Stay in Office, Eliot Spitzer

Marcxh 11, 2008  I just emailed this to the governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer’s, office.  Dear Mr. Spitzer,Please do not resign. I am begging you. Hang in there, be resolute. What happened to you is an affront to all mature people; I completely understand the situation you’ve been in, and support you so much that it is hard to put it into words. Finally NY has a governor who is more than a mediocre mouth piece for a party machine, who can inspire real love, loyalty, and genuine honor. And you are that. The sheer, revolting, vulgar hypocrisy of what has been done to you is so disgusting to me, but please don’t feel that the majority of thinking people in this state don’t support you. We do, and love you. And we want you to stay governor. I do with all my heart. Just realize this, and know how much we care for you and want you to remain in office. Sincerely, Perry Brass, What has happened to Eliot Spitzer is such an exercise in the hypocrisy of this period, when we expect public people to be public people 24/7, when there is no shield of basic human privacy for them, either officially or unofficially, ever.  There has not been a single, great, inventive, intelligent male (and I can’t account for females in this) yet who has not had some side of themselves in need of a place of privacy: and we are now destroying that. Or should I say, “they” have. I am not in this act, never have been, and never will be. At this point, the moral guardians of the Public Sphere, who will use any means at their disposal to invade the Private one (wire tapping, email surveillance, mail tampering—you name it), would have destroyed the lives and careers of  Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Bill Clinton, and half of everyone else they could drag in. They will make running for public office into an exercise in mediocrity, cowardice, and shallowness; if it is not that already. We will be stuck with the next “morally pure” Hitler. What happened yesterday to Eliot Spitzer—when he was “exposed” by the New York Times and the news media machine,  is among the dumber things I’ve seen in my lifetime, but, hey, we’re in the period of the dumbing of everything, so why shouldn’t a brilliant man like Spitzer be the victim of it?Well, I just hope he gets to listen to the smart people of New York who want him to stay. I mean are begging him to stay. Don’t get caught up in the sheer bullshit of the moment, the tabloids in New York City out for your scalp and skull; the Republicans who are making money and careers out of eating you alive; and the rest of the media onslaught that is doing what it always does: selling ad space at your expense. It’s you today, Britney tomorrow, and then whomever else they can grind up and reduce to newsprint pulp or a moment of digital titilation. Don’t be fooled, Governor. We still want you. And I mean that. Perry Brasswww.perrybrass.com  

African Hate Words and What They Really Mean

“The faggot lovers Steve Parelli and Jose Ortiz arrived in Kenya and were happily welcomed by homo activists in the Country. . . These two homos proved to be quite popular with Kenyan faggots and their supporters. The reception from these Kenyans was apparently so good, the two American faggots started contemplating plans of establishing the ‘Other Sheep’ East African chapter.” from Kenyans Against Homosexuality, a blog.



I grew up in an extreme environment of violence and hatred: the American Deep South in the 50s and early 60s, in Savannah, GA, where learning not to question was an important part of learning. I was lucky, though; because I grew up Southern, Jewish, impoverished (and incredibly queer), I was able, at an early age, to question much of what was going on. In fact, I soon realized there were two “realities” then: the “reality” of the way the world was, and the reality of the way people wanted the world to be.
This second reality is an “in our own image” world: in Savannah, it was all-white, totally straight, and very Anglo-Saxon-Protestant Christian. Most kids are brought up in an “our own image” situation, but it’s becoming harder with so many different images now. But I came of age in a seething furor over preserving that “in our own image” environment.
I now see a similar process going on in many places in the world, especially in black Africa: a strange, mirror-image of Savannah where white people were taught to fear and hate blacks and homosexuals were occasionally thrown into the mix as unseen bogeymen. Presently, we experience a condition of extreme hate actions and words directed against a target of ostensibly white or Western homosexuality being seen as something alien to and infecting the purity of black Africa. This is being done often under a Christian guise, which makes me question its real meaning.

First, I have no doubts that East African homophobia plays into an “in our own image” mindset, and that “image” is free from AIDS and “righteously” monogamous. Monogamy was a goal of Christian missionary work, though much of African tribalism bridled at it. Monogamy is still not considered manly for many African men: women are to be contested for, and the more you have, the more manly you are. In the old days, Christian missionaries could attack African male promiscuity with fire and brimstone; they can’t anymore. All they can do is scream at homosexuality and its “promiscuous” sex-outside-of-marriage sinfulness, while trying to ignore male heterosexual promiscuity, especially in urban Africa. There is also the specter of Islam, a very aggressively proselytizing religion, knocking loudly at the door. Islam for centuries was very “hush-hush” about homosexuality: in fact, it was often considered merely a private alternative to strictly controlled heterosexuality. But again, today with too many images in the air, Islam has become loud and harsh about a situation it used to tiptoe around. Therefore, the question in black Africa is: who is going to hate “queers” the most, Islam or Christianity, and of course guess who will suffer the most from this hatred?

A third specter comes up: AIDS, and the embarrassing fact that AIDS started out in Africa as a heterosexual disease, that came into the human population through eating bush meat, or the flesh of primates. This fact has been scientifically proven, but that does not soften the shame and embarrassment caused by AIDS, and how that shame will (hopefully) be obliterated if it is cast onto the bodies of African gay men and lesbians, who are coming out despite the oppression they are under.
All of this is a recipe for a living hell for many lgbt people in many areas of Africa, but the worst part is not being able to speak about it, being too “politically correct” (or “polite” as we used to say in the South) to see what is under the hate language, and exposing it. A lot of Africans will be frightened to death by homophobic extremism, and many will, literally, die from it, because it answers so many needs to cover up so much. I think we need to take the cover off this as soon as possible. LGBT people in Africa need to see that they are a real part of “in our own image,” and the world needs to show this with bravery, frankness, and sincerity.

More about how I feel about subjects like this at my website, www.perrybrass.com.

Michael Lucas Likes Me

Hello Perry,

Here’s my quote:

“Smart, sexy, and suspenseful-everything you could want in a great novel.”

Best regards,
Michael Lucas
CEO, Lucas Entertainment
http://www.LucasEntertainment.com
http://www.myspace.com/lucasblog
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=825840456

I met Michael Lucas the way most people from serial killers to future saints meet: through MySpace.
Actually, I had met him at New York’s Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transsexual Services Center, sometime in the misty past, through Michael’s partner who for a long time was president of the Center’s board. So, I met Richard his partner, and then Michael, but being pretty green to the ways of celebrity and fame, had no idea who Michael was then, that is he seemed like a pretty regular person to me, rather than a media mogul, porn superstar, fascinating piece of human architecture, etc. (which is usually the way he’s presented). In fact, he seemed like just a nice Jewish boy, like lots of them I had grown up with, which is another of Michael’s personas.
But, we met through MySpace, and I proposed friendship immediately, which, gratefully, he accepted. And of course being a writer, on the lowest link of the fame feeder chain (Gore Vidal’s hoary joke about the Polish movie star: “She moved from Warsaw to Hollywood and the first thing she did was fuck the writer . . . so what’s the punch line? That is the punch line, stupid!”), I offered to send him a copy of new book Carnal Sacraments, A Historical Novel of the Future, because, of course I wanted him to option it for one of his movies . . .
(No, I’m not that stupid, I sent it to him because I figured he’s a regular smart guy making it this time in the guise of a porn star, so he’d like the book: as the Jews say, ehmiss: meaning honest.)
So he sent me a real address to mail the book to; I did, and of course I wanted some kind of gushing blurb from him. (I mean, I’m not that dumb: writers are notoriously pious about their motivations, after all, we’re supposed to be the guardians of the First Amendment; but even writers who mythically screw Polish movie stars aren’t that dumb.)
So we did a little dance around that: he was too busy being Michael Lucas (whom some people still call by his natal Russian name, Andre), putting out new movies, opening up supermarkets and community libraries, going on talk shows, getting his picture on the cover of normally boring Genre magazine, while I plugged away at getting some word from the porn mogul/superstar model (“Most beautiful man in the world”) /business man-entrepreneur, etc.
And finally, of course, this did happen: which only goes to show you something that I’m sure Michael would agree with 100%: if you want something ask for it. And don’t be afraid of doing it. I also began to understand that Andre was actually reading my book. I could tell that, and since English is not his first language, it took him a while to do it. Good, Michael. Ehmiss.
So now, here it is: Michael Lucas does like me. What a weird thrill that is, that the auteur of Gigolo and La Dolce Vita (New York style) does like me . . . exactly like Sally Fields gushed at the Academy Awards. For this I can only say, Thank you, Michael.
Or Andre.
Ehmiss.

Perry

Tea Room Sex, A Blast from the Old Past?

Today I read a wonderful entry in Jesse Monteagudo’s email journal that he sends out his friends, and also posts in his own blog, about male public restroom encounters. It really made me think about what is happening here, and why we are so appalled at what has basically been going on since guys got together to pee in the back of the cave. Here’s Jesse’s journal entry, and at the end I include my own response, which I thought was interesting, too.

Sex and the Daytona Beach 9

Male homosexual activity in public bathrooms, for decades a fact of gay life, became big news in 2007, thanks to the misadventures of conservative politicos like U.S. Senator Larry Craig (R-Idaho) and Florida State Representative Bob Allen (R-Merritt Island) and the (mostly unfounded) complaints of Fort Lauderdale Mayor Jim Naugle. Now come the “Daytona Beach 9;” nine men who were arrested for lewd behavior during a sex sting operation at a Sears Department Store bathroom in Daytona Beach Nov. 1. According to the Daytona Beach News-Journal, the accused include “a former Daytona Beach city commissioner and a local high school teacher” who promptly resigned from his job. “The reason that we did this sting is we all go to the mall; our kids go into the bathroom,” said Police Chief Mike Chitwood, who could hardly contain his disgust. “That they could be susceptible to this type of behavior is absolutely a disgrace.” (Please note that I refuse to name the Daytona Beach 9. In my opinion, these men have suffered enough already.)

Public sex, especially sex in public toilets or “tearooms,” has always been controversial, even within our GLBT community. Almost without exception, bathroom sex is male masturbatory or male homosexual, proof perhaps of the male’s greater sex drive. (It is not my intent, in writing this article, to condone bathroom sex. In fact, due to its health, safety and legal hazards, I do not recommend it.) There are many reasons why a man would want to have sex in a public restroom. For some men, bathroom sex is a step in the coming out process; a relatively easy way for them to discover the joys of male love before moving on to gay social networks, commercial institutions, or even a life partner. For other men, tearoom trade is their main or only form of sexual expression. Many of these are repressed “closet cases;” men who can not or will not accept their homo- or bisexuality. For them, a quickie in a toilet satisfies their sexual needs but does not require them to be publicly “branded” as queer, which would be the case if they went to a gay bar, sex club, community center, church, etc. This was apparently the case with Sen. Craig, Rep. Allen, and at least some of the “Daytona Beach 9.”

What makes a public bathroom a hotspot for tearoom sex? Though opinions differ, a bathroom’s location often makes it a favored place for sexual activity. College campuses are ideal tearoom locations, if only because colleges are full of testosterone-charged young men who still question their sexuality. Public parks are also popular (ask George Michael) as well as libraries and department stores (like the Sears in Daytona Beach). Once a place gets a “reputation” there is no telling what might happen. A good example is a Home Depot store in Oakland Park, Florida, which in its heyday was notorious for its men’s room activity. How did that Home Depot become so cruisy? Certainly the store’s butch image attracted a certain type of gay man. Perhaps two guys hit it off at the paint section, went off to do their business in the bathroom, and then told their friends. And the rest is history.

Male homosexual activity, especially in public places, threatens a lot of people, which is why the media have a field day with sex stings like the recent one in Daytona Beach. The Daytona Beach News-Journal’s excited coverage of the Nov. 1 arrests is a case in point. The day after the arrests were made the paper (and its Web site) published an article (“Ex Daytona commissioner, teacher charged in sex sting”) which not only published the names, ages and professions of the accused but also their mug shots. The next day the News-Journal ran a second article (“Mall bathroom sex sting spotlights subculture”) that tried to analyze “a subculture in which adult men meet for sex in restrooms designated online as hot spots, almost in plain view of unsuspecting patrons.” In fact, the only explanation of this “subculture” came from police Sgt. Jeff Hoffman, who talked about “coughing, grunting, sharp zipper noises, … tapping on shoes” and other “signals” used by men to attract sex partners. Though the accused limited their sexual activities to masturbation, they were nevertheless arrested “because a bathroom stall doesn’t completely conceal a person” and, thus, “he has no expectation of privacy, making any sexual behavior unlawful.”

As if that was not enough, the paper followed this tidbit with a third article (“Activists say arrests a setback for gay community”) that claimed that “the entire local gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community is going to have a harder time than ever gaining equality and convincing people that only a tiny fraction among them is interested in sex with strangers in public places.” That’s a lot of responsibility to be placed on the shoulders of nine formerly closeted men. Not surprisingly, the News-Journal’s coverage of the arrests “generated more than 120,000 page views and hundreds of comments on the News-Journal’s Web site Friday. That’s more traffic than the entire site gets on a normal day.” Needless to say, most of the comments were even worse than the cops’.

The media justify their lurid reports by protesting that bathroom sex threatens the well-being of “innocent” bystanders, especially children. Leaving aside the question of whether or not witnessing sexual activity is more traumatic than watching a traffic pileup or a Fort Lauderdale City Commission hearing, the fact remains that an unsuspecting child is more likely to be hit by a bolt of lightning or win the lottery than run into sexual activity in a public john (unless he’s looking for it). As any vice cop could tell you, catching men having sex in restrooms is difficult, which is why they often have to resort to entrapment or other extralegal subterfuges. A sting operation like the one in Daytona Beach is newsworthy because it is so unusual.

The media will also deny that they are conducting a witch-hunt against gay or bisexual men. But a witch-hunt it is, and many of our brothers have paid the price for it. Thirty years ago, reporters used hidden cameras to catch men who gathered in gay bars. Today, the media use similar tactics to catch men having sex in public parks or public bathrooms. In fact, today’s accused have it even worse, for they are branded for life thanks to sex offender laws and the Internet. One does not have to condone public sex to agree that media coverage of sex sting operations is often sleazier than any crimes that the stings seek to prevent. We can feel sorry for the accused, which is why we agree with the Rev. Beau McDaniels of Hope Metropolitan Community Church, who “said she can understand why some local gay and bisexual people go underground. It’s a conservative area where people’s sexual preferences can ruin their careers, she said.”

“If people would learn to accept people as God accepts them, we wouldn’t have this issue,” Rev. McDaniels said. “When you’re told it’s wrong and bad, you hide. This will drive us deeper underground.”

I welcome your comments. You may reach me by e-mail at jessemonteagudo@aol.com.

Dear Jesse,

That was a great journal entry. I really enjoyed it, and thought it was marvelously written, very clear, mostly dispassionate, and “spot on,” as the kids say.

Most gay men who’ve had any experience and fairness out in the world don’t condemn bathroom sex; they may not like it, but to outright condemn it because “I’d never do it,” seems pretty ridiculous. It’s been going on since the early 19th century, at least, when public facilities became available. In fact, one famous “house of comfort” in Central Park was visited by Walt Whitman, and was notorious after the Civil War as a place to meet soldiers, sailors, workers, and other “tradesmen.” In England, it was very popular, especially during Edwardian times, and these places were referred to as “cottages,” so it was called “cottaging.” Since England had ferocious laws about picking up anyone in a bar (constant entrapment), the “cottages” were considered safer. Usually what went on there was not complete sex, just a dangling of equipment, a few winks, and then something was done outside. Although that was not always the case.

A lot of the uproar about bathroom sex, or tearoom sex, really comes from the feminization of our commercial culture. Women, back in the 19th century, were pretty much aghast at the idea of public facilities. They were things men used. Women did not use them; they used facilities in hotels or lady’s shops, if they had to “go” outside the house. Usually, they just held it in, so that women often suffered from terrible bladder problems. But it was considered unladylike to go to do “it” in a place open to the public, so the idea of one of these places being used for sexual as well as excretionary purposes was really disgusting to the WCTU crowd. Men usually laughed at what was going on. It was often considered simply a part of being a man, and the Paris pissoirs were infamous cruising places, and no one ever got busted in one. It would have been considered, in itself, a breach of privacy and manliness. If you did not want the advances of a man, you just let him know and pronto!

I think this attitude was pretty much in force in America, even up until after World War II, when public facilities really started opening up, and women started using them as well. So the old feminine disgust at anything else going on in these places except an “extremely private function,” snowballed. For women, the public bathroom was a place for primping, and anything other than that was totally locked up, with an attendant out in front to make sure it stayed that way. Since no real man ever primped, it meant that he had to get in and out of these places in a nano-second, and any dallying around was considered suspect. In fact, for two men even to go to the bathroom together was considered suspect. A few years ago, a friend of mine and I, who like to go together to piss, were caught by a waiter peeing at once in the same toilet. I thought the waiter was going to faint.

So we now have this idea that bathrooms, or as the Irish say, “shit houses,” are sterile, sacred places where only God, pissing and dumping can take place, and everyone buys into that. Now that the YMCAs of America have all gone co-ed, the parks are patroled to the level of state of prisons (New York’s Central Park is said to have one cop, plainclothed or not, for every 40 visitors), and people are way too tasteful or stylish to consider cruising department store johns (due to the armies of ribbon clerk queens who used to staff department stores, they were infamous), this form of sexual display, in all of its basic, crude, animal splendor, is really off limits. Decent, all-Americans would rather meet via the Web, where they can lie to their hearts content about their assets, age, etc. And there is that most sanitized of all sexual encounters, phone sex, which requires nothing more than a jack and a credit card.

In a way, it’s sad, but I’m sure that a lot of people will say that the Daytona Nine had it coming: they are a throw-back, and as everyone knows, we hate them.

Perry

Friday, Sept. 7, 2007: The most important phone call of my life

I got what may be the most important phone call of my life today: from my urologist, Dr. Hashmat who practices in Brooklyn. He told me that the prostate biopsy that he did a week ago last Monday came back “normal.”

“You’re normal,” he said. “I know you must be anxious to hear this.”

I felt like someone had handed my life back to me. This huge weight had been hanging over my head and I’d been trying desperately not to feel it, pretty much living in denial, trying to go about my business as if nothing were happening. Twice, the first week after the biopsy was done, I’d woken up about 2 a.m., jolted from anxiety. I got up, walked into another room, sat down on the couch, and tried to keep from going out of my head. I kept telling myself how fortunate I’d been. I’d been able to live my life almost exactly the way I’d wanted to live it–had done what I had set out to do–been able to write books, poetry, songs, plays, articles for God-knows-how-many magazines. I’d given a number of people pleaure in their lives–I was very fortunate. But even more fortunate, I’ve been loved, really loved by some wonderful men and women. My partner Hugh, my closest friend Robert, my sister, our friend Susan, my wonderful best friends Jeff Campbell and Marc Collins, who is are longer alive, only two of the terrible victims of AIDS; there are others, but that is what is important in the long run, being loved, being able to feel it and know it.

I was so lucky. By sheer fortune, I found a doctor who started to see that my PSA level was rising: it was 4.2.–7 is prostate cancer–so she sent me to see Dr. Hashmat, an excellent urologist, and he looked seriously at me and decided that we needed to do this biopsy. We did it in his office. It was painful: I can’t lie about that. Even with a large dose of anesthetic, it felt like this rattle snake was running up my ass and biting me in there. He took 7 samples from various sites on the organ, and then told me to wait until the anesthesia wore off. I was dizzy and a bit nauseated. Robert came to Brooklyn to accompany me back to Manhattan, and then the Bronx. Hashmat had warned me that I would see some blood in my urine, my stool, and my semen. But I wasn’t prepared for how much blood would appear the first time I urinated. It was scary, and it continued for the first day or so. My groin felt terrible, like I’d been kicked in it; but I did not want to feel that, all I wanted to do was not be worried about it. Just try to . . . be someplace where I would not have to think about that word cancer at all.

My father had died of colon-rectal cancer at the age of 42. I was 11 when he died, and never was told what he had died of. Back then, in 1958, in the Deep South, you never mentioned words like “colon,” “rectal,” and “cancer” to kids, as if there was something obscene in the Southern mind about all of that: it was too involved with the real body, and everybody knew where that could lead: to the truth itself, something no one could venture into when I was growing up.
The truth was absolutely shameful, so you stayed as far away from it as possible.
We’re still staying away from the truth about so much, but I am grateful for the candor and frankness people now have about things like prostate cancer.
I joked to a friend that I never knew what the word “prostate” meant until I was about 36. Prostate was a part of that nether region that was not supposed to be broached in polite company. I knew that there was a pleasurable aspect to it–ask anyone who’s into anal sex–but exactly what the prostate does, and often what it leads to–anyway, I had little idea.
I do now. And I’m deliriously grateful that I’ve dodged this particular, scary bullet, to put it mildly. I’ve now got the rest of my life before me . . . but then, in truth we all do.
Perry
www.perrybrass.com

Carnal Sacraments: A great review makes a my day!

Last weekend, one of my friends in San Francisco alerted me that Jim Provanzano, the arts editor at Bay Area Reporter, had written a favorable review of Carnal Sacraments in the latest issue.
I was delighted—Belhue Press had sent a review copy to Provanzano, and I had hoped that he’d review the book. Bay Area Reporter is one of the best lgbt papers in the country, and is the “newspaper of record” for the gay and lesbian community of San Francisco—so I’d had my fingers crossed about a review.
Getting books reviewed nowadays is not easy, especially since in the pecking order of queer writers, I make Kathy Griffith’s “My Life on the ‘D’ List” look waaay out there. If she’s on the “D” list, I must be on the X-Y-Z list. I’m not a celeb; I’ve never outed a Republican congressman or a closeted, fundamentalist preacher; I’m not a major league baseball player (I know, you’re all waiting for Derek Jeeter to jeet himself, but it seems like it ain’t happenin’ yet); and I’m not a star in Mixed Martial Arts (which may become my new fascination: imagine a sport where two incredably hot guys hug each other close, keep almost balls-to-balls body contact, and then throw a crazy few punches at one another—who’d-a-thunk it?)—anyway, I’m none of that. I’m just a . . . OK, I’m a good writer, I know that. False modesty is not part of my paraphenalia.
But I was pleased as all get-up at the review, so just in case you’ve missed it, here’s Jim Provanzano’s take on Carnal Sac:

Minority retort: Futuristic executive makeovers & breakdowns

[review] Published 08/23/2007

by Jim Provenzano

Carnal Sacraments by Perry Brass; Belhue Press, $16.95

Set at the end of this century, Perry Brass’ Carnal Sacraments tells the story of Jeffrey Cooper, a design executive who’s reached the pinnacle of his career, which involves supervising global marketing campaigns for superfluous luxury products.

Few know how long it took Cooper to climb his way to the top. As with many other elites in this dystopian world, while appearing to be a dashing 30something, Cooper is actually in his 70s. A regimen of injections, surgeries and other processes keeps his youthful appearance. Underneath the facade, however, Cooper is about to suffer a nervous breakdown, particularly when a lumbering stranger punches him on the subway.

His later coincidental meeting with his assailant, a Dutchman named John van der Meer, leads to a strange and passionate affair that may ruin his precarious status as a tastemaker for the world.

Set mostly in Berlin, where the Arkansas-born Cooper works, the book’s conversations and nicknames are sprinkled with German terms. (A glossary is provided, but mostly unnecessary, with the phrases understandable in context.)

Unlike most other science fiction novels, despite some teleconferences and the expected Orwellian government surveillance, Brass dispenses with futuristic jargon, gadgets and machinery in his novel. He instead focuses on the inner paranoia of an upscale executive fearing his inevitable downfall.

Although set in a future where the government has become a corporate voyeur of every aspect of middle- to high-income citizens, leaving the lower classes to barely documented yet surveilled status, Brass’ novel, like most good “futuristic” fiction, actually comments on contemporary society. Cooper’s wealthy gay friends, up-ended by illness, are forced into a government-controlled frozen status. John, Cooper’s love interest, is relegated to poverty, living in a shack in a forest outside of Berlin.

Cooper gushes with neurotic emotion and pent-up frustration with his “system-assigned” therapist, who warns him of the potential dangers of his romance with John.

Then, in an impulsive gesture, Cooper accepts an invitation from a scheming yet supercilious younger executive in India. Cooper and new mysterious lover embark on a mystical yet conflict-laden vacation. More dark secrets are revealed, and Cooper’s limits and capacity for love versus his grasp on his career are tested.

Layered with philosophical elements, fascinating descriptions, and a clear focus on character overall, Brass’ latest work is one of the most unusual novels I’ve read in years.

[end of review]

Wow, that was good to read! There were a few ickies: like Jeffrey Cooper is from Alabama, not Arkansas—but why quibble? He got the book, and I’m very happy. You can learn more about Carnal Sacraments, why it took so long to come out, and why you must buy the book at my website, www.perrybrass.com. Or, even better, just get the book at Amazon, or your local lgbt bookstore [Frankly, as a gay writer, I'd prefer you get it there; but if there's none around you, you can do Amazon]. It’s only $16.95 retail, which is about the price of 3 beers at any joint in the country now, or one and a half mojitos, or a Big Mac and a mojito—anyway, life is short, books are still cheap, and for the cost of a ticket to a crappy movie at some noisy mall, you can take me home with you, snuggle up and enjoy “one of the most unusual novels I’ve read in years.”
Thanks for your time. Keep them cards and letters a-comin’. Yours, Perry

2 Great Do’s and 2 Great Don’ts to Start Your Day

Two Do’s and Two Don’ts to Begin Your Day
from the classic queer survival manual:
How to Survive Your

Own

Gay Life
(Belhue Press, 1999)
by Perry Brass

The Do’s

1) Realize that only you can change things for yourself. Some change may consist of just opening yourself up to what is already inside you. Your therapist can’t do it—in fact, some therapists have an interest in keeping you unchanged (it’s called their hourly fee!). In the long run, your lover, your family, or your friends cannot bring about changes, either, although having their help along the way can be very important.

2) Realize that there are things about you that may not need changing, that may be authentically right for you. That the warm, loving, tender feelings you have inside are natural and beautiful. Those of us who remember the fabled 60s “love generation” now feel as if we are living through a bitter reaction to it: a period of open, even encouraged hostility and hatred. Even though these are the “cutting-edge” emotions that much of our commercialized culture (“gay culture” as well) spits back at us, that does not mean we have to buy this venom at market value.

The Don’ts

1) Don’t make up rules that you can’t follow: “In my next relationship, I’m going to be monogamous.” “When I fall in love, it shall be forever!” “Any relationship after thirty has to be a serious relationship!” “I’ll never trust you or anyone else ever again.” These are the sort of rules that were thrust on you as a kid. You don’t need them.

2) Don’t allow other people to label or define you: “You can always tell gay people by the way they dress (or, that they like opera, love disco, or are flaky and have no integrity, etc.).” “You’re too old to feel that way!” “You’re too old (or young) for that kind of idea.” Tell all the labelers and definers to go do something ingenious with a rear part of their body.

Perry Brass’s newest book is Carnal Sacraments, A Historical Novel of the Future (Belhue Press), available for $16.95. It is available at LambdaRising.com, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other fine book outlets. He can be reached through www.perrybrass.com, or his email address: belhuepress@earthlink.net

Carnal Sacraments, A Book Is Born

My newest book Carnal Sacraments, A Historical Novel of the Future, just came into the world. Actually, it arrived from the printer on June 18, 2007, but I’m still getting used to it. It’s like having a newborn infant in the house, and the question is what do you do with it, except admire it, or maybe go a little crazy about it?

Actually, giving birth to this one was really hard. It’s my fourteenth book, and I can’t say that they get easier all the time. There was a time when I was on a real roll with books. I published one a year (and occasionally even two) for about ten years. Then I started to realize something. There were places I wanted to go in my books that did not just come off the top of my head, and these places took a lot of digging and gouging to get to. This is not to say that some of my earlier books were rinky-dink. But the first few books, like the Mirage series of queer science fiction novels (Mirage, Circles, and Albert or the Book of Man) had the delicious satisfaction of being born easily. They just literally came out of my mind pretty much fully formed.

In fact, Mirage, my first published novel, took, from soup-to-nuts, from an idea I had in the shower to a finished, published book, exactly six months. I mean, I worked like I had never worked in my life—with literally twelve-hour days of work on it—but it really was just this fortuitous thing falling out of my head, and there are parts of it today that embarrass me. Some of them are simply just bad English. It was copyread instead of being really edited. But readers loved it, and I was lucky in that the hero of it became almost a new “type” of gay hero: not wounded, totally sexual, compelling, visceral. Greeland was wonderful, and I had readers who told me they wanted to marry him.

But Carnal Sacraments, my newest novel, was hard birth. Part of it was that I began three other books before I realized this was the book I wanted to stay with and write. I was kind of dating the earlier books; it was all enthusiastic, then they’d stop someplace and it was time to begin with someone new. But this book dealt with things that I needed to talk about. Things that are already here, even though the novel is set in the fairly-near future, the year 2075, in world that dominated by one economic system: global capitalism. A system of one huge market made up of interlinking markets and currencies, capital pools and worker pools. Where the most important thing is simply keeping money in one constant state of movement and aggressive growth, and only people who increase wealth and the flow of it are considered valuable. So that means that helping people is out (forget it, you doctors, teachers, health and education people—you don’t raise the ante one bit!), and only the most rapacious carnivores get to sit at the table and slurp.

So, I began three other books, who may come to birth later, and also produced a screenplay for my novel The Harvest, which landed on the world with a total thud and a whimper. As in, forget it. Hollywood is so closed it makes Fort Knox look like a shopping mall. But I enjoyed doing the screenplay. I was snookered into it by a young director/producer named Daniel Ferrands who read The Harvest and told me he’d “option” it, but it would be better to have a real screenplay to start off with. So I jumped into the screenplay, and felt that in some ways it was actually better than the novel: I could really think visually about it, and I enjoyed that. But, after the screenplay was finished, Danny jumped ship, and went off to some other island (i.e. other gullible writers to make promises to), and so that was over, and I was back to my first love, the next novel.

I can’t actually tell you though how or when the idea for Carnal Sacraments came into my head. Usually novels begin for me with a very specific feeling associated with a moment in the book. It’s an actual physical situation—and suddenly I’m there. I’m inside the book, before a single word is written. But I can’t remember exactly when that happened, although I could feel that moment that became the first scene in the book, when Jeffrey Cooper is attacked, seemingly randomly, on the platform of a public train in Germany. He’s been floating inside his head, trying to keep from becoming stressed from the onslaught of a packed, pushing rush hour at the public transport (“pubtran”) station of the future, where the trains glide in noiselessly, and everyone is so absorbed into his own frantic, speedning digital world, that no one pays any attention to the fact that a man is being viciously punched on the platform.

I could feel that moment, and right after that, at lot of the plot started to unfold. There was the idea of people being completely buried literally alive in their work, so that almost none of their real personalities ever surfaces or survives: They are their jobs. They have no identity outside work; they can only survive this way. Any other approach to living becomes impossible. Against this tide, I placed another character, a very troubled painter named John van der Meer, a Dutchman living in Germany and feeling at heart as alienated at Jeffrey Cooper, who is American, from Alabama, but completely a part of the new, all-reaching global economy. These two men seem to have almost nothing in common except a strange need for one another, which they will soon find.

The book is set in a truly internationalized and very Americanized Europe, with Germany the center of it. It is a Germany that becomes almost more American than America, because America has taken so many steps backward (because of advancing religious fundamentalism) that the nation has become a Third World country, lagging in fact behind the Third World, which, educationally, has stepped ahead. So some part of the novel takes place in India, an India that is schizophrenic in its super-advancement on one hand and its ancient culture and remaining poverty on the other.

But every country is still connected to one vast global economic system, tied to the culture and religion of consumerism. People are now united only in customer relationships, becoming the consumerate rather than the electorate, and style is now substituted for any form of personal belief and expression, be it religious, ethical, or otherwise.

The first draft of Carnal came about fairly smoothly. I think it took about 9 months, and then came all the subsequent drafts, perhaps eight or nine of them, during which the book went through some fairly radical changes. I changed the tone of the book, brought in new concepts that held the book together—especially the idea of “style as domination,” and I brought in Harold Cooper, Jeffrey’s father who commited suicide. He is never actually in the book—but is only seen as a sad ghost, as the being that Jeffrey could never approach, but who approaches him in the end. I brought my own upbringing in the South into it, and also that of my partner, who is actually from Alabama. I’m from Georgia, and having grown up Southern and Jewish, had a very different upbringing than he did.

You can now get Carnal Sacraments at most gay bookstores like Lambda Rising in Washington, at TLA Video, at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/Carnal-Sacraments-Historical-Novel-Future/dp/1892149052/ref=sr_1_1/105-5536128-3456421?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182525317&sr=1-1), and at Barnes and Nobles. Or you can order it from my website, www.perrybrass.com. Any way you get it, it is one way of sharing in that wondrous situation called the “birth of the book.”

In Love with Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky

I have a terrible confession to make. For years and years I have been hopelessly in love with Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. I cannot even remember when it started, way before I knew anything about him—perhaps it was the first time my mother took me to the ballet in Savannah, Georgia, when American Ballet Theatre would hit town on one its yearly pilgrimages through the South, or the remains of the Ballets Russe would make a similar stop. The program was almost always the same—in fact, in a recent, wonderful talk the filmmaker Wakefield Poole did at the Donnell Library in New York, he explained it. Before he became a “pornographer” as he proudly calls himself, making the groundbreaking Boys in the Sand, with Casey Donovan, he was a young ballet dancer, touring with the always-touring Ballets Russe de Monte Carlo. “We always did the same ballets, to save scenery and costumes. There was ‘Graduation Ball,’ ‘Gaite’ [for ‘Gaite Parisian’] and the third act of Swan Lake.”

He went on to explain:

“The third act of Swan Lake made me know I was a dancer. All I did was stand there and move my arms a bit, but just seeing all those dancers in white with the blue light around them made me know that I was doing something very special and wonderful.”

Well, that did it for me, too. Just being this child in the audience (I think I was maybe eight or nine), and seeing this absolute magic floating on the stage—I was hit. I was smeared. I was . . . I was absolutely intoxicated with ballet and Tchaikovsky. I wanted to live inside it, and him. That feeling continued in my life, decade after decade, and I still have it. I cry my eyes out at the last act of Swan Lake—it has nothing to do with the story, but the fact that he is watching it, too. I’m sure of it. This handsome Russian man with all of his imaginative power, delight and wit is watching every single performance of it. I’m sure of it. I felt that way before I knew anything about him, when he was only some strange name most people can not spell, and his life seemed so remote as to be untouchable.

There are, I am sure, two Tchaikovkys: one is the popular composer who wrote all those engaging, marvelous ditties from The Nutcracker Suite and Sleeping Beauty, and lots of other music that seems almost destined to be lampooned, ridiculed, by a lot of highbrow critics, and even labeled as throw-away. But the really smart people will have nothing to do with that. The genius choreographer George Ballanchine said that Peter Ilyich was the world’s greatest composer for ballet, and if anyone knows, Ballanchine should. Yes, the smart people know that even under some of the sillier things he wrote, there was this brooding intensity; but under the other things—Tatiana’s fantastic letter scene from the opera Eugene Onegin, for instance; the Little Russian Symphony, among so many others—an emotional storm is unleashed and working. You are completely inside him and beside yourself. He has found the perfect expression of everything he could not express.

Then there are other things, like the wistful waltzes in Swan Lake, that seem so simple as to be simple-minded, but which truly haunt you. You realize inside them is the sadness of men who can never have what they want. And that was Tchaikovsky’s own sadness. He was gay—to use one of our many names for this—at a time when being that way was hell. It was knowing you were what was unnamable; it was knowing you were never going to be able to go, freely, inside that deep romantic heart of yourself and bring back the gold of your own feelings and lay it openly, kindly, at the feet of another man.

This was peculiar, too, in the fact that Tchaikovsky was so Russian and so loathed by so many of Russia’s other composers, because they felt that his never-descreet-enough homosexuality in their closed but gossipy society was an insult to a country trying hard to re-identify itself only a few decades before the Revolution exploded it. For two hundred years, Russia’s upper class had been under the dominance of French and English culture. It was impossible to be among the elite and not speak and write fluent French and adequate English—then Victorianism, from both sides of the English Channel, was considered the arbiter of the high taste. There were still the wild, hyper-religious masses of Mother Russia, but the enlightened upper classes rejected them as boorish for French or English refinement.

Countering this was an attempt at a “real” Russian music and culture based on folk tales and songs, coming from Nikolai Rimski-Korsakov, Alexander Borodin, and Modest Mussorgsky. They wanted a hairy-chested, back-to-the-people, two-fisted Russianism, and Peter Ilyich’s very existence represented a spit in the face to that. He was too “light”; a pansy with gossip swirling around him. He was drawn to younger men—sometimes servants, sometimes men of his own class—and as much as he tried, through a disasterous false marriage, to hide it, this attraction dogged him.

In 1891 he sailed to New York to open Carnegie Hall. He was one of the world’s most famous composers, and I keep wondering, would he have been happier in New York, if that could have been possible? New York was known to be a more open city than most of Europe. It had a fairly accessible underground gay culture. But it was impossible for him to stay. He came back to Petersburg, and died there, in 1893, of cholera—and the question has always been, did he willingly drink a glass of water that was contaminated with it? Did Peter Ilyich kill himself in this almost untraceable way, or was he forced to kill himself, as the only way to keep gossip about him (and possible blackmail) from emerging, in the way that it broke out and destroyed Oscar Wilde?

This question has been asked over and over again; Ken Russell in his way- over-the-top Tchaikovsky movie starring an unbearably handsome young Richard Chamberlain, The Music Lovers, gives us the idea that he was forced to do it. This was so, even though his brother Modest, who was also his manager, was known to be “queer as the proverbial goose,” but able to stay in the background.

What brought me back to Tchaikovsky was reading the Rev. Mel White talking about his own “engagement” with of all people the loathsome Jerry Falwell, who I’m sure would have forced poor Peter Ilyich to drink that water at the drop of . . . anyway, it was so terrible reading Mel White talk about himself in these words:

“After I put myself through exorcism, electric-shock therapy, then slitting my wrists, and going to the hospital, my wife finally said, ‘You know, you really have a life of your own. I like gay people, but I just didn’t want you to be one.’ Eventually I met and fell in love with Gary Nixon, and as soon as I realized that my sexuality was a gift from God and got over my fear and guilt, I wrote Stranger at the Gate, in which I told the leaders of the religions right that they are doing terrible damage and they must stop.”

Unfortunately, Peter Ilyich did not get that chance. But every time I go to the ballet and see Swan Lake or Ballanchine’s Serenade, or at Christmas, when I hear the Nutcracker, I think of him, and imagine this handsome man sitting next to me, reaching for my hand.

Of the Dead Speak Only Good: Jerry Falwell is dead.

Good.
Falwell was an infuriating character, and I think a lot of the anger that is coming out now from the gay and/or progressive community is a logical extension of that. He had an amazing, homogenous stupidity: there were very few surprises that came out of him. It’s not like he had a good side, an endearing, kind, warm, charitable side. If he did, then these sides were certainly kept out of the “public discourse,” and the most that can be said of him is that he gave a face and distinctively repugnant voice to what a lot of close-minded Americans were thinking—that they had the answers, and the answers were simple, stupid, and usually what they had, too, had been taught by their families and parents.

But I think that there is another facet to the anger that is coming from Falwell’s death: that he actually instilled fear into the minds of a lot of gay men and women. That under that chubby, down-home, Ya’ll comeexterior was a really vicious man, and he could get away with that viciousness in ways that someone like the current Pope, Benedict XVI, can not. Pope Benedict is too transparently rigid, cold, and uningratiating. People may love him because he’s the Pope, but he’s not fooling anyone when he rails against homosexuality, birth control, freedom of choice, and all the other ills of “secularism.” But Falwell, whom one progessive said should go straight to Heaven, where he’ll be found lying between Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny, could come off on TV as the cuddly uncle, the country uncle who told it like it was: and that was scary. That was worse than the skinny man in a dress leading the flock. This country is filled with anti-Catholic people who would still swallow every word Falwell said; they’d never believe the Pope, but they would “Amen” with Falwell all the way to the Inquisition.