Common Sense	Common Sense Archive

Memory being what it is-- an iffy thing at best-- it is wise to check up what's in the cortex. I was chatting with my dear friend Charley Shively recently-- we are on the phone with each other nearly every day for the last 35 years; that's a lot of yakking. I reminded him of one of his witticisms from the 1970s. It was the occasion of the advertising manager of the Gay Community News-- the first weekly gay and lesbian newspaper in the history of the USA-- exiting to set up a new rag, one oriented to the gay lifestyle: dropping the politics, the news from lesbian world, etc. Charley noted: "When you go down that road, there are only six things in gay world to write about: relationships, movie reviews, substance abuse, celebrity interviews, therapy culture" and I forget the last one, probably cooking and recipes.

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ut, of course, he was right. It's like the gay press, slim as it has been over a half century, took a constipation pill. It's a hard pull, and always has been. But the memory of what gay and lesbian publications achieved in the 1970s still strikes me as remarkable.

I have kept journals, scrapbooks, and daybooks over the decades. Looking at these artifacts is stimulating to the memory, but increasingly tiresome as I visit them repeatedly. For two reasons: first, I have already looked at them again and again and they remain the same; and, sad to admit, they should be better. But, alas, one plays the hand that one is dealt.

The memory of things seems not to be very important in this culture. Gore Vidal has called our nation the United States of Amnesia. Our institutions seem determined to pump out lies, often of gargantuan proportions, that it's difficult to establish what is true and then put it into memory. The memorization of lies leads to dysfunction.

My dear mother, 86, recently had a heart attack. One result of this event was brain damage and subsequent memory confusion. A neurologist came to see her. Apparently, these experts have a standard list of questions to ask folks after a cardio event. He asked Mom, "Who's the President?" Mother said it was Mr. Dawes. Dawes, if memory serves, was the Vice-President under Cal Coolidge. (Dawes was co-recipient of the Nobel Prize for his work on the Dawes Plan, regarding WWI reparations.) Next the good doctor asked Mother what year it was. "1907," she said. A long life certainly has its advantages, but when the memory is interrupted, it looks less attractive.

I was trying to remember some of the old columns I have written for this publication. I think there was one from the '90s; I was going on about the Judy Garland queans and the Maria Callas queans, that type, and I think I ended with a question: is there in gay life such a person as an Arlene Francis quean? I thought this question would linger in air forever. Guess what? The new memoir by Kevin Sesums, Mississippi Sissy, has just been published. It's about growing up gay in the south in the 1960s, a lot of craziness, etc. On the dust jacket cover, there is this text: "His hero wasn't Mickey Mantle. It was Arlene Francis." A lesson in gay life-- if you wait long enough, all things come to pass. Trouble is: who remembers the great Arlene Francis? Even Connie Francis? Or, most memorably, Francis The Talking Mule? Or Vice President Dawes? Memory is a place where we have been but a terrain it may be hard to navigate.

There are some accounts in recent memory of the Stonewall Riots that pretty much got a lot of things wrong. But since that signal event was largely ignored by the established press, how is it possible to establish what happened?

One book on Stonewall worked from oral accounts, certainly a valid research technique. But how reliable are the memories of individuals after all those years? In some law schools, an instructor will perform an exercise. An event will occur-- a mock assault, etc.-- and then the law students will be asked to recount what they have just observed. Each observation will vary, the point of the exercise. The finding of facts is not an easy thing. Think of the blind men and the elephant.

I am impressed with what some folks remember and can learn. I'm thinking of author Ethan Mordden, whose new book is All That Glittered: The Golden Age of Drama on Broadway 1919-1959. Mordden has dedicated much of his life to writing about the Great White Way. Mordden was recently interviewed by Jesse Green in the Sunday New York Times. Mordden is never shy with a phrase and when asked about the eclipse of Broadway culture by other media, he thought it was unfortunate. "When Cool came in, it was the end of theater then theater is dead, because theater is moral, it's glamorous, it's about being smart, it's about sophisticated gay people helping the heteros understand that they're stupid and boring."

That's our Ethan. But in his final comment, Mordden did have a comment on memory. "I was with a young friend, playing him the tape of Barbra Streisand's final night in Funny Girl. We were both gloating over this wonderful thing, and I said, 'Did you see Funny Girl?' And he said, 'I wasn't born then.' I hadn't even thought of that. To me it's all last Thursday."

And to me, it's all a summer day in the mid 1970s.

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