Almost ten years ago my faux-sister Pip was defending 1970s porn star Marc Stevens on Facebook. I caught the thread in mid-stream and joined the fray. He and I were almost lovers.
Here’s the exchange; PIP – Marc Stevens was a next-door neighbor and pal…here he is on David Susskind…We partied all the time…but our scene’s were different…viva la difference, he was oddly fatherly to me…and if though I knew he was a porn ‘star’, I never saw his movies…but he did give offer me advice about boys..which I was happy to hear. Sad to see him had such a tragic end…like so many of that time…famously photographed by Mapplethorpe. ah me!
WOMAN FROM BERLIN I wondered why he was coming to Club 57 – it was you who told him. Wednesday at 3:07pm · Like PIP – yup…hung with Peter Nolan Smith, my sister Kyle Davis Cadley and a whole motley crew….ah woe!
ME – Marc was good fun W
WOMAN FROM BERLIN – He was very polite and nice as I recall.
PIP – A good fb friend, gay english teacher is Fla., was bemoaning a Porno star making a PSA…it rankled and brought Marc to mind! What a great role model he was for gay kids! Did we live in a particular place in time that enabled us to be open and happily accepting of each other? The more I know about what people ‘out there’ think, the less I feel I belong. ME – it was a special time. we accepted each other for what we were and our opinion evolved from relationships after overcoming prejudice. The era of errors.
WOMAN FROM BERLIN One is brought up to be accepting and loving of others or not. I think its that simple.
ME – most people are raised with the bias of their community. it is up to the individual to change the thinking of the majority through our thought deeds and words. PIP – So we made our own community…and now we’re in a right wing hell hole.
WOMAN FROM BERLIN so what’s new? we were always in one
ME – really????
WOMAN FROM BERLIN – We were too busy to notice. Remember Anita Bryant? The Moral Majority? America, Love it or Leave it? Yuppies of all ilks? Nancy Regan’s red cloth coats? Ring any bells? PIP – Vaguely…Anita was mean to Harvey Milk…orange juice…we in the thick of it could dismiss the wacko’s..harder now, somehow, perhaps my view is too narrow and shaped by our unique perspective…I get pissing mad when I think of people in closets and suicidal teens…Surely we have gotten somewhere!!!!Do You remember that party you had in Chinatown…someone fell off the roof ( is okay, I believe) and I made out with a beautiful girl all night!!!! Cyrena. Ah YES, I’m an old goat now lol
WOMAN FROM BERLIN – Steven Kramer who was married to Patti Astor at the time pulled that tap dancing trick on the ledge, which is something he often did, but alas fell off that time.Brilliant artist of many talents. you kissing Cyndria Fox maybe? I know that night Robert Gordon propositioned me with my pal and his girlfriend Snooky nearby. What a creep. That was the opening party for NWV. Andy Horn was there, he says, but I haven’t the slightest recollection of having met him then. PIP – My only gf Cyrena…wow…flashback.
ME – david mcdermott and I jumped to the billboard on the other roof and climbed down to him. Patti was screaming at the top of her lungs. David was a little horrified, but I asked Steven if he could move his feet.
ME – He did and I turned him on his back. Someone yelled from your roof. “What do you need?” – ‎”I yelled back a beer.”
WOMAN FROM BERLIN – Another stunt that he used to pull at Kristian’s loft would be he would be hanging on the ledge OUTSIDE of the window and when you noticed him he would wave at you while holding onto the ledge with the other arm. It would scare the you know what out of you.
ME – Steven? ME – i ran into him months after. He asked if i knew him. I said no, thinking he might be embarrassed. finally I succumbed to his insistence and said, “I was the guy who turned you over on that roof.’ He walked away without another word.
SQUARE GAY – I stand by my post of yesterday. We are supposed to be reminding gay youth that they can be gay and healthy and happy throughout their lives. I don’t think we need more reminders that the gay world is hyper-sexualized and that many, wrong…
WOMAN FROM BERLIN – You know, I think I remember you shouting for that beer.
WOMAN FROM BERLIN – i also said ‘could someone shut up that woman.’
ME – i was so sensitive years ago
WOMAN FROM BERLIN – I must say that many teens of whatever sexuality are self loathing. I was wheeling in my bed at this moment.
ME – noel, the aids epidemic was manufactured. me – straights shared the same lifestyles. we had a good time. don’t demonize the past. L 7
WOMAN FROM BERLIN realizes my state.
WOMAN FROM BERLIN – Oops, this is my stop, gotta get off.Bye Y’all.
PIP Noel is dismissing us as drug addled losers from the 70’s!????
CARO!!! Ha ha. not quite.
ME – Noel, this world is too filled with squares telling us we were wrong. you want to shout that out. sing to a different choir. we are altos and falsettos in this crew. buzzkill someone else
PIP – Noel, could I be wrong in thinking that this is a case of the oppressed becoming the oppressor? It seems you want a place at the dinner table of middle america ! You’ll never feel better until you (collectively) accept yourself…oh dear. ME – believe me, i can still throw the buzzkills off the bus. noel, stop looking in the mirror and admire the shadows
WOMAN FROM BERLIN – Lucia, not all are enlightened or have drank from the same fountain.Au ‘Reservoir’.
ME – marc 10 1/2 stevens. he had some crank on him, drool factor 12
PIP – I never sorted all my pals out…gay..straight..we were individuals baby…As Ann Magnuson said in “The Nomi Story” which I saw for the first time…we were all outcasts who came to NYC to find a place to feel free and express ourselves…the miracle is we found each other. Peter…I saw the Mapplethorpe ‘penis’ today ! Hello!
ME – the uncut version. what a schlong ME – off to sleep after drinking Trappist beer on the Belgium border Aulne 8, was anyone really straight PIP – not then…well…some ‘girls’ LOL, well, my brain is fried kitten, from all the drugs and sex I’ve had..
WOMAN FROM BERLIN – Poor Noel, shame on us, or you, for allowing a drunken bullying Peter to run wild (again). Non-Quitter or Non Sequitur? Hard to say and honestly if we were all drooling over penis sizes the human race wouldn’t have an over- population problem.
SQUARE GAY – squares? really? are you twelve? look who’s doing the judging now. and i am obviously waaaaay to L7 to get the mirror/shadow metaphor. and, kimmy, i am opressing no one. drag queens and leather daddy’s have long had too high a profile in the gay community. i can be out and proud–even to my teenage students–without becoming a parody of myself. i think that’s what a gay student of mine was referring to recently when he told me that i was the reason he stopped seeing it as a curse. to each his own, but i’m not going to support yet another gay cause that thinks its de rigeur to bring out the porn stars or present caged masters and slaves at their galas or whatever else just because it’s part of the “wonderful patchwork of who we are.”
PIP – recently ‘out’, not too proud, a gym rat is just another way to say gay…I don’t think I mentioned ‘leather queens’ once…but my cousin would describe himself as such, as well as a member of Boston’s symphony…stereotypes indeed Noel. Drunken bully.
WOMAN FROM BERLIN knows him from way back when.
She is more wrong than right, but thena woman is never wrong, but she and Pip defended Marc Stevens. He was a good guy and what a fucking crank.
photo of marc stevens from robert mapplethrope