Wednesday, June 30, 2021

TOTAL ASSUALT

On this last day of PRIDE month, I thought I'd post about the first man I was sexually intimate with as an adult. He was around my age (29) when we met in DC in 1971, where I was an anti-Vietnam War and Civil Rights activist and budding feminist and supporter of Gay rights. He was an activist as well but then on the front lines of the fight for Gay Liberation, in fact often cited as a co-founder of the Gay Liberation Front on the third day of the Stonewall uprising.

We had a brief, troubled, but intense relationship, which was challenging on many levels, but I am grateful that he instigated my "coming out" as a gay man, despite my continued attraction to women as well, explaining that calling myself "bi-sexual" would allow me to enjoy the sensual and sexual pleasures of being intimate with men like him while not suffering the consequences of being out as a gay man like him. This was long before the "B" was added to what became for a while LGBT.

As a result of coming out as gay, I lost my job teaching at a Catholic women's college, and some relationships with family and friends, and exposed myself to being criminalized and considered mentally ill. But getting in touch with the gay, and at times feminine, aspects of my true nature, was so liberating, it was more than worth it. 

I never liked the term "bi-sexual" because it seems to imply two kinds of sex, when in my experience every sexual encounter I have ever had has been unique, not generically one of two kinds. But because the "B" in LGBTQ+ seems least talked about and often denigrated and misunderstood (how many times in the last fifty years has my sexuality been invalidated, or ignored as inconsequential, even at times by me!), I now want to stand up for all of us who fall under that designation, even those of us, like me, who prefer the label Queer.

As for that man, at the time we were together he, as many in the DC gay community, was known by a name other than his given one, in his case it was Total Assault, or affectionately "Total" to those of us he was close to. He lived for a while in the commune my wife Lee and I and our two children lived in (she came out as lesbian but was also "bi" and was living with a male partner in 1980 when she became ill and after a botched operation ended up in a coma for six years before she passed),

"Total" was a dynamo not just in the gay world, but the music and broader political worlds as well, and has been a controversial figure in all of them, as he is in my memories. But I still acknowledge my gratitude for all I learned about myself and the world from those early encounters with him and the gay rights activism that grew from them. 

(C) 2021 Michael Lally

Monday, June 28, 2021

YEP

Now that the repubs are suddenly returning to this issue after ignoring it for the last four years:

Sunday, June 27, 2021

BEING THE "B"

 
I've been posting lately about some of the loves of my life who happened to be women. So here's one of the loves of my life who happened to be men: Joe Brainard. I fell in love first with Joe's art and writing and after exchanging some letters made a pilgrimage to New York City in 1972 (I was living in DC) with the intention of seducing him. I sat on the floor, literally at his feet, as he read his work to a small crowd and seemed slightly embarrassed by my obvious ploy.

At his loft later (on 6th Ave next to the church that would become The Limelight) we had sex and would again off and on for the next ten years. After I moved to NYC in '75, we would often see each other at parties and events but more often have dinner alone in obscure little restaurants and usually spend the night at his then Greene Street loft where we would sometimes draw each others' feet or cocks or chests.

We had very different personalities, backgrounds, and looks, but were born the same year (1942) and were the same height and weight, which somehow made me feel like we were essentially related. After I moved to LA in '82 we didn't see each other much, but he called me in 1994 when he was dying (he passed on May 25th, my birthday) but wouldn't talk about it, saying he was fine.

His letters and drawings he sent me, some quite salacious, or I guess I mean sexy, are in my archives at NYU. His smile in this photo captures best what I loved, and still love, about Joe. I think of him every day.

[PS: so as not to be misunderstood, I'm not sad about all the loves I've had that I didn't end up with permanently, I miss them but rejoice in the times we had together no matter how brief or truncated...I'm totally at peace with my past and present...] 

(C) 2021 Michael Lally

Thursday, June 24, 2021

THE WAY IT USED TO BE


I love how these two photos show how we used to party in the house I grew up in. So many of us on the floor (aunts and uncles, the boarder, my mother and sisters and cousin and me). All dressed up to sit on the floor! My maternal Grandma Dempsey (who lived with us) in her throne chair (she was "crippled" and needed the extra height to get up, usually I helped her) and paternal Grandma Lally (who lived down the street and came over from Ireland in the 1800s). Someone would tell a joke, or a story, or sing a song. I loved it. And this is only some of us, a smaller gathering than usual. 
 

Tuesday, June 22, 2021

Sunday, June 20, 2021

HAPPY FATHER'S DAY

 
There's no photos of me alone with my father, but of ones we're both in, this is my favorite. Taken down the Jersey shore in Belmar, around 1952 or so, with my mother and her mother (who lived with us) and some of my siblings, I love the way he's being so tender with my brother Robert (who would have still been a Teamster but soon would be a cop) and me (with my summer tan) only a few years before my father and me began arguing as often and as virulently as he did with Robert when he was in his teens.  

Saturday, June 19, 2021

QUOTE OF THE DAY

"Somebody asked why is it called "Juneteenth" insteada "Freedom Day."
I said,
The word "Juneteenth", to me, contains within it a profound record of the African-American experience of language. With our native languages mostly lost, taken or abandoned, and english thrust upon us, there is a great tradition of passive rebellion and nonconformity amongst enslaved people -- sometimes expressed through language. It's expressed in Juneteenth, I believe, in creating an evolved, improvised (think jazz) hybrid word. Such lingual reclamations of power are mildly annoying, by design, to the enslavers. 'Why won't you do what I say?! Why won't you do it the right way?!'*
*This is my own theory as a biracial man, philosopher and theorist."

—Dion Flynn

I ALWAYS LOVED THIS QUOTE

"Buddhism says it is possible to get your mind together like the wings of a butterfly. It is also possible not to get your mind together and still exist like a butterfly but with no wings."  —Bill Berkson (from RECENT VISITORS)

Thursday, June 17, 2021

AND THEN THERE WAS

 

Back in the 1980s in LA, Katey Sagal and I became friends and for a brief period we even dated, and I was sorry I let her get away, but we remained friends. I've known few people as talented and fun, and I am very happy for her continued success.

Wednesday, June 16, 2021

BACK WHEN

This photo was taken after Ana and I had gone our separate ways back in the 1970s and my broken heart had mostly mended, but seeing it appear online recently brought those feelings back again for a moment...the scars from old wounds the heart endures.... 

Sunday, June 13, 2021

IN THE HEIGHTS

I cried, I laughed, I moved to the music, I couldn't stop smiling as stars were born, a new favorite musical made a future list, I already want to watch it again (this time with the captions on so I don't miss a syllable of its delightful theatrical genius), oh and make sure you stick around for the coda after the end credits!

CHECK THIS OUT

here


Saturday, June 12, 2021

YET ANOTHER LIST

Woke up this morning with the beginning of a list of one favorite (that came to mind) movie for each letter of the alphabet (some of them un-woke) with titles whose first word is 'THE" and ended up with this (have the feeling I've done this before)::

THE AMERICANIZATION OF EMILY

 THE BEST YEARS OF OUR LIVES

THE COMMITMENTS

THE DEVIL AND DANIEL WEBSTER

THE EQUALIZER

THE FIGHTER

THE GRAPES OF WRATH

THE HUMAN COMEDY

THE INFORMER

THE JANE AUSTEN BOOK CLUB

THE KID (the Chaplin silent)

THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS

THE MALTESE FALCON

THE NATURAL

THE OTHERS

THE PERSECUTION AND ASSASSINATION OF JEAN-PAUL MARAT AS PERFORMED BY THE INMATES OF THE ASYLUM OF CHARENTON UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE MARQUIS DE SADE

THE QUIET MAN

THE RED SHOES

THE SEARCHERS

THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE

THE UMBRELLAS OF CHERBOURG

THE VAN

THE WIND THAT SHAKES THE BARLEY

THE X?

THE YOUNG SAVAGES

THE Z?

[had to use google to check the full title of Marat/Sade and the spelling of Cherbourg]

Thursday, June 10, 2021

DISCOVERY

 

Longtime dear friend Bobby Miller found this photo he took of me in we are guessing 1982 and at first didn't know who it was. I'd never seen it until he posted it to my FaceBook timeline two days ago. Pretty fortunate to have so many of my lives documented.

Sunday, June 6, 2021

CLARENCE WILLIAMS III R.I.P.

 
Most older folks first noticed Clarence Williams III in the TV show THE MOD SQUAD. Or younger older folks as Prince's father in PURPLE RAIN. But I was first knocked out by his acting in Shirley Clarke's 1963 masterpiece, near the top of my list of all-time favorite films, THE COOL WORLD, where he plays brilliantly a teenage gang leader in Harlem who becomes a junkie.

In my LA years I was lucky enough to get to know him and have the chance to tell him that and what a great actor I thought he was always, despite the career and personal challenges he faced. I really really liked the guy, not just his acting, and am sorry to hear of his passing. Rest in well-deserved peace, Clarence.

Friday, June 4, 2021

NEW LIST

Woke up with this list in my head:

ANOUK AIMEE

BRIDGET BARDOT

CYD CHARISSE

DOROTHY DANDRIDGE

ELAINE EQUI

FIONNULA FLANAGAN

GRETA GARBO

HERBIE HANCOCK

JAMES JOYCE

KATHERINE KOCH

LOTTE LENYA

MARILYN MONROE

NIKKI NASH

OLIVE OYL

PARKER POSEY

ROY ROGERS

SALLY SILVERS

TINA TURNER

VIDA VIERRA

WALT WHITMAN

Thursday, June 3, 2021

REVISIT

 
I've posted this favorite photo of the late great poet Ed Cox and me before, but wanted to add that this was around the time in 1972 (if not the day of) when he and I gave a poetry reading at Catholic University in DC where we shocked the authorities by reading poems about our romantic and sexual relationships with other men, considered a crime and mental illness at the time, and the late, and then young, great poet Tim Dlugos came up afterward to tell us we were his heroes. Tim and I became dear friends from that moment on until his passing from AIDS in 1990.

Wednesday, June 2, 2021

PRIDE MONTH

I want to wish joy and happiness to all those who celebrate LGBTQI+ pride this month around the world, especially to those who still feel they have to live a secret life because of family and societal and governmental intolerance, harassment, and violence. And those—like myself at times in my life—who feel confused and misunderstood and ever-changing and growing in self awareness and self-understanding and self-acceptance...