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Silverfoxesclub-digest In this issue:
-Akhenaten and Smenkhkare, Introduction (3)
------------------------------------------------------------- In the old days when I traveled the world, I always had with me a book of Tang Dynasty Chinese poems translated by Witter Bynner and called "Jade Mountain." I also carried anything by Agatha Christie. The poems I would read in bed before going to sleep, if I happened to be alone, but Ms Christie was my daytime companion on board the 12-passenger freighters I generally chose for sailings from one continent to another, on board which I was often the only passenger, working my way through the ranks of sailors from the captain on down to the deckhands. How wonderful it was to sit stretched out in a deck chair on a canopied deck, my feet propped on the railing, a cool drink at my side and an Agatha Christie book in my hand, knowing there was a generous supply of men hot to trot at any hour of the night or day. One of my favorite Christie puzzlers was "Death Comes as the End," a thriller she set in ancient Egypt, c. 2200 BC. I love a mystery, particularly an ancient one allowing infinite speculation upon a possible solution. The conclusion drawn from the existing documentation may be arguable, but it cannot be disproved until fresh evidence is, literally, unearthed---dug up archaeologically, that is. The love of mystery and adventure drove me at various times to seek employment at archaeological sites around the world. The scholars running the digs were ever on the lookout for enthusiastic anthropology groupies like me. Another pair of hands? Get to work! I have patiently brushed the stone and soil of diggings in East and Southern Africa, Mexico, India and others I have probably forgot. I think of those times as my glory days of hoping, days of dreaming that I might be in on an important find, but never had the luck. Diamonds and gold were not my goal---only the history of man. I relish historical and other research. My happiest moments, when not in my lover's arms or talking to you guys on the list, are those when I am buried in books or surfing the Web in search of what to write next. I wrote a novel once, which I never sold, and am writing its sequel now---both are on the Web---which require(d) massive research. I spent years buried in the stacks of various libraries around the world to create "The Seventh Eye," as well as walking miles in exotic locales to get the feel I needed to write. It never stops, the researching thing, a habit I shall never break. It stands me in good stead now when I need material to conjure up stories to entertain you. One of my detractors recently denigrated me for trying to "lift the consciousness" of people on the list. My lover and I had a good laugh at that one. "What a jerk!" my baby laughed. He knows why I do this; I do it for ME! Hee hee! This is what I do. It's what I have to do. It's my calling. My life. And if you took away the computer and the pencil and the paper and the Internet and the books and every one of you, I would STILL be writing in my head and enjoying it all alone. When I was nine years old, I once got beaten by my tyrannical father for spending an hour in the bathroom on the toilet, so intensely preoccupied with the notion for a story that I took the pencil I stowed behind my ear and wrote the tale on a whole toilet paper roll---by the yard, that is. He stuffed the unraveled roll down my gullet while arching my head back against the wall to keep my mouth open. He could have strangled me that way, but as the doctors told me in a Reno hospital in 1994 after I survived heart failure three times on the operating table one night, I had the strongest will to live of any patient they had ever seen. I became their poster boy---seven bypasses at one time. It had never been done before. My father knew about my strong will when I was nine. I escaped from his clutches and locked myself in my room. What did I do? I wrote down the goddamned story again, on real paper this time, and submitted it in a writing contest for kids. I won a bicycle---the first prize. My teachers were so proud of me, I sure didn't need him! The principal was a golfing pal of my dad's and told him about my story on the links. My dad was horribly embarrassed because it was the first he had heard. He never forgave me. Very typical of my old man.
Jerry Sloane writes in "A Brief History of Gay Rights" that "King Akhenaten (ruled 1379-1362 B.C.E.) who, although he followed Egyptian custom by marrying his mother and four other women, had an intimate relationship with a man named Smenkhkare. The couple was assassinated by polytheistic (fundamentalist) priests who were upset because Akhenaten introduced monotheism into the culture." Smenkhkare did not appear in the Christie play. There are several facts about Akhenaten's reign which are unclear, in particular the possibility of coregency with his father at the start of his reign or with Smenkhkare at the end. There is also uncertainty about the relationship between Akhenaten and his successors, Smenkhkare and Tutankhamun. It is accepted that his wife, Nefertiti, had six daughters, but no son was ever shown in reliefs. It is possible that both successors (Smenkhkare and Tutankhamen?) were Akhenaten's sons by another wife, possibly Kiya who was 'much loved' of the Pharaoh. The final mystery of Akhenaten was what became of his mummy. Fragments of sculpture and carving from the royal tomb at Akhenaten show that his body was originally put there, but no sign of the mummy remains. It is possible that followers of the Aten Sun God feared for its destruction, which would deny him eternal life, and moved the body to a place of safety, possibly at Thebes. Archaeologists believe they have, however, found the mummy of Smenkhkare---in a woman's coffin! Ah! Such tales these artifacts could tell! It all sounds like homophobia to me. Some of the older members of this list may have already met Akhenaten in a movie called "The Egyptian" which features a galaxy of stars including Edmund Purdom, Victor Mature, Peter Ustinov, etc. This 1954 Technicolor epic tells the tale of a young doctor struggling to survive in pre-Christian times. Through suffering and exile, he gradually gains faith in the concept of one God from the Pharaoh Akhenaten. A thoughtful costume epic that is more realistic than most in its genre, It still pops up on cable TV. Akhenaten is played by an ex-husband of Elizabeth Taylor's, Michael Wilding, who was either bisexual or gay and who quite resembles the carvings identified as the actual king. The film shows him to be benevolent, but no despot, too preoccupied with spiritual matters to be effective as a warrior king. This is an image which dogs him through all history. I saw a TV documentary on his reign recently which indicated that some historians think he may have been a woman. The same applies to the more mysterious Smenkhkare who is now being suggested among gay historians as Akhenaten's younger lover, perhaps much younger. Some religious devotees picture Akhenaten as the "real" Moses, of biblical fame. (If you have not seen "Prince of Egypt," the recent animated film based on Moses' life, you should. It is brilliant in both atmospheric drawing and score.) I am researching all clues I can find to enable me to construct a realistic scenario for these two ancients---Akhenaten and Smenkhkare, possibly lovers in our own Silverfoxes Syndrome---which may help them bridge history and step into your thoughts as men only people like us can understand for what and whom they really were.
(More to come)
Ben Boxer wrote: ...anything by Agatha Christie....
I respond: Christie's second and last husband was an archeologist who was several years younger than she and she spent quite a bit of time on digs in Egypt. She commented that marriage to an archeologist was a good idea because he loved you more as you aged. Ben Boxer wrote: ...working my way through the ranks of sailors.....
I respond:
Ben Boxer wrote:
I respond:
Ben Boxer wrote:
I respond:
Ben, I enjoy these lectures of yours. I studied a
great of history, primarily ancient and early
European, particularly loving mediaeval history, but
as I get older the history of my beloved southwest
with its sexy cowboys becomes my primary interest. I
am a local historian now, though I really didn't see
as much of it first hand as some seem to think. I did
know old men when I was a child who remembered the
Comanche raids of their childhood.
However, to say that the pharoah Akhenaten had a profound influence on Moses is wishful thinking. Today we have a lot more knowledge of Akhenaten, his royal city of Akhetaten and the fact that upon the death of Ay and rise of power of Horemheb as pharoah all reference to Akhenaten was proscribed and he was known for a relatively short time as the "Heretic" and his city, monuments and temples were pulled down and forgotten. Even today we still have yet to fully explore his great Aten temple in the Karnak temple area of Thebes because its exact location is still in dispute. Lastly, looking at the time cronology between Moses and Akhenaten we find that even the most radical experts place them at least 900 years apart. We do know that the Hebrews lived in the Goshen area of the eastern Delta area of Egypt, and that there was a great city PiRamses built there, but did the Hebrews build it, well if they did no one has yet to prove it.. Just when they left is only a matter of conjecture. I hope this stimulates our readers to more fully explore the fascinating subject of Akhenaten, his life and family. I must comment though in parting that Akenaten did not believe in a singular God, only that he was trying to reestablish the Aten as the most high Egyptian God, a position the Aten held during the 4th to 6th dynasties. The father of Akhenaten, Amenhotep III actually began the process of stressing of the Aten as the prime God over Amen long before Akhenaten came upon the scene. With this, I bid all adieu and good night. Ben Boxer comments: I wonder if this kid is descended from Pharaoh Akhenaten or his lover, Smenkhkare? Their love child? Headline: Text:
"There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money and I can't remember what the second one is." Notes on the 25th president of the U.S. and others: Elected to Congress in 1876, McKinley served there until 1891. His faithful advocacy of business interests culminated in the passage of the highly protective McKinley Tariff of 1890. With the support of Mark Hanna, a shrewd Cleveland businessman interested in safeguarding tariff protection, McKinley became governor of Ohio in 1892 and Republican presidential candidate in 1896. The business community, alarmed by the progressivism of William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic candidate, spent considerable money to assure McKinley's victory.
William Jennings Bryan, his opponent in 1896 and 1900, became Secretary of State under Democratic President Woodrow Wilson in 1913, but achieved everlasting fame among zealous Christians in 1925 as aide to the state's prosecuting attorney in the Scopes "Monkey" Trial. In the Chicago “thrill-killing” trial (1924) of Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, two wealthy, gay young men who murdered a 14-year-old neighbor, Bobby Franks, just for kicks, attorney Clarence Darrow saved the defendants from execution by a plea of temporary insanity. Long an agnostic, Darrow then fought fundamentalist religious tenets in the Scopes evolution case (1925). Pitted against "silver-tongued orator" William Jennings Bryan, he defended without success a schoolteacher (John Thomas Scopes) charged with violating a Tennessee statute prohibiting teaching that man descended from other forms of life. Only creationism was allowed to be taught in that state's schools, which Kansas sought to revive in the 1990s and, for a time, did. (Kansas declared a statewide "Scopes Monkey Trial Week" in July 2000 to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the "victory" of creationism over evolution in the Tennessee schools in 1925, overlooking the Tennessee repeal of the law against teaching evolution in 1963. Later in the year 2000, the Kansas law excluding evolution was set aside on the grounds that the state's students were not being properly prepared for national testing.) Although he "lost" the Scopes case, many felt that Darrow's examination of Bryan on the witness stand did much to discredit fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. His chief argument was the Tennessee legislature's crossing the line between church and state to favor a single religion. Bryan, stricken ill and rendered incapable of making his prepared rebuttal, died shortly thereafter. The Scopes trial is the subject of a play, "Inherit the Wind," which was also made into a film in 1955. The movie has been shown in law schools for years although it distorts the case in favor of Darrow---much to the detriment of Bryan whose earlier arguments, coupled with the jury's religious bias, served to win the case for creationism. As for Leopold and Loeb, the two young killers mentioned above, Leopold served a long prison sentence, was eventually paroled in 1958, got a job as a lab assistant in Puerto Rico and married there. He was a scientific genius who spoke several languages by the age of 18. His partner in crime and love, Loeb, was a handsome dude who was murdered in prison in 1936 over a homosexual love affair. Their story, in a watered-down 1950s version, was made into a film called "Compulsion."
In looking over the article above, I can't help but think of several elements of American politics and society today in terms of Yogi Berra's unintentional bon mot: "It's déjà vu all over again!"
------------------------------ Leopold and Loeb popped up in my research today as you may have noticed in an earlier article submitted to the list as the Quote of the Day. Most Americans of my generation have at least vague knowledge of the 1924 "Trial of the Century" which created a furore of public debate over crime and punishment and also made Clarence Darrow the Number One trial lawyer in the country. No anti-semitic cards were played in the press despite both young perpetrators being Jewish, solely because the child victim had been Jewish as well. "Jews killing Jews," as it was phrased at the time, never became a major issue, but homosexuality did. "Babe" (Nathan) Leopold and "Dickie" (Richard) Loeb, both 19, rich kids from the suburbs of Chicago who confessed to the murder of another rich kid, 14-year-old Bobby Franks, were discovered to be gay lovers. That they cruelly murdered their innocent, unsuspecting neighbor was horrible enough in the public eye, but their guilt was compounded by an amateurish attempt to conceal the body's identity. They poured acid on his face to destroy his features. They also poured acid on his penis to try removing the evidence of circumcision which could be used to identify him as a Jew. (The modern use of Hebrew circumcision as a medicalized practice for gentiles dates from about 1865 in England and about 1870 in the US, primarily as a Christian device then thought to prevent masturbation. The American cultural practice of circumcision was not as nearly universal when Bobby Franks was born as it would become when more births took place in hospitals rather than at home.) By 18, Leopold had mastered nine or ten languages, was an advanced botanist, a nationally recognized authority on birds, and a scholar of the classics and philosophy. He was looking forward to a trip to Europe later in the summer, before entering Harvard Law School in the fall. He was smallish, had protruding eyes, often wore glasses, and was considered a nerd by his peers. Loeb was unusually intelligent, though not as brilliant as Leopold. He was handsome. His interests ran more to athletics, dancing, and outdoor life than to intellectual pursuits. At age 17, he was the youngest graduate of the University of Michigan. He also intended to begin law studies in the fall of 1924. Despite their intelligence and the great care they took in disposing of the body, they were incriminated by one small, lethal error. Leopold dropped his eyeglasses when they dumped Bobby's corpse in a culvert, and, finding them, the police traced them to him. Babe and Dickie, as they called each other, were thus undone. Loeb was the instigator of the Franks murder. He was also the actual killer. It was Loeb who lured Bobby into the car they had rented for the occasion, with the promise of showing him a new tennis racquet (Bobby often played the game on Loeb's own court), and hit him on the head with a chisel before stuffing a rag down his throat, letting him die of asphyxiation alone in the back seat. According to Loeb's own statements, he had to spend several minutes after the murder trying to calm Leopold, who kept saying, "This is terrible. This is terrible."
The following testimony was actually whispered between the judge and the lawyers hovering over the judge's bench and accounts for much of the controversy today, more than three-quarters of a century later, over whether or not the two killers actually "had sex"! Testimony from Dr. Healy: THE WITNESS: ....I have the boys' story told separately about an incredibly absurd childish compact that bound them, which bears out in Leopold's case particularly the thread and idea of his fantasy life. For Loeb, he says, the association gave him the opportunity of getting someone to carry out his criminalistic imaginings and conscious ideas. In the case of Leopold, the direct cause of his entering into criminalistic acts was this particularly childish compact. MR. CROWE: You are talking about a compact that you characterize as childish. Kindly tell us what that compact was. THE WITNESS: I am perfectly willing to tell it in chambers but it is not a matter that I think should be told here. MR. CROWE. I insist that we know what that compact is, so that we can form some opinion about It. MR. DARROW: I suggest it be in Chambers. THE COURT: All right. MR. CROWE: Tell it in court. The trial must be public, your Honor. I am not insisting that he talk loud enough for everybody to hear, but it ought to be told in the same way that we put the other evidence in. THE COURT: It would be public, if there was only one outsider in here. If it Is something that is unfit for publication - MR. CROWE: There is no desire on my part to bring out something unfit for publication - MR. BACHRACH: It ought not to be given to the newspapers by this reporter, your Honor. THE COURT: Oh no. This is not for the papers at all. This will not be given to the newspapers, Mr. Reporter. The witness then made the following statement to court, counsel and court reporters: THE WITNESS: This compact, as was told to me separately by each of the boys on different occasions, and verified over and over, consisted in an agreement between them that Leopold, who has very definite homosexual tendencies, which have been a part of his makeup for many years, was to have the privilege of - do you want be to be very specific? MR. CROWE: Absolutely, because this is important. THE WITNESS: (Continuing) - was to have the privilege of inserting his penis between Loeb's legs at special dates; at one time it was to be three times in two months, if they continued their criminalistic activities together, and then they had some of their quarrels, and then it was once for each criminalistic deed. Now their others so-called perverse tendencies seemed to amount to very little. They only engaged in anything else, so far as I can ascertain, very seldom, but this particular thing was very definite and explicit. MR. BACHRACH: So that it need not be repeated, make it clear what the compact was. MR. DARROW: I do not suppose this should be taken in the presence of newspapermen, your Honor. THE COURT: Gentlemen, will you go and sit down, you newspapermen. Take your seats. This should not be published. MR. CROWE: Q What other acts, if any, did they tell you about? You say that there are other acts that they did rarely or seldom? A Oh, they were just experimenting once or twice with each other. Q Tell what it was. A They experimented with mouth perversions, but they did not keep it up at all. They did not got anything out of it. Q And Leopold was - A Leopold has had many years - shall I go into this whole subject while we are here now? THE COURT: Yes THE WITNESS: Leopold has had for many years a great deal of fantasy life surrounding sex activity. That is part of the whole story and has been for many years. He has fantasies of being with a man, and usually with Loeb himself, even when he has connection with girls and the whole thing is an absurd situation because there is nothing but just putting his penis between this fellow's legs and getting that sort of a thrill. He says he gets a thrill out of anticipating it. Loeb would pretend to be drunk, then this follow would undress him and he would almost rape him and would be furiously passionate at the time, whereas with women he does not get that same thrill and passion. MR. CROWE: That is what he tells you? A Surely. MR. DARROW: That is all I believe of that. THE WITNESS: That is what he tells me. And of the other part, of course, Loeb tells me himself. That is exactly what they did, and how he feigns sometimes to be drunk, in order that be should have his aid in carrying out his criminalistic ideas. That is what Leopold gets out of it, and that is what Loeb gets out of it. MR. BACHRACH: Q When in connection with the compact in point of time did they start, with reference to the compact? A Their criminalistic ideas began on the same day, when they began their cheating at bridge. It was on the day when they first made it out. It was the first time in a berth, and it was when Leopold had this first experience with his penis between Loeb's legs, and then he found it gave him more pleasure than anything else he had ever done. To go on further with this, even in jail here, a look at Loeb's body or his touch upon his shoulder thrills him so, he says, immeasurably. *** MR. CROWE: Q How many different forms of perversion did you state yesterday that Leopold practiced on Loeb? MR. BACHRACH: If the court please, if there is any purpose in having the thing done quietly in the court room, the effect is altogether lost if the prosecutor can cross examine openly about the thing and give those things to the public. MR. CROWE: Oh no. No, your Honor. I have no desire to bring this out and give it to the public, but when/a doctor says that boys who agree to practice forms of perversion are merely doing childish things, I disagree with him. MR. DARROW: Well, he spoke about different forms of perversion, as you know. THE COURT: The cross examination of this doctor along that line will take the same form as his direct. It will be done quietly and without any heralding to the world. MR. CROWE: All right. THE COURT: No good can come from it. (Whereupon the following examination was continued out of the hearing of the public generally): MR. CROWE: Q Didn't you testify yesterday that Leopold -- I don't know the exact expression he used - but indulged in some form of cunnilingualism? A No, that is not the term at all. You have got the wrong term. Did you mean malpractice? Q Malpractice? A I said that according to both of their stories they experimented with it, but did not practice it. They gave it up after once experimenting with it, once or twice. Q Didn't you testify yesterday that on several occasions at least Leopold - and when you say "malpractice" you mean that Leopold had Loeb's penis in his mouth, and after once or twice he did not find the same satisfaction in that as he did in the other forms of perversion? A Yes. End of transcript. The relationship between the two was intense. It included sex, as evidenced in the testimony above. According to a prosecution psychiatrist, "Leopold acquiesced in Loeb's criminalistic endeavors and received in return opportunities for certain twisted biological satisfactions." Leopold said of Loeb that he was "jealous of he food he ate and the water he drank" because these "became part of his being." The boys quarreled often. Leopold was apparently irked by Loeb's relative mental inferiority and immaturity. The strange nature of their relationship is revealed in a lengthy October, 1923, letter to Loeb in which Leopold wrote, "When you came to my home this afternoon I expected either to break friendship with you or attempt to kill you unless you told me why you acted as you did yesterday." According to one psychiatrist who examined the boys, the two had a "king-slave relationship" in which Leopold played the slave to King Loeb. Other evidence, however, tends to suggest the relationship was far more complicated than that description suggests. The second item I find of great interest is the description of Dickie Loeb's death. When I first heard of Leopold and Loeb as a teenager, I remember hearing also about Loeb's murder in prison. The facts were, however, suppressed, and even as late as 1960, I was unable to find any resource that would tell me the circumstances under which he died. I had heard innuendoes to the effect that it had something to do with his "being queer," but nothing specific came to light, for me, until I ran across the following information today. On January 28, 1936, Loeb and Leopold had breakfast together in one of their cells at the prison in Joliet. They spent the rest of the morning correcting papers and working on a math class for the prison school. About 11:30, Loeb left for the shower room with a towel and clean clothes. Shortly thereafter, James Day, Loeb's cellmate, ducked out of the lunch line and into the shower room. Day attacked Loeb with a straight razor, causing 58 wounds. Loeb, naked and covered with blood, staggered out of the shower. He was rushed to the prison hospital for blood transfusions. Leopold watched as prison doctors and two Loeb family physicians tried unsuccessfully to save his friend's life. James Day claimed that the razor cuts were made as he attempted to resist Loeb's sexual advances. Ed Lahey, a reporter for the Chicago Daily News, wrote one of the wittiest leads ever in his story describing Loeb's demise: "Richard Loeb, despite his erudition, today ended his sentence with a proposition." Officials disbelieved Day's version of the events in the shower room and tried him for Loeb's murder. Day was acquitted. After his conviction, Leopold had been a remorseful prisoner. He continued his obsession with learning, eventually mastering 28 languages. He taught other prisoners, volunteered for malaria testing, reformed the Joliet prison's library and educational system, and worked in the prison hospital. Following his release from prison in 1958, Leopold migrated to Puerto Rico where he studied birds, taught mathematics at the University of Puerto Rico, and worked as an x-ray technician in a hospital operated by The Church of the Brethren. He commented that "Helping others has become my chief hobby--it's how I get my kicks."
In 1961, he married a widow
who was working in a flower shop in San Juan. In 1971, at 67, he died of heart trouble brought on by diabetes. He willed his body
to the University of Puerto Rico for medical research.
End of silverfoxesclub-digest V1 #226
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