The Beauty of Men Never Dies: An Autobiographical Novel

Old Songs

39 Old Songs As I fixed some breakfast for myself this morning (toast and tea, that’s all) and was singing some old song or other, I remembered that frequently people have said that I was singing what my subconscious was thinking. A few days ago, I had excavated “Be Careful, It’s My Heart,” a hit from the 1940s. I was driving north with the millionaire. A few days later, he mentioned that he didn’t want to break my heart. I assured him that this was very unlikely, and he replied, “But you were singing about it.” And perhaps he had something there. My second brother was given to singing snatches of popular songs, as did my sister. And often I thought their songs indicated a state of mind. As far back as my college days when I briefly had a girlfriend to whom I was semi-engaged, she would pick up on this also. We were “pinned.” I had given her my fraternity pin to wear. It was a ridiculous thing to do to a very nice girl I liked very much but certainly did not find sexually attractive. I was “pinned” to her because she was a Pi Phi sorority girl; it was a way of showing my fraternity brothers that I was their social superior. Anyway, she, too, would often say that the songs I sang revealed an inner state of mind. I pooh-poohed her, but of course she was right. The reason I contemplate this is that now deep into my seventies, I can accept that perhaps I am not exactly the person I think I am. A recent visitor to my home in Uruguay, the high-flying Suzanne, reminded me that in the past I would sometimes appear at parties in Paris with her as my date as a kind of smoke screen to at least partially conceal or confuse my identity as a gay man. I wanted to contradict her 40 Old Songs but had to accept that she was right. I was not alone. Gay men of that period, the 1970s, would not have taken their male lover as their date to a party. Suzanne was not the only woman who would accompany me to advertising agency functions and the like. To this day, male film stars will go to the Academy Awards accompanied by their mother. Strange, isn’t it, that the theater and motion picture industry would be one of the last bastions of “no gays” when it is fully accepted in the medical and legal professions, and even the government? Suzanne’s reminder made me feel ashamed of myself. One, for not taking a stronger stand on admitting my gayness. And two, my deceptiveness later in announcing that I had never been in the closet. To look back on one’s life and admit faults can’t help but lower your self-esteem. Although I also allow myself the redemption that this was customary behavior at the time. Only the flaming queens with the fluttering wrists and imaginary bustles were very certainly gay in the eyes of others. And even they, if openly confronted with it, would dissemble and avoid answering. So I must pay attention to the old songs that crop up in my day to read their messages to me. I can remember as early as the age of seven hearing my older brothers (Really? They were only three and five years older than me) playing records like “Deep Purple” and “Skylark” on a smallish half-size Victrola we had. A wind-up one. The songs of that prewar period were very pretty, even lovely, with very danceable melodies . It was the period of the Big Band. Everyone went dancing. A star of the motion pictures was Fred Astaire, a dancer. This would be unthinkable today. Does social dancing truly exist anymore? Isn’t it just shrugging and shuffling to a heavy beat, never touching your partner? Except perhaps to press your buttocks into his crotch. Buttocks and crotches didn’t exist in the 1930s. Just lovely flowing dresses and floating over the dance floor with a long, striding movement. I think my entire concept of what love and relationships should be was formed by films and magazines of that prewar and wartime period. You would find fulfillment in the arms of some man who wanted you, and it probably wouldn’t last. This was the war’s effect. Everything was about love that was...