The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    jollyroger's picture

    Do Laboutins come in size 15?

    By jollyroger on Sat, 04/28/2012 - 7:12am |

    The last time I bought sneakers (Nikes, sz 15), the cute girl at the register asked me "Are these for you?  Oooh, junk!". (Wherein the noumena of the large footed.)

     

    I do not bring this up in an act of shameless self-promotion (ed note: Yeah, right!) but as the result of random thought associations provoked by the fortuitous juxtaposition in the Times of two stories from what we may (without condescension) call the frontiers of sexual behavior.


    The first concerns a man who, inter alia, sought sex in closed places.

     

    In his toolkit for achieving more and better orgasms, was 30K in high fashion apparel, including the cited iconic high-heeled pumps.

     

    The second (and far more interesting story) is about laboratory confirmation of the old "closeted queen on an anti-gay mission trope". (If we are free-associating to government spies and high-heeled pumps, can J. Edgar Hoover be far from mind?)

     

    What do we learn from this?

     

    1.  Don't cross dress if you have feet longer than 12".

     

    2. Deforming your instinctive sexual promptings by superimposing some archaic morality will end wth you confined to a duffel bag, virtually or F2F.

     

    Comments

    After reading 'bout this it in today's dead tree NYT and looking at the pix, I got to thinking there's something intriguing about John F. Burns opting to cover this story his royal journalist self. I recalled Iraqi blogger Salam Pax describing first meeting Burns as he received visitors such as Salam in his Baghdad hotel room wearing nothing but a towel around his hips.

    I've also got to say that claustrophilia is a new one to me.

    Wondering too if someday they are going to find the British kinky gene?


    by artappraiser on Sat, 04/28/2012 - 10:58am

    Extra added ponderings: why didn't he support English designers with the contents of his closet? Any proper gentleman born to the manor would. Suggests a poseur trying to be something he was not. Or conflicted feelings about the proper attitude of a British gentleman towards the French.


    by artappraiser on Sat, 04/28/2012 - 11:09am

    burns by line struck me too I did not know he was. such. a freak.

    by jollyroger on Sat, 04/28/2012 - 2:29pm

    Doggone it Jolly! I can never resist these unsolved death mysteries. I must say the investigators get a medal in the No Stone Left Unturned department for trying to see if the deceased could possibly have locked himself in the bag.

    So many interesting clues...the one that makes me believe that this is a murder rather than a suicide is the presence of the clipping from the Observer. Would a person with the deceased's technical skills and known fastidiousness have clipped an article from a dirty, inky newspaper and left it lying about? It seems more likely that the deceased would have printed it, slipped it into a plastic sleeve and placed it neatly on the corner of his desk--and even more likely that the clipping was placed there by a person far less tidy in nature, in an effort to imply that the deceased was an unhappy gay man whose fabulous taste in clothing had brought him little joy or satisfaction.

    But to my way of thinking, this is a fellow who had at least to some extent come to terms with whatever archaic morality had been imposed on him, and wasn't afraid to spend freely on enjoying whatever predilictions...er...arose as a result. If I had $30k worth of awesome high-end clothing you'd never catch me ending it all stuffed in a bag. And I'm pretty sure I'd get an "Amen, Sister" from the deceased on that one.

    As to the study--what an elegant approach and result!

    Of course, we all know teh Journal of Personality and Whatever is run by gay communits who are all just trying to make godfearing Mericans look bad.


    by erica20 on Sat, 04/28/2012 - 4:50pm

     locked himself in the bag.

     

    ​Factoring in normal human discouragement after repeated failure, it is a trihute to their forensic dedication that they kept trying and trying.  I suppose if they ended up with 200 failures, but on the 201, "success!", then  what?


    by jollyroger on Sat, 04/28/2012 - 10:07pm