Boring suburban gays and the death of bohemia- Page 2

[Scripps2]

Posted: 5/13/15 at 3:33pm

I watched the 1.5 hour documentary the BBC produced about Hockney a couple of months ago. What struck me is how fresh his current work is but that, when he spoke, there was not the intellectual depth I might have expected. His gifts as an artist may be entirely instinctive rather than having been thought through at some level.

A relative of mine went to the same Methodist church in Bradford as Hockney when they were teenagers in the 1950s and she has a great story to tell about him. I've dined out on it a few times myself and I still intend to - invitations may be PM'd to me.

 

 

 

[best12bars]

Posted: 5/13/15 at 3:44pm

There are more options now for gay people in this country and in this world, so there is no singular "gay lifestyle" anymore, but that doesn't mean Bohemia is dead.

Get married and move to the 'burbs if you want. Live a single life in the city, be a counter-culture artiste, or pretend you're the only gay in the village. Many choices now.

But "long for the old view, Georgie?" You just sound like Mother.

[Auggie27]

Posted: 5/19/15 at 11:33am

Not to be glibly reductive (and ageist), but: yes, it's tough to get older.  That's the subtext, screaming. The culture and indeed the world change, as do priorities.

Updated On: 5/19/15 at 11:33 AM

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 5/19/15 at 11:39am

I read this article yesterday and think it must be a misprint?  Everyone knows gay men never wanted anything but orgies prior to 2007.

 

The Same-Sex Couple Who Got a Marriage License in 1971

[Kad]

Posted: 5/19/15 at 11:41am

Also, talking about how gays are boring and you miss bohemia is kind of messed up when a 22-year old died in a drug-related accident in your home a few years ago.

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 5/19/15 at 11:42am

He didn't live long but oh how he lived!

[Kad]

Posted: 5/19/15 at 11:42am

Right up until he drank drain cleaner in a drug-induced fit, how he lived! But I'm sure he wasn't being bohemian correctly.

Updated On: 5/19/15 at 11:42 AM

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 5/19/15 at 11:55am

Better dead than heteronormative!

[Mister Matt]

Posted: 5/19/15 at 12:06pm

Bohemia is a phallicy in your head.

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 5/19/15 at 2:02pm

Can there be anything more conformist and conventional than feeling that one must conform to sub-culturally prescribed (or is it the dominant culture that is doing the prescribing?) non-conformity and unconventionality just because one is a man who loves and or ****s men?

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 5/19/15 at 2:30pm

 

^This. There's far too much emphasis/importance/value placed on "being different."  How's about just being yourself?

[darquegk]

Posted: 5/19/15 at 4:34pm

Food for thought: if the AIDS cure/vaccine comes to pass (as they've said it would for years, and a news story came out about today), would the old orgiastic Bohemia rise again, or has mainstreaming effectively burned that bridge?

In other words, Bill Compton or Russell Edgington?

[henrikegerman]

Posted: 5/20/15 at 3:48pm

I don't see that darguegk.  The ins and outs of Bohemian vogue aren't taking their cues from hiv.   And the orgy never stopped... it just went - to a large extent - digital.... or at least digitally mastered.

Updated On: 5/22/15 at 03:48 PM

[Phyllis Rogers Stone]

Posted: 5/20/15 at 4:00pm

Even if a cure or vaccine for AIDS was in my hands tomorrow, I think I'd be too afraid that something new* was going to surface to have casual unprotected sex with anyone. 

*Or mutated, like the antibiotic resistant gonorrhea

 

[Wilmingtom]

Posted: 5/20/15 at 7:58pm

I would argue Hockney's definition of "ordinary."  I find having a spouse and kids and a backyard and a grill and a dog and a mortgage rather extraordinary.  He's out of bounds judging others by his own experiences and interests.  If by "Bohemian" he means sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, that's still going on, even in the suburbs.  He must be looking in the wrong places or not looking at all. 

[GavestonPS]

Posted: 5/20/15 at 8:32pm

And I'm sure I'm not the only one who had my fill of casual sex and drugs before I settled down with a man with two children.

After almost 40 years, I really can't imagine anything (or anyone) I missed that I would trade for our kids and grandkids.

But if Hockney seems condescending now, it doesn't compare to the criticism my partner and I faced in the late 1970s, when we were sometimes treated as if we were "traitors" to the gay movement because our lifestyle wasn't sufficiently unconventional.

(This is not a complaint. We've always had plenty of gay friends, though we also lost some friends who couldn't believe our choices weren't a condemnation of theirs. I'm just sharing a bit of oral history.)

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 5/20/15 at 9:04pm

Sometimes your opinions make me want to puke but my gerd does not need that right now.

[Wilmingtom]

Posted: 5/22/15 at 1:14am

^ If you're referring to Gaveston's post, there is no opinion in it.  He's simply describing his experience. 

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 5/22/15 at 1:56am

From 1981 on I had it up to here with reformed whores who settled down after having their fill. 

Thanks, Wilmington!

[Wilmingtom]

Posted: 5/22/15 at 2:09am

And if you're still doing your whore thing all these years later, more power to you. But there's no reason to demean those who have moved on.  And you're welcome.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 5/22/15 at 12:52pm

Thanks!

[Liza's Headband]

Posted: 5/22/15 at 1:37pm

Agreed completely, Wilmingtom. No need for anonymous strangers to virtually attack others for their life choices. It doesn't matter if you're heterosexual, homosexual, or asexual. You do you. No Gay Activists can take that away from you. No homophobic bigots can take that away from you. Live your life and enjoy it. Whether you're "slutting" it up at the club every week or remaining monogamous in the 'burbs... who cares? There is no standard by which we must live. Don't pay attention to the self-loathing hypocrites. 

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 5/22/15 at 1:41pm

Guess you just had to be there when a lot of panicky first post-Stonewall generation gay men explained that "everybody" already had their fill and sewed their wild oats and now "everybody" was settling down as the AIDS epidemic hit.  There was always, and there is in Galveston's post, an air of being "beyond all that" and it's completely invisibilizing to people who opt NOT to live according to mainstream stricture.  Of course, you've never been anywhere, 'band, even though you claim to have been everywhere, including my classroom.

Thanks again, Wilmington.

[Liza's Headband]

Posted: 5/22/15 at 2:01pm

I understand your complaints, Namo. But we'll just agree to disagree as I do not sense that air of "beyond all that" in a message board post wherein no vocal inflections or tone can be heard. 

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 5/22/15 at 2:12pm

It's remarkable that you as a writer seem surprised that readers form understandings of where you're coming from over time.  For example, when you post a message directed at me that approximates a civil tone, it's as if you're not the person who called me "asswipe," "dumbass," and "old," as if that was some sort of insult.  It's as if I am not supposed to factor in the context that you are the person who attempted to publicly identify me on the board and made threats about my employer.  

This is all doubly ironic since you collect injustices more than a gluten-intolerant disabled lesbian music festival attendee.  It's triply ironic that SouthFlorida, of all people, seems to have the memory of a gold fish and doesn't mind the fact that you went after him and after him and after him and after him for something only you seemed upset about.

Similarly, I've read enough of Galveston to know what bugs me about what he writes, and like you, what that is is utterly consistent.

None of this will change anything.  You will continue to exult in your petty little victories of spite and the world will only spin forward.

Thanks again, Wilmington.

Updated On: 5/22/15 at 02:12 PM