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Here's the image that represents so much of what has been lost to me. I enter a great big old movie palace. The carpet has a swirly floral pattern and is slightly threadbare. The movie grinds on, in the second of three reels. It stars Barbara Stanwyck, Doris Day, Thelma Ritter, Burl Ives, John Gavin, James Garner; it doesn't matter. I climb the stairs to the balcony, pick a seat, light up a cigarette and get folded into the erotic ambiance that is such a place. I check out the other men who are dotted about the rows. Later I will visit the men's room, always located in the basement and simply palatial in its accommodations and I may meet a guy or I may not. I may watch the movie again. Or go to another theatre just down the street. I might see four movies a day, go home and write about them. I may stay overnight with a man I meet. In a world like this, time stops. A world of choice.

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Where are the movie theatres with balconies? No cinema these days permits smoking on the premises. And the movies themselves? I haven't seen a theatrical release in several years and have no plans to schedule one. I sometimes watch an old movie on TV and turn it off 20 minutes later. Whatever it was about the movies, movie culture, and movie palaces, it is now gone from me for good. What happened? And what does this mean?

It seemed that movies were once about grown-ups and it seemed they were once about sex. When I was young, both these things interested me: grown-ups and sex. And the movie palace was an emporium of fabulous images and possible sex, as noted by Frank O'Hara in his poem "Ave Maria": "Mothers of America, let your kids go to the movies!they may even be grateful to you for their first sexual experience, which only cost you a quarter, and didn't upset the peaceful home" Entertainment seems to be for the young, and made more aggressively so in the past few decades­ just about anyone can trick the young. The young and the gay. Why is entertainment culture so important to gay life? And why don't gay men let it go, as I have?

Not long ago, I was at an Indian restaurant, dining with friends who were roughly my age (early 50s). As the meal ended, we lingered and chatted; the conversation turned to the career of Lucille LeSueur, also known as Joan Crawford. I put in my two cents and thought the conversation would move on to more substantive matters. A half hour later, they were still going on about Crawford, her co-stars, her gowns, her make-up and hair. I had had it. Queens! Since I was paying for the dinner, I informed them that it was over and not another word about Crawford!

I have noted in this column, at an earlier time, and I think as a joke, that for merchandising purposes for some select products, teenaged girls and adult gay men are essentially the same market (think Ricky Martin, for example) and will respond to the same pitch, with the gay men being a little more hard-edged and hungry. I recall the time even case-hardened Marky Mark, in his Calvin undies days, expressed some apprehension about prancing about on stage in front of an auditorium filled with roaring gay men.

Let me not wander too far from the Magic and Myth of the Movies, as noted by the great cinematic tea-leaf reader, Parker Tyler. Movies are not necessarily entertaining (many are boring), they are rarely instructional, except about the mythology of great pagan cultures, as Tyler observed. The fabulous film stars are usually not very interesting (see the aforementioned J. Crawford). The writing and cinematography are rarely outstanding.

So why do we get hooked? Well, there is the camp aspect­ especially in the context of those old movie palaces wherein the screen images are really 40 feet big, and having a 40-foot Bette Davis or Mae West flapping around is a sight to be seen! There is the monumental bad taste that all that Hollywood money can buy­ and put on display! Then there is the sex­ Boyd McDonald's beat in his classic book, Cruising the Movies.

Strange to say, but during the years of the production code, the sex energy was often more erotically bulletined than in recent years when we have the rating system and can show anything. The homosexual tension among the men was put right on the screen. A whole generation of gay boys (of which I am one) fell under the influence of all those sandal and toga epics­ from Demetrius and the Gladiators up to and through Cleopatra. Author Steven Saylor was once asked why he wrote murder mysteries set in the last days of republican Rome. He noted that he had seen Cleopatra and it had changed his life. Gore Vidal wrote that when he worked on the script of Ben-Hur, he wrote in that scene between Charlton Heston and Stephen Boyd wherein it is demonstrated that­ with that look, that linking of arms, that toast­ the two characters had been lovers­ and one wants to start up again. The joke was on Heston; he didn't have a clue. Q: How gay were the 50s? A: Pretty swish. And the camp then was campier­ how else explain the inexplicable success of Liberace?

I watch the old movies today; it's like cleaning out the fuzzy former "food" from the back of the fridge, something you once liked and saved but went sour. Ars longa?

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