Bosie your poetry is so gay!

Since I'm on the topic of gay guys. I recently read, for the first time, the poem written by Oscar Wilde's lover Bosie (the one whose idiot father got Wilde thrown in prison) where the sentence "the love that dare not speak its name" came from.

The first time I heard the expression "the love that dare not speaks its name" was from an erudite work friend. It's so pukey sounding, I just love it. But the actual poem is sort of -- sniff sniff -- sweet. I feel like my mother did the first time she saw the context for the song "When I'm calling yoooooooooooouuuuuu" because I was tearing through all the Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy movies; and my mother was ashamed to find that the much-mocked song was actually touching within the context of the movie.

The poem is called "Two Loves." It's pretty bad--here's a typical line.

There were pools that dreamed
Black and unruffled; there were white lilies
A few, and crocuses, and violets
Purple or pale, snake-like fritillaries
Scarce seen for the rank grass, and through green nets
Blue eyes of shy peryenche winked in the sun.

The narrator of the poem comes across two figures, one of whom is pretty jolly, the other looks haunted and depressed. The narrator asks the depressed one what his name is. He says: "Love." The jolly one gets all mad and says: "No I'M Love! He's some upstart running around in my garden." And the depressed one says: "(sniff sniff) Alright, I am the Love that dare not speak its name." Sniff sniff. A good ending to a crappy poem. ...But I still hate Bosie. (I hated him for being an asshole, but apparently he was a total anti-Semite too. Bleh!)

'Sweet youth,
Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove
These pleasent realms? I pray thee speak me sooth
What is thy name?' He said, 'My name is Love.'
Then straight the first did turn himself to me
And cried, 'He lieth, for his name is Shame,
But I am Love, and I was wont to be
Alone in this fair garden, till he came
Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill
The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame.'
Then sighing, said the other, 'Have thy will,
I am the love that dare not speak its name.'

I can't top the other blogger's clever title

Noticed this good article linked to someone's blog--and their blog was cleverly titled "I kissed a guy and I didn't like it." I can't believe the shit Letterman is quoted as having said. Maybe it's time the old boy was put out to pasture. Sounds like James Franco is doing a good job, though--especially since the movie in question is about a gay rights activist, for heaven's sake. (I'm excited about seeing Milk--San Franciscoooo!)

I seem to remember when kd lang was asked what it was like to kiss Cindy Crawford (for Vanity Fair) she said something like: What do you think??

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In the relentless publicity interviews he's been doing for his new movie, "Milk," there's plenty to ask about his performance as the neglected lover of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk, the gay rights martyr. So what does every interviewer -- from David Letterman to the Philippine Daily Inquirer to public radio's Terry Gross -- want to discuss most, over and over and over?

The kissing.

Wasn't it really difficult to kiss another man? Implied: Without throwing up, seeing as you're so obviously straight? What were you thinking as you kissed? Did you rehearse it? What was it liiiiiike?

Underlying the questions (and the answers) is this notion that a gay kissing scene must be the worst Hollywood job hazard that a male actor could face, including stunt work, extreme weather or sitting through five hours of special-effects makeup every day. We live comfortably, if strangely, in a pseudo-Sapphic era in which seemingly every college woman with a MySpace page has kissed another girl for the camera; but for men who kiss men, it's still the final frontier.

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