September 25,1978 GAYSWEEK 18

Fresh Rummage

RUMER HAZZITT

The Annual Hazzitt Family Memorial Pigout

I'm really not certain what compelled with opposition. Dehydrated Republicans,

me to chuck it all and head up to the outskirts of Boston this past weekend. Perhaps it was the promise of a really good bottle of wine; perhaps the intense rumblings of an over-watered, yet under-fed, stomach; perhaps it was the police barricade in front of my building. I can't say for sure. In any event, having planted a well-placed kick on the shin of the nearest cop, I scooted up to Penn Station, joined the Amtrack crowd and soon found myself comfortably ensconced between a pockmarked window and a similarly flawed gentleman whose idea of conversation turned out to be his surly monologue on how things used to be. Thanks to his ramblings, I managed to catch a quick nap and was treated to an evening of awardwinning dreams filled with romantic interludes. My station arrived too soon.

As usual when I visit the Boston boondocks, I planned to stay at the Homey Hazzitt Inn. For the weary traveler who welcomes excesses in comfort and service, but shuns them in bills, few hotels offer the advantages of Hazzitt's. Snuggled suburbanly beneath 4.5 stately oak trees in a typical bedroom community, this unique hostel is noted for its reasonable rates, amiable staff, and delicious and abundant cuisine. Frequented by a select clientele comprised largely of the founders' offspring, the patrons tend to be young. Conversely, both management and staff age noticeably each year. As is so often true in rural areas, Hazzitt's seems incapable of retaining youthful help. This disparity in age serves to enhance the familial atmosphere that has charac terized the establishment since its incep-

tion.

Contrary to popular opinion, the Inn was not established as a deliberate effort on the part of the Hazzitt family to drive their already failing neighbors quite mad. An eyewitness reports that in the fall of 1970, Mama and Papa Hazzitt, no longer capable of maintaining a proper Bostonian facade, viciously tore the strings from every available apron, bound them together and ran them up the flagpole in a symbolic abdication of parenthood. The precipitating event, the same astute informant reveals, was a rather silly quarrel that arose when attempts were made to allocate sleeping quarters to visiting children and their respective, but parentally unacknowledged, lovers. According to the tradition in which Mama and Papa were raised, males were forbidden to sleep in the same room with females; nor were inamorata to share chambers. No number of fingers could solve the mathematical dilemma posed by three bedrooms, two sons, one daughter and three girlfriends, so Mama and Papa threw up their hands, shredded their copy of Emily Post, let everyone sleep where they liked, and spent a gleeful evening ravaging aprons. By morning the sign had been posted and the banner was aloft. The Homey Hazzitt Inn was open for business.

Like so many picturesque hideaways available to only a few, Hazzitt's has met

still sporting Mayflower ancestry and avian headgear, banded together in an attempt to drive the guests, if not the Inn, from the town. For years their tactics were simple harassment. During the season, stuffy matrons (reactionary groups always let women do the dirty work), alone or in clusters, would drop in unexpectedly for tea. The guests, out of deference to the management, would adopt as tolerant an attitude as possible in light of the conversation, which inevitably ran to such fruitless topics as marriage, grandchildren and wistful sighs. Escape was impossible as particularly unpleasant dowagers, while denied the workings of all other faculties, invariably possess a viselike grasp with which to handcuff their victim listeners.

While this campaign proved bothersome it failed to achieve the heinous goal. Undaunted, the bilious blue-bloods turned to the law. After wading through piles of legal dogma they unearthed a zoning ordinance prohibiting the operation of disorderly houses of a commercial sort in the vicinity of the Homey Hazzitt Inn. The management has never been noted for its housekeeping ability, so it appeared that the Inn would have to clean up its act or close its doors. Rather than stoop to such measures the management simply stopped billing their clients for services. This action served to increase, rather than decrease, business.

To commemorate this final triumph over naughty neighbors and to celebrate the dissolution of the family unit, patrons and staff convene once a year for what is fondly referred to as The Annual Hazzitt Family Memorial Pigout. As luck would have it, my visit occurred just in time for this gala event.

The pigout procedure is simple. First, all rules of etiquette are eschewed. The chef, traditionally inebriated, must rescue the lobster from the cats who merrily pursue dinner across the lawn. The entire meal, consisting of the messiest foods imaginable-lobster, corn-on-the-cob, clams and the like-is thrown into a garbage can (conveniently situated at the edge of the property, upwind of the more persnickety neighbors) where it steams, unattended. Champagne abounds and participants are not allowed to seat themselves until they have tripped over a lawn chair, insulted at least two persons present and four not, or invented a new form of outrageous behavior. Grabbing across a fellow piglet's plate is permitted. Using knives or forks is not.

As the insect world is inevitably well represented, watermelon is generally served in the living room. While the pitspitting contest is of necessity limited to the distance of one room, pigout participants have found it easy to maintain the Inn's reputation as a disorderly house. The festival lasts long into the night and I would gladly describe it in more elaborate detail were it possible for me to remember. Suffice it to say that a good time was had by all. Join us next year and you too will see that there's no place like Hazzitt's.

There and Back

BRANDON JUDELL

Odes from a Dominatrix; Hansel and Gretel in Hollywood; De Crescenzo Refuses

The

he child endures all things"-Maria Montessori Luci Arnaz has made the top of publicist Pete Sanders's top ten hate list. Maybe she doesn't appreciate Pete's newly developed cleavage, courtesy of the YMCA Also at the Y, the 23rd Street one, David Rothenberg, who's sporting a Hampton's sheen, is bumping lockers with Al Pacino And remember that robber Al portrayed in Dog Day Afternoon? Well, he's back intown. Anyone with a job for Little John, a legitimate one, get in touch with. GAYSWEEK. Designer Dennis De Crescenzo who has outpinupped Betty Grable with After Dark's Atlantic City spread and I mean spread-will not switch to modeling. Poor Wilhelmina!

At the Bushes, Ted Williams nearly brought the house down with his five people act-a condensed version of The Wiz. Without a doubt the energy and gold lamé piano were enough to destroy Pompeii all over again. (By the way, if Ted's name doesn't ring a bell, it will soon: he's the head Munchkin in Diana Ross's next release.) Backing him up were hot tamale Karen Gibson, thrush Walter Holiday of Hot Rock Hotel, handsome Gyle Waddy who has a fine solo act of his own, and Michelle Silver ... In the audience was Tiger Haines applauding heartily. The newly designed Bushes is worse than ever. With the charm of the Mine Shaft minus the bathtub, this place needs help. Ann Reinking has left Dancin' to film All That Jazz. She'll return in January. The Red Baron restaurant (201 Columbus Ave.) is playing host to fashion shows every Sunday. You've already missed Clovis Ruffin and you know how fine he is! But if you're speedy you can still catch Tracy Mills on September 24 and Gentilessé on October 1.. Dapper Jeff Karpel threw a dinner party for Human Rights Commissioner Bob Livingston that had more wit flowing about than could be elicited from a bombed Dorothy Parker. Also noteworthy of applause and present at the gala were Simon (an addictive computer game), a strawberrypeach pie, Richard the abstract artist, cold pasta, and a renowned dream interpreter who told me I had repressed transvestite impulses William Morrow deserves some type of praise for continuously publishing books with a gay theme and supporting the same with high-powered publicity campaigns. Besides Dancer from the Dance, Kings Don't Mean a Thing, and The Beauty Queen, Sheila Weller's Hansel and Gretel in Beverly Hills made its debut a few months ago. Almost unanimously detested by everyone I know who's read it, and for some good reasons, I still have a warm spot for this novel. All about a 54year-old widow/ex-publicist and a 40year-old stereotyped hairdresser who join forces to fight loneliness, somehow a love for life and an incentive to survive spurt forth from these two-dimensional characters. So if you can get past self-pitying passages like "His fingers smell of peroxide. Squinting my right eye open, I see them fuss spiderlike with my face, their blond hairs tickling my nose. Through endless walls of mirrors I see his body sway to the soul music station he always sets my radio to-his forty-yearold belly making gaps in his body shirt; the tiny gold stud he had pierced in his left earlobe glinting along with the fake crystal beads that hang from my bathtub ceiling. Wistfully, he sings over and over

"Sighs."

with the silly radio voices: 'Fly, robin, fly-up up to the sky...," you'll have a sincere read. Donnie and wife are up to chapter two of The Joy of Sex and looking forward to chapter three. We all know Bruce Voeller looks like a butch Farrah Fawcett and we all know he can act. But who knows whether he'll take a leave of absence from NGTF to play the ex-Angel's brother in a certain hush-hush project? Is it true that the darling of W. 13th Street can lose his temper? Ask Lee Horwin. Is it also true that he can be divinely charming? Just phone Rock. Hudson. According to Gail Roffi of Tut Productions, the $20 tickets for Tut, Tut, Tut, an extravaganza at Paradise Garage (84 King Street, 2554517) on September 30 are going as fast as a voyeur in the Glory Hole. Word has it that the international model Sterling St. Jacques will appear as the dead boy-king reborn. Definitely as things look now Tut... will be the in-event of that week Mam'selle Victoire is a dominatrix, that is "a lady who is erotically fascinated with her lover's submission" (e.g. submissive lifestyle or sexual posturing; his bearing of welts). To widen the public's understanding of her sexuality, the Mam'selle has published Sighs, a collection of sensuous poems.

... Cries of the new inmates those not accustomed to this constricture

and the pissed sheets and the occasional

shredded clothing in the morning rang through the night for weeks on end.

-Mother of Invention For those interested in owning their own copy of this distinctively different book of odes, send $4.50 to Mam'selle Victoire, 304 Columbus Ave., Studio One, New York, NY 10023. ■