Adam and the Ants, "Prince Charming"

A colleague earlier this week called to my attention the death of Jack Wrangler, an openly gay man best known - as his name would suggest - as a '70s porn star. And not just a porn star - one of the best. But I had to sheepishly confess at that point that I'd never heard of him.

I know a bit now - of his adult films, both gay and straight; his other artistic endeavors, mostly in cabaret and theater; and, most interesting to me, his marriage for many years to songstress Margaret Whiting. A man who loved many men on and off camera found a lasting love with a woman two decades his senior.

Putting aside any squeamishness one might have about the adult-film industry, it's interesting to contemplate the success of such nontraditional relationships as Jack and Margaret's. Indeed, as Village Voice gossip maven Michael Musto recounted last year, the two became an item after she saw one of his solo performances. They cohabitated for several years before marrying - and he continued to identify as gay all the while.

Somehow they transcended - and perhaps embraced, who knows - sexual attraction, finding in each other a kindred spirit with whom they could achieve life-partner status. I take heart in knowing that such unconventional couples exist - Jack Wrangler and Margaret Whiting; Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky, who remained partners for decades although Orlovsky was predominantly heterosexual. They prove that the labels go only so far, that it's possible to experience love in a way that contradicts or ignores one's tightly held concept of identity. I admire that freedom - the ability to say, as Wrangler is quoted in a sensitive SFGate.com obit, "I was never ashamed of anything I did." Wrangler lived as he wanted, how he wanted, with whom he wanted. One can hardly ask for more than that from life.

So how do I tie this into a song? I don't, really. I'll just point you to another sex-and-gender libertine, Adam Ant, who in this clip for 1981's "Prince Charming" plays dress-up with his fellow Ants in what I take to be an early treatment for Pirates of the Caribbean IV: The Pirates Take Rehoboth Beach. They get away with it because, as Adam sings, "ridicule is nothing to be scared of." Here's to everyone who's not afraid to be dandy.