Subject: Submission: A Key West Christmas
From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 22:14:33 -0500

A Submission From

THE NEW LESBIAN 
AND GAY VOICE

1747 "S" Street, Northwest
Washington, DC 20009
Telephone: (202) 483-1311
Facsimile:  (202) 265-9737
Internet: [email-masked]

Hal Gordon has been spectacularly prolific in the past couple of weeks, and
we are pleased to offer his latest, a piece on Christmas at Key West, which
should evoke both nostalgia and fantasy among your readers. Two other works
are in the pipeline, and we will  be forwarding them to you as they become
available. 

This item has not been previously published, and the author would appreciate
your customary payment for such works.  As we have noted to those who have
inquired, where your publication does not customarily pay for articles, you
may publish them gratis.
We would also appreciate receiving information as to when and by whom one or
more of these items are published.

New Lesbian and Gay Voice would appreciate submissions from both established
and fledgling authors on subjects of interest to the general lesbian and gay
community.  We will distribute feature articles, news articles, reviews of
plays and films, and fiction -- both prose and poetry (though we do not
guarantee that the latter will be accepted).  

   New Lesbian and Gay Voice prefers to transmit articles by e-mail, and
would appreciate your communicating -- where practicable -- by  e-mail
showing your preferred address.  

								Hal Gordon
								4853 Cordell Ave. #920
								Bethesda, MD  20814

	MAKING THE YULETIDE GAY IN KEY WEST

	by Hal Gordon

	Key West, Florida.  While the setting sun paints the tropical horizon
lavender and pink, a burly bagpiper in tank top and kilt serenades an
appreciative waterfront crowd with a wheezy rendition of "God Rest Ye Merry,
Gentlemen."

	The gentlemen are very merry, thank you.  It's Yuletide season, and gays
from all over the U.S. and from as far away as Europe and Asia are converging
on our southernmost playground in what is, for many, an annual holiday
pilgrimage.  
  
	Gays have been celebrating Christmas in Key West for twenty years -- ever
since the Curry House, a gracious, wide-verandahed Victorian
bed-and-breakfast on Fleming Street opened as the first all-male, all-gay
guesthouse on the island.  Today there are a score of gay guesthouses in Key
West, many of them restored architectural gems that might otherwise have been
bulldozed to make way for tacky condominiums. 

	The guesthouses are friendly places, offering such amenities as pools, sun
decks, hot tubs, afternoon wine parties, and even delightful little baskets
of goodies, delivered on Christmas Eve as if by elves.  Generous hospitality
makes for loyal patronage, and many gays -- singles, couples, and groups --
keep returning to the same guesthouses year after year, keeping their own
little holiday traditions. 

	Regular visitors are happy to welcome newcomers.  There is little or no
"attitude," and Key West has to be one of the easiest places in the world in
which to strike up new acquaintances.  The people you meet at breakfast may
well end up being your companions later in the day for sailing, snorkeling,
or a sunset cruise followed by dinner and a swing through the bars.  

   	Landlubbers can always choose the beach.  The most attractive is Zachary
(a.k.a. Liz) Taylor State Park.  The park takes its name from a crumbling
antebellum naval fortress that lies just behind the beach itself, screened
from view by a thin stand of pines.

	The beach is a long stretch of white sand, gently lapped by the jade-green
waters of the Gulf of Mexico.  At the far end is a clump of boulders where
bikini-clad musclemen seek out secluded spots for sunning.  Other sun lovers
spread rainbow-flag towels along the shore, jostling elbows with families and
straight couples.

  	Gays and straights mingle freely on the water's edge and elsewhere on the
island.  Indeed, Key West is said to be one of the few places in this country
where one's sexual orientation really doesn't matter.  A stroll along Duval
Street, the island's main drag, offers further proof of this easy
coexistence.  Gay bars, stores, and restaurants, alternate with straight
establishments.  Gays are also active in local politics and business
associations.

	Locals like to joke that Duval Street is actually the longest street in the
world because it runs from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf of Mexico.  That's
true enough, but the street is still little more than a mile in length.  Even
if you haven't rented a bicycle or moped, you can comfortably walk from one
end to the other in less than half an hour.

	If you want to do some last-minute Christmas shopping, however, it could
take you most of the day.  Key West offers the usual hodgepodge of art
galleries, craft stores, T-shirt mills, and other beach resort schlock, but
some of its wares are genuinely uncommon.  The waters off South Florida are a
graveyard of lost treasure ships, and local jewelry shops offer authentic
gold doubloons and pieces-of-eight, as well as cufflinks, necklaces, and
other personal adornments fashioned from recovered Spanish booty.

	If you're looking for something really bizarre, check out Ripley's Believe
It or Not Odditorium.  Want a shrunken head?  You won't be able to purchase
the genuine article here, but the souvenir counter sells nauseatingly
realistic copies for just a few dollars each.  The very thing if you're
looking for a sentimental token to send your ex-lover.

	Gay nightlife centers around three bars on Duval Street, all three just a
short walk from the Odditorium.  The largest is The Copa, which boasts a huge
dance floor and strobe lights.  The 801, a few blocks east, has an airy,
multi-windowed second floor with great views and occasional live
entertainment.  One Saloon, to the west, offers male strippers dancing on the
bar -- making it the liveliest of the three, most nights.  Women are welcome
at Donnie's, also on Duval Street, which features a restaurant, lounge, and
pool tables.
	
	Or you could do some literary bar-hopping at Sloppy Joe's, which achieved
world renown as Ernest Hemingway's favorite hangout.  The great writer's
memory is still green in Key West.  His home, a thick-walled stone structure
that has defied killer hurricanes since 1851, was opened to the public in
1964, and is definitely worth a visit.

  	Hemingway, as you might expect, was a butch decorator.  He purchased most
of the gloomy, massive, 18th Century Spanish furniture himself, including a
grotesque three-legged and three- armed birthing stool on which the
punch-drunk author sat to have his own medical needs attended to in between
rounds of amateur boxing.

	Hemingway is not the island's only celebrity.  The roster of famous visitors
and residents is, once again, a mixture of gays and straights.  In addition
to Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote spent time in Key West, as did Edmund
White.  Leigh Rutledge, author of The Gay Book of Lists and Unnatural
Quotations relocated here recently.  The straights include painter and
naturalist John James Audubon, authors John Dos Passos and John Hersey, poet
Robert Frost, and Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy.

	Harry Truman enjoyed his visits to Key West so much that he once proposed
moving the nation's capital here.  If Newt Gingrich & Co. have their way, the
government might one day be small enough to fit.  Barring such a catastrophe,
however, the peaceable kingdom of gays and straights that is Key West
promises to remain the scene of many festive Yuletides to come. 
         	       
_______________________________
Hal Gordon is a freelance writer based in Bethesda, Maryland.