“Heterosexuality isn’t normal, it’s just common.” This sounds like something you’d say if you’re queer or an LGBTQ ally to your unenlightened relatives at Thanksgiving.
But gay icon, writer, poet, wit, critic and civil rights activist Dorothy Parker issued this putdown of homophobia decades ago.
Parker, who said that she started her day by brushing her teeth and sharpening her tongue, had a saying for every occasion and mood. “I’m too fucking busy, and vice-versa,” she told (then) New Yorker editor Harold Ross when he wondered why a book review was overdue.
I’m thinking about Parker a lot these days. Parker is best known as a member of the “vicious circle” of writers who gathered at the Round Table at the Algonquin Hotel in the 1920s.