Having labored in the fields of journalism, private investigation, and criminal-defense law, I have spent some time with Larry Craigs--people whose private sexual proclivities threatened, sometimes shattered, their tortuously constructed public personas.
Today I regard these people most with compassion. People are rarely more vulnerable than in their sexuality. And those the most furtive, are those the most vulnerable.
MissLaura's front-page piece on Craig, "Compassion and the Closet," struck me as exactly right. I'd like here to try to work a minor variation on it. For I, like MissLaura, believe it a core "Democratic value" to secure sexual serenity even for those implacably opposed to us.
And, though tempting as it sometimes is, I believe it base to mock, to derive pleasure from, the exposure of, as John Le Carre once put it, "a man whose very dream of love, till now vested in secrecy, has suddenly become public, and ridiculous."
As Idaho Republican Senator Larry Craig's life quickly crumbled around him, I found myself recurrently drawn to two works of art: Van Morrison's 1968 lp Astral Weeks, and Lester Bangs' 1978 essay about it.
The state in which Bangs found himself when he first heard the album precisely describes what I imagine Craig himself is experiencing about now:
I was a physical and mental wreck, nerves shredded and ghosts and spiders looming and squatting across the mind. My social contacts had dwindled to almost none; the presence of other people made me nervous and paranoid. I spent endless days and nights sunk in an armchair in my bedroom, reading magazines, watching TV, listening to records, staring into space.
Bangs' piece centers on the two songs at the heart of Morrison's album: "Madame George" and ""Cyprus Avenue." It is the former that, to me, sounded last week as a requiem for Larry Craig.
In Bangs' frank phrasing, the 10-minute, slow-march, "whirlpool" of "Madame George" concerns "a lovelorn drag queen," smitten with "little boys," who "are only too happy to come around as long as there's music, party times, free drinks and smokes, and [who] only too gleefully spit on George's affections when all the other stuff runs out."
Now of course there is no indication that Craig crossdresses, nor--much--that he was drawn to underage males. The connection is not as superficial as that.
But it is a fact that Larry Craig was, and is, gay. Woefully, lonesomely gay. Shammed in a marriage entered into in 1982 in a panic that he might be outed in that season's Congressional page scandal. Stalled into expressing his suppressed sexuality in furtive restroom encounters.
And it is also a fact that everyone in a position with the need to know, in both the state and national Republican parties, knew Larry Craig was gay. And it is a fact that all these hotshot GOoPer "little boys" were content to "come around," sharing with ol' Lar the "music, party times, free drinks and smokes" . . . just so long as Larry toed the party line, and successfully kept his little self secret. But just as soon as that raw Minnesota cop said "come along," all Larry's usefulness . . . well . . . it all "run out." And all the hotshot GOoPer boys "only too gleefully spit on [him and his] affections."
And, as in "Madame George," our empathy should flow most naturally to Craig. Not to those who used and abused him.
A word about Craig's "crime." There was some talk on this site, in the early days, that we should "frame" Craig's transgressions as a "crime."
Well . . . first, I think it wise we examine the beams in our own eyes, before picking at that particular mote.
Anybody here had sex before the age of 18? In most states: a "crime."
Thought so.
I was in truth disheartened to learn, via the crumbling of Larry Craig, that cops still pursue these sorts of public-restroom stings. I thought that kind of twisted-knicker Victorian waste of taxpayer funds went out with the late 1970s. Even in my red-state area of northern California the cops don't cruise looking to pop married "heterosexual" men furtively, but "publicly," seeking truer love. Here, in fact, there's an entire section of the town's main park that is the province of those who meet to couple in the male version of "the love that dare not speak its name." The police enter in only when sounds a legitimate cry for help.
And--please--this ferment about men feeling "threatened" when approached stall-to-stall by other men seeking sexual congress? I've had men wave their fingers, wiggle their toes, out from under the neighboring stall. What did I do? Ignored them.
Frankly, I am far more offended, in public restrooms, by men who leave fecal matter smeared on the seat, or plug with paper and piles the bowl awash to the brim, than I am by some poor Craig-like sadsack wiggling his digits from the neighboring stall.
Larry Craig's life is over. He'll go home to Idaho, to a hollow immurement, to a ghostly afterlife, attended to by his Potemkin wife. All who formerly adored him, will shun him now. People will, at best, avoid him. At worst, they will laugh in, curse him to, his face. His insides have been turned out, and displayed to the world. He is an object of disgust. To his former companeros, who despise his blundering. To his former opponents, who despise his hypocrisy. His "very dream of love, till now vested in secrecy, has suddenly become public, and ridiculous." His torment is insurmountable, and unrelenting. Tonight, Larry Craig may be the loneliest man in the world.
He put himself there. There's no denying that. But we shouldn't, can't, feel glad about that.
First from simple compassion. Second because sexuality is a harsh mistress. Look hard and true enough into your own life, lived or wished, and you'll no doubt find a place, where, if only for a moment, you might feel something like akin to him. For the raw truth is, sex makes fools of us all. And anyone, pace a tantric saint, who is proud of his or her entire sexual history, real or imagined, doesn't really have one.