This has been a
historic week. In the same week the Supreme Court upheld both Obamacare and gay
marriage. And in the same week, after not having been to a concert at Madison
Square Garden in two years, I saw two
gay divas there: Bette Midler and Morrissey. (The last concert I saw there was
that of another gay diva, Lady
Gaga.)
Bette Midler’s
concert was an emotional show for both of us. For her, it was a triumphant
homecoming after a long career. But it was a homecoming for me, as well.
I’ve been
following Midler’s career for at least 35 years. The last time I saw Bette
Midler in concert was on Broadway in 1979, and that was an emotional story in
itself. On the same day, I attempted to see both All That Jazz, Bob Fosse’s career-defining autobiographical movie,
and Bette Midler’s concert on Broadway. In between the movie and the concert, I
made the fateful decision to eat at a questionable steakhouse on 59th
Street and got so sick, I had to be hospitalized. Being both a rabid Midler fan
and a rabid cheapskate, I went back to the theater where Midler was performing the
following week to use my standing room
ticket, hoping that the box office attendant would take pity on me and not
notice that my ticket was for a different date. I’m happy to report was I was
successful in my effort to see Midler’s show (which was filmed for the concert
movie Divine Madness) and, to
this day, it is the only time I have ever stood to see a Broadway show.
So now you know
why I have such an emotional attachment to Bette Midler. But that’s only part of the story.
I also went
through a “Bette Midler period” during my high school/college years, a period
when I was struggling with my sexuality. It’s almost laughable that I embodied
every gay cultural stereotype in the book (I also went through a Barbra
Streisand period around this time and was already an avid theatergoer). Yet the
last person to figure out my sexuality was me.
Fast forward 35
years and I’m sitting in Madison Square Garden with a predominantly heterosexual audience for Bette Midler's current show. I wonder how many people in this audience
know that Bette got her start performing at the Continental Baths (with Barry
Manilow as her accompanist). I’m sure most of them know her from films like Beaches and The Rose.
So now we have
marriage equality and that strong identification that gay men of my generation
had with female singers (and they were almost always female) like Bette Midler and Barbra Streisand (and
Judy Garland for even older gay
men) seems almost quaint. Sure, other female singers have come along—Madonna,
Lady Gaga, Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry—and they all have loyal gay
followings, but something is missing.
In today’s New
York Times, there was an excellent article1
about everything that has been lost with the Supreme Court’s legalization
of gay marriage and a reference was made to what writer Andrew Sullivan called
“the end of gay culture.”
It talked about
(among other things) the increasing irrelevance of gay bars and the annoying
phenomenon of straight women holding their bachelorette parties there (one of
the pet peeves I talk about in my comedy act). Lisa Kron, author of the
Broadway show Fun Home, talked about the
special thrill she got from feeling like an outsider and how that spawned a
whole genre of gay art.
Now that we’re
“just like everyone else,” I can’t help but feel a twinge of nostalgia and a
certain sadness.
So if you see my
crying at tomorrow’s Gay Pride Parade, it will be for all of the things we’ve
lost as well as for all of the things we’ve won.
2 comments:
I loved this.
A triumph for homogenization!
Post a Comment