10 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE August 4, 2000

Remember when Snickers was fun? eveningsout

1° 1°/ • Well it is again...

Join us for our Cosmopolitan Happy Hour Tuesday through Sunday from 5 to 8pm for complimentary appetizers/drink specials!

Enjoy innovative cuisine with contemporary design created by chef Jeff Fisher.

Come Have a Gay Old Time!!

Snickers Tavern

1261 W. 76th Cleveland 216-631-7555

Serving lunch from 11:30 to 2:30 Tuesday thru Friday Dinner Tuesday thru Sunday starting at 5pm Closed Mondays

CHIROPRACTIC HEALTH

SERVICES

DAVID A. BUDNY, D.C.

16900 DETROIT AVE

LAKEWOOD, OHIO 44107 (216) 228-6622

Dedicated to your wellness

Antone F. Feo, Ph.D. & Associates, Inc.

Concerns

• Abusive Relationships

•

Gay/Bisexual/Lesbian Issues

•

Depression /Anxiety

·

Transgendered

• Sexual Relationship/

No Wait Policy

Come In Today, Drive Today!

Bad Credit,

No Credit,

No Problem!

Come in and see a family

member you can trust.

1365 W. 117th, Cleveland

Between Clifton & Detroit

• HIV/AIDS/Chronic Illness

24500 Center Ridge Road, Bldg. 4 Suite 100 Westlake, Ohio 44145 440/899-1300

Bev Briggs

J.D.

216-521-4300 (BYRIDER

Getting a car and credit is only a phone call away

Get a Fresh New Look

At

Aesthetic Skin Care

Center

216-381-1300

Introducing...

TM

The Parisian PeelTMM...

The gentle affordable skin renewal/ microdermabrasion system for: Fine lines & wrinkles Acne scars, blemishes... & more

G

OODBYE UNDESIRED HAIR!

thanks to PhotoDerm HR® ... a "beyond-laser" technology... that removes undesired hair anywhere on your body with a flash!

Three 20th century authors

are not well known as gay

by Anthony Glassman

Almost everyone in the gay community knows about gay authors. Whether it's classics like Edmund White and Felice Picano, Radclyffe Hall and Gertrude Stein, or newer writers like Pat Califia and David Sedaris, we are proud of our gay writers, almost to a fault.

The problem is, not every major gay writer is known primarily for being gay. There are some very noteworthy authors who, while very candid in their writing about their sexual orientation, are categorized more commonly in other ways. Some are known as African American authors; some are Beat generation writers; one is even the father of contemporary Japanese fiction.

The names are well-known. James Baldwin. William S. Burroughs. Yukio Mishima. Well, in the words of Meatloaf, two out of three ain't bad.

James Baldwin (1924-1987) was born in the Harlem Renaissance of the twenties, spent his youth as a preacher in a Pentecostal church. As he grew older, he began to write essays on the black experience in America.

In 1948, he went to Paris, the home of a celebrated community of American expatriates, where he started writing some of his most well-known.

Giovanni's Room dealt quite explicitly with homosexuality, a freedom given to Baldwin by his residence in the relatively uninhibited post-war France. McCarthyism and the Red Menace may have been running rampant in the U.S., but the artistic community in Western Europe had removed themselves from that, and Baldwin made the most of it.

Baldwin would return to the States, spending much of the sixties and seventies here, becoming civil rights activist and, through his writing, the voice of the angry young African American. He spent his declining years back in France, frequently returning here to hold academic appoint-

ments.

William S. Burroughs (1914-1997) was one of the shining stars of the 1950s Beat Generation of writers and poets and, like fellow Beatnik Allen Ginsberg, was openly gay.

Burroughs was born into money as the heir to the Burroughs business machine empire; he went to Harvard. He did not exactly fulfill his parents' expectations, however, in his occasional work as an exterminator and private investigator.

THE BREWMASTER'S HOUSE

He moved to Paris and Tangiers, where he fed his two addictions, young men and heroin, although, as he says in his books Junkie and its sequel Queer, not at the same time. The heroin had a detrimental effect on his sex drive: he had none as long as he was on smack.

He was known for his stream-of-consciousness writing, slipping from concrete narrative into phantasmagoric hallucinatory sequences, his work blending gayness, science fiction, and the dark underbelly of society made famous in film-noir gumshoe movies.

In his later years, he made a cameo appearance in Gus Van Sant's Drugstore Cowboy, and recorded an album with the rock group R.E.M.

The third author here is the leastknown, at least in the United States. His story is, however, one of the most interesting.

Hiraoka Kimitake, better known by his pen name Yukio Mishima, revolutionized Japanese literature. He lived from 1925 until 1970, and died by hara-kiri, the traditional form of Japanese suicide, trying to re-ignite a spirit of nationalism in Japan. He felt that his people had strayed too far from their samurai forefathers, and had become a broken people after the American post-war occupation.

Oh. And he was gay. Very. Many biographies will mention that he and a young follower killed themselves following an attempt to take over a national defense force installation. Few of the bios mention that the young follower was Mishima's lover.

Mishima's works, from his first major piece Confessions of a Mask, often deal either directly with homosexuality and the attempt to hide it in a repressive society like Japan's, where to this day being gay is somewhere lower on the social spectrum that having leprosy.

Later in his life, he started studying bushido, the ancient code of honor that bound the samurai. He started the Shield Society, a group dedicated to bushido's revival, and with them staged a token attempt at taking over a defense base, similar to a small National Guard base in the U.S. At the end of the "coup," he and his lover sacrificed themselves to revive Japan's pre-war nationalist ideals.

Three men, three lives. All three of them were gay, but aren't known as gay authors, even though they never shied away from their sexual identities.

Landmark Bed & Breakfast Inn

Grand 1909

house near all attractions.

Cable TV,

VCR, fax,

Work-out area.

Room for 1-$50

Room for 2-$65

Where Historic Brewery District meets German Village Suite for 4-$100

· 1083 S. High St. Columbus, OH 43206.

Telephone (614) 449-8298 Telefacsimile (614) 449-8663

Barracks beds @$25. Catering to Gay Men

*

Services:

PhotoDerm Hair Removal Microdermabrasion/ Parisian PeelTM Leg & Facial Veins Treatment Tattoo Removal

Freckles/ Birth Marks/Sun Damage Acne Management Stretch Marks

esthetic Skin Care Center

A Medical Facility for Image Enhancement ́ 14100 Cedar Road, Cleveland, OH 216-381-1300 888-222-0030

Call us!

Let us help you design the

cake of your dreams.

Sweet Arts

WE CAKE PEOPLE

All Occasion Cakes

Cleveland's Classic Cheesecake Commitment Cakes Assorted Pastries

All By Special Order 216/476-CAKE

17008 Lorain Avenue, Near Kamm's Corners