“look behind the eyes

i said and i say

 worry about the plumbing later”

—dick higgins 

(don't know what poem of dick's this is from but it's been bringing me comfort since I first read it and wrote it down almost fifty years ago)

MY NEW HERO

I don't watch men's soccer on TV because it has rarely engaged my interest for long: too little scoring and too much histrionics (the phony injury act). But watching the USA women's team play France today (well, technically yesterday) was one of the most delightful TV sports experiences of the last few decades. The woman of both teams were so athletically tough and talented it was pure pleasure to watch them compete. And Megan Rapinoe, who scored the US team's two goals, is such a charismatic star, I not only have a hero crush on her, if I had room on my walls I'd put a poster of her up on one.

MORE PRIDE

The top photo is the late DC poet Ed Cox and me around the time we did a poetry reading at Catholic U. in DC in Spring of 1972. Ed had just come out a few weeks before me. We both read poems about love and relationships between men, mine more sexually graphic, for what we were told was the first time at that institution and maybe in DC. The young poet Tim Dlugos afterward introduced himself and said we were his heroes. For a while Ed stayed at the commune I lived in with my first wife and our kids and where I would challenge him and myself to try poses neither of us ever had, like letting a wrist go limp (a la the second photo).  I went on to wear ribbons in my hair and mismatched clip-on earrings and sometimes dresses, but unfortunately have no photos of that.

ORE LGBQT+ PRIDE

I took part in the first Gay Pride celebration in Washington DC in early May of 1972, and marched with the Gay and Lesbian contingent in anti-war marches in 1972 and '73. I remember being in a photo on the front page of The Washington Post for one of those events which garnered lots of attention at the Catholic women's college I was teaching at then. Eventually leading to my being fired, partly as a result of my being openly "gay"—though I was what others called "bi-sexual" but I always dismissed as implying there are two kinds of sexuality when my experience was there are as many kinds as there are humans.

Initially coming out as a gay man in my 29th year was a political act, to show solidarity with my gay cohorts who were at that time maligned and oppressed and jailed and called mentally ill for preferring  same gender partners. But in recent years I've been identifying more with the "bi-sexual" label, because as was true back then and unfortunately still is, people on both ends of the spectrum of sexual choice and identity are still too often at best suspicious of the possibility of anyone being truly attracted to both of the traditional dominant genders and at worst see "bi" as a cop out (as I was told in 1972 by a leading activist, it allows for the pleasure of same gender sex with the privilege of not being seen as strictly gay and therefore suffering the prejudice etc.).

When I arrived in L.A. in 1982 at forty, looking for an acting career in films and TV to support my life as a poet, my poetry collections Hollywood Magic and Attitude had just come out and contained many poems about my fluid sexuality and identity which I was told by some meant death to the predictions I was the next (fill in the blank for bad boy actor). Most of the gay and lesbian actors I met were in the closet and stayed there. I looked forward to being interviewed on The Tonight show and flaunting my varied sexual past. But those who had warned me to bury that past may have been right as the expectations of agents and managers et. al. were dashed, as they used to say.

But I have no regrets and am still here and still proud of my past and of the young people who are more accepting of all the possibilities.

ANOTHER GOOD QUOTE

AN OLD FAVORITE

A NEW LIST

As my friends know, I was a compulsive (like OCD compulsive) list maker all my life, constantly making lists in my head or conversations or writing, until my brain operation almost a decade ago after which I woke up with not only no compulsion to makes lists but no desire to and no capacity for it. Best I could do would be two or three items and then I'd lose any and all interest and go elsewhere with my thoughts or words.

But, in the past year or so I've now and then felt compelled to make a list in my head, rarely but still it's happened. The latest was falling asleep a few nights ago when I found myself listing the names of movies I liked that begin with a hard "c" starting with five, and then the next day thinking of more, and then today writing them down and looking up some dates so I could affirm them because I listed them in what I believed was chronological order and on researching the dates I saw a few more to add until here I am with this list:

CASABLANCA
CABIN IN THE SKY (has problems but worth it for Ethel Waters and others great performers)
THE CLOCK
CAROUSEL
CLEO FROM 5 TO 7 (saw it for the first time a few days ago which prompted this list, my new favorite film, and made by Agnes Varda when she was 25 with no film education or experience!)
THE COOL WORLD (Shirley Clarke's masterpiece)
COOL HAND LUKE
THE CONFORMIST
CABARET
COMING HOME
THE COMMITMENTS
COOL WORLD (Ralph Bakshi's uneven mix of animated and real actors and action, in which I did the voice for the cartoon character "Sparks")
THE CRYING GAME
CROOKLYN
CLERKS
CLUELESS
COP LAND
THE COOLER