https://www.amazon.ca/s?k=Maurice+Vellekoop&ref=nb_sb_noss
Maurice Vellekoop is an artist whose drawing style is one I have always felt wonderful.
In this GLOBE & MAIL piece he writes, “The cover of the tattered, dog-eared book is holding on for dear life. Its beyond-yellowed pages are falling out, and there is actual mould on the bio page. My copy of Splendora, a deliriously comic 1978 novel by Edward Swift, has been one of my most beloved possessions since the early eighties.
“Splendora is about an ethereally beautiful teen who flees his bigoted Texas hometown and finds a refuge in the New Orleans drag scene. Upon inheriting his grandmother’s estate, Timothy John returns, disguised as a mysteriously genteel lady. He takes the town of southern eccentrics by storm and becomes an object of adoration. Eventually the strain of keeping up the alter-ego becomes too much. Timothy John’s attempt to evade his true identity as a gay man fails. He confronts the traumas of his childhood, sheds his feminine persona, and, defying all expectations, finds love with the town’s Baptist assistant pastor in a fiery Technicolor ending!
“In the 1980s, I was a closeted gay boy struggling mightily with a number of issues. My family belonged to the Christian Reformed Church, a strict, conservative Calvinist sect. The CRC taught me that, as a homosexual, I could only receive God’s grace through total abstinence from gay sex. The alternative: eternal damnation. On top of that, people were often confused about my gender. In high school, something about my mere presence just drove the guys crazy, and not in a good way: I got called “faggot” all day long, every day. The threat of violence was always present.”
We did not have graphic novels when I was in my teens.
My books were GIOVANNI’S ROOM, THE FIRE NEXT TIME and ANOTHER COUNTRY by James Baldwin, NUMBERS AND CITY OF NIGHT by John Rechy, THE YAGE LETTERS by William. S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg.
Rechy was particularly powerful because he drew on his personal experience as a hustler, a male prostitute for whom sex was a job. He was not looking for love.
Baldwin gave a romanticized view which I quickly realized was false when I became part of Toronto’s Queer culture around 1963/64.
Rechy nailed it.
His books show the queer world as it was and, largely, as it is today.
Maurice’s description of SPLENDORA is of a life entirely one of fantasy.
Baldwin, Rechy, Burroughs, Ginsberg, these are writers who make the earth quake with their words.
NUMBERS is devoid of love, fantasy, wishful dreaming of a happier life. Johnny Rio sets out to get 30 johns in 10 days.
It is in a direct line of descent from the anonymous books LE LIVRE BLANC (Jean Cocteau) and THE CITIES OF THE PLAIN (1881) Anonymous.
These are not books for the faint of heart.
As life would have it I lived in that world not as a hustler but as an observer of the scene,
The man who most helped me get my feet on the ground when I arrived in Toronto was the child of a prostitute who put him to work at ten.
He never knew his father except as a man in a photograph who one night asked him to give him a blow job in a park for cash.
With a mother and father like that we either kill our self or become very strong.
Billy was nothing if not strong.
He knew I was not cut for the trade.
I was cut for something much harder to be.
I laughed when he told me he was psychic.
At 18 I did not believe in psychic.
He said, “After your 34th birthday everyone you know will turn against you. You will celebrate your 35th birthday in a psychiatric hospital after you lose someone very close to you. Don’t worry about it. When you come out you will become the richest man on earth.”
Yes, I laughed then but the day I cut the cake my sister brought into the psychiatric hospital my family placed me in against my will after the suicide of my younger brother Michael I was not laughing. I had questions.
The questions I had are the only ones that matter.
When we get those questions answered people usually say we are crazy.
Lao Tzu, in THE TAO TE CHING (Richard Wilhelm Edition) writes.
41
When the highest type of men hear Tao,
They diligently practice it.
When the average type of men hear Tao,
They half believe in it.
When the lowest type of men hear Tao,
They laugh heartily at it.
If they did not laugh at it, it would not be Tao.
“You are a Crazy-Wisdom-Yogin,” said a man at one of my programs.
“I hear crazy often enough. What does the rest of that mean?” I replied.
“It’s the highest compliment I, as a Buddhist, can pay,” he said.
“Would you care for a beer?” I asked.
Luckily, he did. Even luckier I had a two-four.
He said, “If you quote me put a flame after my name to indicate my rank.”
1980, near the base of Mount Palomar, San Diego, an ancient Egyptian seal was discovered by archaeologist Jerzy Zaborski. Made from lapis lazuli, it was inscribed with hieroglyphs, subsequently translated at Brigham Young University as: “Greetings from the Lord of the Two Lands to the Lord of the One Land”. Analysis of the patina by a couple of different labs indicated that the seal had been (ritually) buried since around 1400 BCE (Akhenaten). Barry Fell also had some interesting things to say about Maui, legendary ‘Libyan’ navigator for one of the pharaohs, who sailed to Indonesia and ended up in a Chilean cave.. according to Fell’s translations of far flung inscriptions, including a Rosetta megalith in Indonesia in 3 languages: Indian (Tamil?), a local tongue, and North African. https://grahamhancock.com/52089-2/
Jerzy told me the story of how he came to discover that Egyptian seal after seeing it in his mind’s eye while meditating naked in a cave in New England. It is a fascinating story.
I’ve ordered Maurice’s book. It is arriving tomorrow.
I’ve always better to stand and face bigots than it is to run from them. I feel it is better to great bigotry with compassion and love as otherwise we’re throwing gasoline on the fire.
The people who have most hated me I learned were men struggling with their own sexuality. Some took a long time coming out of the closet. All of them thanked me for showing them compassion, love and patience.
But that is me.
I grew up in a garden of hate.
For decades I have faced soul searing hate in Toronto. THE GLOBE AND MAIL did a story on that: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/toronto-alternative-theatre-founder-stands-up-to-bullying-threats/article549053/
I recommend Maurice’s book to you.
It can’t get here fast enough.
In an issue of PSYCHOLOGY TODAY I found at Hassle Free Clinic in 1980 just before the feces hit the fan the cover article was titled: THE VALUE OF THE HOMOSEXUAL EXPERIENCE.
I read it. It said that basically homosexual men accept the world’s condemnation and self destruct either through religion or booze, drugs and sex (most) or centre themselves and learn to think for themselves (very few).
Which is not to say I have not got faith or turned my back on booze, drugs and sex.
However I have learned people need love more than they need sex.
Love, for me, is giving people the time to figure things out for themselves. I did. I have learned they can.
They don’t need teachers. We have way too many who want to be those.–Reg Hartt
t
Additional reading for those looking for love:
Twenty-First. Night. Monday.
Twenty-first. Night. Monday.
Silhouette of the capitol in darkness.
Some-good-for-nothing-who knows why-
made up the tale that love exists on earth.
People believe it, maybe from laziness
or boredom, and live accordingly:
they wait eagerly for meetings, fear parting,
and when they sing, they sing about love.
But the secret reveals itself to some,
and on them silence settles down…
I found this out by accident
and now it seems I am sick all the time.
—Anna Akhmatova (translated by Jane Kenyon).
She got over being sick.
The young Maurice Vellekoop.
For more of the story of my first years in Toronto read my THE NIGHT THEY RAIDED ROCHDALE (College). Attached is a fan letter from Jane Jacobs. Very few got one of those. Canadian publishers told me there is no market for my book. The cover is by Chester Brown.
Canadian publishers tell me there is no market in Canada for THE NIGHT THEY RAIDED ROCHDALE. Well, that’s Canada. This is a fan letter from Jane Jacobs. Very few got one of those.
–Reg Hartt
« March at The CineFòrum The Copyright Battle that Gave Cinematic Life to Dracula »