The Gay Nineties
Ever wonder where the expression Gay Nineties derived? Probably not from a place in the Bowery during the 1890’s called Columbia Hall which was derisively known as the:
"principal resort in New York for degenerates"
The Degenerates
How did Columbia Hall earn this metaphorical moniker? How else? Through the willful adoption of metaphorical retrofitted gender identities in which men
“are painted and powdered; they are called Princess this and Lady So and So and the Duchess of Marlboro, and get up and sing as women, and dance; ape the female character; call each other sisters”
Double Lives
The book is filled with many individual accounts of gay men forced to lead double lives in which their secret—but in most cases more truthful—identity is disguised through metaphor. What is interesting about this quote is that the speaker actually couch both his public and private personae in metaphorical terms:
"While my male soul was a leader in scholarship at the university uptown, my female soul, one evening a week, flaunted itself as a French doll-baby in the shadowy haunts of night life downtown.”
Fairy
The author explains the genesis and various subtleties of connotation associated with many now-commonly known slang for homosexuals. What might surprise some readers is the complexity of subtle shades of meaning behind the term “fairy.” What may be even more surprising is how deeply into the mainstream this term had been generalized as far back at the 1920’s as this diary account from 1924 reveals:
"I was seized with that hideous feeling that every person I passed was inwardly mocking me, saying, There goes a fairy, or something worse.”
Queer
Likewise, the original metaphorical dimension behind what became for much of the 20th century the dominant mainstream derogatory term for homosexuality actually has a genesis that was far less specific and much more figuratively expansive:
"Queer wasn't derogatory," one man active in New York's gay world in the 1920s recalled. "It just meant you were different."
