The Ballad of the Sad Young Men

All the sad young men
Sitting in the bars
Knowing neon lights
Missing all the stars

All the sad young men
Drifting through the town
Drinking up the night
Trying not to drown

Sing a song of sad young men
Glasses full of rye
All the news is bad again
Kiss your dreams goodbye

All the sad young men
Seek a certain smile
Someone they can hold
For a little while

Tired little girl
Does the best she can
Trying to be gay
For a sad young man

Autumn turns the leaves to gold
Slowly dies the heart
Sad young men are growing old
That's the cruellest part

While a grimy moon
Watches from above
All the sad young men
Play at making love

Misbegotten moon
Shine for sad young men
Let your gentle light
Guide them home again
All the sad young men

--Fran Landesman

Biography:

 Fran Landesman was born in Manhattan in 1927 and has lived in London since the early Sixties. 'The Ballad of the Sad Young Men' comes from her musical The Nervous Set (1959), a parody of the Beat movement. The 'Ballad' and 'Spring Can really Hang You up the Most' have become jazz standards. 
from: Scanning The Century, The Penguin Book of the Twentieth Century in Poetry, edited by Peter Forbes. 

My comments:  This is an unimpeachably gay poem - the writer is a woman, but she's obviously speaking about gay men. 

I'm not sure about this, but I think this poem (or song really) is of some historical interest. In the Fifties, I think, there was a wave of novels about gay life that started appearing, one of the best known of which was called All The Sad Young Men. I'm assuming it took its name from this poem, though I guess it could have been the other way too. 

I haven't read this book. I once found it on the footpath in Bombay and started leafing through it, and as the title indicates, it seemed a rather depressing book. Also, unusually, the guy who was selling it seemed to know that it was of more than normal interest so he was asking way too much for a really pretty shabby copy, so I didn't buy it. 

But that book gave a sort of generic name to these novels - they've been referred to as the Sad Young Men books, or references are made to the Sad Young Man type of story. This song pretty much sums them up: they paint the gay world as this lonely, sad place full of lost young men. 

As an image its a persistent one. When I came out to my mother one of the things she told me was, "What makes me most upset is that you're going to be have this sad unhappy life." And despite my attempts to persuade her otherwise I think she still believes this. 

And to be honest, I think its true that most of us have felt this way at sometime, and there will be moments when we still feel that way. Its the image often used to describe the gay community by people who are trying to be sympathetic, but still don't really understand it (women journalists are particularly prone to this). 

But it _is_ a stereotype and one that is, thank god, becoming increasingly less true. Or at least, it doesn't have to be the only truth. Fran Landesman wrote this in the Fifties, before the Gay Liberation movement. And the one unquestioned benefit of that has to be the fact that the Sad Young Man stereotype doesn't have to be true. There is now this huge gay world - and in fact, the normal world too, where Sad Young Men need not be so any longer. 

Of course, some still will be, and in India, many still are. One of the most important things I think that Gaybombay and other groups are doing, is reaching out to all the Sad Young Men out there. So if you feel that this song describes the way you are - if you know others to whom it applies - remember it doesn't have to be this way. Get in touch with one of the groups and you'll have a chance not be a Sad Young Man any more.