If I were to find my Great Dark Man, he would not love someone like me.The Great Dark Man is the Real Man. And by his definition, the Real Man would never fall in love with someone of his own sex. So said Quisp.
And if he were to love someone like me, then he could not be my Great Dark Man.
I think this is called aporia, or in plain English, a dead end.
An Englishman in New York dramatizes The Naked Civil Servant's last years, in America. Much of it unfolded around the newborn plague of AIDS. I like to forget what a horror that was, the hospital rooms, the funerals. The film made clear his missteps about reading the epidemic, dismissing it as "a fad" and suffering the rejection of the subculture that had come to lionize him.
I found myself watching John Hurt's portrayal of Quisp as if I were listening to a patient. That made him less offputting. In the film, his combination of exhausted solipsistic nihilism and witty patter, by themselves very quickly wearing, were made bearable by his inconsistency, which showed itself in kindness. (I have been told that inconsistency is also what makes me bearable.) And if he was brave, it was the courage of those who have no hope.
I was surprised, though, by how much I was taken with and moved by the character of Patrick Angus, the doomed young painter who'd already given up hope of being loved.
Perhaps it was the actor, Jonathan Tucker*, I was taken with...
There were the usual predictable political assumptions, but the film was also very unromantic about the flaws of the newly-born gay culture. Liberation brought neither virtue nor happiness.
*2015, update. Mr Tucker played a 180 degree opposite character very convincingly in the final season of Justified: a completely sociopathic and sadistic hired gun for the Bad Guy. Scary and crazy and nasty.
2 comments:
At least Mr Crisp wasn't referring to 'the tall black man' of sorcery (Charles Williams, Witchcraft, preface, third sentence), or was he?
In any case, he seems to express hatred of effeminacy, especially his own -- which perhaps androphiles haven't come to terms with either, supposing that somehow effeminacy isn't unrelated to male homosexuality in pickwickian and unpickwickian senses?
On the face of it, there seems no reason why a masculine, manly man intrinsically couldn't love an effeminate man, since this paradox or whatever occurs in 'heterosexuality.' Quentin Crisp wish'd to be loved and desired by a manly man who he look'd up to an admired. Don't manly men love and desire feminine women? and don't feminine women love and look up to such men? I recall that leading feminist Germaine Greer allow'd that she still long'd for a man to "crush [her] in his tweeds."
I think I see that feminineness ("effeminacy" when in a man) delighted in by most people. No doubt conservative Christians frequently feel that such pleasure in the entertaining style and manner of an effeminate man is impermissible because it conflicts with believing that God forbids sex between men. Womengirls certainly aren't averse to effeminacy in their favourite male singers and so forth.
Presumably the conflict is felt most by males who feel conflicted about their own effeminacy. (Hetero transvestites repair to private clubs for displaying their cross-dressing, don't they? They don't consider for an instant that they should march down the street in women's clothing in Pride Parades for hetero cross-dressers.) And perhaps in parents who don't want a son to turn out that way. ... C.A. Tripp who outlines several types of homosexual personae in "The Homosexual Matrix" says, I recall, that everyone including that is Tripp himself is at least averse to one or more of these types.
Anyway, there seems no intrinsic contradiction in a masculine homosexual man loving an effeminate homosexual man. But obviously the effeminate man is not thereby exempt from taking responsibility for his own actions, or excused in adopting a victim mentality for his 'gay identity' and so on.
No doubt a competent therapist would counsel a womangirl or an effeminate man not to exaggerate or make the entirety of a personality any desire to be taken care of by a man.
But I think a therapist should not exhort and intimidate a womangirl into destroying that desire in herself, on grounds that it is totally unrealistic in terms of who men really are, or that such feminineness is utterly contemptible and worthless as a personal characteristic (as if a feminine womangirl is a shameful failure not only as a human being but also as a member of the sex of Gertrude Stein and Harriet Tubman et al). Presumably feminineness in a psyche deserves nourishment as much as masculinity. Not that many ideological therapists will wish to countenance masculinity in a psyche either -- just alternation between strident protest marching and whimpering victim mentality that insists that we all realize we have to depend upon governmental administration for everything "just as I have a mind" as Marx puts it in the German Ideology.
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But this note to lesbian couples (of an ideological sort) considering to raise children, and who may suppose that the ideal choice of donation seed is a gay male. I think that this is more likely to produce 'worst case scenario' results for the lesbians -- the more so the more 'effeminate' the guy is.
Seems to me that orientationally-personally a hetero guy is more likely to beget a masculine hetero son or daughter, and especially not a daughter with a princess fascination. This last situation will beset the lesbian couple with their most difficult parenting task.
If they have a child with an effeminate gay man, and a princess daugher results, they can try to crush the feminine in their daughter, and also her growing fascination with guys -- on grounds that orientation and personality are in every way socially constructed. Genetics determines qualities such as hair colour, eye colour etc, but not in the least anything to do with personality or sexuality.
This effort will fail, and the princess daughter will rebel and could maybe live out the worst sorts of possibilities vis-a-vis guys. Which in a way will confirm the lesbian parents' convictions about the odiousness of hetero guys (presumably hetero guys, I add). But is this what parenthood is? a chance to vindicate pet ideological-religious theories?
A hetero son from a hetero seed donor will no doubt not be that pleasing to a lesbian couple, but perhaps they will feel less urgent need to destroy his personality and orientation. After all, a boy is 'other' and as such already more or less evil. No doubt the lesbian parents won't be able to prevent themselves from rolling their eyes at the feminine hetero girls that he is attracted to, but at least these girls are their daughters. They can take a laisser-faire attitude and shrug -- as indeed most parents must do a lot of shrugging as children do as they do.
No doubt a homosexual son would be more pleasing to ideological lesbian parents of this sort (whether few or many statistically, I have no notion). He won't be exploiting girls sexually, and so on.
But then a butch hetero guy should be, seems to me, more likely to beget a tough etc daughter, thus, I would guess a lesbian daughter, which is best case scenario.
So from a hetero donor, the lesbian couple can expect more likely their best case scenario (lesbian daughter) and only a somewhat dismal result (a hetero son), but from an effeminate donor, the lesbian couple can expect only an okay result (a homosexual son) and the worst case scenario -- a hetero princess daughter, whom they can either try to destroy psychically, with the concept that if they break her down totally then she will be plasticene that they can re-form into the lesbian protester Democrat etc daughter that they feel all female children should be.
Admittedly, they could draw back from ideology as all parents ought, and consider how best to nourish up the child that they have. They may indeed successfully raise up a limousine liberal daughter who hates Bush-Cheney and Creationist Christians, but who nevertheless likes shopping for clothes, dates 'exciting and dangerous' guys, and who during childhood wanted to play with Barbies and play dress up and have tea parties with her dolls and her friends and their dolls, although she does comply with sound parental wisdom that no daughter should do only those things. But I imagine that this effort would still be very difficult for lesbian parents. Raising a hetero son would be much much less stressful for them; he too could become a sound Democrat, support open borders etc, and in every way be a good person in their eyes except for his desire to phallicly penetrate eager, desirous girls.
Accordingly, although I consider that non-neanderthal nonhetero are having far too few children proportionately to the general population, perhaps lesbian couples should not try in some small way to remedy this reckless genetic experiment.
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