Common Sense	Common Sense Archive

I have just finished reading Gary Indiana's new book, Three Month Fever, which is his fabulous take on Andrew Cunanan and his lifestyles and murders-- two white-bread gay guys, a Jewish mogul, a religious fundamentalist, and an Italian designer of prostie outfits. Yes, Cunanan Celebrated Diversity! Not since Ed Sanders (one of the 60s music group The Fugs) wrote The Family, published back in 1971, about the Manson Family values and their various slaughters, has any author really limned the horror, vacancy, and latent homicidal urge in the world of Krappy Kalifornia-- and in the case Kwean-- Kulture.

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Indiana, an old friend of mine, has turned into a terrific reporter on the slime-beat, the margins, the hideous spectaculars (Euro-Disney), and the freakish outposts of soi-disant normalcy (see his essay on Branson, MO, in his book of essays-- just brilliant).

Having been enlightened by Indiana re Cunanan, it occurred to me that Andrew C. was himself an emblem of what I have called, at least for this piece, The Gay Seven Deadly Sins. There is a gay take on everything that straight life proffers-- and some gay takes on things never even imagined among the normals. We all know the Seven Deadly Sins; they are best depicted in those colorful panels by Paul Cadmus-- "Envy," done in 1947, weirdly looks like an amalgam of the likenesses of Nanci and Ronni RayGun, really odd.

But if Andrew Cunanan, whose public awareness, alas, may not have much enduring currency, as, my dear, each new act or acts of violence replaces the one or ones before (the school shootings and whatnot) is to be our cipher for the Gay Sins, perhaps we should begin by admitting our sensitivity. The word "sin" is value-laden and full of judgement. Perhaps instead of "sin," we could use the phrase "negative virtue." In which case Cunanan's "negative virtues" would include psychopathic lying, the mania for wildly out-of-place self-inventions, credit card Kweandom-- Indiana posits the idea that the first murder was because Andrew owed American Express $40,000. My dear, back in the late 80s and early 90s, I knew queans who ran up their AmEx cards to $50,000, often with trips to Thailand for some fun, and then, whoosh!, right into bankruptcy court, to wait out those horrible few months until the new plastic solicitations came in, as they always did. Cunanan had many other problems than mere debt-- massive debt a signature of success in his culture, especially when faking wealth. Excuse me, where is the news story?

Greed. Envy. High credit loads. Low self-esteem (or "selves-esteem," as AC had many). This seems to be a burden for some in gay world, especially those not related to the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire. Andrew was half-Filipino and half-Italian. He compensated his self-perceived deficiencies by reading John Preston's erotic classic, Mr. Benson, meant as a JO tale, not a How-To guide, as AC made it.

Which are the simpler sins? A little theft? The whole country is founded on theft. Do not include whatever the opposite of sloth is. It ain't industriousness; it's some sort of busy-ness, that maddening kind of busy carrying-on that drives you fucking crazy; you want to shout: "Just sit down on the bench and look at the garden." The hippies did have an idea.

Cultural Know-It-All-ism. Cunanan would try to impress his peers with his knowledge portfolio, seen every play, can mime every aria, seen every ruin, kirk, painting, disaster zone in Europe. Chatty and knows it all. Pure poison. Cunanan, who hailed from San Diego, would often pick up the young Navy guys at the bases there and just "Wow" them with his Hi-Level Gayola Kulture Rap. One weird thing: just as Andrew was working the clubs for the sailor meat, we find, at the same time Steve Zeeland, author of several books on the sociology of available GI guys, working the same loop. The oxygen gets a little scarce suddenly. And to blur matters even further, my roommate just returned from a gay trip to gay San Diego, wherein he and his companion were shown the sites of St. Jim by a wholesaler of the porno flickers; one highlight of the trip was the home of Andrew Cunanan. Celebrate Diversity!

Waste, of course, is the cardinal negative virtue which Cunanan represents, and not just for the gays, but for the culture, of which there are even better and clearer representatives. Andrew C. lived in a culture in which gay men were murdered in the most casual manner all the time, in which no one paid any attention to such things-- straight people do this better in Colorado, as in the Ramsey murder and the mass murder at Littleton; no one pays any attention at all, well, until after the media assault, the crime long over-- and Andrew followed suit. I recall a conversation I had my bookshop workplace earlier this year. A European gentleman was doing some book shopping. I had the radio on, which was beaming the impeachment trial of the President of the United States. At one pause in the show, the Euro gent looked up at me and asked: "Why is all this stupid exercise happening?" I replied: "We are, by mission and intent, a very wasteful and destructive country, even unto our very own, and even at the highest levels." He shrugged.

The 60s TV show "Naked City" always ended with this sign-off: "There are eight million stories in the naked city. You've just seen one of them." They left out the last line, one never said: Sorry, Pal, they're all the same! **

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