staircase

STAIRCASE (1969)

And now, my dears, the dark side of gay marriage.

Divorce, disillusionment, disenchantment and then, of course, the usual straight soap opera called Adultery. It’s all there—ready or not. Just like Halloween—trick or treat, my dears. Waiting for us.

Not that I’m pushing the same old usual happy go lucky Wizard of Oz routine—that old hackneyed “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” Riggermarole Spiel. You know, the old used-up gay fairy tale version of—“And they lived happily ever after etc.” 

It gets grimmer than that, honey—try Billy Wilder’s “Double Indemnity” and then think about the legal depths inherent in any marriage vow whether straight or GLBT-wise, my dears. The nefarious legal and insidious insurance racket that awaits thee, my dears—but then isn’t that what we naïve gay lib advocates want? 

But before reverting to the Barbara Stanwyck-Fred MacMurray routine devised by Billy Wilder and Raymond Chandler to get rid of that gay spouse of yours that you don’t want anymore—let’s pause a moment at the lovely chapel door or Las Vegas quickie marriage drive-in window and calmly, coolly review our rather sticky-wicket Problem.

What about being accommodated into to this so-called Wonderful Lovely Eternal Str8t Marriage Vow Racket Routine—pause a moment and remember your parents. 

How Str8t Marriage made life hell for them and all those other poor bourgeois Breeders and Straight Suckers out there? 

The same old Whatever Whomever Whenever For Ever and Ever After Routine? Let’s ponder this Heteronormative Carnie Side Show Spiel for a moment—before we leap into Dante’s Str8t System of Hell.

Like the Fall of the Berlin Wall—we’ve got DOMA, DADT, the Ban Against GLBT Marriage as well as the Right Wing Conservative Religious Creeps Coalition seemingly beginning to crack, crumble and tumble down right before our eyes. 

Surely we fags and the other members of our GLBT Coalition are now quite the quite Miss Avant Garde Queen Bees and undoubtedly we’re definitely rather de regeur now, don’t you think?

But  now, my dears—the bright side of gay marriage.

From a fag movie queen’s perspective—what could be a more exquisitely thrilling preview of our future gay marriage possibilities than the classic original  “Staircase” (1969) version of our simply marvelous homosexual marital bliss just waiting for us? 

This simply fabulously tubercular version of Harry (Richard Burton) and Charlie (Rex Harrison) posing as without a doubt the most simply charming and entrancingly thrilling Married Hairdresser Couple in the whole scintillatingly gay fairy Universe?

Vito Russo simply lauds and praises to high heaven this heartwarming Stanley Donen-Charles Dyer stage play adaptation Romance of contemporary ecstatic Gay Marriage—so touchingly lavishing Kudos in his lovely early gay film classic film review Tome ”The Celluloid Closet” (1981).

According to critic Russo, “Staircase” is the perfect example of what our chic kosher Heteronormative Accommodation Style is heading for—a modern gay lifestyle bathed in the glorious Straight Mainline Glow of Busy Breeder Existence today. Doesn’t That just simply Thrill Your Little Funny Bone?

Yes, my dears, Miss Russo courageously pooh-poohs the various gay critics that say that “Staircase” is much too “poofy” of a gay movie to be Real—and that “Staircase” simply portrays much too homophobically the typically stereotypical and politically incorrect views of what Hairdressers are all like. After all, new Gay Lib Times have arrived…

But surely, my dears, all that was then—and this is so very tres Nouveau Now. All that was 40 years ago—it’s Ancient History. And here we are in the bright glowing promising days of GLBT 2013? 

With all the hoopla about DOMA and DADT and Gay Marriage Bans coming down state-by-state like a row of dominos. Like the Fall of the tacky Cold War Berlin Wall way back then—one simply has to surely simply just flow with the Breeder Mob? 

But what does the Faggy Future actually have in store for us, honey? Rather than consulting the usual dreary-deary literary critics prognostications and crummy sniveling drama critics drivel, I decided to go straight to the Font of Flaming Fag Wisdom itself.

I flew to Las Vegas and immediately had a Tarot Reading with Madame Sosostris—the Infamous Clairvoyante of Miss Eliot’s dreary-deary “The Waste Land.”

Unfortunately, she slipped a Mickey is my Martini—and robbed me blind. I woke up in a dark Las Vegas back alley behind Caesar’s Palace casino—hung over and missing one my kidneys that the organ black market dealers sold for big bucks in Poughkeepsie.

Since then I’ve unfortunately had several Gay Divorces. The Divorce Lawyers bled me dry. Plus I’m a Dead Beat Dad now with years of tardy Fag Father Back Child-Support payments hanging over my nelly nefarious head!!!

My Ex-Gay Partner’s sex-change operation forced me into tragic Bankruptcy with all that expensive Desert Springs face-lift surgery—and now She simply hates my guts for her Botched Sex Change Operation without any medical insurance to get her dick back again!!!

Other than that, though, isn’t Gay Marriage simply the most Marvelous Thing to happen to all of us liberated Heteronormative Homosexuals in this whole Wide Wonderful World, my dears?