A Lack Of Self-Love Among Some Black Gay Men

I recently found a letter I forgot I wrote to the editor of the now-defunct New York Native, a weekly gay newspaper. At the time the letter was written, I had edited a black gay supplement for the paper. It was called "Celebrating Ourselves," a title suggested by the poet and novelist Melvin Dixon.

The letter, a response to a reader's letter about Dave Frechette's article, appears to have been written as a draft (with a few editing marks made by me). I'm not sure whether or not it was sent or if it was published.

I started keeping a record of my submissions in a logbook that dates back to February 1987. Anything published before that date would not have been recorded in the book.

If the letter was published, it might be in one of my scrapbooks kept on a high shelf in the backroom closet of my apartment. I'll have to check when I have time. In the meantime, here is the letter as written with the minor edits included. 

18 December 1984

Dear Editor:

J. R. Finney II accuses Dave Frechette (Native 105) of doing the very thing he himself does in his letter-to-the-editor--distorting the truth. Frechette, in his article (Native 101) about the Black and White Men Together** convention in Atlanta, does not, as Finney would have us believe, label as Uncle Toms those blacks who have not heard of the ragtime composer Scott Joplin. (It is possible, J.R., to be an Uncle Tom and know everything there is to know about Joplin.) What Frechette did say--and Finney should re-read the article if he doubts this--is that "a significant segment of the black gay community" sees BWMT "as a breeding ground for Uncle Toms who've rejected their own culture." (The emphasis is mine.)

I have been to several BWMT meetings and one or two social events and I found many of the blacks in the group to be very cold to other blacks while grinning in the face of any white man they found half-way attractive. It seems to me that most, if not all, of the black BWMT members are more apt to be white-identified. They haven't learned that there is no crime or shame in being black or loving other blacks.

Getting back to J.R., I don't know where he got the information that 65% of the black population is unfamiliar with Scott Joplin's name. Did he go door-to-door with a clipboard and a pen asking people, "Have you ever heard of Scott Joplin?" Did he do some kind of "scientific" telephone survey? Perhaps Finney should have said that 65% of blacks in BWMT have never heard of Joplin. That might have been closer to the truth.

In recent years there was a network TV movie about Scott Joplin, starring Billy Dee Williams and a postage stamp commemorating his life and career. Dave Frechette's reference to the 30-year-old  black man was not to berate him for being ignorant about Joplin but to illustrate his disbelief that anyone that old could somehow, in this day of telecommunications, not be exposed to these things. It is indeed a mystery.

Sincerely yours,

Charles Michael Smith

Manhattan

**The group is known today as Men of All Colors Together (MACT).

Watch Out For Miss Alice

Whenever my friend and upstairs neighbor Scotty Crawford (now deceased) referred to the police as "Miss Alice," I thought it was a humorous name he had made up. I learned later from a book about the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York's Greenwich Village that gay men back then called cops "Alice Blue Gown."

A Phrase Book For Gay Travelers

For gay travelers and language students I recommend The Gay Phrase Book by Barry McKay (Cassell, 1995). The front cover advises the reader to "Get Your Man in Six Different Languages." Those languages, each having its own section, are French, German, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, and Portuguese. Sprinkled throughout the book are beefcake photos.

AIDS Hysteria In The 1980s

I recently leafed through the June 25, 1988 issue of TV Guide (when it was pocket-size and cost 75 cents). Before tossing it out, I tore out the "Cheers 'N' Jeers" column and put it in a folder marked "LGBTQ." Under "Jeers" was an item about how the openly gay AIDS activist Michael Callen, now deceased, was treated, or more accurately put, mistreated by the staff members at a New York television station where he was scheduled to be interviewed about being a person with AIDS.

According to TV Guide, based on information from the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union), "a technician tossed him a microphone and refused to help him adjust it" and "the make-up artists refused to work on Callen."

I wonder if he pointed out this bad behavior to his interviewer when he went on-camera. If he didn't, he should have. There was a lot of misinformation and fearmongering in the media and elsewhere back then about how AIDS was transmitted.

When I met and spoke with Michael Callen at an AIDS forum held at Hunter College here in New York, I gladly and fearlessly shook his hand. This was back in the early nineties. After that handshake, I've lived to tell the story.

What was their problem?

Note: This blog post originally appeared on my Facebook page on March 27, 2023. I've made a few minor changes.

The Life And Murder Of A Gay Actor

Scott Simon, the host of NPR's Weekend Edition, recently did a fifteen-minute segment in which he interviewed the novelist Thomas Mallon about his latest book, Up With the Sun (Knopf, 2023).

The book is a biographical novel about Dick Kallman, a closeted gay former TV and movie actor-turned-antiques dealer, who was murdered along with his life partner Stephen Szladek in February 1980 in their Manhattan apartment by three burglars. (Both men were gunshot victims.) The trio stole paintings, jewelry, and other items from the apartment. They were later caught and convicted but the stolen items were never recovered.

When Mallon mentioned that Kallman was the star of the short-lived sit-com called Hank (1965-1966), it didn't ring any bells for me until I read a description of the show on Wikipedia and IMDb.com. Kallman played Hank Dearborn, a young man thirsting for higher education, who illegally audits college classes by assuming the identity of absent students, with the help of a professor, played by Lloyd Corrigan.

In 2010, an anonymous commenter on the website datalounge.com, which ran a brief mention of the murders and theft, asked, "Was there ever a book written on the crime?" The answer now is an emphatic yes, although the book is a fictionalized story. Maybe Up With the Sun will inspire someone to do a true-crime retelling. In the meantime, I'm hoping the book, described by the publisher as "part crime story, part showbiz history, and part love story," will be as enjoyable as other fictional Hollywood books such as When the Stars Come Out by Rob Byrnes (Kensington, 2006) and Father of Frankenstein (later renamed Gods and Monsters when it became a film) by Christopher Bram (Dutton, 1995).

We Shouldn't Cherry-Pick History

 The News Briefs column in the January 17-23, 2003 issue of the Gay City News had an item headlined "We Don't Want Him." The him being referred to is none other than Adolf Hitler. The news brief, written by Andy Humm, announced that HBO was "developing a documentary called The Pink Fuhrer" that explored "whether or not Adolf Hitler was homosexual." 

Seventeen years later, the film, which I have not seen, should by now be available on DVD. I would like to see it to judge for myself if what is discussed is credible.

The thing that interests me more is the headline--"We Don't Want Him" instead of "Was Hitler Gay?" I can understand the urge to reject Hitler because of his genocidal, anti-Semitic pronouncements and behavior. But if he was a closeted homosexual, then he becomes part of gay history, like it or not.

Gay history has the tendency to celebrate only those deemed the good guys while ignoring those identified as villains like J. Edgar Hoover, Roy Cohn, Cecil Rhodes, and the murderers Leopold and Loeb.

If we're going to study gay history, it should be studied like all other histories, warts and all; the good, the bad, and the ugly; the sacred and the profane. By sanitizing and cherry-picking history, it becomes distorted and valueless. Looking at history in its fullness makes it possible for us to more accurately analyze and evaluate people, attitudes, actions, and events.

We can't do that if we hide the historical record. The history exists and we have to deal with it.

A Long-Forgotten Pre-Stonewall Novel

One of my Facebook friends, Michael Schiavi, the biographer of the late gay film historian Vito Russo, posted a photo of the front cover of a book called The Gay Year by M de F (originally published in 1949) and described on the cover as "The revealing novel of two men and a forbidden passion."

The book is probably out of print but I would love to read it. The Strand bookstore in the Chelsea section of Manhattan might have a copy or two in its miles and miles of books.

It would be interesting to see if homosexuality is depicted as sordid, perverse, wicked, and psychotic. If it does, The Gay Year would reflect the attitudes prevalent back then.

I'm hoping the novel was way ahead of its time by showing a more progressive, enlightened view. We'll see.

A Street-Corner Escort Ad In Harlem

In Harlem, I've seen handbills attached to lampposts, mail boxes, storefront windows, and even on trees for a variety of reasons--to announce a death, to offer a reward for the return of a lost pet or wallet, steering people to employment opportunities or apartments for rent, etc. But I have never seen a handbill soliciting clients for an escort/massage service. This particular handbill was pasted to a lamppost at the corner of Lenox Avenue and 121st Street. The advertiser was a handsome young man named Jayson, age 19, of black/Puerto Rican heritage. At the bottom of the page was his phone number, in the 914 area code (presumably he was from Westchester County). His photo was at the top.

A few days after I saw Jayson's ad, someone--a homophobe, no doubt--came along and scratched out the phone number with a key or something sharp. This was in 2012. I recently checked that location. There is no trace of the handbill.

The closest  thing to this ad that I've seen was when I worked at the Mount Morris Baths in Harlem.
Some of the customers would write their name and phone number on the back of the door of the room they occupied.

Now that Harlem has become more gentrified and many more gays (and lesbians) are moving in (to the disapproval of the homophobic Atlah Church, down the street from where I saw the handbill), I expect to see more such advertising on lampposts, bus shelters, and on the side of buildings.

On Screen, Langston Hughes And His Boyfriend

About fifteen minutes into the biopic, Marshall, there is a remarkable scene that takes place inside Minton's Playhouse, the famous Harlem jazz venue. NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall (Chadwick Boseman) is seated at a table with his former Lincoln University classmate Langston Hughes and Hughes's male companion who is identified in the end credits as "Langston's boyfriend." The body language of Hughes and the boyfriend telegraphs to the audience their gayness.

Jussie Smollett of the TV series, Empire, is convincingly cast as the young Hughes. (Smollett is an openly gay man.)

The only person I can recall unequivocally outing Hughes as a gay man was Faith Berry in her book, Langston Hughes, Before and Beyond Harlem (Lawrence Hill & Co., 1983). Isaac Julien in his film, Looking for Langston, only hinted at Hughes being gay.

If there is a biopic about Langston Hughes in the works, especially about his early years, I hope Smollett gets picked to play the role.

Naked Apartment Cleaning

While recently perusing an issue of the New York Blade News from the year 2000, an ad in the classified section of the now-defunct gay weekly newspaper caught my eye: "NAKED APARTMENT CLEANING." The ad went on to say, "Satisfy your voyeurism & my exhibitionism." The message was followed by a pager number.

Cleaning a stranger's apartment fully clothed is risky enough. Cleaning an apartment while nude is riskier. If the cleaner is in a room far from his clothes and other items, he would be in a very vulnerable position. What if he--I'm assuming it was a he--had to make a quick exit from the apartment in the face of danger, and had nothing on but his birthday suit?

In a team of three or four other people, he would have a better chance of avoiding trouble. I just hope that the person who placed that ad nearly 17 years ago is alive and well and earning a living doing something less risky.

Gay Activist Cleve Jones's Memoir

I'm looking forward to reading (and reviewing?) When We Rise: My Life in the Movement by Cleve Jones, the San Francisco gay rights activist and founder of the AIDS quilt project. (I'm rarely on Facebook, so the last time I checked, he and I were still Facebook friends.)

 I learned about the book after hearing him being interviewed on public radio's Fresh Air with Terry Gross. I  heard him again today on another public radio show, Here and Now.

A Gay Gossip Columnist

One book I plan to read for the second time is Mike Connolly and the Manly Art of Hollywood Gossip by Val Holley (McFarland & Co., 2003).

Connolly, a columnist for the Hollywood Reporter in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, was a political conservative and a staunch anti-Communist. He was also a gay man.

It's been a few years since I last read the book but I vaguely recall the author depicting Connolly as closeted and homophobic towards other gay men, especially those in Hollywood who were in the public eye like actor Rock Hudson and director George Cukor. Those traits would not be too far off the mark for a gay man living and working during those extremely closeted and homophobic times.

I would love to see a documentary film  made about the life and times of Mike Connolly. It would give us a behind-the-scenes look at gay Hollywood back then, warts and all, told from many different points of view, gay and straight.

A Gay American In Paris

The format of the following script was based on CBS News' American Treasury 60-second between-daytime-program spots that were broadcast in the late 1980s. They highlighted famous American men and women and Americana.

I wrote this script and one other nearly ten years ago with the then-new gay channel LOGO in mind. I don't recall if I actually submitted  them to the cable channel. I do recall talking to someone at LOGO's California offices via phone about writing such scripts.

LOGO like CBS is owned by Viacom.

American Outlooks--Program 2

Writer: Charles M. Smith

June 18, 2005

OPENING LOGO AND THEME:

            (CELEBRITY NAME):

             I'm______with American Outlooks. His book be-                                                                                    came the first of its kind by a black American author.

             Who he was, after this.

COMMERCIAL: 15 SECS:

            (CELEBRITY NAME): CONTD:

           James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room is the story of two 

           gay lovers, one American, the other Italian, in post-war

           Paris. Baldwin was advised not to publish the ground-

           breaking novel for fear that its homosexual theme 

           would ruin his career. Baldwin ignored the advice and                                                                            the book, published in 1956, became a gay American

           classic.

CLOSING LOGO: :02 SECS:                  
            Learn more about James Baldwin in your local 

            library.

Note: I had to change the formatting of the script to make it more readable on the blog.

                                                                            

AIDS Researcher Wins Eviction Battle

A Greenwich Village co-op board 's year-long court battle to evict a doctor who treats persons with AIDS ended in defeat on October 17 [1984], due to the efforts of a gay rights group and the New York state attorney general's office.

The board, representing the tenants of 49 West 12th Street, told Dr. Joseph A. Sonnabend last year that the tenants wanted him out of the building because of concern for their health and the lowering of property values of their apartments due to AIDS patients entering his office.

Sonnabend, a microbiologist and the occupant of the ground floor office since 1977, consulted his lawyer, William Hibsher of the New York law firm Teitelbaum and Hiller. Hibsher is also a board member of the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund, the organization which took the case to court and succeeded in blocking the eviction with a temporary restraining order. The order was issued on October 14, 1983, by the New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

Sonnabend had no quarrel with the board's right to evict him. "But the mistake they made," said Sonnabend, "was to say it was over AIDS."

Then it became a case of discrimination, said Hibsher,"against a population that is really more deserving of people's compassion and help. I think that all people know that very often discrimination against people with AIDS is another form of discrimination against gay people."

In New York State, there is no law prohibiting discrimination against people because of sexual orientation; however, Lambda used a provision of the state's human rights law protecting disabled people from discrimination as the basis for their lawsuit.

"Five of Sonnabend's patients," said Hibsher, "joined in the lawsuit for legal reasons. We were concerned that since Dr. Sonnabend is not himself a disabled person, the defendant might take the position that [Sonnabend] could not raise the disability statute in support of his legal position."

With the patients as co-plaintiffs, continued Hibsher, "they could say they are disabled persons, and they are potentially being discriminated against by the building's decision." Two of the five patients have since died of the disease.

In the court settlement, Sonnabend was awarded $10,000 in damages and a new one-year lease. The co-op must also pay $1,000 in legal costs to state Attorney General Robert Abrams's office, which acted as Lambda's co-counsel.

Hibsher sees the settlement as a landmark case that "projects a very strong image on the part of those who protect the rights of these citizens."

He continued: "It's, to our knowledge, the first litigation brought in connection with alleged discrimination against people with AIDS, and it established very importantly legal procedures in the State of New York and nationwide; One, that people with AIDS are considered disabled persons under the disability laws, and most states have a civil rights law which protects persons who are disabled from discrimination. Two, the court issued a preliminary injunction in the course of the litigation and part of its ruling was that it accepted the expert opinion that AIDS is not casually transmitted. Consequently, the court rejected any notion that a person with AIDS could be segregated or kept out of a public accommodation on the grounds of potential contagion. Three, and I think most important, the case stands for the proposition that the civil rights community, Lambda, the attorney general of the State of New York, and other litigants are not going to sit back and let people discriminate" against people who are gravely ill.

Sonnabend, who spends much of his time doing research, said that after the settlement, "some of the tenants offered their congratulations. Many tenants at the time [of the eviction attempt] were quite unhappy with the way the board proceeded."


This article was originally published in the Gay Community News (Boston) on November 10, 1984.

When Love's Flame Burns Out

Going through some old newspapers, I came across an article by Steven  G. Fullwood, a black gay man, called "Love, Interrupted," (New York Blade News, March 1, 2002).

Fullwood details the night, two days after Christmas, when his then 23-year-old boyfriend decided to break off their relationship in the most public of places, Times Square. Fullwood, an archivist at the Schomburg Library in Harlem, was age 35 at the time.

After reading the piece, it made me wonder if Fullwood's ex-boyfriend, now in his 30s, met a similar fate doled out by a much younger lover.

An Etiquette Book For Young Gay Men

One Saturday evening in February of this year, my friend Robert and I stopped by the Suite, a gay bar on Amsterdam Avenue at 109th Street in the Morningside Heights area of Manhattan to relax and chat while sipping sodas.  On a small table near the entrance were several paperback copies (free) of a self-published book called The Essential Sex Venue Etiquette and Resource Guide: For America's Gay and Bisexual Young Men by Robert Brandon Sandor. Browsing through the book (or pamphlet as the author described it), I was particularly fascinated by the glossary which contained many unfamiliar terms such as "bat boy" ("A boy that loves large penises") and "teabagging" ("Placing one's testicles down onto someone's mouth or forehead").

A guidebook such as this one would have been useful to and probably appreciated by previous generations of gay men who had to learn the ropes through trial and error.

I plan to write a much more thorough review of the guidebook for this blog later on.

Black Gay Hollywood

Kevin Thomas, Film Critic
c/o Editorial Dept.
Los Angeles Times
202 West 1st Street
Los Angeles, CA 90012

June 1, 2005

Dear Mr. Thomas:

In 1966, when I was living in California, I spoke to you on the phone about Montgomery Clift's final film The Defector, which you had reviewed. You sent me a black and white glossy of Clift*, which I still have.

It wasn't until years later that I learned that you are a gay man. I read some quotes from you in William J. Mann's Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood, 1910-1969. I also learned that you are very knowledgeable about the gay Hollywood luminaries of the past.

I recently reviewed Donald Bogle's Bright Boulevards, Bold Dreams: The Story of Hollywood for the Boston-based Gay & Lesbian Review. The book has some gay content. His book has inspired me to do research on Black Gay Hollywood. I would appreciate receiving whatever information you have concerning this segment of the Hollywood community.

One person I am particularly interested in learning more about is Joel Fluellen, a black gay actor, who appeared in such films as A Raisin in the Sun and The Learning Tree. According to Bogle, Fluellen was "a leader in the fight for better roles for African Americans." Did you ever meet him? If so, what was your impression of him?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely yours,
Charles Michael Smith


Note: I never received a response. Kevin Thomas may have been knowledgeable about Gay Hollywood, but as a white gay man, he may not have been as knowledgeable about Black Gay Hollywood.

*Montgomery Clift (1920-1966) was a gay man.

A Book About Two Unsung AIDS Heroes

A book I am looking forward to reading is historian Martin Duberman's Hold Tight Gently: Michael Callen, Essex Hemphill, and the Battlefield of AIDS, published by The New Press. I had the opportunity of meeting both men in the 1980s.

I learned about this book when I saw the last two copies of the March 2014 issue of A & U magazine on a recent visit to the Gay Community Center on 13th Street in Greenwich Village. Martin Duberman's photo was on the cover, with his name in red letters and a brief description of the book.

On Bisexuals

"In those days [the 1960s] we always assumed that a bisexual (especially, for some reason, a bisexual man) was really a homosexual in the closet. ....But as I learned a decade later in Paris, the world is full of genuine bisexuals, though most of them keep a low profile, not because they're ashamed but because everyone distrusts and fear them."--Edmund White, from City Boy: My Life in New York During the 1960s and '70s (Bloomsbury, 2009).

Exploring The Male Gaze

Backward Glances: Cruising the Queer Streets of New York and London by Mark W. Turner (Reaktion Books, 191 pp.)

Mark Turner's Backward Glances is not a memoir but a scholar's exploration and analysis of something all gay men do without a second thought.

Cruising is an age-old activity, not necessarily the exclusive domain of gay men. However, the particular ways and locales in which gay men do it are unique. And because gay men for centuries have been perceived as sexual outlaws, these rituals of cruising have developed as a way to protect oneself from persecution, imprisonment, entrapment, and scandal.

Turner, an American who is a faculty member in the Department of English at Kings College, University of London, looks at cruising through photography, letters, poetry, journalism, pornography, fiction, etc. as a way to show the reader that these media "all are part of the interrelated cultural production of the city and provide possibilities for understanding how cruising was imagined and how it gets reimagined over time."

He points out that it is not always easy to distinguish who is cruising and who is not, when individuals are sharing the same space that has multiple uses. Is the man standing in front of the department store window there to window shop or is he there in search of another man? This ambiguity is captured so well in the cover photo. A young man on the street is looking back at two other men with their arms around each other. They are unaware that he is observing them. If the photo was taken out of context, how would we read it?  Is he a gay man attracted to one or both men? Or is he a straight man astounded by such open display of affection? This photo underscores Turner's question, "[H]ow do we know our cruisers when we see them?" I think the answer has to be that we don't, not always.

It must be pointed out that cruising, like voyeurism and exhibitionism, are about the visual. However, the motivation differs. Cruising is a more reciprocal activity. Whereas voyeurism is more one-sided and surreptitious and exhibitionism is more self-centered, more transgressive, more confrontational (in other words, blatant). Although cruising might be considered transgressive as well because it involves something forbidden by society--male-male attraction--but it is much more of a sharing or mutual appreciation experience.

Turner makes it clear from the outset that his study is a limited one, focusing mostly on those who are white, male, and middle class. He understands that "cruising as a street practice needs to be far more fully considered in relation not only to issues of gender but also to race and ethnicity."

Even though Turner's view is mostly Eurocentric (he does devote two pages to the black science fiction writer Samuel Delany's Times Square porn theatre experiences), it is still important to listen to what he has to say because his observations have some relevance to gay men in general. For example, he states that "The cruiser positively longs to be seen, but not by everyone, and not in all streets." I think that description can apply to all gay men of whatever race, ethnicity, or social background.

I did find one passage that was particularly noteworthy. In Turner's view, bathhouses are places that "have the potential to level out social determinants such as class." To some extent this is true, but then there are other considerations that may come into play such as race, age, looks, physique, mannerisms, etc. Elsewhere in the book, he quotes another writer who says cruising is "a type of brotherhood far removed from the male bonding of rank, hierarchy, and competition that characterizes much of the outside world." To say that rank, hierarchy, and competition are absent from cruising is a misstatement. Anyone who has spent any time in a cruising area knows that there is a pecking order. The ones who are young, good looking, and have a muscular build are the most favored. If a person doesn't meet the criteria, rejection is usually the result.

All in all, Backward Glances is worthy of our attention, if only to give us some insight into what lies behind the male gaze and how that gaze has transformed the urban landscape.

This is an excerpt of a book review that was originally published in the Gay and Lesbian Review (July/August 2004).