I few weeks ago I was sitting at the coffee shop being frustrated that I had nothing in my head to write about, so I just decided to force it a bit and start making it up. It's important to me to write things without regard, necessarily, for whether what I write is good. I don't believe I have any talent for writing fiction, but I think it's good to write. It keeps the imagination exercised, and what I like is that once you start something, it's like working on a puzzle--trying to figure out how it goes, what makes sense, how to get from point A to point B. So anyway, I started to write something, and then for a few weeks since I've added a few sentences each day during my lunch hour at work. So there hasn't been a great time comittment, but I can manage this little act of discipline, writing something for 15 or 20 minutes per day. I'm not doing a lot of editing or polish, little looking back. The goal is to write little stories or creative things without worrying too much about getting them right. We'll see how long it goes. I did read this through once, and it strikes me that it started as one thing, and ended as another. I should strike the beginning and rewrite it to make it a little more coherent, but I'm not going to.

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Ed and his friend Carl turned the corner of the street on which Ed’s friend lived. Ed didn’t drive. His mother had nagged him to get his license when he was in high school, but he was never interested. Now that he was on his own, he found that he didn’t really need a car. Why should he bother when everyone else gladly took him wherever he wanted. He looked at Carl scanning the houses for numbers, ducking his head to see under the sun visor. The cluster of cars up ahead ought to have been a clue, Ed thought, but then he remembered that he hadn’t mentioned to Carl that they were going to a birthday party. Ed provided as little information as possible to those he hung out with, or more accurately, to those who hung out with him.

“It’s right up there on the right,” Ed pointing as he spoke. Carl made a quick pull to the right and parked behind an old Honda that Ed knew belonged to his friend. Without a word Ed hopped out of the car and walked quickly toward the house, with Carl following a few paces behind. Ed knew Carl would follow.

The bungalow was shared by four guys, a place that had become a sort of half way house for the gay boys of Ed’s youth who had neither the attention span to plan for a future nor the aptitude to support one. At all hours the house was awake with activity—the clamor of a television, phone chatter which leaked through walls, bathroom noises and smells, strangers walking the darkened hallway which connected bedrooms with the kitchen and the living room. Boys came and went, but the house didn’t change.

The door was open. Noise coming from the back of the house drew Ed through the kitchen and onto the patio in the back of the house. Guys he knew and guys he didn’t, greeted Ed as he made his way through the gathering. Carl, now cut loose by Ed, nodded to those who looked his way. Most nodded in return, neither curious nor suspicious. Older men in attendance were common. Carl, in his neatly pressed shorts, collared shirt, and sandals, understood this and didn’t make any awkward moves. He stood back, listening without insinuating himself into conversations while scanning the patio for boys he recognized, and for boys he wished he knew. He was not afraid to become a part of the scene, even though he didn’t fit in, clearly didn’t fit in with this group of out-there gay boys, lost somewhere between adolescent preoccupations and a growing sense of being left behind.

Carl would look upon the gathering boys, listen to their talk, judge them and envy them. He remembered himself at their age, and compared his own youth to that of the boys at the party, boys who seemed to have nothing but the absence of parameters. How did his own sons compare? Was he looking upon a generational change, or merely at some boys untethered of their families and their pasts, and now making it up, badly, as they go?

He stood around listening to two boys talk of the previous night’s drama, borne of methamphetamines, electric hair clippers, and an exaggerated sensitivity to florescent lighting. None of this particularly interested Carl, but he enjoyed watching the tallest one gesture and pull at the bottom of his shirt. He said nothing, looked agreeable, and monitored Ed’s movement around the back of the house.

Ed was already on his second drink. He looked absently to his left and his right while people spoke around him. Occasionally he would register a faint smile and shift his weight, or move further into the house for a moment, as if looking for someone, and then return to his place at the patio door.

Carl liked to listen to the waves of crowd noise and correlate it with the levels of drink, with the food, the lighting, the temperature. Centers of noise always had at their center one person who whose voice rose above the rest, and who led the noise levels.

Carl counted a third drink for Ed, then a fourth. As Ed drank he became more stationary, less responsive, more morose. Talk around Carl moved to other, even more remote topics, and soon the sun was shifting in the sky to cast some shadow. It felt less severe to Carl now, and allowed him to remain outside. The crowd began to fragment and distill.

Ed approached Carl purposefully, apparently clear-headed. “Let’s go to Gillian’s. I feel like some games.” Carl put down his soda without hesitation and followed Ed through the kitchen, out the front door, and down the sidewalk to the car. They drove in silence for five minutes before Ed said, “Let’s stop and see if Hodson is home. Turn down here,” he said, gesturing with his right shoulder and a tilt of his head. Carl waited in the car for a few moments until Ed emerged with a stout young man in his late 20s, a ball cap on his head and his forearms covered by badly executed tattoos.

The three of them drove to Gillian’s. Ed attached himself to a video game and played for ten minutes or so, with Hodson looking on at Ed’s game, occasionally entering a groan when Ed faltered. Carl sat in silence in a video game chair at some distance from the other two, watching and waiting for Ed to tire himself. He did.

They returned to Hodson’s small, darkened apartment, sat in his wooden, mismatched chairs and poured the available liquor from near empty bottles found in the refrigerator. Ed began talking, in tones familiar to Carl, about his plans for the evening. “What do you want to do, Carl? Where did you tell your wife you were going?”

“I didn’t tell her anything. I’m open for anything.” He had a passing impulse to suggest something unreasonable, something utterly unlikely and improbable, but he didn’t.

“You’re a shitty husband. If I were her, I’d give you a good kick in the ass.” Carl smiled but didn’t respond.

“What do you say we take a ride?” Ed asked, but Carl knew it wasn’t really a question. He didn’t care. They would, of course, end up in the car—Carl knew that—driving wherever Ed felt like going. Ed rose to his feet and moved toward the door, grabbing the bottle of tequilla with his right hand as he headed out. Carl and Hodson followed him.

They drove slowly through familiar and unfamiliar neighborhoods, turning and weaving through streets purposively. Carl drove as if he had a destination in mind, each turn signal indicating confidence and anticipation, but no one knew where they were going. Occasionally Ed would tell Carl to go one direction or another, reorienting his direction as if he were a moving wind-up toy. Carl moved in his own pre-determined direction until redirected otherwise by Ed.

They were silent. Hodson sat in the back and watched through the window as the scenes passed through the side windows. It was the late afternoon by now, and they drove for nearly three-quarters of an hour, covering the northern part of the city, and then heading south along the river.

On the southern part of the city, the road forked, one road traveling east and into the city, the other hugging the river through warehousing, and empty graveled lots. Carl took the path closest to the river and continued to slowly follow the river. The region was industrial and vacant, littered with pallets and mounds of crumbled asphalt and cement. With no other cars to set the pace, Carl drove more and more slowly. No one noticed.

Finally the car came to rest at an open lot. Carl pulled up to the edge of the river and parked. A cement wall held the river back for 50 yards along the lot. Carl got out of the car and walked to the wall, sitting down to hang his feet over the edge. Ed and Hodson went their own way.

The three of them sat watching the river and beyond. The gray haze of the distant horizon, the moist air, and the line of malnourished trees along the opposite bank, gave the area the feel of a poorly maintained terrarium. The three men sat quietly, as if lizards waiting without interest for another to move. Ed rose to his feet, setting the near empty bottle of tequila on the cement and stepping away from the other two. He walked along the edge for several yards, turned towards the river, and began to urinate. They were alone, and felt they were alone. Ed returned to stand beside Carl, looking out at the river while Carl sat looking down at his feet.

“How are your boys?” Ed asked the same questions every time. Carl was never sure if he was really interested or was just lazy.

“You’re my only boy. Are you ok?” Carl answered with uncharacteristic sarcasm. Sarcasm wasn’t Carl’s style. It caught Ed by surprise. He snapped back in anger. “I’m not your boy. I’m not anything to you.” They never really spoke of their relationship, or whatever you would call the time they shared. That was Ed’s style.

Carl stiffened a little as his fear returned. “You’re something to me. I know you. You know me.” He didn’t really know what to call it himself. “Anyway, it doesn’t matter.”

“I’m not your pet boy to lead around town like some puppy dog.” His voice was strained; perhaps it was the alcohol. Ed turned away from Carl to face the river upstream.

“No, I know that. I just meant that we have some sort of relationship. That’s all.”

“Whatever. I just don’t want people to get the wrong idea.” Ed calmed a little.

The wrong idea, Carl thought. They most likely had nothing but wrong ideas. But he had to remember the twenty-some years that separated him from Ed. At Ed’s age, people mattered. He understood that, but yet he couldn’t resist pushing Ed. “What is the right idea? What do you want people to think?”

“I don’t want them to think anything at all. There’s nothing to think. Sometimes you hang out with me. What’s to think about? Hodson’s here too. People don’t think anything about that.” They both looked in Hodson’s direction. Hodson didn’t notice. He was walking away from them along the river, waiting.

“He’s not an old guy like me. It’s odd—you hanging around with someone like me. There’s no way around it. People assume I’m just another pervert who wants to get into your pants. Why am I here if you’re worried about it?” Carl truly didn’t know why, but the reason wasn’t important to him.

“Why ARE you here? What do you want?” Ed asked angrily. It was the sort of irritating response spoken by those who don’t have an answer and want to deflect the question. Ed wasn’t used to being challenged, not since his parents gave up on him years ago.

What do you mean? You called ME, remember. I’m glad you did, but you called me. What do you want me to do?”

“I want you to stop asking me what to do. Just fucking do what you want. I’m not you’re babysitter. I don’t give a shit what you do.” With this Ed walked a few paces along the river’s edge and away from Carl. Carl was unmoved. They had never spoken so frankly. It was unlike either, and unsettling to both. Carl thought a moment while they both stood in silence, and then he responded.

“I do want to get into your pants,” he said without flinching. “Maybe that’s not all I want, but I want that.”

“Whatever.” Ed turned his body toward Carl and looked at him. “You think if you hang around long enough I’ll drop my pants and you’ll get lucky?” Carl didn’t respond.
Ed stepped closer to Carl, reached with both hands for his pants button, and unfastened it, pulling down his underwear with his right thumb and exposing his lower abdomen, the tuft of darkened pubic hair and the penis it seemed to hide. “Here, have a feel.”

Carl watched without speaking, without his eyes meeting Ed’s. Slowly he reached out with his right hand and touched Ed’s pelvis with the back of his fingers, as if petting a wary dog, and then pulled away.

“Now you don’t have to hang around any more.” Ed released his thumb, re-fastened his pants, and walked past Carl along the river and towards Hodson, who was leaning against the car watching. Ed lifted himself onto the hood of the car without acknowledging Hudson and sat there looking out over the river.

“You’re giving out free feels?” Hodson rarely spoke without first being spoken to—it was a quality Ed liked. He needed to be the focal point of his own circle of accessory companions. There was no room for others.

Ed turned to look at Hodson. “Why, you want a feel too?” He was angry again, hopping off the car hood and onto his feet and stepping aggressively toward Hodson. “Here, help yourself,” he said while reaching again to unfasten his pants, this time pushing them down to expose his entire pelvis and buttocks. But Hodson didn’t hesitate, instead meeting Ed’s aggression with his own hurried steps around the front of the car. Either unaware of Ed’s anger or indifferent to it, Hodson dropped to his knees and began roughly taking Ed in his mouth.

Ed was stunned. Hodson wasn’t supposed to be anything but background scenery to Ed’s impulsive choices. No one thought he cared. Ed watched the top of Hodson’s head as it moved, noted his shoes shaking excitedly, resting on toe tips as Hodson kneeled, but Ed didn’t feel Hodson’s clumsy hands or mouth on his penis. Ed showed no reaction; neither would Hodson have noticed.

But then, suddenly raising his right hand above Hodson, Ed struck the base of Hodson’s head violently with the bottom of his clenched fist, causing Hodson to slump forward between Ed’s legs and onto the crotch of his pants, as if vaulting face forward onto the edge of a tree hammock. Hodson was out, limp and unconscious.

Hodson’s weight caused Ed to lose his balance, and he fell forward onto the back of Hodson’s legs and hips, Ed’s ass still bare. He sprang up but was caught by Hodson’s weight between his legs, and began kicking his legs to free himself.

By the time Carl arrived to grab a hold of Ed, he had already kicked his legs free of his pants, and was standing naked from the waist down before Carl. Carl grabbed Ed’s underwear and pants from under Hodson and handed them to Ed, who hurriedly removed his shoes and stepped into his pants again. They both looked at Hodson, slumped face down on the pavement, still unconscious. As Ed put on his shoes, Hodson’s legs began to move and his body twist.

“Get in the car,” Carl snapped at Ed, himself moving quickly to the driver’s side. Ed got in the car and they drove away, leaving Hodson dazed and lying on the pavement.

Moments passed while neither spoke. Ed was still agitated.

Carl drove further north along the river and then crossed over. Finally, heading south among the quiet residential neighborhoods, Carl broke the silence: “Why did you hit him?”

Ed didn’t answer. “Do you think he’s hurt?”

“He was moving when we left. You hit him hard. He’s hurt, but he’ll be ok. What the hell were you doing? He might call the police. You could be in trouble.”

“It wasn’t like I thought about it. I just hit him. He was going crazy on me.” Ed wondered himself why he had reacted so violently.

“Why didn’t you just push him away?’ Carl asked. “You dropped your pants. What did you expect him to do?” These were good questions, but Ed didn’t know the answers. He wasn’t a violent person, generally, but he had lashed out before. He wasn’t going to answer.

“Just take me home,” he responded, dismissing any further talk.

Carl took him home, pulling into the house Ed shared and parking the car in front, across the street from the house. Ed got out without speaking, and Carl followed him into the house, down the hallway, and into Ed’s room. Now Carl was agitated. Ed was often silent, and usually Carl liked this. Not now.

Ed flopped onto his bed and reached down behind the back of the stand to lift a bottle of vodka from the floor. “What are you doing?” Carl asked, clearly annoyed.

“What the fuck does it look like? If you don’t like it, leave.” He brought the bottle to his mouth, took a small mouthful, and swallowed quickly. Carl remained standing in front of the bed, unsure of what he should do.

“You hurt Hodson. You might have really hurt him. You could have killed him. And now you’re gonna sit here and drink. Is that it?”

“Like I said, you can leave if you don’t like it.”

“That’s your answer to everything? It’s all ok as long as you don’t ask for anyone’s approval. The thing is, you don’t want me to go away.” Carl moved around to the side of the bed almost menacingly, looking at Ed, who was sitting on the bed staring at the light on the stand.

“How do you know what I want?”

“Maybe I don’t, but I think I know. Why don’t you just say what you want? That way no one has to guess.” Carl no longer felt like playing by Ed’s rules.

“Why do you always have to have everything spelled out? Can’t you just figure things out? What does it matter what I want?”

“Hodson did what he wanted.”

“So did I,” Ed snapped in return.

Carl didn’t want to argue, but neither could he simply be agreeable. “Put the bottle down,” Carl said calmly, just as Ed was removing it from his mouth. Carl waited for a reaction. None came. He reached to grab the bottle from Ed’s left hand, but Ed pulled away.

“Fuck off. You think you’re my dad or something?”

“I think you need one. You’re acting like a child.” Carl caught the bottle in Ed’s hand, pulled it from him forcefully, and set it on the stand. Ed reached for Carl and tried to push him away, but he had too little leverage. Carl fought against Ed’s arms, grabbing his wrists and twisting them to gain control, and then pushing Ed against the headboard and wall. Ed sank onto the bed, his head bouncing against the wooden board. He was stunned, mostly from Carl’s aggression. He sprang forward combatively into Carl in a tackle around Carl’s waist. But Carl was bigger and stronger than Ed, and could control him if necessary. He reached his arm around Ed’s back and thrust him again against the bed, this time kneeling on the bed to pin Ed down with both arms.

With one hand Carl slapped him on the face and with the other he held Ed down by the throat. “You want to be a loser, is that it? Get yourself together, son. I can’t bail you out every time you screw up.” Ed was pushing the heels of his palms against Carl’s chest, but his reach was too short.

“Fucking get off me. You’re hurting my chest.” Ed began swaying his body and grinding his waist against the bed to break free. Carl gripped his shirt near the collar and pushed him up the bed, pulling his pants half way down his hips. Carl struck him again on the other side of the face, and began repeating in a low voice, “You think you’re a tough guy? You think you’re a tough guy?”

Carl leaned on Ed’s shoulders to pin him down, but Ed was no longer resisting. In a near whisper to himself he returned Carl’s chant: “I’m a tough guy, I’m a tough guy.” He took the blows as if his face belonged to someone else. Carl reached for a sneaker below the bed, pulled Ed’s pants down further to expose the skin of his thighs, and with long, high extensions of his arm, began to strike Ed’s upper thighs with the sole of the shoe. “I don’t feel anything,” Ed mumbled almost imperceptibly to himself, too quiet to taunt Carl.

Ed’s erection was showing through the elastic of his underwear. He was no longer aware of Carl, or of the night. He had what he wanted. He lied motionless on the bed, nearly swooning with the touchtone of violence. Carl continued striking Ed. He wanted to stop, but he didn’t want Ed to stop. He wanted to take him, to embrace him, but he knew what Ed wanted. “Do what you want to do”—he kept replaying Ed’s words. He was afraid of the escalation. Their games had to stop. Ed wanted more punishment each time, and his crimes were rising accordingly.

Carl grabbed Ed by the shirt again and shook him. “You have to stop hurting people,” he pleaded with Ed. Ed heard only warning and disapproval in Carl’s plea.

“Make me.” Ed mumbled, “You have to stop me.”

“No Ed, I mean it.” He slapped him hard across his cheek with the back of his hand.

Again, with his eyes closed, Ed mumbled, “Make me,” and reached with his free hand beneath his underpants.

Carl lost his focus momentarily, bending over Ed to brush his face against Ed’s exposed abdomen. It was tenderness Ed was not expecting, and didn’t want. His eyes opened wide, as if he were jarred from his own private revelry. He shouted “Fucking pervert,” and pushed Carl’s head away from him with both hands. Embarrassed by his lapse and fearing its consequences, Carl swung powerfully with his right hand and punched Ed on the side of his head.

Ed slumped forward onto the bed. Carl knew instantly that he’d gone too far, but it was too late. Ed was unconscious, perhaps worse. He stood still against the bed for a second, looking at Ed, at the waist of his pants pulled sideways on his hips, at his t-shirt pulled up his back, and the side of his face pressed into the bed. And he knew what he wanted.

Here’s a little more on the classification of gays. Gide writes, “I call a pederast the man who, as the word indicates, falls in love with young boys. I call a sodomite . . . the man whose desire is addressed to mature men. I call an invert the man who, in the comedy of love, assumes the role of a woman and desires to be possessed. These three types of homosexuals are not always clearly distinct; there are possible transferences from one to another; but most often the difference among them is such that they experience a profound disgust for one another, a disgust accompanied by a reprobation that in no way yields to that which you (heterosexuals) fiercely show toward all three. The pederasts, of whom I am one (why cannot I say this quite simply, without your immediately claiming to see a brag in my confession?), are much rarer, and the sodomites much more numerous, than I first thought. . . . As to the inverts, whom I have hardly frequented at all, it has always seemed to me that they alone deserved the reproach of moral or intellectual deformation and were subject to some of the accusations that are commonly addressed to all homosexuals. . . . That such loves can spring up, that such relationships can be formed, it is not enough for me to say that this is natural; I maintain that it is good; each of the two finds exultation, protection, a challenge in them; and I wonder whether it is for the youth or the elder man that they are more profitable.”

Such silliness. Twink lovers, bears, and bottoms, I suppose. I wonder just how young Gide means when he says “young boys.” I have a preference for young guys myself, but I would certainly not say I preferred young boys. I have no sexual interest in boys. And even the boys who are of age but who seem very child-like are not sexually appealing to me. What IS appealing to me are young guys who mix maturity with youth—the boyish faced kid with the body of a man . . . a sizable dick, a hairy bottom, and a slightly muscled physique. I like the contrast of innocence and brawn. But boys, mere boys, hold no appeal. If forced to choose between pederast, sodomite, or invert, however, I suppose I’d be a pederast. That Gide thinks inverts deserve reproach is reproachable. His thinking on homosexuality is crude.

In May of 1921, just months before Proust’s death, Gide wrote this: “Spent an hour yesterday evening with Proust. . . He says that he has not been out of bed for a long time. Although it is stifling in the room in which he receives me, he is shivering; he has just left another, much hotter room in which he was covered with perspiration; he complains that his life is nothing but a slow agony, and although having begun, as soon as I arrived, to talk about homosexuality, he interrupted himself to ask me if I can enlighten him as to the teaching of the Gospels, for someone or other has told him that I talk particularly well on the subject. He hopes to find in the Gospels some support and relief for his sufferings, which he depicts at length as atrocious. He is fat, or rather puffy; he reminds me somewhat of Jean Lorrain. I am taking him Corydon, of which he promises not to speak to anyone; and when I say a word or two about my Memoirs: ‘You can tell anything,’ he exclaims; ‘but on condition that you never say: I.’ But that won’t suit me. Far from denying or hiding his homosexuality, he exhibits it, and I could almost say boasts of it. He claims never to have loved women save spiritually and never to have known love except with men. His conversation, ceaselessly cut by parenthetical clauses, runs on without continuity. He tells me his conviction that Baudelaire was homosexual: ‘The way he speaks of Lesbos, and the mere need of speaking of it, would be enough to convince me,’ and when I protest: ‘In any case, if he was homosexual, it was almost without his knowing it; and you don’t believe that he ever practiced. . .’ ‘What!’ he exclaims. ‘I am sure of the contrary; how can you doubt that he practiced? He, Baudelaire!’ And in the tone of his voice it is implied that by doubting I am insulting Baudelaire. But I am willing to believe that he is right; and that homosexuals are even a bit more numerous than I thought at first. In any case I did not think Proust was so exclusively so.” Just a paragraph later Gide bemoans his lack of facility at the piano. He says he does not like pianists because: “All the pleasure they give me is nothing compared to the pleasure I give myself when I play; but when I hear them I become ashamed of my playing—and certainly quite wrongly. But it is just the same when I read Proust; I hate virtuosity, but it always impresses me, and in order to scorn it I should first like to be capable of it.” I understand when Gide means.

If Gide’s thought on homosexuality is crude, Proust certainly does not further the cause in his writing. Elegant and beautiful as it is, his treatment of gays is harsh and relentlessly unsympathetic. Gide agrees. He writes in December, 1921, “I have read Proust’s latest pages with, at first, a shock of indignation. Knowing what he thinks, what he is, it is hard for me to see in them anything but a pretense, a desire to protect himself, a camouflage of the cleverest sort, for it can be to no one’s advantage to denounce him. Even more: that offense to truth will probably please everybody: heterosexuals, whose prejudices it justifies and whose repugnances it flatters; and the others, who will take advantage of the alibi and their lack of resemblance to those he portrays. In short, in considering the public’s cowardice, I do not know any writing that is more capable than Proust’s “Sodome et Gomorrhe” of confirming the error of public opinion.”

Gide is right. On the one hand, that Proust treats the subject of homosexuality so extensively in his books is exciting and surprising, given the times. Homosexuality is insinuated into every otherwise respectable aspect of society. Gays inhabit the Paris parlors, the butcher shops, and theaters. It gives readers the impression that it’s not a rare and dangerous scourge, but a part of everyday life. On the other hand, Proust’s every treatment of homosexuality is unsympathetic--gays are ugly and duplicitous. He mirrors exactly the sharply disdainful attitudes of the public, and one gets the feeling that he’s trying to have it both ways. He wants to write about gay life, his life, but he also wants to protect himself. Just as he said to Gide—you can write anything as long as you don’t say “I.”

There’s one final passage about Proust that I want to note. Proust’s chauffeur arrives at Gide’s house, returning the copy of Corydon that Gide had given him to read. What’s funny is that Gide notes how lengthy and convoluted the chauffeur’s speech is. “His sentence is much longer and more complicated than I am quoting it; I imagine he learned it on the way, for when I interrupted him at first, he began it all over again and recited it in one breath.” The chauffeur’s wife, who also lives with Proust, speaks in a similarly convoluted speech. Gide visited him in mid-May, 1921, and describes Proust as spending “hours on end without being able even to move his head; he stays in bed all day long, and for days on end. At moments he rubs the side of his nose with the edge of a hand that seems dead, with its fingers oddly stiff and separated, and nothing could be more impressive than this finicky, awkward gesture, which seems the gesture of an animal or a madman.”

During the visit Proust talks of nothing but homosexuality. What is most interesting is that Proust, near his death and having finished his work for the most part, is perhaps regretting his treatment of homosexuality. “He says he blames himself for that ‘indecision’ which made him, in order to fill out the heterosexual part of the book, transpose “Within a Budding Grove” all the attractive, affectionate, and charming elements contained in his homosexual recollections, so that for “Sodome” he is left nothing but the grotesque and the abject. But he shows himself to be very much concerned when I tell him that he seems to have wanted to stigmatize homosexuality; he protests; and eventually I understand that what we consider vile, an object of laughter or disgust, does not seem so repulsive to him. When I ask him if he will ever present that Eros in a young and beautiful guise, he replies that, to begin with, what attracts him is almost never beauty and that he considers it to have very little to do with desire—and that, as for youth, this was what he could most easily transpose (what lent itself best to a transposition). ”

In early January of 1921 Gide went to see Parade, by Cocteau, Satie, and Picasso. He writes: “went to see Parade—of which I don’t know what to admire more: pretense or poverty. Cocteau is walking up and down in the wings, where I go to see him; aged, contracted, painful. He knows that the sets and costumes are by Picasso, that the music is by Satie, but he wonders if Picasso and Satie are not by him.”