Common Sense	Common Sense Archive

Not long ago, my dear roommate lost his mother. Well, he didn't lose her; she died. He hadn't seen her for 24 years. After her death, I got the call from the probate court in Connecticut. Seems Mother had left a sizeable estate-- something around ten million pazzoozahs. I passed on all the poop to roomie, and he took over from there. The probate back-and-forth went on for months. Turns out that Mummy had deliberately disinherited her two children, and left the piles of booty to her grandchildren, my roommate's nieces and nephews, and these kids could only inherit after my roommate and his sister were long dead. Family values, Connecticut-style. What did I learn through all this mess? In France, children cannot be written out of wills. The French, wise to the ways of human relationships, simply assume the parents will resent and hate their offspring and the kids feel the same. Under French law, all inherit. Anglo-AmeriKan Law remains primitive by comparison.

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Why did roomie's mother do this-- cut her two children out from their inheritance? Well, we kicked it around. Mother was born into the lower-middle class. During the war, she was a WAVE or WAC and met an officer; she married up. She wanted but one thing-- to be a country-club lady, drinking and playing cards with the other gals. She got there, but the price was marriage to a man she probably didn't much care for and bearing two children to secure her position. At the father's funeral, back in 1975, the last time roommate saw Mother, she told him-- making reference to his being queer-- "You are a traitor to your race!" Roommate, back in touch with sis after all these years, asked sis what Mums had told her friends about him when they asked, as other mothers will do to a woman with children. Sis said: "Mother told them that you were in residence in Italy." I suppose that's where people like The Mother thinks all the faggots should go, perhaps where so many gay men did go when family pushed them out. Think of Norman Douglas. One of the gay groups should give a Gay Appreciation Award to Italy for providing shelter to the refugee faggots. I recall back in 1961, my first step-father, at the dinner table, and for whatever reason I cannot recall, said: "The faggots all go to San Francisco." I was pleased to hear this bit of news-- though, you wonder, who told him? I think it was Time magazine, famously homophobic at that time and well into the 70s. This, in tandem with roommate's ordeal, made me understand that there really is a heavy price to heterosexuality-- one of the lesser parts of it being the straights' obsession with homosexual life and culture and always getting it all wrong.

The other day, a chum and I were discussing The Kinsey Report, published in 1948, a seminal volume, which, evoking a lyric by Billie Holiday, is still news today. Friend noted that when Kinsey interviewed working-class men, one question was: "What do you think about when you are having sex with your wives?" All guys said: "Nothing." Well, of course this isn't true. Everyone has something going in their sex machine in the head-- sometimes that same old tired fantasy that's been there with you for years, never worn down, unlike the stone at sea's edge, by the fantastical tide. No, working-class men would not tell Kinsey what they were thinking while fucking because working-class people understand they are at risk by the middle class and the ownership class when it comes to detailing those things in life that middle-class folks feel are their entitlement. Some say class is the great story in Amerika; others think that race is our great story and conflict. Both are top-of-the-marquee events. I think class now needs some more spotlighting.

The most tired thing in gay life is the British upper-class passion for the working-class lads, though, you know, E.M. Forster settled in quite nicely with a policeman friend and his family. And, though things change, some working-class guys can pitch themselves, in the gay world, more successfully than the lads from the middle class. The heavy baggage of British homosexuality sort of ruins the American scene. Walt Whitman wrote the template for these shores, the commutarian band of brotherhood, still my model, Mary. Sex is more important than romance when it comes to class. Tom Driberg, the radical English MP, was always chasing after the English working-class boys, sucking them off, often in only marginally private spaces-- he thought the sperm of the working-class lads had some energizing effect, the ultimate utility of Fabian Socialism.

I've always thought the gay identity nixes the class background-- for the working class it is a way up; for the highbrows a way down. Think of World War Two, the great traumatic change to the sytem, the event which gave us the gay movement-- all the guys and gals in those bunks, from Everyplace USA and both sides of the track, meeting all new types. It's like Maya Angelou reading her poem at Clinton's first Inaugural, with its riff on different faces, different people, different backgrounds, and promises of a new beginning: "Good Morning!" **

Author Profile:  Mitzel
	Mitzel was a founding member of the Fag Rag collective, and has been a Guide columnist since 1986. He manages Calamus Books near Boston's South Station.
	Email:	mitzel@calamusbooks.com
	Website:	calamusbooks.com