2014

The Nativity

"The Nativity" - artist unknown, Ferens Art Gallery, Hull Museum

Christmas Evening

Peter O'Toole

Peter O'Toole in "Lawrence of Arabia" 1962

Peter O'Toole, Star of "Lawrence of Arabia," Is Dead at 81

 

Joan Fontaine

John Kobal Foundation/Getty Images

Joan Fontaine playing the wife of Cary Grant in “Suspicion,” directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

Joan Fontaine, Who Won an Oscar for Hitchcock’s ‘Suspicion,’ Dies at 96 

Eleanor Parker

Clark Gable and Eleanor Parker in The King and Four Queens 1956

Eleanor Parker

Eleanor Parker, who was nominated three times for a best-actress Oscar but whose best-known role was a supporting one, as the marriage-minded baroness in "The Sound of Music," died on Monday in Palm Springs, Calif. She was 91.

Nelson Mandela

Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela 

Paul Walker

Paul Walker

On November 30, 2013, Walker and a friend, Roger Rodas left a charity event. Shortly after leaving in Rodas' red Porsche Carrera GT, the driver lost control and crashed into a light pole and tree in Valencia, Santa Clarita, California and the vehicle burst into flames.  The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department declared the two deceased at the scene. 

November Sunset

Sunset at the Smith Point Marina, Long Island, NY, November 29, 2013, photo by Donald L. Brooks

Thanksgiving

November 22, 1963

The Devil Is in the Details

Hell is a Hieronymus Bosch painting made after 1490. 

It is currently in the Palazzo Ducale, in Venice, Italy.

This painting is part of a series of four, the others are Ascent of the Blessed, Terrestrial Paradise and Fall of the Damned. In this panel it shows the punishment of the wicked with diverse kinds of torture laid out by demons. ~ Wikipedia 

Harry

Blind Harry looks up at his master among the autumn leaves...

All Souls' Day

Joža Uprka - All Souls' Day

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Souls'_Day

River Phoenix

20 years ago on Halloween, River Phoenix was left

 to writhe and die on a sidewalk by his "friends".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Phoenix 

100 Years on the Assembly Line

Ford's first moving assembly line at its Model T plant in Highland Park, Mich., in 1913. It cut the time it took to build a car to three hours from 12.

By Bill Vlasic, The New York Times, October 29, 2013

Detroit — The moving assembly line was the simplest of inventions, born of necessity to meet the exploding demand for automobiles in America in the early 20th century.

The full article... http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/30/automobiles/100-years-down-the-line.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&hpw

More on the Whore

Times Square 1970

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Donald in Times Square Photo Booth 1970

You sport a very nice body that surely will get you places, as long as they aren't looking for someone to talk to. Everyone flocks to you and wants you in their bed, too bad you can't figure out how to hold a fork.

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Whoring on Times Square in New York City -- back against the wall watching the zipper sign on the Times Building -- not looking at anyone. If someone looks, look away. It's important to not take any interest. That macho thing -- “butch” it’s called.  Broke?  Queers look for guys and will pay to go down on something young and dirty, a cheap Times Square whore!

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Variations on a Whore

WHORE

by Donald L. Brooks

I was a whore from childhood -- Slim Miller in the back alley promised a dollar if I touched it… then promised two if I wouldn’t tell.  I didn’t accept the money and told.  My parents seemed unconcerned and even somewhat amused.  So it made no difference.  This was not a thing not to do.  

My professional whoring came when I was flat broke -- perhaps in the back of my mind I always regretted not accepting the dollar, actually the two dollars -- a lot of money for a boy back in those days!  So, it made no difference then and why should it now?  This time I took the money when it was offered.  I could do that or I rob some poor soul on the street, which had already failed  -- just didn’t hit him hard enough!

In a small town, there’s not a lot of opportunity for whoring -- the clientele is limited and they spook easy.  They don’t pay up and then get upset when they wake up to find you picking their pants pockets -- or they’re just plain gross, like soaking false teeth and a glass eye in the same jar by the bedside -- imagine what’s nibbling at your crotch!

Reform school was just too risky a place for any activity of the type -- besides I didn’t need cigarettes and took no great desire for sweets -- respect was too important.  The cost of being known to be a whore was a quick descent into utter disrespect and ostricism.  I watched it happen to others -- I took on a lover, there was respect there, a unity that was secret and yet known -- a bond that others would not touch and dared not ridicule.

I was a free whore in my second stint in reform school.  I can’t say why -- I was about to be released and I just let it all go -- every good-looker got a shot at it!  Toward the last few days, the guards were catching on and the inmates were getting difficult -- the timing was perfect, however.  On the last day as I walked across the compound, a fist slammed into my face and I kept walking, walking through a crowd that had gathered to see a fight -- past the guards who had seen me take it in the face without flinching -- like nothing had happened.  No contest.  I was not going to be busted to the hole the day before I could be free!

It was like a fly had briefly flown by -- or like letting a mosquito suck your blood!

I whored on Times Square when arriving in New York City -- standing with my back against the wall watching the zipper sign on the Times Building -- not looking at anyone.  If someone were to look at me, I looked away.  It seemed important to not take any interest.  That macho thing, I guess -- “butch” it’s called, of which I knew nothing, I just was… Hey, I was broke, I knew that queers looked for guys and would pay to go down on something that was young and dirty, so there I was, a Times Square whore!

It worked, I can’t remember the first one, but I’ll guess it wasn’t for more than a few dollars, five or seven at the most.  That wasn’t a bad wage when the weekly wage for an honest living was no more than 40 bucks a week.  The hassle was always there though -- cops eventually get on to the same loiterers and then someone tells you to move along and give someone else a chance.

I was legit for a time -- private clientele, good people, conductor of New York City Ballet, head of the USO, steady respectable customers -- then the bottom dropped out, dropping acid, smoking pot, alcohol, cocaine and even heroin.  I got hooked up with an agency and became a professional.  That’s right, a real professional whore!

My life as a professional whore lasted about two years -- I started it and I ended it.  I was a good whore and I got lots of work.  Massage was part of the front, other times, just plain whore!  I was at the male burlesque in Times Square stripping and tripping -- customers, the other strippers and the girls from the burlesque next door.  I had them all and all of them on my own terms.  If you were hot, it was free, if you were not, it was not!

Being a male prostitute is not the easiest of professions -- if one can call it a profession  Well, yes, I guess it can be called so if it’s the sole means of support.  How long a period of time one needs to be whoring in order to qualify as a bona fide prostitute is a relative thing I’d think.

The hours are not very regular -- sometimes what was to have been five minutes of work turns out to be an hour.  Customers don’t always want to pay the agreed amount due to some quibble over services -- these can be numerous.

It is essentially an unrecognized, but illegal profession.  Further, prostitution as the law sees it, is generally reserved for female whores -- society never really acknowledges that a male could be a complete whore -- he only enjoys a status as a hustler, which carries connotations of deception and trickery rather than true and honest abasement of the flesh -- whether the hustling involves same or not.

The male whore who insists upon being strictly “straight” often fails to find a thriving business -- he becomes more of a “trick” -- his pants get unzipped and zipped back up before he’s got a real chance to negotiate a decent wage. Which is another thing -- when one works for a company, there is a set wage -- work done or not.  A whore, on the other hand, works -- one might say, “by the piece”.  

When things get out of hand financially, a whore can often go for a price much less than the going rate -- depending upon the circumstances and the place of “employment”.  Which presents another kind of difficulty.  Many johns like a “butch” appearance, which includes a rather everyday appearance with a bit of wear and tear, devil-may-care.  However, the idea arises, it seems that this means the goods can be had for less.  The high-end dresser, escort, whatever doesn’t encounter these problems.  The problems there are much different.

A high-end whore must be perfect -- but without going over the edge into appearing “gay”, as the escorted individual usually wants his trophy to appear in public, but does not want the “stigma” of a “gay” escort.  It’s perfectly acceptable in most circles for a john to have a clean dog on a leash, but not a flitting poodle with a loud mouth.  Sitting off to the side, out of the way, the dog can pose as a chauffeur or a body guard -- is not allowed to socialize with the individuals of the john’s profession.  When away from this crowd, however, the dog is in charge, almost as a reward for behaving well.  Almost anything can be had for the asking, well, within the financial means and good reasoning.

There are agencies that send out male whores -- once again, the hours are unpredictable, the clients are usually high closet, but the money is guaranteed -- there is a hefty cut that goes to the agency, but the guarantee and the regularity are worth the price.  This can be in the range of from half to one-quarter of the whore’s fee, which is usually set by the agency. The whore collects the cash, keeps aside the amount owed to the agency.  The agency collects a percentage from the whore.

Unintentional whoredom is a phenomena not uncommon -- the desperate out-of-work, the junkie, the drunk, the stranded -- other situations.  Some of these non-professionals are dangerous individuals -- best to take care of the business quickly and efficiently.  This non-professional will bleed the john dry before he exits, sometimes without performing -- sometimes in a pure assault and battery.  However, there are johns who are looking for exactly this encounter.  They are usually highly intoxicated and are letting it all hang out -- they don’t want to know what they are doing.

The last type of whore is the dangerous one -- if demands are not met, or if he feels insulted, either mentally or physically, retaliation can be swift, unexpected and brutal!  

The Killer!

http://donaldlbrooks.com/Variations.html

Accomplishments

In my lifetime, I have found that accomplishments, in the most selfish sense of the word, are nothing more than the horrors of our dreams.

Welcome to Ted Cruz’s Thunderdome

A PLACE ONCE CALLED WASHINGTON

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/opinion/sunday/dowd-welcome-to-ted-cruzs-thunderdome.html?pagewanted=2&hpw

Harvey Tavel

The late Harvey Tavel  holds many memories in my theatrical life.  He was probably not just the most severe critic of his peers, but also of himself.  He had an almost tragic love of theater, elevating his adoration beyond the tiny rooms of dismay, transforming them in the mind into the grand palaces of the opera and, if possible, beyond, knowing that it is but the imagination that determines the glory of the moment.

Harvey was the brother, in any sense of the word, to Ronald Tavel.  They were revolutionaries in the 1960s with the Warhol machine, giving a great amount of soul and receiving but a wave of recognition.  The “theatre of the ridiculous” and such owe a great debt to Harvey and Ronald Tavel.   Alas, in the end, even though the Tavels maintained their individuality, the  philosophy of the Tavels by others was abandoned in the search for recognition and “success”.

At  the advent of the 1970s, the Tavels established a theater by the name of “Theater of the Lost Continent”  (TLC) that crossed paths with my shenanigans at the time and I came to know Harvey Tavel.  I had met Ronald Tavel earlier while I made midnight love to the bronze statue of Peter Stuyvesant.

While I may have at times mistakenly regarded Harvey as Ronald’s brother in a minor sense, Harvey was very much his own man.  I knew little of his personal life and came to know only of late that Norman Glick was his dedicated and avowed love.  In theater, Norman’s role was as the technician for everything that the Tavels needed in regard to same. 

Harvey was in the my TLC production of “The Trojan Women” and subsequently in a half dozen plays with myself, as director or actor, “Vinyl,” “In Search of the Cobra Jewels,” “Flatbush Tosca,” “Freaky Pussy,” “Infinity,” “The Life of Juanita Castro,” “Kitchenette,” “Line Birth/Play Birth.”  Through those productions, he became a good friend of our mutual associate Harvey Fierstein, and remained so, even though successful Fierstein never gave the highly talented Tavel  the moment or the break that he so richly deserved. 

It should be noted that Harvey Tavel was overt in his criticism and exercised it equally to that which he adored or disdained.  There was little in the middle —both ends of the spectrum were no less than devastating or exultant.  He was talented and passionate in his likes and dislikes.  We shall all miss him, but heaven help heaven, heaven had best have the best opera in the business!

~ Donald L. Brooks 

Saharan Dust Over the Atlantic

Who Killed Trayvon Martin?

July 4, 2013

Summer Solstice

Solstice fire in Montana

The celebration of Midsummer's Eve was from ancient times a festival of the summer solstice. Some people believed that golden-flowered mid-summer plants had miraculous healing powers and they therefore picked them on this night. Bonfires were lit to protect against evil spirits which were believed to roam freely when the sun was turning southwards again. In later years, witches were also thought to be on their way to meetings with other powerful beings. ~ Wikipedia 

Bleeding Hearts

Bleeding Hearts on the grave of my dog Bear in the Spring of 2013

Atlantic

 

Early April at the Atlantic Ocean Smith Point Long Island 2013

photograph by Donald L Brooks

Spring

 

April Fool

Resurrection

 

Equinox

 

 

Spring Equinox at Stonehenge photo by Josh Gurner

An equinox occurs twice a year (around 20 March and 22 September), when the tilt of the Earth's axis is inclined neither away from nor towards the Sun, the center of the Sun being in the same plane as the Earth's equator. The term equinox can also be used in a broader sense, meaning the date when such a passage happens. The name "equinox" is derived from the Latin aequus (equal) and nox (night), because around the equinox, night and day are about equal length. ~ Wikipedia

 

March Snow

 

A Rose at the Ocean

 

 

A rose at the ocean,

sunset at Smith Point, Fire Island, NY

February 18, 2013

 

Obituary...

 

Music for the Funeral

 

Valentine

 

Sunset at Smith Point

 

 

Sunset at Smith Point, Fire Island, NY, January 8, 2013

Photograph by Donald