Who's afraid of gay romance? (notes from a blond).

If you've gotten this far back in this issue of the magazine, you're probably wondering if gay people think of anything besides sex. Of course not. We're just like straight people. That's why they're so afraid of us in locker rooms. They know we're thinking what they're thinking, only there is a possibility we're thinking it about them. You'd think this would cheer them up, being admired and lusted after, but it just scares most of them because it's yet another in the long list of nameless dreads they ate forced to deal with, in this instance with their pants down.

This may be one of the real reasons there have been no big gay love stories in the movies. Since the majority of filmmakers and film audiences ate straight--hell, the majority of everything is straight except in certain zip codes--the majority of love stories that involve gay people almost always feature one person who is discovering his true sexual identity. This is the character the straight audience can identify with--the fearful one, feeling his way.

Straight audiences have no idea who does what when it's two men of two women, and it's unsettling. But they can relate to somebody coming out because that person is dealing with a nameless dread, at least from a straight point of view.

We may never get a really big gay love story that changes that formula. Jeffrey, Paul Rudnick's very funny look at celibacy during the plague years, is one of the few successful general-distribution movies featuring a group of adults who are securely out. Of course, Jeffrey was a comedy with a love-story twist, not a flat-out romance.

The American Film Institute list of the funniest American movies has a number of pictures with gay sensibilities. Number 1, Some Like It Hot, is about two straight guys in drag, and a bunch of other drag comedies made it as well: Tootsie, Mrs. Doubtfire, Victor/Victoria.

But you won't find so many on AFI's list of all-time top love stories. In fact, you won't find any. I've always been a bit suspicious of the institute's lists. I find it hard to believe there are 15 pictures better than All About Eve, but 16th is where it places on AFI's all-time top 100. The institute's love story list is all heterosexual--even King Kong (24) is boy-gets-girl, boy-loses-girl. Within the top 10, the screenplay for The Way We Were (6) and the original book of West Side Story (3) were written by a gay man, Arthur Laurents. The film versions of Tennessee Williams's A Streetcar Named Desire (67) and Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (89)--two plays by gay playwrights who were often said to be writing stories about men disguised as stories about women--both made the list. Harold and Maude, a truly weird saga by the late and out Colin Higgins, turns up at 69. The great George Cukor ranks 12th with My Fair Lady, which is not about any of his boyfriends--two points above The African Queen, which isn't either.

There's love among the physically challenged (Coming Home, 78) and among the impotent (Bonnie and Clyde, 65). The first time a black person hits the list is 58, and then it's the interracial Guess Who's Coming to Dinner--blacks with each other happens only once, in Porgy and Bess, all the way down at 92 (and Sidney Poitier is the guy both times).

Animated characters fare better. Beauty and the Beast is 34th, and Lady and the Tramp sneaks in at 95, proving that even cartoon dogs are more acceptable as lovers than gay people. Rock Hudson and Doris Day, the big romantic-comedic duo of my childhood, squeak in at 99 in Pillow Talk, perhaps because it's tough for some people to buy in hindsight. But Giant doesn't make the list at all, even though it's wildly romantic.

Clearly, this is going to be one of the tougher nuts for us to crack. But I think I see a way. We do a sequel to the number 1 movie on the list--Casablanca 2. We open on Rick and Louis walking into the fog and the beginning of their beautiful friendship. Then everything goes Technicolor, and I think you can imagine what happens next.