Sunday! It started raining last evening before I went to bed, and it lasted through this morning. I slept well and stayed in bed for another hour after I woke up because it was so nice and comfortable and because, well, because I could. I can’t tomorrow, after all. I feel rested and good this morning, too. I think the reading went well, and the panel…well, I’ve done a better job moderating before, but my panelists were amazing–Karis Walsh, MJ Williamz, and Marie Incontrera. Their new books sound amazing; Marie is actually a debut author with a romance set in the world of Manhattan theater, which sounds like a absolute winner. I enjoyed talking with them, at any rate, and hope the viewers enjoyed listening to us. I think I rambled a lot, like I always do, forgetting its about the panelists and not the moderater. I hate when I do that, you know.
LSU came within a tiger’s whisker of winning the national championships in gymnastics, and they didn’t have the best meet, either. Kailin Chio got a 10 on vault (the only one of the competition) and I was very proud of the young ladies. Congratulations to Oklahoma for winning again, and to Minnesota and Florida for making the finals. LSU didn’t make it past the semi-finals last year, but they had a great season this year and rebounding to finish second nationally this year was a great season. Brava, ladies!
I didn’t read much yesterday, sadly, but plan to rectify that a bit this morning. I am ordering groceries for delivery, and I am going to make my “famous” meatballs (the recipe that was in the Mystery Writers of America Cookbook, but has evolved and is much better than it was then) in the slow cooker for dinner and lunches this week. I have a panel this afternoon which I am not moderating for the Bold Strokes Bookathon, which is about reading reviews (I don’t) and if reviews have anything to offer the reader (no, they don’t). I do have the interview questions from the moderator, which I may use to explore the topic more on my own for the newsletter (I love doing self-interviews when someone else thinks up the questions). I do want to do some reading today, and I would also like to write some. I think I’m itching to get back to work on fiction, and I know that once I start, the dam will break and a torrent of words will come flowing out of me. At least, I hope that will be the case.
I also opened up the new version of Chapter One of Chlorine that I had started a while back, when I realized my revisions had not truly improved it and I was losing the character’s voice and truth and desires. The original idea was a young actor-on-the-make, willing to do whatever he needed to do to keep his career alive and progressing, despite being a closet case for obvious reasons. The 1950s were a very paranoid era in Hollywood–all the Commie-hunts, the Hays Code, a connected and queer underground beneath the glittering surface, the threat of television to film attendance–and I also came up with a better stage name for him: Wade Rivers, which fits into that whole Adonis Factory machine Henry Willson drove–Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Troy Donahue, Guy Madison–that I am fictionalizing. I have to say, there may have been only about seven hundred words or so that I wrote on this new version, but it really is good, he typed modestly.
I’m a much better writer than I have ever given myself credit for. It’s also nice to be able to recognize that–and my long career–without feeling the need to belittle myself or make some caveats.
I also want to get a newsletter finished and completed and sent out today.
And on that note, I am going to bring this to a close and head into the spice mines. I also want to get some cleaning done today, too. Cleaning, reading and writing on a cloudy, rainy Sunday; does like ever get any better than this? Have an awesome rest of your day, and I will check back in tomorrow morning before I head into the office.
Here we are on my first ever (and hopefully last ever) work-at-home Monday. I did used to do work-at-home Mondays, but I didn’t like them very much. I didn’t get up as early as I would have liked to, but …the bed was comfy, the blankets were heavy and warm, and Sparky was being a cuddle-bug. Since I didn’t have to get up early to shower before work, I allowed myself more time in the bed this morning. What can I say? I don’t know why Sparky has become a morning cuddlebug, either–he rarely sleeps in the bed with us; Skittle and Scooter loved the bed and slept there without us all the time, but not Sparky. I do have a lot of work-at-home stuff to get done today, which means fighting with Sparky over my chair (something I also had to do with both of his predecessors)…but there are very worse things.
A lot of worse things, actually. I shudder to check the news this morning. Hmm, I see someone sent out an AI image of himself as Jesus. Remember those ten commandments that the Right wants to post in every classroom and outside of public buildings? I believe the very first one is Thou shalt have no other God before Me. Maybe they want to put them up because they need a constant reminder?
I think I may be on to something here. Sheesh. And yes, I screen shot the blasphemy to keep to share whenever some fucking smug Christian pulls that faith bullshit with me on line.
Yesterday was kind of nice. I slept late, felt relaxed and good, and did get some things done around the apartment. I was also creative for a lot of the day, thinking and taking notes and trying to wrap my mind around a few things. My mind is flooding with creativity again, and was kind of all over the map the last few days so much that I didn’t even remotely try to contain it and just let it roam wherever it wanted to go without restraint. I also realized part of my motivational issue with writing right now is because I have so much to work on I feel overwhelmed and paralyzed at the daunting chore ahead of me. But…that isn’t helpful and only increases the feeling of being overwhelmed, so I need to start putting one foot in front of the other and getting things done. So…list and prioritize, get organized and stop just floating from day to day with no plan. I was going to get the mail and maybe some groceries today after my work at home duties, but I can also do that on my way home from the office tomorrow. It was a gorgeous day yesterday, and it looks like another one today–this truly is the best part of the year in New Orleans, when everything is blooming and the air smells lush and sweet and redolent with sweet olive, jasmine, magnolia and honeysuckle. I’ve yet to see a stinging caterpillar, and the return of the termites is just around the corner.
I’ve also kind of reached that same point about the world and the country as I have with the writing; all I do now is just laugh at the insanity and think about how apropos that we’re dancing so close to the abyss because everything is fucking stupid. Yes, I think I may have snapped. I mean, we have the First Lady throwing her husband under the Epstein bus and bringing it back to the forefront again, the disaster of the war and the explosion of inflation because of it–I don’t even want to think about gas prices; another reason I don’t want to leave the house today–but at least there was a bright spot in Hungary as the people there voted out right-wing extremism in a landslide; another slap in the face to MAGA as the world recognizes the scourge of fascism and rejects it yet again. Hey Americans–you have an opportunity to do the same and purge these anti-American traitors this fall. Maybe we can even get the world to start forgiving us for our arrogance and stupidity.
I started a reread of Listen for the Whisperer by Phyllis A. Whitney yesterday on my iPad, and the Gothic-tropes were just radiating off the pages as I made it through the first chapter. I originally read this shortly after Victoria Holt’s The Secret Woman and Mary Stewart’s The Ivy Tree, which put me all in on romantic suspense for the next two decades. Gothics/domestic suspense were about women’s fears; and what could be more hardboiled than thinking the man you love might be trying to kill you? This was my first Whitney novel for adults after reading many of her juvenile mysteries; it had everything I could possibly want: a fading movie star, a decades-old unsolved murder mystery, and some histrionic family melodrama. Leigh Hollins is a professional young woman with emotional issues, so she wasn’t an heiress; her father was a best selling novelist so she had some privilege; she’s in her early twenties. And then it’s off to Norway; more on this later obviously once the reread is complete.
The next Scotty is going to be a sort of Mardi Gras mystery, even though I’ve already done one, and am still working out how to include and interweave all the things I want to include and its going to include some callbacks to the series history, methinks, which will make it more fun for me to write.
I also completed my rewatch of The Traitors fourth American season, and am digesting my thoughts to write about my latest obsession.
And on that note, tis another cup of coffee for me and into the spice mines for the day. Have a great Monday, everyone, and I will be back tomorrow morning bright and early.
Beautiful physique model Dick DuBois from the 1950s and the “fitness” magazines—which would also be an interesting setting for a queer noir.
Sunday morning and I am still feeling disoriented. I kept thinking yesterday was Friday, and that today would be Saturday. I have an errand to run and some groceries to have delivered. I stayed up late finishing the laundry–it was launder the bed linens day, postponed from Friday, which also helped with the day mind-fuckery–but slept very well and slept in. The kitchen looks much better than it did yesterday morning, but it still needs some work. After Paul got up, we just had a lazy day hanging out and watching television. It was indeed a gorgeous day out there yesterday and it looks like today is going to be just as lovely. I may take a walk later just to revel in the day and get some exercise. Maybe I’ll stretch today too–can’t hurt, right? I’m starting to feel the itch to become more physically active, since I am not nearly as tired all the time the way I used to be. It’s so lovely not to be tired, Constant Reader, you have no idea!
I can also tell my injection is due next Monday.
I was thinking–I did do a lot of that yesterday–about my recent newsletter essay about gender roles and my not fitting in as a child as a boy who didn’t conform to my assigned gender role (which meant I was gender-nonconforming) and that really, it was the late 1970’s/early 1980s when those rigid roles began to loosen slightly. I’m enjoying all this introspection and self-discovery journey I’ve been on for the past few years (beginning with Mom’s death), which also makes me realize how long I avoided examining myself and my life. I thought I did a lot of navel-gazing before, but it was always pretty shallow and never went very deep, ever; often, I think, because there were things about myself I preferred not to know, or to confront. But I’m more interested now in accepting patterns of behavior that I now understand were driven by the anxiety, which is now under control.
I also spent some more time paging through Jackson Square Jazz and kind of enjoying it, because it also is reminding me of writing the book and the research that went into it, particularly the Cabildo Fire, which was a real event that I wrote into the book as a pivotal moment for the plot and I got to write about some New Orleans history that may or may not have ever been talked about in fiction. (I also remember being rather taken aback when someone told me the pre-Katrina Scotty books were also important historically because they documented what gay Quarter life was like before everything changed; Jean Redmann did the same for the lesbian side.) I am in the thinking stages of the eleventh (!!!) Scotty right now, too–I know the plot elements I want to hit–and I am also thinking about getting back into the in-progress manuscript I am trying to focus my energies on (rereading Christa’s story from Crime Ink: Iconic got me back into that mindset again, even as I realized I couldn’t tell my story as well as they told theirs); I need to immerse myself into that world again as I reconfigure my main character, who I was softening a bit. No, the main character, Greg, needs to be on the make, as they used to say back then, using his looks and his body to advance himself in Hollywood, while painting a dark picture of what being queer in Hollywood used to mean.
And so, on that note, I think I am going to bring this to a close and go have some breakfast before settling into my easy chair to read; I think I am going to reread Listen for the Whisperer by Phyllis A. Whitney and try to get further into my first-time reading book. I also need to do the floors and clean up the workspace a bit this morning. Have a great Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will check in with you again tomorrow on work-at-home Monday. Till then!
Sunday morning and here we are, ready for another exciting and highly productive day. The world is still here (so far), and I am already on my second cup of coffee. I feel rested and relaxed, which is terrific, because I do have things I need to get done today. I basically took yesterday off from everything–no errands, few chores, no nothing–other than icing my calves and finishing the final available series of The Traitors from the UK. I’ll probably go ahead and watch Australia and New Zealand–others from around the world don’t seem to be available to stream anywhere, but I bet the German one would be bad-ass. I think I am going to spend the morning here in the kitchen, cleaning and organizing and writing some, before working on the living room and doing some editorial work. I don’t need to run any errands today, either–but may have a pizza delivered tonight for dinner. I also need to prepare lunches for the week. But I do feel good this morning, so we’ll see how it all goes, shan’t we?
I did write about my conflicting emotions on the unexpected loss of my friend Lauren Henderson, which you can read by clicking the blue. It did help me sort out the complicated feelings I’ve been experiencing since I woke up to the news the other morning (can people stop dying on me, please?), and once it was finished and posted I feel less unsettled about everything and could have a proper cry for her loss, which was cathartic. Highly recommended. I also spent some time Friday evening looking through old pictures of good times we’d had together–especially Italy–which was also lovely.
Sigh.
I guess the Oscars are tonight. I may have them on while I do something else (unlikely) tonight, but I am not staying up to see who wins the big prizes and can happily wait until tomorrow morning tp find out. I am hoping Sinners wins everything under the sun, including Best Actor for Michael B. Jordan, but I feel it’s going to be another The Color Purple night, where “See how liberal we are! Look at all those nominations!” will suffice. I never understood where the idea that Hollywood is liberal came from, when Hollywood collectively is as conservative as it gets–look at how few films there are that center anyone who’s not a cisgender straight white man–but like the news, it makes for a great conservative target–and they never care about whether their bitching is actually based in fact not feeling (fascinating, since they’re also the “fuck your feelings” crowd), as long as they can get mad and complain about something. I mean, look at our news media now! Years of calling it the “lamestream media” (thank you for that bon mot, quitter Palin) and “the liberal-biased media” worked, didn’t it? They kept watering down their content and anything the Right might consider “offensive” to them, and they happily fell into lockstep with MAGA. If this does ever end without the country glowing and in ashes, there’s so much work to repair the long-lasting damage they’ve done to the country that we might as well just let the whole thing collapse and start over. The system is too entrenched in white supremacy to work for anyone who doesn’t fit into their narrowly defined box of acceptability.
I do love the new iPad, by the way, and I love the magic keyboard that I bought to go with it. It functions much more like a laptop than my old one, and now I am not even sure what to do with the old one, other than wipe it and take it back into Apple, so they can refurbish it and resell it as used again. Is that credit worth driving back out to Metairie? Probably, because I’ll eventually need another accessory for all the Mac products I own.
I also have been feeling good about my writing ability again. I’ve been getting some praise for my work lately, which has been absolutely lovely–and needed, I think. With my anxiety medicated now, I am realizing that my Imposter Syndrome was another one of those symptoms that I was so used to that I never thought it would go away.1 I am good at what I do. Could I be better? Always–that is always the case with creative arts–but that doesn’t mean what I release out into the world is garbage, either.
It’s a nice feeling, really.
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. I am going to make myself some breakfast and start cleaning up in here. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow morning.
The Acropolis in Athens lit up at night.
Mind you, I am sure there will be flare-ups again, but the need for humility and not being outwardly proud of my accomplishments isn’t there any more…and if it is still there, it’s not as persistent; that awful little voice seems to be gone now. ↩︎
Ah, Shangri-La. That name used to be very much in the zeitgeist when I was growing up; it’s a mythical place, a utopian paradise, a warm, fertile valley hidden in the Himalayas where no one ages, from a book (and two film adaptations) by James Hilton titled Lost Horizon. (In Tibetan Buddhism, I believe it’s called “Shambhala”–also the title of a hit song by the band Three Dog Night1 in the early 1970s.) I saw the original 1937 film version on the late movies when I was a kid, and became fascinated by the story. I read the book (Hilton also wrote Good-bye Mr. Chips) and really liked it, but you also had to suspend some serious belief because there were definitely holes in the story that didn’t make sense that both Hilton and the film’s director simply glossed over and ignored. The movie was remade as a musical in 1973, I think–it bombed and is considered one of the worst movies ever made; I’ve never seen it because I’d heard it was terrible (although I am now thinking it might be fun to do a project watching major Hollywood bombs). Shangri-La used to be a part of the zeitgeist, but it has faded as I’ve gotten older–funny how that happens; like how no one ever talks about the gold in Fort Knox anymore, or quicksand (Hanna-Barbera have a lot to answer for when it comes to the threat of quicksand).
Here we are on Sunday morning and the time changed, which I always hate. Can’t we just do away with Daylight Saving Time? The extra hour in the fall, while appreciated, never makes up for the lost hour in the spring. I had planned to get up early to offset the lost hour, but that didn’t happen and I stayed in bed until nine (eight, really); the bed was comfortable and Sparky was warm and purring, okay? I could have easily stayed in bed a few more hours, but Sparky eventually got hungry so I went ahead and left the comfort of the pile of blankets and made coffee and fed him and here we are, you know? I am about to get another cup of coffee and put some bread in the toaster. I bought a “gourmet” jar of strawberry preserves yesterday, just to see if it really is better than the Smucker’s brand I usually get; I love preserves so much more than jams or jellies, which I think is the result of my parents being from the country, and us bringing home jars of preserves back home with us when we visited Alabama; my grandmothers were queens of canning–the memory of their blackberry preserves makes my mouth water a bit. I do miss that about going to Alabama in the summer–the fresh fruit and vegetables right off the field.
The gourmet preserves are delicious, by the way.
After my late start yesterday, I managed to run my errands and make groceries, and had some things delivered later on once I was home. Paul saw his trainer and rode the bike for a few hours yesterday afternoon, which gave me a chance to do some chores around here (more of them to do today, too). Once the chores were taken care of and I felt a bit tired, I sat down in my chair to finish off season 2 of The Traitors-UK, and I am noticing a pattern with the different casts–your chances of winning are exponentially higher if you’re an attractive younger man; that was Season 2 from beginning to end, with handsome and sweet and young charmer Harry getting rid of at five other traitors (UK’s season 2 is very traitor heavy; they start with three and recruit several times; there were three of them going into the final six! Today I am going to start season three of the UK version; it’s absolutely delightful to get sucked into the show and vested in the players. I also love the challenges, almost more than the game of Faithful v. Traitor, to be completely honest. I really cannot wait to write my essay about the show.
For the record, I am not as familiar with opera as I am with ballet–and even ballet I am not that familiar with, other than I know it’s an incredibly strict discipline that requires years of training and conditioning and rehearsal. What ballet dancers can do with their bodies is astonishing; it’s like figure skating in the way that it’s actually an incredibly difficult and grueling sport made to look like art. Opera is much the same, only it’s vocal and breathing training, and again–the ability to hit and hold those insane notes requires dedication and devotion and hours and hours of training. Dismissing these art forms as whatever it was the clown prince of the Kardashians called them this week, which was pretty ballsy for someone making a career in the arts and coming from a dance family. It was very tone-deaf for someone who likes to paint himself as some sort of renaissance man, but I also think he’s kind of been reading his own notices and his current mistress comes from the most narcissistic family that has ever lived–so we also can’t rule out the negative influence of the plastic she-thing he sleeps with. I’ve no desire to see his latest movie, and I sincerely doubt he gave a performance as excellent and layered as the dual role Michael B. Jordan played in Sinners.
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Hope you have a lovely Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow as I make my way into the spice mines!
They dropped the “h,” though, calling it “Shambala.” ↩︎
Monday morning and have to head to the parish courthouse for jury duty at criminal court. I am one of the few people who don’t mind doing jury duty, and don’t try to get out of it when I am called. I was originally called to serve a week after my surgery in 2023, but got excused as I couldn’t drive, let alone serve on a jury. I slept well last night, too.
It rained all day yesterday and the parades were all cancelled, postponed until tomorrow night. I am sitting here getting ready to go report for jury duty, and trying not to worry about dealing with a week I can’t plan in the least. Before the anxiety medications I would have been a bundle of knots and nerves and on edge the entire day; probably wouldn’t have eaten anything or gotten much of anything done. I didn’t get as much done as I would have liked, perhaps, but I was a bit out of sorts yesterday. I’ve not been feeling super-great over the weekend–kind of nasally and sore throat-ish, which was annoying, and enough of a distraction to keep me from getting a lot done and being able to focus. I did get some things done–the boring kind of things I generally hate to do and put off. I did struggle a bit trying to work on both the book and a short story I need to finish, but it wasn’t flowing or coming and it just wasn’t working so I gave up and gave rein to my creativity in other ways.
I did realize, thank goodness, that I hadn’t revised as much as I had thought, and so have a lot “more room” to work with than I had thought, which was a relief. What I mean here by “more room” is the word count; I have about 900 words in the word count that are going to be excised or slashed down dramatically, so I have approximately a thousand more words of room before I hit the outside word count. I always write short stories this way, which I know makes no sense to anyone other than me. I have to have a title that works for me and puts me into the right mindset/mood to produce the story I want in the voice and tone that I want–being in a very cheery mood when you’re writing about someone who’s planning to kill his mother and sell her farm to a corporation doesn’t really lend the right tone, if you know what I mean (which is why my story “The Sound of Snow Falling” remains unpublished in my files; I need to make it darker in tone than the cheery voice it’s currently in)–and then I start writing it, knowing how many words I have to tell the story. Sometimes I know the entire story, sometimes I know the beginning, sometimes I know the end, sometimes I have a title and an opening sentence. It’s wild and chaotic and freestyle, really; the only thing for sure is I have to know how much room I have. I also figured out the story last night as I brainstormed and cleaned and did other things, so now I have to write it in the room that I have. I also need to go ahead and read those 900 words to see if any of it is even worth trying to save or just delete it all…since I know now what the story is, and I like it.
And now you know why it’s so hard for me to write short stories.
But I think I will get this one done soon, and then I’m going to be free again to dive back into the book. Yay!
I also spent some time with Lev AC Rosen’s The Bell in the Fog, which I am really loving. Reading it reminds of Chlorine–which will be very different even though set in the same time period. Los Angeles and Hollywood are a different mood–sunshine noir as opposed to foggy noir. (I always see Lev’s story in my head in the style of The Maltese Falcon film, whereas Chlorine I see as more of an American Gigolo style but in the 1950s–Palm Springs, Hollywood, Malibu.) I am still excited to be writing again, can you tell? Everywhere I turn, everywhere I look, whatever I think, my mind steers itself back into thinking about something I am working on. That’s a good sign, I think. I like when my thoughts are mostly filled with creative thoughts and inspirations and breakthroughs. It always puts me into a much better mood–certainly better than watching the news and rolling my eyes and wondering what the fuck is going to happen next and knowing this is not going to end well under even the best, most hopeful outcome will include death and violence.
And yeah, I’d rather focus on my own writing and creating and art, you know? Create my own joy and try to brighten the darkness a little bit?
And on that cheery note, I am going to get ready to head to the courthouse. Have a lovely Monday, wherever you are, and I’ll be back, most likely tomorrow morning.
Work at home Friday! I didn’t have to go into the office today after all; the person I was covering for didn’t need me to cover for them after all, so I get to drink my own coffee and do some of my work-at-home chores in my pajamas–including my team meeting. Yay! Yesterday was a gray, rainy day, the kind that is also cold so you get that lovely cold dampness that goes right through you to the bone. I ran my errands on the way home, and I don’t have to leave the house at all today unless I so choose–and I am rather leaning towards choosing no definitively already. I woke up the remnants of a thunderstorm; everything outside my windows is wet and dripping. Yeah, definitely not leaving the house today if I don’t absolutely have to–I can run errands and make groceries tomorrow. I am going to do some chores this morning when I need a break from the computer–dishes, laundry, picking up, etc.–but thanks to the midweek weekend we enjoyed because of the holiday, I am not as far behind on housework as I usually am. Sparky let me sleep late this morning, and was a little cuddlebug before I did get up. It’s not even about getting more sleep anymore, it’s more along the lines of way too comfortable for me to get up. Paul was at the gym when I got home from doing some minor errands after work last night, and then after he came home he went upstairs to work for the evening, leaving me and Sparky to entertain ourselves downstairs, which is why I did some picking up and cleaning last night. Looking around this morning, I can honestly wonder why I didn’t do more last night. Hmmm.
I worked a bit on a Substack essay last night, too; the one I worked the most on is about outing and speculating about celebrity sexuality. Many of the essay drafts I have saved on Substack were triggered initially by something that happened in the world; this one “”Johnny Are You Queer?” was inspired by Shawn Mendes having to address all the rumors and speculation about his sexuality, and how that made me feel. It was the second time a celebrity had to do this recently, the other being Kit Conner from Heartstopper. Both instances made me look at the subject in an entirely new (and more empathetic) light, which was frighteningly staggering; I thought how could I ever speculate about a celebrity’s sexuality, when I personally know what it feels like to have people speculate about you that way–and I was never a good-looking hot young celebrity, either, which would be exponentially worse. This led me to how “outing” originally started; it was a political act of protest from a community that was dying and no one cared, and a way to strike at closet cases who were actively harming the queer community (remember anti-gay Aaron Schock and his Downtown Abbey congressional office? He’s now an A-Gay living on the party circuit, and much happier than when he was a closeted anti-gay politician. I’d say that worked out pretty well for him in the long run, wouldn’t you?). Outing eventually got out of control and more of a tabloid monster, far from its original intent, but I’m also thinking about privacy rights now a lot more than I ever did when I was younger–which I am trying to explore in more detail in the essay. I am also writing one about organized Christianity, but it keeps getting longer with more examples because cosplay Christians are always going to cosplay with their full chests while denying Christ with every breath they take.
I generally don’t pay too much attention to celebrity drama, mainly because I don’t care that much about celebrities; as I’ve gotten older, I care less about entertainment news and the celebrity gossip machine. I remember the Blake Lively thing from last summer when that movie was released, and how she was getting a lot of press for being, well, a difficult bitch on set. I did think it was strange–I generally can’t avoid celebrity gossip, despite trying very hard because it’s fucking everywhere–that if she was that awful, why were all her co-stars and everyone else involved with the movie backing her? Now, I’ve thought Justin Baldoni was hot since his days on Jane the Virgin, and I even bought his book about being a male feminist; because I’ve really been thinking about masculinity and what it means to be a man, which is what the book is about. I’ve not read the book–I still might, just to see what it says; even if he’s a hypocrite, that doesn’t necessarily mean he doesn’t have a point about some things–but of course the story exploded everywhere again on Christmas Eve when Lively sued Baldoni, claiming he hired a PR team to destroy Lively’s reputation so her concerns about inappropriate behavior on set by Baldoni wouldn’t be taken seriously–and she has receipts. Celebrity fan culture in this country really is something, and it really is out of control; I don’t know why so many people think being a fan of an artist entitles them to know everything about that artist (see above paragraph about speculating about celebrity sexuality), not to mention the horrors of being a celebrity on social media. Yikes, indeed. All I will say is that Hollywood has always had fixers; the only difference is that now they are guns for hire rather than salaried studio employees. Jordan Harper’s Everybody Knows explores the horrible world of Hollywood PR and what they cover up, and how they spin damage away from their client to someone else, even if that someone else’s life or career is destroyed by the spin. (Read Jordan’s book, seriously.) There’s a decent show on Prime starring Anna Paquin in which she plays a spin-doctor-for-hire, Flacks.
It’s also why no one can ever completely trust celebrity news; it’s literally the prime example of fake news.
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Friday, Constant Reader. I may be back later, one never knows. If not, though, I will definitely be back in the morning tomorrow.
Yea, he’s handsome and has an exceptional build, but Zac Efron is more talented than he gets credit for.
Hollywood has always been interesting to me, ever since I was a kid. I am not as obsessed with Hollywood and celebrity culture as I used to be; I used to love awards shows but now find them kind of tedious and a lot of to-do about nothing very much. Paul and I used to watch any and every awards show, regardless of what they were for; now it’s just easier to follow live updates and skip the forced, awkward scripted banter and speeches where winners attempt to thank everyone they know before the band starts playing them off.1 That’s always cringey to me–not for the person the band is playing for, but for the event itself. I get that they want it to end on time, but at the same time it seems bad form to celebrate someone and then cut them off as they do celebrate? Your mileage, as they say, may vary.
One thing I did notice when my Hollywood fascination was at its peak was how cleaned up and sanitized Hollywood bios were, as opposed to the fiction written about Hollywood. You’d never know, for example, from reading a biography ofSpencer Tracy that he wasn’t just “good friends” with Katharine Hepburn, or that Roddy McDowell never married for a reason, or that some stars may have been forced to have sex with casting directors, agents, and producers to get started. But those marvelous Hollywood novels (dismissed and disdained by critics as trash) were so much fun to read, and they always ended in tragedy. I also always wondered–affairs and divorces were also fairly common amongst Hollywood celebrities–how much truth there was in those stories; often I could identify characters as real people (for some books–cough Valley of the Dolls cough–trying to figure out who the characters were based on was part of the fun of reading them). And of course, the existence of “studio fixers”–yeah, there’s still a bunch of stories from Hollywood’s past we may never know the real story behind, let alone the stuff they buried so completely it’ll never be known–definitely speaks to the need for them, so yeah, Hollywood had a lot of secrets.
And now, knowing what I know about powerful Hollywood figures and how they behave? I’d be more surprised if they didn’t see the contract players as a harem of men and women for them to play games with.
I also have a tendency to avoid highly praised writers and books (and other forms of entertainment, of course), because I always end up disappointed, which is fault of neither author nor their work. Jordan Harper has been praised a lot, so I was hesitant to read him…but having now read Everybody Knows, I don’t regret waiting to read it because I saved a real treat for myself.
For want of a better word, wow.
Los Angeles burns.
Some sicko is torching homeless camps. Tonight they hit a tent city in Los Feliz near the 5. The fire spread to Griffin Park. The smoke makes the sunset unbelievable. The particles in the air slash the light, shift it red. They make the sky a neon wound.
Mae waits outside the secret entrance to the Chateau Marmont. She watches Saturday-night tourists wander Sunset Boulevard, their eyes bloodshot from the smoke. They cough and trade looks. They never thought the Sunset Strip would smell like a campfire.
Mae moves around the sidewalk like a boxer before the fight. Her face is sharp and bookish, framed in a Lulu bob. She wears a vintage floral jumpsuit. She’s got eyes like a wolf on the hunt–she hides them behind chunky oversized glasses. Nobody ever sees her coming.
Jordan Harper is an amazing writer. That’s where we need to start with this book. Yes, the story is compelling and fascinating and dirty and sleazy and makes you kind of want to take a Silkwood shower. The characters–all of them, from the two leads on–are defined and fully dimensional, with interior lives and motivations. Our two main characters, Mae and Chris, are modern-day fixers…but in modern times they’re called “flacks” and work for “p.r. firms”, even if their job is the same as the tough guys who worked for MGM and Warners and Fox back in the day. But the writing is what sold me on book and writer; those opening paragraphs are as fine a series of opening paragraphs I’ve ever read. The dialogue is real, the characters are awful but you understand why they are awful–and both Mae and Chris have seen their fair share of horrific cover-ups and helping their clients get off scot-free every time they get in over their heads. In the very first chapter, Mae is on the job helping a young former child actress transitioning into adult roles out of drug overdose situation in her rooms at the Marmont, and her quick thinking and moving gets the young woman out of there without being seen or caught.
Mae is very good at her job.
Her boss sets up a meeting with her–off the books, away from the office–but on his way to meet her, he is murdered. It’s supposedly a car-jacking go wrong, but Mae has to wonder, is it? He’d seemed like he was about to hit a financial bonanza, but needed her help. Mae decides to look into his murder–which Chris winds up working as well from another direction. Mae and Chris didn’t work out the first time–but they’ve never forgotten each other, and soon join forces. Both were coming to the conclusion that their jobs were sleazy and they were helping bad people get away with doing bad things, and when they realize what is at the root of all the trouble, they see it as an opportunity to make some cash and perhaps do a little good on their way out to retirement.
And what’s going on in Hollywood is something horrible, indeed.
I loved this book, and deeply resented not having the time to read it all the way through in one sitting, so am really glad I made the time to sit down and finish it–in one sitting. I was about forty or fifty pages in, and sat down and didn’t budge till it was done. That authorial voice! The influence of the hardboiled masters is clearly there, but Harper has his own distinctive style and authorial voice that makes him unique in the business–and that’s not an easy thing to do.
I can’t wait to read more of his work.
I do think this aversion, or lack of interest, in awards shows has come from attending so many writing awards banquets, and yes, it’s a lovely problem to have. At some point I will go talk about my antipathy to awards…but must and always will confess to loving being nominated for things. My jones for that itch to be scratched has happened more than I could have ever dreamed. ↩︎
Or so the song by the Village People would have us believe, at any rate.
I’m not sure what it is about Hollywood, movies, and stars that draws gays like moths to an outdoor night light, but there you have it. We’ve fallen in love with movie stars and made them into icons–and interestingly enough, we always seem to like the same ones for the most part–Joan Crawford, Bette Davis, Katharine Hepburn, Judy, Liza, Barbra, Cher, Madonna, Lady Gaga, and so on; almost like there’s some kind of weird genetic link between the majority of gay cisgender white men that draws us all to the same things, so much that even straight people know who the women are that we idolize.
Why this is the case, I have no idea. But gay men have also significantly impacted how we as a society and culture look at men’s bodies, too–see previous post about how what was considered sexy in a man began changing in the 1970s, and continued evolving until what gay men (theoretically) found hot was what everyone considered hot for a man.
When I was a kid it was also believed that bodybuilders were mostly gay, too–because only gay men had the free time to develop and work their bodies…so the gay male attraction to muscular fit men was enough for society to say that about bodybuilders. (I have always appreciated bodybuilders aesthetically, but they leave me cold. They are so not sexy, despite the skimpy bikinis they pose in (gay men were also, for a long time, the only ones who weren’t competitive swimmers who wore speedos), and they never really have been.
But gay photographers began making bank in the late 1940s and 1950s by launching “physique magazines” as a cover for gay eroticism; they would find incredibly handsome men with worked out bodies and photograph them in “classical” poses. This dodge was how they got around pornography and postal obscenity charges; no visible penises, and the men were always posed like classical paintings or statuary to “show off their physiques”. Some of the men who posed for these photographers often did so early in their careers (Yul Brynner was one of many who did these kind of photo shoots to pay the bills), and never really hid their past as physique models–but they also didn’t bring it up much. Nudes for a male (or scantily dressed at least) weren’t as big an issue as they were for women; but male nudes weren’t exactly a boost to one’s career.
The gorgeous Ed Fury, who did some Hercules/hero type roles in movies in the 50s/60s
These old photos–and 8 mm physique films that were sold to private viewers–are astonishing to come across in the modern day and leaves so much to be explained1. Hollywood has always done a great job about covering up the same-sex attractions and predilections of movie stars; look at Randolph Scott and Cary Grant’s five years living together, or any number of other male stars. I’ve started looking into this a bit more because it’s all research for Chlorine, and it’s a plot point in the book. (It also gave me an idea for another noir, called Obscenity.) It’s very fascinating to me. The more I learn about Hollywood, and how things worked, and how rife with homosexuality that the studio assiduously kept secret, the more interested I am in those decades when studio bosses held all the power, when their fixers went around cleaning up after their stars, and the secret homosexuality just out of view there. Tab Hunter, Rock Hudson, and of course, the agent who represented all the beautiful boys: Henry Willson, who more than anything else is a tragic figure that I can’t help feeling sorry for, despite how awful he actually was…I am more willing to give queers forgiveness because of the toxic times they lived in and how they had to survive. (Roy Cohn, on the other hand, can burn in hell right next to J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson) Reading The Man Who Made Rock Hudson, a very well written biography of Willson, really made me feel sorry for him in many ways and understand perhaps why he was so damned awful.
It was also the times.
William J. Mann, by the way, has done some excellent queer Hollywood history non-fiction, if you want to a good place to start reading up on it.
I’m really looking forward to doing more research on physique magazines.
This was the birth of gay porn, really, which makes it all the more interesting to me. ↩︎
After we moved to the suburbs and had not only a house but a second car, my mother decided that maybe religion was missing from the lives of my sister and I, and began taking us to church–not the Southern Baptist faith she herself was raised in, but the Church of Christ, which was my father’s family’s faith. It wasn’t like my sister and I hadn’t been to church before; whenever we visited relatives in Alabama we were inevitably dragged to church with them, whether we wanted to go or not. It wasn’t even up for debate, so yes, in some ways, my father’s family kind of forced religion on us when we didn’t really go to church at home with our parents. I never knew why Mom decided we needed to start going–she wound up having an off-and-on relationship with the church for the rest of her life–but we did. Dad played golf every Sunday morning and often hit buckets of balls after or maybe went out for lunch with the other players; I don’t know. But not only did we start going to church, she rewarded us by taking us to Ponderosa for lunch (where I first discovered Catalina French salad dressing, a favorite to this day) and then we’d go see a movie. Most of the movies are forgotten now, collecting dust and cobwebs until I think about that movie again and remember it was one Mom took us to.
The Last of Sheila was one of those movies, and I fell in love with it as I watched. It had everything I could possibly want: an incredibly clever murder mystery, a cast of movie stars I recognized, and it was about Hollywood, even though set and shot along the Riviera. It was an inside look at the rich and glamorous–something I felt was like another planet to me in my subdivision house, in my lower middle class existence which was a place where I felt like I didn’t belong.
Shortly after seeing the movie, I was at Zayre’s with a couple of bucks to buy books with, and there were three I wanted–The Last of Sheila and two others, but I could only afford two of them, and I regretfully put The Last of Sheila back because I’d already seen the movie and I could get it the next time.
Constant Reader, it wasn’t there when I went back. I never forget there was a book, either–but I didn’t know whether it was a novelization or an actual book the film had been based on; and I didn’t mind reading novelizations, either. When I rewatched the film again during the pandemic, I remembered there was a book and started looking for it on-line. It was clearly rare and beloved, because whenever a copy would come up for sale on second-hand sites it was always priced anywhere from $150-$300, and I didn’t care about the nostalgic aspects of it that much. Then last summer two popped up on ebay; both more expensive than I would have liked but still–reasonable enough to consider. I put in a bid on one and then realized the other was a “buy it now”, so I went ahead and bought it. A few days later I won the bid–and a little confused, decided to go ahead and honor the bid since I had put one in but simply forgot about it, and I gave the other away to a friend who also loved the movie for Christmas.
And finally, I settled in to read it–after another, recent rewatch.
The Sheila rode at anchor, stern to the quay, stern lines fastened securely over the bollards. The Mediterranean sun glanced off the brightwork and made of the white hull a dazzling blur. Her eighty-seven feet dwarfed the sleek ketch on her port side, a racing vessel owned by the pretender to the Spanish throne, but the Sheila was in her turn outclassed by the ninety-five-footer on her starboard, a powerful yacht owned by a South African diamond billionaire. The Palma marina was, as usual in the summer, crowded with the pleasure craft of the wealthy, berthed as tightly together as possible, their anchor chains frequently fouling.
Lee Parkman swung her long slender legs out of the taxicab and stood somewhat shakily on the quay, shielding her eyes from the too-bright noonday sun that pierced even through the lenses of. her oversized sunglasses. Her legs still felt rubbery from the long, bumpy tide over the dursty roads that led from the Palma Airport to the marina. Mallorca was like that, she thought. The paradox of moderan airport and luxurious anchorage linked by an ancient and ill-kept road.
I don’t know if they still do novelizations of popular films as a merchandising gimmick–the cover of this one has a little admonition to see the film READ THE NOVEL and of course, the ever-popular Now a Major Motion Picture From Warner Brothers. There’s also a lovely cast photo prominently featured on the book cover–with the cast posed together in the same way they are in the photograph in the book, which holds the key to the very clever puzzle at the heart of the book, and what a cast of early 1970’s luminaries it contained! James Mason, Joan Hackett, Dyan Cannon, James Coburn, a gorgeous young Ian McShane, Richard Benjamin, and the fabulous Raquel Welch. All play, in a way, traditional Hollywood archetypes: Mason is the director fallen on hard times; Benjamin the writer who can’t get a script film so works on rewrites of other people’s work; Cannon the blowsy loud shark-like Hollywood agent (based on Sue Mengers, anyone remember her?), Coburn as the asshole abusive producer; Welch playing the stunningly beautiful actress with little talent; McShane as her loser husband/manager; and Hackett as the Hollywood heiress, whose father was a monstrous tyrannical producer like the Coburn character, married to the Benjamin character and the only thing keeping him out of hock.
Coburn’s character, Clinton, invites all the others for a week-long trip along the Riviera on his boat, the Sheila, named after his late wife, killed by a hit and run driver about a year earlier. Sheila was a gossip columnist that Clinton truly loved, but she was also a typical Hollywood rags-to-riches story. She started out as a call girl and worked her way up to gossip columnist and married a rich producer before her tragic death. The driver of the car that killed her was never found. He claims to want to produce a picture, a way to honor his dead wife, called The Last of Sheila, which he wants Benjamin/Tom to write, Mason/Philip to direct, and Welch/Alice to star in. They will also spend the week playing a game–each person is assigned a card, and every night they will get clues they will have to solve to figure out who has the card. Once the person who has the card solves it, the game is over for the night so you have to find out who has the card before the cardholder does to get a point. None of them really want to play–but once the first night gets underway, some of them get into it and some of them don’t. There are also all kinds of clues and hints that something a lot more sinister is going on below the surface, as the guests become uncomfortably aware that the game is really about them and their secrets…and then there’s an attempted murder, and then Clinton himself is murdered on the second night.
It’s a fantastic set-up, and it’s an incredibly clever plot. The film’s screenplay, from which the novelization was adapted, was written by closeted gay actor Anthony Perkins and Stephen Sondheim (yes, that same Stephen Sondheim), which also lends depth and insight into this world of cutthroat behavior, backstabbing, and vengeance. The novelization itself is one of the better ones I’ve ever read; they were usually cranked out quickly by a pseudonymous writer trying to make a quick buck (no harm there; I’d certainly write them if the price was right and they were still a thing) who basically simply turned the screenplay into a book, without getting much into the story or layers or character development. But this one of The Last of Sheila is the rare one that you put down when finished and think, Oh, there was so much more that could have been told there–and it even fleshes the characters and the backstory–and the motives–out even further. It actually helps with your appreciation of the film by giving necessary back story to the relationships between them and their individual motives, and I am very glad that I read it.
The Last of Sheila will always be one of my favorite films, because it remains fresh and interesting and its cleverness never stops amazing me every time I watch it.
And of course, Bette Midler’s “Friends” plays over the closing credits–after the perfect ending–which was also my first real exposure to the Divine Miss M, whose debut album I bought shortly after seeing the film and I’ve been a fan ever since.
Queer and Loathing in America 