay-themed shows I've greatly enjoyed: Angels in America: Millennium Approaches; Love, Valour, Compassion!; Take Me Out; Matthew Bourne's Swan Lake; Whoop-De-Doo!; End of the World Party; March of the Falsettos; Naked Boys Singing; Torch Song Trilogy, & The Temperamentals.
