CHAPTER FORTY-TWO -- IN BOSTON, PLEASE REMAIN FULLY CLOTHED WHILE DANCING...and TORONTO DOES NOT LIKE THE WORD "SUCK"
(Did You Sleep With the Models?)
Is there life after California?, I asked in Chapter Thirty-eight.
More to the point, how gay is gay life in Boston? Judge for yourself from Tom Stehling's September 1984 opening. "A friend of mine tells two stories that seem characteristic of Boston. In the first, he reports that one night at Chaps (one of Boston's most popular dance bars) he was dancing with a guy he had just met. They danced the night away, smiling and flirting. At last call, it seemed to my friend that one thing should lead to another, and he asked his new-found buddy, 'Would you like to go back to my place and maybe listen to music or whatever? ' (It was the 'whatever' that my friend was most interested in.) The boy replied, ' I can't go home with someone who has been dancing with his shirt off.' "
"In the second story my friend reports that he was walking home with someone from the gym and invited the guy to stop in for a beer. This invitation, however, was innocent; at the time my friend had a lover to whom he was faithful. The two of them sat chatting for a while and after the beer my friend excused himself to go to the bathroom. When he came back into the living room, his visitor was sitting on the couch stark naked. Neither of them commented on this change but went right on
talking as if nothing were different. ' Would you like another beer?' Eventually my friend excused himself again. This time when he returned his visitor was fully clothed. They wrapped up their conversation, and after a handshake the visitor left."
The rest of Tom's droll article covers Boston, and Bostonians, thoroughly. He's the kind of travel writer who could have produced a lively guidebook, especially since he lived in Boston's heavily gay South End.
Two months after the Boston tour, Tom Stehling wrote about Provincetown. Although it's best known as a summer destination for gays and straights, Tom preferred the town in winter, when "much of the population is gone. What is left is a happy joining of two communities, a gay community and Portuguese families, many of them still fishermen as their ancestors were. The two groups live and work together harmoniously. In winter a high percentage of Provincetown citizens are unemployed, and to survive people must work together.
“Everywhere you see community bulletin boards advertising services, and many of these signs include notations like 'Prices negotiable,' 'Special rates for unemployed,' or 'Barter arrangeable.' At one of the guest houses, a handsome gay couple in their thirties are raising a fourteen-year-old straight boy, the son of the older gay man in the couple. The arrangement works fine in Provincetown. Transferring from his New Jersey school to Provincetown High, the boy was amazed that he was not searched at the door each morning for weapons. He says he has heard no flak from the other kids about having a gay dad. He does, however, tend to be most friendly with the children of other gays and lesbians. The communities feel the differences between them, but they are at ease with each other."
After atmospheric descriptions of the town in fall and winter, Tom settles down by the fire with a good novel and decides, for himself and on behalf of readers, that "you've never been so relaxed, and you realize that you don't miss P-town in summer at all."
Greg Jackson, another Bostonian, wrote about Massachusetts's two famous offshore islands in the same issue. "If a gay man insists on a gay vacation, Provincetown is the answer. However, a visit to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket can provide a lot more -- and a lot less -- than Provincetown. Both islands have the same kind of natural beauty, but without the carnival atmosphere. It is true that neither has a meat rack, leather bars, or sex in the dunes, but for a restful interlude or a romantic get-away, either island is preferable to the more frenetic pace of Provincetown
"Smaller, wilder, and more remote than Martha's Vineyard, Nantucket is a patch of moorland where the intoxicating smell and feel of the sea are everywhere. There are really two Nantuckets -- the town and the island. Nantucket town is quintessentially New England -- nineteenth-century New England -- preserved like a fly in amber. To walk along its cobblestone streets lined with mansions and gray, weathered cottages is to walk through another era, an era when tall-masted whalers plied the seas. Nantucket is the most carefully preserved town in America, but it is a living community, not a reconstruction like Williamsburg.
"The other Nantucket, the island itself, is a land of wild, primitive beauty. Here and there on the island are other tiny settlements, along with scores of vacation and retirement homes. But the island remains uncannily pristine -- the great windswept beaches, marshy coves, and fresh-water ponds. The open, undeveloped areas are covered with dense, low-lying vegetation: heather, beach plum, bayberry, cranberry, and thousands of wildflowers."
While we're in the neighborhood, more or less, a quick detour to Canada. George De Stefano set out, in December 1984, to tell "What Gay Men Do in Toronto." On his visit, he found a stuffy, conservative city "suffering from a Victorian hangover" in which gays, despite setbacks, had become increasingly visible and militant against persecution by police and others such as right-wing religionists and powerful old-school politicians governing the province of Ontario. Even so, he kicked up his heels among the city's gays, whose joie de vivre belied their kinship with that Massachusetts city suffering from a puritan hangover. That's because, in Toronto as in Boston, "guys tend to keep their shirts on when they dance."
Canada's officialdom was certainly no friend to our magazines during my tenure, nor before. In the May 1978 issue of Mandate is a letter from George Mavety "To Our Canadian Readers."
"We apologize," he wrote, "to our many thousands of Canadian readers who found upon purchase of the February issue of Mandate that four pages had been removed. Due to a ruling by Canadian customs, it was necessary to have these pages removed in order that the February issue could be sold in Canada.
"Since Mandate has a steady monthy readership in Canada, we felt that it was better to remove the four pages and have the issue distributed rather than to deny our readership the entire magazine. We can assure you that we are doing everything within our means to see that this problem does not arise again."
As editor, I followed a list of prohibitions regarding photos and text specifically for Canada. For instance, men in nude layouts must not touch; in stories, certain sexual gratifications considered extreme must be eliminated or else (since censors often are obtuse) couched in elliptical language. It was never entirely clear just how erect an erection could be before Canada chopped it off. As for acts of sexual congress, Canada does not like the word “fellatio,” much less that U.S. vulgarism, “suck.” Those who must engage in such behaviour should close their eyes and think about Ottawa.
The situation didn’t improve in the decade after I left the magazines. In 1993, Publishers Weekly ran a news story titled "Canadian Customs Targets Book Shipments by Gays, Activists." In this regard, self-righteous Canada resembled such oppressive regimes as the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Sandra Mackey, in her book The Saudis, reported that "When international news publications such as The Economist, Time, or Newsweek are late reaching the stands, it is a clear signal that they contain something that offends the Saudis or those in power. To stop dissemination of objectionable stories, armies of laborers are mobilized to slash and tear publications, page by page." (Mackey spent four years in the country with her husband. She smuggled out the notes for her revealing book as though from the Soviet Union or any other totalitarian state.)
Canada in earlier years was never the great liberal paradise that some Americans imagined, though it did provide heroic refuge for draft resisters during the Vietnam War. These men were advised, however, to arrive in Montréal, if possible, rather than elsewhere in the country, since the province of Québec was likely to grant immediate landed immigrant status to asylum seekers.
In June 1985, Greg Jackson raved so about "La Ville de Québec/Québec City" that he no doubt would gladly have sought refuge in Canada had he been of draftable age in the Vietnam years. So extravagant was his infatuation with the city and the surrounding region that while touring the Ile d'Orléans, a twenty-mile-long island in the St. Lawrence River, he decided he could stay there forever. "The island is an idyllic setting of farmland and small quaint villages of eighteenth and nineteenth century vintage. Even the island cemeteries are cheery -- immaculately maintained churchyards full of flowers and surrounded by stone walls gently lapped by the river." He told Peter, his partner: "When I die, bury me in one of these churchyards." Peter pointed out, however, that since Greg was neither Roman Catholic nor Canadian, burial in a Québec cemetery might be difficult.
Not one to take no for an answer, however, Greg answered that since he hoped to return many times before his final summons, they would surely have time to work out the details. Meanwhile, his ovations included Québecois scenery -- cobblestone streets, the Château Frontenac, city walls and fortifications, tiny manicured squares in the Old City, classic French cuisine and the "country French" cooking of rural Québec province, and the men. "In true French fashion," he opined, "Québec men are a bit effeminate -- by American standards. To a greater extent than straight men on both sides of the border, French Canadian men are concerned with their appearance. Confronted by slightly-built men (French Canadians have not been caught up in the body-building craze) who are dressed in clothes of continental cut, often carrying a shoulder bag, smelling of cologne, and communicating a body language that is soft and unthreatening, the American visitor wonders if everyone in Québec is gay. Alas, I must report that this is not the case. But there are enough gay Québecois to warrant a half-dozen gay bars in the city." He pointed out also that la Ville de Québec is the only walled city north of Mexico.
You may not hear the word “suck” while you’re in town, but “sucer la bite” is a useful phrase if that’s what you want to do. And, Monsieur, if someone asks, Tu aimes enculer les garçons? — he wants you to perform the other activity. Even though this is Canada, you’re not expected to add, “s’il vous plaît.”