hey i can teach you how to swim… if you want

Jack and Neal Gossip

Jack and Neal were Both Hot 

 “Jack was handsome…really he was a hunk, a football star, and a klutz.” “Jack was a big, athletic man, and Neal was very muscular. ” “Jack was always making faces and using funny voices…he was a cutup. But he was also down in the dumps a lot…self-conscious, and terribly shy. That was of course one thing he admired about Neal—Neal was so swift and graceful.” 

Carolyn Cassady, former wife of Neal, and lover of Jack’s

Neal Opens Door Stark Naked 

The inspiration for On the Road had begun when Neal Cassady stepped into Jack’s life, opening the door of an East Harlem apartment stark naked in early 1947. Over the next three years, Jack’s solo hitchhiking adventures and epic transcontinental drives with Neal continued, and the two engaged in a voluminous correspondence whenever they were apart, recounting the events of their hectic lives and revealing their deepest thoughts to each other. [Kerouac described Neal Cassady on their first meeting as “a side-burned hero of the snowy West.”] 

Joyce Johnson, A Kerouac editor, biographer and lover, 

My Desire To See You Again” 

Jack Kerouac and Neal Cassady kept in touch through letters, one of which written in 1948, is an intimate account of Kerouac’s dreams for his future and his excitement to realize them with Cassady as his partner in crime. The topic of the letter bounces around from page to page, switching rapidly from a half-baked plan to buy a ranch to expressions of admiration and love. “There is nothing clearer in my mind than my desire to see you again,” Kerouac writes. * A Match for Jack…Opposites Attract/ * In many ways, the two couldn’t have been more different. Neal was a hustler from an early age, but also a voracious reader of Proust, Spinoza and Schopenhauer, with dreams of being a writer and intellectual. “Jack had a formal education, which Neal envied, but intellectually he was more than a match for Jack, and they enjoyed long discussions on every subject.” “They each had what the other wanted,” says Carolyn. “It made them admire each other more.” “Jack was the observer, Neal the actor. Opposites attract.” 

- Carolyn Cassady

“We’re Strangely Connected” 

 In his 1950-1952 letters to Cassady, written when Jack was in his late twenties and hopelessly smitten with Neal, he composed a plea for love. In his January 10, 1951, letter, Kerouac begged Cassady to recognize how “strangely connected” they were. - Amburn/ * “I Know I’m Bisexual” “I can’t promise a darn thing, I know I’m bisexual, but prefer women, there’s a slimmer line than you think between my attitude toward love and yours, don’t be so concerned, it’ll fall into line. Beyond that – who knows? Let’s try it & see, huh? … “.

Neal Cassady in letter to Allen Ginsberg, April 10, 1947

 "Splatter My Come At You” *

In 1948, in a single letter, Cassidy announced the birth of his daughter, proclaimed how he worshiped “…sex – yes, all; all, sex”; and asked Ginsberg if he could “splatter my come at you…” More dryly, Ginsberg instructed Cassidy to send some of that come “…so i know you’re sincere.”–

Catharine Stimpson, The Beat Generation and the Trials of Homosexual Liberation, 

 "I fucked Kerouac” *

 “As everybody knows, I fucked Kerouac,” said Gore Vidal in a 1994 interview. Vidal noted that almost everything that happened that night [August 23, 1953] except for graphic descriptions of sex, were described almost word for word in Kerouac’s novel The Subterraneans. “I said I was heading uptown…but Jack had other ideas.’: ‘Let’s go get a room around here.’ The first law of sex is never go to bed with a drunk. I was twenty-eight. Jack was thirty-one. Lust aside, we both thought, even then (this was before On the Road), that we owed it to literary history to couple.”– 

 (viadukenorth)

Natasha Lyonne has always been an icon.

Echo & The Bunnymen - Bring on The Dancing Horses

This interview really is a delicious treat for all fans of Hannibal and Hannigram! See below for the choicest Hannigram tidbits:

‘Where we left Will and Hannibal at the cliff and this power tenderness and intimacy that they are experiencing in that moment - that feels like it’s a launchpad. And so I don’t think we can pull back where that is, but we have to continue the trajectory and continue that level of intimate exploration between these two men. And their queer love story, their queer blurring of identities… It’s not so much an evolution as it is an extrapolation of what was intended for Season 4… If you liked the trajectory, you’re going to love where it’s going.’

‘It does become more intimate, and I do see pathways of expressing that intimacy in ways that the Fannibal family will feel validated by.’

‘Whatever is beautiful is what [Hannibal’s] attracted to. And [Mads] ungenders Hannibal’s attraction… He’s Hannibal. He’s genderless. He is manifesting in this form in a way that the devil has chosen… And I think Will’s state of mind in Season 4 is conducive to a greater fluidity than his state of mind in the previous seasons.’

Googling…

‘Do Will and Hannibal end up together?… kiss… die… love each other… kill together… date… Hopefully all of the above.’

‘There’s something about the transportation of a kiss… I feel like [on the bluff] their lips lingered so long, hovering above each other, that… I don’t think we can roll that back. I don’t think that’s authentic. I don’t think it’s realistic for two people to get to that moment, and if their story is continuing, to ignore that from happening. I can see versions of suppression. But, as we all know, anything you suppress is just going to erupt louder and harder.’

‘The arc of their intimacy is continuing on an upward trajectory.’

Summing up Season 4… ‘Lurid erotic intimacy.’

Benediction (2021) dir. Terence Davies

DHRUV SANGHVI & FARUQ MANZOOR Cla$$ | 1.02

Sheryl Lee Ralph Powerful Speech at 2023 Critics Choice Awards

“When I held him, all I could hear was my own heart beating. Did he hear it too?”

Moonlight (2016) dir. Barry Jenkins God’s Own Country (2017) dir. Francis Lee Black Sails (2014–2017) created by Jonathan E. Steinberg Pain and Glory (2019) dir. Pedro Almodóvar Free Fall (2013) dir. Stephan Lacant My Own Private Idaho (1991) dir. Gus Van Sant Hollywood (2020) created by Ryan Murphy & Ian Brennan Weekend (2011) dir. Andrew Haigh Brokeback Mountain (2005) dir. Ang Lee Happy Together (1997) dir. Wong Kar-wai

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON (2022—) ¤ S01E05 “We Light the Way” dir. Clare Kilner

Gael García Bernal & Diego Luna in Y tu mamá también (2001) dir. by Alfonso Cuarón

Henry Cyril Paget, 5th Earl of Anglesey, c. 1900

2020 Holiday Films with Gay/Lesbian Leads

MY OWN PRIVATE IDAHO (1991) dir. Gus Van Sant

The centerpiece of River’s performance, and the film, is a campfire scene with Reeves. Scott Favor takes Mike Waters on a road trip (on a stolen motorcycle) to visit Mike’s brother. At night, sitting by a fire they’ve made, they discuss their respective childhoods: “If I had a normal family and a good upbringing, then I would have been a well-adjusted person,” Mike insists. What’s really on his mind: he’s in love with Scott, and he’s terrified of saying so.

 “I only have sex with a guy for money,” a reclining Scott tells him. “Two guys can’t love each other.”

 A miserable Mike says haltingly, “I could love someone even if I, you know, wasn’t paid for it. And I love you, and you don’t pay me.” Curling up in a ball, he tells Scott, “I really want to kiss you, man.” The scene ends with Scott gently holding Mike, stroking his hair.

“This is the best part in the film,” Van Sant said, “and was chosen by River to be his big scene.” At River’s request, Van Sant scheduled it for the last day of shooting. River rewrote it himself, making it more lyrical and making his love for Scott explicit (in Van Sant’s original script, the relationship was more ambiguous).

 “‘I love you, and you don’t have to pay me’—I’m so glad I wrote that line,” River said. “I think that in his private life, Mike was probably a virgin, so he only relates sex with work.” River had spent some time thinking about situational virginity, and the emotional consequences of having sex when you didn’t want to have it.

— Last Night at the Viper Room: River Phoenix and the Hollywood he left behind by Gavin Edwards