PeterRS

The Last In The Series Marking LGBTQ-History Month LGBTQ-History month is celebrated in many countries, although the months are different. I chose that celebrated in the UK and a few other countries since the low season has approached in Thailand and there is less being written about. I believe our gay history deserves to be remembered. Wherever it falls where you live, this is my final contribution on the subject. Our LGBTQ history is almost certainly as old as recorded time. Even just going back as far as the Greek and Roman worlds, when much male to male sexual activity would almost certainly today be called pederasty, there were genuine homosexual bonds. Arguably the one we recall most often today was between Alexander and Hephaestion. We could add Achilles and Patroclus, and more. The most famous Roman-era gay couple was the Emperor Hadrian and Antinous. This started out as an older man/younger man relationship but Hadrian became besotted with the young man. When he was around 20 Hadrian took him on an expedition to Egypt where he drowned in the Nile. Hadrian ensured his name continued long after his own death and so it has continued throughout history, Even Oscar Wilde makes mention of Antinous in The Picture of Dorian Gray. “What the invention of oil-painting was to the Venetians, the face of Antinous was to late Greek sculpture, and the face of Dorian Gray will some day be to me.” The trailer for the 2009 movie version of The Picture of Dorian Gray Antinous’ death was regarded as highly suspicious and murder by persons unknown as jealousy of the relationship was considered. Hadrian was bereft. He declared Antinous a deity and ordered a city to be built at the site of his death. Throughout the history of most peoples there have been famous personalities who either proclaimed themselves gay or later became known as gay. Emperor Ai of China’s Han Dynasty, famous for having cut off the sleeve of his tunic rather than wake his male lover; a host throughout the first millennium; King Edward II in England in the early 1300s; leading to a near tidal wave during the Renaissance. Less seems to be known about famous gay personalities in the 19th century, at least in the English speaking world where the most obvious is Oscar Wilde. One reason perhaps was the nature of English society where underneath the prim and proper surface anything seemed to be tolerated. Punishment for homosexuality was also severe. Between 1810 and 1835 a total of 46 people were hanged for sodomy in Britain and almost 750 imprisoned. The situation in Germany was somewhat similar. Richard Wagner’s patron, the tall, handsome and gay King Ludwig II of Bavaria was so enthralled by Wagner that he virtually bankrupted the country to finance his ever more ambitious compositions. He has often been called “Mad King Ludwig” but there has never been much evidence of any mental condition. Government officials used his ‘paranoia’ about castles and Wagner as an excuse to depose him, along with his “abhorrent homophilic behaviour”. His younger brother Otto was definitely mentally ill and had been confined for most of his life to an asylum. Ironically after Ludwig’s death, Otto became King and was to reign in name from that asylum for 27 years An early postcard showing Ludwig II Ludwig is as remembered today for his famous castles. It was during imprisonment after abdication at Schloss Berg on Lake Starnberg that he was found drowned in what still remain mysterious circumstances. The lake was shallow and Ludwig was a good swimmer. The intrior of the most famous of the castles is in an austere German medieval style, Schloss Neuschwanstein Nearby Schloss Linderhof, a much smaller castle, is in the style of Versailles with sumptuously decorated rooms and formal gardens. In the vastness of the Imperial Russian Empire, homosexuality was illegal for most of the 19th century. As in England, though, all this did was consign it to its own underground where many, particularly those in the nobility, were able to indulge their passions. One of the most passionate was Grand Duke Konstantin, grandson of Tsar Nicholas 1 and uncle of nephew Nicholas II. Yet his homosexuality was not revealed until 1994, some 80 years after his death, when his frank diaries were published. Another was Prince Vladimir Meshcherskii, a close advisor to both Alexander III and Nicholas II, and equally well known to the Imperial family as one of the city’s most notorious homosexuals. Later, we know of the gay lifestyle enjoyed by the impresario Serge Diaghilev, founder of Les Ballets Russes. He belonged to a gay clique in St. Petersburg where young mostly underpaid male dancers from the Maryiinsky Ballet (known during the Soviet years as the Kirov Ballet) were prized. Partners were often swapped between members of this clique. One who was part of this trade was 18 year old Vaslav Nijinksky, regarded as arguably the finest male dancer who has ever lived. Nijinsky was a protege of 30-year old Prince Pavel Lvov who showered his poor family with all manner of gifts. When lent out to Diaghilev, Nijinsky realised that the older man could do much more for his future as a dancer than Lvov. So he switched partners. One of the few formal portraits of Nijinsky, a handsome if shy young man – copyright Alamy Even before then however, Russia was home to one homosexual who was to become not merely a national figurehead but one still known and revered all around the world. Personally I hate the term “classical music” but it is one that we just have learned to live with. For me it conjures up images of courtly palaces and gaudy churches, the two institutions without which over the last few hundred years what we term classical music might never have existed. Throughout these years there have been musicians, conductors and composers who have been gay. Like movie stars, most kept their sexuality private for it was important when mixing with society and the church hierarchy to fit in with their ideas of societal norms. Frederick the Great, the first King of Prussia was a noted composer and also gay. Camille Saint-Saëns, best known probably for his Organ Symphony where the organ dominates the final movement, and Carnival of the Animals was also gay. Siegfried Wagner, son of the very promiscuous Richard Wagner who enjoyed a considerable amount of female flesh, was very gay yet was persuaded to marry a young innocent Welsh girl Winifred aged only 17. He was 45. They remarkably produced four children before he resumed his gay life. And is it not one of the 20th century’s great mysteries that Winifred Wagner was to become a totally rabid Nazi who almost certainly had a long term affair with Hitler and remained a lifelong fan of Hitler till her death in 1980. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L3623uF8XwA Part of Hans Jurgen Syberberg’s fascinating 5-hour 1975 documentary The Confessions of Winifred Wagner which youtube does not permit to be embedded 20th century composers perhaps understandably have been less concerned about being openly gay – and there were many of them. Aaron Copeland, Samuel Barber, John Cage and a host of other young Americans including Leonard Bernstein were quite open in the 1940s and 50s. Since he desperately wanted to conduct, Bernstein was advised he had to get married. Elsewhere Benjamin Britten and his partner Peter Pears were together for nearly 40 years, latterly quite openly a couple. But the one composer lodged in most people’s minds as gay was the composer Pyotr Ilych Tchaikovsky. His ballets Swan Lake, Sleeping Beauty and The Nutcracker are regularly performed all over the world, as are his symphonies and concertos. He is Russia’s most recognised and beloved composer. In 2013, after a century of Russians denying he was gay, even Putin spoke out on television about the composer basically saying Russians adored him for his music, not his sexuality. This was at a time when Putin was passing anti-gay laws! The young Tchaikovsky Born in 1840 and growing up in Tsarist Russia, Tchaikovsky’s early life was far from easy. A sensitive child, he was sent to St. Petersburg for schooling. The death of his mother from cholera when he was 14 deeply affected him. As a boarding student at the School of Jurisprudence, like many boarding establishments, he became intimately acquainted with homosexuality. The School itself boasted a number of prominent gay alumni. But life as a clerk in the Ministry of Justice bored him. As a young man about town, he quickly found a set of gay friends with whom he expended most of his energies. But Tsarist Russia was not a country where scandal could be accepted and once he had been threatened with exposure as gay, he limited his activities. We know this from the autobiographical account of his brother Modest who was also homosexual. By 1863 he decided to change his career and carve one out as a composer. Here he came under the spell of the gay composer, Vladimir Shilovsky. As the years passed he had affairs with many young men, including prostitutes. In 1876 he fell deeply in love involving a “passion with unimaginable force” with one of his students Iosif Kotek. As he wrote to Modest the following year – “It is impossible for me to hide my feelings for him, although I tried hard to do so at first . . . can you imagine how artful I am in hiding my feelings? My habit of eating alive any beloved object always gives me away. Yesterday I gave myself away completely... I burst. I made a total confession of love, begging him not to be angry, not to feel constrained if I bore him, etc. All of these confessions were met with a thousand various small caresses, strokes on the shoulder, cheeks, and strokes across my head. I am incapable of expressing to you the full degree of bliss that I experienced by completely giving myself away.” But like so many others, that love was not to last. Significantly, though, Kotek had already introduced one if his friends, an extremely wealthy widow with eleven children Nadezhda von Meck. For 13 years she was to become Tchaikovsky’s patron thereby enabling him to spend all his time on composition even though the two had decided – surely extraordinarily - that they would never meet. Even before these years of financial security and endless affairs with young men, he was happy. Yet he was about to enter a disastrous period in his life. Antonina Milyukova, a former conservatory student of his had a deep crush on him and bombarded him with letters. So persuasive was she, and so deeply did Tchaikovsky consider marriage could be the one way of maintaining respectability in St. Petersburg society, without his initially remembering who the lady was (!) that the marriage took place in 1877. It only took him days to realise he had made a huge mistake. After 20 days the marriage had still not been consummated. He spent a total of just one month with Antonina before leaving her for good. Finally he realised he could not change his sexuality. He accepted he was gay. Since then, many commentators have considered he became a rather sad man who spent much time reflecting on his fate. Although he never divorced and always looked after his wife financially, nothing could be further from the truth. Always promiscuous, he continued to have affairs although he never did find long term happiness, no doubt an outcome that would have placed his position in Russian society and as a composer at considerable risk. Of all his affairs, arguably the most meaningful would have been scandalous at the time – with his nephew Vladimir Davidov nicknamed ‘Bob’. Tchaikovsky was 31 years his elder. After his sister died, the two became considerably closer, no doubt because like his two uncles Bob discovered he was gay. A 1892 photo of Tchaikovsky with his nephew ‘Bob’ Despite Tchaikovsky’s adoration for him, Bob was often and understandably conflicted. But Pyotr did not give up. His Sixth and final symphony is dedicated to Bob. Many regard this Symphony as Tchaikovsky’s own death notice since, unlike almost all other symphonies by any composer, this one ends with a very slow requiem-like movement. It also includes a phrase from the Russian Orthodox Mass for the Dead. But there is absolutely nothing to indicate that he was contemplating suicide. Yet a few days later aged 53 he was dead. Allegedly he had drunk unboiled water in a restaurant (a reason for his death that is regularly cast in doubt - with cholera common, what restaurant would offer patrons unboiled water?). Pyotr left his entire estate to Bob, a considerable amount in those days. Not even Bob could escape from his famous uncle’s shadow. He struggled with morphine and alcohol for years, eventually taking his own life aged just 35. Long after the names of most well-known gay men of their time have been forgotten, that of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky will remain. When many decades hence audiences flock to hear concerts of his symphonic works and mothers take their young children to delight in the Christmas excitement of The Nutcracker, perhaps a few will recall that he remains one of the most famous gay men in history. Image from The Nutcracker – photo Royal Opera House

The Barmy Army did indeed exist in Pattaya with @Gaybutton as either its leader or one of its regular members. I seem to recall they met weekly at a bar in Sunee. Apart from drinking, chatting, telling tories of Pattaya in general and the old days in particular, I recall reading nothing more.

I watch to enjoy and learn.

And you always trust what you read in People magazine??? It was reported today that Steven Spielberg has donated US$25,000 to the GoFundMe site. I hardly think he would throw around his cash unless he believed it was for a needy cause. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2026/feb/13/steven-spielberg-dawson-leery-idol-donates-25000-to-james-van-der-beek-fundraiser

Having now seen the full men's Final Programme, Malinin's breakdown is even harder to work out. I've also seen several interviews he gave in the months leading up to the Olympics. He seems a relatively humble individual. In each, he says clearly that his short-term goal is the individual Olympic Gold. As I've stated above, with a good lead from the Short Programme and his three nearest competitors each having fallen after one jump with their scores being lower as a result, he had absolutely no need to pack his Programme with the seven quad jumps he said he was determined to include. He was so far ahead in points he could - and to my thinking should - have quickly modified his programme before he took to the ice. He and his team could easiy have decided to convert some of these quads to much easier triple jumps. He would have lost points but would still have won quite easily. But his confidence (arrogance?) in determining to land all seven in competition overcame that simple desire just to win the Gold.

Like @Pete1111 I have come to enjoy curling. For whatever reason I always thought it was a middle-aged man's sport. So it is a joy to see that most of the teams are made up of young men and women in their 20s. The young women all look so extraordinarily beautiful, especially the Asian ones, as though they are taking part in a beauty pageant than an Olympic sport! But my favourite is still Marc Muskatewitz the leader of the German team.

You constantly spout about your doing good with your research. I hope many members do the same. I donate to one charity which has given funds following massive earthquakes in Nepal and in Sichuan Province, the horrendous tsunami in December 2004 and so on, but these were deliberate actions and to one of the world's recognised charities. Whenever I pass away a recognised charity for the education of desperately poor hill tribe children will be one of the beneficlaries. Would I give to a GoFundMe page? Unlikely, unless it was specifically for someone I knew. I have two close relatives in the UK who are desperately iill - one with a severe heart ailment that will result soon in her death and the other with one of the rarer forms of leukaemia. Both are from well-off families and both are additionally cared for by the National Health Service. Unlike the monstrously expensive health system in the USA, they do not need cash from anyone. But a huge number with similar conditions in Asia are not nearly so lucky. Why should they not set up GoFundMe pages? How do you check their financial records and their earning capacity as @unicorn wants us to do? You can't! So, some people will indeed give out of the goodness of their hearts as @Suckrates implies. What is wrong with that? Besides, depite your alleged research, you still have no specific clue of the financial situation of the actor you are discussing. You are guessing. And you have little clue about a widow with six young children who now have to survive perhaps for the rest of their lives without a bredwinner. So, you suggest he may have erred in not having sufficient life insurance and goodness knows what else. If you feel that way, don't contribute. But people do contribute on impulse for a man for whom they clearly had great regard. Could they have donated to cancer research instead? Of course! But I understand there are some protections already built in to GoFundMe organisation if someone makes a Report about a possible scam. How effectve that is, I have no clue. But I am sure protection against scams will be increased in future. l'll end with a true story. About 15 years ago there was a newspaper article in Phuket about one man's fund raising operation to assist his young son aged ten. For years he was constantly tired, unable to play with his schoolmates etc. A succession of local doctors were never able to come up with a diagnosis. His father set up his own fund raising scheme through local papers but unsurprsingly it resulted in peanuts. Exasperated the father decided to spend some of his meagre savings by bringing the boy to be seen by a specialist at the Bangkok Heart Hospital. It was only by pure luck that the doctor he saw there had been trained at the famed Mayo Clinic. He detected a congenital heart condition named Ebstein's Anomaly which had never before been diagnosed in Thailand. He said the boy needed an operation within six months or he would die. But there were no surgeons in the country who had undertaken such surgery before. Through someone who had happened to see the original Phuket article, it was brought to the attention of a relatively rich man. He asked his friend to meet with both the family and the hospital doctor to make sure this was a genuine case of need. The report back was the boy was bright and intelligent, even funny, but looked younger than his ten years. And the doctor confirmed both the diagnosis and prognosis. End result. The hospital not only cut its fees in half, it sent a team to the Mayo Clinic to see the operation carried out. The rich man donated the remainder of the fees and a five-star hotel gave the father and son rooms for two weeks so they could stay in Bangkok for the constant check-ups. One of the most heart-warming stories that resulted was a report that the boy was thrilled than he could finally ride his bicycle to see his grandmother every day. This certainly bears out @unicorn's sugestion of the need for research. But the above tale depended totally on a succession of sheer luck. Had a GoFundMe operation been in effect, maybe it would all have happened out of the goodness of the average Thai person's heart. We can never know. The real blessing is that this disease has become known in Thailand and already several other children have benefitted from the new skills of the surgeons.

Good examples. Yet, many of the Thailand examples I read about involve activity for which insurance is not easy to obtain at the level required. So if someone hires a motorbike and crashes it into a tree after having perhaps one beer, the insurance company would probably argue about paying out for that one. I agree some riders have imbibed more than a beer or two, but still someone has to pay the medical bills. Individuals are not always to blame when there are non-insurable events.

I think in the UK you can see the full programmes of each competitor along with sound. All the vdo I posted here has is a few seconds of each progrme and no sound. Hopefully someone will post the full versions on you tube sooner rather than later.

Examples?

Finding vdos that can be played in Thailand of the Final Men's Skating Round is near impossible due to contract restrictions. All I can find is this is one with exceprts from the top finalists.

You make profound statements with no source material. Is this just your conclusion?

Well, Malinin's problem is that he did not skate anything like that. In fact, his long programme was so bad I cannot remember any other skater who has skated a worse long programme. Although he had a generous lead of 5 points from the short programe, he took to the ice last and was aware that all of his nearest rivals had faltered at least once. The gold was his for the taking. After all, for the last two years he has enjoyed an unbeaten streak over the previous 14 ice skating competitions. Yet it was as though his mind just turned to jelly. He achieved nothing of which we know he is capable - falling badly twice, pulling out of a quad jump and made it a one turn jump, and so on. People then talked about the pressure of the Olympics affecting him. According to The Guardian, he is reported to have said - “The pressure of the Olympics really gets you,” Malinin said. “People say that there’s an Olympic curse, that the Olympic gold medal favorite is always going to skate bad at the Olympics. So that’s what happens." That is pure BS. It did not affect one of the the favourites Nathan Chan in 2022. It certainly never affected Hanyu Yuzuru when he won his first gold aged 19 in Sochi - two years younger than Malinin - and his second gold in Pyeongchang aged 23. He had shown a vast amount of confidence and maturity - both totally missing from Malinin's performance. Yet Malinin is too good a skater. He will bounce back. But he will take some time to recover from this setback.

What does all this matter? The poor man is dead and leaves behind a widow and six young children. Whatever he shuold have done or might have done is immaterial. He is dead!!

Successive Thai governments have been tying to do this for decades and all have failed. Why the snake Anutin should have the means to solve the problem beats me!

I had never heard of the actor until news of his passing this morning. I have quite a bit more sympathy than @unicorn. First the GoFundMe page was set up by friends, not his widow, although she has indeed stated the funds will be needed. @unicorn states checking for colorectal cancer at age 45 is recommended. But he was only 48 and therefore in his 46th year when diagnosed. I think many of us skip health checks by a year or two from time to time. Blaming him or his wife for not strictly adhering to recommendations is I think massively unfair! Plus I have absolutely no idea how his cancer treatment was paid for. The cancer was diagnosed 2 1/2 years ago. I imagine treatment throughout that time in the US medical system would have been extremely costly. Plus all his children are still young - 15, 13, 12, 9, 7 and 4. The thought of educating all of them through to university graduation levels in the United States must be horrendous and will require millions. For private non-profit universities with room & board added to education costs for four years, the amount can easily reach $260,000! But that is today's costs. How much will it be for the three youngest children when they reach college age? Maybe the family does have quite a large nest egg and we cannot depend on anyone to tell us apart from his financial advisor - everything else is pure speculation. But imagine merely paying living expenses for such a large family and even these are not going to last very many years!

The exterior photos make it look pretty depressing.

@unicorn rather suggests in the title of this thread that this song should have prompted an intervention. You can acually say that about a very large number of songs. Many people knew about Karen Carpenter's mental issues and depression did nothing. Why therefore would a song prompt action? An action from whom? Songs with the sentiment of desperation were rarely regarded as indicative of mental illness, Certainly hardly ever as a prelude to suicide. Yet Kurt Cobain's lyrics with Nirvana, especially "Something in the Way" and others illustrate the very dark period he went through in his life. Indeed the lyrics of American songs seem to betray a good deal more inner darkness than those from other countries. Cobain struggled with much mental pain before taking his own life at age 27. On the other side of the ocean, George Michael had been battling with severe depression for 12 years, with paralysing grief and unhappiness before his death aged 53. He could not come to terms with the loss of his lover to AIDS and the death of his mother. Also the possibility that the public might find out about his homosexuality. Even though he died from a heart attack, should he not have benefitted from an intervention the more so as his songs indicate deep depression? I believe it was Kierkegaard who remarked that the commonest form of despair is not being who you are. The fact is that even though 'stars' are surrounded by friends, lovers, family, adoring fans and a plethora of hangers on, many - more than we may think - suffer from loneliness of a depth few feel. Some become more the star than their real selves. If Karen Carpenter suffered in her life, it was those around her who should have noticed and should have reacted. I am sure some did, just as some of those dearest to them try to prevent all manner of addictions to find help and prevent suicide. Too often, sadly, some such attempts are unsuccessful.

And for someone who can afford to say at Capella by the river, he can obviously afford restaurants that are quite high class. He might think about starting with the nearby Normandie Grill in the Mandarin Oriental! You'll need a tie and maybe a jacket, though!

FInished earlier as I had a free day today! LGBTQ-History Month – (Part 2 of 2) It is hard today for us to think of Mineo as a big star because he never landed a really starring role. Yet as a teen idol he was massively popular and had a huge young fan base. By 1960 "Mineo Mania" was sweeping America. Mineo Mania In America As the young writer/director Peter Bogdanovich who first met him on a movie set mentions in an Esquire Magazine article, “I have never met anyone quite so instantly disarming as Sal could be; inhibitions and prejudices dissolved in the heady rush of his good humor and happy conspiratorial manner. No one took himself less seriously than Sal, which is not to say that he was frivolous; he’d just drop off into that funny snore of his at any hint of pomposity in himself or others . . .You never felt any awkwardness around Sal; he made sure you were at your ease.” As his boyish looks started to fade, though, so did his career, although rarely for that reason. He desperately wanted a key role in David Lean's Lawrence of Arabia. Lean's people turned him down on the basis that it would not be appropriate to cast someone who had recently played a Zionist terrorist and killed four Arabs in Exodus. He was equally desperate to play the young lead in The Godfather. Few in Hollywood then knew of Al Pacino who was thought of more as a New York stage actor. Sal again was not considered even though he was a ‘name’ and of Sicilian descent. He also read for the part given to Dustin Hoffman in Midnight Cowboy, a movie for which he had tried to buy the rights. Despite his major attraction to the relatively new teenage audience, Hollywood passed him by. Almost his only roles in major movies were The Longest Day and The Greatest Story Ever Told, in both buried among a host of other supporting actors including Charlton Heston, Henry Fonda, John Wayne and Sean Connery. Sal did not like Heston saying he had “an ego the size of Texas and a talent the size of South Dakota.” With film offers tailing off, he took a beach house near Los Angeles where a frequent visitor was Jill Haworth. Apparently a warm and generous person, many came to visit when he was there. He loved giving large parties for anyone and everyone. At one, Rudolf Nureyev, the world’s most famous ballet dancer who had recently defected from the Soviet Union and was very gay, approached Sal. In those days the twist was the most popular dance. Nureyev asked him, “Teach me what they are doing.” Astonished, Sal replied, “You’re putting me on! You want me to teach you how to dance?” Sal then took a towel and pretended drying his bottom for a minute or two. Moments later Nureyev was doing the twist in the middle of the dance floor! One day he met a 19-year old singer Bobby Sherman on the beach. Learning Sherman had nowhere to stay, he quickly became a fixture in the Mineo household. In Sal Mineo: A Biography the author claims it was here that he had his first truly gay experience (it may have been the first time he had had a genuinely serious and loving gay experience, for it is claimed he had already had very brief and ultimately unhappy flings with Dean, Paul Newman and Marlon Brando). One day Haworth returned from shopping to find Sal and Bobby naked in their bed together. Appalled, she walked out. She was still only 19. Yet it was not long before the two were to continue their friendship that lasted the rest of his life. As Sal’s career was going downhill, Jill’s was on the up. She became a star in her own right when cast as the original Sally Bowles in the Broadway production of the musical Cabaret, even though she had never once sung a note professionally. Bobby Sherman - photo Everett Collection Sal’s homosexuality was publicly discovered after he and Bobby spent a night together in a hotel. A paparazzo following up a tip took a photo of the two kissing. Although the public seemed to pay little attention and still a star name, Hollywood effectively crucified Sal. Film and TV show contracts were cancelled, his career now set on a long downward spiral. Had he been under contract to a studio, like many other better-known actors it is almost certain that all would have been covered up to protect reputations. But he had never been offered such a contract. Thereafter Sal basically lived for the moment, accepting parts in trashy television dramas interspersed with some much better plays, and whatever else came his way. Almost permanently broke, much of his later work was third-rate theatrical fare, sometimes even appearing in dinner theatre or in student productions, both of which he loathed. He did have one major success both as actor and director. He took an option for a Los Angeles production of the Broadway play Fortune And Men’s Eyes. With its concentration on the hell of prison life and in particular its homosexuality, this was a gamble, the more so when two men had to appear on stage fully naked and one rapes the other. Sal now aged 30 appeared as the rapist Rocky and cast then 18-year old Don Johnson, another who had shared his bed and was to become his roommate for several years, as the younger Smitty. Whereas on Broadway the play had featured the rape offstage, Sal’s 1967 production had several changes which included performing it on stage just before the lights go out for the intermission. Perhaps to avert possible discussion about being gay, Johnson married in the same year, a marriage that lasted a mere two months. Johnson quickly gained a reputation for his hedonistic lifestyle which included six marriages. The second lasted only as long as the first; the third just 10 months! Sal behind Don Johnson Sal’s production had added some dialogue and more nudity which did not please the play’s author John Herbert. It could all have been a disaster, but the West Coast critics all but unanimously agreed Sal had created a triumph for himself as actor and director. Johnson also impressed and would eventually take one of the two leads in the popular TV series Starsky and Hutch. Although it had already played on Broadway, a producer financed Sal’s production for a transfer to Stage 73 in New York in 1969. The influential New York Times critic Clive Barnes clearly loathed it. Starting his review “How far can you go?”, he continued, “Mr. Mineo’s version of this play is pure and tawdry sensationalism. I am not sure what kind of reputation Mr. Mineo has – he is a minor Hollywood player I believe – but I am perfectly certain of what Mr. Mineo deserves!” And if that is not bad enough, it gets worse! Barnes basically trashed the production. Yet it continued to play for some time. Flyer for the New York Season Perhaps not surprisingly it was around this time that nudity on stage, the term ‘gay’ and in general sexual freedom were becoming far more openly discussed subjects before HIV and AIDS were almost to close them little more than a decade later. The tribal rock musical Hair had opened on Broadway in 1968. In London the premiere waited a little longer until the day after theatre censorship was abolished. Poster for the London production of Hair With this poster designed to illustrate the musical’s anti-establishment, psychedelic and sexual experimentation nature, it was a huge success. At the end of Act 1 the cast emerge from under a large circular cloth all totally naked (albeit with dimmed lighting), It broke new boundaries and the show ran for several years in both New York and London. As much as that brief nude scene, it was the lyrics of one of the songs that shook critics – “Sodomy”. The Boys in the Band had also opened in an off-Broadway theatre in 1968. The original production and revivals of the revue Oh! Calcutta (the title is based on a French phrase ‘Oh! Quel cul to as – Oh what a fine ass you have!’) featuring full male and female nudity in most of its sketches had opened in both cities playing for years after its New York premiere in 1969. The Stonewall Riots had taken place just four months before Sal’s production opened in New York. Unlike so many major figures in Hollywood, Mineo was later never ashamed of his sexuality. Behind the scenes everyone knew he was almost oversexed with a penchant for men in their late teens and early 20s. His deepest regret was for the times he had spent with some of those figures, famous actors whom he loved and he believed loved him, but only for fleeting moments before they so quickly, silently tossed him out of their lives. A continuing mystery about Rebel Without A Cause is how it came about that the three young stars all died violent deaths when still young: Dean crashing his Porsche Spyder aged just 24, Sal murdered in a botched robbery aged 37, and Natalie Wood mysteriously drowning after falling from a yacht aged 43. At the end of an over-active life filled with a craving for frequently unfulfilled love when he had been used by others and yet never settled down to make the hard decisions that would really develop his career, Sal remained an optimist. As he told an interviewer in Toronto prior to his death, “Now I’m a former rebel who has found his cause. I’m going to be a great movie director someday. Just you wait and see.” No matter how unlikely that might now seem, the killer’s blade ensured it would never happen. The teenage idol then in his late 30s who never had a childhood and had witnessed Hollywood turn its back on him, tragically was dead. Sal Mineo leaves a legacy as a gay icon who never shied away from acknowledging his sexuality. His part playing a key role in gay history is surely secure. Sources: There are too many reliable sources to be listed here. I urge anyone seeking to know more to read the excellent, exhaustively researched Sal Mineo: A Biography by Michael Gregg Michaud which includes extensive interviews with Jill Haworth and Courtney Burr, and the essay by his good friend Peter Bogdanovich in Esquire magazine.

If a straight boy does not deliver what has actually been greed, the appropriate course of action is to return and complain to the mamasan. Withhold a tip if warranted. But the problem in my limited experience is that hardly any customers bother returning to the bar and just chalk problems like this down to experience. In any event, there is presumably little proof re what he was asked and what he said he would do. So if the boy earns cash for the bar, there is little a mamasan is likely to do. The issue often seems to be one of communication - lack of clear communication. I know this is very difficult and perhaps feels awkward for newcomers. But two issues that could have been added to the list of what the customer wanted was no smoking and no phone until after sex. Very difficult to enforce, especially with straight boys who probably need some straight porn to get in some kind of mood to go with a gay guy. It would also be my word against his. Although I no longer attend bars in Thailand, were I to do so and in the unlikely event I wished to take out a straight guy, based on what I have read in recent years in this forum I'd have on my phone pre-prepared lists of what was expected - one in Thai, one in Vietnamese, one in Lao, one in Cambodian and maybe one in Burmese. These can be done before arrival in the country. That's a big hassle to prepare I know - but what do you want? What you ask for or what happened to the unfortunate poster above? I would have the boy agree this and show it to the mamasan. It's obviously no guarantee, but it surely avoids a good part of the issue of communication difficulties.

Why? Why is there always someone who moans about tips being too high (however good or bad the service) for the only reason that it queers the pitch for those who follow? A tip is a tip. In my many years of bar hopping and offing, I gave tips which were in line with the service I received, not what others suggested. The guys who gave great service and went beyond what I expected (most of them) would always get more. I never knew about average tips but always had in my mind what I would give for a good time. The only time I had any issue was with a boy from the old Screwboys Bar who, having been given quite a generous tip for lousy service, asked for more! He was out the door quite quickly! Would those who complain suggest to bars that there is a tip sheet with maximum tips obvious to all patrons? Impossible! (Sorry @vinapu as I am sure you are always fair. But there are equally degrees of fairness. A guy with lots of cash to spend is likely to pay considerably more in a tip whatever anyone suggests to him whereas those on far more modest incomes give less. That's the way of the world!)

If you look through the massive cataolgue of songs, old and not so old, you will find plenty with lyrics which suggest all manner of mental issues. I have no idea why @unicorn reckons this particular one so shocking. As I'm a bit older, I can remember this from Roy Orbison "It's Over". Like @unicorn I rarely paid much attention to the words and did not realise it referred to the break up of a relationship, but the title and the repetition in the second verse of "It's over, it's over. it's over" made the young me think it was about the end of life. What about Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"? Mama, put my guns in the ground, I can’t shoot them anymore. That long black cloud is comin’ down. I feel like I’m knockin’ on heaven’s door The pain of lineliness is also expressed in Eric Carmen's "All By Myself" (with the melody stolen from Rachmaninov's Second Piano Concerto)? Most that I can recall refer to an expression of the loss of someone, not the singer. But the effect on the original listeners who rarely if ever considered context was vitually the same. Elton John/Bernie Taupin's original "Candle in the Wind" after the death of Marilyn Monroe Loneliness was tough,The toughest role you ever played, Hollywood created a superstar, And pain was the price you paid. Or Metallica's "Fade to Black"? I have lost the will to live, Simply nothing more to give, There is nothing more for me, I need the end to set me free But go back in time through the classical canon and you find composers almost preoccupied with songs about death. Bach's cantata "Ich habe genug" meaning essentially "I have had enough and wait to go to my Maker" is probably the most obvious. Just before his death in 1949 Richard Strauss wrote his hauntingly beautiful "Four Last Songs". I adore the third "Beim Schlafengehen" (While Going Too Sleep) which ends - Hands, cease your activity; Head, forget all of your thoughts; all my senses now will sink into slumber. And my soul, unobserved, will float about on untrammelled wings in the enchanted circle of the night, living a thousandfold more deeply.

LGBTQ-History Month – (Part 1 of 2) Preface: Like a small number of other posters, I sometimes write long blog-type articles. Obviously readers can choose whether or not to bother reading them. I have decided the two parts of this and one more dealing with aspects of gay history this month will be my last such long ones. I hope at least some may find these interesting. February 12 sees several anniversaries. We'll skip over the birthdays of Abraham Lincoln and me, and remember only it was the day 50 years in two days time when one of the cutest and most talented screen actors was murdered. Sal Mineo had just driven home from the rehearsal for a play. Walking towards his small one-bedroom West Hollywood apartment to spend the evening unusually alone (his actor boyfriend of six years, Courtney Burr, was due back from New York the following day), he was jumped on in a totally random robbery attempt and stabbed with one fatal knife wound to the heart. He died almost instantly. He was 37. Gay actors in Hollywood history were virtually all closeted and hard to find unless you were in the movie business. Mineo, though, eventually came out as gay and I find him a hauntingly fascinating, hugely talented, mischievous, mysterious and thus frequently exasperating character. A few readers will remember him, may even have seen him in one of his films, may know that he was gay, this at a time when we are told many actors were either gay or bisexual but totally afraid for this to become known. While Mineo might initially have been bisexual he did come out as gay just at the time when sexual boundaries were being extended and just before the gay world we know today really began. In so many respects he was ahead of his time. Not well known is that Sal Mineo had an early connection to Thailand. He had been a child star on Broadway playing a pageboy in The King & I. When the boy playing Crown Prince Chulalongkorn fell ill, Sal stepped into his shoes for the rest of the run. He loved performing with Yul Brynner who was to become almost a father figure to him for the next decade of his life. Scene from the original New York production of The King & I - photo Fred Fehl His big break as an actor came in films when he played Plato alongside James Dean and Natalie Wood in the 1955 movie Rebel Without A Cause. Rebel is a movie about three very alienated teenagers, each misunderstood by their parents who simply do not even try to listen to them and each desperate for someone to care about them. As Dean says when the three are in the darkened castle near the end and they imagine how much better their lives could be, almost pretending to be a family, “Nobody talks to children.” Sal was just 16 at the time of filming. As a result of that movie he became one of the youngest actors ever nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. It is now known that Dean was bisexual. It was always assumed that Mineo and Dean had an affair during the filming of the movie. Yet Mineo later acknowledged that at that time “I had no idea or understanding of affection between men.” It was only later that he became bisexual (and even later totally gay) but the Dean rumours persist to this day. Even so, very brief flings with men were to become a part of his life, even though he initially found them unsatisfying for a number of reasons. Several sources agree Rebel’s director Nicholas Ray, himself bisexual, had sex with his young star even before the start of filming, as it is known he had with Natalie Wood. A screen actress since the age of four, Wood had by then quite a sexual upbringing, one being in an affair with Frank Sinatra when he was 38 and she only 15 after she had been pimped by her Russian mother. That near kiss at the end of the clip does not appear in the movie which was filmed in colour. For years Mineo claimed that in a way he was seen as the movie world's first gay teenager. As he said in a 1972 interview, “You watch it now, you know he has the hots for James Dean. You watch it now, and everyone knows about Jimmy, so it’s like he had the hots for Natalie and me. Ergo, I had to be bumped off, out of the way.” It now seems certain Nicholas Ray intended this, as there are many discreet gay references in the movie if you just look for them. Jim offering Plato his jacket in the police station after hearing Plato feels cold even though they do not know each other. The photo of screen idol Alan Ladd in Plato’s locker. After the “chicken” run, Plato looks on Jim as clearly more than just a crush. When he then suggests Jim go home with him to chat, that there is no one else there and they can have breakfast together, it becomes even more obvious. Yet if there had indeed been any relationship between Dean and Mineo as actors it ended suddenly when Dean was tragically killed in a car crash the month before Rebel Without A Cause was released. Masculinity in movies up to the early 1950s meant essentially John Wayne-type characters. With Marlon Brando in The Wild One in 1953, a new type of masculine youth figure evolved, one that was to develop even further with the three leads in Rebel. Roles for teen actors were no longer thereafter to be relegated to nicely-dressed adjuncts of polite middle-and upper-class families. And rebels were no longer just from poor working class homes. Of the three teenagers, I find Wood the least effective. Although she really was 16 when the movie was filmed, to me she actually looks and acts – and is dressed – more like 26. Having recently seen the movie, I do not find it quite as iconic as its reputation. Some of Dean’s scenes are definitely overdone while the drama is not always convincing. After the dreadful death of her boyfriend in the game of “chicken”, Wood shows almost no emotion, before instantly transferring her romantic feelings to Dean. That certainly does not ring true. Indeed, none of the gang show any emotion either, despite the horror they have just witnessed. Dean’s sobbing at the end “I got the bullets” from Plato’s gun after he has been killed by the police does seem somewhat idiotic! If said before the police fired, it would surely make much more sense. But then I guess it was important that Plato dies at the end. And it’s always important to remember it is a film of its time – not 71 years later in 2026. Many regard Rebel as Dean’s movie. Yet increasingly critics and audiences have come round to the view, as I do, that it is the emotionally charged Mineo as young Plato who is the real star. He is the actor who is the most believable, making his character’s loneliness, neediness and desperation so real, that face of a cherubic boy somehow infused with a knowing sensuality that exudes danger and vulnerability in equal measure. Plato seared Mineo into the minds of America’s youth. Mineo was born to a family of poor Italian immigrants in New York. Being under age at the start of his career, his domineering mother took control of his finances. With absolutely no clue of the entertainment business, she skimmed off for herself 15% as his manager and a further 10% as his agent, as well as paying for all his expenses. For much of his time in Los Angeles she provided him with only $20 per week as a living allowance. This continued even when his movie fee was later to rise from $350 per week to $3,500 per week. He loved his family who initially sacrificed a lot for his career. Eventually he bought them a large mansion by the ocean at a cost of $350,000. He thought it would be his base forever. It did not take him long to realise his mother was spending all his money faster than he could make it. At the height of his fame he discovered he was broke and still owed US$250,000 to the IRS. He cut his financial ties to his mother and moved permanently to the West Coast. With his family unable to pay for the upkeep of the mansion, it was sold. Sal never saw a cent. Photo of the late-teens Sal – photo Bettmann//Getty Images After his second movie with Dean in a lesser role Giant, Sal had become a bankable star having been in several movies in between. But big roles did not come his way until Exodus in 1960 which earned him another Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. Playing Dov Landau, a powerfully bitter Auschwitz survivor in the movie, its director Otto Preminger had Dov confess the Nazis had “used him like a woman.” Even so, few seemed to realise that this meant homosexuality on the part of the Nazis. Hollywood in those days had to get a Production Code Seal of Approval to keep issues like homosexuality off screens. Preminger was one of the first to prove you could get away without that Seal for commercial success. It helped end studio self-censorship. Sal’s love interest in that movie was a 15-year old English actor Jill Haworth. They got on so well that they kept seeing each other after shooting was complete. So great was Sal’s popularity by this time the two featured on the cover of LIFE magazine. Cover from LIFE Magazine - Copyright LIFE magazine Not only did their affair last several years, Mineo claimed he lost his virginity in his swimming pool when Haworth was only 16 (presumably he meant his virginity with a woman). She confirms this story, claiming she felt no shame because she really loved Sal. She was under contract to work in France and so Sal flew regularly to Paris. There she introduced him to the gay painter Harold Stevenson whose speciality was painting fully nude men. For whatever reason, Mineo agreed to model for him. This resulted in an enormous 40-foot long portrait of a fully naked Mineo titled “The New Adam”, conceived by Stevenson as a homage to his own lover, Lord Timothy Willoughby. Although his arm covers his eyes, Mineo never tried to hide his identity. It was acquired by New York’s Guggenheim Museum in 2005 where it can now be viewed. The New Adam painting - copyright Harold Stevenson Part 2 with Mineo's adminssion of being gay will appear on Wednesday

The benevolent influence of Portugal in Asia is certainly often forgotten. We remember the Spanish partly for their conquest of the Philippines, the Dutch for ther conquest of Indonesia and part of the Malayan/SIngapore peninsula and also their presence, along with the Portuguese, in pre-Shogun Nagasaki; the British for their conquest of the subcontinent, the China coast and much of the Malay peninsula; and later infiltrations by German, French, American and other nations. It was all supposedly transacted in the name of trade, but we know that the conquest of territory and the conversion of heathen souls to Christianity was very much a secondary issue. But Portugal was one of the first and caused the least problems for peoples in the region. When it negotiated with the Chinese to take over the peninsula of Macao in the mid-16th century, it agreed an annual payment in gold. When Britain went to war with China in the early 19th century, it just took Hong Kong and later the Kowloon Peninsula as the spoils of unequal wars without any payments to China. Let's also not forget the influence of France in Cantonese cuisine. It's quite extensive.