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January 8, 2018 843 × 581 dimitris-geros-cavafy-the-next-table
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Building Connections & Community for Gay Men since 1989

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Gay Wisdom – Today in Gay History

  • Born
  • 1901 -

    GLENWAY WESCOTT, Wisconsin author, born (d: 1987); A major American novelist during the 1920-1940 period and a figure in the American expatriate literary community in Paris during the 1920s Wescott was the model for the character Robert Prentiss in Ernest Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.

    His relationship with longtime companion Monroe Wheeler lasted from 1919 until Wescott's death. If you haven’t read Wescott’s The Grandmothers (1927) you are, quite simply, not really civilized. Not that there’s anything remotely gay about it. There isn’t. It’s simply a beautiful book, well worth discovering.

    Despite his literary reputation, Wescott published relatively little, but he continued writing his entire life. Having known almost everyone who was anyone in the arts during the past seventy-five years, he kept careful journals of his observations. The eventual publication of these journals will be a literary event. They provide one man’s record of who was who, and who slept with whom, during a good portion of the 20th century. Perhaps they will also explain the meaning of a spectacular Paul Cadmus painting that hung in his house. In it, three men, clearly arranged in a triangle, are sitting on a picnic blanket. The men are the photographer George Platt Lynes, museum curator Monroe Wheeler and Wescott himself.

  • 1955 -

    MICHAEL CALLEN, American singer, songwriter and AIDS activist (d. 1993); was a singer, songwriter, composer, author and AIDS activist. He was a significant architect of the response to the AIDS crisis in the United States.

    First diagnosed with "Gay-related immune deficiency" (GRID) in 1982, Callen quickly became a leader in the response to the epidemic. He was a founding member of the People With AIDS Self-Empowerment Movement among other organizations, and he testified before the President's Commission on AIDS and both houses of the U.S. Congress. 

    As a founding member of the New York Gay & Lesbian Community Center Board, and through his activities in other organizations around the country, he also became a leading voice in gay and lesbian politics.

    He was a founding member of the Gay a cappella singing group The Flirtations, with whom he recorded two albums. He also had a solo album, Purple Heart (Significant Others Records, 1988), which a review in The Advocate called "the most remarkable Gay independent release of the past decade." 

    In partnership with Oscar winner Peter Allen and Marsha Melamet, he wrote his most enduring song, "Love Don't Need a Reason," which he sang frequently at Gay Pride and AIDS-related events around the country. In 1993 he appeared in the films Philadelphia (as part of The Flirtations) and Zero Patience (appearing in drag as a singing virus, Miss HIV).

    Shortly before his death from AIDS-related complications in December 1993, Callen completed vocal tracks for 48 new songs. Twenty-nine of these compositions have been released as a double CD, titled Legacy, which garnered four Gay & Lesbian American Music Awards, including Album of the Year and Best Recording by a Male Artist. Legacy, recorded with the help of such prominent musicians as Holly Near, Cris Williamson, David Lasley, James Taylor, Greg Wells, k.d. lang, Fred Hersch, Arnold McCuller (Phil Collins) and Steve Sandberg (David Byrne, Ruben Blades) are a testament to Callen's commitment to the Gay and Lesbian community as well as his own passionate struggle for Gay identity and selfhood.

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