Still from Nighthawks (1978), grabbed here.
"SLEAZE BUCKETS" | 1979
We, that is, homosexuals, or as they like to pronounce it on television, HOmo-SEX-U-als, are more and more in the news.
We are in the news because they want to know about us.
Often, journalists report on our activities as though we were a sub-species, a sub-culture, or some subterranean night crawlers from another planet.
The rule is: when talking about homosexuals, keep your distance. Never expose your own sexuality. Hide behind your objectivity. But this rule and style of reporting often breaks down, because in matters of sexuality, there is no clear and fixed distinction between them and us.
When you are talking about homosexuality, it is hard to tell who is them, who is us, and who is hiding. The traditional canons of objectivity fail.
People are always saying you can't be a little pregnant without eventually showing it. True. But you can be a little gay without ever wanting to show it. In fact, that's the state most people live in.
And so, since there is always a little bit of us in them, journalists have difficult time with us.
Most journalists, when talking about homosexuals, get their facts right, but err in interpretation. For straight facts often lead to queer interpretations.
Roger Ebert in his review of Nighthawks
(Sun-Times, Oct. 16, 1979), for example, has all his facts right, but his quasi-objective and distant point-of-view distorts his interpretations.
For Ebert, Nighthawks is a movie about them (gays)--for them. And his conclusion is: let's hope nobody is like them.
He keeps his critical distance from us and our world, and he dutifully reports in his liberal family newspaper that gay is sad, and gay is bad.
Factually, he is right: Nighthawks is a dull, uninspired, two-star movie. It has left town after a week at the 3 Penny.
Even with foreign kudos, it couldn't hold an audience: gay or curious.
Jim, the school teacher/nighthawk, is an anti-anti-hero: so ordinary that he stirs little more than a yawn. Sure, he does the best his lukewarm British flesh will allow, but he has a difficult time keeping a stiff upper anything.
The movie is so ordinary, in fact, that it begs all kinds of interpretations. And a critic can't just say, "well, folks, that was one I slept through." So Ebert fills in with gratuitous interpretations and musings on gay life.
For Ebert, Jim is a victim, his haunts are gloomy, and his life, dead end. And the last and only good thing you can say about the movie is that it was playing at the 3 Penny, and not at one of those male "sleaze buckets" on Clark Street.
For Ebert, Jim is a victim because he cannot find an "Enduring Relationship," which according to Ebert is the "social epidemic" of the 20th century.
But: male homosexuals have been having and surviving transitory relationships for centuries. It's nothing new for us. That's why we are probably better able to cope with this urban situation than most self-proclaimed, married-again monogamists.
True, among homosexuals you will not find too many American Gothic, til-death-do-us-part couples. In a gay "marriage" it's more likely that both partners will be holding a pitch fork.
There are millions of couples in New York, Chicago, and London who have discovered that an exclusive, one-on-one relationship is not essential. Many of us don't even have an enduring weekend together.
But that does not mean life is a horror show. It means we have changed our expectations, or totally abandoned them. And for us it's not a dead end; it's a life cycle on speed.
Further, to call homosexual haunts gloomy is a prudish cliche. Gloomy for whom? That's where we find other guys, our sex partners, our sun shine.
It might seem sad to you, an outsider, because you are not there for what we are there for. But the wait is worth it, honey; the wait is worth it! For when the arrow hits the target, you scream inside like a Zen master.
And as for "sleaze buckets": I remember the Newberry Theater [note: a gay porn theater], now a parking lot on Clark. Cold seats, fat men, leaking roof, stink bombs, and the projectionist sleeping at the switch.
Who used to go there? Dirty nighthawks. Sure.
And kids from the suburbs. Who found out about the all male sleaze bucket from reading Roger Ebert's Sun-Times movie section. And since they never read about an all-male anything else, they would flock to the Newberry, often for their first coming out experience.
Yes, I remember one kid, in his early twenties, arriving at the Newberry on a cold, rainy Friday: going to the bathroom, showing a half of dozen men what he had to offer: and then, leading them, like a good shepherd, down in front to the cement floor, and while another dozen men watched, he made sure there were a lot of satisfied customers at the Newberry that night.
And all the while he performed, there was a movie going on above them. Duffy's Tavern, with a couple of long haired blond kids making it on a pool table, while the Stones rolled on in the background. Talk about Apocalypse Now. Talk about a real movie experience.
So, Mr. Ebert, do keep your critical distance: for if you were to slip into one of the sleaze buckets on Clark Street, and review one of our movies, it just might turn out to be a living experience.
And if you looked down beneath the screen, I just don't know who you would recognize.
Originally published in "Gay Chicago," October 25, 1979.
© 2010 John Michael Vore and Firetrap Press Cooperative.
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