McFarlane takes issue with anyone calling Davis gay because "It makes Susan look like a beard and she deserves better than that. Bluestein doesn't mention that in her memoir and McFarlane dismisses it by saying "he hustled, but so did a lot of struggling actors back then." McFarlane thinks Davis got AIDS from "passing around needles at A-list parties" and neither Bluestein nor McFarlane make much of the fact that he worked as a prostitute when he first moved to NY in the seventies. His wife and a writer friend, Rodger McFarlane, are of the opinion that Davis was NOT gay, despite a lot of indication that he was. For a lot of people that meant he was gay." He was always partying, always very promiscuous. His wife Susan Bluestein explains his behavior this way: "Brad was a bad boy for a very long time.
That's just a stereotype that people have of gay men, that they're all heavy into drugs and debauchery and wild promiscuity. So Brad Davis's best friend was gay, he worked as a gay hustler and lived with with a drag queen but was NOT gay? The article goes on, and seems to be saying that just because Brad Davis partied hard, did lots of drugs and alcohol and had lots of sex with men doesn't mean he was GAY. Whatever the reason, Davis was haunted by rumors about his sexuality during his life, and since his death he has become a gay icon whose assisted suicide in 1991 only adds to his tragic memory."
Or maybe it's the stories that have surfaced since his death about his six-year battle with AIDS, an ordeal he kept secret and with which many gay men can identify. Or maybe it was the sexed-up vulnerability he expressed in so many of his performances. Perhaps we want to believe Davis was one of us because of the many gay roles he played during his nearly 20-year career.
And his widow-who in her March 1997 memoir of the late actor, After Midnight: The Life and Death of Brad Davis, admits that he worked in a gay hustler bar and lived with a drag queen before making it big-says, "I don't know why everyone wants to believe Brad was gay. His best friend, a gay man, insists that "just because Brad had sex with men doesn't mean he was a homosexual." His former colleagues refuse to go on record saying that Davis wasn't straight. Since his excesses killed him, why are we still hooked on his tragic glamour?īrad Davis was not gay. "Amid persistent gay rumors, Brad Davis rode drugs and sex to an early death from AIDS complications. The mention of Brad Davis made me look up info about him on Google and I found this odd article about him from The Advocate called "Our Man Brad." It begins: