(Reprinted from here: https://www.gayauthors.org/story/ac-benus/amarriagebelowzero-operalibretto/5)

 

 

 

Part 2:

 

Refuting the Voice of the Majority –

A Marriage Below Zero and its Contemporary Readers[1]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part Five – Romantic Ideal

Damon and Who..? [50]

 

Under persecution their love held firm, and that, even to the point of death. What more romantic and inspiring portrayal of love has ever existed? One could say that this is the portrait of David and Jonathan as detailed in the Book of Samuel, and it is, but by the 19^th century, same-sex couples also had another example. The ancient source of the legend of Damon and Pythias survives in De Amicitiae Vinculo, or The Bonds of Partnership, by Valerius Maximus. This author was a Roman scholar and historian who lived at the time of Christ. The Bonds of Partnership was a collection of exemplary tales of same-sex couples and their brave deeds. Most of these are from Greek origins, and Valerius seems to have had a moralistic reason for collecting them. Namely, that in classical Greek society, male-male partnerships were both honored and honorable because they conformed (or, at least appeared so outwardly) to higher ethical codes of conduct than existed in the Roman tradition. True or not, the perception of an older and better-adjusted place for Gays in ancient Greek society was a constant source of inspiration for pre-Christian Romans.

 

In a much different age, there was a final flowering of Neo-Classical arts that included the rather surprising reappraisal of the Damon and Pythias legend. In 1821, Irish poet and playwright, John Banim (1789-1842),[51] produced a classical-style play on the subject in London to much acclaim. The play entered the cannon around the English-speaking world when it was published in 1829.[52] In the age it was written, romanticism was in full force, and there was not yet a trace of fear of Gay people existing that grew endemic by the end of the century. Banim could, without any fear of censure, be true to the original intent of the ancient source by having his men on stage be loving and tender. In Act V, Scene One, at the moment that Damon regains his senses and realizes that Pythias is indeed back to at least prevent Damon from dying alone, he tells his partner:

 

 

 

 

Fraternity, or more plainly, brotherhood, is the loadstone of the play, and it appealed to an age that was already severely changed by the disorder and fractured life brought by the Industrial Revolution.[54] Perhaps it was viewed with nostalgic longing; a look back to the mystical “simpler age” that each and every era believes must have existed. The play’s popularity continued well past it contemporaries, and I can find a playbill for it as late as an 1889 production in Brisbane.[55] Again, for an insider, this portrayal of manly love must have been a breath of fresh air. It is possible, as much now and always, that money talks, and it were the queens that kept production in this play alive for so long, perhaps to the point where outsiders became suspicious of such male-male glorification.

 

Banim’s play inspired an American to found a brotherly origination after attending a production of Damon and Pythias in Washington D.C.. In 1864 Justus H. Rathbone (1839-1889) was an actor,[56] and was so inspired by the love of the same-sex couple, their bravery, their honesty, their fidelity, that he ritualized their story into a fraternal organization that could promote these ideals into the broader world. ‘The Knights of Pythias’ was the first such order to receive official legal backing via an Act of Congress. This came about at the urging of President Lincoln who had read and supported Rathbone’s prospectus.[57] Under the auspices of this group, books and beautifully romantic color lithographs of the happy couple were produced and distributed.[58] In their chief retelling of the legend in book form, we read that at the moment of rescue, one partner tells the other:

 

 

And that earlier, while the execution scaffold was being erected, among the crowd were special individuals who empathized with the lovers’ plight as only insiders could:

 

 

Here, we glimpse the special ‘initiated’ people of the group Damon and Pythias belonged to. Though we are in the audience, we too are included in ‘that band of Brothers’ to witness and knowingly experience the breadth of their love as only we can. Thanks to such popularization, Damon and Pythias took pride of place next David and Jonathan in 19^th Century Gay minds as model couples. The contemporary examples of commentary, and of story-retelling, and of the reproducing of images of this biblical couple in 19^th century cultures are far too many to elaborate here, for after all, it was David who tells the world of his Jonathan: “Thy love to me was more wonderful than the love of women.”[61] But of relevance to Cohen and our study here, is the particular rabbinical tradition that David and Jonathan’s love was pure and safe as long as neither sought advantage over the other.

 

The sages characterized the relationship between Jonathan and David in the following Mishnah:

 

“Whenever love depends on some selfish end, when the end passes away, the love passes away; but if it does not depend on some selfish end, it will never pass away. Which love depended on a selfish end? This was the love of Amnon and Tamar. And which did not depend on a selfish end? This was the love of David and Jonathan. (Avot 5:15)"

 

Rabbi Shimon ben Tzemach Duran (Spain, North Africa 14^th –15^th century) delineated the significance of this Mishnah:

 

“Anyone who establishes a friendship for access to power, money, or sexual relations; when these ends are not attainable, the friendship ceases…love that is not dependent on selfish ends is true love of the other person since there is no intended end.” (Magen Avot – abridged and adapted translation).[62]

 

 

For Cohen's couple, both men were safe (if a bit ostracized) and shielded by their wealth and elite standing. This relative anonymity was upset when Dill pressured Arthur to enter into what both men believed to be a marriage of convenience. Here the 'selfish end' brings down hardship and plight on the relationship. It was Cohen's great romantic masterstroke to have Dill rescue Arthur in New York, and by doing so, renounce any hope of societal standing, thus reducing themselves to the status of exiles, for love.

 

Inevitably, the continued popular success of Damon and Pythias by a 'certain crowd' drew the attention of some quick-witted men of letters. The great Victorian satirist W.S. Gilbert (1836-1911), prepared a parodied poem and set of illustration for the lighthearted entertainment magazine Fun. In his regular column named Bab Ballads, he tackled the subject of 'a modern' Damon and Pythias. Here, in classic Gilbertonian-fashion, the law threatens the domestic bliss of a same-sex couple by turning a 'friendly-action' on inheritance protection into a harrowing trial. There is much understanding and sympathy from Gilbert on the problems that stand in the law of two legally independent men being recognized in even civil statue as forming a unit. The poem is sadly all to relevant for same-sex couples today who still struggle with getting the legal system to simply stand out of their way in matters of adoptions, forming unions, inheritance, immigration, and on and on. The entirety of this poem with Gilbert's comical drawings is included in Appendix 4.

 

What exactly the legendary love of the ancient couple meant to Cohen will need further research, but it seems clear from A Marriage Below Zero that Arthur and Dill are meant to fill the romantic potential of a modern Damon and Pythias. Ultimately Arthur's rash action is based not on threats to himself: exposure, ruin, trial, prison – no, it is based on every contemporary queen's highest ambitions – to live for love and die for it too, if need be. Cohen did after all live and write in a highly romantic age and he was skillful enough to give outsiders a seemingly moral lesson, while touching the hearts of his peers. To suppose that Arthur killed himself due to 'shame' is to impose an outsider's untenable prejudice on a man who is shown to have lived contentedly with himself and his partner. One can better argue that, in spite of the romantic overtones, Arthur was taking a practiced step as one last safeguard for Dill. Arthur could conceivably be arrested, tortured and forced to provide 'names.' This has been a common fear since the mid 19^th century introduction of homophobic laws. Arthur could have conceivably been compelled to testify against Dill under threat of his own arraignment. By taking himself out of the corrupt police hands, he at least could not be a weapon to seal Dill's fate. In this way, Arthur's sacrifice becomes Damon's sacrifice made manifest. In this way too, Cohen leaves open the door of an alternate ending – one where Dionysus/Elsie absolves them, and 'subsumes lust of punishment into the acceptance of mercy.' Such an ending in 1889 could not have been published.

 

 

 

Part Six – Legacy

In the Shadow of Death

 

Mitchell/Leavitt touched upon Cohen's book pre-shadowing the media circus that surrounded the Oscar Wilde trials.[63] While the Wilde testimony revolved mainly upon Wilde and the young men compelled to give evidence against him, the 'scandal' did not widen to charges against anyone else of his class, or better, like Lord Alfred Douglas. Far more apropos to the mood at the exact time of the release of Cohen's book is the Cleveland Street Scandal. In July 1889 media reports began to trickle out about a private residence where young men were making pocket money in the company of Earls and other Lordly Peers. The boys, under no-doubt heavy threat of hard-labor prison terms, squealed, and named names. In the weeks that followed, what issued were charges that the highest echelons of the British Empire were involved in a cover-up; English Lords escaping to France in the middle of the night; and yes, suicides. In the end, the only ones hauled before the mighty power of the bench and its powdered wigs? – the hapless working class teenagers, and sadly enough, they were the only ones imprisoned.[64] The most unlikely victim of the Cleveland Street Scandal was the second in line to the throne, Prince Albert Victor of Wales.[65] We are told that his father, Edward, Prince of Wales, put the kibosh on the investigation, and buckled-down his son with a formidable woman in the form of his wife-to-be, the future Queen Mary. The prospect of married life seemed to have suited Albert Victor as much as it had Arthur Ravener, for in a matter of weeks the 28-year old was dead. Amongst the Gay community at the time, it was speculated that the Prince had been 'removed' from the line of succession for his incorrigible Gayness.[66] The evidence for this comes in a series of letters he wrote to a female friend in the summer and fall of 1891 saying he was in love and happy. This was not with Mary, but suddenly in December, he proposed to her, and promptly became miserable. He died in January of '92, and Mary was quickly engaged and married to Albert Victor's younger brother, the future King George V.

 

This chain of events that rocked London in the second half of 1889 is eerily like what Cohen hinted Elsie read in the newspapers, and what sent her off to Paris to look for Arthur. So much so, that if it had happened before going to press, the book likely would have been altered, or perhaps dropped all together. For anyone who questions the 'realness' of Arthur's actions, one need only look at the real life victims of this contemporary media scandal.

 

The lack of even an attempt to see the world of Cohen's novel through the lens of its time seems to mark most critical analysis of the work. Somehow all attempts to view the novel from the empathetic standpoint of its contemporary Gay readers were lost to 20^th century commentators. In 1955, Noel Grade, writing for the publication associated with the pioneering Gay Rights group, The Mattachine Review, accused Cohen of creating "the accepted standard for homosexual novels in the years to follow." And in 1977, Roger Austin said the book was "anti-gay" because of Arthur's self-do-in.[67] To vilify Cohen's book as anti-gay and pin the start of the no-escape-but-self-murder genre of fiction is hopefully now untenable. The popularity of the book waned so fast that its one and only paperback printing can hardly have been in the library of every heterosexual writer of 'homosexual fiction' who gleefully sought out 'a fitting end' on their reviled characters.[68] On that front, the survival of the book at all was due to its isolated and loving protection on the shelves of Gay men – the very premise of the Mitchell/Leavitt collection. If these 19^th century Gay men had thought of the book as anti-gay, it would not survive today. As for a fatalistic view, what Great American Novel, from Alcott's Little Women to Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby, and well beyond, does not have a death as its locus mundi? Are there serious, published accounts, that Alcott was anti-sister because she killed off Beth? Preposterous!

 

Death in fiction is the writer's oldest cliché, and death, particularly self-inflicted, is an apparent obsession of Gay artists. Whether Cohen fits this bill or not, one only need survey the popular Queer Cinema of our times to see how pervasive the linking of romance with death is. Some random examples of fatalistic films made by Gays for Gays are: Rebel Without a Cause (1955),[69] The Living End (1992), The Consequence (1977), The Fan (1981), Fox and His Friends (1974), Edward II (1991), Law of Desire (1987), Brokeback Mountain (2005), Borstal Boy (2000), Prick Up Your Ear (1987), Dream Boy (2008), Steam (1997), Day for Night (1973), The Betsy (1978), Justine (1969), Mala Noche (1986), Burnt Money (2000), Pretty Boy (1993), This Special Friendship (1964), Bangkok Love Story (2007), Cruising (1980), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971), and on and on.[70] A serious study would be to determine why Gay culture continues to be so defeatist when we are told we have made so much progress. I doubt any of this can be laid at the feet of Cohen.

 

Rare are the exceptions of Gay films for Gay consumption that dare to feature equitable endings, where men are shown as not necessarily happy, but content in the struggle to lead a life together. While the above list was partial, the following are all the films – after long consideration and consultation with Russo – that I can think of: Luster (2002),[71] Maurice (1987), My Beautiful Laundrette (1985), Latter Days (2003), The Two of Us (1987),[72] and Beautiful Thing (1996). The real courage is in showing that life goes on. True bravery is showing that men in love can carve out a space for themselves in this invidious world.

 

 

 

Part Seven – Justification

Touching upon my Foibles

 

In the months following the publication of A Marriage Below Zero, Cohen created a crime hunter, Ned Bachman, the New Orleans Detective. This was the golden age for detail-drenched crime stories and pithy sleuths that people could remember long after the case had been solved. The first Sherlock Holmes story to appear in print, A Study in Scarlet, came out in 1887, at Christmas time. But all in all, Cohen must have felt slighted when his publisher decided to release A Marriage Below Zero as a 50-cent pulp-fiction softback edition. I'm sure he felt the work deserved a rigid spine. However, it is easy to imagine that his editor informed Cohen there was no other way. Due to the gay, and thus illicit, content of the novel, it was going to be relegated to crime-fiction status, or not be published at all.

 

But it was published, and downtrodden man-loving men could read the remarkable. In the scene where Elsie has broken into their rental home, she huffs at Dill, demanding to know:

 

 

 

 

An insider cheered; an insider said, 'You go, Dill!' and one could scarce hope to find a more defiant, more non-apologetic defense of same-sex love printed in the United States until after the Stonewall Riots. An insider never doubted that "society is to blame" as Elsie herself tells us.

So too society could be to blame if we follow Elsie's cryptic words about the demise of her father to its logical conclusion.

 

"My mother was left a widow when I was a baby. […] In reality it was the most satisfactory outcome of what I was always told was an extremely unhappy marriage. […] His death was a happy release for both. […] [M]amma looked upon her husband as an encumbrance, and an obstacle in the way of her social ambitions. […] When he has given you the protection of his honorable name, […] why, the most delicate thing he can then do, is to cease reminding you of these facts, by taking himself off."[74]

 

Since it is established that Mamma is a widow, the phrase 'take oneself off' can only mean suicide. But, why death? Are we not to understand Mamma's 'extremely unhappy marriage' as the fore figuring of Elsie's miserable nuptials? Is not her father's decision, Arthur's decision? And, for the same reasons? I have decided that for my libretto, the answers are yes.[75] Mamma and Elsie are not so different after all.

But what is my artistic justification for providing an equitable ending? Because an opera provides a unique opportunity to have my cake and eat it too – I can achieve Arthur's suicide and its consequences without killing him. A great tradition from the opera of the Age of Enlightenment was the Ombra scene; the picant inclusion of paranormal incidents in otherwise unflinchingly true-to-life portrayals. M. Night Shyamalan produced a half-fiction, half-reality TV documentary to promote his film The Village (2004). The fake half concerned a made up plot, where due to a near-death incident, Shyamalan has gained special insight. The true part was a simple snowy evening in Philadelphia where the camera encountered people on the street, or in the lobby of quiet office buildings. The person behind the camera asked these random people the very simple question: "Have you ever had a paranormal experience yourself?" The 'No's were filmed, the awkward half-grins, the 'are you serious?' looks, and then people began to be honest and relay that 'one time…' or 'once…' and soon a surprising number of people have been in touch with this thing our society tells us is more than rare. Rare is relative, but kept secret is not. The opera of the enlightenment knew this, and took advantage of it. I do so too, for it has the potential of being touchingly 'real' on the stage in a personal and private way – Elsie can see Arthur dead, but be the one who pulls him back from the brink.

 

If Elsie loves Arthur, truly loves him, she can do what she never had a chance to do in the book. If she loves him, her decision is an easy one, because it is the less painful of the two options. She doesn't have to like it; she can blame Arthur and Dill all she likes, blame Letty and Mamma too, but she knows the squareness of the guilt rests on her shoulders.

 

 

 

Part Eight - Conclusion

More Than the Sum of its Parts

 

There is much in Elsie that should be explored as a model of an early feminist outlook. She envies men because the have the "privilege" of doing exactly what they like,[76] and comes to emotional loggerheads precisely because, despite her best efforts, she cannot do as she likes. Cohen more than once relays Elsie as exhibiting what contemporary readers could comfortably diagnose from their armchairs as 'hysteria.' Like the made-up psychosis used to suppress a certain other element in society, these same medico-quacks created a condition to keep 'troublesome women' at bay, that is, to keep them quiet. Worse yet, is that these self-same male doctors created a 'treatment' in which manual stimulus of the clitoris to orgasm was the 'cure.' (And these 'doctors' called us perverts!) The long sad story of women being sexually abused in the name of 'science' deserves a fuller treatment, but for our purpose, I believe Cohen was skillfully illustrating that an equating of the status of Gays and women existed in the minds of the powers that would dominate them both. Both 'conditions' were made up excesses fundamentally meant to contain and control people. Both required treatments that were twisted and demeaning. Both 'conditions' were presented as weaknesses to be eradicated, and both were fear-mongered as a dire contagion that threatened society at large.[77]

 

Just as the best and brightest minds of the late 19^th century were actively imposing an outsider's view on any number of minority groups, outsiders have imposed their views on A Marriage Below Zero. They reduce Arthur and Dill to a nefarious set of deceptions, and likewise reduce these men to a 'nasty' set of habits, desires, inclinations – supply your own repressed, self-loathing adjective. An insider's view sees a great camp unraveling of a society that oppresses and destroys lives thoughtlessly. For insiders, the book is a parade of signposts for the initiated – for those with tongue firmly in cheek – and also full of elements only 'you' would recognize. These markers pass unseen by the outsider's attention, and harmlessly, through Elsie to the reader. An insider read a great love story between the lines, a secret place for their love to inhabit when times jeopardized their relationships with ever new cruelties, both medical and legal.[78]

 

Cohen's bravery was to skillfully resist the reduction of his male couple to a series of 'acts,' or worse yet – for it was then prevalent intellectual thought – 'impulses.' His men were simply a reflection of those undoubtedly around him. For even if Cohen was not Gay, being a man of the theater meant constant contact with queens, and these were the men well-endowed in the knowledge of heroic and romantic tales of the past.

 

Despite Karl-Maria Kertbeny's (1824-1882) best of motivations for coining his (ugly) hybrid 'H-word,' it was latched onto by the worst of 19^th century pseudo-medical quacks.[79] Suddenly men who had all along forged lives together were told they were sick. This mental schism, between 'feeling' well but being 'labeled' diseased, bore a heavy toll on the relationships they were naturally drawn to form, and broke any number of them up. This outsider interference was pervasive, threatening of both freedom and life, and led to an open season on criminal hunting of Gays for money through blackmail.

Part of what made Symond’s experience with his soldier in 1877 so powerful to him, is that he, through personal experience, was finally able to totally refute the outsiders’ view – the pathological-medical view – that had reduced his potential for love and happiness to psychotic tendencies. Imagine his surprise to find that he, and that his lover, after their act of love- making, were as natural as anything imaginable. The very nonchalant demeanor of his partner must have reminded the Whitman-loving Symonds of the old man’s poem:

 

 

 

 

Symonds, in that non-descript and anything but elegant rented room, was able to carve out space to exist with another man on the level of equals who have come together willingly. For him this experience of creating equality via love was more profound than what marriage between people of the opposite sex, ever unequal, could possibly offer.

 

In the crucible of the social, political, and pseudo-medical witch-hunting of the third quarter of the 19^th century, Gay people ceased to exist. They had their lives replaced and amputated down to a stump that marginalized them to a series of acts, or uncontrolled impulses, and all the other slurs that deprived them of the fundamental right to exist unencumbered by others’ hostilities. Cohen dared in 1889 to show two men, not as a series of acts, or impulses, but Men who love, and Men, imperfect as they are, who would give all to keep that love safe from a hostile and murderous world. Good on him!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

---------------------------------------------

 

 

[1] Elsie tells us in the book’s opening lines: “I suppose I am rather frivolous. I believe in the voice of the majority[.] […] I never listen to the minority[.] […] It would therefore be inconsistent to pay much attention to its estimate of myself.”

 

[2] See my Personal note for an answer to this question.

 

[3] Tangentially, Cohen book is about such pressure, although it seems that Dill is the primary pressure on Arthur to acquire a wife, but only assuming (as they did) that she was ‘in the know.’ Gay men forced to marry women was a common ‘treatment’ imposed by late 19^th and 20^th century psychoanalysts. Henry Hay, the very founder of the Gay Rights Movement, reluctantly became legally entangled with a woman (see Katz, Gay American History, 1976 ps.611-632 for Katz’s historic interview with Hay). Many literary figures of the early 20^th century were equally ‘cured’ by such brutality. The British-born, but Paris-based, Francis Rose was pushed into legal entanglement by none other than a lesbian couple who would be abhorrent of the idea for themselves: Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. When Rose met Luis, the love of his life, in 1952, his wife began a slow and painful campaign to separate them. She eventually succeeded in shattering the man into a nervous breakdown, and forcing him to renounce his love-match with the young man. Toklas, for her part, chattered about the wreck of her “friend” as nothing more weighty than idle gossip (see Spring, Secret Historian, 2010 ps.143-168, and plate No.23 [unnumbered in the book] for a photo of Rose and Luis.)

 

[4] Bayard Taylor Joseph and His Friend: A Story of Pennsylvania

 

[5] Howard Overing Sturgis Tim: A Story of Eton

 

[6] Edward Prime-Stevenson Imre: A Memorandum

 

[7] Edward Morgan Forster Maurice

 

[8] An important exception, and the watershed analysis that turned the limiting tide on the book, appeared in Pages Passed from Hand to Hand, 1997. At this remarkably late date, Mitchell/Leavitt seem to be the first to note the obvious, and recognized that the ‘Hotel Scene,’ where men mill about the portico of the Fifth Avenue Hotel, as only possibly coming from a Gay man who was familiar with cruising spots. (See Appendix 5 for more information on Cohen’s real-life portico)

 

[9] Roger Austin is responsible for spreading this harmful cliché. His 1977 Playing the Game was remarkably obtuse in understanding Cohen’s work as anti-gay, a position that today, with the research in place that he never bothered to do, is untenable (see Mitchell/Leavitt Pages Passed from Hand to Hand, 1997 p.83). Unfortunately, Austin is still oft quoted today by individuals who have never read A Marriage Below Zero for themselves – a cursory review of on-line commentators will sadly bear this out.

 

[10] The origins of the word are operatic/theatrical. In the 1770’s a new form of stage presentation was developed where the actor would speak a section of dialogue while the orchestra played accompaniment. This new Melo-Dramma was embraced by progressive composers who placed sections of it in both plays and operas. Mozart did so in Thamos (1773), a play he provided incidental music for, and later in ZaÏde (1780) a Singspiel opera with dialogue. A derogatory sense of the word entered the English language with the hyperbole plays of the mid 19^th century. In this popular, and cheep, stage genre overly dramatic gestures became dogmatic and comical. Such broad, cartoonist mannerisms, were revived by early filmmakers to visually convey characters’ intent – think of the dastardly landlord twisting his mustache. As all silent movies were performed with live music, melodramatic as an insult was very clear to people of the first quarter of the 20^th century, but not so to us today. (See OED for the etiology of the word)

 

[11] Chapter 10

 

[12] No image of him is available. There exist but a few scant biographical blurbs, and such an apparent lack of interest on him as a subject, that I cannot even ascertain what the “J” stands for!

 

[13] See the Jewish Encyclopedia entry for Cohen: http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/4852-dale-alan

 

[14] It is possible this name was a tribute to the Robin Hood legend, where 'Allen a Dale' was the troupe’s resident minstrel, storyteller and all around Bard.

 

[15] West’s 1928 play Diamond Lil, set in the 1890’s, created a title character who seems to have much in common with Cohen’s protagonist diva of My Footlight Husband.

 

[16] Mitchell/Leavitt, Pages Passed from Hand to Hand, 1997 p.83

 

[17] Deriving from a stage term, and closely related to being in “drag,” camp referred originally to anything portrayed in a female manner by male actors. See OED for the etymology of the word.

 

[18] Chapter 3

 

[19] Chapter 5

 

[20] Chapter 5

 

[21] Chapter 19

 

[22] Chapter 18

 

[23] Chapter 19

 

[24] Chapter 3

 

[25] Chapter 6

 

[26] Chapter 8

 

[27] Chapter 8

 

[28] Chapter 7

 

[29] Chapter 17

 

[30] Chapter 8

 

[31] Chapter 8

 

[32] I should note that the undefined scandal of which Elise reads in the newspapers, and which sends her to Paris to find Arthur, is hinted to be a 'dating service.' Dill is implicated as the man in charge, and an officer-pimp would likely be a familiar character-type to initiated Gay readers of the day. Historical irony touches here for a moment. The quoted account was written by Edward Prime Stevenson, an early Gay Rights advocate, who was also the first critic to label Cohen's novel as 'anti-gay.' It was his clichéd view that was later picked up and transmitted by Roger Austin in his work published in 1977 (See Pages Passed from Hand to Hand, p.83). The irony is that Stevenson's taking of Elsie's words at face value preventing him from seeing the depth of the novel's integration into the Gay world both he and Cohen were writing about. An insider, he promoted an outsider's view, much to his discredit, and to those who blindly followed him.

 

[33] Edward Prime Stevenson (under pseudonym Xavier Mayne), The Intersexes, 1910 Florence. Quoted by James Gardiner in his chapter A Bit of Scarlet, from A Class Apart, 1992 ps.50-57

 

[34] One that foreshadows Forster’s fictional tryst between Maurice and Scudder that turns into a lifelong love.

 

[35] Quotation marks added.

 

[36] Symond’s original word is ‘fraternity.’

 

[37] Katz, Love Stories, 2001 ps.244-245

 

[38] Fagging (v.) from the OED, to work hard but in a tired way.

 

[39] Woods, A History of Gay Literature, 1998 p.326

 

[40] Act One, Scene Two

 

[41] Act One, Scene Three

 

[42] See appendix 5 for notes on actual places mentioned by Cohen and what they look like.

 

[43] Chapter 2

 

[44] Chapter 23

 

[45] Chapter 25

 

[46] Chauncey, Gay New York, 1994 p.288

 

[47] Chapter 9, quotation marks added

 

[48] Chapter 2, italics added

 

[49] Chapter 3

 

[50] See Appendix 4 for a visual feast of all things Damon and Pythias from Cohen’s age.

 

[51] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Banim

 

[52] An unabridged facsimile of the original edition is available as part of the Library of Congress’ on-line library. http://www.archive.org/details/damonpythiasplay00bani

 

[53] See Appendix for a reproduction of this page in the 1829 printing.

 

[54] The use of 'brother' (and by extension, brotherhood, fraternity, etc.), has a long and ancient history. It was – and in many parts of the world, still is – the preferred term of endearment that same-sex partners used to designate a state of union with one another as family. This was and is simply the most convenient way in many languages to speak of partners and the unions they form together. I will offer three examples from three ancient cultures in the region.

 

First, the ancient Egyptian couple of Khnumhotep and Niankhkhum have a shared tomb in Saqqara. Here they are depicted multiple times in the loving embrace that is so emblematic of married couples in all of Egyptian art. They face each other, their arms are reaching out and locking, and their lips about to kiss for an eternity of bliss. The text has each referring to his love as 'brother,' and fortunately for us, their family histories are also recoded in the tomb, forever refuting the hetero-conceit they there were actual siblings. See: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/20/science/20egyp.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

 

Second, the Greek term was widespread in the Mediterranean basin for same-sex partners. In the original New Testaments (that is, in the un-translated Greek), the 'disciple whom Jesus loves,' has that loving partnership referred to with 'philios,' or the bond that partners share. Also of note is the nick-name 'Thomas,' which means 'twin' in Aramaic (אומא), and which seems to designate that he and another of their communal family were intimately partnered. Here is how Wikipedia sums up who that partner could be:

 

The Nag Hammadi copy of the Gospel of Thomas begins: "These are the secret sayings that the living Jesus spoke and Didymos Judas Thomas recorded." Early Syrian traditions also relate the apostle's full name as Judas Thomas. Some have seen in the Acts of Thomas (written in east Syria in the early 3rd century, or perhaps as early as the first half of the 2nd century) an identification of Saint Thomas with the apostle Judas, brother of James, better known in English as Jude. However, the first sentence of the Acts follows the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles in distinguishing the apostle Thomas and the apostle Judas son of James. Few texts identify Thomas' twin. In the Book of Thomas the Contender, part of the Nag Hammadi, it is said to be Jesus himself: "Now, since it has been said that you are my twin and true companion, examine yourself…

(from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_the_Apostle)

 

So we see, Thomas himself could be the 'brother' that Jesus loved like family in a same-sex partnering.

For some of the endless studies on the subject, also see: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=whom+jesus+loved

 

And third, in classical Latin, 'brother' carried on the by-then ancient tradition as the term of choice for same-sex couples. A remarkable and unlikely survivor exists in pieces of bathroom graffiti. Apelles and Dexter were in love, and two mementos of their vacations still exist from the time of Christ. Joseph Jay Deiss in his wonderful book, Herculaneum, Italy's Buried Treasure, New York 1985, describes and translates some documents from the walls of the so-called Suburban Baths, which was really an exclusive and truly high-end private club. Many of these are by and about Gay people, and one says:

 

Apelles the Mouse here lovingly fucked with his brother Dexter – twice.

 

Their other memento of a happy evening reads:

 

Apellas the chamberlain to Caesar, here dined most pleasantly with his devoted Dexter, and then they fucked each other.

 

See page 146 for a reproduction of the original graffiti, which are beautifully, and dare I say, 'lovingly' done. They are labeled as items No. 2 and No. 1, respectively: http://books.google.com/books?id=ZVgQB0jDIOcC&pg=PA146#v=onepage&q&f=false

 

[55] See Appendix 4 for an illustration of this playbill.

 

[56] See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justus_H._Rathbone

 

[57] See the organization’s website: http://www.pythias.org/index.php

 

[58] See Appendix 4

 

[59] Hill, The Story of Damon and Pythias, 1878 p.124

 

[60] Hill, The Story of Damon and Pythias, 1878 p.118. An unabridged facsimile of the original edition is available as part of the Library of Congress’ on line library. http://www.archive.org/details/storyofdamonpyth00hill

 

[61] Book of Samuel, Chapter 1, Verse 26

 

[62] From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_and_Jonathan

 

[63] Mitchell/Leavitt, Pages Passed from Hand to Hand, 1997 p.84

 

[64] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleveland_Street_scandal

 

[65] See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Albert_Victor,_Duke_of_Clarence_and_Avondale#Cleveland_Street_scandal

 

[66] See Gardiner, Who's a Pretty Boy Then?, 1997, p.24

 

[67] Mitchell/Leavitt, Pages Passed from Hand to Hand, 1997 p.83. In some Karmic fit of injustice, Austin - distraught at the rejection of one of his manuscripts - became despondent and attempted multiple suicides. He finally succeeded by drowning himself in 1984. See Spring, Secrete Historian, 2010 ps.392-393.

 

[68] Many of whom were women, and whose complex feelings regarding men-loving-men, often turned out violet, retribution-based, fiction. See the brilliant chapter titled: Homosexual Men by Women, Woods, A History of Gay Literature, 1998 ps.201-208.

 

[69] The screenplay writer, director, and both young male stars were all relatively open about being Gay.

 

[70] In fact the morbid list is so extensive, Russo in The Celluloid Closet, 1987, devotes an entire Appendix to the matter. It is called the "Necrology," p.346, and lists 39 films from 1919 to 1983, who dies/is killed in them and how. In the last couple of years, I should note the new trend in Queer Cinema is to have the main character 'nearly' killed, but then, somehow, pulled back for an unsupported, and at best unbelievable, 'happy' ending: Shank (2010) and No Regret (2006) are the best examples.

 

[71] Though oddly enough, this movie is replete with a Topsy-turvy style heterosexual suicide; one that drives the happy couple together.

 

[72] A previously obscure BBC Bristol 60-minute film daring to show on TV two teenage boys committing to a life with one another. (I have subsequently learned that the film as broadcast was actually butchered to show one boy abandoning the other for a female.)

 

[73] Chapter 18

 

[74] Chapter 2

 

[75] Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) wrote an essay in defense of a person's freedom to choose suicide. It is titled The Right to take Oneself Off, 1909. Bierce is widely believed to have committed suicide via exposure in the Mexican wilderness.

 

[76] Chapter 1

 

[77] See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female_hysteria

 

[78] For a movingly sad case study on how such 'doctors' ruined the lives of well-adjusted Gay men, see: Katz, Gay American History, 1976 ps.235-237. A 'doctor' Hughes, of Saint Louis, Missouri, writes in 1914 how he first used "electrozations," or applied high-voltage electrical shocks, on his patient's genitals. As repeated rounds of this torture had no effect on whom the sufferer loved, Hughes forthwith decided the man must be castrated. The good man of science would eradicate his patient's "erotopathic evil" at all costs. The man was operated on several times, first removing the nerves in his genitals, thereby paralyzing him, but then, when again no effect was noted on whom he loved, full castration was deemed a necessity. As the victim/patient became "asexualized," the good 'doctor' proclaimed the 'treatment' a success, mainly because it then became sexually irrelevant whom his victim/patient loved. Hughes recommended he find a woman to marry.

 

[79] Kertbeny, who never came out publicly, relays his story of being a young apprentice bookseller and having one of his chums at the shop be blackmailed and kill himself. Years later in 1869 he began to publish open letters laying out logical arguments as to why government bodies did not have a right to criminalize consensual adult affectional expression. He stated first and foremost that people were not a series of acts-committed, but born with natural variations outside the ken of the law. Ironically, the term he bore, Homosexual, was quickly used to invent a made-up psychosis and used as a weapon of the worst legal and medical abuse for more than a hundred years after 1869; in fact until 1969 and the Stonewall riots when things began to be forced toward change. (See Lauritsen/Thotstad, The Early Homosexual Rights Movement (1864-1935), 1974 ps.6-9 AND http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl-Maria_Kertbeny) Being Gay stayed a fabricated “mental illness” in the United States until the brave work of Dr. Evelyn Hooker, which started in the 1950’s, was finally able to convince the American Psychological Association to remove it from their list of treatable pathologies. (See the remarkable oral interview with Dr. Hooker preserved in Marcus, Making History, 1992 ps.16-25)

 

[80] Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1861 After ps.363 and 364

 

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Many thanks to Lisa for beta reading this, and for her general encouragement. All remaining mistakes are mine.