Arnold Zwicky's Blog

🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍🌈 🏳️‍🌈 three rainbow flags celebrating National Coming Out Day, which is also the anniversary of my wedding-equivalent to my (alas, long-dead) husband-equivalent Jacques Transue (in those days, there were no same-sex marriages, so no same-sex wedding anniversaries either; queers had to invent their own practices and occasions, which most of the rest of society, with some honorable exceptions, simply dismissed as illegitimate — and, yes, that still fills me with white-hot rage). And then coming out, a process that proceeded slowly and painfully through the 1950s and 1960s, flowering publicly in the 1970s, but was still attended by shame and despair and near-suicidal depression, until I slowly embraced my inner fag and transformed, in steps, into some kind of warrior queer, ending up where I am now, known in some circles for being a Famous Fag (who used to teach linguistics, many years ago, and still writes some mostly fluffy stuff about language). An unexpected development, not at all how I expected to be remembered, but not an unpleasant one; I could have done much worse. Especially since my coming out was such a mess.

So if you’re queerly inclined, I passionately recommend coming out, but see if you can do it better than I did. Of course you’ll have to do it in a way that suits your own circumstances, which aren’t exactly like anyone else’s; but learn from others, be gentle with yourself, and cultivate friendships. (I know, such conventionally generic advice, but not entirely useless.)

I will have more to say about coming out and NCOD. But first, since most of life is random happenstance, I’ll have a few things to say about today’s Bizarro cartoon, which has nothing to do with NCOD or husbands (of any degree of legitimacy) or queerness, but instead is about henchmen (of a particularly thuggish sort). And, by the way, about language, because in the cartoon Wayno (a) commits a groan-worthy pun that (b) is about English vocabulary.

The Wayno Bizarro strip of 10/11.

(#1) hencemen ‘men who utter synonyms of hence‘ as a pun on henchmen (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Wayno says there are 3 in this strip — see this Page)

From NOAD:

noun henchman: [a] mainly derogatory a faithful follower or political supporter, especially one prepared to engage in crime or dishonest practices by way of service: the dictator’s henchman. [b] historical a squire or page of honor to a person of rank. ORIGIN Middle English, from Old English hengest ‘male horse’ + man, the original sense being probably ‘groom’. In the mid 19th century the sense ‘principal attendant of a Highland chief’ was popularized by Sir Walter Scott, whence the current (originally US) usage.

Also from NOAD, a list of vocabulary items in a semantic field similar to henchman:

follower, supporter, assistant, aide, helper, adjutant, right-hand man, subordinate, underling, minion, lackey, flunkey, toady, stooge, acolyte, satellite, shadow, bodyguard, protector, British minder; informal sidekick, crony, heavy, man/girl Frday; North American informal body man.

But Wayno’s henchmen are decidedly thuggish, in appearance and dress (the one on the right is even wielding a crowbar, for breaking into places). Again from NOAD:

noun thug: 1 a violent, aggressive person, especially one who is a criminal: he was attacked by a gang of thugs. 2 (Thug) historical a member of a group or organization of robbers and assassins in India who waylaid and strangled their victims, usually travelers, and stole their belongings. They were suppressed by the British in the 1830s. ORIGIN early 19th century (in thug (sense 2)): from Hindi ṭhag ‘swindler, thief’, based on Sanskrit sthagati ‘he covers or conceals’. thug (sense 1) arose in the mid 19th century.

And with other items from its semantic field (I’m especially fond of hood — a clipping of hoodlum — and goon):

ruffian, hoodlum, bully boy. bully, bandit, mugger, gangster, terrorist, gunman, murderer, killer, hitman, assassin, hooligan, vandal, Yardie; informal tough, bruiser, hired gun; British informal rough, bovver boy, lager lout, hoodie; Scottish & Northern English informal ned; North American informal hood, goon; Australian New Zealand informal roughie, hoon; dated cutthroat, desperado; rare myrmidon.

NCOD and the anniversary-equivalent. From my 5/22/20 posting “The Age of Anxiety”:

Now I will indulge myself in quoting a big chunk of my 10/11/16 posting “News for penises: NCOD, Portlandia” on how we worked together as a couple. Having a best friend is good for anyone, but if you’re gay, having someone to stand with you in love and respect against a world that is often quite hostile is precious indeed. (Recall Arnold and Alan in [Torch Song Trilogy].)

From 2016:

How NCOD came to be our anniversary, when we never got to get married, is a story I’ve told elsewhere, but the short version is that if you haven’t had the ceremony you get to choose a date, and J suggested this one as symbolically fitting and not interfering with other events and holidays whose dates might have been more biographically significant.

So typically we took each other to dinner, often sushi (something I lured him into) and had noisy celebratory sex in the living room afterwards (the bedroom is so everyday, and the kitchen is way too small, unless you’re midget acrobats).

I’ll note here that neither J nor I was likely to be picked out as gay on the street. We dealt with our (potentially concealable) sexual identities in two very different ways. J sailed along in life just doing what he did, including some decidedly gay stuff, and talking about things matter-of-factly, so that he was often, ridiculously, surprised that people pegged him as queer. In no way distressed, just surprised. Absolutely endearing.

On the other hand, once I realized that I could do a kind of community service by being visibly, flagrantly, sometimes in-your-face, queer, through writing and incendiary clothing, I went for it. And Jacques was with me every step of the way, his arms around my shoulders, admiring the earnestness of my commitment, and clearly enjoying my performances. He never once suggested I was Going Too Far, and once, when we were in private, he actually applauded me and kissed me.

He always said the political and public stuff wasn’t his thing, but obviously it was, he just got to do it through me. I was his vehicle. (Yes, I miss him terribly, even after 13 years [and just as terribly, after 21 years, now in 2024].)

When I started writing extremely personal stuff about my sexual experiences, in the belief that writing about such things intelligently would be useful to others (and, of course, yes, fun), I asked J what his limits were for my writing about him, our sexual lives together, and our sexual experiences with other men, and he just said, write about whatever you want, all of it, just so long as I don’t have to read what you write. I said, you know this could mean you’re going to meet people who know really intimate details of your (extensive) sexual history, your body, and our lovemaking. So what?, was his response. He had no reputation to protect, he was just a guy, I was the guy with the reputation, and if I could write about my times at the baths or in t-rooms, who would care about his times cruising at the gym, or our anniversary sex in the living room?

In the end, of course, he wanted to read some of it, in postings to the Usenet newsgroup soc.motss, and he thought it was really really hot. And often funny. And sometimes perceptive. (Over the years he was a helpful critic of my writing and teaching.)

Coming out movies. Coming out is a theme in a great many movies about LGBT life (and a plot device in lots of gay male porn, but there it’s rarely treated with nuance or insight; the objective is to slide as quickly as possible into the action). A web search (now made difficult by the biases of AI searching) eventually led me to the odd site Focus Features, with its posting “Breaking Down The Closet: Movies For National Coming Out Day” from 10/11/18, where the 7 chosen films are deliberately all over the map. The list, with a (sometimes cryptic) comment from the compilers for 6 of the 7:

Boy Erased [on conversion therapy; just being released when this article was posted]
Milk You must come out
Brokeback Mountain The tragedy of the closet
Beginners Coming out at any age
Pariah Coming out in many ways
The Danish Girl Coming out in history
ParaNoman Animated film comes out
(#2)

And then (from my own choices) a terribly flawed movie with fine performances by the two principal male actors, especially by Michael Ontkean in the role of a young man in the process of coming out and entering the world of sex between men. From my 3/28/17 posting “Michael Ontkean”:

Making Love. Romantic gay relationships came to Hollywood in this movie, which was, however, extremely cautious in how it presented the two main characters’ sexual relationship. It did get them to bed together, but without any clinches, and I don’t think they actually got to kiss on screen — this ten years after the wonderful British film Sunday Bloody Sunday (which came complete with hot gay male kissing). From Wikipedia:

Making Love is a 1982 American drama film starring Kate Jackson, Harry Hamlin and Michael Ontkean. The film tells the story of a married man [Ontkean] coming to terms with his homosexuality and the love triangle that develops around him, his wife [Jackson] and another man [Hamlin].

Ontkean’s character is inexperienced with men, also searching for a long-term partner. Hamlin’s is an old hand at sex with men, and promiscuous. They are both satisfyingly masculine and hunky — no campy stereotypes here, but not a lot of physical contact either. (As a fan of male-male affection of all kinds, I felt cheated. It’s taken Hollywood a long time to get sort of comfortable with same-sex affection, especially between men.)

(Hamlin went on to a big role in L.A. Law and elsewhere, and in a few years Ontkean got the best role of his career [in Twin Peaks].)

 

This entry was posted on October 11, 2024 at 3:09 pm and is filed under Actors, Gender and sexuality, Holidays, Homosexuality, Lexical semantics, Linguistics in the comics, Movies and tv, My life, Puns. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.