Another Queer Jewish Buddhist

How a gay boy lost his heart to India: From Sajid Khan to the Ramayana and Bhangra in Bryant

When I was fifteen years old there was a TV show that starred Jay North, the kid who played Dennis the Menace in the early 60s. The premise of the show was that North was searching for his lost father in India, traveling on the back of an elephant with his Indian friend, who was played by a young Indian actor named Sajid Khan. Jay North could be in one of Richard Lamparski’s "Whatever Became Of" books, but Khan went on to become one of India’s top actors and heart throbs. And when I was 15, he was my heart-throb, one more piece of evidence helping me to realize that I was a gay boy.

It was not the first time I was captivated by a young Indian. To this day
one of my favorite movies is the 1940 version of The Thief of Baghdad,
starring Sabu, who was indeed the son of an elephant driver. This film puts the Disney cartoon to shame and its special effects still hold up after all these years. But what makes this film truly great is its Huck and Jim friendship between the deposed king of Baghdad and Abu (played by Sabu) the thief. It is a deeply spiritual movie, that is also a grand adventure, a love story and fantasy. It compares more to The Lord of the Rings than to the Disneyfied remake. And like Huck at the end of his story, Sabu as Abu lights out for the territories. It was the first time in my life I’d heard of the city of Basra. And every time I hear news of this city today I am
filled with sadness. (Let’s ignore for the moment that Iraq and India are completely different cultures and the people only look alike to those who have no experience of the world and it’s many peoples.)

Sabu went on to make a number of films in the US, including the high camp
Cobra Woman, and the classic Black Narcissus which demonstrated that he was really a fine actor. But his career stalled because Hollywood couldn’t see him as anything other than the exotic elephant boy. He suffered the fate of so many actors who don’t fit the homogenized white bread image sold by the studios of the day.

Unlike so many actors with an ethnic background, a name
change wasn’t going to change Sabu’s heritage. He died young and frustrated, restricted by the racial blinders of the time. He might have done better to light out for the territories.

At this point you may be wondering if I’ve been to any SALGA dances. Or HABIBI for that matter. What I can tell you is that the other night on my way home from work I passed through Bryant Park to discover the Incredible India ad campaign was sponsoring performances of traditional Indian music and dance on a fanciful stage, and as I passed by I could see in the distance what was very clearly a performance of an episode from the Ramayana, one of the world's greatest stories. I was hooked, and was in the park in a flash. The next group of performers were Bhangra dancers. That’s right. You may know Bhangra as music, but this is how the term has changed in this generation and in the West. Its origin is as a dance style from Punjab, and there was a group of young men who demonstrated this athletic rhythmic movement with such obvious pleasure it was completely infectious. It’s amazing the whole crowd wasn’t on their feet along with them. One of the dancers moved with such sensual grace that my old memories of Sajid Khan and Sabu were reawakened.

Accuse me of sentimental orientalism if you like. Or fetishism. But a youthful attraction to these men is what opened my eyes to a wider world. Sabu was my sexual fantasy psychopomp who led my soul -- and my body all the way to Asia, where I worked for 7 years and traveled widely. (And where I discovered that I too could be objectified and made the object of a fetish for my then still red hair.)  This curious passion is what led me to discover, study and respect the beauty and value of other cultures, languages and spiritual paths. Which is no surprise really, since in both Maya and The Thief of Baghdad these handsome young men took on the role of guide to other characters through (under)worlds they did not know. It may be a cultural and artistic stereotype, but it led me to a place where those stereotypes dissolve, and then reform newly informed.

So have you had some teen crush that led you out of the closet, and out of your own culture? 

For the price of a senate seat you could own history...and a record of the rights the senate revoked

Yes, you've probably already read in the NY Times that a rare copy of the Magna Carta will go up for auction in here in NYC at Sotheby's in December. The Magna Carta is the first record of the rule of law circumscribing governmental rights and creating one of the cornerstones of justice in the English speaking world: habeas corpus, which prevents illegal detention of citizens. The Times does not mention this right specifically since we've lost that right in this country with the current regime of war criminals in the White House, and that might be bad form. They did mention that Sotheby's estimates the price the document will fetch is between $20 and 30 million dollars. Just about the price of a seat in the Senate, where is the only place in the United States that habeas corpus is worth the paper it is printed on.

May we all work for the restitution of our rights and freedoms as responsible and informed citizens. And may I live to see the day that George Bush, Donald Rumsfeld and the entire crew of clownish cronies are brought up on crimes against humanity.

Copywriters know how to write a blog...

Over at Joe My God earlier today there was a request for readers to share what their own blogs are about. I always love to look at what people who read there are writing themselves, so it was a good way to get all the URLs in one place. It's amazing how much smart writing there is...and sometimes isn't.

There is of course the 95% Rule. 95% of everything is going to be bad. Advertising. Movies. Blogs. That's just what it is. And then there is the DSM diagnosis of the age and my generation: narcissistic personality disorder. When that meets the web there is an explosion of verbiage (a word this copywriter hates because copywriters write copy, authors write books and stories, and people who can't write spew out verbiage whether they are copywriters, authors or not) that is depressing.

So it is with great pleasure that I link to a blog unlike the rest. One that gave me a good laugh. Written by a copywriter whose work I know and admire. (And for those of you who have raised an eyebrow at this point, no, I'm not talking about myself.)

What ever became of…? Google & Wikipedia changed the game.

There used a series of books that helped nostalgia buffs find out "What Ever Became of...," Ruth Etting, Billy Gilbert, Edna Mae Oliver and the like. The author was Richard Lamparski, and I knew about this witty little series filled with stories about these faded stars of yesteryear — celebrities who would be considered D-list today only appearing in a cable channel reality show) because the first friend I made in Gay Youth was Michael Knowles, who did legwork, research and photography for Richard and receives credits in a number of the volumes.

Today of course, new books would be redundant. Just the other day I was curious about an 80s alternative rock group I loved called Human Sexual Response . I went directly to Wikipedia. Lo and behold, there was a complete entry on them along with follow ups of what became of members of the band after they broke up. For that matter, there is a website devoted to photographs of the graves of the famous, the infamous and the almost forgotten celebrities of the past. Pere Lachaise comes to the web.

And then there’s Google. We all know the guilty pleasure of Googling oneself. Or the disappointment. But what is really interesting is the way we find each other. Last year found a man I hadn’t seen since 1981 when I moved to Japan. He had returned to live in the town in Tennessee where he grew up, and by Googling his name, eventually I came across an entry that had to be him. And just yesterday I received an email out of the blue from a woman I hadn’t seen or heard of since 1981. Of course, there is also the weird experience of finding other people with your name on Google and their very different lives. While my old colleague did reach me by email, she also thought she had heard me on a podcast she downloaded from another site created by a man with the same name as me, another Mark Horn who also happens to write about advertising and business among other things!

At the moment, I am looking for a lot of people I've lost touch with because Gay & Lesbian Youth New York, or Gay Youth when I was a member, is holding a reunion on November 3rd for all the people who were ever in the group, from its inception in 1969. Sad to say, the first place I check for a name that I don’t have a contact for is the Social Security Death Index. Last night though, I was speaking on the phone to someone who had been in the group with me and who I hadn’t spoken to since 1994. He told me that one person I was looking for was listed in the Manhattan phone book. I laughed, because I’d gotten out of the habit of looking in it. And in fact when I went to check I realized that I didn’t have a phone book anymore. Except there really is no replacement online for the local white pages.

By the way, if you’re wondering whatever became of Richard Lamparski, today he lives in Montecito and recently published two new books of memoir material: Manhattan Diary and Hollywood Diary.

And if you know anyone who was either in GY or GLYNY, send them to the GLYNY board for information on the reunion.

55 years old today. Ain't slowing down.

D'var Sutra: Resh Lakish, Angulimala and Yom Kippur

It is the period of the ten days between Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur — that time when the myth (which I do not mean in any disparaging way — there is nothing quite so powerful as myth) tells us we are between life and death, and that we must put all our thoughts towards at-one-ment and return to God.

It is the time when we review all our sins and do the work of repairing what has been broken in our lives — relationships, agreements, our own moral sense. Sin in Judaism does not carry the same meaning as it does in Christianity. In fact, I tend to think it is closer to the Buddhist concept of “unskillful means,” that is to say that the sinful action was an attempt, however misguided, to reach wholeness from a place of delusion.

I find the words of Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik on the subject of sin and the energy that is locked up in it to capture the experience of what happens in meditation when we awaken from the grip of one kind of delusional thinking or another:

“Sin is not to be forgotten, blotted out or cast into the depths of the sea. On the contrary, sin has to be remembered. It is the memory of sin that releases the power within the inner depths of the soul of the penitent to do greater things than every before. The energy of the sin can be used to bring one to new heights.”

He then goes on to use the example of the life of Resh Lakish, a sage of the Talmudic era who before he came to the study of Torah was a much feared bandit. When he repented and returned, Soloveitchik says (in agreement with all the sages of the Talmud) this is what raised him to the level of the sages, it was the energy from released sin that elevated him to “unimaginable heights.”

Certainly, one of Resh Lakish’s great teachings, recorded in the Talmud, could have come from the mouth of the Buddha:

"No man commits a sin unless struck by momentary insanity"

It is interesting to note a similar story of a bandit turned saint in the Buddhist canon — the story of Angulimala. Angulimala was a highwayman who killed his victims and cut off their fingers, wearing them in a gruesome necklace. In fact that is what his name means, necklace of fingers. He had vowed to kill 1000 people. And had reached 999 when he met (and intended to kill) the Buddha, who with a few words enabled the robber to see through the delusion that led him to sin so grievously. And in a moment he became an Arahant, an awakened saint who then went from village to village as a monk trying to repair the damage he had done to others.

As a storyteller I recognize the motif at work here — the archetypal pattern that both reassures us that we can be forgiven and we can attain atonement by showing us how the worst can reach that state. And how these characters also stand in for the ways in which we commit little murders.

Scholars say that Angulimala did not really exist. It seems certain that Resh Lakish did, but who can say? I love one of the quotes ascribed to him in the Talmud as it regards the power of story and myth:

“Job never actually existed; he is only the imaginary hero of the poem, the invention of the poet”

And of course it doesn’t matter that Job didn’t exist, and Resh lakish (if he existed) knew it. Job's story (as well as the stories of Resh Lakish and Angulimala) teaches us something that a biography can’t. It reaches that part of our unconscious minds in the language it understands. Perhaps this quote is even a sly clue in the Talmud that Lakish did not really exist, but was created to tell a story. Maybe.

I digress however because of my love of story. And that’s not what is important here. What’s important is that we all sin. And that we can use awareness, mindfulness and compassion towards ourselves and others to wake up and release the energy of our sins to ride that energy towards unimaginable heights.

May you have an easy fast.

Do Portuguese Cross-Dressers Read Time Out?

Okay, I understand that advertising is supposed to be attention getting. It has to break through our wall of indifference. But it also has to be relevant. Particularly to the target audience. So I have to ask, just who is Time Out trying to reach in this ad for Time Out Lisbon?

The headline translates as:"What you do at home is your business, what you do outside is Time Outs."

Now of course I realize that the young target that Time Out appeals to might find this amusing. But does it provide a reason to read the magazine? I think not.

I read Time Out religiously here in NYC. And I know it is for a much younger demographic than I represent. Why? Not because of the events they cover, but because of the type size, which is difficult for anyone over the age of 40 to read! Still, I soldier through every issue looking for interesting things to do in this city, because there is so much to do here and there are few places that have an almost encyclopedic listing of it all. And how else would I know that Joan of Arc of Mongolia will be playing at MOMA this coming Monday the 24th?

Homo-erotic Narcissism in Advertising

Account people complain all the time that creative people are narcissistic and immature. They're just jealous.

That said, I was rather struck by the homo-erotic narcissism on display in a series of ads for an award contest sponsored by an outdoor advertising firm that creates bus shelters as ad vehicles in Australia and elswhere.

In each of a series of ads we see two people — and one is putting the moves on the other. One is clearly aggressively interested. The two people are dressed differently, one in rather every day clothes and the other dressed for hunting. Except they are both the same person. The campaign line is Embrace Your Ego. As though this were a problem in most creative departments. There are several ads which show two men. But of course, the video features two women, with the aggressive ego seducing and kissing the more subdued creative persona.

This is no surprise of course since creative departments are almost always overwhelmingly male and thus a fantasy of two women (and because they are the same person really the fantasy can be about twins for extra kink value) kissing catches attention. And showing two men would be way too threatening.

For that reason I have to give the team credit for in fact having any print ads with men at all, much less several. However I suspect rather than embracing the ego, this campaign puts the teams' id on display. Don't need a degree or a consult with the DSM-III for that diagnosis. Just a familiarity with Forbidden Planet.

Gay Youth, Gay Liberation Front, Gay Activist Alliance Buttons from the 70s

Pack rat that I am, I have saved lots of buttons from the 70s and the gay groups I was in. The three buttons in the top row are all from Gay Youth New York, the first one, top left was designed by Mark Segal (publisher of Philadelphia Gay News) and it was the first GY button, from 1970. The button in the top row far right was designed by John Chiafalo, who was chair after me (and after Bill Agress who left quickly so that when John arrived there was no one in charge). I don't know when the button in the middle was used.

Row two starts with a button from GLF, then the classic lambda button from Gay Activists Aliiance, as well as another GAA button which quotes the Declaration of Independence.

Row three has 3 buttons from the pride parades in the 70s, which was sponsored by the Christoper Street Liberation Day Committee, CSLDC, pronounced, I kid you not, Sizzle-Dick. I believe that the button on the far right was designed by gay artist Ralph Hall.

Below that is a button from the Columbia University gay group, which picked up the lambda symbol. A button from the year of the bicentennial, which shows the liberty bell with a crack that has the shape of the lamda. And a button that was either from GLF, or from the Red Butterfly — a gay communist cell that seemed to have about 5 people in it at any given time.

Bottom row are a couple of more pride march buttons from other years. And in the middle, between rows is a button not associated with any group, but one I loved, with the slogan: Not With My Life You Don't.

Have any buttons from those days yourself? I'd love to see others, since I remember lots of great buttons from that time.

Crotch Control on the New York Subways

As a native born New Yorker, a committed supporter of mass transit and an advertising man I have always had a fantasy of making short public service spots about how to behave on the subway. Sort of along the lines of the etiquette films I saw in school growing up in the 60s.

Every day I am outraged by people who stand in the doorway and don't move when the doors open, making getting on or off near impossible.

Every day I am outraged by mothers who insist on riding the subways with their children in strollers during rush hour.

Every day I am outraged by the hawkers of free rags (I can't even consider calling something like AM New York a newspaper) blocking the stairwells, pushing papers in my face and leaving fire hazards and accident causing litter throughout the stations.

Well some Australians clearly feel the same way, because they have made my fantasy real and created a series of public service spots about bad behavior in the subway. And my favorite, which will if you're a New Yorker, you will certainly recognize, is the Crotch Spreader:

I've always found the difference between riding the NY subways and the Tokyo subway instructive of the difference between the American sense of personal space and the Japanese sense of personal space, which relates to the masculine aggressive action of crotch spreading to mark territory.

On the NYC subway, standing too close is considered an act of aggression — and too close can mean 6 inches away to some people. Of course, personal space shrinks with growing crowds, but on a crowded NYC train there are often people who make it clear that they expect a clear berth or there will be hell to pay.

In Tokyo on the other hand, personal space on a crowded train is not 6 inches away. Or one inch away. The trains are so crowded that it feels as though one has negative personal space. Or to quote Groucho Marx when Margaret Dumont asked him to hold her closer "If I were any closer to you I'd be behind you."

You can see the other spots on this series on YouTube. But I would really like to see these done for New York City, and our own particular sense of language use. For while the way I write about this might sound rather high-falutin, a day doesn't go by where I don't say out loud at one point or another (usually while trying to walk through Times Square and impeded by gawking tourists who under other circumstances I am always happy to help with directions since so many in Japan helped me) "This is New York, get out of the way."