RFD 200 Winter 2024

Issue 202 / Summer 2025

RESILIENCE

Submission Deadline: May 15, 2025 www.rfdmag.org/upload

As we all contend with the global “crisis” in politics, climate and return to bias and prejudice, we’re asking our readers consider ways of engaging in tapping into our own collective and inner resilience.

How do you tap into a network of resilience and support while not getting consumed by “doom scrolling” and being in a place of resentment, anger and fear while contending with caring for our personal world and those who matter around us.

Someone suggested that like a forest, the network of things is less about the trees above ground by the multitude of mycelium under the earth interacting with the roots of hundreds of trees

and plants to react to the challenges the environment foists upon a changing land.

At times it makes sense to present an above ground “front facing” view of ourselves, brave strong rooted trees facing the elements. While at other times in makes sense to “sink in” to the earth, to merge with our environment as a way to keep up communication but stay incognito.

As a community that has in many places made strides as part of being openly proud, vigilant to our place in belonging in community, we’re also deeply aware that the promise of inclusivity has not reached everyone equally, fairly or most importantly in

ways that improve on our day to day lives.

So, dear readers, consider contributing to our collective glance into selfreliance and collective resilience. We love your ideas especially in how you have built up your personal network, share your images of shaping a strong community and tell us the dreams you want to share via poetry for a vibrant you and us.

We want to acknowledge that there are many parts of “us” and we welcome all of those voices even if they differ. We understand the main goal is respect. So sharing what’s significant to you is important in telling “our story”.

Submission Deadlines

Spring–February 15, 2025

Summer–May 15, 2025

See inside covers for themes and specifics.

For online issues, advertising, subscriptions, back orders and other information visit www.rfdmag.org.

RFD is a reader-written journal for gay people which focuses on country living and encourages alternative lifestyles. We foster community building and networking, explore the diverse expressions of our sexuality, care for the environment, Radical Faerie consciousness, and nature-centered spirituality, and share experiences of our lives. RFD is produced by volunteers. We welcome your participation. The business and general production are coordinated by a collective. Features and entire issues are prepared by different groups in various places. RFD (ISSN# 0149709X) is published quarterly for $25 a year by RFD Press, PMB 329, 351 Pleasant St., Ste B, Northampton, MA 01060-3998. Postmaster: Send address changes to RFD Press, PMB 329, 351

Pleasant St., Ste B, Northampton, MA 01060-3998. Non-profit tax exempt #62-1723644, a function of RFD Press, Inc., with office of registration at 231 Ten Penny Rd., Woodbury, TN 37190. RFD Cover Price: $11.95. A regular subscription is the least expensive way to receive RFD four times a year. First class mailed issues will be forwarded. Others will not. Send address changes to submissions@rfdmag.org or to our Northampton, MA address. Copyright © RFD Press, Inc. The records required by Title 18 U.S.D. Section 2257 and associated with respect to this magazine (and all graphic material associated therewith on which this label appears) are kept by the custodian of records at the following location: RFD Press, 85 N Main St, Ste 200, White River Junction, VT 05001.

Production

Managing Editor: Bambi Gauthier

Production Editor: Matt Bucy

Visual Contributors Inside this Issue

Artwork not directly associated with an article.

Front Cover

"One Fine Day" by Patrick Gracewood

Back Cover

"Wading In" by Paul Wirhun/EGGMAN

Front Inside Cover "Sunflowers" by Javier Trelis

Back Inside Cover

"Morning in Mendocino" by Matt Bucy

Patrick Gracewood 2, 30

Denison Beach .............................. 4

milo beach creature ......... 7, 27, 29, 36, 40, 45

Artboydaning 10, 11, 32, 35, 55, 57

Kirk Read ................................. 19

Javier Trelis ...................... 20, 46, 50, 53

Ricard Vyse 23, 24

Matt Gold ................................. 58

of large carving "One

by Patrick

I won't be here that much longer. Wasn't sad because I understood life will go on, there will be a beautiful sunny day, birds singing, and made the celebratory relief sculpture.

Detail

Fine Day"

Gracewood.

"Visitation of the Faerie Spirit" by Denison Beach.

We Are Still Here

by Luna

I woke up to the sound of rainwater dripping in a bucket. Badger had managed to patch most of the leak in the roof with some old tape they had found at the bottom of one of the rusty cabinets in the tool barn. What would I have done without Badger? I’d probably have been dead.

I slipped into the blue dress that I had found in the drag room when we first arrived. It was torn at the shoulder and it had some stains of mold on the hem, but it was still my favorite. I went downstairs and out into the bath area to wash my face and start the fire under the drum. After weeks of drought, last night’s rain had replenished the source and I was giddy at the prospect of finally being able to wash. Until then, we had been rationing the water and using most of it for the garden. Growing our own food felt like a daunting task at first, but thanks to the combined knowledge of Badger and Starlight we were getting better at it. I was just good at removing weeds and picking slugs one by one so that they feasted on the grass instead of our lettuce.

Six years ago, when Croquette started making preserves of every edible plant, berry and vegetable imaginable and stocking them in the cellar, Faeries made light fun of her. Croquette was one of those shy Faeries who preferred doing things over talking. Her obsession had been making all those preserves and to that end she had turned the kitchen into a witches’ lair. She had all kinds of wild herbs hanging from the ceiling to dry and watched over a handful of pots and cauldrons that she left simmering for hours. The Faeries indulged Croquette, as they always did with the most eccentric among us, although a few were frankly annoyed by having to cook meals in a kitchen that smelled permanently of boiled cabbage and vinegar.

We enjoyed talking about Croquette around the fire, sharing memories and stories. She had transitioned well past her fifties and was often harassed in the outer world for her weight and lack of passing, but that never prevented her from living life on her own terms. No one really knew where she was from or what she did for a living, if she did anything at all. She only spoke French, mostly to herself. We would not have survived the first winter without Croquette’s preserves and the recipes she had left written on a small notebook tucked away in the library.

At the beginning it had only been Badger and me. When we decided to attempt the journey, my only wish had been to see the prairie and the ancestor’s tree one last time. As the world we knew was quickly falling apart, I prepared myself for the worst, but Badger wanted to live and it was their love and determination that carried us through. A few times I feared that we wouldn’t make it, like that night at the forest when we were assaulted in our sleep by a group of drunken militia men and had to flee leaving behind our backpack of supplies. The day we finally arrived at the sanctuary, the house was covered in vines and several window panes had been smashed. Some nasty asshole, probably a facepuffed teenager from the village with acne problems, had sprayed “mort aux pédés” on the door.

During the first five years of Le Pen as president, the gatherings continued uninterrupted. There was a need to come together and to heal after the shock of seeing the far-right taking power in one country after another. We spoke about resistance and resilience; we offered workshops in self-defense; we collected money for refugees; we joined in the struggles and protests of other groups in the region. At the same time, everything around us kept looking puzzlingly normal. People were going about their business, the stores stayed open, the shelves were full of food and the cost of gas even dropped thanks to the fracking projects approved by the new government. It was not until the war began, during the second term of Le Pen, that things started to change and change rapidly: the new laws on national security, the blacklisting of activists, the climate crisis denialism, the state-sponsored hate campaign against minorities. For the Faeries, everything came to a head the night that five police vans appeared in front of the house and arrested everyone for infringing the new laws. The Faeries just spent a couple of nights at the police station, but the raid had a chilling effect on the life of the community. Soon after, the sanctuary was hit with inspections, fines and finally a court order to cease all activity. By the time of the Flare, the Faeries had already abandoned the sanctuary and the war descended into even more brutal and desperate bloodshed.

When Badger and I arrived, we spent days cutting the growth around the house and cleaning the

mess that vandals had left behind. Some mysterious spell must have protected the interior of the house, as there were no traces of unwanted visitors. Apart from dust and mold, we only found the droppings of the occasional mouse. We also found one remaining Faerie. It was Sleeves, the tomcat who used to spend the season of gatherings at the sanctuary. Sleeves had gone back to his feral roots and it took a while to regain his trust, but after a few weeks he started getting closer to us until he finally felt confident enough to sleep in our bed.

We spent that fall and winter eating through Croquette’s preserves and cutting wood for the stoves. After sunset, Badger would read in candlelight everything they could find in the library on how to live self-sufficiently, while I tried to mend the harp and teach myself to play. We made love every night as if it was our last, riding into sleep on the waves of emotion and pleasure unleashed by our orgasms.

One morning in early spring, as we were still lying in bed with Sleeves nestled at our feet, we were woken by the sound of the bell. In the haze of my semi-conscious state, I felt for a moment that I was waking up from a long nightmare and that some Faerie had just rung the bell for the morning circle. Then reality sunk in and I was suddenly terrified. In the new world we were living in, unexpected visitors were the last thing anyone wanted to see. We crept out of bed and tiptoed downstairs avoiding the creaking step. From a corner of one of the windows in the kitchen, all we could see was a wide-brimmed straw hat. Then we heard it: yooohooo! We rushed to open the door. We basked in the warmth of those deep blue eyes and broad, wrinkled smile. We couldn’t believe that Starlight was just standing there in front of the door! We hugged and cried as many tears of happiness as we did of sorrow, for our reunion brought also the memory of our loss. Starlight was one of the elders of the community, beloved for his gentleness and green fingers. The night of his arrival we had the first heart circle since the sanctuary had been abandoned. We ended the day cuddling at the friendship room and falling asleep to the sound of crackling wood.

Phones were among the first things of the old world to die, and yet the word managed to spread. As if connected by invisible threads, Faeries from far and wide had heard Starlight’s yooohooo and started to come home to the sanctuary. A week after Starlight, Bongo and his turtle arrived. Then it was the turn of Zimt and Arándano. Many more Faeries came over the weeks and months that followed. One

of them brought a rifle. We had a series of long and excruciating circles regarding whether it was okay to have guns for self-protection or even to hunt. The bitter debates almost broke our fledgling community, but in that darkest hour the different sides finally managed to come to a consensus. The following day we made a ritual in which we put the rifle in a metal box and sank both of them at the bottom of the lake.

We did so many more rituals in those early days. We were all becoming feral and growing our own food had also taught us to be much more attentive to the cycles and needs of the land. Some of us were learning to be fantastic foragers, discovering the troves of treasures that had always been hiding in plain sight in the forest. Others made their homes up in trees and befriended many a wild creature. I took to speaking with animal spirits and on full moon nights I summoned the owls.

One thing we could not grow in the garden or forage for was retrovirals. The plague reared its ugly head again and the bodies of Starlight and other Faeries started to decay. Those of us who had been spared, remembered the deeds of our ancestors and came together to care for our sick and hold their hands until their last breath. We dug a small cemetery not too far from the ancestor’s tree where we put our siblings to rest, and let their flesh melt with the earth. It was heartbreaking to watch those Faeries go, knowing that the meds that kept them alive had been so widely available in recent memory. But Starlight saw it differently and asked us not to cry when his time would come. He felt immense gratitude that death would find him surrounded by the love and presence of Faeries.

Under cover of darkness, a few Faeries liked on occasion to venture as far out as the monument. At the beginning, they came back with tales of terrible fires raging down in the valley. We all knew about the fires as the ash darkened the sky and shrouded the sun for days on end. The world around us continued to spiral down into destruction and somehow it had forgotten about the Faeries. Over time the fires disappeared, as did the terrifying roar of fighter jets over our heads or the echo of faraway explosions. By now we have learned to live day-to-day, through our collective joys and sorrows, remembering to always plant the next harvest but also not knowing what tomorrow will bring.

I have a recurring dream. I plunge into the lake and dive as deep as I can, almost out of breath, until I find the metal box containing the rifle. And, as I am just about to take the box into my hands, I wake up. All day today I have been restless, unable to fo-

cus or even do the simplest tasks. I knew what was nagging me. I went there before the sun hid behind the trees. I was afraid of being discovered and yet I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I just wanted to see it and hopefully get some relief. I dived deep into the lake and looked for the metal box. I took one plunge

after another feeling the anxiety growing in my chest with each unsuccessful attempt. The sun was setting and the water was getting colder. I kept looking for it everywhere, tirelessly, desperately. I kept looking long after it was too dark to see. I left the lake dreading the dreams that will visit me tonight.

"Wisteria" by milo beach creature. Archival photo artists and subjects unknown, design and all other photos by milo.

My Dreams For the Years Ahead

by Gordon Binder

What do I want to see ahead? Three drawings offer my take on this timely question.

"Pride At The Capitol": Life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, all men – and women, of course – created equal, free press, freedom of association, separation of church and state, equal protection, and more… the very values enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution experienced by all of us.

"DC’s High Heel Race": (We celebrated the 37th annual race on Tuesday, Oct 29 right before Hal-

loween.) All queer folks—I use the word inclusively—accepted fully and completely for who they are. Especially want to see an end to the bullying of gay and non-binary students in school and elsewhere, an end to gay-themed book banning at schools and public libraries, an end to the panoply of anti-Trans, anti-drag laws.

"Boyfriends": With growing recognition that we’ve been around since human history began, I hope same-sex couples in public embracing, kissing, holding hands, showing affection becomes all the

norm, indeed commonplace with little objection not unlike what straight couples enjoy.

I appreciate there are many challenges and opponents to realizing these dreams. I sincerely believe Americans are free to believe as they wish. And yet the day should be over when anti-gays can impose on the rest of us their will, their ideology, their theology, their anger or resentment, their ignorant bigotry—whatever the explanation for their homophobic beliefs.

Stay tuned to see what’s to come here at home. With what seems like a growing trend among young

folks to move beyond the traditional binary male/female identities, this might just spur the cultural and political changes we need to see progress.

As to the rest of the world, hoping for progress where it’s possible but recognize there are any number of countries where anti-gay laws are in effect. Getting rid of them may require a revolution of sorts among their citizens. Here, too, stay tuned.

Wishful thinking? Maybe. But I do believe these “dreams” offer a good way forward for generations to come.

For Queers of the Past, Present, and Future

by J.N. exe

To dream of the future where our queer community exists is to dream of audacity. The dreamscapes of the future are an unending promise to hold onto that same spirit of audacity that has allowed us to band together and to soar in our own skies. I want us to reclaim our sense of selves and our communities; Who we are. We weather ourselves in the storms by staking our claims in our audacity.

Audacity in its truest form, is not brash and flouting but a bold choice. Power and strength lay in the choice and acceptance to move forward with your actions. To deny those who hurt you the satisfaction of your surrender is also to deny former versions of yourselves the satisfaction of destroying all of your hard work. Your splendid dreams are far too beautiful to be stopped by anyone in the past, present, or future. This includes ourselves. Audacity to break those bad habits that we picked up to survive is to be audacious enough to dream of a better tomorrow. Audacity to take a step back and say: “This does not help me grow anymore,” is as important as a promise we make to ourselves for the

future. We are, by default as humans, contradictory in nature; but oh how wonderful it is to experience the new and different. My hope is that we find our way to knowing this. Because it is a Herculean task now. We stand tall in the muck, because we refuse to break down. We stand tall in the muck because we dream to help ourselves and others get past this.

What I would like to see for the queer community in the future is a deep dive into our own selves; to get a better understanding of how to make our way into the past as well as the future. To reconnect the fragmented parts of our community, we need to have the glue be our steadfast understanding of our humanity. We are often put into difficult situations to uphold the system that doesn’t want us to exist, we get lost and we give in. That is human, that we falter. But what lets us heal and to come together is to understand that, and prioritize that, as the goal we need to have for us in the past, present, and future.

We stand tall because… Above all else, we are audacious.

The New Pronoun Tool

by Source Aurora

At Faggots in the Woods, the 2024 Spiritual Gathering of Cascadia Radical Faeries, the pronoun debate continued to inspire creativity. Now, if someone chooses to communicate their pronouns in a gathering circle, they now have a new tool! The option to introduce themselves and their pronouns in the third person.

He is Fantasy Lover! They are Starfire!

She is Champagne Rugstomper!

It is Hunterwood!

All Chastity Boonstalker!

When called out, these pronoun-plus names are then repeated by the group.

And those who choose to call out their names without pronouns as they have historically done can continue to do so with the same repeated response.

Commando! Commando!

Tree Hugger! Tree Hugger!

Sparkle Bunny! Sparkle Bunny!

It is a working model of communicating inclusivity. We needed one and this new tool appears to have appeased the pronoun Gods for now. For that,

we have Weaver and Theonym to thank for coming up with this idea.

I am a regular old-fashioned he/him. But being he/him is true to the way I feel about my gender in this body in this lifetime. As true, I imagine, as they/ them/she/xi/yall/it etc…feels to those who hold and share these pronouns beyond the binary.

If the binary pronouns did not reflect my inner feelings about my gender, I would want those close to me to know and to use my pronouns for me to feel known, seen and loved.

Emotionally, spiritually, and somatically. I can make that conceptual leap. I empathize with the importance of sharing the information and having others take note.

Like a more nuanced coming out! And we all know how difficult it can be to come out!

Let’s all get on board with the pronoun revolution so we can get to where it is integrated and easy. At this point, it may feel harder than it needs to be.

We are moving toward a greater understanding of the complexity of the embodied human experience. We are all allies in this moment of cultural awakening and together we will reach a new peace with a greater love and understanding of each other. The willingness to grow and evolve beyond our conditioning is very Faerie!

"Imaginary Planet" by Carlo “Uranus” Quispe.

In dreams they still come through doorways, looking for me their strong bodies run down steps toward me their voices, so familiar, call my name their eyes, so clear, see who I am.

In the sky, a star moving, with red lights flashing a flight bringing them home.

I hail a cab.

“To the airport!” I sob from the backseat.

Through the rush of traffic I arrive, throw doors open sprint down concourses, there’s a group of us now laughing, crying, pushing security out of our way we’re running together, a band of us, who’ve seen the sign.

“They’re coming back!”

At the gate, we stand in silence and watch the craft maneuvers into place through its small lit windows we see movement on board.

We press toward the gangway. Doors open. One by one they come out. Long after the rest have left I stand and wait.

* * * *

I roll over and face the wall.

I’ll rest no more tonight. My body aches. Knees and hips beyond repair; endlessly coughing; my lungs have betrayed me.

Rising up, sheets on the floor my room too close to sleep, I let the water run and look at the body in the mirror.

I move slowly through this time and place. There is a window here, a courtyard people passing through; there’s one well-kept garden and beyond the haze, the city continues its frantic search.

Bob, who I met in the chorus of Marat Sade, inmates in an asylumhe was the Mad Dog Boy and I was the Tall Catatonic; he died so thin and disappointed over 40 years ago.

Ellison passed on his lonely bed beneath the light from the tv screen Russ on Memorial Day, gasping like a fish Glenn purple and swollen, a horrific plant on death’s vine.

From my bed to the window to the mirror and back to bed again.

Will they say I should’ve been happy just to be alive?

—Ed of All People

"They Don't Let You Wait at the Jetway Anymore" by Kirk Read. Analog collage with ink on paper, 7 in x 10 in.

"Il Trovatore," by Javier Trelis. Mixed technique on board, 80x62cm.

Foreigner

What I have saved and never lost is for you

It is all for you

Sunrise and sunset in a foreign city I have never woke in

The taste of breakfast cakes

Something foreign and familiar

Roses in a vase

That wait for our kisses to bloom

Khe Charles

Aria

The hardening enmity between nations on both sides of the planet booming of their artillery is like percussion

The rhythmic kicks and punches to an Asian grandfather on a street in San Francisco because of some white man’s sense of loss is not music

Warning signs are all around us, we only act when the ground falls below our feet the mute voices of the sane people in America

the slow steady melting of polar ice caps, The flow of black, brown, Jewish blood in the streets is not opera. It is the overture before the end

Khe Charles

Jogger

I always noticed you in my periphery while driving— a youth, a man, an octogenarian jogging shirtless, muscles rippling in waves like a white flag of surrender, sweat dripping in torrents like a rainforest, balls bouncing within jockstrap-free shorts.

Sometimes, you approach my rearview mirror, like that T-Rex in Jurassic Park. Other times, you race ahead of my car, like a gazelle leaping before a safari jeep. The best is when you jog parallel to my car so I can pretend not to gawk.

You relieve me of the monotony of my commute, providing more entertainment than all the satellite radio stations. You imbue me with awe of your exquisite physique and awareness of my flabby butt sitting in this seat. I wish I could unbuckle my seatbelt and join you.

The light changes green. My car pulls ahead. Sometimes, you keep pace with me for a piece. Other times, I catch up and pass you. Eventually, I look in my rearview mirror as you disappear around the bend until the next sighting.

—Andre Le Mont Wilson

by Richard Vyse.

Like Whitman’s Two Boys Together Clinging

Like Whitman’s two boys together clinging, a couple of twenty-something men stood hand-in-hand at the corner of MacArthur & Fruitvale, waiting for the light to change.

Their fingers entwined tenderly, naturally, courageously daring, braving, insisting, never parting, not caring what anyone thought.

On the opposite corner, the red stoplight hand vanished, and the green crosswalk man appeared. A device emitted chirps for the visually impaired.

The two crossed in front of my car, like Jack and Jillian with no or kindergartners who escaped from a field trip because they had their whole lives ahead of them.

—Andre Le Mont Wilson

To a Musician in a Caravaggio Painting

Young man, tuning your lute, I’d like to hear you play it. Dismiss your comrades. Let the drapery fall from your shoulder, that overlarge prop

Signor C has decked you out in to hold his composition together, which doesn’t really interest me, I think you know that. I want to hear something enchanting, a galliard, a sweet fantasia. I want to watch your fingers on the strings, the concentration on your brow. I want your heavylidded eyes to see me turn limp and fall, a fool idolater before you. And oh my dear boy, your red lips plump and wanton, let me mop them with my mouth, I don’t care where they’ve been.

—James Kangas

Published in Chiron Review #109, Fall 2017

"Hydrolea" by milo beach creature. Archival photo artists and subjects unknown, design and all other photos by milo.

Future Love

Two futures appear on the horizon in opposite directions.

In the first, our love is inevitable, our desert blossoms flourish, entwined for many years to come.

In the other, they wilt, we see all the obstacles, too many to overcome and no will to carry on.

Our brains battle our hearts. A head-on collision between oncoming trains, the speed increasing.

The sun beats down, the drought extending, desert blossoms so radiant, they can be seen for miles on the arid landscape.

Crowds gather, eager to discern which future will occur, as two fragile flowers wonder about their own destiny.

—Stephen Schwei

"Platanthera" by milo beach creature. Archival photo artists and subjects unknown, design and all other photos by milo.

"Self portrait of an old young man" by Patrick Gracewood. I've painted self portraits for years. It's a sort of daily divination: Who is this man today? The results always surprise me with the emotions that show up..

France

My father never promised us that we would live in France, but I plan to go there for my lover, Laurent, to live and try our lives together. To be seen on the Seine, hand in hand, like lovers are supposed to.

Listening to Judy Collins in my head, and Dire Straits on CD, some weird heavy death metal of his on YouTube, and the sound of his strong heart as I lay my head on his beautiful naked body beneath me.

Seeing him smile in a way that is only for me, coaxing it out of him so easily now, with a joke or a kiss, or a tear from his eye by convincing him of my deep love, his own self-doubts flowing down his cheek as we embrace.

A land where lovers can be together, wherever we find ourselves. Surviving like he has all his life, overcoming the darkest odds. We’ll straddle the differences and mount each other’s steed, charging ahead blindly, without backup or refuge.

People and time shift around us, testing our love and resolve. The mundane are events when we are together, the bond is unbreakable when we share what we have. The unlikeliest but perfect match for each other.

France is our fantasy, a fairy tale of life together, a prince of mine in a not-so-distant land, ready for love and our dreams to come true. We will break down all barriers to make Paris our once and future home together.

— Stephen Schwei

If I Lived

For Laurent, one last time

If I lived forever, I would reminisce about our times together, revisit so many places. See them through historical eyes. Experience them again, but softer, less intense, more aware of what they meant.

If I lived forever and a day, I would make love to you, talk and laugh, side by side, never losing contact between your body and mine.

If I lived but one life, it would be with you, entwined and inseparable, embracing and unalterable.

If I lived, it was with you, more alive than any other time, alert and ensnared, captured by your essence, in love with the one true you.

— Stephen Schwei

Antinostalgia

I often lie awake at night, Just nestled in my bed. My tired eyes stay open wide, As thoughts swirl in my head.

The comfort of my bed is not Real; my sheets do not care. My bed just lies there as I rot; I sink into despair.

Despair about the life I lived; Mistakes from years gone by. Despair about the life I live; Not quite content, but why?

I dwell upon these thorny thoughts, Until the thorns draw blood. Then, surely, swiftly, change my course; Bury it in the mud.

I steer my mental gaze ahead, To future fruitful fields. A ten-pound weight lifts off my head, As my discomfort yields.

I dream of an expected life; Well, expected for most. But my dream life features no wife; Yet, love I hope to host.

I’d lived in eight ‘homes’ by age twenty; They, though, were just buildings. One future home for me is plenty; That’s one checkbox filled in.

My dog died, I was twenty one; He had to be put down. Without a pet, life lacks some fun, But, in a dog, it’s found.

We’d all left mum by twenty two; All singing different melodies. I’ll hold her close ere the day’s through; My mother is my remedy.

I’ve had no loves by twenty three; Well, crushes, but no more. But love, you see, persists to be All I ever look for.

My future plans transpire to be Corrections for the past.

I’ll keep my dear ones close to me; They let my wishes last.

—Blythe White

Inner Sanctum

I saw the priest lead the altar boy behind the sacristy whose name I can’t remember whose seduction I won’t forget and shifted my gaze to the statuary of the stations of the cross for an eternity it seemed but for Christ’s sake I fell asleep on an empty pew hidden from God and some 40-plus years later I saw this same man no longer a priest in a checkout line at the local hardware store and he had changed (have we not all changed) but there was something about his edgy eyes that gave him away even though he was bearded and sweaty and shaky as he fumbled with a torque wrench and a cat’s claw and I stepped up to question him to say something about his sin but he turned and apologized for holding up the line.

—Joseph Zaccardi

"moth" by milo beach creature. archival photo artist unknown; all other photos and design by milo.

Bring Me the Broomstick of Irene Selznick

by Claude Chabot

Garbo was dead; dead as a doornail. And now she was dying and she knew it.

She felt certain that it would happen by the end of the year. Absolutely certain. Just yesterday she had steadied herself against the stove in the pantry when a spasm came and went. When she recovered, she rolled her fingers together in disgust; grease, disgusting grease. Cynthia was simply not doing her job, and she’d noticed it in all areas of the apartment. She had taken out the Comet and scrubbed the stove herself. She’d have a word with Cynthia to shape up, or she would find a new maid. If she only lasted a couple of months more she was nevertheless going to go with her duplex tidy.

She stood in the foyer facing the Venetian mirror trimmed in smoky, hand-wrought glass and fixed her handsome fur hat on her head. The first autumn cold had arrived. She calculated that she wouldn’t be on the street long enough for her to be the target of any animal rights people. She sympathized with them, but in her day fur had been considered glamorous and one never thought about the little animals that suffered so. At least, that’s what her grandniece had told her—how badly they were treated. Thus she’d given up fur except for this one hat which she wore when her grandniece wasn’t around.

The elevator attendant brought her downstairs where she strode briskly through the building’s foyer not unaware of the comments and stares she still occasioned. As she stepped outside she squinted a bit and breathed the crisp air, saw that traffic was light on the avenue, and the trees in the park had taken on the final brilliance of autumn (they’d seemed so late this year). Frankie the doorman bowed slightly to her as he’d always done while he swung the glass doors open for her. Sweet Frankie. It always embarrassed her a bit, that bow. But she had given up years ago telling him not to, and it was something that she’d come to expect. She’d be disappointed if he stopped now.

Continuing her regal exit, her driver Tony held the door to the Lincoln for her and smiled: such a nice young man, a young actor—so polite, such beautiful manners. He reminded her of her son when he was that age. She felt a twinge of pain at the memory of Andreas, but it never was allowed to shadow her face, and she steeled herself by turn-

ing her thoughts to her little journey. He took her quickly to the rent-a-car agency where she picked up a subcompact reserved under her real name, stowed her overnight bag in the backseat, and began to drive herself to the house she’d been born in, on a winding road in a village perched over the Hudson. She’d never sold it through all her husbands, hits, flops, or sojourns in Italy and Africa. She’d held onto it as tightly as she’d held onto her career, with the tenacity of a hawk clutching its tortured prey in its beak. Or was it the career that had caught the woman and would not let go? She started up the Henry Hudson doing not quite twice the speed limit.

She knew that she was taking a chance driving, but if a spasm came over her she thought that she would just pull over to the roadside until it passed, and if it didn’t, well, what of it? She was ready to depart, she just didn’t want to bring anyone else on the parkway along with her on the final fade-out, “the big one” as her last husband the late lordsomething-or-other had put it. What was his name? The hard candy entrepreneur with the honorary title and the house in Kenya. She’d forgotten. Not that her mind was going, she could just never recall certain details, and this included most of the movies she’d made in the last thirty years and her last two husbands. She began to zoom over the Washington Bridge.

She wanted her last visit to the house to be accomplished without anyone noticing who had arrived. A limousine would give it all away so she decided to drive herself. After all, she hadn’t been too proud to drive to Philadelphia for all those talk shows she’d done in the late Sixties to maintain her career (what was the host’s name?). She was a great star, but she was also a butcher’s daughter too, who hadn’t forgotten where she was from. And she had liked the astonished looks of the toll-takers on the New Jersey Turnpike when they realized from whom they were taking their quarters.

Not all the people in town who had known her and her family were long gone or dead: most of them, but not all. She wanted to do the visit in the utmost privacy, be able to go to the grocery where no one would recognize her without her movie star face painted on. In fact, she had played a scene like

this in a prince and pauper plot in “Desdemona Takes a Holiday,” when she was a contract player at Paramount. Colbert had turned done that one so they had cast her. The young heiress whose face is known the world over suddenly disappears to be a chambermaid for a week in a glamorous Manhattan hotel where she winds up meeting a wealthy polo player. They fall in love but he fears he’ll lose his inheritance if he marries someone so humble, being unaware of her real social status. There was a happy ending. “What a ridiculous plot,” she thought. She chuckled to herself and remembered Paolo as she swerved off the parkway. How art had mirrored life but in not such a pleasing way…

Right before the annulment of their marriage Paolo had referred to her in the Italian press as “the face that had sunk a thousand ships.” She was living in Rome and playing a cameo in one of those big-budget Roman Empire movies that they made in those days. Was it “Forum of the Twelve Caesars” or “Mysteries of the Cumaen Sibyl”? She tried to remember but couldn’t. She had been surprised when her maid Silvana told her about this item in the papers, but she had only laughed. She knew Paolo was just mad that he wouldn’t be getting any of her money. After all, she hadn’t hired him for stud service. She had married him because she had been in love. But what love is to a public person may just be a business transaction to others, she discovered in late middle age, though even at the time of their marriage she realized there was more than a little bit of self-deception involved. She hadn’t cried over that one, just closed off another room in her soul. That was 1963 and there weren’t many still left open. Actually, she had tried to be that callous once about ten years ago. Was it ten years ago, no! Fifteen, she recalled, still surprised how fleeting time had become: it was Christmas night 1975. She had returned from the day with her niece in Locust Valley. Her spirit had seemed as utterly empty as her apartment, so she picked up the phone and dialed that number that Joan had given her. Had hired that young man to, how had he put it? Make her happy. But she couldn’t go through with it. The flesh was weak but the spirit was unwilling. It was embarrassing at her age to have to pay for someone. She imagined having him roll over after he was finished while she fished in her purse for a tip. No, it was simply not possible. She had given him a drink and an envelope holding a one-hundred-dollar bill and then sent him along. Such a nice young man. Everyone said that the world was going to hell but she had found a handsome, beautifully dressed hustler with

gorgeous hands. He could have been her grandson. Oh my, she had thought as she closed the door firmly, he could have been her great grandson. Well, he’ll have this story to tell for years. The time he had made Adriana “happy” (she knew he certainly wouldn’t admit that she’d sent him on his way). That was how she’d live on besides the movies—all those stories about her. She hoped that he would be telling his great grandchildren the story sixty years from now. The time he’d serviced Adriana Andorra.

She pulled the Subaru subcompact into the gravel driveway and stepped out with a bit of difficulty, pulled the suitcase from the back and slammed both doors shut. Her pumps crunched in the gravel. It was twilight when she’d arrived, and the sun was setting through the almost empty branches. Still, there were rays of warm, wistful light coming through the mesh of black trees holding the last hardy survivors of the year’s foliage.

The little house was dark. As she stood on the front porch fumbling for her keys, she had to step back out into the last sun to find the right one. Her business manager had always rented the house, but recently it had started changing hands every couple of years. She understood that the last family had moved back to Japan, and it was vacant for the time being.

She turned her key in the door. How many keys to how many doors, elegant and squalid, she had had in her long life!

Naturally, it reminded her of “Destiny’s Strangers” where she had played that young nurse, who driving home late one night, discovers the victim of a lynch mob barely alive after the branch holding him has broken, bringing him crashing to the ground, but saving his life. Her final scene, where she sneaks into the home of the leader of the lynch mob and confronts him with the evidence that will certainly send him to the chair, was her first big screen moment. She remembered Bosley Crowther of the Times writing that her final close-up, “Contained in her eyes all the pathos, wisdom and fragility of the character who triumphs over her fears to bring the lynch mob to justice.”

“Wow,” she remembered saying, thinking at the time as she read the clipping during a pedicure in her house in the Hollywood Hills, “all that.” She clearly recalled that day on the stage at Fox shooting that close-up, wanting to go home because she was leaving for the East coast the next day for her steamer to France, and feeling a little ill from the custard she’d had at the commissary at lunch. Bosley had mistaken impatience and nausea for pathos

and fragility. She chuckled to herself a little as she stepped into the dark house. Even though she had lost Best Actress to Hepburn that year the movie became a classic.

She walked through the kitchen and switched the lights on and put down her bag. Yes, it was here that she would commune with her past, and as she walked further, recollections of her youth washed over her like the mellow warmth contained in a glass of good wine. The kitchen had been remodeled many times, but it was still the room where her mother had sewn her dress for her meeting with Griffith. As it turned out it was her first and last meeting with Griffith, and Gish, those paragons of the silent era. Adriana hadn’t liked the smile on Lillian’s face. Griffith had told her mother that her daughter was lovely, but she should forget about the movies and enroll her in secretarial school. Gish had ushered them out, saying soothing, nicey-nice things. She grimaced at the bitter memory. Gish! Griffith! He had sent them both home to Nyack, and she thought she’d spend her life there, watching the people in the big houses coming and going with their big lives, and she would just have to stay and care for her own little one as best she could, marry the grocer’s son and put her dreams away like her mother’s friends told their children. Yes, they’d say, the movies, the theater, so exciting, but it isn’t life, not really, and anyway, what hope could they have? Just delusions of grandeur that was all, better to settle down and face the day-to-day rather than pinning your hopes on something that just couldn’t be.

She moved through the house that she hadn’t stepped into for fifty years, this little cottage in the woods that had been a palace to her father. She paused a moment, the still vivid sensations of her youth bewildering her. Time was telescoped for a seemingly endless five seconds where seven decades simple vanished and she was home, her mother sewing for the neighbors and her father cracking nuts with calloused, cut hands and throwing the shells into the fire. Her father who had worked so hard all his life, coming to an America who despised him, where he sometimes had to walk down the frozen Hudson for odd jobs in the city, decades before he had gotten his cottage or his butcher’s shop, his feet bundled in rags because he couldn’t afford boots. He had never understood her reality of make-believe, playacting and daydreaming, but sensing the iron determination of his daughter, had given her over to her mother and the quest.

The house was still furnished with a few pieces that she had known as a young girl, and she

switched on lights in what they used to call the parlor, picking herself around these old end tables and chairs that by her mere recognition of them seemed to bring them forward to her in greeting. Of course the name they greeted her with was not Adriana Andorra but Mable Andropoulos. She winced a little. How she hated that name, not Andropoulos; no, never; but Mable. How had her mother come to choose that? She realized it was a popular name of the day, but, honestly, coupled with a name as Greek as the Aegean it only seemed to foolishly mark her as a new arrival in a country so hostile to new arrivals. In what had been her parents’ bedroom she put her suitcase down, switched on a lamp, and ran her hands over the bureau. She reclined on the double bed, a Sears Roebuck relic of the Sixties which a tenant had left, and closed her eyes, listening to the wind scratching against the house.

How many beds she had seen for sleep or amusement or career or with an incalculable alchemy of all three. She rose with difficulty, momentarily rolling back into the unsteady softness of the Sears mattress and then propelling herself forward managed to plant her feet on the floor and raise herself up. She went over to the standing full-length oval mirror. She thought of the French word “regarde” as she studied herself. It was so much more meaningful than “look.” “Regarde Adriana,” she thought to herself, “see what time has taken.” She was quite old; you could tell by the hands.

Not the face, no, her conversion to vegetarianism she credited to that and also a few well-timed facelifts. At eighty-three she looked to be a smart and fit sixty-five. But she knew she had to go sometime and she accepted it matter-of-factly. Even Gloria Swanson had bit the dust after a time and Adriana had thought she would certainly live to be two hundred. Anyway, there wasn’t much left to look forward to except gradually falling apart. If it frightened her, she never let herself know it. She had lived an extraordinary life, and she’d rather go out still burning brightly than as a dim old bulb.

Well, what to do? Unpack? First she peeped through the blinds. It was completely dark outside now. Inside you could hear the wind and the dead leaves rolling over themselves. It was quiet, dark and eerie. Was this what death was like? No company, no music, no fun? Or would it be heaven or hell with lots going on? Devils and angels and complicated orders of rank? Satan (she always imagined him as Walter Huston in a red silk cap) – The Heavenly Father – Saint Peter. She had the sudden urge to pray, but for what? She awkwardly got down on

"Magnolia" by milo beach creature. Archival photo artists and subjects unknown, design and all other photos by milo.

her knees, clasped her hands together, struck a pose to please Eternity and tried to think of something to say, but no, nothing. She could only remember the prayers of childhood. It was kneeling that she felt the tightening, burning contraction in her torso and she panicked. When it came to it, the reality of death was not something so easily ignored, something that even Adriana Andorra had to confront.

Oh no, not here, not now, not alone in this dreary cottage! And she clasped her hands together as long as she could, begging God to spare her this time. Finally, she had to grasp her side to rid herself of the stabbing pain. She rose, doubled over in agony and managed to collapse on the bed, her anxiety making everything worse. She breathed deeply and carefully trying to calm down so she could get to the phone and get help. She lay there for well over an hour, the pain slowly dissolving to little more than heartburn. Then she reached for the phone. She was going back to the city. She had communed with the past; enough was enough, as her mother would have said. Adriana didn’t need to remember anymore or pretend that she was ready to die. She would sell the house, make a tidy profit on this little cottage in the woods and cut off her humble roots entirely. She managed to beep her driver who called back immediately. “I’ve had my fill of this nostalgic nonsense,” she said to him, “come get me at once!”

“What about the car?” he asked, never daring to suggest that she drive back herself. He proposed to bring along his friend Steven who always made her laugh, and he’d drive it back for her.

“I almost died up there,” she said melodramatically, safely ensconced in the back seat of the Lincoln. Tony raised his eyebrows.

Later she asked them up to her apartment for supper. They weren’t doing anything were they? Would they like to dine with her? Of course Steven was dizzy with excitement. His idol asking him for supper. This semi-ecstatic attitude of his had made her uncomfortable at first, but once he had grown used to her and she to him, he had relaxed. He told his funny stories that made them all laugh.

She asked Tony to order from a French restaurant on 78th Street which delivered food, and she directed the boys in the laying of the plates and the silver. She loved giving orders. After all those years taking direction it was nice for someone else to be the monkey for a change. They may be eating in the kitchen but she still demanded a little style. No not those glasses, the ones in the sideboard in the pantry, no not those, the ones…yes, yes those.

She had a little poached trout and a lot of white

wine and began to tell the stories. The fish reminded her of the restaurant in Rome near the Vatican that specialized in fresh trout and white truffles, which she had frequented in the Fifties. Hollywood was in a slump and her affair with Antonelli had been denounced in the press throughout the United States. “Who are they to judge?” she had been quoted as saying in all the papers under that famous picture of her locked in a death grip kiss with Roberto. Her career came to an abrupt halt. She had turned to Roberto, Italy and his art movies to pay the bills. That’s right, it was that year that she’d made “Mysteries of the Cumaen Sibyl” for him. A flop at the time, it was thought of now as a kind of classic, although she still hated it.

One Sunday back then, after a long and splendid meal, she had herself driven to Ostia and a small beach club. She had been with her friend the Ducessa Claudia Orlano-Caesarini.

An entire stratum of Roman movie people dozed the midday away. Adriana and Claudia joined some people they knew from a country weekend. The men and women were ensconced in light jackets, silk scarves, and sunglasses, hidden under the protective reach of one of the enormous chartreuse beach umbrellas scattered on the sand. Only the waiters moved, silently filling half-empty glasses. It turned out that the only people who had brought bathing suits were Claudia and Adriana. Evidently, a view of the sea tinted by sunglasses was enough for the others, so they went into their cabana and changed, giggling like naughty girls. The others had given them surprised, somewhat sneering looks when they announced that they would actually be going into the sea and getting wet.

It was when they both emerged from a hearty swim in the foaming blue, and Adriana was smoothing back her blond, rust-colored hair that she realized that she was being scrutinized by four young men, one of whom she recognized as Maurizio, an assistant director at the Cinecittá studio. Although in her mid-forties she had the tanned athletic build of a gymnast and she paused, frankly returning their gaze. Later, as she languished under the big umbrella with the silk scarves, Maurizio came over and knelt at her side and introduced himself as a devoted fan, invited her over for an aperitivo with himself and his friends. They sat at a table nearby, four lean, deeply tanned dark eyed boys in bathing suits with no umbrella. Claudia and Adriana joined them, and the silk scarves muttered spiteful things amongst themselves.

They had returned to Rome in the late afternoon

in Maurizio’s car. The boys had all been so charming, bashful and boastful at the same time. After depositing the women at their building off the Via Condotti, the boys returned to their parents’ respective flats to change, while Adriana and Claudia transformed themselves into glamorous denizens of the night. When the boys returned several hours later, Adriana and Claudia had metamorphosized into the Star and the Duchess. At first Maurizio and the others found it difficult to see the casual sea creatures they had been that afternoon and were put off by their new appearance, but Adriana set them at ease by offering them a Scotch. “Very American you know,” she murmured as she proffered the amber liquid. The boys relaxed and they drove to a small, unfashionable restaurant with good food. They laughed happily together over dinner, then went to a nightclub specializing in samba. It was there that she’d first danced with Paolo whose intensity of expression fascinated her. They drank sweet, cold Spumante lavishly and then left the intoxicating heat of the club to meet the cool dampness of the quiet streets. They tore around Rome in Maurizio’s used Alfa Romeo.

She remembered the frequent and unrestrained laughter of their flight through the streets, crammed into the small car with Maurizio screaming curses and threats of doom to the other impetuous drivers. Driving in Rome always seemed to her like competing in the Indianapolis 500. The car cut through the traffic and the night air blew her bronzed hair back over her naked shoulders. Claudia turned to her at one point and wrinkled her nose in displeasure. It was a humid night and the boys, though well groomed, smelled heavily of sweat. Oddly enough, although she was fastidious about herself and demanded that in her friends, Adriana found the musky, metallic odor of the boys arousing. She felt charged by an electric thrill and this was accentuated when, laughing, she would turn to Paolo in the darkness of the back seat and for a moment his beautiful sharp white teeth would be illuminated by the beams of a passing car or his burning eyes were suddenly exposed by a street lamp…

“Adriana, are you with us?” Steven called to her across the table. She had lost herself to the memory of the joys that had followed their ride in the car. Recovering herself, she explained that at dawn she had found herself in a remote corner of the city with the boys after dropping Claudia off at her flat. Drunk and delighted by the boys’ attentions, she had climbed hot and urgent into a fountain to cool off, and then they had walked with her laughing with

excitement, thrilled by her audacity. They found a café open early filled with street people and truck drivers who brought produce in from the countryside. The boys ordered five coffees as Adriana languished in the doorway, Paolo’s motorcycle jacket around her wet gown which plastered itself close to her breasts and thighs. The drivers recognizing her stood dumbstruck. Some muttered unclean things under their breath and edged toward her, but they were put off, not so much by the boys’ presence but the look of defiance in Adriana’s famous eyes, those honey-colored irises with the golden sunburst around the pupils. “Yes,” she thought sitting at the table across from Steven, “the face that could sink a thousand ships.” Years later she was told that her walk in the fountain had been Fellini’s inspiration.

“Why did you decide to go to Italy?” Steven inquired, a little bored about her story with the boys and too young to know about the fuss caused by her affair with Antonelli, “Why did you give up on Hollywood? Couldn’t you find any work?” he asked tactlessly.

“Yes, but not what I wanted. It was right after I lost the role in ‘Streetcar.’ I would have gotten too if it hadn’t been for Irene Selznick.”

“You didn’t get it. Why not Adriana?” Tony asked.

“You know, of course, that Irene had all that money and all those connections from her father, Louis B as in bastard at Metro. I once passed her there on the lot when I was loaned to them…don’t you adore that word loaned? As if I were a piece of furniture to be moved about town at will. I was on the lot during a picture with Tracy when one day Miss Irene Mayer Selznick appeared and asked the director what we were shooting. She had produced ‘Streetcar’ on Broadway and my agent knew they were going to do the film at Warner’s and Freddie was trying hard to get me Blanche. I know Kazan wanted me and so did Tennessee. At least, that’s what Freddie told me. Of course Freddie had been skimming my salary all those years.”

“Didn’t you sue Freddie for fraud in mismanaging your affairs?” Steven asked as Adriana poured herself the dregs of wine.

“His estate honey, his estate,” she replied, tipping the glass back and taking the wine in one swallow, “the bastard died before I realized what was happening. Skimming my fees for twenty years! But he always did get me the parts he promised me, he just took forty percent of my salary without telling me. But he did get me the parts. I was hoping and praying that he could get me tested for ‘Streetcar.’ I really wanted to do it; I would have been perfect. Of

course, Vivien was superb…”

“But you’d have been better, right Adriana?” Steven interrupted, giggling.

“Why yes, how perceptive you are Steven. I was scheduled to be tested, and then the test would be cancelled, and a meeting would be set up and cancelled, then another test and so on and so forth until I finally read in the papers that Vivien had been signed. I’d suspected it was Irene who didn’t want me, and I’d heard later that it was she who had blocked me. She said I didn’t have the stature as an actress to play the part.”

She bitterly recalled that particular day, sitting at a banquette at Ciro’s. She was waiting for her press agent, and biding time by reading Variety, when she came across the item announcing Vivien’s signing. She had thrown down the paper, stood up in the restaurant and shrieked, “Bring me the broomstick of Irene Selznick!” upsetting a tumbler of water on herself just as her press agent arrived.

“I would love to have seen you as Blanche, Adriana, you would have been marvelous, you have that tragic quality,” Steven added self-consciously.

She suddenly disliked him, and Tony, always sensitive to his employer’s moods, noticed the look she gave him, and immediately suggested that they leave. Steven balked but Tony was firm. He gathered the plates together and forced Steven into the kitchen to help him wash up. “Oh, leave them for Cynthia,” she said, but Tony insisted. That was why she prized him: he was courteous, responsible, smart, clean, handsome—she really should help him out with his career, but then, it was so hard to get a good driver.

It was quiet with the boys gone, and she sat in her chair overlooking the park, drinking vodka. She wasn’t looking forward to the onset of the terrible cold, and it occurred to her to go back to Kenya for the winter months. She had been so happy there after a year of adjustment. She sometimes forgot how happy she had been with Jerry, “your lordship” as she called him when they had argued or when he was having one of his maudlin moods. He would laugh when she’d say that, and he’d suddenly remember he was a Welsh country boy with an honorary title, a house in Africa, servants, and a foundation in his name. Somehow by remembering how far he’d come he would cheer up and grab her as if she had been the embodiment of all those years of struggle, the goal to be attained, and maybe she had been. Strangely, she’d forgotten him, not because he was insignificant, but because that completeness that had finally entered her life had been

savagely cut from her with his death. She had tried to stay there with his daughter and her husband, but it grieved her to wake up in the morning, at first still expecting to see him coming in with breakfast, or, in the late afternoon, about to order the horses to be saddled for their ride, and then stopping herself. The horror had flooded her at those moments, and she wanted to run somewhere to be comforted. Jerry had been there when she learned of Andreas’ death but there was really no one to console her in Africa when Jerry died. She had decided to return to the States after more than twenty years abroad to be with her long dead sister’s niece, and all the picture people she knew who had moved to New York from the West Coast.

Adriana felt that dull pain in her abdomen again. Although it was close to midnight, she called her doctor at home and demanded an appointment the next morning. She was used to making unreasonable demands when she was frightened, and her doctor somehow tolerated these rude intrusions. Shyamoli always picked up the phone no matter how late it was.

The next morning, awake at 6 a.m., she carefully readied herself for her appointment. No matter how old she became she always hoped and prayed that she would be recognized on the street, and consequently she prepared for this, grooming herself to the nth degree and dressing as the monument to the glamour she thought herself to be. But as she buttoned and primped, the real purpose of her visit crouched in the back of her mind with the quiet patience of death. She knew she was far too healthy for her years. Wasn’t it always that way, people marveled that you had lasted so long and so well, and then you were gone one day, suddenly?

She was brought downstairs by the elevator attendant. Frankie bowed as usual and held the door open for her. The day rushed at her. It was one of those expansive autumn days in New York, when the sky glows blue and the air has a miraculous quality to it. She walked to her appointment around the corner. There were few people on the street, no one noticed her. But she didn’t care. She turned her face to the sun and felt its last glorious heat—Indian summer, her favorite time of year in the city.

Moments later she strode down the hushed corridor of an old town house off of Madison where Shyamoli, her doctor, a tall dark Pakistani woman with a cultivated British accent waited at the door with her shorter, younger nurse. Adriana was grateful to the feminists for giving her women to care for her in her advanced age. She had always disliked

the rude probings of male doctors, who, despite what they said, never seemed to regard her quite as dispassionately as they claimed.

They exchanged pleasantries. Adriana handed Shyamoli a book she knew she’d wanted and couldn’t locate in New York. It was her way of smoothing out her demanding style. Their greetings dispensed with, Shyamoli ushered Adriana into the examining room where she had to unprimp and unbutton what she had so carefully assembled a half-hour before. The nurse left to hang and smooth out her things as the ritual of the tongue depressor and the syringe proceeded. Shyamoli fussed here and there capping test tubes of blood, labeling scrapings, and finally exited to make a preliminary office diagnosis.

Adriana dressed and waited, looking at the diminutive sample bottles of medications in the glass display case of the examining room. There was a knock on the door and Shyamoli entered.

“How am I doctor?” she asked nervously in her over-articulating, reedy voice now grown husky with age.

“That’s a lovely dress my dear,” Shyamoli commented, “Oscar isn’t it?”

“It’s bad news.”

“Not at all. Though we still have to get back the results of your tests I would say that you have a minor ulcer.”

“An ulcer? Me? I give ulcers, I don’t get them.”

Shyamoli laughed a bit uncomfortably. “Nevertheless I have called your pharmacy. They’ll bring some medication around to you that will stop the pain, and then when the tests are back we can talk about an appropriate treatment. Otherwise you’re doing,” here she paused a bit, “quite well.”

“An ulcer? You’re serious, aren’t you? At my age I suppose that is good news isn’t it!” she exclaimed, enormously relieved and not afraid to show it. “Thank you for accommodating me at such short notice my dear, you’re a treasure,” she gushed, and letting Shyamoli help her on with her coat, she meant to make some small talk, but had the urgent desire to leave immediately.

Shyamoli came into the waiting room as her nurse closed the door, remembering the first time she had seen an old Adriana Andorra picture. She was in public school in London, and she remembered thinking how luminous Adriana had been on screen, how fresh and witty her delivery, although the brownish print bobbed and jumped with age. She thought that “immortal of the screen” wasn’t a cliché, but a reality for this actress whose films were

still frequently shown. Perhaps it was the seductive Hollywood glamour of the time, but she didn’t think so. Shyamoli had had the same impression when she’d seen those neo-realist Antonelli films Adriana had made in the Fifties. There was that haunting quality of her characters that was so real, yet crafted and abstract at the same time. She had loved Adriana in the smitten, perfect way an audience must, and she was humbled by her. How then to tell her the news, how then to tell her the truth? She stood in her expensively furnished waiting room, tall and dark and radiant, and cried in her small way, grasping her nurse’s shoulder.

Meanwhile Adriana strode down the street in her best I-own-the-sidewalk, make-way fashion, heading for the Plaza for breakfast. She had fasted for her exam, and now she had a substantial appetite. She again lifted her face to the sky. The heat from the sun was delightful. The terror of the night before had subsided and she coolly surveyed the comings and goings of the world which had its business to attend to.

“Hey, Adriana,” someone called roughly.

She lived for the moments when she was recognized. Her heart beat pleasantly faster with this everyday but still pleasing thrill.

“Hello boys,” she drawled to the gang of construction workers and the beaming, big-bellied foreman in particular who had called after her. They had taken their shirts off in the humid Indian summer day, and Adriana’s interest could still be stirred a bit at the sight of the shoulders of one particularly robust looking young man.

“Hey Adriana,” the foreman yelled again so that heads turned in her direction all the way down the block. On another day she might have been a little offended by his jocose familiarity. But today she smiled broadly, all the disappointments and loneliness of a lifetime temporarily forgotten, as she marched down the street. A crowd now gathered before her smiling collectively and respectfully watching her as her cape-like wrap fluttered behind her. She stopped and made an exaggerated, comic bow to the construction workers as cars came to a halt and the crowd applauded. The foreman screamed, “They don’t make them like you any more Adriana baby.”

She paused to savor the moment watching the awed faces of the young and old in the crowd watch her, before she delivered her exit line. Her famous eyes flashed as she shouted back lustily, “No boys, they certainly don’t,” and continued on her way to breakfast.

"Calpogon" by milo beach creature. Archival photo artist unknown; all other photos and design by milo.

"Hibiscus" by Javier Trelis. Mixed technique

Big Time: Pop Culture and the Path to Acceptance

by Bob Mathis-Friedman

Introduction

2018: MSNBC newscaster Joy Reid engages in the Wakanda Forever salute to a fellow Black woman, whom she has just finished interviewing. This is an example of the overwhelming success of the film, The Black Panther (2018: Marvel Films), and its incredible impact on the American...even Global...consciousness; grossing over a billion dollars at the box office (as of this writing, the highest-grossing film featuring a Black cast in cinematic history), with its sequel, the aptly-named Wakanda Forever, pulling in over 800 million, they have, through their narratives, redefined how African Americans—especially children—imagine themselves and their futures; further, they opened doors for non-People Of Color to perceive them, or rather, us, as well. Black people have been fully embraced as not only equals, but heroes— more importantly, worthy enough to be superheroes,with children dressing up as King T’Challa, Princess Shuri, and Killmonger for Halloween (I haven’t bothered to elaborate on who these characters are because I’m confident that you, the readers, already do) speaks volumes: they’re household words, having come a long way from minstrel show footage, manservants and maids, and other secondary, tertiary, and antagonistic roles that reflected mainstream perceptions of us.

There is a particular path that is replicated by other marginalized and minority groups on the road to acceptance, that is tied to pop culture representation, emerging out of negative stereotypes and narratives implying or outright displaying oppression, and leading to the ultimate depiction as role-models: superheroes, in leading role in successful big screen features. It begins with incidental roles that not necessarily depict the group as entirely lesser or bad (although some aspects either or both may creep in); next, mention (subtle or overt), often as an issue, in dramatic or semieducational films, television or other media (such as comics); this is frequently done using subtext or hints, with the closer to surface, the more negative, dramatic or tragic it becomes. Next comes comedy (including musical comedy) where the nature of the group becomes more nuanced; this is

particularly true of the sitcom, where the nature of the groups can become decidedly less subtle, and eventually—with a degree of caution—more positive. This would also be around the time when the group leaps to cinema, where they begin the first, very tentative steps to include actual, heroicallyincluded characters, or even protagonists or (often less-defined than the principal ) second lead. Finally, the steps grow rapid as the group begins to be featured as protagonists in films, comics, and television shows that place them front-andcenter, although they are often: 1) produced by companies that specifically target the group as an audience, with the mainstream, essentially, an afterthought, in film (although they might reach a wider audience in the realm of television); 2) on TV and in movies, except in the aforementioned limited audience-designed features, high-concept, lead heroes (specifically, the coveted superhero) do not exist.

Next comes the major change phase, wherein television actively displays the group in superhero roles. First as supporting characters and guest stars, then, leapfrogging with the cinema world to show them as leads; in this case, the pattern reasserts itself, starting with jokes, then as protagonists in comedies, then as serious leads. At last, they hit the big time: they know that they’ve arrived when they become the lead(s) in a successful, high-concept superhero film, with kids everywhere yelling “trick or treat” while wearing their images, and reimagining themselves and their potential.

Which brings me to queer/pagan pathways, and dreams of what it might take to reach the big time.

1. Neopagans

Let’s set aside the earlier examples of witches and pagans (Wizard of Oz, etc.) for a moment, and begin our focus on the 1950s and the formation of neopaganism, particularly, Gardner’s works on modern witchcraft, aka Wicca. At the same time that the newly-christened religion was hitting the bookshelves, notions of what it means to be pagan/witch were already beginning to shift. Bell,

Book and Candle(1959), based on the 1950 Broadway play of the same name, starred Kim Novak and James Stewart as lovers, one of whom was a witch. The witches within the film were part of a community—a diverse, nuanced culture, global in scope...whose practices were more reminiscent of tricksters than those of outright malevolent entities; moreover, through the eyes of an ethnographer, the audience was shown the elements of an underground subculture, and how they navigated a mainstream that neither understood nor acknowledged them.

This was, first, couched within the genre of romantic comedy (everything is tolerable if it’s foregrounded by a love story), and second, allowed for the comfort of the audience’s preconceived notions by implying that witchcraft was, at the end of the day, dark magick.

Witches were physically incapable of shedding tears or falling in love, although “hot blood” (lust) was permitted; once a witch truly fell in love, they’d lose their powers and become mortal, indicating that the most profound of good emotions— love—was anathema to being a witch, thus the message that witchcraft was, essentially, satanic, still showed up in the subtext, and that integration into mainstream society meant surrendering what made one different in a variety of ways (more on that, later).

This is after the release of The Crucible (1958), also based on a play (written by Arthur Miller, and still performed by both professional and amateur companies to this day), which was about the Salem witch trials (1692-3), and served as a nottoo-subtle commentary on McCarthyism (thus aiding in usage of the term “witch hunt” to mean a systematic persecution without good cause); this implanted in the public consciousness the idea that hunting “witches” was inherently a bad thing, without commenting on whether or not witches, themselves, were. Thus, more subtextual messaging while not necessarily challenging the status quo on the overt subject.

Bewitched (ABC/Screen Gems: 1964-72) starred Elizabeth Montgomery as Samantha Stephens, a witch whose marriage to mortal advertising executive Darrin (played at different times by Dicks York and Sargent) frequently generated problems for her supernatural relatives and his business ventures. Bewitched introduced a generation to a complex world of witch culture, hierarchies and relationships; while maintaining the idea that witchcraft involved fantastic magical effects,

the series nonetheless presented the idea that “witch” and “evil” are, by no means synonymous, and engaged in narratives involving the dynamics of intermarriage, race (and racism), class, gender, family, respect and representation—a show far ahead of its time

Bewitched was, of course, a comedy, which allowed for more than any drama could have at the time (it was the 60s; shows were trying, but had to be much more careful, even if many of those topics were more directly illustrated; Kirk and Uhura’s kiss in Star Trek (“Plato’s Stepchildren”, Season 3, Episode 10) was seen as a major controversy, even though, in the story, the characters’ liplock was involuntary, while the dynamics and issues of interracial marriage was the entire driving force behind Bewitched, and actual relationships between mortal races was the topic of more than one episode.

The 1970’s brought paganism into sharper focus, separating it from the “evil witch” paradigm, entirely (by this time, a slew of films about satanic witch cults were in vogue, both on the large and small screens); The big screen’s earliest major foray into paganism was a major setback: The Wicker Man (1974: Studio Canal/Warner Bros.), about a devout Christian policeman who, while tracking down a missing girl, is drawn into a community of pagans, with disastrous (read: fatal) results; this was clearly a slow-burn horror film that used ironically-accurate elements of Western European pagan concepts and practices from an older time as a vehicle to propel the story, made all the more telling by the protagonist’s clearly delineated status as “Christian-as-enemy/victim”. It should be noted that not every neopagan reads the film in such a decisively negative manner; still, the paganas-ritual-killer motif is fairly demonstrated in such a way so as to encourage, for the mainstream, a clearly negative view of modern paganism.

Meanwhile, the small screen had a much better showing, and was much closer to the mark—comics have readily shown paganism attached to superheroes for decades: Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel (more on this one, shortly), Thor, etc., have graced their pages since (for many) the 40’s; in the 60’s, the Mighty Thor’s comic book adventures were adapted to animated shorts (1966: Marvel Comics Animation).

But, in 1974, the same year as the Wicker Man, SHAZAM! ( 1974-76:Filmation Studios) hit the airwaves on CBS. A live-action children’s series, teenager Billy Batson (Michael Gray) would, each

week, receive a warning from the six “immortal elders” (Solomon, Hercules, Atlas, Zeus, Achilles and Mercury) about an upcoming issue or crisis that he’d have to deal with; later, when the situation presented itself, he’d resolve the problem by uttering the word, SHAZAM!, whereupon a lightning bolt would transform him into Captain Marvel (not to be confused with the Marvel Comics characters of the same name, and played alternately by Jackson Bostwick and John Davey); his powers (wisdom, strength, stamina, power, courage and speed) reflecting the traits of the aforementioned “elders”. At one time, the good Captain was so popular that comics featuring him outsold those of Superman, and he also starred in a movie serial during the 40’s; the television version was popular enough to spawn a spinoff, The Secrets Of Isis (1975-76: Filmation Studios).

High school science teacher, Andrea Thomas (Joanna Cameron), while on an archaeological expedition, unearthed an amulet that endows her with the ability to transform into an incarnation of Isis, the Egyptian goddess of magic and renewal; she could, according to the show’s intro: “soar as the falcon soars, run with the speed of gazelles and have dominion over the elements of sky and earth.”

In other words, she was a goddess of witches, whose powers were focused through rhyming incantations. The Wiccan-esque elements to the show were never clearer than during the episode, Lucky (Season 1, Episode 10): when a young boy’s dog dies, Isis uses her powers to create a visual image demonstrating the cycle of life to him.

Far more popular than Isis was Wonder Woman (1975-79: Paramount ), which aired on ABC for one season, and CBS for two more. The immortal Amazon was played by the immortal Lynda Carter, and set the bar for depictions of superheroines on the screen. The pagan origins of the character was subtly ignored, however; only once did any Amazon acknowledge the presence or reverence to the Greco-Roman gods of their culture (the phrase “thank Athena” was uttered in the first episode of the second season, but never used again; in the pilot, “The New, Original Wonder Woman”, she used a throwaway line, “I know a few myths”, implying that, to her, the gods were not actively worshiped). Still, the subtext was strong, and pointed to other texts and messages (see below).

Interestingly, Wonder Woman’s counterpart in the animated series, Super-Friends (1973-1985: Hanna-Barbera Productions), not only referring to

the gods on a regular basis, but the gods, themselves, appeared from time to time.

The first overt, significant inclusion of neopagan/Wiccan characters and narratives occurred in a daytime soap opera, One Life To Live (ABC). The character’s name was Luna Moody (Susan Batten).

Luna was a major character whose storyline ran from 1991-96; a worshipper of The Goddess, her spiritual nature was, nonetheless, classified as “new age” (thus dodging the “w” word, and keeping her within the comfort zones of those midwestern suburban homemakers who watched the show). She enjoyed the usual array of protagonist story arcs, including a powerful wedding episode (presided over by both a minister and a high priestess, to respect the religions of both bride and groom), and several subtle uses of her powers (she went into trance states in order to save the day on several occasions; after the character’s death in 1996, she even returned in spiritual form on several occasions in the years, since, with the most recent being in 2012, thus demonstrating the character’s popularity.

Not long after Luna shuffled off this mortal coil, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003: Fox Television) debuted. By the end of its second season, one of the major supporting characters, Willow Rosenberg (Alison Hannigan), had discovered an unusually strong talent for witchcraft; this ability continued to develop, with Willow exploring not only her powers and her identity, but the Wicca (and yes, they used the word) community of the Buffyverse (the continuity of the show), as well as how it is distinguished from other kinds of magic practitioners. More on Willow and her community, later, but suffice it to say that this was a big step in the inclusion of neopaganism and/or Wicca (other forms of paganism were included in the show, as well) with a regular, protagonist-based, supporting character in what is, arguably, deemed a superhero show, that actually speaks the names “Wicca” and “witch”.

Leapfrogging to the big screen (almost always behind the advances of small screen successes), the ultra-popular Harry Potter book series became adapted into a film franchise, utilizing material from the entire wizarding world continuity by R.K. Rowling, and spawning every possible form of merchandising and adaptations (2001-present: Warner Bros.). The franchise—both the books and movies—have become such household words that even neopagans have been known to use the word “muggle” to refer to outsiders. This, however,

"Jasir" by Javier Trelis.

brings us full circle, with an enormous member of the populace rethinking their opinion of magic workers but still having no clue as to who or what the magic-users in the real world are like.

Then, there is one Wanda Maximoff.

Wanda first appeared alongside her brother, Pietro, in the pages of X-Men #4 (1964), written by Stan Lee and illustrated by Jack Kirby. Using the code-name, the Scarlet Witch, Wanda was, in fact, a mutant, possessed of the ability to alter probability through an act of will. Focused through complex gestures, her powers resembled spellcasting, so she referred to their manifestations as “hexes.” Later, Wanda discovered that she also had a talent for actual magic, and underwent training by a witch, Agatha Harkness; her “true magik” took the form of manipulating natural forces, in a manner not unlike Wicca (presumably, as it transpired in the 70’s, the writers were aware of Wicca, which, in turn, influenced the narrative).

By the early 2000’s, Wanda’s powers evolved yet again: her mutant ability to manipulate probability fields turned into a natural mutant ability to tap into vast stores of chaos magic (just as some mutants have superhuman levels of strength or speed, Wanda’s ability to use her will to affect reality—a definition of magick—was far beyond normal human potential), making her one of the most powerful magic users in the Marvel Comics universe.

This was reflected in the Marvel cinematic universe, only it, too, fell behind its other media. Wanda first had her major appearance (played by Elizabeth Olsen) in Avengers: Age of Ultron (2015: Marvel Studios), and quickly proved to be a fan favorite (at this point, her powers consisted of vaguely-described telepathic and telekinetic aspects, and she did not realize that her powers stemmed from augmented witchcraft). It was in the miniseries Wandavison (2021: Marvel Studios, streaming on Disney+), that she discovered her legacy as the formidable (and, at last, named) Scarlet Witch. Wandavision was a highly successful program, and led to the theatrical film, Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness (2022), in which Wanda co-starred; although she was the main draw for box office, the film lacked the resonance of the series, or the depth of character that Wandavision gave the Scarlet Witch (there are rumors that director Sam Rami didn’t even watch the show); worse, the story involved Wanda’s descent into obsession and homicidal rage, turning into the thing that the witch community

worked so hard to counter the idea of, only to find redemption in death—an oh-so common trope for the marginalized: death by nobility.

Still, rumors persist that Wanda’s apparent demise was only just that, and the ever-popular character will return, better than ever.

2. The Queer Community

The MPAA rendered depictions of homosexuality limited at best, while Frederic Wertham’s book, The Seduction Of The Innocent (1954) killed any mention or depiction of queerness, although the creators of both forms of media did whatever they could to slip things through. Films like Rebel Without A Cause (1955), Suddenly, Last Summer ( 1959), and many of the films featuring Rock Hudson and Doris Day utilized subtext to demonstrate a queer presence, although (a) more often than not, the presence was accompanied by negative messages involving frustration, unrequited desire and mental or emotional problems, and (b), even if done in a neutral manner, relegating the subject to subtext allows for the audience’s ability to ignore what’s in front of their faces, reinforcing the perception that we “don’t exist” (the feeling being that we shouldn’t). Gays became more visible in our next section.

I. Visible, at last. Sort Of. “Adult” Narratives;

Midnight Cowboy (1969) presented it in the context of the lives of male prostitutes (played in this case by Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman); homosexuality became part of a “dark world”, and there was even a question as to whether the central characters were gay, or just gay-for-pay. On the other hand, The Ritz (1976), based on a play by the same name, offered a look into the gay bathhouse scene of New York, which not only showed an open look at an aspect of gay urban culture, but introduced the concept of out gay characters as helpful figures not unlike the “magical negro” trope—a role that would be repeated throughout our history.

Meanwhile, back at the small screen, queerness had its run as negative subtext emerging into pure aesthetic. Batman (1966-69: Screen Gems) offered clearly queer aesthetic with its high camp and dry humor, although there is a question as to how conscious that aspect of aesthetic was, while Bewitched included both a queer aesthetic and implicitly gay characters (such as Uncle Arthur, played by Paul Lynde), and gay actors (aside from

Lynde, Dick Sargent, the second Darrin, was gay),

In the 70’s, the television landscape featured multiple queer story angles, generally using recurring characters in sitcoms and the occasional guest-star in “very special episodes”, many of which reflected tropes similar to that of “witches” in The Crucible, with the guest character subjected to homophobic oppression or violence, then the episode resolving the issue by castigating the bully in a manner similar to the evils of witch hunts, often without clearly delineating whether or not the victim, himself, was homosexual; or episodes, like in All In The Family (1971-79), or Barney Miller (1975-82), where characters are either discovered to be gay, or their being so becomes the element that drives the plot and results in a lesson to be learned by the regulars, which brings us to our next phase—characters that find redemption through death takes on a whole new element as gay characters begin showing up that “prove that they’re good people” (read: redeemable) by doing something heroic (or a least, noble), then quickly getting killed off. The most famous example (also, one of the first) was Beverly La Salle, a drag queen portrayed by renowned performer Lori Shannon, who had a recurring role on All In The Family; in her third appearance (“Edith’s Crisis Of Faith, Part 1”, 1977), LaSalle is murdered while throwing herself in the path of assailants attacking her and Archie Bunker (the series’ lead character); prior to this, the show treated LaSalle with the care and respect that she deserved, with the characters— even the iconically bigoted Bunker—perceiving her as a friend (LaSalle came close to also treading the path of the “magical negro—which I will now refer to as “magical twilight person” after one of the euphemisms for us in decades past.

Other shows that used the “gay guy dies during/ after an act of nobility” trope included Dynasty (1981-89), Gimme A Break (1981-87), and most pointedly, Buffy The Vampire Slayer (1997-2003), which will be covered later.

II. Stronger Characters, Early Heroics, Greater Diversity.

Queerness had found its way to talk shows and movies made For television. Homosexuality, transgender issues (term-reduced to “transsexualism” at the time) and bisexuality was grist for mill on shows like Donahue, Ricky Lake, etc., and characters began their first forays into representation. But first, some mixed messaging; Jody Campbell (Billy Crystal) was a regular on

the satirical sitcom, Soap (1977-81); a gay man who had a modest career as a commercial director, the character was involved in a clandestine relationship with a pro football player, and had decided to undergo a “sex change operation” (the term used at the time, and would later be referred to as gender confirmation surgery) to be with him openly. But the erstwhile boyfriend opted to leave him for the closeted, married life, so the character then attempted to commit suicide.

He was supposed to be a protagonist; the viewers clearly showed sympathy for Jodi (a kind of tragically heroic figure), while the character simultaneously supported a variety of stereotypical tropes and narratives.

The writers (or, likely, those above them) apparently had trouble coming up with “acceptable” gay storylines involving other men, so Jody didn’t date others; instead, he found himself in heterosexual-like plots involving affairs with women, single parenting, and—ultimately, a psychological experiment gone awry, whereupon Jody took on the past-life identity of an elderly Jewish man who was—you guessed it—extremely straight.

Similar (if less extreme) scenarios happened to Steven Carrington (Al Corley), the “gay brother” on Dynasty.

Steven was forced to engage in sex with women at a brothel (rape by coercion), his lover was killed in a fit of homophobic rage by his father, and, when he requested that his family openly acknowledge his gayness, only one person did so out of the entire cast, and he nobly went off to apparently die in a conflagration at an oil rig. And, that was only the first season. Steven would then (after having miraculously survived (and now being played by Jack Coleman after the character underwent emergency plastic surgery) would go back and forth with “I’m gay/I’m somehow in a straight relationship/whoops, I’m gay, again” story arcs, mixing messages left and right; ultimately, Steven finds a new boyfriend, Luke (played by Billy Campbell), one who doesn’t take crap and says so in an impressive monologue displaying his nobility—wait for it—shortly before a massacre at a wedding that became the fifth season finale (a forerunner to Game of Thrones’ infamous season finale), with every single cast member inert and bloodied. Just who would survive?

Not Luke. He was only one of two characters that died; the rest of the cast survived. Still, Steven’s sheer presence in a wildly popular nighttime soap opera spoke to the audiences (including

"The Sicilian Model" by Javer Trelis.

queer ones; "Dynasty Night" was a big deal in gay bars across the country), however problematic that voice frequently was.

In the movie-world, independent films such as My Beautiful Launderette (1985), Kiss Me, Guido (1997) and The Wedding Banquet (1993), were released to great critical acclaim, but the major drama, Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), fell to similar tropes; the gay man in an unrequited relationship (even though they actually had sex) with a straight man, then dies the very moment that he does something noble. The French film, La Cage Aux Folles (1978) features the owner and star, respectively, of a drag bar (lovers) contending with homophobic in-laws, and its sequel finds the couple caught up in a spy adventure, bringing them bit closer to the goal; the movie was popular enough to spawn two sequels and a Broadway musical, then, years later., an American remake, The Birdcage (1996). All were comedies, as was the film Mannequin (1987), which featured Mesach Taylor as the flamboyantly heroic character Hollywood, who was the epitome of both the magical negro and magical twilight person tropes. Still, as it was a blend of fantasy and screwball comedy, the audience was invited to not take Hollywood seriously, even as he repeatedly kicked butt and saved the day.

The same could be said of Donald Maltby, the magical twilight person of the series Brothers (1984-89) played by Phillip Charles MacKenzie. A friend and mentor to the recently-out Cliff Waters (Paul Regina), Donald was a highly flamboyant individual who served as the audience’s insight to gayness and gay culture. He was also unapologetic, sexually-active, and multi-talented (by day, an editor at a publishing house, he could intimidate muscle bound bikers and was a former fighter pilot). In spite of the show’s positive (and informative—it was the first show on television to address, in detail, the AIDS crisis, for example), Brothers was aired later at night, keeping it, presumably, out of the reach of younger viewers. When the series later went into syndication, the local affiliates tended to air it even later (at the time, KTLA in Los Angeles aired it at 11pm, for example).

Sitcoms and nighttime soaps became a veritable dumping ground for homosexuality and other forms of queerness: bisexuality (Taxi, LA Law), transgender (Night Court, Friends), Intersex (Quark, to a not- good effect), and Drag (before Dag Race, RuPaul had his own talk show); Rosanne Conner and Jadzia Dax vied for “first

sustained, same-sex kiss” (Rosanne and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, respectively, a the latter of which will be dealt with in detail, below). Then we get to the Present.

III. The Present

The administration, as of this writing, has shifted in ways the negative consequences of which one can only begin to imagine. Currently, over 200 pieces of anti-LGBTQIA+ legislation are moving through the halls of government, some of them having already passed.

On the other hand, we’ve had a good run, where queer representation in the media is concerned.

The Fox series 9-1-1 Lonestar (2020-present) features transman firefighter Paul Strickland (trans actor Brian Micheal Smith): for years, Ellen (syndicated) was a top-rated talk-show; the comedy series Ugly Betty (2006-2010) was filled with gay, bi, and trans characters, while Will and Grace (1998-2020) had the majority of leading characters queer; Brokeback Mountain (2005) became a highly-successful, critically-acclaimed drama in the theaters, which is where we’re landing, at the moment.

The film, in spite of its acclaim, and the presence of characters for whom the audience can find sympathy, neither can be classified as heroes, in the “larger than life” sense of the word. The movie is about the harshness of living in the closet, the struggle of attempting romance within that context, and there is a tragic, and typical, ending. It’s not unlike its predecessors, but with a nicer, more palatable wrapping and aesthetic. Moreover, it’s R-rated, leaving out the younger audience and removing the goal potential.

Here, too, television’s turn was closer to the mark.

IV. High-Concept: Science Fiction and Spandex

In 2006, the BBC produced the series Torchwood (2006-2011), which starred openly-gay actor Jon Barrowman as Captain Jack Harkness, a timetraveling adventurer from a future era wherein most people are bisexual, making him the first queer character to lead a mainstream, sci-fi adventure series. Harkness first appeared as a recurring character in Doctor Who. This is a fairly important leap, although Torchwood is aimed at an older audience than Doctor Who—a compromise maneuver. This incarnation of the series was spearheaded

by Russell T. Davies, the creator of the ground breaking series Queer As Folk (itself, a dramatic shift in the perceptions of the viewing audience and how gays are treated as a community).

The television realm made significant strides, leaping far ahead of its cinematic counterpart, and achieved the dream, heading into the big time:

The animated series, Young Justice (2010-2013) opened the floodgates by revealing that the heroine Halo was non-binary, and the Kingdom of Atlantis typically included pansexual, polyamorous relationships (including the heroes Aquaman II and Lagoon Boy) in their culture; She-Ra and the Princesses Of Power (2018-2020) a reboot of a series with a similar name, featured a wide variety of queer types, ending with the titular heroine

and her arch-enemy, Catra, confessing their love to one another and sealing their declaration with a passionate kiss; Disney’s Buzz Lightyear (2019) featured a married lesbian couple.

On the live action front, the children series Henry Danger (2014-2020 ) and Danger Force (2020-2024) ) included both subtextual and overtly queer content (of course, they were, technically, superhero parodies, and thus, comedies); Power Rangers: Dino Fury/Cosmic Fury (2021-2023) contained story elements that included a female same-sex relationship and a reference to the right of those with bodily dysphoria to alter their forms.

These shows, with the exception of Young Justice, were principally aimed at younger viewers; although it spoke volumes as to what was

considered acceptable, the range of audience wasn’t broad enough to make the final leap. For that, we had: Greg Berlanti’s plethora of superhero shows in the DC stable included the debut of Mister Terrific (Echo Krllum), a Black, gay superhero, in the series, Arrow (2012-2020), to be followed by Dreamer, television’s first Transgender superhero, played by transwoman actor/activist Nicole Maines (also a writer, Maines pens her own character’s adventures in DC Comics), in the series Supergirl (2015-2021). The openly gay Berlanti, whose prolific showrunner skills resulted in him spearheading a record twenty-two television series simultaneously, had queer characters spread across all broadcast and streaming platforms, as well as a critically-acclaimed theatrical release, a gay coming-of-age romcom, Love, Simon (2018); but, the great leap came with his helming Batwoman (2019-2022).

Based on the character from DC Comics, the titular hero (played by out actress Ruby Rose) is Kate Kane, Bruce Wayne’s cousin and a Jewish, openly lesbian (the latter in both identities) crime-fighter; when Rose left the show, Kate Kane stepped down to be replaced by Ryan Wilder, a Black lesbian (played by the openly queer Javicia Leslie). A queer lead in a superhero show. Now, if only the jump to the big screen works out as well.

3. The Endgame

Starting with the Sapphic bondage subtext demonstrated in William Marston’s Wonder Woman stories, the intersections between queer and pagan narratives has had a long history in pop culture; that tradition continues in the comics, with the same-sex relationships on Themiscyra finally becoming overt in the medium (for example, Queen Nubia and Amazon blacksmith Io are lovers), and Diana’s bisexuality is strongly referenced on more than one occasion. This does not seem to hold true on screen, however; Diana’s queerness has yet to be mentioned in any animated or live-action feature on the small screen, and it is only obliquely implied (and easily overlooked—on purpose), once, in any of her big screen appearances (2017). As it isn’t open, it would be logical to, for our purposes, discount it, as it is still in the subtext phase.

A more direct pathway would be the Wiccan approach, starting with Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s character, Willow. In the third season, around the time that she’s learning to tap into her powers as a witch, Willow encounters her counterpart from a

parallel universe—an evil vampire variant (“Doppelgangland”, season 3, episode 16. ), and realizes that vamp-Willow is “kinda gay”; the following season, Willow encounters fellow with Tara Mclay (Amber Benson) and the pair becomes a couple, even going so far as engaging in a subtle, semi-offcamera, sexual play—the first of it kind on network television (“Once More With Feeling” Season 6, episode 7). The development of their relationship is a slow burn, at first masking it through subtext (“doing spells” as their coded terminology), before revealing it to the audience as real.

In the reboot of the series Charmed (20182022), featuring three sisters who are both POC and witches; one of the sisters is a lesbian, while one of the recurring characters is a transwoman. Both of these series, however, have run their courses and ended with no plans for reboots or reunions. Still, there is one last hope.

The titular character in Wandavision conjured up twin children, Billy and Tommy; one is a speedster taking after Wanda’s twin brother, while the other is a magic wielder taking after his mother. Wanda also had a rather vicious and manipulative rival in the series, a powerful witch named Agatha Harkness (Kathryn Hahn). Recently, a spinoff series, Agatha All Along, featured both characters in a masterfully-woven tale filled with queer aesthetics, characters and situations. In the comics, Billy (a gay character) died and was reincarnated as William Kaplan, then took the code-name of Wiccan and joined the super-hero team, the Young Avengers. In Agatha, Billy (now played by openly gay actor Joe Locke) had a similar experience, and was last seen heading off in search of his brother, also a reincarnate. It should be noted that, in the comics, Wiccan ultimately married an alien prince, and they have since become Marvel’s gay power couple, while Wiccan’s brother was revealed to be bisexual.

Conclusion

With Wanda due to make a return to the Marvel cinematic universe, and there is talk of a second season of Agatha, our hopes may rest with Wiccan (who even appeared in his comics-accurate superhero costume). That is, if the current climate can take it.

Acknowledgements

I’d like acknowledge Chris Beron, Aaron Raz Link, Nick Glover, Dewey Singh, Charles Ardinger, Jac Schaeffer, and Greg Berlanti.

Remembering Tom Spanbauer (1946-2024)

by Clyde Hall with Kwai Lam

Kwai Says

Tom, author of Faraway Places, The Man Who Fell In Love With The Moon, In The City Of Shy Hunters, Now Is The Hour, and I Loved You More , died in Portland September 21 at the age of 78. He is survived by his husband Sage Ricci.

For myself and many others in the Dance for All People and Radical Faerie communities Toms’ books were amazing, provocative and inspiring: the first time we saw much of our world view and experience really reflected.

Tom was an expert at the craft of writing, receiving many awards. He taught and mentored many students. He called his teaching technique ‘Dangerous Writing’. One of his students Suzy Vitello described it thus: “Dangerous writing

was a way to look at the scary thing, the hidden thing that people spend their lifetime burying, and coaxing that into language, sentence by sentence. Tom felt you had to make your reader laugh while breaking their heart.”

Below are remembrances about Tom from Clyde Hall, who knew him since college—Clyde is a Shoshone Elder accomplished artist and ceremonial leader who started the Dance For All People. Both Clyde and Tom grew up around Pocatello, Idaho.

Clyde Says

Tom and I were adopted brothers in the Native American tradition. We met at Idaho State University, my second year of attendance there. Tom was up on a ladder in green corduroy

Photograph of Tom and Clyde, by Amez Miller, 1982.

pants rearranging books at the Indian Club room at the university. Tom had been hired as the liaison/advisor to Indian Club at the University. In the course of time, we developed a great friendship and affinity for each other.

As the years passed, Tom moved on to Boise with his wife Diane (they were later divorced). I spent a great deal of time in Boise with Tom in Boise.

I used to go to gay bars in Boise—I called Tom to pick me up at one of them (it was late at night and I didn’t have a ride to his place)— he was wearing a trench coat and scared. This was Tom’s first time in a gay bar! After that you couldn’t get him out of those places. I always knew he was a big gay boy. I liberated him— there was no looking back!

Then he moved to a remote place in Vermont, dropping all communications. We lost touch for a couple of years while he sorted things out.

Tom called me, out of the blue, from Key West, where he had moved. He invited me to visit him at Key West, for the first time, and we rekindled our friendship. He was working as waiter. We had all kinds of adventures: dancing on the end of the island at Key West under a full moon—prowling up and down on Duval Street, surrounded by hot men—it was a good time. I went to visit him every winter; he was there for about four years.

Tom decided to pursue his writing career, and moved to the Lower East Side of New York City, back when it was really sketchy. There was place that filmed porn movies across the street. It was really run down, and just on the cusp of gentrification. Drug addicts, prostitution—he described this as it was then in his second novel The City of Shy Hunters. He was getting a degree in writing from Columbia University. I’d come and visit a few times per year.

We started to work on the outline for The Man Who Fell in Love With the Moon. We spent hours talking about old time Indian culture and traditions and how he was going to put them into the book. The book was a period piece, set in Idaho during the Old West (mid 1800s) period.

The whole book was written in that apartment in the Lower East Side—then we’d go outside and walk around the city to take breaks from the apartment, and continue our discussions. It was a work of love, doing that with Tom. I continued to do that work with Tom as he

wrote The City of Shy Hunters .

We were walking in New York somewhere, a snowy night; a lot of times we’d just walk around the city and exchange ideas. Tom said “I’m going to be like Hemingway; I’m going to write the Great American Novel.” I said to him “nope, you’re going to write the Great American Gay Novel.” Tom just looked at me.

There was the time Cowboy Jeff and I visited him on the Lower East Side and Cowboy was in a cast. We took him to some wild places like Beyond Beirut—we used to put Cowboy through his paces. Cowboy was in the Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon as Delwood Barker.

I continued to do that work with Tom as he wrote The City of Shy Hunters .

After he graduated from Columbia, and with the publication of The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon (which met with a great deal of success), Tom decided to move to Portland. I was there with him as well. We were a big part of each others’ lives during that time as well, maintaining contact via phone, as well as letters and visits.

In thinking about our decades we shared many adventures together, some up and some down; some rough and some fabulous, in many different places. There were times he would come and stay at my house on the reservation. (My mother and grandmother always liked him.) During his stays on the reservation we would attend many cultural activities such as the Fort Hall Indian Festival, tribal Sun Dances, and Powows. Tom had a great love of the Shoshone people.

Another adventure I recall: after my Uncle and primary teacher George Wesaw died, George’s daughter and I decided to take Tom into a memorial ceremony as our guest, as he and George had a great friendship with each other and spent many hours discussing Indian ways and culture. But the officiants of the ceremony wouldn’t let Tom stay—so we all left. That was sad.

Tom always had this love/hate relationship with Catholicism. He was always fighting with the mores and values of that religion in his life. He embraced Native American teachings and the way that those teachings move in the world.

While living in New York, Tom had a boyfriend, who was a very handsome Brazilian, but unfortunately the Brazilian died from AIDS. Sadly Tom got AIDS from him. Tom was taking

herbal remedies because that was all you could do about it—there was no cure. I kept up on medical advances concerning the disease. When I found out about the AIDS cocktail, I suggested to Tom that he look into it. I remember my words exactly at the time: “you have too much to do, too much to give to the world.”

I suggested that Tom dance with the Thunder Pipe bundle, which is kept by a Society on the Blackfeet reservation, that I had been an initiated member of for many years. Tom took a vow to “not die from AIDS,” danced with the pipe—and it worked! He lived to a ripe old age.

Tom went to a number of Naraya ceremonies, a Dance for All People, along with myself. Tom met his husband Sage at one of these ceremonies.

Between Tom and I, we changed the world a little bit. It wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t met in that Indian club at ISU, with those well

fitting green pants (with no pockets)!

Out magazine featured him as one of the “Out 100,” in ‘98 or so; the next year I was. At the millennium both Tom and I were on the list of the outstanding people of the century. I don’t know if Tom was instrumental in having Out magazine list me.

Going forward, I will miss not being able to text him, call him, or go see him. For the rest of my life there will be a big hole. He was there for me; I was there for him. We were a big part of each others’ life. There’s not a day where I don’t think about him.

Towards the end of his life, his husband Sage told me that Tom was having these imaginary conversation with me.

We loved each other. Together we did great things in the world. But we didn’t set out to do anything, we were just having a good time. It just happened because we trusted in The Spirit.

Delishus Memories of Alan Sabal (1951-2024)

By Habibi, Agnes de Garron, and Keisha lo Mein

From Habibi

I first met Delishus in the late 90’s at a EuroFaerie gathering on Terschelling. We bonded over Broadway and sex parties. I hosted her in my funky Dutch farmhouse, and she kindly hosted me at her place in Stuyvesant Town in New York’s East Village. We would go to shows, parties, drag marches, and other mischief. During my first stay with her, having lived outside the U.S. for fifteen years by this point, I made the cardinal sin of answering her question “Would you like to listen to some Patti Lupone by

replying “Who is Patti Lupone?” Oops. A threehour teach-in followed and much that I know about Broadway grew from our time together.

Delish (and her stage persona Baby Delishus) graced many an international gathering that I was involved with: EuroFaeries, Asian Faeries/Thailand, and beyond. As the geography and edginess of my work in international musical exchange grew (now there are Broadway academies in Lebanon and Pakistan!) Delish joined the board of my organization and eventually rose to Board Chair during the past few years. She ran one tight Board Meeting,

Photograph by Keith Gemerek.

needless to say, and brought tons of helpful experience and information to my organization’s scholarship program bringing Iraqis, Eritreans, Syrians, and Lebanese to the U.S. to study music. During the pandemic, I lived in Brooklyn for one year and we tried out every Turkish restaurant in Manhattan while waiting for the parties to resume. She met my husband-to-be in Lebanon while visiting one of my organization’s programs in 2018 and firmly encouraged me to take the plunge and get him to the U.S. on a K-1 visa.

Our last conversation was just two days before he fell ill—we hatched a plan to go to gatherings in Greece and Holland to celebrate my retirement and allow her to enjoy more international travel while she had the health and funds. Her sudden passing has been a huge lesson for me in Carpe Diem. I imagine her now in the Heavenly Bad Faeries tent, getting stoked, and belting out a number as only Baby Delishus could do.

From Agnes de Garron

Delishus was always an enthusiastic member of the NYC chapter of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Sister Ivana Plotz. More than happy to be standing in habit on a street corner, greeting pedestrians as they walked by promulgating some Universal Joy to all. Always ready to volunteer for all and every upcoming event. Delishus attended Agnes de Garron’s weekly dance class and performed in the group’s dance pieces. I remember him singing “Sisters” on the stage at Tompkins Square Park and dancing.

As a Sister and a Faerie Delishus never missed the yearly Drag March to Stonewall Inn. A big Broadway musical fan, he tried never to miss a performance of City Center Encores Series bringing old shows back to the stage.

From Keisha lo Mein

Delishus was remarkably present at every New York Faerie gathering, action, party or extravaganza. And he always brought his unique style of play. He had the confidence of someone who was a foot taller and more beautiful, but he was never on the sidelines, and he was beautiful! He never hesitated to be outrageous. His drag sense was hysterically funny. For someone of his diminished stature he stood out in the crowd. He was delightful and his laugh was contagious. Many of you will know what it was like to be a passenger in his car going to a Blue Heron gathering. It was a master class in female vocalists from the stage. You loved

it or you didn’t.

I will never forget his Latka parties that he held in his apartment for Hanukkah. Sharing his tradition was an act of generosity. We will miss you, dear Delishus.

From Donald Gallagher

Alan Sabal was an extraordinary person in his place of work at City College, where he worked in Admissions. He had an extraordinary talent for getting around and through the difficult bureaucracy and getting admission for people deemed too foreign or not qualified enough or of the wrong demographic. For those he was a champion who worked to make sure they were given a chance, and often succeeded. He was very much loved and admired by those he worked with, and for, and continued to be influential even after he retired.

I knew him before I was a Radical Faerie from my party club GSA, where he told me about the Faeries and that I was one and should go. I did go at last and discovered Delishus rather than Alan. So delightful! I went to several gatherings with him. And to other adventures at the beach in NYC and NJ. To travel with Delishus was an adventure. You’d never know where a detour he would suggest would take you, but I learned not to worry about how many miles we were going out of the way, because there was always a surprising and wonderful restaurant or winery or historical sight at the end. How he knew where so many things were, and how he never used a map but always knew just how to get there I cannot guess. Also true were the extensive details of his trips to the far ends of the world. With Delishus, always be prepared. Not only are you going to hear of all of the sights but the hotel accommodations as well as the MENU!

One of my favorite Delishus moments was in the back of a taxi, on the way to a Purim celebration with Rebbitzin Haddasah Gross. We were going to be Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence who saved Haddsah from the Nazis as in the Sound of Music . I don’t recall her original name as a Sister but we decided in the cab we should have more appropriate names for Purim. I became Sister Shiksa Marie. That moment for Delishus was the naming of Sister Ivana Plotz, and that one was so perfect that it remains as a wonderful tribute to our dear friend and joyful sister in the regular world, the Radical Faeries and the NYC (Dis)order of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. Blessings.

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Issue 202 / Summer 2025

As we all contend with the global “crisis” in politics, climate and return to bias and prejudice, we’re asking our readers consider ways of engaging in tapping into our own collective and inner resilience.

How do you tap into a network of resilience and support while not getting consumed by “doom scrolling” and being in a place of resentment, anger and fear while contending with caring for our personal world and those who matter around us.

Someone suggested that like a forest, the network of things is less about the trees above ground by the multitude of mycelium under the earth interacting with the roots of hundreds of trees

and plants to react to the challenges the environment foists upon a changing land.

At times it makes sense to present an above ground “front facing” view of ourselves, brave strong rooted trees facing the elements. While at other times in makes sense to “sink in” to the earth, to merge with our environment as a way to keep up communication but stay incognito.

As a community that has in many places made strides as part of being openly proud, vigilant to our place in belonging in community, we’re also deeply aware that the promise of inclusivity has not reached everyone equally, fairly or most importantly in

ways that improve on our day to day lives.

So, dear readers, consider contributing to our collective glance into selfreliance and collective resilience. We love your ideas especially in how you have built up your personal network, share your images of shaping a strong community and tell us the dreams you want to share via poetry for a vibrant you and us.

We want to acknowledge that there are many parts of “us” and we welcome all of those voices even if they differ. We understand the main goal is respect. So sharing what’s significant to you is important in telling “our story”.