Larry Craig, the simply superb and sweet-smelling Senior Senator from the great state of Idaho, has been in the news recently and has caused me to rethink my thoughts about homosexuals. As many of you know, I did not attend an Ivy League college. In point of fact, I didn’t attend any college. I spent those formative years working in filling stations, followed by a job as a draftsman at AT&T, which was quickly followed by service in the United States Army. I thought that with this background I was fully acquainted with the seamier sides of life. When it came to homosexual men, they were referred to as “queers.” Today, those people are called gays. When I began to come to New York in 1948 and thereafter, I became acquainted with gay men who struck me as unusually talented. They were artists, writers, and people who ran excellent restaurants. I had no prejudice ever against gay people. But now, as it turns out, I knew very little about their practices.
Earlier this year the simply superb Senator from Idaho was arrested in a Minneapolis airport restroom because he had propositioned an undercover cop. The cop testified that Senator Craig occupied the next stall and signaled with his feet and hands that he wished to have a homosexual encounter. In my naiveté, I had assumed that for two gay men to accomplish their work, they would both occupy the same stall. Now in my declining years, I find that this is not necessarily the case at all.
My naiveté also led me to wonder about a story concerning the Minneapolis airport. I understood that, since the Craig incident, the restroom authorities were considering lowering the barriers between the stalls down to ground level. In my innocence, I wondered what this would accomplish.
Well, as it turns out, lowering the barriers between the stalls would tend to decrease the great sin of onanism. If the testimony in the case against Senator Larry Craig is correct, the gay men would hold hands under the barrier between the stalls and would then commit the great sin of onanism. The female CNN announcer on television explained that this sin is “having sex with yourself.”
Obviously, in addition to the sexual content of this exercise, there are gymnastic requirements as well. Why “having sex with yourself” must be performed in a men’s restroom while holding hands with another gay, is a mystery to me as it could be performed in the privacy of one’s own home. As Larry Craig, when he was arrested and charged said, “I am not gay; I have never been gay.” Obviously, I am ill equipped to answer questions about gayness.
In the Old Testament of the Bible, there is a citation from Genesis 38, verse 9. My cursory reading of this section of the Old Testament discloses that Onan had an older married brother. One way or another, the brother was killed and Judah, his father, had ordered Onan to marry the widow, as was the custom. Onan said, pardon the expression, to hell with that. He then, according to the sacred scripture, “spilled his seeds upon the ground,” just as the CNN announcer described it three or four thousand years later. If my understanding is halfway correct, Onan had sex with himself. The so-called seeds were of course the sperm which fell “upon the ground.”
My belief is that if the sweet-smelling Senior Senator from Idaho were acquainted with this citation from the Old Testament, he would forsake the gay life and seek a Congressional seat from Greenwich Village in New York, even through he says, “I am not gay; I have never been gay.”
There is one significant favorable development in the Larry Craig case in that, the stall used by the great Senator, has now become a major tourist attraction. It is not the Taj Mahal, of course, but it memorializes the Old Testament and the grave sin of Onanism.
Now let’s turn to the gentleman from Christopher Street in New York City. Christopher Street is located in Greenwich Village. Greenwich Village is widely known as the home of gay people in New York City. There are gay bars, gay restaurants, and gay art galleries throughout what in New York is called “the Village.” During my many years in New York, I made Greenwich Village my home. But I would not want you to conclude that this makes me a gay person. My motto is, “I am not gay; I have never been gay.”
Earlier this year, we learned that a New York City woman in her late thirties discovered that she was pregnant. Later we learned that she simply opened the telephone book and picked the name of a person who lived in the village and declared him to be the father of the unborn child. This gentleman resided on Christopher Street in the Village.
As these things go, there was a need to have a legal tangle. The gentleman from Christopher Street had to hire a lawyer to defend himself.
As it turns out, the gentleman from Christopher Street was in his late forties and had lived an exclusively gay lifestyle all of the years of his adult life. He had a male roommate, which was a long-standing arrangement. When the paternity case came to trial, his lawyer was able to demonstrate conclusively that in his adult life, his client had always led a gay lifestyle. When it came time for the gentleman from Christopher Street to testify, he told the judge, “Your Honor, in all my life, I have never met a vagina personally.” That statement rings with Churchillian eloquence. And it came not from a politician or professor, but from a simple soul from the Village in New York. Shortly thereafter, the judge threw the case out of court and the gentleman from Christopher Street was fully exonerated. Nonetheless, he was presented with a $3,400 bill from his lawyer. The pregnant female had no financial resources, so there was no possibility that he could recoup his losses from her. Apparently he smiled and went home to his apartment to enjoy his gay lifestyle with his partner. He now has a good legal story to tell at cocktail parties.
I don’t know what these two cases are meant to demonstrate, but on the other hand, they give an essayist an opportunity to use such pungent phrases as “having sex with oneself” and a man who has never met a female sex organ in person. For an old geezer such as myself, this is quite enough.
E. E. CARR
December 22, 2007
Essay 278
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Kevin’s commentary: News to me. I thought that the under-stall gap was used for things much dirtier than holding hands while both parties jerk off. I mean it’s almost definitely used for all sorts of things, I guess, I just never had thought of that one. Cute. I wonder, when you’re both done, do you come out and introduce yourselves? If not, who leaves first? What’re the rules around this type of thing?