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- Herausgeber: Olympia Press
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015
A Shockingly Honest Book! The author of this book is a well-known TV and Hollywood actor, though not a star. Like so many homosexuals, he began life as an average, normal young man repulsed by the very word "homosexual." In Hollywood, he had many women as his lovers, and the movie star he married also had many lovers. It was a sad, gay, crazy world in which the star today is the has-been of tomorrow. As age reached out and touched him, this man, too, felt the fear that clutches everyone who sells a face and a body to the public. He turned to writing, became successful. Alone, lonely, finding no satisfaction with the many women with whom he had affairs, he found himself in a Third Avenue bar one night, being picked up by a young boy. From there on in, he was caught, trapped, in the world of the homosexual, the world of all the sad young men who are neither men nor women, only lost souls.
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All the Sad Young Men
Anonymous
This page copyright © 2007 Olympia Press.
http://www.olympiapress.com
CHAPTER ONE
I awakened slowly to the sounds of the East River traffic sixteen floors below. I stretched my body luxuriantly between the cool sheets. I remembered a feeling of complete relaxation and of being at peace with myself... for the first time in years. In my semiconscious state, I knew I was happy, physically and mentally. The blessed relief that comes from tension, and barriers, suddenly let down. Even before I was half awake I knew that suddenly a new life had begun for me. I felt reborn, new, and excitingly young.
At first I was afraid to open my eyes. I turned my head to look at my bed companion. I was afraid that it might not be real... That this had all been a glorious dream and that there would be an empty place in the bed beside me. Unrumpled sheets and the cold smooth pillow undented and untouched by the lean young body that I had loved so passionately, But there was the tousled, sleepy head, with its face toward me, that I had kissed so passionately during the night.
I was not alone. The thrill of knowing that love was still with me almost made my heart jump from my body. A love that knew no limitations—a love that had come to me in all its glories with a challenge that could only make our love stronger because we had to fight the world together with its narrow moral confines.
I seemed to be riding on the crest of new passions, newly explored and beautiful places that my heart had never been before. Suddenly I realized the meaning of levitation such as Yogis claim to experience. Love, the most beautiful love one could ever have, had come into my arms, claimed my heart, and expressed itself in greater abundance than I could ever have believed possible.
Love is a strange thing. Love every glance, every word, every movement, speaks only to you. The sound of love's voice when it speaks the most ordinary of words can send you to the heights of passion or the depths of despair. And love had come to me at last.
After all these years of searching for something —I didn't know what—, hoping for something I didn't dare, hope for, praying that I would become a whole man, not just the shell of one... It had happened at last! The shell of this man looked like a man, acted like a man but was empty, insecure and ignorant of what he really was. But now that love had entered my life the shell had been filled.
Although it was a love I thought I could never accept, one that society frowned upon, and people joked about, or talked about behind closed doors— that was me... filled to overflowing,... and because of this great love, a love has filled me with such happiness, and is so completely natural to me that I want to share my delirium, my joy and well-being with all the world.
I sighed deeply and reached out to feel the warmth of my love's body. I am at once filled with desire and all the beauty it represents to me. I move closer and take Love into my arms and it is suddenly awakened with passion, the same as mine. Suddenly we are both alive with the awareness of being one on some astral plane. We seemed to be one piece of flesh moulded together by a sculptor's hand.
Love's kiss, though still sleepy, became one of fire that seems to seer our flesh from naked toe to the top of our skulls. Suddenly we are so close that it seems we are moulded together with the heat of our passion and we will never become separate bodies again. I don't care. Here in Love's arms I want to stay forever. I don't want to be freed from this mold that seems to make us one. But the climax of passion is spent so suddenly and with such force that the world seems to stop spinning on its axis and our two bodies are hurled into space of beautiful lights, unearthly music that pounds in our ears. We are together with such force that we hurt one another with the pain of our love. But we dare not let it go. For the time in space we are with one another desperately—as if we were the only ones left in the world and apartness would certainly send us both to a crashing death, back to earth, only to be smashed to bits by life's reality.
Suddenly, our senses relax and we are released slowly and gently back onto the familiar bed of white sheets and the crumpled pillows—a place from where, just moments before we had been elevated, to a misty colorful, unreal and beautiful world... a world that belonged to just the two of us.
Slowly my love turned and reached for a cigarette on the bedside table.
“Want one?”
“Not right now, Baby”. I answered drowsily.
I was too content to stir, and only wanted to feast my eyes on the perfect symmetry of the beauty lying beside me. I wanted to remember every line, curve, hollow, or muscle on my Love's body. I have never tired of looking at perfection. And even a connoisseur of art would say that my Love is a perfect thing of beauty.
My Love took a deep draw on the cigarette and then passed it over to me in spite of the fact that I had refused the offer of one. Love, propped up on one elbow, looked deep into my eyes. I marveled at the dark blue of these eyes and the dark lashes that fringed them which were so startingly long and curled upwards. The blond body was tanned as if it had been dipped lightly in gold. I saw the look of love and respect in those eyes for me. I felt truly humble that Love had come to me in such a beautiful completeness.
“We've got a big day ahead of us.” Love said.
“I know.” I sighed deeply, hating to come back to reality and the business of the day ahead.
“Gerry,” why don't you go ahead and shave first... I suggested, then I turned my back on him and said “leave me in my dream world for a while. Don't forget we're having lunch with my publisher and you better be sure that both our dark gray suits are packed up and ready.”
My Love, Gerry, laughed and, jumped athletically from the bed and stood and gave me a sharp salute, saying, “O.K. boss.”
As I heard Gerry splashing around in the bathroom like a young seal, I had to laugh at myself. Lots of middle-aged authors and business men sleep with their secretaries, but I wondered just how many of those secretaries were male.
My eyes traveled to the large bureau at the end of the room, and there in a Morocco bound frame, was the picture of my own son taken when he was fifteen. Billy was a good kid... Although I haven't seen him for five years.
He's twenty now. My God! I thought. What in hell would he think of his father in this situation? Gerry, my love, is only twenty-four.—
CHAPTER TWO
Strange—I have no feeling of guilt about my love for Gerry. I wouldn't like Billy to know of my devotion my passion for Gerry. But, then who knows how Billy, himself will turn out? His life has been a strange one from the very beginning. He's been surrounded by kookoo artists, sculptors, writers, actors, the would be's, and the has-beens, of the theatrical and artistic world all his life. Billy has probably understood all along, more about what I'm just beginning to learn, all his life. His mother, talented, beautiful, has always had her lovers around the house, male or female. Our life, his mother's and mine had been miserable from the start. I was a green hick from the country... fell madly in love with a glamorous woman, who was a movie star. She made me her leading man in my first picture. It was a flop — I was a flop. The only good thing that came out of that marriage was Billy — God bless him. And I hope to hell that I never let him down.
I could hear Gerry singing in the shower. He'll never make the Met, I laughed to myself, God gave him everything but a sense of pitch and rhythm, but he sure sings with a hell of a lot of enthusiasm. It was really quite terrible, but I loved it. Thinking back over my career, which has been a spotty one, up until now, I had gone to Hollywood originally to become a writer, not an actor. But when Clea saw me, Billy's mother, and took one look at my lanky farm frame. Body and fresh dumb face, a writing career was out of the question. She was going to make me the biggest star in pictures.
I was the star that never rose. My star got on a horizon and stayed there dimly for a few short years. Clea lost interest and made other discoveries but she kept me around as a sort of house decoration. In the meantime I tried to write, but no one took me seriously. Little Billy was born and I vowed then and there that I was going to become a writer of note, if only for him. Clea was still going on, and she probably will forge ahead forever. She certainly is not without talent. Clea is the personification of the ageless glamour screen queen.
I thought to myself as I heard Gerry singing in the bath-room that it's a good thing Clea didn't see him first or I would never had the chance of having him as the perfect secretary, because Clea would have had him in front of the cameras so fast that poor Gerry would never have known what happened to him.
Gerry came out of the shower, wrapped in a towel, looking like a young Adonis.
“O.K. boss. Up and at'em. Times' a wastin', Our suits are back from the cleaners and you have a meeting with that theatre group at eleven o'clock. There are some letters that you have to get out today. “There are a few bills that ought to be paid too. I'll write out the checks if you'll sign them.”
Gerry was all efficiency now... and all man. That's the one thing that attracted me to him when I first met him. How, I wondered had any young man so handsome, not have been picked up and thrown to the wolves of Hollywood, the theatre, or television. I asked Gerry this, once... and he just gave me his big laugh and said, “I know I have no talent and I haven't any ambition to be anything but just what I am. A damn efficient all around man's man.” And that's what he is.
With Gerry giving his final orders to me he left my room and I could hear him whistling as he went down the hall to his own room.
As I got out of bed and went to the shower I could envision what Gerry was up to now. He was ripping up his bed, putting some cigarette butts in an ash tray, scattering some newspapers on the floor so that when Mrs. Mulligan arrived at nine sharp it would look as if he had slept in his room.
“Our Mrs. Mulligan,” as we fondly called her, is a sprightly gray-bird of a woman with a strength of an Ox, the wit of the Irish and as reliable as the rock of Gibraltar. She made no bones about the fact that Gerry was the favorite man in her life. Nothing was too good for him. I knew that by the time I had finished my shower and shave I would smell the good aroma of coffee coming from the kitchen, and the gay, bright banter that always went on every morning between “our Mrs. Mulligan” and my Gerry.
It's a happy house we have — the large living room and dinette that looks over the river extends onto a terrace is delightful on sunny mornings. Besides our two bedrooms, I have a small den and office where I work. Knock wood, I just sold a best selling novel to a picture company. Things could not be better for me right now. The biggest thing about this achievement, in my mind, is the pleasure it will give Billy. To know his father is a success on his own — in his own field — It was a triumph over Clea. I was my own man now and not a shadow of a star. Now the theatre group is dickering with me to do an adaptation of another novel for a musical. All this may seem very unimportant to the story, but the fact that I have finally become recognized in the field that I chose to be successful, takes away the deep feeling I had for so many years of rejection. Rejection in my case, I'm sure, is the main factor in my latent homosexuality. We all try to reason things out, go to psychiatrists, talk with people we know, but no one ever knows the real reason for homosex-quality as is confronts us personally.
I suppose that all the time I have had a homosexual urge, sometimes under the guise of wanting to be accepted, wanting to be admired for my talent or recognized for my capabilities. Through the ages man's admiration for man has always been accepted. A man wants to be brave for man, in war. A man wants to be successful so that he will be looked up to by other men in his community. Man is homogeneous in the fact that he likes to join clubs and associate with other men; much in the same way that has often been said that women dress for women.”
In my young days in Hollywood, there wasn't anybody or anything that I couldn't get, if I wanted it. Men didn't appeal to me in a sexual way, but under the influence of alcohol, on several occasions on gay parties I allowed an intimacy to take place which I now know that I enjoyed much more thoroughly than I did my normal relationships with women. Not until after the end of my career as an actor, the break up of my marriage, did I ever consider the possibility that I might be an actual active homosexual.
Now I realize that for years I had been fighting it, and it wasn't until I left California and came to live in New York that I even let myself accept that fact that I preferred men to women.
Once a man has crossed over the border and fallen in love with another man his whole emotional pattern is set into a new orbit. There is always the fear that one loves one more than the other. The fear of losing your lover to another... perhaps in the same way in which you had taken him away from someone else, by being more successful, even more handsome and clever. I, at forty-five, still consider myself a slim, attractive, handsome, clever and successful man. Even with this knowledge, the dread, and the fear, of the homosexual growing old is always the stab in the wound. Age is the one thing that frightens the homosexual most. Youth is the power and glory of the half-world, as they call it. But, if this is the half world, then this happiness I now have—never give me the whole world. It would be too much to endure, any more happiness than I have at this present writing would be too much to bear. Will it last? Can it last? I only pray that it can and that it will. This is a sad gay world.
CHAPTER THREE
Gerry and I? We're a good team. People like and respect us. Gerry is so un-obvious. He's so courteous, he has beautiful manners, he is a good dancer and a bright conversationalist I like him so why shouldn't everybody else. That's my worry.
The fear of losing him sometimes make me shudder with fear.
Gerry makes my work easier, in fact he even makes it a joy. Loving him and having him close to me most of the twenty-four hours of the day has improved my work, my health and my sanity... but there is always the difference of years... and how can I hold on to someone with all this charm and talent and physical attractiveness? That's what makes the gay world so sad.
I think now is the time to bring in the women in our lives. Dorothy and Fay, they are our two sidekicks. They both have finally learned the score about Gerry and me. In fact it has helped our relationship and they like our companionship and the courtship we can pay them. Both girls are in their early thirties and are handsomely incomed by alimony and don't want to make any false or foolish mistake by falling in love with a penniless handsome bum.
Both girls like their men when and where they want them and they don't want to be caught with their so called lovely alimonies down. At first, Fay had a terrific crush on Gerry and even though I was disturbed by it and hated her for it, I couldn't blame her. Fay is a beautiful svelte brunette, with white, white skin and a figure that stops traffic. Like all women, they liked to be shown off at their best. Together with Gerry and his blond Adonis-like appearance they always attract attention wherever we would go. One night, when things got a little hot and heavy and the martinis had been flowing too much, Fay declared her attraction and love for Gerry. I'll never forget how embarrassed, almost to death, I was, or, how happy and proud, when Gerry told Fay, flatly, that he was in love with me. I think it was the happiest moment in my life. That a man so handsome, and so young, would pronounce his love for another man in front of a woman in love with him was a thing of courage that I can never forget. Fay got over it of course, and now seems to understand and is still our constant companion.
Now it is time that I mention Dorothy, whose wit and humor are as bright and cold as the diamonds she wears around her beautiful neck. She's a red head, but only her hair-dresser knows for sure. She's as greedy green as the huge emerald she flashes on her petal like fingers, but a friend she is. In fact Dorothy is in every sense the beautiful dumb broad who has made good and is going to stay that way. Dorothy is about as dumb as the huge alimony she has been collecting for years and as tantalizing as Cleopatra might have been in her hey day. In fact if it weren't for Gerry I could, I would, have madly fallen in love with her and married her and settled down in a half normal sense. Dorothy and I had our romantic period. It was shortly after I had first come to New York. We had made the bed scene quite successfully but neither of us had seemed quite satisfied by it. This happened shortly after I had met Gerry but I had had no romantic or physical contact with him at that time. It was Dorothy who said one morning as she rolled over in bed and kissed me warmly, “You know, Wally, you really don't give a damn for women, do you?” I was shocked, I protested seriously that she was wrong... but a woman knows.
She laughed as she got out of my arms and said, “Let's face it, darling — we're not for each other but we're for each other all the way.”
Heretofore in this document I have not identified myself with a name, so shall we just call me Wally, only because I can't think of any name I dislike more intensely then Wally — So I shall be — Wallace Richards. And this author, in spite of his egotism and opinions does not like himself at all.
CHAPTER FOUR
Dorothy preened her proud body in front of me and said, Wally, you know, you and Gerry were made for each other. So why not make the scene?” I was shocked of course and thought that she still was a little drunk from the night before.
There is something brittle and bright, and terribly amusing about ultra-sophisticated women like Dorothy. Once they understand a thing and they know that man is not for them they do not lose interest, nor do they try to conquer them any more, but seem to become more devoted and much more loyal as a friend, more protective than ever before. Dorothy is always a constant source of amusement to me. In fact I don't really know how I could live my life without her... her friendship, her humor, and her love. Dorothy has a dog, a tiny, nasty little poodle whose hair somehow seems to be tinted the same color as hers. The poodle's name is Rapier... and rightly so. Nothing is safe when Rapier is around. A leg, an arm, a chair... anything goes with Rapier. One noon in the middle of August, probably the hottest day of the year, Dorothy leaped from my bed and ran naked to the windows on the terrace and exclaimed, “For heaven's sake it's snowing!” I, too, hazily stumbled from my bed to see what in the hell she was talking about, I saw what she meant when I saw that Rapier had ripped one of the eider down pillows on the terrace lounges where we had spent most of the night... until the sun came up and it was too hot to stay out of doors. A gentle breeze had come up and the feathers were flying all over the terrace. It truly looked like a snow storm and Rapier seemed to be the only one in the apartment who had been satisfied. With a couple of Bloody-Marys served with a couple of scowls from Mrs. Mulligan, Dorothy began to realize that it was still August, that she was still divorced, that she was still unhappy, and that she still couldn't have me. So she turned me over to-Gerry and that is when our love affair started.
CHAPTER FIVE
This happiness that I now feel so secure in with Gerry, has lasted over three and a half years. A relationship this perfect in a homosexual's love life, is truly indeed almost a record breaker.
Actually, it was through Dorothy that I first met Gerry, who has become my beloved. I had known Dorothy on [...]
