Tag: 1980s

Science Fiction Double Feature

Lips! Lips! We want lips!

The first time I went to a midnight movie1 was when I was either eighteen or nineteen. I still lived in Kansas then, and the midnight movie was playing at the old movie theater on Sixth Street that was rarely open other than for some special occasion. They’d been doing midnight movies for a while before I went that first time, and I was going with a co-worker who promised me I was going to have an amazing time. I wasn’t so sure. The line outside the Granada Theater was a bizarre sight–many of them dressed up freakishly, and a lot of them were carrying paper bags full of stuff, which I also thought was odd.

I was about to watch, and experience, The Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time.

I had no idea what was to come.

At the late night, double feature, picture show…

The crowd started chanting for “lips” as the lights in the theater went down, and then I saw what they were chanting for, as two bright red lips appeared on the black screen and started singing as everyone cheered….and started shouting responses to the opening credits.

And I liked the song.

What followed was ninety-eight minutes of insanity. I had never heard of an “interactive” movie before, and it really caught me off guard. How did people know what to yell, and when to yell it? They sang along with the movies, and I soon was caught up in it; getting sprayed with water, ducking out of the way of flying pieces of toast and toilet paper and tampons, and it was all so delightfully subversive in terms of questioning gender and sexuality. You still couldn’t swear on prime time television shows, and you definitely couldn’t say “sex” (I always hated the coy and cheesy ways television writers came up with as a workaround).

And then of course, there was Tim Curry’s Dr. Frank-n-furter.

I’d never seen anything like that before in my life…and I howled with laughter as he removed his robe to reveal what he was wearing beneath, and several people shouted in unison, “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Liza Minnelli!”

And after ninety-eight minutes of madness and mayhem, I was a convert. I walked out of the theater with my head still reeling from all the subversion a still moralistic 1970’s American culture had taught me was wrong on every level, disgusting sin and decadent morality, and I wanted more.

I bought the soundtrack shortly thereafter, both vinyl and eight-track, and it didn’t take long for me to have the entire thing memorized. I don’t remember seeing it again while I lived in Kansas–we moved to California shortly thereafter–but I did discover the theater in Fresno that showed it, and I started going weekly. It was more of a production in Fresno–people dressed up and acted out the parts in front of the screen (they tried to recruit me once to play Brad, but I said no; it would be over another decade before I was comfortable enough to wear only underwear in public; I was really uptight). Eventually, after memorizing the film and soundtrack, learning everything there was to know about the movie and play, I finally stopped going to the midnight movies. HIV/AIDS ripped a lot of the joy out of life in the 1980s for me, and once I was out of the habit of the movie, I was out of the habit and looked back on it as a past experience with nostalgia and joy.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show was the perfect amount of subversion at precisely the right time for me. It opened a world of possibilities to me, but at the same time, it made me very aware that I needed, more than anything else, to get out of Kansas. Much as I loved the movie, those memories of seeing it that first time–and the self-actualization and realization that came in its wake–are also tied up with my growing misery and dissatisfaction with living in Kansas. It’s also tied to discovering actual queer people in Fresno, and recognizing that even this little bit of subversion, something I could go see with the straight friends without any questions or fears, kept me going through the early 1980s as everything started turning even darker than they had ever been in Kansas.

Watching it on television just isn’t the same, either.

But the movie always holds a special place in my heart–and I imagine it does with many other queers for whom it proved an awakening of their true freak selves–and I became a lifelong fan of all the stars, whose careers and successes I followed…but one is now dead to me forever, and Her Name Must Not Be Uttered….and her being in the film has also kind of tainted its legacy with me.

But seriously, what a great movie. I may write an essay about the movie someday, you never know!

  1. I’m not counting the night of the senior prom, when the school districts got together and got the Twin Theaters (I think that was the name) to show a midnight movie to keep us all out of trouble. It was Smokey and the Bandit, by the way. ↩︎

You Wanna Jitterbug?

I’m not really sure when I became aware of Wham!, if I’m being completely honest. I think I remember seeing the video for either “Wham Rap” or “Bad Boys” on MTV, and I immediately clocked the lead singer, a handsome young boy with brown hair and an amazing smile…but thought the other guy (who turned out to be Andrew Ridgely) was more attractive. When they released their next album, Make It Big, I really liked the debut single, “Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go,” which was catchy and boppy and a lot of fun. The video was probably one of the gayest things I’d ever seen, but again–it was light and catchy and fun and silly, like the song. I bought the album, which was far better than I could have ever imagined it being, but I never became a big fan. Their next release, Music from the Edge of Heaven, included my favorite song of theirs (“I’m Your Man”), and I actually saw them in concert, in Oakland. I was working at a department store at the time, and some of my co-workers were HUGE fans. They’d bought tickets to a Wham concert, and one of the people dropped out…and they offered me the ticket. I was already burning out on concerts at this point, didn’t really want to drive to Oakland for a concert, and wasn’t a huge fan of the main act….but there were two opening acts: Katrina and the Waves, whom I also liked, and the Pointer Sisters, whom I loved. So, I agreed to go and use the ticket, figuring at least I know the Pointer Sisters will be amazing live (they were), but I wasn’t prepared for how fantastic this little teeny-bopper bubblegum teen idol-style act would be. George Michael was incredible live.

I left that concert a George Michael fan, and shortly thereafter Wham dissolved and George went solo…and had the kind of solo career that all artists hope for, which completely eclipsed Wham. Andrew and Wham played a small role in the two George Michael documentaries we watched recently, but when I saw that there was a Netflix documentary that focused solely on Wham, I thought, I need to watch that because no one really remembers how fucking HUGE Wham was before George went solo.

And taking into consideration that they were in their late teens/early twenties when they blew up…that’s pretty remarkable.

As I said, I tagged George Michael as gay the first time I saw one of their videos. (I also tagged Freddie Mercury the first time I saw him; Greg Louganis at the Montreal Olympics; Elton John; and any number of others who eventually came out.) I couldn’t tell you what it was about George; whether it was his voice, his posture, the way he moved, what it was about him, but every alarm in my head went off. He’s gay was my first thought, and my second was one of sympathy. Sure, I was in my early twenties, deeply closeted and deeply conflicted about my life and my future, but I still felt sorry for a rising pop star/teen idol on the cusp of superstardom because all I could think was, if not being myself is making ME so miserable and I’m just a college student, how awful would it be if you were a worldwide star/celebrity? I felt nothing but sympathy for anyone else, regardless of class or status, who had to lead a closeted existence.

How much worse was it for someone in show business, who achieved worldwide superstardom?

And while obviously Andrew Ridgely is the only one of the two still around, it’s pretty clear he and George remained close until George’s death. They were childhood friends; the pictures of them from childhood are astonishing. Andrew was always a pretty boy–he’s kind of always looked the same, really; for me it’s the eyes–while George was kind of plain and drab; who knew he’d grow up and have supermodel looks? I always wondered, you know. Andrew always seemed kind of superfluous to the group, if I’m being honest; I guess he co-wrote some of their songs, and I also guess his presence–his own exuberance and showmanship–helped George with his own shyness and the support was there for him always; he mentioned in one of the documentaries about his life that the mutual agreement to disband also meant that he was going to have to face all of it on his own for the first time.

But the primary takeaway from the documentary–outside of what a good friend Andrew truly was–is how HUGE Wham actually was world-wide before they disbanded. They toured Communist China in the mid-80’s to sold out arenas. That was kind of a big deal back then, as Western entertainers were viewed by the regime as “decadent.”

How did I know George Michael and the others were gay the first time I ever laid eyes on them on my television screen? I honestly don’t know. I’ve never looked at or considered “gaydar” as anything other than a joke, really; something all gay men joke about as we wish for the hottest of male celebrities–singers, musicians, athletes, actors–to turn out to be gay after all. Representation matters so much, and with more and more celebrities feeling comfortable and confident enough to come out over the last decade or so, we’re getting queer characters on television series and in books; we’re even getting television series and movies with gays as primary characters. I don’t like it, obviously, when the representation is bad, but at the same time we gays come in every shape, size, and type of person. There are gay villains and demons just as there are role models and angels. I do wonder, when my mind is wandering and I am tired, if gaydar is actually a thing; something that was programmed into our collective DNA millennia ago, giving same-sex attracted person a subconscious sense that recognizes like, as in oh he is like me as a protective measure? What was it about George Michael, and Elton John, Greg Louganis and Freddie Mercury before him, that triggered something identifiable in my brain? (I did wonder about Rock Hudson when watching McMillan and Wife.)

It’s curious, isn’t it?

If you’re a George Michael fan, I highly recommend Wham, because the fact that George was a huge star already before he went solo sometimes (often) gets left out of the story.

And Make it Big is still a good record.

Street Angel

Ugh, another toxic Tuesday.

I mean, if Monday is manic, Tuesday can be toxic; Wednesday can be woeful; and Thursday can be…something. Regardless, I am awake at the usual Tuesday morning godawful toxic time, swilling coffee and getting ready to head into the office. Huzzah.

I didn’t feel well this morning when I got up, but I took my weekly return-to-work COVID test and it was negative. I am not really sure why or how I ‘ve managed to go this entire pandemic without getting infected (particularly when you take into consideration how many possible exposures I have had with my job since this all began), but I also managed to get through the entire (and ongoing) HIV/AIDS pandemic without getting infected, either. Just one of the lucky ones, I guess? But as my coffee sinks in and courses through my veins–and the Claritin-D kicks in–I am feeling a lot better. Still a bit tired, but can definitely make it through the day, which was questionable when I first got up this morning. I’m not sure what that was about, but am glad it is passing (or is past).

I have so much to do it’s a bit overwhelming, but when I got up this morning I didn’t have the strength and/or energy to even face up to everything that I have to do, but I am starting to get that necessary second wind and maybe–just maybe–the strength and brain focus necessary to start plowing through this massive to-do list, which also needs to be updated. SO much to do this week, but I also have a three day weekend looming so maybe I’ll be able to actually get some things done this weekend rather than trying to recover from an exhausting week? My energy levels is something that I’ve been very concerned about for quite some time; by the time I generally get home from work the day–from getting up early to being out in the heat to running errands–I am so tired that I have trouble working on my writing and my to-do list, and giving into Scooter’s demands that I sit in my easy chair and provide a lap for him in which to sleep while I watch documentaries or go down Youtube wormholes is way too easy and tempting to avoid–and once I am in that chair, it’s game over for the night.

Paul didn’t get home until late last evening so I watched some documentaries, including Scream Queen, about Mark Patton, the closeted gay lead of what is considered the gayest horror movie of all time–A Nightmare on Elm Street II: Freddy’s Revenge. I remember seeing it and not liking it when it first was available to rent–I rented a lot of movies back in the day–but primarily because the connecting thread from the first movie wasn’t there other than Elm Street and Freddy. Now that I’m hearing about all the gay subtext–some of which was apparently overt–I kind of want to see it again; I’ve never wanted to watch it again because I didn’t enjoy it when I was in my twenties (a foul, horrible decade and probably one of the worst of the seven–yes, seven, this is my seventh decade on the planet–decades of my life. I do have fond memories of the 1980’s, but I also have a lot of horrific memories of that same decade) but now I am thinking I’d kind of like to see it one more time, looking at it with a fresher perspective than I had in my twenties.

And I really need to finish reading John Copenhaver’s The Savage Kind. I’ve agreed to read a friend’s manuscript with a gay character in it, but I can’t read two new-to-me pieces of fiction at the same time. (This is not true for non-fiction; I am reading both Robert Caro’s The Power Broker and The Great Betrayal now, and I am trying not to start reading Paul Monette’s Becoming a Man) I need to work some more on all my various writing projects; there are some short stories coming due, deadline-wise, relatively soon that I’d like to write something for, and so I can’t just not be writing in the evenings consistently the way I have not been doing since the summer weather arrived.

Heavy heaving sigh. And on that note, tis off to the spice mines I go. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow.

Mercenary

As I have said before, reading Murder-a-Go-Go’s indirectly led me to Spotify, which led me to rediscovering the magic of the Go-Go’s again after many years, and then led me on to rediscovering other 80’s music I loved, like the Cars and, just Friday, Josie Cotton. Josie Cotton is probably best known for her her cover of the Go-Go’s “Johnny Are You Queer?” (which could never be released or recorded today, but at the time was kind of in-your-face and cool) as well as fronting the band playing the prom at the end of the terrific teen movie Valley Girl (which also should have been a much bigger hit than it was; but calling it Valley Girl was an attempt to cash-in on Moon Zappa’s novelty hit “Valley Girl”, but the movie was actually so much better than that; it was one of my favorite teen movies of the 1980’s and also starred a very young and beautiful Nicolas Cage in what may have been his first starring role). I was listening to two of her albums Friday night and yesterday (Convertible Music and From the Hip) and marveling that she wasn’t a bigger star than she was; she certainly had fun, upbeat music with lyrics that bit down hard, and she also had a terrific sense of personal style that should have caught on in the age of Cyndi Lauper and Madonna.

Go figure.

Which leads me to the next story in Murder-a-Go-Go’s, Bryon Quertermous’ “Mercenary.”

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“They asked for my dental records,” Lodi Meyers said, “so they can identify my body if he kills me.”

Andre Taylor sat across from her at a diner on the outskirts of downtown Detroit. “You really want to talk about this now? With me?”

“I don’t have any other options,” she said, tears giving way to an angry flush across her cheeks. “They’re putting together this moronic safety plan for me while insisting there’s not enough evidence to keep him in prison.”

Andre flexed the fingers of his beefy, gnarled hands and picked up his coffee cup without taking a drink. The bleached white of the cup contrasted with the dark black skin of his hands, which were shaking enough to splash a bit of the freshly poured coffee onto the table.

“I’m really not the person you should be talking to about this.”

Lodi reached her hand across the table and clutched Andre’s wrist. “That’s exactly why we’re talking.”

Andre put his coffee cup down and stood up. “This was a mistake.”

Lodi grabbed his wrist again, this time more aggressively. “There’s a reason you showed up even though this is a terrible idea. You want to make sure I haven’t told any- one what you did.”

Bryon Quertermous has published two novels–Murder Boy and Riot Load–which are kind of hard to classify. They’re noir and hard-boiled, but there’s a twisted, slightly demented sense of humor about them that reminds me of Victor Gischler’s work (which you should also read).

“Mercenary” is a terrific tale, built around two people–a woman and a man–who are tied together by the weirdest connection (saying anything more would be spoilerish); she’s a former pain clinic manager and he’s a bail bondsman. Her husband is about to be released on bail–and plans to kill her. The rest of the tale, as she tries to convince the bail bondsman to help save her life, plays out as we find out more about their connection, why the husband is in jail, and see just how far Lodi is willing to go to protect herself and her daughter–who is in a coma. There’s a lot here, and Quertermous tells his story sparingly and carefully, with fewer words than most would have used, and yet I can’t help but feel there’s even more to be mined here; this easily could have been a novel. Instead, it’s an enormously satisfying dark tale with a sardonic sense of humor that was quite fun to read.

This Town

I am technically considered a baby boomer; I was born in one of the last years that falls into that classification. But I’ve never felt like a child of any decade other than the 1980’s; even though I remember the 1960’s I was too young to be anything other than a passive observer. Likewise, most of the 1970’s I was young-ish; I graduated from high school in 1978 while I was still sixteen (turning seventeen the first week of college), and not turning twenty-one until 1982. So, if anything, I was probably mostly shaped by the 1980’s, even though I wasn’t a child of that decade. The 1980’s changed and shaped me and what I went through in that decade probably had the biggest impact on the person I was to become. The 1980’s were an interesting decade–horrific in some ways, terrific in others–but without question, I always think of the Go-Go’s when I think of that decade.

I remember the first time I heard “Our Lips Are Sealed” on the radio; it was different from anything else in the transitioning world of music; disco was dying everywhere except gay bars and so was operatic hard rock. New wave and punk were starting to make their presences felt on the charts, and of course the launch of MTV changed the world of popular music forever. I bought the Beauty and the Beat album the day it was officially released, at Tower Records on Blackstone Avenue in Fresno (I spent a lot of money in that Tower Records over the years). I loved it. It was one of the few albums I played cover-to-cover, over and over again. I wound up buying their albums on their release dates (alas, in the 1980’s there were only two more–Vacation and Talk Show–before they broke up the first time and an era ended), saw them multiple times in concert, and even bought their solo recordings (Jane Wiedlin’s solo recordings are spectacular and never got the attention they deserved).

I was distraught when they broke up.

So, naturally, when I heard Holly West was doing an anthology of crime stories based on the music of the Go-Go’s, I unashamedly contacted her and asked if I could write one for her. (I never do this, by the way. I will submit to open calls, but I never directly contact an editor to ask if I can write something for them.) Much to my delight, she said yes, gave me a list of song titles to choose from, and I picked “This Town.”

I honestly don’t know where the story came from. I cued up Beauty and the Beat on my computer one morning and blasted it while cleaning…listened to “This Town” on repeat a couple of times, and then sat down at the computer and started writing the story.

I was rather pleased with it, and so was Holly. The rest is history.

And when I found out Jane Wiedlin had written an introduction and the book was blurbed by 80’s MTV veejay Alan Hunter…what a fucking thrill.

And here’s the opening, for a taste.

Our IDs were fake, but no one seemed to care. Even when a burly bouncer asked to see them, his bare meaty arms adorned with tattoos, his bored eyes just flicked over the laminate before waving us inside. Celia was right about that, like she was right about everything. She could always find someone with coke to share or sell, or who was happy to share their blunt with us. She was a golden girl, the kind I used to think only existed in books or movies, the girl that’s too perfect to exist, the one every other girl wants to be friends with, wants to be. The one all the guys notice first, their eyes wide open and their jaws gone slack.

 She always had the trendiest new make-up, the first to try out a daring new look we were too cowardly to try but quick to copy, always the first, the one everyone else imitated. She seemed to glow from inside, drawing everyone’s eyes to her effortlessly, and she somehow managed to always look perfect, even when she was drunk, even after dancing for hours when our make-up was running down our cheeks and perspiration dampened our armpits. Her skirts were just the tiniest bit shorter than everyone else’s, her tops seemed to fit her in a way they didn’t fit anyone else, her hair thicker and shinier and bouncier. She pulled in guys like night insects to a white light, caught up in her magic, wanting her. They only noticed the rest of us once she’d turned her attention elsewhere. We didn’t mind taking second place to her because it seemed like the natural order of things. She always knew the right thing to say—whether kind or insulting—and we all gravitated to her, wanting to be her friends, to be her. She was our pledge class president, organized, efficient, determined we be the best pledge class our Omega Psi chapter had ever seen. Even the sisters seemed to be a little in awe of her, grateful she’d picked Omega Psi out of all the offers she’d had—every sorority had offered her a bid, I’d overheard one sister telling another at Monday night dinner, her voice awed as she went on to say that had never happened in the history of the Greek system at Tulane.

And she made us all feel special, whispering “Sisters” to us as we hooked our pinkie fingers and whispered the word back to her, committing to a lifelong bond with her.

She was Celia, and we were better for knowing her, special for being her sisters, like she’d selected us to be pledges and not the actives.

She somehow even knew the best places to catch the parades at our first Mardi Gras, and wasn’t from New Orleans.

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Let’s Dance

I managed, yesterday, to polish off Chapter Two; I wrote 1700 words or so in about an hour and fifteen minutes and voila! The pesky chapter was finished. I also started Chapter Three this morning; alas, maybe about a paragraph was all I was able to get done, but it was a start, and a start is always lovely. This weekend is my birthday; I will officially be fifty-six; but I’ve been saying I’m fifty-six for quite a while now. (I usually add the year after New Year’s; it’s just easier and I don’t really think of my birthday as a big deal, quite frankly). Paul and I are going to go see Dunkirk tomorrow night, and then out for dinner afterwards. I’ve taken Monday off, and I am working a late night on Tuesday, so I won’t have to be in to work until around three, which means I basically have a three and a half day weekend, which is lovely. I am hoping to be able to get a lot done this weekend; I want to finish reading the Ambler, which I am loving, then I am going to reread Dorothy B. Hughes’ In a Lonely Place, and then I am going to reread The Haunting of Hill House. After that, it’s either Jeff Abbott’s Blame or my advance copy of Laura Lippman’s newest, Sunburn.

One of the best perks of being a writer is that I get advance copies of books, or know people who do that can pass them along to me. My dear friend Lisa recently gave me an advance copy of this:

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I don’t consider myself to be a horror writer (SHUT UP BACK THERE! I said horror, not horrible), but I do consider myself to be a big fan of the genre. I read a lot of these books–not all, who knew there were so many? But I was a voracious reader, and I loved to read horror. The first horror novel I read was The Other–I still have the hardcover copy I originally read in junior high; I’m not sure I remember how I got a hardcover copy of it, maybe it was my grandmother’s–and I also read The Exorcist in junior high; everyone was reading it, and as all tweens (although we weren’t called that then) are wont to do, all we talked about was the crucifix masturbation scene. I always liked horror–I remember watching old black and white scary movies with my grandmother (she also likes mysteries) when I was a kid, but I never thought I could write it. I certainly never tried until the 1980’s, when my fandom of Stephen King made me give it a try. I still love reading horror, and there are certainly some amazing horror writers being published today whose books I greatly enjoy.

My inability to get any of it published is an indicator that crime was a better fit for my talents.

But what a wonderful resource this is! And a lovely trip down memory lane. To be honest, I thought I hadn’t read much horror throughout my life outside of the usual suspects (Stephen King, Peter Straub, Poppy Z. Brite) and some others that have come along more recently, but in going through this, I saw many titles I’d forgotten I’d read, and authors I’d forgotten.

This is a must for all horror fans; even those who are too young to remember the glory days of the mass market paperback boom of the 70’s and 80’s.

And now, back to the spice mines.