Ask the Flying Monkey! (March 1, 2010)

Have a question about gay male entertainment? Contact me here (and be sure and include your city and state and/or country!)

A Note from the Flying Monkey: I’ve mentioned before how, completely coincidentally, I often receive emails around the same time all centered around a certain “theme.” This week, most of the mail involved questions about the past.

But with topics as interesting as these, it's not enough to merely write about the past. So join me this week as we make a full-fledged JOURNEY BACK THROUGH THE MISTS OF TIME!

Q: Oh magnanimous one, right now I'm really into creatures like fairies, fairy-adjacent creatures (such as elves), and really anything that can fly. Are there any books, TV shows, movies, or songs that involve creatures such as gay angels, gay fairies, gay elves, or anything that can fly that's gay? -- Kitty, Tennessee

A: Fairies, angels, and "fairy-adjacent creatures" (I love this term!) are, of course, part of Europe’s mythical past, and I think medieval history is as good a place as any to begin our little journalistic journey through time.

But gay fairies? It feels like there’s a joke to be made here, apart from the obvious “fairy” pun, but I can’t seem to think what it is.

Here’s what I’m coming up with (though not all of these can fly): Zevran, the bisexual elf assassin in the game Dragon Age: Origins (who I’ve been trying to seduce for weeks now and who won’t still put out!); the gay angel in the (widely panned) 2009 movie The Vintner’s Luck; Balthamos and Baruch, the gay angels in the His Dark Materials series of fantasy books; and Hermey, the obviously-gay elf-dentist in Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

Gay angels and elves include Zevron (left), the angel in Vintner's Luck, and Hermey, the would-be dentist

But it’s questions like this where my readers really shine, so I suspect they’ll be many more suggestions in the comments.

And now, let’s head back into the mists of time!

Q: So in Augusten Burroughs' memoir Running With Scissors, then thirteen-year-old Augusten is raped by Neil Bookman, the 33-year-old stepson of the insane family he’s sent to live with, and then carries on a two-year affair with him – with the full approval of the family. Did he or the family ever face justice? – Myron, St. Paul, MN

A: Our next stop? The 1980s when most of author Augusten Burroughs' weird and extremely disturbing teenage years allegedly took place.

As for “Neil Bookman,” the man who raped the 13-year-old Burroughs and then had an affair with him for two years, that’s not his real name; it’s a pseudonym Burroughs made up. Even so, the real-life family that Burroughs lived with from age twelve until his late teens (and considered Bookman to be their stepson), sued the author and his publisher, claiming the book was fabricated and/or exaggerated (they eventually settled for no damages when Burroughs agreed to acknowledge in future editions of the book that their memories differed from his).

By that time, however, “Bookman” had long since disappeared from the family, and no one had heard from him since.

Joseph Fiennes (behind) and Joseph Cross in Running with Scissors

Still, the fact that the character was “real” was definitely a concern for the actor who played him in the movie version, Flash Forward’s Joseph Fiennes.

“Over and above his sexual predilection to young boys, he was a real guy, and we weren’t sure if he was alive or not,” Fiennes tells AfterElton.com. “So there was that concern for me – it’s not only a subject that was acutely explosive, but possibly this man was still there.”

How did Fiennes get inside the mind of the character?

“What one wants to show with anything is the human aspect and nature,” Fiennes says of his film role, which he discussed with Burroughs at length. “Neil was deeply disturbed. I don’t know why, but he was a human, fallible creature that was badly bruised at some stage. Actually, there was a love there, but it was misguided, and it was complex. I loved the challenge of it. Those are the roles I’ve been looking for me which [are difficult to get] after you do Shakespeare in Love. [Roles] are few and far between that are witty and insightful like that, and I loved that journey."

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