Sad farewell to all those gay times

One of the men in an informal group at a cocktail party had just described, with animated gestures that set his balderdash swirling in its glass, what a good time he had experienced at a local night club the night before.

"My, my," said one of his listeners, “you do know the gay places, don't you?"

The first speaker's smile turned immediately to a scowl, and an unmistakable look of displeasure 'came upon his face.

"Waddya mean by that crack?" he snarled, taking tentative steps towards the other man, whose eyes, by the way, had flown open in horror as he realized what he had said.

There was a lot of pushing and shoving, and more than a few angry words exchanged, before the first speaker had been placated and soothed sufficiently by explanations and apologies.

The word "gay" has been abducted by a small group and removed from common usage. It has been hijacked right out of the everyday language in midflight, and given an entirely different meaning by its kidnapers.

Anyone who would use the word now in its old, innocent meaning had best employ it carefully, weighing all possible implications before bringing it into play. Cautious people probably will choose to look for a substitute word rather than risk misinterpretation.

This word casualty in the continuing assault on the language has not gone unmourned in the land that gave us the English tongue. A writer for the Times of London dwelt on the loss in a recent piece. Philip Howard wrote:

"It has recently become impossi-

George E. Condon

ble to describe our cheerful and lively friends as gay without risk of misunderstanding. For some time longer it has been impossible to describe our eccentric and funny friends as queer without the risk of misunderstanding.

"Gay is a friendlier, less hostile epithet for our homosexual friends than queer, and it has established itseif. The old meaning survives in the noun, gaiety, and perhaps in the ancient Suffolk dialect in which 'gays' mean the pictures in newspapers, magazines and picturebooks.

"It is queer that such an inoffensive old three-letter word, for which there is no exact synonym. could have acquired a wholly new meaning and dropped its old one so rapidly. Over the past five years the new use has grown from coy euphemism to accepted slang as both adjective and substantive, as in Gay Liberation.

"This interesting process has created possibilities of double entendre and other confusion. It is now difficult to use the old cliche, 'with gay abandon,' or to say 'it's a gay day.' Neither of these is a great loss."

The English writer does point out, however, that "all those sentimental pop songs of the Edwardians and the Twenties, in which gay was almost as much a key mood word as moon and June and love, have taken on enigmatic new connotations."

It occurred to him also that "The French diplomat who in 1918 made the comment to Sir Thomas Beecham on modern dancing, "Their faces are so sad, but their bottoms are so gay,' would need to rephrase his remark today, or risk being grossly misunderstood."

A lot of old friends had to abandon their old identities and seek less ambiguous descriptions as a result of the cruel corruption of a single simple word. The gay troubador today sings and strums under a new name, if, indeed, he sings and strums at all. And if the gay caballero still rides about wearing that fancy embroidered cape and the velvet hat with flowing ostrich feathers, he'll no doubt have good need of that sword at his side.

What it comes to, I suppose, is that the people who used to be gay in the old sense of the word now have got to be downcast and downright defensive.

It is all terribly queer.