What's in a name? The origin of Rascal and his Lair

So, where did I come up with the nickname/handle "Rascal." Well, truth be told, it was my dad's nickname for me when I was but a wee bairn. Beat the hell out of "Jon," & all of its variations, i.e. Jonny, Jon-Jon, etc. I really hated that name by the time I was about five. Part of it was getting tired of not having a reasonable answer when people (read other rugrat kids) asked why there was no "h" in my name. As I recall, my first switch of moniker occurred in summer school, 1970. The new name chosen? "Seymour," believe it or not! I have no real clear idea where I came up with THAT one, except that I seem to recall that there was a "Seymour Kneitel," I think his name was, on the creative team behind the Popeye cartoons I loved to watch at my godmother's house after school. I tired of "Seymour" pretty quickly, but not the idea of changing my name. I think I switched around four or five times, but none lasted long. The only other name I recall adopting, at least briefly, was of all things "Pierre." Finally, as a concession to my parents' wishes, I did start going by "Jonathan," off & on until I was about 14 or so.

So you see, the name my parents gave me at birth never sat well with me. I know that my parents were very aware of this, & of my plans to change it legally when I was old enough. What is actually kind of interesting was finding out, years after I had changed it to Julian, that my brother Keith had wanted them to name me Alexander (for Alexander the Great; how gay is that?). If they had, maybe that would still be my first name at least. Now, how the choice was made is kind of funny.

To begin with, in my sophomore year in high school, I was befriended by one of my teachers, Danilo Pacheco. He was the one who started calling Jonathan, so that was what I went by from about 14 until 18. I still wasn't completely happy with it, however, & was working on a complete name change, meaning first, middle & last by the time I was about 16. For a while, "David" was in the running, rather strongly, but I really wanted something more unusual than that. But the final choice of "Julian" was in fact brought about indirectly by my mother.

See, in my senior year of high school, I had the opportunity to get a class ring. The choices of course were silver or gold band, with fake ruby or fake onyx as the stone. I opted for the silver & onyx combo; the ring was ordered & a deposit put down for it; the balance was due on arrival, by COD.

Well, however long it was after that the ring arrived, but I wasn't home at that particular moment. Mom was however &, not knowing what it was, she refused to pay for it. I got home later that day, & she proceeded to rip me a new er, bodily orifice (I am trying to maintain at least a PG-13 rating for this blog) for ordering something & expecting her to pay for it without question. At the time, I was collecting miniatures as a "hobby" & she assumed it was a dollhouse chair or something. Now, I may have been a little on the weird side in terms of my interests, but not stupid enough to do anything like that. Long & short, however, was that I figured out what it must have been, & let HER know, in no uncertain terms, what I thought of the situation (being raised Catholic, we all knew how to inflict a powerful guilt trip). Mom, of course apologized profusely, but the damage had been done - no class ring for me. To make it up to me, however, mom gave me a REAL gold ring with a REAL onyx setting . . . with the initial "J" set in gold in the stone. Out of consideration for her, as I really DID prefer that ring anyway, I mean, who would settle for fake over real in the first place, that cemented my first initial, thereby limiting my choices.

What I was looking for, ideally, was a name that I could handle all of the possibl e diminutives of. Now, in the past, I have told people that I took the name from the classical guitarist Julian Bream, but that is really only partly true (& a small part at that). You see, about the same time I came out of the closet as gay, in 1979, a certain film came out where the main male character was named Julian, & the character was called Julian, Jules, & Julie by other characters throughout the movie. The movie in question was "American Gigolo." Thus, my first name is an homage to the young & extremely HOT Richard Gere. And while only one person has ever addressed me as "Julie," I am of course now commonly & interchangeably known as either "Julian" or "Jules." A fun variant that cropped up in my mid-20's, courtesy of a sweetheart of a guy named Chris I knew from the White Horse in Oakland, where I was working at the time, was "Hooligan!" I LOVED that!

My new middle name was almost "Montgomery" for Montgomery Clift, & Clift as my last name was always in the front running, pretty much neck & neck with "Frost," for Robert Frost, my then favorite poet (my tastes have altered somewhat over the years). I'll get to that part of the story in a bit. However, I felt that it would be a little TOO pretentious to do that, I mean, I didn't want anyone thinking that I was Monty's and Liz Taylor's love child. Now, it so happened that, when I was confirmed as a Catholic "soldier for Christ" at age 12, the guy who sat next to me for the confirmation mass, rehersals & all, took the name Francis, for St Francis of Assisi, as his confirmation name. My confirmation name I had decided upon years before -- Thomas. I chose Francis specifically out of devotion to St Francis who, in my opinion, is one of the most deserving of canonization. St Francis, to me, is the embodiment of a man who took Christ's teachings completely to heart. These days, this is my only acknowledgement to my Catholic upbringing.

Finally, it came down to the nitty-gritty as to finalizing the name, in particular the last one. I was theoretically engaged to a woman at the time, & so I made the decision hers to choose. I asked her which should prefer to be known as Mrs. Clift or Mrs. Frost. She, obviously, chose Clift, & the rest, as they say is history. However, I should point out that, I was looking, in fact for a name that would look GREAT in lights, you know, I wanted to be a STAR! and I needed a star-power name.

So, there you have it, how Jon Wilber Elliott (ain't that a kick in the rubber parts) became Julian Francis Clift, AKA Rascal. The "lair" part is sweet & easy; while cleaning up the house to get it ready to be seen by potential buyers, I discovered one of my brothers photo albums from the 1970's with pictures of him in all kinds of different places, including with a friend at Rudolph Valentino's house in Beverly Hills (I guess, I don't know LA that well). Rudy's home was called Falcon's Lair; I kinda dug the name. So I used it to name my home LAN (Rascal's Lair), & now the blog.