Today in Gay History

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April 10

Born
John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester
1644 -

JOHN WILMOT, Earl of Rochester, British poet, born (d: 1680); was an English libertine, a friend of King Charles II, and the writer of satirical and bawdy poetry. He was the toast of the Restoration court and a patron of the arts. If you’ve never read the poetry of Rochester, run, don’t walk, to the nearest library and, after leafing through the pages, order a copy of your very own. He is easy to read, witty, very funny, and delightfully obscene.

He’s also proof positive that the world didn’t begin with Queen Victoria, his age being almost as unzipped as he. Rochester was an incomparably dissolute rake whose sexual philosophy was clearly “any port in a storm.” Consequently his poetry extols the joys of every possible type of human coupling.

One poem, possibly unique in the language, is about two men entering a woman fore and aft, but obviously making love to each other. Other poems are about the pleasures of boys: “If by chance then I wake, hot-headed and drunk, / What coyle do I make for the loss of my Punck? / I storm and I roar, and I fall in a rage, / And missing my Whore, I bugger my Page.”

Rochester was once banished from the court of Charles II for smashing the king’s clocks and dials when they refused to answer his drunken question, “Dost thou fuck?” He was like that; he was also burned out at age 33. The film "The Libertine", based on Stephen Jeffreys's play, was shown at the 2004 Toronto Film Festival and was released in the UK in 2005. While taking some artistic liberties, it chronicles Rochester's life, with Johnny Depp as Rochester, Samantha Morton as Elizabeth Barry, John Malcovich as King Charles II, and Rosamund Pike as Elizabeth Malet.


Augustus Montague Summers
1880 -

On this date the eccentric English author and clergyman AUGUSTUS MONTAGUE SUMMERS was born (d. 1948). Known primarily for scholarly work on the English drama of the 17th century, as well as for idiosyncratic studies on witches, vampires, and werewolves, in all of which he professed to believe. He was responsible for the first English translation, published in 1928, of the medieval witch hunter's manual, the Malleus Maleficarum.

Despite his conservative religiosity, Summers was an active member of both the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology, to which he contributed an essay on the Marquis de Sade, and of the Order of Chaeronea, a secret society which cultivated a homosexual ethos. Summers' gay interests also show in his edition of the poems of the sixteenth century poet Richard Barnfield, which partly are openly homosexual.


Olympic fencer, Kin Hoitsma
1934 -

Kinmont "KIN" HOITSMA  was an American fencer born on this date (d:  2013); Hoitsma competed in the individual and team epée events at the 1956 Summer Olympics. He later became a teacher. He was a long time lover of photographer and designer, Cecil Beaton.

Hoitsma met Beaton in 1963, when the photographer was in Hollywood creating costumes and sets for the film of My Fair Lady. It was an unhappy time for Beaton because he liked to move on swiftly from one project to the next, but on this occasion he was held in Hollywood by contract ; he fell out with the director, George Cukor, and there was a period when the two men refused to speak to one another.

One weekend in March, Beaton escaped to San Francisco, where he wound up at a bar called the Tool Box and met the handsome, 6ft 3in Kin Hoitsma . “His apartment had dried grasses on the windowsill and eight daffodils were very charming in a black pot,” Beaton noted.

An unlikely friendship formed, and soon Beaton was to be found hiking in Big Sur and camping out under the stars in the Yosemite Valley. Hoitsma was able to discuss art, but he had never heard of Chanel — or, for that matter, of Beaton. The relationship was greatly encouraged by Christopher Isherwood , and Truman Capote reportedly told Beaton he had never looked better.

On his return to Britain, Beaton invited Hoitsma to move in with him. Hoitsma arrived in London in June 1964 to study at the Slade and was given modest accommodation at 8 Pelham Place, Beaton’s London home, and the smaller spare room at Reddish House, Broadchalke.

Hoitsma met Princess Margaret and became fond of Pauline de Rothschild and Countess Brandolini. But after a year he told Beaton that he had to leave: he was yearning for the hills around San Francisco. For his part, Beaton, though devoted to Kin, was not cut out for domesticity; but he was still devastated . The two men remained friends to the end.

Kinmont Trefry Hoitsma was born in Cooperstown, New York, the son of Ralph Hoitsma, a salesman in the paper trade, in turn the son of a cattle rancher in Wyoming who had emigrated from Holland.

The family was peripatetic, moving between the East Coast and the Midwest. Kin graduated from Shaker Heights High School in Ohio, and went on to Princeton University where he studied Greek and majored in French.

In 1956 he competed in the Ivy League Fencing Championship, losing narrowly in the final match, against Columbia. He went on to the collegiate finals, and in November that year, aged 22, fenced for the United States at the Melbourne Olympics. The men’s epée team did not make it beyond the first round, though in the individual men’s epée Hoitsma reached the quarter-finals, defeating the eventual gold medallist, Carlo Pavesi.

On his way back from the Games Hoitsma stopped off in San Francisco, and liked it so much that he settled there, studying Architecture at Berkeley before taking a variety of jobs. He then took an Art History degree at San Francisco State University. It was during this period that he met Beaton.

After his return from London, Hoitsma settled back into academic life, contentedly teaching history, literature, philosophy and religion at Chabot Community College for the next 30 years. On one occasion Beaton even dropped in on one of his English Literature classes, and became absorbed watching Hoitsma dashing “from one end to the other of a blackboard – an Olympic athlete of the mind at work”. In 1967 Hoitsma published The Real Mask, a dissertation on Edward Albee’s play Tiny Alice.

Hoitsma lived on Potrero Hill, where he cultivated old-fashioned roses and was visited in 1967 by Christopher Isherwood. In later life he retired to a home in Oakland, California. He died in September 2013.


Birder Christian Cooper
1963 -

CHRISTIAN COOPER, born on this date, is an American science writer and editor, and also a comics writer and editor. He is based in New York City. 

Cooper is currently a senior biomedical editor at Health Science Communications. On May 16, 2022, National  Geographic announced Cooper would host a show on their American TV channel called Extraordinary Birder, following showing species of bird around the world. A release date for the series remains to be determined.

Cooper was Marvel's first out gay writer and editor. He introduced the first gay male character in Star Trek, Yoshi Mishima, in the Starfleet Academy series, which was nominated for a GLAAD Media Award in 1999. He also introduced the first openly lesbian character for Marvel, Victoria Montesi and created and authored Queer Nation: The Online Gay Comic. Cooper was also an associate editor for Alpha Flight #106 in which the character Northstar came out as gay.

Cooper has written stories for Marvel Comics Presents, which often feature characters such as Ghost Rider and Vengeance. He has also edited a number of X-Men collections, and the final two issues of the Marvel Swimsuit Special.

Cooper was thrust into the spotlight in May 2020 after Amy Cooper (no relation), a white woman with a dog, called the police saying he threatened her and her dog. In a video recorded by Christian Cooper, Amy Cooper is shown calling the police, telling 911 dispatchers, "I'm in the Ramble. And there is a man, African American — he has a bicycle helmet. He's recording me and threatening me and my dog."

Amy Cooper was charged with a third-degree misdemeanor over making the false claim, but the charge was later dropped, given her lack of a criminal background. The Manhattan District Attorney's Office says it dropped the charge after Amy Cooper completed five restorative justice sessions.

In an interview with The New York Times, Cooper said his love for bird-watching began at age 10, and he told the newspaper he "was all in" when National Geographic approached him about the possibility of a TV show nearly a year and a half ago. "I love spreading the gospel of birding," he said in the Times interview.


Died
Evelyn Waugh
1966 -

EVELYN WAUGH, English writer, died (b. 1903); an English writer best known for such satirical novels as Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Scoop, A Handful of Dust and The Loved One, as well as for broader and more personal works, such as Brideshead Revisited and the Sword of Honour trilogy, that are influenced by his own experiences and his conservative and Roman Catholic viewpoints.

Many of Waugh's novels depict British aristocracy and high society, which he satirizes but to which, paradoxically, he was also strongly attracted. In addition, he wrote short stories, three biographies, and the first volume of an unfinished autobiography. His travel writings and his extensive diaries and correspondence have also been published.


1975 -

MARJORIE MAIN died on this date (b: 1890; Born  Mary Tomlinson, she was an American character actress and singer of the Classical Hollywood period, best known as a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract player in the 1940s and 1950s, and for her role as Ma Kettle in 10 Ma and Pa Kettle movies. Main started her career in vaudeville and theatre, and appeared in film classics, such as Dead EndThe WomenDark CommandThe Shepherd of the HillsMeet Me in St. Louis, and Friendly Persuasion. 

She was born near Acton, in rural Marion County, Indiana. She was the second daughter of Reverend Samuel J. Tomlinson, a Disciples of Christ minister, and Jennie L. (McGaughey) Tomlinson. Mary's maternal grandfather, Doctor Samuel McGaughey, was the Acton physician who delivered her.

After Tomlinson left her family, who had moved to Kentucky, she spent the next several years studying dramatic arts in Chicago and New York City, despite her father's disapproval of her career choice. Tomlinson adopted the stage name of Marjorie Main during her early acting career to avoid embarrassing her family.

Main married widower Stanley LeFevre Krebs, a psychologist and lecturer, in November 1921. They met while she was performing on the Chautauqua circuit. Main accompanied Krebs on the lecture circuit, handling the details of their life on the road. They had no children together, and made their home in New York City. Main performed with touring companies and in New York theaters on a part-time basis throughout her marriage. She also began her Hollywood film career in 1931. Main considered this period "the happiest years of her life." She returned to a full-time acting career after Krebs died of cancer in 1935.

The Krebses' marriage was a nontraditional one. By her accounts, the marriage was happy, but not particularly close. Main claimed to be "brokenhearted" following her husband's death, but also explained that his death was "like losing a good friend. Like part of the family." Main's biographer, Michelle Vogel, quotes a later interview in which the actress related: "Dr. Krebs wasn't a very practical man. I didn't figure on having to run the show, I kinda tired of it after a few years. We pretty much went our own ways, but we was [sic] still in the eyes of the law, man and wife." Vogel also revealed that Main had a long-term relationship with actress Spring Byington.

Main, who is best known for playing "raucous, rough, and cantankerous women" on-screen, was characterized as "soft-spoken, shy," and "dignified" when she was off-screen. Main became a popular character actress of the 1940s and 1950s. She appeared in diverse roles on the stage and in more than 80 films. The "cornball humor" of the Kettle films endured in television shows, such as The Beverly Hillbillies and Green Acres, of the 1960s.


Noteworthy
Eli Andrew Ramer - Two Hearts Dancing
2022 -
ELI ANDREW RAMER, author and former White Crane columnist ("Praxis") is a magid, a traditional Jewish religious itinerant preacher, skilled as a narrator of Torah and religious stories. He is the author of the classic Two FlutesPlaying. Now he has authored a companion to that seminal work, TwoHeartsDancing. Eli and I had a brief conversation about it:
 
Bo: So ...what prompted you to write a "companion" to Two Flutes Playing?
 
Eli: I never planned to write a companion volume to "Two Flutes Playing." Then again, I did, but life derailed/erased it - for almost 20 years. "Two Flutes Playing" is a channeled book that I compiled in the 1980s. First published by Joseph Kramer from the Body Electric School in 1991, it's gone on to be reissued several times by different presses, including White Crane, and has had its own interesting life wandering around the world of gay men's spirituality.
 
Around the time it was first published I wrote a story that led to another story that was beginning to become a book illustrated by my dear friend and Gay Spirit Visions Conference co-founder Raven Wolfdancer. When he was murdered I put together the drawings and stories we'd created into a small desktop published book, and when I sold the last copy I more or less forgot about it.
 
Flash forward. Covid arrives. A strange echo of our lives with AIDS. Locked away from the world I went through and organized all my unpublished work, came upon the stories I did with Raven, and sent them to the publisher who had reissued "Two Flutes Playing" - Wipf and Stock. They said it was too short. I started going through unpublished poems, added them to the old stories - and "Two Hearts Dancing" was born.
 
Bo: So while Two Flutes Playing was channeled, this is more of a collection of your thoughts in isolation?
 
Eli: What's channeling? What's inspiration? Who are our muses? Certainly Johnny Moses was a muse, some hours before we met, awakening one of the stories in the first part of the book. And Raven Wolfdancer was clearly a muse, embodied, in addition to creating the art that graces the first part. And the poems in the second part were inspired by lovers and strangers and other writing, so while not channeled in quite the same way as Two Flutes Playing, this new book is also a received text.
 
Bo: And do you think Two Hearts Dancing is a revival of that companion to Two Flutes? Or is something altogether new?
 
Eli: I call it a companion volume and not a sequel, but now that it's been birthed, I do see the two books as siblings, the two of them dancing in and around each other, in and out of time.
 
Bo: Can you talk a bit about the role of story-telling in the LGBTQ community? And how you see it relating to the prophetic tradition?
 
Eli: A story is a line of thread linking two worlds together. A story is a line of saliva linking two kissers together. A story in our community is connector, a delight, and a tool for survival in an often-hostile world. We often find ourselves in words and stories in ways that we might not otherwise, in hearing a word for the first time and thinking - "Oh, that's me!" A word, a new pronoun - worlds rippling out from words in wet delicious ways.
 
Stories began when we learned how to talk. This is a story. The first human language was manual and not verbal. It was signed and not spoken. We invited speech so that we could keep telling stories when it was dark. And then we invented fire. I believe - this is a story - that the very first storytellers were people like us, wandering in between female and male, the living and the dead, between words and silence. I believe that the first elders and prophets were people like us, living between female and male, the living and the dead, between words and silence, and able to link them all together, as with thread, as with the wet space between two people kissing, when they pull apart.
 
Bo: What are you reading these days?
 
Eli: Covid and the death of 40 people in my life since July 2017 altered my brain. I can hardly read or watch movies or take in much of anything, but I do thrive on going for four-hour walks. I used to read a book a week, usually three or four at the same time, one by my bed, one on the kitchen table, one next to the toilet, and one in my backpack for when I go out. Now it takes me more than a month to finish a book. What I'm reading, slowly - A Time to Mourn, a Time to Comfort: A Guide to Jewish Bereavement by Ron Wolfson, and The Lying Life of Adults by Elena Ferrante.
 
Bo: Could you describe Two Hearts Dancing for readers?
 
Eli. The book isn’t a coming out guide so much as it is a guidebook on coming in—coming in to who we are as mystics, lovers and healers. The first section has fourteen tales that are grounded in gay archetypes and ends with a responsive reading to be used in gay men’s rituals. The second part, Poems of Our Tribe is comprised of twenty-four poems that are mythic, mystical explorations of embodied spirituality, sexuality, and love.

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