Edward Gorey, Frank O’Hara and Harvard’s Gay Unrground ‹ Lerary Hub

Contents:

• EDWARD GOREY, FRANK O’HARA AND HARVARD’S GAY UNRGROUND
• THE REASON GAY PEOPLE LOVE THE LONDON UNRGROUNDTHE RAILWAY HAS A HIGHER PREVALENCE OF LGBT+ WORKERS THAN MANY OTHER SECTORSGETWTLONDONBOOKMARKSHARECOMMENTSLIFTYLEBYCALLUM MARITRANSPORT EDOR12:00, 16 SEP 2021BOOKMARKLGBT RABOW FLAG RATED ONTO A LONDON UNRGROUND ROUNL AT HAMMERSMH STATN (IMAGE: TRANSPORT FOR LONDON)GET FREE EMAIL UPDAT FOR EVERYTHG LONDON UNRGROUNDMORE NEWSLETTERS SUBSCRIBEINVALID EMAILSOMETHG WENT WRONG, PLEASE TRY AGA LATER.MORE NEWSLETTERSWE E YOUR SIGN-UP TO PROVI NTENT WAYS YOU’VE NSENTED TO AND IMPROVE OUR UNRSTANDG OF YOU. THIS MAY CLU ADVERTS OM AND THIRD PARTI BASED ON OUR KNOWLEDGE OF YOU. MORE THANK YOU FOR SUBSCRIBG!WE HAVE MORE NEWSLETTERSSHOW ME SEE OURPRIVACY NOTICE SEE OURPRIVACY NOTICE&TIM;GROUP 28 GET FREE EMAIL UPDAT FOR EVERYTHG LONDON UNRGROUNDINVALID EMAILSOMETHG WENT WRONG, PLEASE TRY AGA LATER.SIGN UPNO THANKS, CLOSEWE E YOUR SIGN-UP TO PROVI NTENT WAYS YOU’VE NSENTED TO AND IMPROVE OUR UNRSTANDG OF YOU. THIS MAY CLU ADVERTS OM AND THIRD PARTI BASED ON OUR KNOWLEDGE OF YOU. MORE &TIM;GROUP 28THANK YOU FOR SUBSCRIBG!
• BACK TO THE ’90S AND THE GAY UNRGROUND BALLROOM CULTURE OF NEW YORK
• 6 PARTY CREWS REFG THE GAY UNRGROUND
• DID YOU KNOW THE 100 BLOCK OF GAY STREET WAS RAISED? TAKE AN UNRGROUND TOUR
• GAY FURRY HACKERS ARE TARGETG US STAT FOR PASSG ANTI-TRANS LEGISLATN
• GAY MOSW · CY GUI
• THE 10 BEST NEW YORK CY GAY CLUBS & BARSSEE ALL THGS TO DOGAY CLUBS & BARS NEW YORK CY

EDWARD GOREY, FRANK O’HARA AND HARVARD’S GAY UNRGROUND

His speech, body language, and cultural passns—theater, ballet, the novels of gay satirists of mor and manners such as Saki, Ronald Firbank, E.

Benson, and Ivy Compton-Burt—were a talog of stereotypilly gay tras and affi.

Yet no one the almost exclively gay crowd he traveled wh ever saw him at gay bars such as the Napoleon Club or the Silver Dollar. O’Hara, who’d had his first same-sex experience when he was 16, was nflicted about his sexual inty—all too aware of his attractn to men but gnawed by the spicn that gay men were sissi and hnted by fears of what would happen if his secret got out the nservative Irish Catholic muny where he’d grown up, Grafton, Massachetts.

THE REASON GAY PEOPLE LOVE THE LONDON UNRGROUNDTHE RAILWAY HAS A HIGHER PREVALENCE OF LGBT+ WORKERS THAN MANY OTHER SECTORSGETWTLONDONBOOKMARKSHARECOMMENTSLIFTYLEBYCALLUM MARITRANSPORT EDOR12:00, 16 SEP 2021BOOKMARKLGBT RABOW FLAG RATED ONTO A LONDON UNRGROUND ROUNL AT HAMMERSMH STATN (IMAGE: TRANSPORT FOR LONDON)GET FREE EMAIL UPDAT FOR EVERYTHG LONDON UNRGROUNDMORE NEWSLETTERS SUBSCRIBEINVALID EMAILSOMETHG WENT WRONG, PLEASE TRY AGA LATER.MORE NEWSLETTERSWE E YOUR SIGN-UP TO PROVI NTENT WAYS YOU’VE NSENTED TO AND IMPROVE OUR UNRSTANDG OF YOU. THIS MAY CLU ADVERTS OM AND THIRD PARTI BASED ON OUR KNOWLEDGE OF YOU. MORE THANK YOU FOR SUBSCRIBG!WE HAVE MORE NEWSLETTERSSHOW ME SEE OURPRIVACY NOTICE SEE OURPRIVACY NOTICE&TIM;GROUP 28 GET FREE EMAIL UPDAT FOR EVERYTHG LONDON UNRGROUNDINVALID EMAILSOMETHG WENT WRONG, PLEASE TRY AGA LATER.SIGN UPNO THANKS, CLOSEWE E YOUR SIGN-UP TO PROVI NTENT WAYS YOU’VE NSENTED TO AND IMPROVE OUR UNRSTANDG OF YOU. THIS MAY CLU ADVERTS OM AND THIRD PARTI BASED ON OUR KNOWLEDGE OF YOU. MORE &TIM;GROUP 28THANK YOU FOR SUBSCRIBG!

Posthumoly, O’Hara would take his place on the Mount Rhmore of gay letters, but durg his Harvard years he was torn between the closeted life he was forced to live whenever he returned home and the more liberated life he lived at Harvard and Boston’s gay unrground. He looms large the prehistory of mp, the d sensibily that enabled gays, pre-Stonewall tim, to signal their sexualy unr the radar of mastream (read: straight) culture and, simultaneoly, to mock that culture wh tongue firmly cheek. To gay rears who uld read the subtext Firbank’s prickg w and “orchidaceo” style, as tractors lled , his prose hid his queerns pla sight.

The ntent of his novels, which poked fun at bourgeois stutns such as marriage, had special meang for gay rears, too.

BACK TO THE ’90S AND THE GAY UNRGROUND BALLROOM CULTURE OF NEW YORK

“One n image how such a flagrant parody of heterosexual mor might functn wh the gay subculture—rercg the self-teem of those who thought their nontradnal sexualy a rebelln agast the nventnalism of late Victorianism, ” wr David Van Leer The Queeng of Ameri. “An appreciatn of [Firbank] beme the lm tt of one’s sexualy and of one’s allegiance to the dandyism of post-Wilan homosexualy.

It’s hard to image Gorey rejoicg the gay “muny solidary” signaled by a fondns for Firbank. “I realize that homosexualy is a ser problem for anyone who is—but then, of urse, heterosexualy is a ser problem for anyone who is, too, ” he said.

But beg a homosexual 1946, or facg up to the fact that you might be, was surely jt a ltle b more ser, as problems go, than beg heterosexual. When Gorey arrived on mp, the Harvard Advote was funct, closed the early 40s by outraged tste who’d disvered that s edorial board was, for all purpos, a gays only club. When the magaze rumed publitn 1947, did so wh the unrstandg that gays were banned om the board (a prohibn everyone disregard but that was nervo-makg nohels).

6 PARTY CREWS REFG THE GAY UNRGROUND

Whether Gorey thought of himself as gay at Harvard and whether his emergg style and sensibily reprented a g to terms wh his sexualy he never said. Then, too, the fact that he was surround, for the first time his life, by unmistakably gay men—one of whom, Frank O’Hara, had bee a close iend (though not, should be emphasized, a lover)—mt have prsed the qutn of his own sexualy.

If he, like O’Hara and others their clique, was stgglg wh his inty, the pervasive homophobia of the tim mt have affected him some way. Gays, they mataed, were an pecially worrisome threat to natnal secury, sce their “perversn” renred them vulnerable to beg blackmailed to spyg for the Rski.

DID YOU KNOW THE 100 BLOCK OF GAY STREET WAS RAISED? TAKE AN UNRGROUND TOUR

Harvard’s expulsns of gay stunts ma the mood of the moment impossible to ignore. Hampers the social and psychosexual velopment of her son, ” Roel van n Oever asserts Mama’s Boy: Momism and Homophobia Postwar Amerin Culture. It seems likely that this mountg tolerance toward gays—or, for that matter, any weirdo who me off as “very, very faggoty” (Gee Montgomery’s first imprsn of Gorey)—would have unsettled a llege stunt tryg to make sense of who he was.

GAY FURRY HACKERS ARE TARGETG US STAT FOR PASSG ANTI-TRANS LEGISLATN

It wasn’t until the begng of Gorey’s sophomore year, the fall of ’47, that Harvard approved his move to Elt, where he and O’Hara end up sue F-13, a triple. ” (Dietrich was to gay culture the ’40s what Judy Garland would be to later generatns of gay men. Gorey and O’Hara were a subculture unto themselv wh a larger subculture, the gay unrground.

Even so, says Gooch, “they were a unterculture, ” albe “an early and élist form of ”—textbook exampl of what the cultural cric San Sontag lled the “improvised self-elected class, maly homosexuals, who nstute themselv aristocrats of taste. The transport dtry may not strike you as a stereotypilly gay profsn, if there is such a thg, yet the railway has a higher prevalence of LGBT+ workers than many other sectors.

GAY MOSW · CY GUI

Ined, the railway fay is a morn fay, wh a proud, gay ntgent and recent years. Last year, the Northern le extensn, which was still unr nstctn, hosted a celebratn of all thgs gay about the Tube. Takg the gay Unrground unrground Na Wakeford, a Doctor of Visual Soclogy, was missned by TfL’s ‘Art on the Unrground’ project to exvate the queer history of the tube for the Northern le extensn exhibn.

Acpanied by LGBT+ lleagu om London Unrground, Na's performance clud anecdot om her rearch to the symbtic relatnship between the Tube and the gay muny. If you want a book tailg gay sex and railway signallg, look no further.

THE 10 BEST NEW YORK CY GAY CLUBS & BARSSEE ALL THGS TO DOGAY CLUBS & BARS NEW YORK CY

She scrib the culmatn of her project as: “takg the gay Unrground unrground.

“My soclogy head suggts that ’s probably not ‘gay people and tras’, ’s gay people and public astctur. ” “When there is a mercial anisatn which uld jt sack you for beg gay vers a public anisatn, I thk public anisatns tend to be a b better, ” she ntu. ' Na nces that there is some direct appeal that railway profsns have to gay men and lbian women particular.

'Our Pk Depot' go on to explore how Parsons Green beme known as 'the pansy pot', the Tra Managers at Golrs Green gag the affectnate name 'Golrs Queens' and which rriage of a Tube tra is the gay one.