Harry Hay on the right next to Mitch Walker then Don Kilfefner touching Mitch and John Burnside at Wattles Park, Hollywood, 1978.
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Don himself promoted this image for a calendar that benefits the LGBTQ History Project, which is ironic considering Don’s anti-historical and anti-psychological attacks on, and erasure of, Mitch over many decades.
Doing a little active imagination with this photo, I like to imagine that Mitch (28 and looking rather handsome!) is regarding Don with an appraising and skeptical eye. Don looks ancient (he’s 41 in this photo!!) and seems beatifically smarmy and smug (as does Burnside) with his hand insouciantly draped in Mitch’s inner thigh. I wonder about the psycho-sexual dynamics happening there between the two men and can easily imagine unconscious attraction-rejection dynamics motivating Don’s long-simmering resentments over the decades. If I were a 41 year old man who looked like that, with my hand draped in between the thighs of a 28 year old who looked like THAT, I “might” have some feelings, too…(purely hypothetically, of course…I don’t like your tone). This unaddressed “daddy/son” complex of Don’s has certainly played itself out publicly over the years, with this oft-repeated insistence that young(er) men should pay him (sorry, “elders”) obeisance (sorry, “respect”) for his ego and sexual gratification (sorry—I keep doing that!—I mean “wisdom and contributions to the cause”!). My own connection with gay Eros may be shaky, but I know violent acting out and repressive sexual tension when I see it.
For his part, Harry looks like a grumpy old man, hands clasped protectively over his groin but drawn closer into the photo by Mitch’s hand on his far shoulder. Of course, these are all my projections; I was not yet 2, but how fascinating to be able to interpret an historical document like this. In composition, the photo reminds me of the dynamism of da Vinci’s Last Supper, or of a Carravaggio, where everyone is up to something and all the psychologies simmer below the surface of the image…