I was born and raised in Austin and the one thing I’ve never gotten used to are the ridiculously hot summers. So when the thermometer hit triple digits for the 30th day in a row I started planning my escape…
To New York City (cue cowboys: New York City?!?)
What better way to honor Stonewall’s 40th than to go to the place where the modern gay rights movement began.
Although I have yet to make it to the West Village, I have already been leaping about the city going to museums and enjoying all that this queer place has to offer a Jewboy from Texas.
And I’ve been finding the queer content in the most unlikeliest of places. Take: Sappho! A 19th century marble statue of the infamous poet from the Isle of Lesbos.
Sculpted by the Comte Prosper D’Epinay, Lady S looks positively ravished and ravishing. The poet is holding her lyre and poets wreath in her left hand and um… well… grabbing her breast with her right hand. (Click above pic for more shots.)
Is she in heat? In the sculpture court of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (one of the most conservative art institutions in the country)?
I’d like to think so and I present it to you queerbos. Oh! To be a lady caught in the crosshairs of that intent gaze! It’s just positively lezbotronic. There’s more to come: Kenneth Anger, Gay Ice Cream, Rocky Horror, Fred Halsted, Queer Archives, the Big Booty Bakery, and you know… Stonewall.
Wish you were here!
This article appears in July 17 • 2009.