The Good Old Days

Roman Polanski, at Cannes for the showing of his film version of David Ives’ “Venus in Fur,” lamented the disappearance of the era which celebrated the difference between the sexes with such niceties as flowers for the lady.  That, along with his objection to women striving for parity with men in the job market, de-feminizing themselves, as he put it, may have made him seem like an old fashioned guy, but there was no mistaking the obvious underlying refusal to accept women as equal players in life’s game plans.  As someone who is liable for arrest in the United States for having sex with a minor, an event now decades past, but still on the books, Polanski demonstrated in those days another sense of the differential of power between men and women, but it all boils down to the same thing.  It will be interesting to see his cinematic take on Ives’ play which is a marvelous duel of the sexes played out in both witty and cruel sado-masochistic terms.  A similar nostalgia seemed to have animated a large portion of the English public as they reacted to the debate on gay marriage in the Commons last week.  What is the celebration of marriage really all about these days, when an increasingly smaller percentage of persons attend church on any kind of regular basis, when almost half of marriages end in divorce, and there is no shame attached to women bearing children out of wedlock, as the term so quaintly puts it, nor for males to get women with child and leave the relationship utterly casually?  Gay persons, on the other hand, who are willing to fight for the right to marry are ironically enough just about the most enthusiastic brides and grooms on the scene these days.  What does marriage have that partnerships do not?  I can tell you very simply that when my wife and I were divorced, and I moved from the situation of father and head of the family to a gay male living in or out of relationships, the majority of our old friends were polite but kept their distance, contenting themselves with a polite handshake and smile when they were introduced to my current heartthrob.  That all changed to a very positive and obvious social acceptance when they watched me and my man stand at the altar and exchange vows.  It was the ceremony, the public dedication, the merging of ourselves into the centuries of cohabitation that brought us finally into their welcoming embrace.  So, I say just go to a gay wedding, folks; it’s so liberating.  And while you’re at it, watch Michael Douglas and Matt Damon going through the utterly sad story of Liberace and his lover, son, and servant, two males locked into so much neediness, self hating to a degree that is hard to watch, and at the same time devoted to a public persona for Liberace that is so outrageous, flamboyant, and feminine that it defies any commonplace understanding of what a “homosexual” was all about in those long ago days before most persons even understood the word “gay.”  Up there in his furs and glitter, flashing his bejeweled fingers over the keys, he just seems so beyond any public definition of anything that he defies interpretation.  Brilliant, sad, and tiresome all at once.