Liberace "Behind the Candelabra"

[x-man]

 
And I didn't miss your point about pedophilia. I just happen to think you're wrong about it, but I have no interest in arguing about it.

Thanks for the bears.  I appreciated that.  Nice talking to you again.  I thought I saw you circling around the fire a couple of topic sites further off, but you never came in to warm yourself.

I am embarrassed about getting the names wrong; I don't usually do that.  Actually, when I wrote it I was in a hurry.  I was on my way to a tattoo parlour for my first tattoo (Someone is tattooed on my heart, why not on my arm?), so I took something for the anxiety and prospective pain--basically, I was stoned.  Maybe that is not the best time to write postings.

I didn't mean that every use of "boy" for a man is distasteful--for a friend, or for a group of friends ("the boys") it's fine.  Where I do react is hearing it from straight people using it as a personal negative comment about the relationship between a man and a younger man.  I have heard this more than once, and from people who would be very upset to be accused of homophobia.  But when I brought this to their attention they stopped doing it.

And BRIAN, what do you mean by disgust at Liberace's "treatment of the 'young men' he picked up?"  What did he do?  I thought he gave them a lot of money and lots of gifts.  They certainly knew what they were doing, and they knew why Liberace picked them up.  If they want to sell their ass, why blame him?  He was a rather pathetic figure; they were not.  If you are going to despise anybody it should be them for being such whores.

[Front-Ranger]

And BRIAN, what do you mean by disgust at Liberace's "treatment of the 'young men' he picked up?"  What did he do?  I thought he gave them a lot of money and lots of gifts.  They certainly knew what they were doing, and they knew why Liberace picked them up.  If they want to sell their ass, why blame him?  He was a rather pathetic figure; they were not.  If you are going to despise anybody it should be them for being such whores.

I was under the impression that brian was disgusted by Liberace's spreading AIDs to the young men, which, back in those days, was fatal.

[x-man]

I was under the impression that brian was disgusted by Liberace's spreading AIDs to the young men, which, back in those days, was fatal.

FR, are you sure you have your timeline straight?  Someone else will know this better than I, but I thought Liberace's relationship with Thorson and the young men who preceded him were before we knew how HIV was spread.  And, I thought, Liberace did not spread HIV to Scott Thorson.  Did Liberace spread HIV to anyone?  Is this a fact or a supposition?  Also, it might be wise when discussing the matter to distinguish between AIDS and HIV.  Then, perhaps, it wasn't as important to distinguish between the two as it is today.

[milomorris]

Liberace was indeed a top-notch pianist, and a masterful showman. Those are wonderful achievements. He was also a flawed man. Those flaws were a detriment. I think that his life can be viewed as a lesson for young homosexual men: focus on achievements and leave the rest alone.

[brianr]

Nothing to do with AIDS. Apparently Liberace had already dropped Scott Thorson by 1982 when AIDS was beginning in the USA.
After 40 years as a high school teacher I have some understanding of the psychology of youth. There is debate as to whether Scott was 16 or 18 when Liberace picked him up, plied him with all sorts of gifts then dropped him 5 years later, having destroyed him, when he found someone younger. Expecting a young man (not much more than a boy) to resist is asking a bit much.
At much the same time I was openly gay at a catholic school and helping young men of the same age come to terms with their sexuality. I found them very attractive but never did anything illegal.  I vividly remember  one boy Chris.  I still dream of him. I first knew something was wrong when I saw he was crying up the back of the classroom. Later he came out to me.  He use to visit me (just after finishing final school exams) at my home in the late evenings and talk for hours. Only when I met him a year later and he told me he thought I had been naive did I realise he had wanted me to have sex with him.
I suggested another boy attend a gay youth group in the city and was horrified when he told me an older man had taken him home. I complained to those running the youth group to no avail. That boy later died of AIDS.
You cannot expect a highly sexed youth of 18 to have some sort of morals especially in those days when all gay sex was illegal so support services were thin on the ground.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Liberace was indeed a top-notch pianist, and a masterful showman. Those are wonderful achievements. He was also a flawed man.

Which is kind of to say, He was human, don't you think? We might not all be gifted musicians and showmen/women, but most of us, or at least most of us here, anyway, I would imagine, have our own personal triumphs and achievements, as well as our own personal flaws.

[x-man]

The movie is historical and this must temper my complete disgust with Liberace, his being in the closet and suing anyone who even hinted he was gay and his treatment of the 'young men' he picked up. It just shows how far gay rights and pride have progressed in my lifetime.

In some ways this conversation is focusing on the relationship between Liberace and the young men with whom he was involved.  Others want to trash Liberace entirely, and not look too closely at the young men, seeing them as victims, talking of their "ill-treatment" and expressing "disgust" at Liberace  What I am about to say is going to outrage some of you, but such situations are not always so obvious.  I am speaking of personal experience; I cannot prove that my experience extends to others, but I suspect that it sometimes does.

The young men who flocked around Liberace were, I believe, 17 to their early 20s.  I was 14 when I began hanging around the men's washroom in the city park of the small town I lived in.  (The town was on the Trans Canada Highway, and thus the park washrooms had more visits by passing travellers than might otherwise be the case.)  I knew what I wanted, and had a pretty good idea of how to get it.  I didn't want money, I wanted sex and a man's touch.  I certainly wasn't about to look amongst my school mates--too easy to be outed.  And I wanted older men; to a 14-year-old that meant men 18 and over.  To keep my sex life separate from my school life, it meant casual sex in the park.  It was dangerous and I took some big chances.  But I insist it was ME going after THEM.  The forces that drove me into the park were far more elemental than money or bribes, and if I am being honest, I cannot see myself as the victim--I was the aggressor and I knew it.  My morality was definitely in question, but I was not coerced or enticed into anything.  I remember, particularly, the first man.  I had him so worked up even before we got down to business that he was visibly shaking with excitement--he didn't  know what was happening.  I had done that to HIM, but if we had gotten caught he would have been the sicko pervert who went to jail, not me,the innocent victim kid.

I am  not saying that my case is typical.  Child abuse is evil and must be exposed and stopped.  But in my case it was not abuse; I could have stopped any time I wanted, and I was never bribed--such would never have occurred to me.  We eventually moved to the city where my choices weren't so limited, and my behaviour not so problematic.

In the case of the young men around Liberace, they were far more sophisticated at 17 to 22 than I was at 14.  Frankly, I don't think they were ill-treated--unless you think banging Liberace is ill-treatment in itself.  And Scott Thorson's (and probably other young men's) protestations that it was "gay for pay" hardly puts them on the "innocent" side of the issue.  So let's be a little more flexible here when we encounter situations like in Behind the Candelabra.  Don't be so swept away by outrage until you look deeper.  Dismiss me as an aberration and a teenage slut if you want to, but I was not the only one.

[Jeff Wrangler]

I am certainly not saying that my case is typical.

Maybe so, but I'm sure your experience is also far from unique.

[milomorris]

Which is kind of to say, He was human, don't you think? We might not all be gifted musicians and showmen/women, but most of us, or at least most of us here, anyway, I would imagine, have our own personal triumphs and achievements, as well as our own personal flaws.

Right. The difference is that most of us will never have our achievements or our flaws exposed to the entire world for review. Because we have a chronicle of Liberace's flaws and accomplishments, easily-accessible lessons can be drawn from them.

[Jeff Wrangler]

Right. The difference is that most of us will never have our achievements or our flaws exposed to the entire world for review. Because we have a chronicle of Liberace's flaws and accomplishments, easily-accessible lessons can be drawn from them.

Very true on all accounts.