A complex tale that begins with a follow-up to my 3/1 posting “The grace of lovers”, about the sharing of enthusiasms with my first male lover, Larry (the pseudonymous Danny Sparrick in my writings about my sexual life). That’s Larry1. There are gripping stories about our time together and his life now, but the tale of the three Larrys is fabulously intricate as it is, so I’ll put off posting about these parts of Larry1’s life for another time. And focus on our exchange of enthusiasms, which will lead, circuitously, to Larry2 (in NYC, some years after Larry1). And then, a recent posting about a French conference on interjections, in which a 1982 dissertation on discourse particles I directed at Ohio State brings us Larry3, who wrote it.
There is still more, a epic of geographical (and social) wandering for both Larry1 and me; he grew up in Del Mar, a beach community in San Diego County, and ended up in provincial Japan; I grew up in little suburbs of Reading, in the Pennsylvania Dutch country, and ended up on the San Francisco peninsula; in between these terminal points, he and I more or less wandered the world (we both taught in China along the way, but not in the same place or at the same time; we both lived in England at one point and were able to get together in London then; and once we rendezvoused in Washington DC). Perhaps these odysseys will make another posting — but, again, too much for today.
The grace of lovers: an exchange of enthusiasms. From my 3/1 posting, which was
part three of a celebration of the poets Jack Spicer and Frank O’Hara, who came to me as a gift from my first male lover; Larry brought me both Spicer and O’Hara, and steered me to Stephen Sondheim as well.
Friends share their enthusiasms — that’s one of the benefits of friendship — but with lovers this sharing can become an intimate connection of its own, a lover’s gift, a lover’s grace. (That was over 50 years ago, and our romantic, intensely sexual, and intellectually passionate coupling long ago morphed into a loving friendship that has lasted both of our lives.) Of course, we exchanged gifts, as lovers do; here I talk about some of the things that Larry gave me.
He introduced me to Spicer and O’Hara and David Ignatow’s Rescue the Dead and got me to appreciate Sondheim. In exchange, I introduced him to Ned Rorem’s diaries, got him to appreciate W.H. Auden, and gave him books. In response to my 3/1 posting, Larry wrote:
I see the collection of O’Hara’s poems you gave me in 1972 is inscribed “To Larry. Happy Birthday! – Arnold”. I remember the moment you handed it to me and feeling amazed that you’d thought to give it to me. The book is worn with age, like me, like us, but retains the special feel it had for me that day. That the book is still with me is telling, since my move to Japan, via China, was limited to two suitcases.
Of course, there were a number of other gifts. Most memorably, though, and very early on, the Rorem diary (alas, now lost) that impressed me so much … and, much later, a collection of Auden’s poems I still dip into now and then.
My posting about Rorem. In which my New York friend Larry — Larry2 — puts in an appearance. Well, the posting is about Like With Like versus Opposites Attract, and that leads to Larry2, who quotes Rorem to me on the subject. From my 7/26/10 posting “Like/unlike”:
A reminiscence, with Ned Rorem in it, sort of. Back in the [late] 70s, I was in NYC on business — negotiating a public television series on language, a collaboration between Ohio State Linguistics and the Yale University Media Design Studio, and, eventually WNET in New York (our project was never funded, but Gene Searchinger eventually got funding for an excellent series called The Human Language: Linguistic Society of America clips here), and staying with my friend Larry.
Larry and I went to dinner at a restaurant in the West Village, where we found my OSU colleague Robert (also on the tv project) and his lover Howard (a psychiatrist in New York), already seated at a table for two. Robert and Howard were physically similar and dressed very similarly, in what you could describe as Casual Village Leathergay costume, and their gestures and speech styles were mirrored.
About ten minutes into the evening, Larry leaned across our table to me to remark, “How strangely like attracts unto like.” Or at least that’s how I remembered it.
Recalling this a few days ago, I realized how much Larry’s remark sounded like a quotation, from something or other, but what? Larry … [and I] still keep in touch electronically, and he replied quickly to a query about the occasion, saying:
I remember the dinner and the comment. The line I was quoting (or maybe just paraphrasing) is: “Always, strangely, like with like.” Can’t vouch for the commas.
My memory of the source is less firm. I feel fairly sure it’s Ned Rorem – very probably in one of his diaries …
It’s a great line, whoever wrote it, and I’m astonished that Google yields nary a hit.
Ah, Rorem! I still have the volume in question, so I could reply immediately to Larry:
You just have to know where to search: {“Ned Rorem” “New York Diary” “like with like”} gets it; the secret, obviously, is knowing that it’s the New York Diary (1967) … Now, armed with the Google Books hit, I’ve been able to find it in my copy, and photocopy it.
You got it almost exactly: “but always, paradoxically, like with like”.
(Sometimes, some people can produce near-verbatim recall.)
It’s from 1959, in a section with Rorem’s description of the baths he frequented in NYC and philosophical reflections about them:
… ceaseless efforts at cross-breeding … couplings of white with black, beauty with horror, aardvark with dinosaur, panda with pachyderm, skinny-old-slate-gray-potbelly-bald with chubby-old-slate-gray-potbelly-bald, heartbreakingly gentle with stimulatingly rugged–but always, paradoxically, like with like.
(Rorem is famously open and detailed about his experiences and feelings, including his sexual exploits and wild infatuations. His descriptions of gay sex drip with distaste for the physical acts and their setttings, all the while fueled by an intense, unquenchable desire for other men’s bodies, with all of it blanketed over in romanticized fuzz.)
So Rorem, reporting from the bathhouse district of Gayland — places that belong uneasily to both a fantasy world and the real one — gave me the tag Like With Like.
(Rorem, celebrated setter of songs — I have a number on my iTunes — and diarist, is now 86. He and Larry and I have all survived the manifold pleasures of our younger years to enjoy the pleasures of our advancing years (cue Rossini). Sadly, Robert and Howard did not.)
In Gayland, as in the actual gay and straight worlds, association (Like With Like) and contrast (Opposites Attract) are both operative principles. In clichés: a gay man is searching for his twin self, and also for the other half that he needs to make himself complete. (Of course, in fantasy no actual searching needs to done, since the desired other can always be satisfyingly conjured up.) The drive to associate with people you (would like to think you) are like is very strong — it’s a major factor in sociolinguistic behavior — so in fantasy association tends to dominate contrast, in choosing buddies, tricks, and lovers. Association is then the main dish, contrast the condiments and spices.
The French proposal for an interjections conference. Which brings us to Larry3, who gets a reference in the proposal. From my 10/1/23 posting “Typologizing interjections”:
The reference (as it appears in the bibliography in the proposal):
Schourup, Lawrence. 2001. Rethinking well. Journal of Pragmatics 33(2001). 1025–1060.
Here I really perked up, because this is one item from a considerable body of work on discourse particles in English by Schourup, beginning with his Ohio State dissertation:
Lawrence Schourup, Discourse Particles in English Conversation. OSU PhD dissertation, 1982.
— OSU Working Papers in Linguistics, 1983.
— Outstanding Dissertations in Linguistics (Routledge), 1985.
And yes, I was the adviser, and I am extraordinarily proud of that. Though mostly my role was not to get in his way unnecessarily, and to offer useful comments on his research plans and thesis drafts.
It was something of a surprise to see his 2001 Journal of Pragmatics piece on English well listed as an exemplary description of an interjection in a specific language, but it’s a fair cop. What a delight.
The three Larrys. Though I suppressed several giveaways in my texts, alert readers will probably have twigged to the fact that these three Larrys are one: Larry1, my first male lover, in 1970 a grad student in linguistics at Ohio State, who took a leave from OSU, spent some time working in NYC (as Larry2 in my telling), eventually returning to OSU (as Larry3 in my telling) to write that fine PhD dissertation. Ending up as a professor in Japan, with a long-time male partner, but having to conceal his homosexuality and this relationship for the sake of his job. He’s retired now, and times have changed, so now I can talk about my first male lover Larry (not Danny) in my postings (something that pleases him); and he and Isao can present themselves as partners in public and work on getting their relationship officially recognized in Japan (there’s a hitch with the US).
Soave sia il vento,tranquilla sia l’onda
Leave a Reply