\n<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was his defense, and that\u2019s what he did for the rest of his life,\u201d Fortney, 77, told me.<\/p>\n
The Diverting Tinkerbell: It\u2019s a time-tested survival strategy that gay men like Taylor learn quickly and use generously as needed. Butch he was not. Then again, nobody showed me you could be gay and masculine. On \u201cLetterman,\u201d Taylor\u2019s flamboyance is a shocking contrast to all those hooting audience members in Ray-Bans, the same kind of man who laughed at his jokes when he was a boy \u2014 his best and most immediate way of avoiding their blows.<\/p>\n
Fortney said that when people assumed Taylor was gay, he bristled at the perception, even as he emceed AIDS benefits and, in 2005, served as the grand marshal<\/a> of the Pride parade in Washington, D.C., Taylor\u2019s hometown.<\/p>\n Take what happened at a coffee shop when a young fan thanked Taylor for being out.<\/p>\n \u201cHe said, \u2018You\u2019ve made things so much easier,\u2019\u201d Fortney recalled. \u201cAll Rip gave him was a smile and a nod like, fine, now you can leave. He would not accept what an influence he was.\u201d<\/p>\n Lynde\u2019s story is more tragic. Joe Florenski, who with Steve Wilson wrote the Lynde biography \u201cCenter Square,\u201d<\/a> said the comic was an overweight boy who struggled with being made fun of until he found a solution.<\/p>\n \u201cHe could get laughs for being funny, not for being the chubby kid,\u201d Florenski told me.<\/p>\n Lynde never officially said he was gay, although he was out to close friends. His arrests for public intoxication made the news<\/a>, as did a 1965 accident<\/a> in which James Davidson, a 24-year-old actor friend, fell to his death from a ledge outside Lynde\u2019s San Francisco hotel room.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n