The New Issue: Leo Lerman
Leo and Gray Foy. The boys met on April 30, 1948. Leo and his friend Robert Davison threw a party. Though invited as Davison’s guest, Gray caught Leo’s eye. The late editor was determined to make the beautiful young artist his lover. And he did. The men were together until the day Leo died, August 22, 1994.
October 5, 1984: I have written very sparsely about our personal and private lives, the loving life we live here together, the life we have shared (and the parts we could not share without capsizing the boat). What of this rich, loving together life? Surely, if this is an honest book, our life (singular in every aspect, save the parts unshared) must suffuse it. Our life is the deep well that nourishes us. We have been married – what other way to look at our state? – for some thirty-four years, with all the ups and down, a midlife crisis (mine) any “normal†marriage engenders.
…
I have on life, one center, and that is Puss.
SP: Do you think he wanted to be married?
GF: He considered that we were. He didn’t need any kind of authentication. There was never any question in his mind that we were. And even if we had been married, that doesn’t mean that it was going to last. We were just old fashioned. We didn’t feel that way.
SP: I think, though, Gray, that he might have wanted it for financial, for inheritance security.
GF: That is absolutely true. And there was no guarantee of that at all.
JK: And that didn’t happen.
GF: It’s true. If anything could have been done about that, he would have done it. He would have liked to have taken care of me when he was gone.
This book is terrific!
Thanks for that…and yes, read the book.
I loved the current pictures too!
STB
What’s pretty extraordinary about Lerman’s journals — aside from the thoughtful writing and personal honesty — is his first-person candid commentary about still-fascinating cultural figures such as his buddy Marlene Dietrich (who tells LL that she doesn’t like sex, but since men seem to expect it from a sex symbol, however old she’s getting, Dietrich just gives in to get it over with) and Maria Callas (who spills the beans about Ari Onassis’s preference for anal sex and how Jackie O refused to go that far). It’s like an insider’s guide to the realities behind 20th-century culture.