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PAGE 28 Q-Notes T March 1994 The Palms A Neighborhood Bar Serving The Gay & Lesbian Community for 17 Years Located in Downtown Greensboro Mondays Tuesdays Start The Week Right With $1.50 Well Drinks Country Night Dance Instruction Beginners 8:15pm - Advanced 9:15 Wednesdays Dance To Your Favorite Tunes Thursdays Fridays 1st & 3rd Saturdays 2nd & 4th Saturdays Sundays MetrOnome House Music 'til Sam Pool Tournament 10:00pm With Cash Prizes! Show Night Featuring Your Favorite Entertainers Show Night Entertainment by Your Favorite STARS! Country Show Night Hosted by The Renegades Greensboro's Premiere Western Dance Team Show Night Featuring Your Favorite Entertainers Home of The Greensboro Renegades OPEN 7 NIGHTS A WEEK Tuesdays at 8:00pm Mon., Wed. - Sun. at 9:00pm Your favorite music by your favorite DJs Ed • Darin • Emerson Palms • 413 N. Eugene St. • Greensboro, NC • (919) 272-6307 A Private Club For Members And Their Guests British boys find joy fl^Ue England Sleeps by David Leavitt \'ikiD{; Press, NV $22.00 304 pages by Jonathan Padget Special to Q-Notes Popular author David Leavitt, who’s works include Family Dancing snA. The Lost Lan guage of Cranes, has returned to the literary scene with a moving tale of love across British class barriers in While England Sleeps. The situation Leavitt establishes in his new novel is not unfamihar to many readers: Intelligent, witty, generally dashing young upper-class Englishman struggles to find stable emotional pathway for his homosexu ality in a cruel, rigid class structure. You’ve already met Leavitt’s primary character. Brain Botsford (or at least a very close hkeness), inliterary works like E.M. Forster’s Maurice, Christohper Isherwood’s Berlin Stories, or films like Another Country. Brian is a struggling writer (of course) in 1936 London whose attempts to focus on a successful life are thwarted by the death of his mother, his Aunt Constance’s constant badgering to set him up with a nice young girl, and his own insistent desires for men that find their most frequent release by “cottaging—” or pursuing illicit liaisons in London’s public bathrooms. Brian’s focus finds its greatest challenge, though, when he attends a Communist Party meeting (popular among the friends in his “smart set”) and meets Edward, an idealistic, informally ed ucated subway worker with a quiet under standing and acceptance of his own homo sexuality. So, after boy meets boy, you have boy moving in with boy, boy frealdng out and pursuing girl — thus breaking other boy’s heart, and boy realizing the error of his ways and trying to get the other boy back. Only this time, the brokenhearted boy, Edward, has fled the scene (to fight in the republican forces in civil war-tom Spain, to be specific); and the caddish boy, Brian, must risk his conventional stability to save the remains of his glimpses of tme ecstasy—glimpses that are shattering in the face of fascism’s stag gering rise in late 1930s Europe. Save a few unique twists here and there, the story’s not too unusual. The characters are not extremely complex, particularly Brian and Edward, who come across in Leavitt’s hands as two handsome, squeaky clean WASPs with sex drives and physical endow ments that are quite at home in this realm of “fiction.” So, does Leavitt’s tale deserve a read? Reservedly, “yes;” and it’s mostly due to the fact that Leavitt seems to really believe in his characters and their plight — even when the situations border and cross into the realm of melodrama. But beyond the melo drama also lies a real lyricism that comes through too infrequently — but it’s there — in places you might not expect it. You’d think that in romanticizing a period like 1930s Europe with a gay theme, Leavitt would take the liberty of empowering Brian and Edward’s speech with poetic intimacy. But he doesn’t. Brian and Edward, perhaps in a more realistic portrayal of their society, stumble in an effort to communicate their feelings, and they speak most fluently in the raw energy of the sexual act. But when describing things such as the tunnels of Lon don’s underground rail system or ocean wa ter that evokes Brian’s memory of his jour ney with Edward back from Spain, Leavitt takes full command of his language and wields it like a weapon of emotional war. While England Sleeps should be worthy of most readers’ literary leisure time. Enjoy the vision of an early 20th century gay love story told from a late 20th century perspec tive and be grateful that unlike Forster, whose mixed-class male lovers in Maurice don’t make it any further than their love nest on a boathouse floor (or stable, or something like that), Leavitt is at least willing to send his lovers out to face and fight the world—even at the bittersweet expense of a happy ending. Escort Ring Continued from page 1 were four movies being filmed here and we had clients at all four, from the boom opera tors all the way up to the actors,” Hincemon mused. **rm tired of these straight, married men using me for sex,,," After he arrived in Hollywood and started working forFleiss’ company, Hincemon de veloped a loose personal relationship with the owner herself. “I wasn’t her right-hand man or anything, but I would see her at parties and things. But, you have to remember that I had no idea who Heidi really was. I had no idea that she would become such a huge figure. I just worked for her.” Hincemon stayed in California until last October when he was summarily forced to return to Charlotte to give adeposition against Holliday. He has remained in the area since then, but will be returning to the West Coast after the trial. He has now been subpoenaed to give a deposition against Fleiss. In the short time that he has been back in Charlotte, Hincemon has created a minor stir by threatening to reveal the names of promi nent city officials whom he claims patronized PMA. When asked why he would divulge such information, Hincemon said, “They’re just as guilty as I am. I’m tired of these ‘straight,’ married men using me for sex and then acting like they don’t know me when I need them for something.” Hincemon stated that in the future he hoped to open a legitimate business and put his dealings with Fleiss and Holliday behind him. Q-Notes attempted to reach Holliday for his conunents on the charges, Fleiss and Hincemon, but several calls to his Atlanta business went unanswered. RECORD BARON Stop Fighting the Overcrowded Malls And Buying Overpriced CDs and Tapes CDs $11.99-13.99 Tapes $7.99-9.99 We Also Buy and Sell Used CDs and Albums Bring In Your Unwanted Music For CASH or TRADE Charlotte — Independ. Blvd. 563-9155 Monroe — Union Square 283-1607 Pineville — Tower Place 544-1176 Concord — Walmart Center 788-3913 Gastonia — Franklin Square 861-1300
Q-notes (Charlotte, N.C.)
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March 1, 1994, edition 1
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