Ask the Flying Monkey (December 3, 2008)

Have a question about gay male entertainment? Ask the Monkey!

Q: As far back as James Dean, Monty Clift or earlier, have you ever really been surprised by anyone turning out to be gay? You know, ranging from the ones I just mentioned, to Freddy Mercury, George Michael, Richard Chamberlain, Ellen DeGeneres, Thomas Roberts to Luke MacFarlane, Neil Patrick Harris, T.R. Knight and others? -- j.U.d.E., Brussels, Belgium

A: It’s true that, after the fact, you can make a case that almost any celebrity “seems” gay. He’s a little fey and wears make-up during stage performances? Well, of course he’s gay! Or he’s got a voice that oozes testosterone and he swaggers around like a transformer-robot? He must be over-compensating, so of course he’s gay too!

Still, that doesn’t mean the Monkey hasn’t been genuinely surprised from time to time. The Monkey paused for a second when he learned that Raymond Burr was gay, not to mention Frasier’s Dan Butler, Weeds’ Guillermo Díaz, Queer as Folk’s Robert Gant, Obi-Wan Kenobi Alec Guiness, and, of course, Perez Hilton (uh, just kidding on the last one).

Clockwise from top left:
Alec Guiness, Dan Butler, Robert Gant, Guillermo Diaz

But truthfully, it’s not gay men who possess traditionally masculine mannerisms that truly shock the Monkey.

No, it’s the gay folks who are or were actively and willfully working to undermine GLBT interests: people such as Roy Cohn, Jesse Helms strategist Arthur Finkelstein, and the openly gay senior staff members of virulently anti-gay politicians such as Rick Santorum, Mel Martinez, and, yes, John McCain (at least the post-sold-his-soul-to-the-devil John McCain of 2008).

The Monkey gets it: these people are gay and political conservatives. And the Monkey understands the desire to try to wrench the Republican Party from the nut-bags and whack-jobs who currently control it. But aligning with far-right anti-gay extremists in the name of any cause? This genuinely surprises the Monkey.

Q: One of my friends recently informed me that the actors who play Chuck Bass (Ed Westwick) and Nate Archibald (Chace Crawford) on Gossip Girl actually live together. I've been researching and of course they're all, "We're just friends, blah, blah." Obviously in my fantasies there's something more, but what do you think? – Mary, Sydney, Australia

Ed Westwick (left) with roommate Chace Crawford

A: It used to be the case that if you wanted to know who wasn’t gay in Hollywood, you could look to the folks who had played gay characters or who, for example, lived openly with a person of the same sex. Ironically, these folks — people such as Billy Crystal — were the ones that Middle America often mistakenly assumed to be gay. In truth, gay actors were far too conscientious to risk such things.

But things are changing, with more and more gay actors leading publicly closeted lives, but privately open ones — often, very open. This is especially true for younger actors. So these days it’s possible that two male actors living publicly together might actually be gay, despite public denials.

So what of Westwick and Crawford, who live together in Chelsea no less? The gossip rags and websites seem convinced that they’re a male version of the explosive Lindsay Lohan/Samantha Ronson pairing. And the Monkey tends to agree that where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

Except when the “smoke” in question is two hot young objects of twink-ish desire. Then the line between reality and wishful thinking gets blurred all to hell.

Next page! Good gay genre films and Springsteen's gay love song?