- I was, I hope, a pioneer. But I cannot and will not become a martyr. Where can I go from here? Regular press refused advertising because it was a gay album, not spoofy, but for real. Regular distributors turned off to it. Major labels refused to pick it up. Gay bars expressed interest in selling the album, but when contacted later there was no response. Copies were sent to all the major talk shows, and even those whose private lives are not even suspect in circles where they dabble in call boys, DARED not let me appear, because of the top brass of the networks. Even the original record producer cut the statue of David at the groin because of 'public opinion' and the song 'David' was retitled 'Michael' because of his fear that business associates might have thought he flipped and had swung over the line.
- ...offering the profits of the record to homophile groups, if they would help to promote the sales of the record have FAILED. Are they all that financially secure; or that mentally retarded? I really couldn't care less, right now, John. I have my lover, I have my own beliefs in what I tried to do, and I don't regret it one bit. If anyone still wants a curiosity, and what may become now a camp collector's item, they can still purchase the album through Libran. Perhaps, word will spread, and still a renaissance of honesty may come. My own position now is becoming one of amused silence. I am stepping out of the vanguard (what else can I do, I have to eat and try to bail out my indebtedness for this venture) and I will let the banner be picked up by less cool heads. Get swept under that Conservative carpet fellas. I am not the martyr type. I enjoy my gay life too much to allow it to become too public, for a public that doubts the reality of it. It came from decisions, not pot. Living it, not howling for it. And acceptance from family and friends who admired my talents, my intelligence and my honesty. I no longer wish to allow anyone to try to denigrate any of those qualities, because they cannot share them, or equal them.
- About 60 percent of all the guys who work in straight porno films in New York are either bisexual or gay. Yet none of them would do 'The Story of Joanna' because the character in it had two major love scenes, one with the leading lady and one with the leading man. There was no one who would risk his masculinity to do that scene.
- I am not bitter, John, I am just broke. Now I must retreat into the silent majority once more, and hope that I can live down the mistake of thinking that the world, if not the gay community at least, was ready for a little honesty.
D.L. tried to raise money for a gay show a few years back, but was frustrated to failure. Was that an attempt to promote his lover's short-lived theatrical ambitions? (You MUST know who I'm talking about, but let's not let the public in on these little indiscretions, or a whole organization might be discredited by its own nepotism). Nearly every successful gay show has happily produced a NEGATIVE and loathsome picture of gay life. They had to succeed. Painting a positive picture aside from pretty young things in provocative poses to titillate repressed intellects who need jerk-off material, is still in a Neanderthal era. I wish it were not so. If it were not so, rock or Welk, square or swinging, the FACT that it was a POSITIVE statement of gay love, should have gained favor and support for the album. - The Continental Baths should be a giant lesson. You elected Mayor Lindsay? Guess again. You got used. Picket ABC? For Christ's sake, ABC is said to have a higher percentage of gay employees than any other major network, but most of them are smart enough to keep their mouths shut. Figures in business, sports, politics, theatre? I've been around long enough, and in the RIGHT circles, to have had a Who's Who circuit of sexual jollies, and some of the names I could drop would cause more slander and libel suits and interest shit coverage in the press, but to what avail? I have enjoyed their bodies, and they now have the money to protect their reputations.
I took a big chance. I hoped that queens everywhere would stand up for their own. To date they haven't (in sufficient numbers) to keep me from economic disaster. If every reader of GAY had bought a copy of the album, if only out of curiosity, the thing would have broken even, not made me a millionaire, thank you, simply recouped the investment. - Unfortunately, maybe it is still the era of acid rock, but too bad most little pinkie lifters don't know that Rock is Dead. You've been used. You've been had, and you're too asleep to know it. Someday soon, someone hopefully will follow my lead, but not admit to being a cocksucker. He'll get outside economic backing, and the Machine (there are many, but the right one, let's hope) will pick him up, thinking it's a fun gag, and make him a Super Star. When music is 'in,' all the 'critics' will latch on to him, drooling over the 'possibility' that he MIGHT be gay, pray to get interviews with him and swoon preciously at his feet.
- ...The death of Zebedy Colt is imminent as a public figure. One half of me was killed by the straight world we know, but the other half was wiped out by the gay world, the impossible, nomadic, psychological imbalance that will continue to doom any semblance of a 'gay community' to ever exist.
Since being gay is not an ethnic, religious, or physical condition, since it is a normal appetite suppressed by straights, flaunted by queens and indulged in by healthy red-blooded citizens of either sex, there is no way to get them to ever 'stand up and be counted.' - ...I am a man, not a head or a square or a queen or a drag or a sissy, just a MAN, and the object of my affection, my lustful desires, my frustrations, joys, hates, sorrows and ecstasies, is another man, not by social pressures, or disease, or a possessive mother, or physical or psychic instability, but by PREFERENCE. And to prove my point and strip away any and all excesses of theatrical non-conviction which has turned into social conformity, I chose to sing 'straight' songs usually associated with...heterosexuality. A simple statement made simply without bombastic or psychedelic contrivance.
What other areas are left for pioneers these days? The wilderness within and without has been conquered or laid to waste. Technology, chemistry and nature are pretty much exhausted. Human tolerance and understanding are the only primitive regions left. Welcome, voyager! - You said in your review that to hear me no would suspect I am gay: well, I am. I'm happy with a gorgeous boy, so happy and sure of each other are we, that, in fact, we groove together on other people we find mutually distracting, only to return to one another with our relationship stronger and more refreshed than ever. But, really, as to being gay, so what? Do we have to hide in closets, do we have to be high all the time in order to find inner peace? That's the whole point of my album: I wanted to simply state in a square medium something as basically truthful as the fact of loving another human being. It shouldn't matter whether I'm singing about a boy or girl...I'm gay, so I sing about loving another man, that's all.
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