The New Issue: Leo Lerman
Leo and actress Gypsy Lee Rose, courtesy Bonnie Cashin Estate.
April 29, 1973: I never worry about the percentage of feminine in me, the percentage of masculine. I am grateful for whatever percentages I have and try to use these. I am watchful only in outward manifestations. I am protective of the woman in me, and don’t permit her to show in my walk or in my hand movements or in my voice – because she is vulnerable in our world. Less than she was several years ago – but still I must be vigilant and try to keep her within myself, where she nourishes me – imbuing my masculinity with all sorts of wisdoms.
GF: When I first met Leo, he had a beard. When we got onto a bus or something, people would laugh, because it was so unusual. After the hippies came along. Everyone else was flamboyant. He was never flamboyant. He didn’t dress in a particularly – he was a little more conservative. He wore black suits for many, many years.
SP: So was it not until after the Sixties, Gray, that he began to become more –
GF: Relaxed.
SP: Relaxed or colorful or eccentric in the way that he dressed. I wouldn’t call it eccentric.
GF: No, he wasn’t eccentric.
SP: What’s the word – stylish. Up until then he kept it pretty conventional.
GF: Well, he had no money to buy anything. He was very poor for many years.
…
SP: Did you or he, were you ever conscious that you had to disguise your [sexuality] – we talked about being accepted and feeling that you still kind of have to restrain your behavior.
GF: Sometimes we would go to a restaurant – the two of us – and we’d go a number of times and people would say, “What’s going on with those two?†but it didn’t bother us. I never came out as they say. I thought, “Why bother,†in case people didn’t get it.
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.