From: NewLGVoice@aol.com Date: Tue, 28 Nov 1995 22:14:33 -0500 Subject: Submission: A Key West Christmas 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: NEWLGVOICE@AOL.COM 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.