Living in the post-Stonewall era, we're all familiar with famous gay people. If asked, I bet we could all think of at least 5 notable LGBT folk, and usual suspects Ellen DeGeneres, George Michael, or Barney Frank would top the list.

Yes, yes, they're all well and good, and have offered the own contributions to the overarching queer narrative, for better or for worse. There are countless other gays, however, who have been forgotten over the years. In this new series, we offer you 10 homos of historical importance.

Today's topic: Arts & Letters!

Herbert Huncke, 1915-1996: Born in Massachusetts to a middle class family, Huncke embraced the vagabond lifestyle and lived it up on New York City's 42nd Street, which was at that point still a hotbed of gay hustlers, drug dealers and other untouchables.

It was there that Huncke not only fed his insatiable appetite for drugs, mostly heroin, and befriended Jack Keroauc, Allen Ginsberg and fellow writer William S. Burroughs, who celebrated Huncke in Junkie. Huncke also made an appearance as the character Elmer Hassel in Kerouac's On the Road.

Though Kerouac and those other writers are known as the founders of the Beat movement, the genre's name wouldn't even exist if it weren't for Huncke, who coined the term, which, in his eyes, could be equated with being beaten down, as in, "I'm beat like socks."


Claude McKay, 1889-1948: If Herbert Huncke's the unsung hero of the Beat movement, Claude McKay may very well be the dark horse of the Harlem Renaissance.

Though he became famous in the United States, McKay got his start in his homeland of Jamaica, where he was a police office, poet and publshed his first collection in 1912, at the age of 23. It wasn't long until McKay traveled to the United States to study at Tuskegee University in Alabama. So repulsed by the segregation and blatant racism in the area, McKay transferred to Kansas State University before relocating to Harlem.

It was uptown, baby, that McKay made a true impact, publishing a number of poetry collections and three novels, including Home to Harlem, which depicted the neighborhood in all its gritty, sexy glory and garnered some fierce critiques from fellow writers, like WEB DuBois, who said he needed a bath after reading the "lascivious" book.

In addition to his literary work, McCay helped found the pro-Communist African Blood Brotherhood, which opposed black nationalist Marcus Garvey's capitalist bent. McKay would later become disillusioned with Commie doctrine and became a Catholic. He'd likely take a different track today.


Ethyl Eichelberger, 1945- 1990: New York's theater scene owes a tremendous amount of gratitude to Eichelberger, a drag performance artist born James Roy Eichelberger.

After studying acting at the Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island, where he worked for six years, Eichelberger moved to New York City, and began putting on his own shows. And they were spectacular: fire swallowing, somersaults and fabulous wigs were all incorporated into his experimental one-woman shows about the feminine spirit, oppressive politics and mythical struggles.

Eichelberger became quite famous in the 1980s, when he helped shape the East Village's experiemental theater scene Sadly, he committed suicide in 1990, due in part to endless pain caused by the HIV he kept secret for so long.



Patrick Angus, 1953-1992: Not many of Angus' painter peers appreciated his work, which depicted the "unseemly" side of gay life, like Triple-X movie theaters, unapologetic sexuality and cruising.

It wasn't always like that, though: Angus began his career painting portraits of friends. It wasn't until after moving to New York, and seeing that gay life wasn't always rainbows and lollipops, that Angus began using his craft to exorcise feelings of isolation, sexual frustration and economic division. Artistic leaders shunned his work as a negative depiction of gay living, and Angus would have been swept under the rug had it not been for publisher Robert Patrick, who began including Angus' work in the LGBT literary magazine, Christopher Street. Dubbed the "Emily Dickinson of painting," the once-ostracized Angus became a hit, and died knowing that his work was being collected. He has since been a bit forgotten, and I think deserves a revival.

Roger Casement, 1864-1916: Roger Casement career doesn't technically count as "arts and letters." He was an Irish national who worked as a British consul in the early 1900s, traveling around the world, most notably the Congo and Peru, to document human rights abuses. He did; he also used his time abroad to sample local men. His secret "black diary" keeps vague, yet completely erotic, record of his encounters. "Carlos... big, long thick. Wants awfully and likes very much," writes Casement of a trick.

Though we may find Casement's words enticing, they ended up sealing his fate: the Brits put him on trial for treason after Casement, disgusted by the empire's abuses around the world, joined up with Irish nationals and tried to strike a deal for German aid. Once discovered, so too were his diaries, and his enemies gleefully used Casement's homosexual dalliances to condemn him to death.

Alfred Jarry, 1873-1907: French surrealist writer Alfred Jarry was the life of the party. Known best for Ubu Roi, his completely scandalous and lascivious play about a hapless dictator, Jarry also had a reputation for loving absinthe. He loved the liquor so much, in fact, that legend has it Jarry, an avid cyclist, once painted his face green and rode around Paris to display his alcoholic adoration.

Perhaps it was the absinthe that helped Jarry evolve from the prevalent symbolist movement to absurdity, a move illustrated in his 1895 play, Caesar Antichrist, which was about Jesus coming back as a draconian emperor, a theme Ubu Roi continued to explore one year later. Though people were outraged by Jarry's naughty language and political positions, he inspired an entire movement of writers and playwrights, including Andre Gide and Marcel Duchamp.



Mangus Enckell, 1870-1925: Like Patrick Angus, Mangus Enckell used his art to explore masculine eroticism, although with far more touching results. Discarding the naturalism so popular in the day, Enckell instead embraced Symbolism and Post Impressionism to create portraits of naked, reclining men whose unapologetic sexuality caused, and still does cause, quite a stir. The most notable of Enckell's contributions, queerly, can be found at the Tampere Cathedral in Finland, where Enckell painted an altar mural that includes two men holding hands, although the Church doesn't highlight that particular artistic detail.


Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, 1840-1893: Even the biggest homophobe can't deny the importance of Russian composer Tchaikovsky, who brought the world classic pieces like The Sleeping Beauty, Swan Lake and, yes, The Nutcracker.

Though living in a time when homo sex was clearly a no-no, and once part of a short-lived marriage, most scholars agree that Tchaikovsky ended up embracing the man-on-man action, and used it as inspiration throughout his too-brief career.

I wonder what the Christian right, many of whom watch Nutcracker every Christmas, would have to say about Tchaikovsky's gay ways.


Pierre Seel, 1923-2005: Seel may actually be one of the most well-known people on this intentionally obscure list. Or maybe he's the one whose sexuality matters most: the French Catholic found himself carted off to a concentration camp after reporting a watch stolen from a well-known gay cruising grounds.

While there, he was not only starved, beaten and sexually abused; he also had to watch as his lover was torn asunder by dogs. The Germans later blackmailed him into joining the Gestapo and sent him into the killing fields. He survived, returned home, married and tried to the past behind him, thanks in large part to drugs and alcohol.

It wasn't until the early 1980s that he began telling his story, becoming the first, and only, French national to speak out about anti-gay Nazi persecution. His tale has been collected in I, Pierre Seel, Deported Homosexual. It's not for the faint of heart.


F. Holland Day, 1864-1933: F. Holland Day totally revolutionized the world of art by elevating photography to the level of "fine." Though he got his start as a publisher, Day's career took a fortuitous turn at the turn of the century, when the Royal Photographic Society held a show in his honor. He would soon be the most famous photographer in the world, although not everyone loved his work.

Known best for his portraits of lithe, naked young men, Day elicited either charmed wonder or disgust. One critic claimed his pieces were the produced of a "diseased imagination."

Others, meanwhile, embraced his sensual symbolism, even his show called The Seven Words, in which he himself dressed as the crucified Christ and acted out his final seven statements, including, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" and "It's finished!"