The Lusty Mediterranean

 

by John Primavera

 

“There hasn’t been a new man since Adam,” an Italian-Ameri­can father admonishes his fifteen-year-old son Tony after catching the boy lying in a hammock with his teenaged male cousin. They were wearing only bathing briefs and had been mutually mastur­bating each other.

“This is no longer kid stuff. Grow up!” His father shouted.

Tony blushed and ran inside the house, visibly upset. This epi­sode was just the forerunner of many until Tony left home when turning eighteen.

“I can’t be my preference around here, so I’m going.” The son moved to California to be with others like himself, far away from home where men newer than Adam could live out their lives in what in the twentieth century became known as the Gay lifestyle.

Tony’s father, while admittedly relieved when his son left home, never really got over their separation. He and his son, his only male heir, saw each other infrequently after Tony left home in 1972.

When the father died twenty years later, Tony was almost forty and as he beheld his deceased father he felt both sadness and re­gret.He even stifled an urge to hug his dead father whom he really never knew. Never like real fathers and sons. He sat down at the rear of the funeral parlor, all angry and resentful. He suddenly wanted to be with Andy, his lover for the last eight years. He wanted someone to reach out to and be comforted by; needed to make up for the devalued relationship he shared with his father.

It was just then he heard someone call out his name. He looked up to see a tanned old man leaning on a bamboo cane with a twinkle in his eyes.

“Buona Notte. My name is Sal. Nick and I were boys together on Mulberry St. back in the old days.”

At first Tony just stared up at the tanned stranger with his hand extended just inches from Tony’s face. Seeing Tony’s hesita­tion, he withdrew his hand.

“I’m Tony.”

“Sure, I saw you when you were two. Your father made a visit to the old neighborhood.”

“That’s right. . . . He was born in Little Italy. Won’t you please sit down?

“We two were born there. Grew up there, in fact.”

The old man seemed animated and warmly took Tony’s hand, speaking rhapsodically of the old days spent together with his fa­ther.

“We weren’t exactly the best of friends. But we were neigh­borly.”

He then spoke of the gangs of kids, the games they played and processions carrying the statue of Saint Gennaro, the patron saint of Naples, through the streets. He seemed very interested in Tony and this gave him a sense of momentary relief. Sal was a short, almost midget-like man who wore a suit and vest. Nick was one of the most respected kids whom other kids called upon when they needed a good base runner for the neighborhood team.

Tony listened in fascination to all this colorful life, and for the first time he was awed by the many untold details about his fa­ther’s youth. Sal rattled off names such as Angelo, Fabio, Little Augie; mentioned Caffe Ferrara, the family business still operating at the same location for more than a hundred years. Listening to this old man relate his and Nick’s heritage made Tony momentar­ily forget the anger he earlier felt.

“You okay, Tony? Hope I’m not saying too much.”

“No . . . go on.”

“If you like.”

“No . . . it’s just that my father and I were not close. We were strangers.”

Sal, taking hold of Tony’s arm, spoke in a lowered voice. “I know all about it. I’m just like you. Your father and I saw each other last feast day. He knew he was dying and so he told me about you.”

Tony was stunned. “You mean you’re Gay?”

“All my life,” he said softly. “Nick showed me your picture.”

He couldn’t believe it. His own father had a Gay friend! One since childhood whom Nick never mentioned. Sal talked on, but he was only half-listening. How wonderful to know that. It was like opening up an old familiar book and discovering a whole new chapter. Tony felt a wave of emotions. On the plane ride home to California, he sat in his seat just imagining telling Andy about everything from bocce balls for sale at Rossi’s on East Grand Street to the cannoli and spumoni Italian ices sold by street vendors. How Nick held Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia’s coat while hizoner batted stickball; tell Andy about eight men trying to stand atop each other’s shoulders to reach the top of a greasy pole. Maybe the two of them could take a trip to New York and visit Sal on Mul­berry St.

On the sand of a warm California beach the following night, he and his lover sat dissecting Tony’s relationship with his father. The two spoke of the years each spent avoiding the other. When was it that Nick became aware of Tony’s true orientation. Was it when Tony stopped bringing girls home from school? If not, when? He remembered hearing Nick and his friends joke about “queers” and “pansies” when watching TV. Then there was the time Nick was all upset when Tony flunked out of Little League squad. Nick never once sounded prejudiced when talking about his two black friends he played cards with.

“I don’t understand it, Andy. Why my homosexuality wasn’t something he could accept, like somebody’s race, for instance.”

“That’s because you were you,” Andy said while watching the waves coming in. “Your father could accept certain facts about others he couldn’t accept in you. He was proud. If your sister wanted to marry the son of one of his black friends . . . he’d turn on her. See what I mean?”

That was it. Tony was as Gay as Sal. But that didn’t change the fact that Tony was still his son. Yes . . . Tony was his father’s son and that made the whole thing different. That reality hit too close to home. How awful for Nick to know his son was one of them. Such a fact implied things . . . such as: if the son was that way what about the father?

 

II

 

The coming of Gay Liberation and the asserting of rights for homosexuals has led to a more tolerant attitude in America to­ward what previously existed as an underground society. Gays and lesbians came out of their closets to proclaim their equality. Tony’s story was only one of many I heard about talking to writ­ers researching Gay history. Coming to terms with one’s family, after years and years of denial, was crucial for understanding in an Italian-American culture that honored family values. La famiglia was sacrosanct to Nick’s generation. Homosexuality stood in the background, was foreign, or was something discussed only in whispers around the dinner table. Nick lived and died with this attitude and so to him expressions of sexual cultures other than prescribed heterosexuality was courting the devil himself.

I have grown sorry about such relationships. Had Nick been an educated man instead of a bricklayer, he might have understood human nature better; known that what was unnatural to him was very normal and truly natural to his own son, his own flesh and blood. Even in Italy, the motherland to all Italian Americans, it was not only natural, but where sex was seen as less of a threat in the much-older European society. Had the Puritans landed a few degrees more north instead of at Plymouth Rock, we Americans would be as easygoing as Italians, French, Greeks and so many other Mediterranean cultures. What American tourists visiting Italy could not help but notice the casual and easygoing attitude of the native Italians? The undraped human anatomy among the statuary and paintings; hear the fabled strolling troubadours en­chant with romantic love songs native and tourist alike.

Some statuary dates back to ancient Roman Empire times when replicas of the male nude were used to decorate sacred pagan rites. The Dionysian orgies were considered free expressions of normal human needs (fellatio, sodomy) and ancient writers such as Petronius were influenced by them. Young slaves known as Atanites were trained as objects of pleasure for the luxury-loving nobility and later, when their masters grew tired of them, sold for use to male brothel owners in Athens. The ancient Romans held homosexuality in esteem.

The coming of Christianity saw the decline of paganism and the hedonism it spawned. Homosexuality was never fully out­lawed, however, and took root in such all-male environments as the monasteries. A reawakening of erotica was to take place dur­ing the Renaissance. In this era, the era of the two Italian giants Michaelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, came the relaxation of offi­cial prudery by the Catholic church. This saw the male nude begin to flourish as never before. Michaelangelo’s statue of David shocked many with its raw sexuality. Many consider this master­piece of Italian culture to be the epitome of homoerotic art. Even to this day, David is used to sell everything from men’s underwear to condoms! While da Vinci and Michaelangelo were the twin icons of Renaissance art whose homosexuality was widely known, it was a heterosexual painter, Vincenzo Foppa, who painted the first Italian subject known to be homosexual with his St. Sebastian.

Playwright Tennessee Williams’s use of this martyred saint as his role model for the play Suddenly, Last Summer,is an example of gayness being an excuse for murder that has become common­place among modern Gay writers. Regrettably, more positive ex­amples of Gay Italians in history seldom inspire today’s literati. Gherado Perini, one of Michaelangelo’s most beautiful young models with whom the artist had a relationship; and young aristo­crat Tommasso Cavalieri to whom the Gay artist wrote many of his sonnets and believed to have been his great love, are truly worthy to serve as literary subjects.

In the late nineteenth century with the coming of Italian unifi­cation and nationhood, the Catholic church was dealt another blow as it saw its secular power reduced. In 1889 the Italian gov­ernment removed homosexual behavior as a crime from its penal code. Heterosexual behavior such as that practiced between the opposite sexes, however, was not so lucky. Women were still very much viewed as property of their husbands and an integral part of la famiglia. Divorce, for instance, was still taboo in the eyes of the Church. What sexual contact there was between men, however, was viewed as relatively harmless. Homoerotic behavior among Italians, while far from being officially embraced, was simply not a prosecutable offense. Dr. Alfred Kinsey, of the famed Kinsey Report and noted sexologist, researched Italy after hearing reports of its sexual casualness and came away with much material. He discovered, for instance, the roles culture and climate played de­termining the sexual habits of its men. His findings lent verifica­tion to what this paper previously stated about the Italian history of male erotica and the influence of the warm and balmy climate. Kinsey also researched Arab societies and similarly found little prohibitions on male-to-male contact. Yet because of the rigid teachings of the Koran that forbade public depictions of sexuality or even its discussion, their literature furnishes little information on private sexual conduct.

Italy, just to the north, however, offers little public restraint in its popular media concerning sex. From Boccaccio’s Decameron to the modern homoerotic cinema of Fellini and Pasolini, Italians are never shy about their passions and, thus, sex Italian-style roams everywhere.

To begin with, the early childhood environment of Italians de­picts closeness between infants and adults. Masturbation of in­fants is often used to quiet or pacify hyperactive babies in order to make them sleep. In his early childhood environment, the Italian male grows up around lots of other males. At night he sleeps close to where his parents may be lovemaking, where older boys not only may be discussing sex, but masturbating. Much of his knowl­edge about sex comes from these contacts. He sees other males having morning erections and jokes about such things. He’s ex­cited by other boys tousling, groping and simulating anal sex. In corners he may observe couples making love . . . hear words such as il magnifico and cazzo grande. In public squares he encounters men in groups, some standing or sitting at fountains. Soldiers or sailors on leave who are lonely and in a constant state of readiness for any kind of excitement. Finally, he sooner or later becomes aware of the cruising men who come around looking for a com­panion for the evening, the day, or hour. In the meridional zone of Naples, according to Kinsey, there are more anal tendencies than in the northern zone of Milan. Italians in general, moreover, have very well shaped and big male organs. Bigger than Arabs in gen­eral have. The difference in size may be due to more homosexual activity. Kinsey also noted how Italian men have adopted an in­strumental attitude towards their bodies—something later to be elaborated on in this paper. During World War II, Gay American G. I.’s were startled to discover the frequency of overtures that Italian men made to them. Such soliciting was unheard of back home. These men eagerly took money or advancement in ex­change for sex. This reputation for easy sex so drifted back to America that immigrant Italian men were questioned by Ameri­can immigration officials about whether or not they had ever en­gaged in any male prostitution! Such was told to me by an Italian immigrant doctor who migrated from Italy in 1950, having come through Ellis Island. Wardell Pomeroy in his book written in 1972 about being Kinsey’s assistant, Dr. Kinsey and the Sex Institute, wrote that Italian sexologists regarded Italy as “the most homo­sexual place in the world” (qtd. in Chauncey 393n19). Italian sexologists, feeling there was nothing to hide, seconded their opinion. In a land where daughters were still being chaperoned around, few cared what sons were up to. It was the 1950s and amore flourished in the land of Casanova.

 

III

 

Professor Richard Gambino, in his telling book Blood of My Blood: The Dilemma of Italian Americans, states that, “Italian Ameri­can men display a need for closeness typical of their ethnic group” (147). Even when dancing, he notes, “Italian men have no inhibi­tions about dancing solo or with one or more men” (154). In Italy there exist men-only social clubs where same-sex dancing is prac­ticed. Women-only clubs are also the norm in Italy, although this socializing along gender lines need not necessarily be Gay. Con­siderable attention, however, can be gained by the sight of an un­escorted and unengaged girl cavorting with strangers in public.

Sir Richard Burton, the noted anthropologist, wrote about “hot-blooded heathens” he encountered in travels in Italy. Venice, for instance, he described as one of the most seductive spots on earth. No doubt his reserved Anglo nature was shocked by what he saw. The poet Lord Byron, likewise, named Venice “the Sodom of It­aly.” Such public emotional displays found in the various Italian cities and towns became gist for the writing mills of scholarship that were to eventually lead to the creation of the fabled lusty Mediterranean. In both European and American literature such writers as Thomas Mann, Donald Windham, James Baldwin, Ber­nard Malamud, and Baron Corvo all wrote about the definitive link between Italy and the homoerotic awakenings bestirred in the souls of “innocent” travelers; of young and spirited Italian boys driving uptight, inhibited Anglos and northern European men mad with desire. Christopher Isherwood, English and homosex­ual, said, “It was almost a fetish for upper-class Englishmen to pursue working-class boys” (in Galloway and Sabisch 48). This myth of superior virility; this “primitive” version of the working class Italian stud, however romantic, was an obsession that often produced tragic results. Even a Catholic priest visiting Italy is en­ticed into forsaking his vow of celibacy in Morris L. West’s “The Devil’s Advocate” when he’s seduced by a handsome Italian youth.

The sexual culture of the United States, based primarily on Pu­ritan beliefs, began to show a remarkable drift as the nineteenth century ended and the twentieth began. A resemblance to that of southern Europe was taking hold in our largest cities. Police re­ports acknowledge a “new vice” being imported here. Entertainer Jimmy Durante, then a young cabaret performer and a product of New York’s immigrant population, noted, “In the Bowery where I was raised I got used to seeing anything” (qtd. in Chauncey 35). While working many of the saloons in 1908 he saw many “queer entertainers known as fairies.” This word derived from the Italian word finocchio. Durante spoke of how the fairies lived in rooms above the saloons and pool halls that lined Mulberry and Bleecker Streets—a section of lower Manhattan known as Little Italy. A section further west of there, Greenwich Village, became known for its “fairy houses.” One Vito Lorenzo was arrested by vice po­lice for running such a house of ill-repute above his Canal St. sa­loon. John Mariano, another entrepreneurial Italian who ran a men-only social club in Italian Harlem, explained in the following why the phenomenal trend among New York’s immigrant “Bachelor Culture” community:

 

Many male Italian immigrants having come from Italy left their women behind and so they bonded together in a strange land. Living mostly in cheap boarding houses they worked as day laborers, truckers, dockworkers—low wage jobs that too often offered only seasonal employment. It was not uncommon not only for men to share the same bed, but also, during off-season, for out-of-work men to sleep to­gether in that same bed in shifts. These all-male surrogate families offered some protection and a sense of belonging in a foreign environment. Marriage to a sweetheart back home was often postponed as economic security became uncer­tain. Prostitution thus became a cheap way for such men to meet their emotional needs. The Bachelor Culture later was joined by sons of these same immigrants who, because of lack of education and prejudice, saw their upward mobility blocked. (qtd. in Chauncey 76–77)

 

So what you had in the early decades of this century were men living on the fringes of mainstream society who recognized they weren’t part of the American work ethic which they saw as “unrealizable.” So second-generation Italian Americans mingled with newly-arrived immigrants who played bocce ball, card games, and who visited pool halls. Within this all-male environ­ment it became easy to meet a youth with teased eyebrows from upstairs or the surrounding neighborhood groomed to “entertain” their partners who were in need to have their sexual urges met.

In southern cities the phenomenon soon spread and hustlers were called “vergazzi” by local vice authorities. Their customers, however, were immigrant tomato farm workers and cotton pick­ers. But it was primarily in the North beyond the influence of the Bible Belt where sexual vices of all varieties flourished. This was also where the majority of Italian immigrants settled. Soon the figure of the lusty Italian was to go national as a new symbol was created.

 

IV

 

Lonely women who desired male companionship frequented the cafes and dance halls of New York. Here they encountered a young man from Castellaneta, Italy named Rudolpho Guglielmi who knew how to tango. Rudy, as the ladies were fond of calling him, longed for the American Dream having known only poverty all his life. But after discovering how Italian immigrants were treated, the sensitive and bitter Rudy soon became lonely and homesick. Guglielmi, after struggling to learn English, soon learned how to use his handsome good looks and talent for danc­ing to get a job as a paid dancing partner to lonely women seeking entertainment. He was expected to look continental and suave, making women seem more graceful and beautiful than they were. In essence, he was treated as a gigolo. A commodity to be bought, exchanged, or discarded by flirtatious women. Such treatment was for Rudolpho humiliating. He was aware how American men viewed gigolos as social pariahs with effeminate manners and pomaded hair.

Rudolpho saw this treatment as an affront to his manhood and so he left New York for California hoping a new land offered new opportunities. His charm caught the attention of an agent. Think­ing himself too fat, he used a corset and soon his dancing attracted a movie executive on the lookout for something different and new. He offered him a contract as a bit player. It was then that Rudolph Valentino was born.

Puritanism in the early 1920s was on a roll in America. Prohi­bition was the law of the land. Republicans were in control of both Congress and the White House. American movie heroes were clean-cut, boy-next-door types whose idea of romance was to give the girl-next-door a peck on the cheek. Girls were expected to be virgins whose virginity needed protecting by the screen hero at all cost. Rudolph Valentino,in comparison to this, was sensual, suave, and, above all, contemptuous of female virginity. Unlike gawky and shy male heroes, he exuded unbridled passion; while the av­erage screen hero made inexperience—especially in sexual mat­ters—seem quaint and appealing, Valentino’s handsome looks, bedroom eyes, and wild abandon made him truly Hollywood’s original male sex symbol—the Casanova men envied and women dreamed about having.

But Valentino proved to be more than just an idol. His sensitiv­ity belied his roguishness; his background defied the convention of Anglo dominance among movie heroes. Italians, before Valen­tino, were virtually invisible to the mass audience and, if at all visible, made brief appearances as organ grinders or villains. In Italy, men learned to dress like him, combed their hair the same, and even made love the same! This form of idolatry, in effect, made his reputation. Even other actors were enthralled and sought to copy his style for their own success. Gay men, identify­ing with his rough treatment of women, started Valentino fan clubs and scrap books of their hero. They reveled over his poetry writing, collecting of amulets and dildos, and, especially, scorn of women—qualities so unlike other leading men. His being from a country known for the uninhibited lust of its men, moreover, added to the mystique.

Valentino to be sure had his admirers. But he also attracted a fair amount of critics. Straight men, none too pleased about this fame among women, reviled him as a “pink powder puff.” Puri­tans pointed to him as an example of a decadent Hollywood. Ho­mosexuals, on the other hand, loved him all the more for such criticism. They marveled at his ability to be both strong and sensi­tive; both the elegant dresser and virile.

Valentino’s rejection of the heterosexual male values of his time was best summed up by his famous statement that he “preferred a good plate of spaghetti to any woman.”

When he died tragically and childless at the age of thirty, it only served to enhance his legend and mystique. Gays and Italians mourned him. His funeral was the greatest of its day with thou­sands of his fans waiting in line for a hopeful glimpse of their hero.

While Valentino made history as the first Italian movie star to achieve international fame, his place in Hollywood sets him apart from future Italian-American actors. This is because of the notori­ously bigoted and racist investment American producers have made in the association with Italians of the crude, the criminal, and the unsavory. Such stereotyping has so limited the range ac­tors of Italian descent can have to their acting styles, that no other Italian actor can hope to achieve Valentino’s influence. To be sure, such denigration and demonizing has not been without complaint from Italian American civil rights organizations. Yet, sadly, the willingness on the part of almost all Italian Americans of talent to be a party to such an ignoble enterprise points to the low self-es­teem negative culture can create. “Don’t complain and enjoy the Mafia,” is the answer Hollywood gives to those of us who object. As a result, Italian Americans are trivialized as comic buffoons, made into scapegoats for America’s racial problems; or demeaned as blue collar dolts despising education or anything vaguely un­masculine. Such marginalizing makes it easy for any young Ital­ian-American actor—Gay or straight—to be content with strait­jacketed roles playing cartoon characters. Bigotry, he is told, is big business.

Such an unrealistic view of our ethnic group and culture will continue as long as we as Italian Americans feed the hand that bites us both as performers and patrons.

 

V

 

One such Italian who exploits the image of Italian men as hav­ing a voracious sexual appetite is the professional Gay hustler. Salvatore Risicato—long before there were Gay or bisexual classi­fied ads trading on the cache of the sexy Italian stallion—reports how he and his friends serviced men on their cruising ground near Bronx Park bridge at 180th Street in 1938. Risicato, then eighteen, looked “straight as he could” to appeal to prospective johns. The cops not only knew what was going on, but ceded the hustlers their hang-out in lieu of secret payoffs from Risicato and his friends in the form of sexual favors. Indeed, the “Italian youth problem” was so bad, that informal curfews were used to control activity. Some Gay hustlers preferred the less “public” YMCA (ironically started by social reformers to get young Italians off the streets!). But these attempts always proved futile. Halting vice in one place only moved it somewhere else. Mayor John Lindsay of New York, in fact, ended the twenty-year-old policy of entrap­ment of Gays by undercover cops as being useless in curbing the “problem.”

After the Stonewall riots of 1969, Gays began asserting their rights as never before. Gay bars were no longer harassed as homo­sexuality was now being viewed by vice cops and prosecutors as a victimless crime. The “popular and endemic vice of Italy” Sir Richard Burton studied a century before, was now commonplace here in the United States. The Italian “peccadillo”—as he liked referring to it! Father Louis Gigante, an Italian American New York City Councilman and Catholic priest battling for civil rights for homosexuals, introduced that city’s first Gay Rights bill. For his boldness, Gigante, himself Gay, gathered the forces of the Catholic church against the bill and what was originally a sure thing headed for certain passage, fell short of the necessary votes for passage when key supporters pulled out.

Other New York Gay Italians of note were Joe Cino who started the first Gay theatre with Cafe Cino ten years before the Stonewall rebellion. “Dames at Sea,” a campy musical play that later found its way to mainstream theatre, was first produced there. Among the audience of Gays and Lesbians at Cafe Cino’s productions sat undercover vice cops waiting for an obscenity to take place as an excuse to padlock Joe’s business. It was alleged that such under­cover police were sometimes bribed with everything from sex to drugs to keep Joe’s business going.

Another historic Gay Italian was Vito Russo, a film critic for the Village Voice newspaper. The paper was then New York’s only weekly outlet for Gay audiences. Russo wrote the first compre­hensive book about Gays and Lesbians in film, The Celluloid Closet. His work was so important, it would spawn a sequel as well as a documentary film.

Both Joe and Vito have since passed away but are mentioned here as making important contributions to the history of Gay Ital­ians.

 

VI

 

Italians love attention. Go to any Little Italy and you will notice men arguing, standing, whistling, gesturing, etc. This acting out is an important part of daily living to an Italian. Italians are all born showmen. It’s common behavior whether one is strolling the streets and squares of Naples or Rome; or is in New York or Bos­ton. This accounts why so many are involved with the arts. Even the ordinary Italian’s voice sounds musical. Voices resonant with deep feeling and emotions. On street corners standing noticeably are the giovanotti. These are the young males of the neighborhood. These males aren’t so much standing by as they are posturing to stand out. Some do it by looking tough; others with a body shirt and tight jeans. If you ask them why they are here, some shrug their shoulders and profess a vague reply; others think they are serving a purpose. These see themselves as protectors guarding their neighborhood turf. Like sentries, they see themselves as protectors of the weak, the elderly, and young. In their eyes a stranger can be a potential thief, rapist, or drug dealer. Such turf holders are very territorial.

Such males are keenly aware of their bodies. Bare arms . . . buffed upper torsos; voices boisterous. Languidly they stand or lean with thumbs hooked around belt loops. Such men want your attention and are making an instrument of their bodies to get it. Two thousand years of Christianity have not dulled habits formed in their pagan past, you see. Their pagan past lives on despite changes in fashion, locale, or language. The festooned warrior or toga-wearing charioteer is today; guarding tradition as well as territory.

In the Italian town of Chieti, where my father was born, is the proud bell tower of St. Giustino jutting into the sky. But there is also in this same town, carefully preserved, the ancient temples of Hercules and Mars—pagan patrimony co-existing with Christian­ity.

In the posturing instrumental bodies of modern Italian youth there also co-exists the Christian with the pagan:

 

Nick liked wearing his tiny cross around his neck ever since making his first Holy Communion. He had two . . . one sil­ver, the other gold. On warm Friday and Saturday nights he wore them as well as a white athletic undershirt. His dark hair combed swept back. His green eyes a curious blend of intensity and innocence. His lower torso draped in loose, floppy casuals as if to tease with mystery what delights lay buried underneath. Look . . . but don’t touch. Cruise . . . but don’t automatically assume I’m Gay. Snap my picture for your den in Milwaukee . . . but don’t introduce me to your wife or daughter. Nick is ambiguity personified. His look can mean anything from “I’m just horny and experiment­ing” to “We can negotiate a price.” He’s proud and worries about losing face among his peers surrounding him. His peers, however, may be his fellow turfholders or fellow Gay hustlers. Ambiguity among ambiguities. Whatever the case, you’ve got to admit his ambiguous look is compelling. Since age eleven he’s probably spent more time combing and fussing with his hair before the bathroom mirror than his sister. Now, at age nineteen, he realizes the power to attract is the power to own. He has gone in the last eight years from a worship of God in heaven to a Godlike worship of his own power. Beauty and sex . . . he lusts for both; and both mean power.

 

As homoerotic relations become more accepted in our culture, the dominant vs. passive roles are becoming less clearly defined. The “shame” of being penetrated by another male has now gone the way of the “sin” that once was equated with homosexual acts themselves.

A young Italian-American Navy seaman named Anthony once described to me his following saga:

 

At seventeen I went to live with a forty-year-old friend of my uncle’s named Gino. Although he was my older lover, we often referred to each other as Daddy and Sonny. Now since I never had a real father I kinda enjoyed his being pa­ternal towards me. Gino taught me ways to express myself I never dreamed were possible. Never having had any kids of his own, he felt flattered by the idea of my being his “son.” At twenty I joined the Navy and all he taught me came in handy . . . in or outside the bedroom. I shared quarters with two Gay Marines, one older and one younger. These two were into total pleasure. A lot of raw sexuality. There wasn’t anything either had any reservations about doing. Into fucking and being fucked. We were closer than brothers. Both were Anglos and neither knew any Italian guys before me. After we split, they started running classified ads in the Gay papers looking for a Gay Italian roommate! A romantic Italian was cool to have, just like me! I was truly flattered.

 

VII

 

In his documentary film Love Meetings (Comizi d’Amore), Gay Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini treats modern Italian morals and mores to exhibit this new sexual versatility. He depicts how the young men of Naples who, when female street prostitution is banned, must prostitute themselves to men in the daytime to afford visiting female bordellos in the evening. Public restrooms serving as places where such “business” transactions took place. These lusty Neapolitans obviously had no qualms or guilt about com­promising their traditional manhood. The word today is bisexual­ity, a hustler recently said to me.

While on the subject of film, Gay porn Italian-American super­star Joey Stefano enjoyed the passive role as much as he enjoyed being dominant. Stefano even was touted as having the screen’s most “unsinkable” ass!

In this paper I’ve tried to show what progress sexual relations among Italians and Italian Americans have made over the last century. Playwright Albert Innaurato in his early Gay liberation play, “Gemini,” gives us a comedy about an Italian American fa­ther and son living in south Philadelphia. The Gay son, unknown to the father, invites his college chum for a visit. Wanting to keep his attractiveness to the chum a secret, the son also invites the chum’s sister along as well. The father, not fooled for very long, discovers his son’s true motive and orientation and, thus, allows his son to follow the apple of his eye when the “chum” leaves. The father imagines the son to be going through a “phase” and so al­lows his boy to practice his “peccadillo.”

“Gemini,” meaning having a dual nature, is a true depiction of a loving father who understands matters of the heart. He’s cogni­zant of the dual gemini nature of human relationships. He knows, too, that to try and stifle honest human emotions would be the ultimate sin.

 

Works Cited

Chauncey, George. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890–1940. New York: Basic Books, 1994.

Duberman, Martin. About Time: Exploring the Gay Past. 1986. New York: Meridian, 1991.

Galloway, David, and Christian Sabisch, eds. Calamus: Male Homo­sexuality in 20th Century Literature. New York: Quill, 1982.

Gambino, Richard. Blood of My Blood: The Dilemma of Italian Ameri­cans. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1974.