Join with Queerty as we pay homage to Quentin Crisp, who six years ago this week was called by the Lord but opted for hell because he heard the devil had a big one and was poking bottoms with a pitchfork while using it. Quentin Crisp was born queer in England on Christmas Day, 1908. Her Majesty the Queen avoided all comparison with him, knowing her quips and her hairstyles were inferior.
In his twenties, he determined to live “not merely as a self-confessed homosexual, but a self-evident one.” Part and parcel of his mission was “making the existence of homosexuality abundantly clear to the world’s aborigines”. Quintin’s magnum opus was his life, though his autobiography was none too shabby. Titled The Naked Civil Servant, it was adapted for a television film starring John Hurt in 1975.
He later developed that material into a one-man show, An Evening With Quintin Crisp. As in his earlier days he had worked as a prostitute, there was no small number of people claiming to have enjoyed An Evening With Quintin Crisp. One of his most famous quotes would eliminate the need for relationship advice columns, were it to be universally heeded. “The formula for achieving a successful relationship is simple: you should treat all disasters as if they were trivialities but never treat a triviality as if it were a disaster.” Upon his death, Quintin Crisp was cremated and his ashes were scattered over Manhattan.
