Husbands, Wives, and Lovers: The opening theme of a short-lived sitcom offers an escape from the "job, house, wife, kids" mandate

During the spring of my senior year in high school.  I devised a clever scheme to avoid having to date girls: I would ask out a supermodel-cheerleader, way out of my league.  Then, when she laughed hysterically and hung up, or more graciously had to wash her hair that night, my parents would "console" me by letting me borrow the car anyway.  So on Friday nights I went out with boys, to movies, to get pizza, to Leonard Bernstein's Mass at Augustana College, to the spring musical.

We would get back to my place or his place about 9:00 and turn on the tv set just in time to hear the jazzy, risque theme song to Husbands, Wives, and Lovers ("and luuv-errrrs"), produced by gay-friendly comedian Joan Rivers.

 It was the first time any man and woman on tv had lived together without being married, and hearing about it made us feel grown-up and sophisticated and sort of dirty.  Luuv-eerrrrs....

I just wanted to watch the beefcake-heavy opening credits,  in which five women approach men in the hope of amorous activity, and are rejected. (I don't know the names of any of the characters).

1. Cynthia Harris tries to get the elderly Stephen Pearlman interested, but he's listening to his own heartbeat with a stethoscope.

Stephen Pearlman (1935-1998) appeared on L.A. Law, Seinfeld, and Die Hard with a Vengeance.  He is not related to Michael Pearlman of Charles in Charge, starring Scott Baio (left)

2. The vain Charles Siebert wrests a mirror from Claudette Nevins' hand and uses it to admire himself.

Charles Siebert (1938-2022) appeared on Trapper John MD, Dallas, Matlock, and the Love Boat.  Although he posed for gay magazines early in his career, he was married to a woman for 19 years.

3. Lynne Marie Stewart tries to get  hunky, open-shirted Eddie Barth (left) interested, but he's busy eating a sandwich.

Eddie Barth (1931-2010) appeared in Alice, Magnum PI, Fame, Night Court, and Men in Black: The Series.  

4. Mark Lonow waits in anticipation while Randee Heller strips, but he doesn't like the results, and rejects her.

More after the break

Muscleboys in French Class: the Signe de Piste

During my senior year in high school, I thought myself too mature for the boys' adventure books in the Green Library, so I asked my French teacher for something about "adventure" with "no girls in it."  She reached onto her bookshelf and gave me one of those pulpy French paperbacks: Guy de Larigaudie, Yug.  A boy living in prehistoric times who domesticates animals, discovers fire, and travels to distant lands.  And is drawn as a semi-n*de preteen.

Ok, that wasn't quite what I was looking for.  I was 16 years old, not really into kids.  Maybe two teenage boys together? 

Les tambours de l'ete (Summer of the Drums), by Theodore V. Olsen. Michigan Territory, 1832, settlers and Indians each mistrust each other.  Only two teenage boys. Kevin and the Indian To-Mah, can help them reconcile.

Both are drawn as slim, golden muscle gods in loincloths or altogether nude, clinging together in an idealized Old West.

Ok, but I didn't care for Westerns.  Something a tad more contemporary?

Mon Ami Carlo (My Friend Carlo), by Gine Victor.  A new boy arrives at a dull boarding school in Italy. A thin boy with a pale face, ebony hair, and eyes like stars.  Milo instantly fell in love with him.  They bedded down for the night in their underwear, their smooth hard chests glowing in the moonlight.

Now I had to ask: what was this publisher who specialized in teenagers in love, and who was this illustrator who created endless pages of muscle gods?

The publisher: Signe de Piste, a collection of boys' adventure novels published between 1937 and the 1990s, most with gay subtexts.

The illustrator: Pierre Joubert (1910-2002), who illustrated many scouting publications as well as many of the Signe de Piste series.  He  specialized in idealized semi-n*de teenagers, muscular, blonde when he could get away with it, enjoying the pleasures of "comradeship."

With Signe de Piste, the Green Library, Alix and Enak, Tintin, Corentin, and Spirou, how could gay boys growing up in France ever feel alone?

Golden Cities, Far: In junior high, we write a heroic fantasy novel with absolutely no connection to "The Lord of the Rings"

I discovered The Hobbit in sixth grade, The Lord of the Rings in junior high, and thought it the best thing ever written. Heroic fantasy!  Elves, dwarfs, and wizards fighting the Dark Lord in an alternate Medieval world!  Infinitely superior to sword and sorcery (about mighty-thewed barbarian heroes in an ancient world), and to those dreary naturalistic novels about high school basketball stars that teachers were always pushing at us.  Even better than science fiction.

Around eighth or ninth grade, my friend Darry and I started working on our own alternate Medieval world -- if we couldn't find a "good place" in our world, why not make one of our own?   

We developed a gazetteer-full of new countries, wrote historical timelines spanning thousands of years, compiled detailed genealogical charts, and invented a dozen languages of Elves, Dwarves, and Men (well, some words in each). We got ideas from fantasy novels, myths, folklore, the histories of obscure countries, and anything else we could get our hands on:

The country of Runoe after forgetting the name of Runde Island in My Village in Norway.

The forest-dwelling Colemonas of Jotunheimr after the Norse giants and Coleman camping equipment. 

The Dark Lord, Moi, after a book in the junior high library, In Search of Moi (we hadn't studied French yet, so we pronounced it Moh-ye)

We worked every day at lunchtime and after school, on Saturday and Sunday afternoons, during holidays.

Fantasy worlds must be used as the setting for novels, so by eighth grade we were working on a plot about a Midwestern teenager named Jim swept away through a time-space warp to the world of Toulbium, where he gathered companions to fight the Dark Lord Moi.

Everyone we told about the story screamed “You’re plagiarizing The Lord of the Rings!”

 But we patiently pointed out that:

1.  Jim is rescued by Ray when he enters the world of Toulbium.  Frodo and Sam  Frodo and Sam already know each other.

2. Jim and Ray travel west to Montenia, not east to Mordor.

3. There are Eluses instead of Elves.  

4. Jim is black.  There aren't any black characters in Tolkien.

5.  Montenia is surrounded by dark forests, whereas Mordor is bounded by mountains.

6. Instead of throwing the One Ring into Mount Doom, Jim throws a magic sword into Pair Daedeni, the Cauldron of Life.

7. Jim becomes a born-again Christian. (I was Nazarene, remember?)

Every Saturday we took the bus downtown to Readmore Book World to spend our allowance on heroic fantasy novels for research.  They were part of the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, bright, shining paperbacks with evocative titles: The King of Elfland's Daughter, The Broken Sword, The Wood Beyond the World, Beyond the Golden Stair, Golden Cities Far.

But there were some problems:  

More after the break

Coming out with Barry Manilow. That's right, I said "Barry Manilow"

Speaking of singers that you couldn't avoid hearing during the 1970s, I spent my entire three years at Rocky High and most of my four years at Augustana College  running in the other direction while Barry Manilow's syrupy love! love! love! love! crooning spewed forth from transistor radios, car radios, the p.a. at school, record stores, tv...but there was no escape

Junior High.

1. "Mandy":

I remember all my life, raining down as cold as ice.

Well, he got that right -- all my life, I've remembered that song, no matter how much I don't want to.

2."It's a Miracle": 

It's a miracle, a true-blue spectacle....

At least he's over his relationship with Mandy.

3. "Could it be Magic"

Baby take me, high upon a hillside, high up where the stallion meets the sun...come, come, come into my... 

This is the first song I heard that I knew was about having sex, although I wouldn't be asking anyone to come, come, come into my....for a few years.

Tenth Grade:

4. "I Write the Songs": 

I write the songs that make the young girl cry...I am music, and I write the songs...

Barry Manilow is music?  Rather full of himself, isn't he?

5. "Trying to Get That Feeling Again": 

I've gone up, down,all around,  trying to get that feeling again. 

You just need to relax, Barry.  It can be tiring going...um....up, down all around.

6. "This One's for You": 

This one will never sell, they'll never understand, I don't even sing it well.

He's got that right.  The song won't sell, he doesn't sing it well.

Eleventh Grade:

7. "Weekend in New England." 

Last night I waved goodbye, now it seems years -- I'm back in the city, where nothing is clear.  

I'd rather be in the city than stuck in a small factory town in the Midwest.

8. "Looks Like We Made It": 

Do you love him as much as I love her, and will that love be strong when the old feelings stir?  

Barry is talking to someone in love with a man about how much he loves a woman.  I can't figure out what's going on.

Twelfth Grade: 

9. "Daybreak" 

It's daybreak if you want to believe, it's daybreak, no time to grieve. 

Repeat 38 times. Don't try to figure out what it means. I hav no idea.

10. "Can't Smile without You": 

Can't laugh, can't sing, finding it hard to do anything.  

So that's why his singing is so bad -- he's broken up with someone!   Quick, get back together!

11. "Even Now"

Even now I think about you when I'm climbing the stairs, and I wonder what to do so she won't see.  

You still thinking about Mandy?  It's been four years!

More after the break

Spring 1977: On the Brink of Busting Loose

In the spring of my junior year in high school, when I was starting to accumulate college catalogs from all over the country -- indeed, all over the world -- and hoping to get away from the oppressive influence of parents, church, and heterosexism -- a new sitcom appeared on Wednesday nights after Good Times called Busting Loose. 

It starred the 20-year old Adam Arkin as Lenny Markowitz, a cute Jewish boy -- just as I was reading My Name is Asher Lev, and watching Lanigan's Rabbi, with their homoerotic Jewish subtexts.  And meeting Aaron, my first Jewish friend, who was gay but didn't know it yet.

Lenny tries to distance himself from his parents by getting his own apartment -- a terrible one.  The wallpaper has ducks on it.

He has a crush on his next door neighbor, Melodee (Barbara Rhoades), who dates for a living -- "I'm a great date!" she explains. But she's actually a paid escort, not a... you know.

  She's always saying things that sound like sex but really aren't: "Can I borrow some ice?  My date threw his back out."

But I was more interested in Lenny's close knit group of childhood buddies (plus a coworker), various personalities and levels of hotness: the nerd Lester (Danny Goldman), the bad boy Vinnie (Greg Antonacci), the hunk Woody (Paul Sylvan), and Allan (Stephen Nations), whom I don't rememer.

There were only 21 episodes, in the spring and fall of 1977.   No gay characters, no nudity.  You had to be there, just at the brink of "busting loose."

Paul Sylvan also embarked on a musical career, and posed naked and steamy for the cover of this album.

Stephen Nathan was in The First Nudie Musical (1978).

And Adam Arkin has had a long career, with many gay-positive projects, such as East of A (2000) and Kids in America (2005).

Rod Stewart: Gay Rumors, Heterosexual Songs

This song has been going through my head for two days:

It's late September and I really should be back at school
I know I keep you amused, but I feel I'm being used
You led me away from home, just to save you from being alone

You stole my heart, and that's what really hurts

"Maggie Mae" (1971) is about a college boy who hooks up with an older woman, and finds that she has taken control of his life.  I had a similar experience with my first boyfriend Fred -- an older man (well, 28) who convinced me to leave home, drop out of college, and follow him cross-country to Omaha. I lasted five miserable weeks.

Rod Stewart's songs are overwhelmingly infused with "girls! girls! girls!" heterosexism, but when you are growing up in a world where gay people are assumed not to exist, you find meaning where you can. 

"Twisting the Night Away" (1972)
Here's a fellow in blue jeans, who's dancing with an older queen
dolled up in her diamond rings, twistin' the night away
Man you ought to see her go, twistin' to the rock and roll
Here you'll find the young and the old twistin' the night away

I didn't realize, at age 11, what a "queen" was, but by the time I got to West Hollywood, I did.

"Tonight's the Night" (1975):

Come on angel my hearts on fire
Don't deny your man's desire
You'd be a fool to stop this tide
Spread your wings and let me come inside

I didn't realize, at age 14, that this was a graphic image of heterosexual sex. I thought he was trying to get someone to "open up" metaphorically, to find an emotional connection.  During my first year in high school, I was trying, with little success, to find something "real," a boy I could actually care about, amid the incessant "date girls!  have sex with girls!" rhetoric.

"You're in my Heart" (1977).

I didn't know what day it was 
When you walked into the room
I said hello unnoticed
You said goodbye too soon

During my junior year in high school, I was depressed because I had never experienced this jaw-dropping, forget-your-name attraction.  Well, I had, but I didn't recognize it, because I thought that boys could only ever be attracted to girls.

"If Loving You is Wrong, I Don't Want to Be Right" (1977)
Your mama and daddy say it's a shame
It's a downright disgrace
Long as I got you by my side
I don't care what your people say

The song is about a girl in love with a married man, but it could easily be applied to "the love that dare not speak its name."

Back in the 1970s, Rod Stewart had the androgynous air of a drag queen in training, and his highly publicized friendship with "bisexual" Elton John raised some rumors.  But closeted gay performers are usually homophobic, just to be on the safe side, and Stewart has always been gay-positive. 

His "Killing of Georgie" (1977), about a gay guy who leaves his small town for New York, and then is murdered (not in a homophobic hate crime), was the first pop song to talk about gay rights. In 2016, he noted that his youngest son Aiden, age five, liked dressing up like a lady. so he might be gay (most likely transgender, or just having fun).

The Homophobic Horrors of Gym Class

The homophobic horror that is gym class began in 1855, when the state of Ohio made the ill-fated decision to require it of all students.  It took off during the 1920s, when "physical culture" was all the rage in Europe, and students were doing gymnastics in the yard.

By the time I entered junior high, the diabolical structure was in intact.

1. The "class" was actually called Physical Education or "p.e.," but only girls said that.  Boys had to say "gym," even if the teacher insisted.  

Got that?  Better not slip up, or you would be called a "fairy" or a "girl."

2. The two most gifted athletes in the class would then become team captains, and choose their team members.  "Fairies" were constantly ridiculed and degraded during the process, and left unchosen at the end, while the two team captain argued over who had to take them.  "I'm not taking the fairy -- you take him!"  "No way -- no girls on my team -- you take him!"

Then we played a sport.  No instruction in rules or strategies -- the "teacher' assumed that we already knew the rules.  If we asked, we were yelled at: "Don't be a smart-ass!  You know the rules!"

3. In junior high the sport was usually dodge ball, which involves trying to kill each other with hard round projectiles while yelling homophobic slurs: "Take this, f*g!"

4. In high school the sports were football in the fall, basketball in the winter, softball in the spring.  Same procedure: no instruction, two jocks picking teams and deriding the "fairies" while the "teacher" looked on.

Football was the worst.  "Stand here, facing this big, hulking man-mountain.  You're going to try to stop him from passing this line."

I just stepped aside and let him through.

We also got brief instructional tours, single class sessions, of golf, archery, and tennis, barely enough to learn what the equipment looked like. 

And rope-climbing.  I never understood that one.

I was very happy during my junior year, when the "teacher" gave up and just gave us free days to do whatever we wanted.  I ran around the track.  No homophobic taunts, no humiliation, and no projectiles hurled at you.

Big Bad Brucie

I am a child of the television era; the tv was on from the moment we got home from school until well past bedtime, except during dinner.  We watched while playing, doing homework, reading, a constant, pleasant background to our lives.

Radio was trivial: the KSTT Top 40 Hits played every morning as we were getting ready for school, and sometimes late in the evening.  It was like an alarm clock.  You never deliberately listened.

Until the fall of 1975, my sophomore year in high school, when a friend told me about a late-night radio program, Dr. Demento.

It specialized in parodies and novelty songs.

The first night I listened, the playlist included:

"Dragnet Goes to Kindergarten"
"Pickle in the Middle with the Mustard on Top"
"Marvin's Duckie"
"Chicken Fat"
"They're Coming to Take Me Away"
"The Lumberjack Song"

And "Big Bruce," by Steve Greenberg.

Well at the beauty salon every morning at ten
Big Bruce arrived and kind of tip-toed in
He wore bell bottomed pants and a polka-dot tie
And whenever he spoke, it was just to say 'Hi'

And everyone knew when he swished into town
You could smell his perfume for miles around
He stood six foot five, and weighed 106
With a curl in his hair and a smile on his lips

He dies when his beauty salon catches on fire, and he goes back inside to fetch his purse.

That's what heteros thought gay men were like in 1975.

Many still do. This is Big Gay Al, from Southpark.  Grant Stone and Trey Parker still think gay men lisp and swish.

I had no idea that gay men existed in 1975, but I knew all about swishes:  boys who believed so strongly that they were girls, that they actually became girls, or rather a monstrous boy-girl hybrid: though male in form, they lisped, minced, swished, carried purses, wore dresses and perfume and make-up, called you "Thweetie," and were usually named Bruce.

Except the swishes I knew were figures of disgust and dread: they waited patiently in schoolyards and back alleys, breathing softly in the shadows, until an unsuspecting boy approached.  Then they pounced!  All it took was a slim, bejeweled hand placed on your shoulder, or a soft lisping whisper in your ear, and you would change, inevitably, into a swish.

Big Bruce was certainly ridiculed, laughed at, and looked down upon, but he was no threat.

"Big Bruce" was first released by Randy Sparks of the New Christie Minstrels in 1961.  He meant it as a parody of "Big Bad John," a Western ballad by Jimmy Dean (the guy who sells sausages)

On the queer music website, Randy Sparks writes: "Most gay men had no problem with laughing at the ditty, but any lesbians in my audiences seemed to immediately take offense, so I was careful where I sang it. I didn't want to make anyone uncomfortable."

I would certainly be yelling "homophobe!" now, but in 1975 it was a pleasant alternative to the horror the swishes usually brought.

The song was very popular in the homophobic 1960s, recorded by several other groups, including The Country Gentlemen (1966), The Faux Pas (1967),  Bill Stith (1973), and most recently Bird & MacDonald (1993).  Steve Greenberg's version is from 1969.

Homophobic Moments in Music: It's a Man's World

From the moment I turned 13 to the moment I moved to Texas at age 24, my life consisted of a nonstop interrogation of girls! girls! girls!

From parents, teachers, Sunday school teachers, bosses, neighbors, and friends:
"Is there any girl in school that you like?"
"That girl is cute -- why don't you ask her out?"
"You'd have a girlfriend if you weren't so picky!"

From friends, classmates, bullies, jocks, and strangers on the street:
"Doesn't that girl have large breasts - why don't you ask her out?"
"Which actress on tv would you like to have sex with?"
"How many girls did you have sex with last night?"

So the last thing I needed during my senior year in high school was the most uber-heterosexist song on Earth.

During Homecoming, the orchestra had to play for the Gong Show, an adaption of the popular game show where singers could perform for a panel of judges until they were "gonged" off.  The one who made it through the entire performance without a "gong" was the winner.

There were 20 songs, mostly pop hits of the era: "Convoy," "I Write the Songs," "Stand Tall," "You Make Me Feel Like Dancing."

Some dinosaur numbers that got quickly gonged: "Blue Suede Shoes," "My Boyfriend's Back," "Luck be a Lady Tonight."

A duet, "Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better," from last spring's musical, Annie Get Your Gun.

"Voi che sapete," an aria from The Marriage of Figaro, got gonged after just a few bars.

The song that won: "It's a Man's Man's Man's World," originally recorded by James Brown, the flamboyantly feminine but apparently heterosexual "Godfather of Soul" (1933-2006).  It's a heavy-beated, immensely sexist number about how men are in charge of everything:

This is a man's world, this is a man's world, this is a man's world.
Men make cars and trains, electric lights, toys, well, just about everything.
If you're a man, you're in charge.
But you're nothing without a woman or a girl.
Yeah...you're nothing, nothing at all, without a woman or a girl.
You're lost in the wilderness
You're lost in bitterness

Great, just what I needed to hear.

Things haven't changed much since the 1970s.  Recently the song was played over a gay male couple who appeared on So You Think You Could Dance, to emphasize the producers' belief that same-sex relationships were worthless, "lost in bitterness."  The judge suggested that they try being with women: "Who knows, you might like it."

See also: So You Think You Can Dance; and 12 Songs I Hate.