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December 25, 1908– Quentin Crisp

Yesterday, while traveling on public transportation, I was called “an old queen” when I accidentally jostled a whipper-snapper while taking my seat. At first, I was offended, and as I started to spit out a response, I thought of a certain Old Queen of England and instead my retort was:

“Oh, sweetie dear, you simply have no idea…”

When I arrived in NYC in late summer 1976, I didn’t even have a clue to get from the airport into Manhattan. I was 22-years-old and one of another hundred people who just got off of the plane, ready to become a Broadway star and famous recording artist. I ended up taking a taxi to the Tudor City Hotel where I had chosen to make a reservation because it was across the street from Truman Capote’s apartment. My room at the hotel was the size of the bathroom at my Los Angeles apartment, and it had one tiny window that looked at an air shaft.

I checked-in and then headed down 42nd Street to Times Square just to picture my name in lights. This was the Times Square of the mid-1970s, so very different than the Disney-ized Manhattan today. I was so overwhelmed to find myself alone with two pieces of luggage, my dreams, and no plan, that I called the only person I had any connection with in the city. I confessed to my friend that I was a bit freaked out at finding myself all alone in NYC, and he invited me to stay in his apartment’s maid’s quarters until I could find a place of my own.

I took him up on the offer, but I stayed at my already paid for room at the Tudor City Hotel for one night. Late that evening, I turned on the tiny black and white television in the room and just happened to catch a most unusual, moving, mesmerizing film, The Naked Civil Servant (1975) starring John Hurt, about the early life of Quentin Crisp, of whom I knew absolutely nothing. The film was unlike anything that I had experienced. Just like me, Crisp had arrived in NYC not knowing a soul, but, unlike me, he arrived with a plan. Crisp was ready to become famous.

Crisp was a flamboyant, fey man who wore make-up and painted nails. He worked as a rent-boy as a youth. He then spent three decades making money as a figure model for art classes. The interviews he gave about his unusual life attracted increasing public curiosity and he was soon in demand for interviews where he told tales of his highly individual views on social manners and the cultivation of style. He was also frequently harassed and beaten.

Crisp was born Denis Charles Pratt. He is the author of the classic and flamboyantly eccentric coming-of-age memoir, The Naked Civil Servant (1968), the basis for the film that I watched on my first night in NYC. The book made him an international celebrity. He wrote several books and articles about his life and his opinions on style, fashion, and films. Crisp was famous for his concise, compact, and dare I say it, crisp witticisms.

In the 1980s and 1990s, he performed his one-man show An Evening With Quentin Crisp, to acclaim in theaters around the world, all the while spreading his unique philosophy:

“Never keep up with the Joneses; drag them down to your level. It’s cheaper.”

During the second part of his show, Crisp would answer questions from the audience and gave advice to the crowd about how to find their individual style and live a happy life. I saw him twice in this vehicle, in the early 1980s and again in the late 1990s. Both times. the experience was life-changing.

Crisp was Oscar Wilde’s obvious perfect descendant, with his calculated caustic confabulations, open gayness and witty, and winning obstinate opinions toward any kind of conventionality. Crisp caused a bit of a stir in the traditional Britain of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. In 1981, Crisp moved to NYC, and brought along his witty remarks and eccentricity. Crisp charmed the city and he became the essence of the modern bohemian.

During his two decades in Manhattan, Crisp wrote 11 books, plus reviews and magazine articles, appeared in several films, including playing a touching and dignified Elizabeth I in Sally Ann Potter’s gender-bending Orlando (1992), opposite Tilda Swinton.

While filming The Bride (1985), he became friends with Sting who was playing Dr. Frankenstein. Crisp was the inspiration and subject matter of Sting’s beautifully brilliant song An Englishman In New York (1988). Crisp:

“I had looked forward to receiving my naturalization papers so that I could commit a crime and not be deported.”

In 1986, Sting visited Crisp in his Manhattan apartment and was told over dinner, and in the three days that followed, what life had been like for an out-of-the-closet gay man in the very homophobic Britain of the 1920s-1960s. Sting was both shocked and fascinated. His song includes the lyrics:

“It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile. Be yourself no matter what they say.”

Sting:

“It’s partly about me and partly about Quentin. Again, I was looking for a metaphor. Quentin was a hero of mine, someone I knew very well. He was gay, and he was gay at a time in history when it was dangerous to be so. He had people beating up on him on a daily basis, largely with the consent of the public.”

Noted for never turning down a party invitation or a free meal, the gregarious Crisp claimed that he had never fallen in love:

“You can fancy someone, wish them well or enjoy their company, that’s all I can do with anybody. But when Miss Streisand sings, ‘People who need people are the luckiest people in the world’, she’s being funny. When you need people, you’re finished. I need people, but not any one person.”

Crisp always said that moving to the USA was his proudest achievement. He loved Americans.

“When I was coming to America, I went to the American Embassy in London, and the man asked me, ‘Are you a practicing homosexual?’ and I said I didn’t practice. I was already perfect.”

34 years after the first one, there was a second film about his life, this time the NYC years, An Englishman In New York (2009), with John Hurt playing him again, and featuring Denis O’Hare, Cynthia Nixon and Swoosie Kurtz.

Crisp resided in a single room in the East Village from 1977-1997. He remained fiercely independent and unpredictable to the end. He caused controversy and confusion in the LGBTQ community by jokingly calling AIDS “a fad”, and homosexuality “a terrible disease”. Always the contrarian, he famously commented after the death of Princess Diana:

“She could have been Queen of England and she was swanning about Paris with Arabs. What disgraceful behavior! Going about saying she wanted to be the queen of hearts. The vulgarity of it is so overpowering.”

He was always in demand from journalists needing a juicy sound-bite, and throughout the 1990s his commentary was often requested. You could count on Crisp to say something quotable.

He entertained publicly and privately with his inimitable decorum, dignity, dexterity, drollery and drive. Crisp spent his 90th birthday performing his show. He took his final curtain call while on tour with it, in Manchester, England, just a few weeks away from his 91st birthday in 1999. He didn’t quite make it to the 21st century, and maybe that was a good thing. This is what Crisp had to say about that:

“I hope for nothing, nothing, in the new millennium except death. It will get noisier, it will get darker, it will get faster and the music will thump more. But I shall be dead.”

Not everyone’s cup of tea, I like to think that we would have been great friends if we had the chance to meet. I still like to consider Crisp’s life whenever I get called an old queen.

Quentin Crisp, by Angus McBean, 1941 – NPG x135799 – © estate of Angus McBean / National Portrait Gallery, London

Essential Crisp: The Naked Civil Servant (1968), How To Have A Lifestyle (1975), How To Become A Virgin (1981), How to Go To The Movies (1988), Resident Alien: The New York Diaries (1996) and The Wit & Wisdom Of Quintin Crisp (1989).

December 26, 1956: David Sedaris:

“Undecided Voters, to put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. ‘Can I interest you in the chicken?’ she asks. ‘Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?’ To be undecided in an election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.”

I don’t recall what brought me to pick-up that hardback copy of Barrel Fever with its iconic Chip Kidd designed cover at my favorite bookstore, M. Coy Books, in downtown Seattle in 1995. Remember bookstores? I am not an avid NPR listener (I like my radio to play Rock ‘N’ Roll music, please), so Sedaris was unfamiliar to me at this point. I do remember that The Husband read it first. I heard him crying with laughter as he read straight through it from our loft bedroom. I was afraid he would fall down the ladder when he descended with the book in hand. The Husband: “Really, I believe this is the funniest thing I have ever read… it is called The Santaland Diaries. You have to read it right now, this very minute!”

And, we were off and away to Sedaris-land. I bought each of the next books, in hardcover, on the day they came out. I would dog-ear his pieces in The New Yorker. I would eventually extend my love for Sedaris to his boyfriend, Hugh Hamrick, and his insanely funny sister, Amy Sedaris.

“Seven beers followed by two Scotches and a thimble of marijuana and it’s funny how sleep comes all on its own”

Recalling his high school days in Raleigh, North Carolina, telling tales of his zany family, or life at their house in Normandy or the place in England with Hamrick, Sedaris always writes in his unique voice about the absurdities of life. He has a remarkable ability to find the humor in situations that are melancholy, peculiar, or dire.

Sedaris possesses a wicked wit that speaks to me in ways I never thought possible. A perfect day for me is a summer afternoon on Sauvie Island outside of Portland, naked on a blanket, with a thermos of vodka lemonade and a brand new David Sedaris tome.

“My hands tend to be full enough dealing with people who hate me for who I am. Concentrate too hard on the millions of people who hate you for what you are and you’re likely to turn into one of those unkempt, sloppy dressers who sag beneath the weight of the 200 political buttons they wear pinned to their coats and knapsacks.”

In the terrific, must-watch documentary Do I Sound Gay? (2014), filmmaker David Thorpe deftly takes on the relationship gay men have with their own voices. The film includes interviews, professional vocal coaches, speech pathologists and gay celebrities, including an hysterical section featuring Sedaris and Hamrick. Even if Hamrick does not sound convincingly butch, Sedaris may have one of gayest sounding voices this side of Truman Capote.

Of his partner of 26+ years, Sedaris writes:

“Hugh and I have been together for so long that in order to arouse extraordinary passion, we need to engage in physical combat. Once, he hit me on the back of the head with a broken wineglass, and I fell to the floor pretending to be unconscious. That was romantic, or would have been had he rushed to my side rather than stepping over my body to fetch the dustpan.”

It is ironic that Sedaris has a birthday on the day after Christmas. The adaptation of his classic Santaland Diaries has become a Holiday staple for regional and community theatres, replacing seeing a production of A Christmas Carol as a family tradition. I was finally able to hear Sedaris’ own version on NPR when I was receiving chemotherapy on Christmas 2013. His voice is gay perfection.

In the September 28, 2015 issue of The New Yorker, Sedaris has an extremely original, hysterical essay about reluctantly asking Hamrick to marry him for strictly unromantic reasons, A Modest Proposal. It is a response to the SCOTUS ruling on Marriage Equality in 2015:

“It occurred to me while standing there, cars whizzing by, that the day I marry is the day I’ll get hit and killed, probably by some driver who’s texting, or, likelier still, sexting. ‘He is survived by his husband, Hugh Hamrick’, the obituary will read, and before I’m even in my grave I’ll be rolling over in it.”

At my house, we always take his Christmas collection Holiday On Ice (1997) off the Sedaris section in the bookcase and casually toss it on the coffee table as part of our tradition. My favorite selection Dinah The Christmas Whore, still makes me laugh and cry. It is quintessential Sedaris.

Cool tid-bits about the eccentric Sedaris: He holds a keen interest in taxidermy; he does not drive or use the Internet or own a cell phone or an email account. Sedaris:

“I’ve always been convinced I would hit and kill a child, so I don’t drive because I’m afraid. Where I grew up, in Raleigh, you needed a car. I stayed at home a lot, and I had to entertain myself. Ultimately, I think not driving was good for me. And, I never learned to type; I type with one finger. So I’ve never worked in an office, which was also probably good for me. As for the Internet, everyone tells me it makes you lose a year. A bread truck will go by, and on the side it says: ‘If you want to learn more about our products, go to www.breadtruck.com.’ Then you’ll go to a computer and look that up. But who cares about bread? Then there’s something else, and something else. I don’t want to lose a year like that. The world is already full of books and magazines.”

I am a fan of the odd little indie film C.O.G. (2013) starring cutie pie Jonathan Groff, whose character is a stand-in for Sedaris. It also features two other actors I adore, Denis O’Hare and Corey Stoll. The film is based on a Sedaris piece about hitchhiking as a youth to Oregon where he takes a job picking apples.

In the October 28, 2013 issue of The New Yorker, Sedaris wrote with humor and sadness of the suicide of his sister Tiffany. He caught a lot of flack for that one:

“A woman came up to the front of the line, and she slapped a note on my table, and stormed off, and it said ‘For your information, joking about people dying is never funny’. I have such a problem with that, when people say ‘Blank’ is never funny, I’m really amazed sometimes at the things I laugh at. I mean, there’s something to be said for giving something a little time, you know, if a tragedy happens, but I mean, Sarah Silverman has said some really funny things about rape, really funny things. Someone less skilled than she is might not be able to pull it off, but I’ve seen it done. I’ve seen people say things about 9/11—I mean I’ve heard them—so anything’s possible, I just don’t ever see the point in cutting yourself off for that. A couple of years ago on tour I collected jokes. I said when you come to get a book signed please tell me a joke. I’ve heard a lot of jokes over and over again, and I’ve heard jokes that were lame, you know, I don’t like to fake laugh, but you don’t want to embarrass anybody, you know, they’re putting themselves out by telling a joke. Jokes with three things, you know, ‘there’s a priest, there’s a rabbi, a witchdoctor’, those jokes take forever. I said to people, I want you to tell me gay jokes. Everyone’s afraid to do it. Gay jokes would be like, ‘what does a gay horse say: ‘Hayyy’.”

Essential Sedaris: Barrel Fever (1994), Naked (1997), Me Talk Pretty One Day (2000), Dress Your Family In Corduroy And Denim (2004), When You Are Engulfed In Flames (2008), Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk: A Modest Bestiary (2011), and Let’s Explore Diabetes With Owls (2013). I am currently savoring his Theft By Finding: Diaries (1977–2002).

This year marks the 25th anniversary of Sedaris reading Santaland Diaries on NPR.

I think he is the funniest writer alive. And, I find few subjects off limit for jokes.

“If you’re looking for sympathy you’ll find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.”

About:

“I started drag because I wanted to have a job where I was in control of my life and my art. I draw inspiration from everything and everyone…ballet, the weather, fashion, my favorite artists such as Annie Lennox, Cher, Grace Jones, and ALL the 90s super models!…and also my favorite drag artists Sasha Colby, Aquaria, Raven, Mimi Marks and Roxxxy Andrews to name a few. You can catch me at Play Dance Bar in Nashville every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. My next tour will be in San Diego and LA from January 10-16, and I will also be at RuPaul’s DragCon!”

Instagram: bhytes

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, George!

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Brooke Lynn Hytes

Age: 31

Location: Nashville, Tennessee

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