August 25

Happy birthday, Lenny!

Born 99 years ago, on August 25, 1918, gay* composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein introduced an entire generation to classical music with his televised “Young People’s Concerts” (1954-1972). As a composer of stage musicals (West Side Story), film scores (On the Waterfont) and celebrity conductor of the New York Philharmonic, he was as famous as a rock star, with ego to match.

*Although he married (and fathered children) upon the advice of gay conductor Dmitri Mitropoulos, Bernstein was considered homosexual – not bisexual. Arthur Laurents (Bernstein's collaborator on West Side Story) said that Bernstein was "a gay man who got married. He wasn't conflicted about it at all. He was just gay.” As well, Bernstein’s wife knew of her husband’s sexual orientation before they married.

Personal note from your blogger: Earlier this month I attended the Staunton Music Festival (Staunton, VA), which presented a concert titled “Hollywood Songbook” that featured composers who wrote music for Hollywood films or whose music was used in films. The concert was book-ended by works from gay composers Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein. Who knew that Copland wrote five film scores, or that he won an Academy Award for Best Original Music Score for “The Heiress” (1949)? Notably, Bernstein was nominated for his film score for “On the Waterfront” (1954), but did not win. 

R.I.P.: Leonard Bernstein 1918-1990

Bernstein conducting the overture to his operetta CANDIDE:

Seeing red:

Man nips:

August 24

August 24, 79 AD: Vesuvius Eruption
Preserved Explicit Gay Graffiti

Exactly 1,938 years ago today, the 19-hour eruption of Mount Vesuvius destroyed Pompeii and Herculaneum (Bay of Naples, Italy), burying the towns under 10 feet of ash and pumice that was super-heated to around 900 degrees. Mount Vesuvius spewed forth a deadly cloud 21 miles high, ejecting molten and pulverized material at the rate of 1.5 million tons per second, 100,000 times the thermal energy of the Hiroshima-Nagasaki atomic bombings.

Death was nearly instant, as the volcanic flow burned the flesh off the bones of the inhabitants as it buried them. A study of the ruins of Pompeii (three times the size of Herculaneum) revealed a culture at a time before Christian morals dominated the West. An unexpected find in their excavations was explicit gay graffiti, such as "On this spot Auctus copulated with Quintius."

First-century kink (m/m/f three-way)

Other examples from those gay Pompeiian times:

Weep, you girls.  My penis has given you up.  Now it penetrates men’s behinds.

Amplicatus, I know that Icarus is buggering you.

Secundus likes to screw boys.

I have buggered men.

Beneath layers of muddy ash was a snapshot of everyday life in a Roman resort town, complete with bank receipts, graffiti, "for rent" signs, public mosaics depicting extremely graphic sex, "beware of the dog" signs, steamy murals, and penis decorations on street corners (a sign of fertility). Oh, and there were electoral propaganda messages, too. Imagine that.

But I digress.

 Dudes in denim:

Towel boys: