esrosedotblog

EXETER

Watching HULOT'S HOLIDAY today reminded me of 'the old days' in Boston. This film is one of the first foreign films that I ever saw. It was 1954, my first year of school in Boston; MIT. There it is from the air. It hasn't changed a lot from up here. There is the Great Dome there in the middle and Kresge Auditorium over the left. I lived over on the right on East Campus, in the dorms, just out of the picture.

Somehow, I fell in with a bunch of theater queens who knew everything about everywhere to go to see stuff in Boston. I was swept up in their midst. Well, it is no mystery, actually. Birds of a feather and all that.

This was when homos found each other in a primarily secular and not sexual way. It is hard to describe. Sublimation.The Fifties. The homo thing was not discussed and probably not really thought of directly; but there was a strong temperamental affinity. This was the time of camp after all; although we did not know that about it or ourselves. It got named, after the fact, by Susan Sontag who remained a closet lesbian as she outed everyone else. Even straights didn't discuss sex. There wasn't any for anyone.

Also, in those days, it was not a disgrace to be an intellectual. And the lines were blurry between effete and queer. I could not tell you how many of this group were actually gay. I connected with a few in later years; but we were never sure about a lot of the others in the gang. I wasn't all that out myself for quite a long time.

A lot of these kids were also New York jews which meant that they had major attitude. They were also very smart; mostly physics and math majors at first. You had to skate fast to stay up with them. I learned a lot in a short amount of time. The severity scathing comments demanded it. Up or out. It was wonderful life training.

They were a great bunch and, as I say, they took me right in. "No" was not an acceptable answer to an invitation. They, and subsequently I, inhabited the second balconies of all the theaters. We did not miss a pre-Broadway run of anything. We saw the Pops and the Symphony. At that time you could get rush seats to many events. Tickets to shows were at a student rate. There was even an on-campus agency that could get seats when no one else in town could. These were golden times. and never realized how unique and wonderful this was. I got a great education at MIT. Well, the truth is, I barely made it out of there because I actually majored in seeing and doing everything there was to see and do in the city.

This is the Exeter Theater where I probably saw HULOT. There were several art houses in Boston; this was, after all, the period where the influx of international cinema was at its peak. Sadly those times are gone. But, at it's zenith, the Exeter was where we saw all the Ealing comedies with Alex Guiness et. al. and all the Bergmans. I remember seeing my first filmic blow job in a movie there--ONE SUMMER OF HAPPINESS. This is especially notable since the Exeter was also a church; Spiritualists. They made their nut on movies and were obviously not bothered by the content. Some church. I don't think they were x-ians.

I have often wondered, as one does, what my life would have been like had I gone to Penn State or some other awful place in a nowhere location with a bunch of small town rube kids like myself. I am sure I would be happy and life would have been fine but I would never have seen HULOT or that Swede in SUMMER getting done. I sure would never ever had sat in the dark at the Exeter and imagined a totally differennt life, which I have, for the most part, managed to live out.