Date: Mon, 9 Aug 1999 23:47:26 -0700 (PDT) From: Rex Wockner Subject: WOCKNER/QUOTE UNQUOTE #151/13 July 1999 ========================================= = QUOTE UNQUOTE #151 - Jul 13, 1999 = = by Rex Wockner = ========================================= <><><1><><> "We were both in suits and he sat across from me and we had a conversation for a while that was clearly about nothing to do with what was on our minds. And finally he said, 'Well, I should be over there or you should be over here,' which I thought was about the sexiest thing I had ever heard anybody say. I don't remember which one of us budged, but we did. And we had a sort of making-out session. We were finally rolling around on the floor when he said, 'Hang on,' and he produced a little black leather case that had R H embossed on it in gold. And he unzipped it and pulled out his poppers. He had a personalized Rock Hudson popper case! And I completely lost my hard-on. I was so overwhelmed at the notion that I was about to go to bed with Rock Hudson. Not to mention the fact that I'd just seen the baby's arm hanging between his legs. And we sat on the couch together and he put his arm around me and said, 'You know I'm just another guy, like any other guy. You know that, don't you?' And all I could say to that was, 'No. You're not. And I'm Doris Day.'" --Tales of the City author Armistead Maupin on the first of his several sexual encounters with Rock Hudson, in the new biography Armistead Maupin by Patrick Gale. <><><2><><> "I don't think it's relevant to anybody. If I thought it meant something, to teach somebody something, that would be fine. But since it doesn't exist, I don't have to worry." --Christopher Lowell, star of the Discovery Channel's Interior Motives, when asked June 17 by Milwaukee's In Step, "You have no interest in talking about your romantic life?" <><><3><><> "I don't know. I know, based on the letters we get and the personal appearances I do, that they think I'm their friend, and they will walk right up to me and throw their arms around me. It's that kind of relationship that I hope I have fostered with them. I think whatever they're seeing, they know that there's a good deal of earned authenticity there and that I'm there to help them." --Christopher Lowell, star of the Discovery Channel's Interior Motives, when asked June 17 by Milwaukee's In Step, "Do you think your viewers assume you're gay?" <><><4><><> "I have this huge family that's been decimated by alcoholism and drugs and violence and I'm their role model. Because I live in California and have a mortgage. Because I've been on television and I kissed Anjelica Huston. It's about as much as any of them can imagine being a triumph. ... If I'd taken up with a gospel band or rock and roll, I'd make a whole lot more sense to my family. But to write books. ... I'd come home with books and they'd stare at me like I was crazy. That was the thing most queer about me." --Author Dorothy Allison to Boston's Bay Windows, June 10. <><><5><><> "We have a gay pride day celebration in Naples, but it consists of two or three floats on lawn mowers going around the parking lot of the one gay bar in town." --John Kossenyans of Naples, Fla., while watching the San Francisco gay-pride parade, as quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, June 28. <><><6><><> "Being openly gay in public life is itself a political statement. It's relevant to changing laws because half the reason the laws haven't been changed is the public at large isn't aware that gay people exist because we've been encouraged for so long to stay in the closet and be quiet about ourselves and not to cause a fuss." --Actor Ian McKellen to the Sydney Morning Herald, June 28. <><><7><><> "I'm not particularly keen on entering a political arena. That sort of activism may be fine for somebody like Ian McKellen, but I wouldn't be capable of it. Different people have different missions in life, and I see mine as an acting mission. I think I'm quite a good actor in the small area I tend to work in, and I just want to keep expanding on that, really." --Gay actor Rupert Everett to Atlanta's Etcetera magazine, June 25. <><><8><><> "I'm not up to being a [gay] role model, actually. If you waded through my life, it's probably not role model-y enough. It's fantastic, and it makes me very happy if people are somehow inspired by me, but I'm still essentially just an actor." --Actor Rupert Everett to Atlanta's Etcetera magazine, June 25. <><><9><><> "I've never regretted anything I've said, even the stuff about being a male prostitute. I'm not ashamed of it. It was necessary for me at that time in my life. I was going for a career in acting, but I wasn't completely successful. So, I became a male escort." --Gay actor Rupert Everett to Atlanta's Southern Voice, June 24. <><><10><><> "I never imagined living past 30. ... You always set yourself dates when you are a kid. [I set it] when I saw my first James Dean film. When I was a kid, as opposed to now, I kind of looked up at the tragic rather than looking down on it. Everyone wanted to suffer, wanted to live like Montgomery Clift or Patti Smith." --Gay actor Rupert Everett to Newsweek, July 12. <><><11><><> "One of the earliest and most trenchant intimations I had of my own homosexuality came while watching Tom Cruise in the 1983 comedy Risky Business. I say this with a certain amount of embarrassment -- because who, after all, wants to admit to being aroused, as a 10-year-old boy, at the sight of a barely-post- pubescent-himself movie star dancing in his snug white cotton underwear?" --Christopher Kelly writing in Salon magazine, June 30. <><><12><><> "If they sent a check to my campaign, I would not turn it away. Because what that says to me is, they're accepting my agenda. They believe in reduced taxes, and increasing the defense budget. They believe in getting rid of illegal drugs in this country. They believe in restoring our public schools to greatness. So, it's a matter of their accepting my agenda." --Presidential candidate Elizabeth Dole when asked on NBC-TV's Today show June 30: "Do you want the support of the Log Cabin Republicans? They're a group of gay Republicans." <><><13><><> "What I reject is the idea that being a same-sexer means that you have to sign up for an identity, ideology, and a lifestyle in which everything is cut and dried and it's pre-digested. I think gay culture is part of the problem, not the solution. ... Gay culture took straight society's ideal of gay culture as unnatural and unhealthy and they turned it on its head. Neither of these things are true. A lot of queer discourse is really just in-your- face queer. We're not going to apologize for it. We're going to celebrate it. Enough celebration. It certainly doesn't make for good art. It makes for third-rate propaganda. It makes for a kind of hedonism and consumerism." --Author Mark Simpson (It's a Queer World) to the New York Blade News, June 25. <><><14><><> "I'm on constant guard [since my partner and I adopted a baby], I'm terrified I'm going to turn into Erma Bombeck, get really soft and lose that cynical, bitter edge that people enjoy my writing for. I'm vigilant that I won't change. I've very consciously not written about the baby in my sex advice column. I don't think it's an appropriate place. I've always used things out of my life and talked about my boyfriends. My column is read by three-and-a-half million straight people a week. They read it because it's about their sex lives most of the time. Once in a while I'll talk about 'us' and trick them into reading something they wouldn't read otherwise." --Syndicated columnist Dan Savage in a July 5 interview with Gay Parent magazine. <><><15><><> "Believe it or not, it was about when I was six years old [that I knew I was gay]. I remember looking at cowboys and Indians on television. Back in the '50s, the Indians were all muscled-up Hollywood actors and they all wore little G-strings with flaps in the front and back. All I wanted to do was lift the flaps. ... I have never forgotten this moment." --Gay porn star Cole Tucker to the Memphis gay magazine Family & Friends, July issue. <><><16><><> "Doing this work is a fantasy come true, and to have started at my age is unheard of." --Gay porn star Cole Tucker, who is 45, to the Memphis gay magazine Family & Friends, July issue. <><><17><><> "If you come to Denmark secretly hoping to be raped and ravaged by a raucous band of longhaired, broad-shouldered Viking queers, forget it. Danish gays are pretty much a neatly coifed, reserved group fairly indistinguishable from their straight countrymen. That's because Denmark is very tolerant of homosexuals making the need for a separate political or cultural identity mostly unnecessary. In Denmark gay men have most of the same rights as other citizens, including the right to marry in a civil ceremony. That said, there is still lots of fun, e.g. parties, cruising and sex, to be had for the passing tourist. There are clubs, bars, parks, cinemas and toilets -- as described in other sections of this periodical -- catering to every taste and desire." --From the Danish National Association of Gays and Lesbians' "Guide to Gay and Lesbian Denmark '99," which was funded by the Danish Ministry of Culture. <><><18><><> [Ed.: Put a slash through the O in Orstedsparken] "If you just need some fresh air and a little open-air-sex, Orstedsparken is the place to go. It is a popular cruising area, and between the trees and statues you can find partners for casual anonymous sex. Be careful (take responsibility for both you and your partner) and remember that there are free condoms and lubricant in the specially designed 'bird nests'." --From the Danish National Association of Gays and Lesbians' "Guide to Gay and Lesbian Denmark '99," which was funded by the Danish Ministry of Culture. <><><19><><> "I think [gay life is] very shrill. It's a pity it's got that way. It was all right in the middle, when it got to be open, but not loud. Nowadays, wherever the gay people are, there's trouble. The real people in England used to say to me, 'What do the queers want now?' Because they thought they'd done so much for us. And I thought so, too. But the gay people look 'round and if they see anything they've been denied, they want it -- whether it's any use or not." --Author Quentin Crisp to Atlanta's Southern Voice, July 1. <><><20><><> "A gay person isn't really living. He's giving an imitation of somebody who's alive. Gay people are standing on the bank watching other people swim. It's a useful thing -- because you see more of life if you're not in the middle of it. You can form an opinion and a judgment of it." --Author Quentin Crisp to Atlanta's Southern Voice, July 1. -end- Italics is shown like _this_. Rex Wockner's "Quote Unquote" is archived at http://www.qrd.org/qrd/www/world/wockner.html, which also archives his weekly "International News" and some of his longer gay-press articles. To do a KEYWORD SEARCH of Wockner's archives, go to www.dejanews.com, scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on 'power search,' enter keywords in the search window (for example: Wockner Quote Rosie O'Donnell lesbian), scroll down and set the dates to search from Jan 1 1995 to today, then click 'find.' Archives of Microsoft Sidewalk's "The Wockner List" are at http://sandiego.sidewalk.com/wockner A profile of Wockner is at http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/14229.html