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Liberace "Behind the Candelabra"
Jeff Wrangler:
--- Quote from: milomorris on March 11, 2014, 12:41:19 am ---Liberace was indeed a top-notch pianist, and a masterful showman. Those are wonderful achievements. He was also a flawed man.
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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:
--- Quote from: brian on March 10, 2014, 03:39:45 pm ---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.
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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:
--- Quote from: x-man on March 11, 2014, 01:11:47 pm ---I am certainly not saying that my case is typical.
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Maybe so, but I'm sure your experience is also far from unique.
milomorris:
--- Quote from: Jeff Wrangler on March 11, 2014, 09:30:26 am ---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.
--- End quote ---
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:
--- Quote from: milomorris on March 11, 2014, 03:26:51 pm ---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.
--- End quote ---
Very true on all accounts.
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