Michael Hone

Mediterranean Homosexual Pleasure Michael Hone

The discussion of homosexuality over so huge an area as the Mediterranean means draconian choices, but I've set out to fully cover the past and the present, from Gilgamesh to Caesar, from Gloeden's Taormina nude-boy models to Truman Capote and his Sicilian hustlers, from the Egypt of the pharaohs to the homosexual village of Egyptian Siwa, home of the Oracle dear to Alexander the Great. We'll honor the love of David for Jonathan and discover the most pro-gay city in the world, Tel Aviv, as well as the Morocco of Paul Bowles and Gore Vidal, the Capri of Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene, Malta and its Knights, the Templars on Rhodes and Richard Coeur de Lion before the gates of Jerusalem. We'll go to the Peloponnese, homeland of the very-first homoerotic act of love between a boy and a god, that of Hyacinth and Apollo, and we'll learn the origin of the Janissaries and the amorous exploits of Persian Cyrus the Younger. We'll visit today's Venice, and see what's going on, sexually, in twenty-first century Rome. Our trek will take an unexpected turn in Myconos, a homosexual paradise I'm more than familiar with. The subjects listed in the Contents are not vignettes, they are the detailed essentials--every major event, every anecdote--of what has made the Mediterranean the world's past and present prime source of homosexual adventure and pleasure.