''PRIDE'' Before (and Amidst) the Fall

''MIDNIGHT COWBOY'' and The BIG LIE of homosexual GAIETY

The film rendition of James Leo Herlihy’s savage and tragic novel, MIDNIGHT COWBOY, was (and remains) a prime example of censorship-by-reimagining. Released in 1969 - a seminal year for the Gay Liberation movement, owing to the momentum derived from a series of high profile demonstrations and media-managed street theatre (culminating with the Stonewall Riot) - the film presents Jon Voight as an annoyingly dumb man-child whose earnest naivete is immune to cynicism and common sense and whose ill-omened decision to pursue a career as a street hustler is presented as just another in a series of endearingly awkward foibles. Of course, there is a tragedian element to the plotting of the film, to be fair, and the motif of existential loneliness and the pitiable sorrows that bond street people together is sometimes poignant. But nonetheless, it is a deliberate re-working of the source material - a philosophically inclined novel that is genuinely horrifying as well as an uncompromising rebuttal to the mythologies of gay life and identity.

Herlihy was himself a homosexual who committed suicide in middle age. And the reader gleans from the first page that the book is in many respects Herlihy’s story. Herlihy himself is NOT the ‘‘Midnight Cowboy’’ - but Herlihy clearly knew him very very well. And the monsters that populate the bestiary of the Midnight Cowboy’s peculiar Hell are not mere archetypes - in fact, they’re drawn so intimately that its obvious that Herlihy came to know them through personal sex and violence, of the body, mind and spirit.

Who is in fact the Midnight Cowboy is Joe Buck - a simpleminded 20 something year old with the body of an Adonis and virtually no meaningful inner life whatsoever beyond that which is absurdly literal and corporeal - Buck is a product of growing up in Eisenhower’s America. Born during World War II, his earliest memories are of a trio of young blonde women, who would look after him in shifts as each would report to a war economy/WPA job of some sort. He recalls a young soldier who would very occasionally visit while in uniform, who the reader infers was quite probably Joe Buck’s biological father, who after a time never darkened the door of the three women again. At aged 5 or so, the blonde women pack Joe Buck into the car and drive him to Texas, where he is greeted by a floozy grandmother who takes him in and who - while always kind to Joe - is too limited and too easily distracted by her penchant for the bottle and for shacking up with a long line of men as her beauty fades and her charms and good health with it.

Joe’s Grandmother, Sally, owns a beauty shop and works long hours. She is gone before Joe goes to school (leaving him breakfast on the table and a frozen tv dinner in the oven) she returns after he is asleep. Joe spends his free time obsessively watching the TV Westerns of the day. Joe, in later years, ‘‘remembers’’ a paramour of Grandma Sally’s named Woodsy Niles - who was a bona fide cowboy who Joe comes to imagine as his Father figure. It remains unclear if Woodsy Niles actually existed; in reality, he is likely a pastiche of various men that were present in Sally’s life and would sometimes playfully interact with Joe, coupled with the characters played by Hollywood actors on the TV shows he watches incessantly.

As Joe’s physicality develops into a splendid, and muscular physique his personality and inner life remain totally and completely stunted. He begins to appreciate that something is terribly wrong with the fact that he simply cannot find his way in the world - let alone even relate superficially to peers nor cultivate friendships - a teenaged Joe simply quits going to school because there is nobody there to notice - not Sally, not his Teachers, not a pack of adolescent friends.

The one intimate connection that Joe establishes ends in disaster. One day at the movie theater that he haunts, he meets a teenaged girl named, Annie Pratt. Annie falls for Joe immediately - but just as quickly, Joe learns of her self-destructive and warped nature. Annie is well known throughout town to pull a train of however many boys and/or men corner her and ask to be satisfied and accommodated. One day at the movie theatre, a group of boys, one of whom vaguely remembers Joe from school, takes Annie into a storage room on the balcony level of the theatre and they proceed to roughly gang bang her in succession. When its Joe’s, ‘‘turn’’, the girl climaxes - and tells him he is, ‘‘the best’’. Owing to Joe’s anatomy and virility (this is inferred - Herlihy is not crass about this - he is the only man who appears to satisfy Annie.

Joe and Annie begin an ongoing, surreptitious relationship - which burdens Joe with a deep sense of shame. Ultimately, the girl’s parents are notified of her activities, Joe becomes a pariah - rumormongers and fishwives claim he was pimping the girl out, that he is a sex deviant who ruined her. Annie is committed to a mental asylum, and Joe is once again all alone. Without even the comfort of Annie, warped as their relationship may have been.

As Joe enters his 20s, nothing at all changes - he eats the food that Sally leaves for him, he goes to movies, he fantasizes about being like the wild west heroes he sees on television. He is ultimately drafted into the US ARMY - but his stint is uneventful. He does poorly in the Army, but not poorly enough to prompt a discharge before his tour of duty is completed. The Army assigns him to a Motor transport company where he drives a truck at various stateside deployments. Until one day, with only weeks left in his term of service, Joe is notified by the company chaplain that his grandmother, Sally, has just died. Sally and her latest beau had attempted to go horseback riding - and Sally, having no experience, is thrown from the animal - her bones breaking into pieces as she collides with Earth.

Joe endures a complete breakdown at the news and goes catatonic - he places the telegram the chaplain handed him in his mouth, climbs under the truck and lies, catatonically, in the fetal position for many hours. It is not of course that Joe was so very much in love with Sally nor that they shared a particularly close bond - the heart of the matter is that Joe has no capacity to identify a way of being let alone satisfy a role in the world in which he is forced to live. The absence of any intimate familiars within ones’ existential purview - the absence of any reciprocal shared human affinities is terrifying in a most punctuated way. Joe rapidly becomes initiated into the aforementioned reality.

Discharged from the ARMY - his frantic efforts to re-enlist being denied owing to psychological unsuitability - Joe finds that the house he shared with Sally has been liquidated by an Aunt he did not know existed. With nowhere to go, he travels to New Mexico, recalling that a fellow GI who he’d enjoyed a rudimentary and superficial rapport with lived there. Joe checks the local Phone Books upon arrival but realizes he does not remember, if he ever knew to begin with, the full surname of his acquaintance. Joe finds himself spending long hours at a 24 hour diner near a flophouse hotel where he has procured a room.

At this stage of the story, there is a subtle tonal shift to the semi-surreal and - at conclusion of the aforementioned second act - positively nightmarish. And it is absolutely key to the story, the narrative structure, and the ontological and ethical conclusions of the novel itself. Not coincidentally, as mentioned at the beginning of this essay, this entire segment of the book was removed from the film adaptation. Act II commences with Joe taking a job as dishwasher at the diner that has become the setting of his life; owing to fact that food is readily available and largely free. Joe takes to eating a large meal after the conclusion of his shift in the midnight hours, and sometimes sitting until dawn just smoking cigarettes and compulsively drinking coffee.

Joe begins to notice an odd crew of young homosexuals congregating in the restaurant during these midnight dinners. Joe’s naivete precludes him identifying the trade of these boys, but he find himself contemplating their strange affectations, fastidiousness, and exaggerated excitability. Unique among them is a one who begins sitting at Joe’s table. Sometimes he remains for only a few minutes, sometimes until the sun rises. Eventually, the silence is broken by his introduction as ‘‘Perry’’. Perry is nothing like the other hustlers - the omniscient narrator remarks that some people are doomed - and this fact imbues them with an irresistible charisma if those so afflicted learn how to exploit it. Perry is described as a James Dean doppelganger who walks side by side with death.

Perry at first presumes that Joe is himself a hustler, new to town, and seeking out trade. He quickly learns, after asking Joe if he, ‘‘Makes the scene’’, that Joe is wholly illiterate as to the language of the street - and is not at all part of the homosexual subculture. Joe cannot escape its gravity, and he is always within its proverbial orbit, but he is not truly part of it. After introducing Joe to marijuana - which leads to Joe experiencing a sobbing emotional breakdown whereby he mourns and pines for Sally - and demonstrating the power he wields over people who are taken in by his sinister charisma by humiliating a wealthy John who is obviously devastated by the fact that Perry views him with bemused contempt and nothing else, the horror of the story truly peaks.

Perry asks Joe what he, ‘‘wants’’ - and offers to give it to him. Joe doesn’t understand who and what is he dealing with; dumbly replying that while in the Service, he and his fellow draftees and enlisteds would entertain themselves by going into town on Leave and picking up a hooker for the night. Perry replies that if Joe wants to have a woman, he can easily arrange that. Perry places a phone call at a telephone booth, and then he and Joe drive deep into the desert - eventually arriving at a ramshackle, French couture brothel. Perry rings the bell and a strangely monstrous figure greets them. A huge, epicene Indian man greets them - his bizarrely proportioned body and towering height rendered even more curious by his hi-pitched, lisping vocal register and overly lucid vocabulary.

Perry introduces the monstrous Indian as, ‘‘Tombaby Barefoot’’ - they enter the parlor of the brothel and then are met by the demonic Juanita Barefoot - Tombaby’s mother. Joe has difficulty looking at Juanita. She wears a silk robe and nothing else - her body is as wrinkled as a corpse. Her eyes are yellow, and a smear of purple lipstick across her maw draws attention to unusually sharp and canine like teeth. Juanita growls more than speaks - she remarks on Joe’s physicality as one might admire well bred livestock. After a strange, meandering conversation - Juanita takes Perry into the kitchen to speak out of earshot. Upon return, she informs Joe that one of her best whores, ‘‘Delores’’, is bathed, washed, powdered and ready for him.

Joe ascends the staircase, reports to the room as directed, and finds a very very young Mexican girl in the room. After some awkward effort at communication, Joe begins to feel remorse at the thought of taking such a young girl - but she relents and takes him into her arms and they become intimate. After several minutes, Joe senses something is wrong. He looks across the darkened room to a closet - the door just barely ajar. Joe dismounts the girl and approaches the door - it slowly opens from within. Perry is seated there in a folding chair - flanked by Tombaby and his witch mother. Perry begins laughing maniacally and Joe begs him to stop - when he does not, Joe begins beating him in the face. Perry continues laughing even as his handsome face is ruined. Juanita then strikes Joe in the stomach as Tombaby restrains him. Joe is then raped by the monstrous Tombaby and Perry.

And so Joe Buck is initiated into Gay life.

CONTINUED IN PART 2