Common Sense	Common Sense Archive

Has this ever happened to you? You run into an old acquaintance. You haven't seen him in some time. You knew him and his boyfriend. Turns out, he and the old beau split (or boyfriend died) and he had a new mate, and the new mate, on whom your eye lingers, is a close variation of the one before. This isn't always the case, to be sure; there must be variations in human behavior, but it happens enough to prompt the question: Do they always seek a replacement who is a replica?

My first cat, Sergio, was given to me by Jimmy Marshall in 1972. That was the year Jimmy broke out as a famous children's book author and illustrator with the first of what would be his signature series, George And Martha. Marshall, at that time, was boyfriends with Harry Allard, and Harry, in the coming years, would provide Jimmy with some of the delightful texts for his illustrations, including Miss Nelson Is Missing (a fave with elementary skool kids) and It's So Nice To Have A Wolf Around The House (an animated film of which was made and nominated for an Academy Award). Jimmy and Harry had an unpleasant break-up and Jimmy started to take his own boyfriends.

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When Sergio was hit by a car and I had to have him killed, I called Harry Allard. Harry was my cat expert; he himself had six. Harry said: "I always tell people not to get another cat right away. If you do, that makes the cat seem like an appliance, replaceable with just another unit." And yet Marshall, who died of AIDS at age 50 back in 1992, utilized advice contrary to Allard's re cats: Jimmy hired, fired and replaced boyfriends without missing a beat. I met several of them. They were all the same physical type. They were all charming in that well-mannered faggot way (which the straight boys, at least then, did just not have), and Jimmy, in two or three instances, had the fellows who became boyfriends write texts for his illustrations for his rather amazing and prolific 20-year career in the kiddie book racket. Looking back on these matters, it occurs to me that, after Jim and Harry broke up--and I had been a friend of both--that Jim had more or less interviewed me as a Potential New Boyfriend. He wined and dined me, hosted a cocktail party for me and James Purdy when I brought Purdy to town for a reading. Marshall even asked me to write the text for a kiddie book. I did. Jim got it kicked around; it never went anywhere--story of my literary life--and I just reread it, and it's quite funny and touching; it's called Plotsky: The Sloppy Bunny, and any interested parties can drop me a line But Jimmy went on to New York and his home in Connecticut, where he died. I had a phone conversation in 1990 with the last boyfriend, and he was as gracious and well-mannered as his predecessors.

Is there a Boyfriend Assembly Line? How can it happen that in so small a world as gay life, someone like Marshall can find one after another who fill the specifications of his dance card? Are we really all just the same? Jim died; we had been out of touch for years. Allard moved to Mexico and I haven't heard from him since.

Still, the lesson of Jim's list of beaux provokes meditation. I had another friend named Jim, a dear friend from about this same time; I introduced him to Harry Allard, an evening of great amusement. Jim's lover, Tim, another friend, got sick and then died, after years of illness. Weeks later, my roommate and I ran into this Jim, a friend of both of us, and Jim had a new beau, not all too much different, in physical looks, from Tim. My roommate said to Jim: "Tim's not even cold in his grave." Los dos Jims taught me a lot: some can never be alone; some even line them up in advance, like planes waiting to land at Idlewild. They have stock in the Boyfriend Assembly Line, and get first dibs on the new product.

Does Ed White have the same type of boyfriend one after another? In a recent interview, he was asked why he stayed in Paris. "I like the men!" Are we all hard-wired in our erotic impulses, as Noam Chomsky has noted in our language skills? Can we never overcome the sameness that we fall back on? Will it come to the point that we can call up and order what we want on the Boyfriend Assembly Line? I can't say. But what I will proffer is the wisdom that if this does come to pass, I doubt I will be able to afford it, and, hunch of hunches, not much like the option. Go fish.

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