The Road To Umphang - Thailand's Death Highway

Umphang in Tak Province has long been one of Thailand's most remote provinces.

Well in the 20th Century the only access to the region was by pack horse, ox-cart or on foot.

In the late 60s the Thai government financed construction of road through the perilous mountains only to have rebels kill thirty construction workers. The other workers abandoned their machinery and it wasn't until the mid-70s that Highway 1090 connected Mae Sot to the remote town on the Burma border.

I had always been curious about Umphang and one night in Ban-nok suggested to my wife that we take a drive to see the end of the road.

“It will be a road adventure.”

"Like Lord of the Rings." my ex-wife commented, remembering a long-ago trip in a cheap car through the mountains north of Chiang Mai.

"More like Swordman of Ayuthayya." I couldn't think of another Thai movie.

“Oh.” Angie my eight year-old daughter groaned with dismay. Her idea of excitement was hitting the local shopping mall for a KFC dinner.

The next day we we set off north to Tak in our pick-up.

Before the Umphang turn-off, we asked the owner of a noodle stop at the beginning of Highway 1090, if she had ever been to Umphang.

“Mai. Mao lot.” Car sickness was a plague besetting the Thais, but this highway is renown for its formidable assault of 1219 nail-biting curves on the tender Thai constitution.

“Umphang mii arai?” Angie’s mom questioned the owner’s husband who had family in Umphang. He was part Karen, which was the major ethnic group in the area, who have been at war with Burmese government for decades.

“Umphang has nam-tok Thi Lo Su, a very beautiful waterfall.”

I was enheartened by that information and set off for Umphang.

It was only 160 kilometers away.

A long 160 and we were about to discover how long.

The road was worse than treacherous.

Work crews repaired damage from monsoon rains at various spots in the mountains.

Two hours into the trip a mudslide had washed out the road. There was just enough room for our pick-up to pass the obstacle. I looked across the valley. The road snaked up to the peaks. It took us twenty minutes to reach that spot.

We stopped at a waterfall.

The flowers were exquisite.

White.

Orange.

160 stretched longer and longer, as the day got shorter.

Coming around a corner furred with jungle another pickup was cutting the corner in my lane.

I tapped my brakes and skidded forward without any control. Coming from frozen Maine I didn’t turn the steering wheel to avoid a slide. The other driver was local. He was used to dirt.

My internal proximity alarms rang like the Titanic’s ‘warning’ claxons.

For the first milli-second I was totally convinced that my right bunker was destined to crush his driver side door.

A second milli-second later and downgraded the danger to kissing to a 90% chance of tagging his rear bunker.

A millisecond more and we miraculously passed each other without a scratch.

He braked to see that I didn’t plunge off the road, then continued on his way and me on mine.

“Close.” Angie’s mom was not happy.

I wasn’t either.

We stopped for gas at a Karen refuge camp.

The foreigners had been living in Thailand for decades.

Their houses were rudimentary.

They remained stateless.

A mile on the skies opened up, as we entered the home stretch.

Noahesque monsoon rains lashed the mountains. We descended into a valley.

At the bottom a motorcycle was stopped before a brown deluge. The turbulent stream raced across the road. The water appeared about hub cap deep, but I waited for an oncoming truck to test the waters.

The pick-up emerged from the angry torrent and I followed his route to the other side. The motorcycle driver was stuck in the rain. He was soaked to the bone.

We arrived in Umphang to discover not a jungle Shangril-lah, but a sleepy town accustomed to its remoteness. No restaurants were open and we had to make do with noodles, plus the road to the Thi Lo Su waterfall had been washed out by the monsoon.

Needless to say there were few happy campers in our guesthouse room that evening.

Today it was back to Mae Sot.

The same 160 kilometers.

The same 1219 curves.

The same dangers as before, but this time I had beer.

My daughter is poking me in the back.

Her eyes say one thing.

"Let's go, I want KFC."

"I know somewhere better."

She didn't believe me, but I had been to Mae Sot before.

The Moei river separated the border town from Burma.

And one place had good food.

"When?" asked Angie."

I could only say, "Soon."

And three hours was soon on the Highway Of Death.

WALK LIKE A WOMAN by Peter Nolan Smith

Billy Wilder's SOME LIKE IT HOT was a funny movie about two musicians hiding from the Mob in an all-women band and I didn't think much about men dressing as women, until my next-door neighbor asked in his basement, "Who you think is prettier? Jack Lemmon or Tony Curtis?"

"Neither."

The year was 1964 and men in dresses weren't supposed to be pretty to twelve year-old boys on the South Shore of Boston.

"Yeah, but if you had to make a choice, who would it be?" Chuckie Manzi was my best friend, but his question had weirder me out.

"I pick Marilyn." She was the logical choice.

"Marilyn's dead and you wouldn't want to make love to a dead women, so if you were on a deserted island with Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon, who would be your wife?"

"I would kill myself before marrying either of them."

The Catholic Church condemned men dressing as woman an abomination, however the priests wore long black cassocks, which they looked like dresses to me and I kept my distance from priests as would any twelve year-old atheist.

"You know they have a word for men who want to be women? Drag queens and not drag like drag racing."

"I know." I had heard that term in school and the words were not spoken in a nice way.

"Some of them are supposed to be pretty."

"Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon are not pretty."

"You're no fun." Chuckie gave up on getting an answer.

A year later I entered his bedroom and was shocked to see a teenage girl in lingerie and high heels. For a second I thought it was Chuckie's sister Addy. I was in love with my ex-babysitter, but then Chuckie pushed back the wig, "I just wanted to feel what dressing like a girl was like. It feels real good. You want to try?"

"No."

I left his house.

We remained friends throughout the 1960s and when Ray Davies sang on Kinks’ hit song LOLA, "She walked like a woman and talked like a man." Chuckie asked, "You ever see a man walked like a woman and talk like a man?"

"Once at the Greyhound Bus Station. I had bought Levi jeans at Walker's Jeans on Boylston Street and was walking to South Station."

"Through the Combat Zone?"

Strip bars, gay clubs, porno parlors, and prostitution in Boston's adult entertainment district

"Yeah, I was looking for something at Jack"s Joke Shop and outside the Hillbilly Ranch and a man in a dress was fighting a sailor, who hadn't paid her."

"Who won?"

"The drag queen. They're tough, because they have to be tough. You still wear Addy's lingerie?"

"No, I outgrew that."

"You could always try on your mother’s undies."

"Fuck off." Chuckie dropped this subject forever.

After high school we grew apart.

I attended a Catholic university on the outskirts of Boston and drove taxi to pay for an apartment near the campus. My last fares of the night were from in the Combat Zone; mostly go-go dancers, drunks, and a few drag queens from the Other Side. The trannies were good tippers and several were more attractive than the strippers from the Two O'Clock Lounge.

Most of the drag queens brought straight men to cheap hotels. Neither passenger spoke much en route and after dropping them off for a night of wicked sex I couldn't help, but sing Lou Reed's WALK ON THE WILD SIDE, "In the back room she was everyone's darling."

In 1971 I didn't know what a back room was, but a move to New York in 1976 opened my eyes, because sexual frontiers were blurred in a city where people answered their desires with a constant yes.

I frequented gay bars with queer friends from the ballet. My queer friends told the fag hags that I had doubts about being a homo. These models, air hostesses, and strippers thought they had could cure me and they were right, because I was mostly straight.

One night at the Anvil I was waiting for my friends to end their voyage to Sodom in the back room.

No girls were allowed in the bar, so I was surprised by an attractive slender brunette sitting next to me.

She could have graced a fashion runway in her pink tube top and hot pants.

A long lacquered nail touched my shoulder.

"Buy me a drink?"

The faux falsetto betrayed why the bouncer permitted her into the Anvil and I ignored her request.

"Are you going to make me beg?" She twirled a strand of long brown hair around her finger. It was a good act and I laughed.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing, just thinking of an old song."

"Let me guess," she sighed with a roll of her eyes. "LOLA."

"Yes." I was a poor liar after a few drinks.

"Too bad it wasn't a song you want to dance to like Diana Ross' LOVE HANGOVER."

"Why?" The ex-Supreme singer had scored a big hit with that song in the gay discos.

"Because I'm a good dancer." She wiggled her shoulders like a Times Square go-go girl

"I bet you are." I signaled the bartender for two drinks.

"My name's Dove. How you like to go in the back room with me? You can do anything you want."

"No thanks."

"Do you think I'm unattractive?" Her lips pouted with hurt disappointment.

"You're every man's dream, if I were that type of man."

"I know you're straight. That's why I sat here."

"I thought it was to hustle me for a drink."

"Fresh." She slapped my hand. "I have my own money."

She flashed a thick roll of twenties.

"I'm kept by a very important person."

"Who's your VIP?"

"A US senator from Dixie."

"Which one?"

"If I told you, he'd have to kill you, but I accompanied him to Jimmy Carter's inaugural ball. Every man at the White House was stumbling over their feet to worship my high heels, especially those wicked Republicans. They really have a thing for girls like me."

"I bet they do."

After that comment the two of us conversed about politics, love, and sex.

I ordered more drinks.

My friends were lost in the Anvil's snake pit.

An hour later I waved for the bill.

"Where you going?"

"Home. I live in a SRO room on 11th Street and 5th."

"And you're leaving alone?"

"Sorry."

"Don't be sorry, one night you and I will get it together."

"Never," I answered too fast to be telling the truth.

"I've heard 'never' too many times to know that 'never' doesn't exist forever."

She stood up to twitch a hip as a calling card for that future date in Never-Neverland.

Dove was not only patient.

She was persistent.

I refused her at the Mudd Club, Studio 54, CBGBs, Hurrahs, Xenon, the Kiev, and Dave's Luncheonette.

"One night you and me."

"Never."

Dove smiled and caressed my thigh.

"See you soon."

"Maybe. Maybe not."

Dove disappeared for most of the fall.

On Halloween in 1980 I attended a black tie Paloma Picasso party honoring the NY Ballet at Danceteria on 37th Street. The illegal nightclub was packed with Upper East Side slummers and after an hour of champagne I went to retrieve my leather jacket from the coat check.

While waiting in line a young ballet boy stumbled into me. His clumsiness was not from too many drinks. A brutish six-footer shook the dancer by his tuxedo lapels. The stitching of the ballet boy's evening suit gave way and I slashed my arm down on his aggressor's wrists, breaking his grasp and the gay boy fled into the crowd.

"Why you do that?" the thug demanded with eyes blurred red with Dexies.

"Because I didn't feel like being bumped into, while you beat up on a fag."

"And what are you going to do about it?" His hands clenched into fists.

Boys from South Shore of Boston didn't back down from challenges and I lashed a right to his mouth. The punch staggered him. He spit a tooth in my chest. I threw lefts and rights faster than his counters, but my heavier opponent weathered the blows without any sign of damage and backed me up to the wall.

I was in trouble, until two bouncers stopped the brawl.

They knew me and threw the Jersey boy out of the club.

Two ballerinas praised my standing up against this gay basher and I exited Danceteria with them in tow. On the street I waved down a taxi, but my hand never reached the air, because something struck the base of my skull.

Hard.

I fell into the gutter and pulled my arms over my head.

A second blow booted my ego past my superego into a green emerald id pulsating with lightning.

This was not a good sign. Finally someone asked with a Jersey accent, "You have you had enough?"

"Yes."

I sat up with great difficulty.

"No you haven't." The thug cracked my skull with a chain wrapped around his fist and strode away the victor.

I rose to my feet shaken to the bone.

"Are you all right?" asked a young handsome photographer on the scene.

I had seen him around. His name was Marcus Leatherdale.

"I think so." My teeth were intact and my nose was unbroken.

"He would have killed you if I hadn't have pulled him off." Marcus was clearly horrified by the damage to my face.

"I owe you one." I glanced in a car mirror. Blood drooled from a dozen cuts and my skull was swollen with blossoming bruises.

I took a taxi home and stayed in bed for a few days.

Every second of my convalescence I plotted my revenge, for while New York was a big city, the nightlife in 1979 was a small scene consisting of maybe 3000 people and two weeks later a transvestite trapeze bar opened in Times Square. Dove's lover was part owner and she invited me for a drink at the bar.

"I heard about you're saving that gay boy at Danceteria." She signaled the bartender for drinks.

"You're my hero."

She was smoking a Virginia Slim.

"Heroes don't get the shit beaten out of them." My facial bones were returning to their original positions.

"Well, you're a hero to me and I'd love to show you how much." The black Chanel dress revealed the best features of her Mia Farrow figure.

"Thanks, but I'm not really in a romantic mood."

"I could change that in a second."

She opened a Pond's Cream jar packed with cocaine shining with Bolivian pink.

"You, me, and an ounce of blow. How can you say no?"

"Not tonight." I rose off the stool.

"What wrong?" She was an expert judge of the mood of men.

"That guy who beat me up just walked into the bar." I grabbed a knife from behind the bar.

The handle was as cold as the blood in my veins.

"No." Dove pushed me back down and puffed on her cigarette. "Girls like me learn early how to take care of ourselves and our friends. I'll take care of this. Believe me, it'll better this way."

She read the murder in my eyes.

"This better be good."

"Silly man, this will be bad."

Dove stole through the crowd, sucking on her cigarette, until the ember burned a lava red. Dove winked at me and tapped the thug on the shoulder.

When he turned around, she stuck the cigarette in his eye.

Screaming he dropped to his knees.

Dove returned to the bar and asked, "Will you go home with me now?"

"How I can refuse?"

At my room we snorted blow, then necked and petted and groped without intercourse. The cocaine eunuched my cock.

In the morning Dove left my apartment, whispering that that my erection dysfunction was our little secret.

"Thanks."

"No, thank you, super-hero." Dove was a starlet of discretion.

Her bar lasted a half-year. Dove sold out her interest to the owners of Danceteria.

Over the next months Dove began to dressed like a Park Avenue divorcee with nova blonde hair and one day she told me that she was moving south.

"To Palm Beach."

"Big money country."

She shrugged a shoulder cloaked by Dior.

"The Senator isn't running for office and he wants to make me an honest woman."

"An operation?"

"Perish the thought."

"Good luck." Being beautiful was a powerful card to play with the rich.

"Thanks, but I was born lucky." She smiled knowing the odds weren't in her favor, but they never are for girls like her.

And now every time I hear WALK ON THE WILD SIDE I think about Dove, because she was everyone's darling in the right mood and beat out Tony Curtis as my # 1 choice on a deserted island, although I couldn't have foreseen that option in 1964.

Not even in my wettest dreams about a man who walks like a woman.

Donnie Ward 1270

In 1971 I drove taxi to pay for my college education. The Boston Cab Company had its garage on 72 Kilmarnock St. The split was 50/50 for booking over $100 in a night. Tips added another $10 to the equation. Average income for a family of four was $10,000. I wasn't rich, but I had buying power and one summer night I picked up a drunk man at Fenway Park. "$10 if you drive me to the 1270." "That's a gay bar." I was a radical. We didn't call anyone 'fags' or 'queers'. "And?" He introduced himself as Bruce. His mustache was thicker than the shaved tail of a Lipizzaner stallion. "And nothing." I had seen his type around Boston. 1971 was the height of the Sexual Revolution. All that mattered was getting off. "Nothing. I know your type. You think you're straight, but you look at the girls in this town and think that there's nothing you want to fuck." "Wrong." I was a stud. "Then you have no problem coming into the bar. I'll get you a girl as long as you don't say you're straight. The fag hags love men on the razor's edge. Drinks are on me. The Red Sox won in the 9th." I parked the taxi in front of the bar. Bruce and I entered without paying the $2 cover. Beers were a dollar. The DJ was playing Sly's SEX MACHINE. A black boy came up to me. "I've never seen you before." He was the handsomest man in the world. "I'm new." "You ever dance with a man?" "No." "I won't bite." And he never did. Donnie Ward was a good friend and so was Bruce. They respected straights who respected gays. "

ROCK STANDS TALL by Peter Nolan Smith

In August 1984 ACTUEL sent a Californian-born photographer and me to cover the Deauville Film Festival. This was my second journalism gig for the French magazine and I hoped that writing a good article might open the path to another profession other than being a doorman at La Balajo. he Deauville Film Festival was not Cannes, however the organizers were honoring GIANT and I arranged an interview with Rock Hudson, whose performance opposite James Dean in the 1956 George Stevens' epic tale of Texas oil had been nominated for an Oscar, and I based the trip on the premise of whether Rock Hudson or James Dean was a better dinner companion.

"James Dean was James Dean." Randy came from Los Angeles.

"He died and left a good-looking corpse."

"Something tells me he didn't have good table manners."

"Me too, but we're going to Deauville to speak with the living about the dead." James Dean had fallen out of my favor, although I wished he had been in EASY RIDER instead of Jack Nicholson.

Randy and I took the train to the Normandy beach resort and booked into a hotel in Trouville.

We were issued passes to all the films.

After the screening of GIANT at the beachside casino the handsome movie star recounted to the Q&A audience, "You know James Dean was a wonderful actor. He had studied method acting under the legendary Lee Strasberg and had the gift of touching the pain and joy deep inside him. Every scene in GIANT confronted Dean with this conflict and I was in awe of his struggle to reach his character Jett Rink. My drama school was Universal International, where I learned all the Hollywood skills; acting, singing, dancing, fencing, and horseback riding and that riding came in handy on more than one occasion in my career."

His words were translated to the French audience and they laughed at his joke, but Rock Hudson went on to reveal doubts about his talent.

"I just showed up on set and recited my lines. George Stevens, the director, would nodded and say fine after one take, but if it was a scene between me and Dean, then he would go into conference with Dean after each take. I couldn't hear their conversation and I once went up to the director and asked, if I should do anything different like Dean. George repeated that I was doing fine and returned to Dean for what seemed like hours. I didn't understand his difficulty. Acting to me was reading your lines and acting like you're supposed to act, but what do I know? I'm just Rock Hudson. Thank you for going to my movies."

The audience rose to their feet and applauded his graciousness.

Outside in the theater's foyer I was introduced to Rock by his Paris publicist. The film star greeted Randy and me with a firm handshake. My friend mentioned his father's bar in Hollywood. It was supposed to be a dive.

"I went there once."

His blue oxford shirt helped his eyes shine with a fond memory.

"I had a good time, but it's even better to hear Americans in France." The movie actor gave us a huge smile. "There's only so much French speaking I can take in one day. Do you speak French?"

"Sort of." My Boston accent struggled with the Gallic rolling Rs.

"Then you can order lunch." He was nearing 60, which was almost twice my age, but he was better looking than any man at the festival, including Ryan O'Neal, who was promoting a new film.

"Rock, a moment." Randy stopped at the entrance to the Hotel Deauville and snapped several shots.

"You can shoot more after lunch." Rock led us into the dining room.

The maitre de sat us by the window. Sunbathers stretched out on the broad strand. A man strolling on the balcony waved to Rock.

"Doesn't look like Malibu," I said sitting at the table, surprised to find a British tabloid reporter next me.

"I supposed nothing looks like Malibu." The snarky reporter in his 40s was clinging to the polyester style of the 70s. His name was Bill. He placed a tape recorder on the table and smirked, "But then not all of us are movie stars, are we?"

"No, we're not." I was annoyed at his piggy-backing on my interview and the publicist explained in French that there had been a time conflict as well as his newspaper had a readership of one million.

"Everything hunky-dory?" Bill pushed down the 'record' button. "Mind if we get right to it?"

"Not at all." Rock lit a cigarette. He could have been a Marlboro Man in his youth.

Bill dominated the flow of talk and his course had an unmistakable destination.

Rock ordered a bottle of crisp Meursault to accompany our Sole Meunière. I admired his styled skill of avoiding the hack's trapdoors and waited for my chance to ask him about manners.

"You spent a lot of time with James Dean on the set of GIANT." The Brit reporter was setting up our host. Rumors about his sexuality had been murmured from coast to coast in the gay community. Millions of them thought that he was one of them.

"Not that much. He was getting into character, so he hated me. I knew it was Jett speaking instead of James, so I didn't let it bother me."

"Did he have any women on the film?" Bill was angling to out Rock's sexuality.

"You mean have sex? I didn't ask." Rock was no snitch and I respected his discretion about a long-dead star.

"Some people say that he didn't have sex with a woman after that Italian actress dumped him for that Tony Bennett wanna-be Vic Damone."

"I don't know anything about it and____"

Bill didn't let Rock finish his answer and asked Rock about Jim Nabors, "After all these years isn't it time you let the world know about you and Gomer Pyle?"

"Know what?"

"That you and Jim were lovers. That you shared a place in Hawaii?" The reporter spat out his queries without losing a beat.

"I don't know what you're talking about?" Rock took a sip of white wine. This rumor had been bouncing around gay clubs for ages.

"C'mon, the young boys of our readership are dying to hear the truth."

"You mind leaving the man alone?" I wasn't gay, but I had danced with a few men at 1270 and my younger brother was a queer.

"I'm just trying to write a story, so piss off." The thick-skinned reporter, then demanded to know who was king and queen in the Nabors-Hudson arrangement.

"More like tar and feather Mr. Hudson." My mother had taught her children the importance of good etiquette, but sometimes good manners aren't as useful as bad manners.

I brandished the silver knife in my hand.

"You can't threaten me like that." The reporter recognized the intent in my eyes.

"Gentlemen, no fists or knives." Rock lifted his hands.

"I'm not saying another word." I put down the knife.

"Faggots."

Randy shook his head

"You say it with a smile." I was itching for a fight. It was my forte.

"Or else what?"

"Or else he'll break your nose." Randy had seen me fight more than once. I had a good left.

"You're joking."

"Not at all."

"Fuck you both." The reporter stormed out of the dining room.

"Sorry about that."

"It's not your fault. I've been dealing with his kind for years." Rock thanked me and ordered a brilliant Riesling to complement our Atlantique Sole.

We spoke about his work with Douglas Sirk in WRITTEN ON THE WIND and his movies with Doris Day. He signaled the waiter for another bottle of wine. His publicist looked alarmed, but he patted her hand, "Darling, no one lives forever and I want to feel good. That's the true sign of a gentleman. The ability to make everyone feel comfortable."

I wrote down what he said for the lead into my article.

Lunch lasted an hour more than originally scheduled and after the publicist paid the bill, we walked out onto the terrace. The sun was strong and the wind of the sea was scented with seaweed. Rock lifted his head and then turned to me, motioning to Randy to stop taking photos. He looked like he need a nap.

"Off the record I'd like to say something about me and Jim," he whispered over my shoulder. "It's not true. Someone made a joke about us getting married and then it became the truth. Jim and I are friends. Nothing more and nothing less."

"Thanks." I hadn't asked for this admission and shook his hand.

"Nice man." Randy shot his departure.

"My feelings exactly." A real gentleman.

"So who wins? James Dean or Rock Hudson for dinner guest?"

"I loved the sole, but as Rock was a gentleman."

That evening we met Russ Meyer, the director of FASTER PUSSYCAT KILL KILL. I had seen the sexually charged film at the Neponset Drive-In and asked him about his influence of the fantasies of young boys.

"I was a young man in Hollywood in the 50s. No one was doing what I was doing. I wasn't even sure of what I was doing, but I liked women and there was no place better to like women than in Hollywood." The mustached director had hundreds of stories. We heard a few of them.

"Did you ever meet Rock Hudson?"

"Old Rock. He was a good man."

"My thoughts too."

In my hotel room overlooking the Atlantic I wrote about Rock Hudson's manners and the pleasure of dining with him.

I avoided any negative comments about James Dean.

Dead man are better left dead.

The French magazine placed my Rock Hudson article in the next issue accompanied by Randy's photos.

Actuel's editors were happy with my writing, but I didn't receive another assignment.

A London newspaper had reported on my behavior at lunch with Rock. They had complained about me and ACTUEL didn't need any trouble from the UK.

I went back to the door of La Balajo and refrained from bad behavior.

Through the autumn of 1984 I spotted Rock Hudson at restaurants and galleries opening in Paris. He seemed to enjoy the City of Light. He waved once. Everyone looked at me. He looked a little thin, but he was still the most handsome man in the room and Paris was a good place for a gentleman no matter what his age.

And it still is.

Foto by Randall Koral

To Speedo Or To G-String

Yesterday my old-time drinking buddy Dave left for the South of France. The Dreamliner carried him from JFK to Casablanca to Nice, where he was met by his friends living in a villa above the Cote d'Azur. His plane had been delayed after the TSA found organic hair spray in an old wrinklie woman's purse and he called from the airport to kvetch about Homeland Security.

"I agreed, but imagine if they had found your Riviera Speedo."

"I don't have a Speedo." Dave had a good body for a 50 year-old man.

"No Speedo?" I wished I could wear one, except my body is better suited to a chador for the beach. "Brave man, you're going for the g-string."

During the Grand Vacannes every European man regardless of his figure goes to the beach in the skimpiest bathing suit possible, but Dave was being American.

"No g-string."

"No g-string?" Dave managed the wardrobe for a very popular network TV show.

"Are you going au natural?"

"No, you idiot. I'm wearing trunks the same as everyone."

"Same as everyone?"

Dave was gay.

"We're not the same as everyone."

"We?"

"You know gays, queers et al."

"You're not gay and don't start thinking about coming out. The last thing this world needs is another Bruch Jenner."

"Her name is Caitlin."

"Well, I'm sure he doesn't wear a Speedo anymore. Gotta go. The old lady has been cleared for the flight."

"Bon Voyage." I loved the South of France and shouted to a click, "Bring me back espadrilles."

I laid back in bed and googled 'ladyboy' porn. I might not be 'gay', but I ain't straight neither.

Happy Gay Pride Day.

Do You Like Gladiator Movies?

The movie GLADIATOR was released in 2000. My friends and I gay maitre de greeted us and and asked where we had been.

"We saw GLADIATOR."

Joe made a face and hissed, "I saw it. I didn't like it."

"Why not" asked my ex-lover Ms. Carolina. She loved Russell Crowe.

"Because there were no queers."

"You mean like Tony Curtis and Laurence Olivier in SPARTACUS?"

"Exactly."

"Jude Law was a little swishy in the movie."

"Not enough to notice."

"You mean like Steve Reeves."

"Exactly." Joe nearly swooned with delight. "He was who the strange men meant when they asked me if I liked gladiator movies."

"Someone actually asked you that?"

"More than once and the answer was always yes."

Joe attended to a group of bankers at the entrance and Ms. Carolina whispered, "Now I understand what Peter Graves meant in AIRPLANE."

"No one ever asked me that?"

"I guess you weren't as luck as Joe."

Not many gladiator movies were made after 2000.

Certainly nothing like BEN HUR.

The other evening I was bored and watched QUO VADIS or where are you going in Latin.

The movie featured Robert Taylor, Deborah Kerr, Peter Ustinov and a cast of thousands.

The producer Sam Zimbalist chose art director Edward C. Carfagno to recreate Rome and all its glory and this film swished like silk curtains in the wind.

Peter Ustinov camped out Nero as a mad violet poet with ringlets.

The writer, actor, diplomat, and family man ( he had four kids ) allowed none of his scenes in QUO VADI to pass with flaming high and bright.

His wife resembled a drag queen.

They both dressed like they were going to the Gay Pride March.

Ustinov was a genius, because Rome was actually very puritan.

Nero's friends fell under his thrall.

Noble Romans were straight, but with a taste for brutality.

Christians were infecting the empire.

Peter looked like the Old Testament God.

The Romans knew where to put troublemakers.

The Colosseum.

Man versus beast.

Thumbs down.

Do I like gladiator movies?

Yes.

I prefer to spare life.

It is not a sign of weakness.

Pressing Flesh

In the summer of 1966 I was standing with my father at the Lower Mills station outside of Boston. We were headed to work. A Mattapan-bound trolley stopped to let off a crowd. My father and I were mystified by the hubbub, until the trolley pulled away from the platform and we spotted Robert F. Kennedy.

The forty year-old politician was campaigning for his brother Ted.

My father was a staunch Republican from the State of Maine, but sensed an opportunity to meet the future president of the USA and rushed me across the track to RFK, where the young NY senator was pressing flesh with his admirers. He shook my hand and I wished him good luck. Our trolley was approaching and my father and I ran to the other side. Once seated on the trolley, a passenger asked us, "Who was that.

My father said, "The next president."

We prayed for that future, but two years later after winning the California primary a gunman shot RFK dead in LA.

It's been over fifty-three years since his death and every day of this presidential election it what becomes clear is that America and the world lost a great deal more than a man's life.

I cried that day and I cried recently watching Ted Kennedy's eulogy in St. Patrick's Cathedral.

"Some men see thing as they are and ask why, my brother dreams things that never were and asked why not."

No one in politics talks like that today

In 1989 I was vacationing in LA. My friend Adriana Kaegi of Kid Creole and the Coconuts was working on a video for the LAMBADA at the then-deserted Ambassador Hotel. I was a little hung-over and didn't think much about the significance of the location until I wandered into the Embassy ballroom and said to myself, "I've been here before."

Not in person, but I climbed onto the stage where RFK announced his victory. I stood at the dusty podium. His hands might have touched the wood and I looked to the left.

The kitchen door was open.

Rosie Grier was RFK's bodyguard. The ex-LA Rams linebacker was supposed to protect the candidate from the crowds. Later he said that the candidate's security plans called for an exit through the audience, however someone yelled, "No, Bobbie this way.

And RFK entered the kitchen. 

The film portrays the exuberant chaos and then a man sticks a .22 in the face of RFK and pulls the trigger.

Standing in that empty kitchen I realized this was a killer's killing zone. There was nowhere for the victim to run.

I cried once more for the loss of RFK

We are not the same as we were in 1968, although the trolley into Ashmont from Lower Mills is still free as it was on that day in 1966 and that is a good thing.

We miss you Bobby.

And Martin and Malcolm Biggie and Tupac and thousands more murdered by the powers that be http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJ8rxSYMi-c&feature=related