Unpublished Gay Sketches

Unpublished Gay Sketches
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The Violet Quip
Str8t Drag (Staircase)
The Nuisance
Sherwood Anderson’s Son
Vulgar Verdigrised Visage
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The Violet Quip

“uncoupling desire
from representation”
—David Bergman,
The Violet Hour: The Violet Quill
and the Making of Gay Culture

she might not—
have had the courage
to continue writing her
Novel, my dears

if it hadn’t been—
for the encouraging
gay quips of her writers’
group, the violet quip

a quip here—
oh dear me, a quip there
so like some mysterious
lavender pimpernel

all those years—
telling the same old story
smoking a cigarette after sex
staring at the ceiling

coming out quips—
back then long ago,
the gay closet seems so
so banal, so boring now

Str8t Drag
—for Richard Burton
and Rex Harrison

“I feel like a whore
at a choir boy's orgy”
—Staircase (1969)

most people—
both gay & str8t
simply hated it

“staircase” the flick—
such a failure, dears,
the critics opined

but to me—
there’s nothing more
charming, endearing

than a pair—
of str8t actors
doing drag

not gayz—
queens ascending a
sequined staircase

like in the—
beginning of the
tres gay movie

but 2 male actors—
known to be hetero
married, tres straight

even their flaws—
imitating fags
so entertaining

the opening scene—
two hairdressers doing
each other’s hair

the exquisite flip—
of the hairdryer cord
up over the lover

the sepulchral—
effeminate sitting
down in the chair

the lovely white—
bedroom sheet
clipped at the neck

the dainty mock—
seriousness of being
a gay hairdresser

The Nuisance

“We, of course,
were popular in the
neighborhood because
of the game”
—William Spratling,
The File on Spratling
(Autobiography)

extra points for pinging—
negro nuns on the ass
with our lewd bb-gun

zeroing in on victims—
from the balcony, the
tourists great fun

but anderson’s son—
made a nuisance of
himself dontchaknow

Sherwood Anderson’s Son

up there in spratling’s—
apartment, gay adolescent
sexual rowdiness so rampant

vieux carré homoeroticism—
thanks to natalie vivian scott’s
french quarter renaissance

but young bob anderson—
could hardly be kept away
difficult to get rid of

hardly a child, my dear—
more like a raging teenage
erection with two legs

he kept interrupting—
faulkner’s typing at his
novels, it got rather tiring

so finally one day—
spratling and faulkner
got the kid drunk, stoned

Vulgar Verdigrised Visage

pulled his pants down—
and painted his little peter
tres verdigrised green

so drunk & stoned, passed out—
spratling painting the kid’s huge
penis green,

then shoving him—
out into vieux carré street
nude for all the tourists to see

shocked negro nuns—
tres gawking aghast by it all
swishing back to church