I wrote this in October, 2008, for the online "Obit Magazine," which called itself " 'The New Yorker' of Death." It's been two decades since his murder. None of us can control how we’re remembered, though we may try to live in ways that minimize the dancing on our graves. Yet a special place should be made for those who are memorialized not for how they lived, but how they died. Those singular victims of war, accident, or crime may become famous, even important. But their daily voices, their quirks and smiles, their plain ambitions and … [Read more...]
Tab Hunter, 1931-2018
[contextly_auto_sidebar] Tab Hunter passed away Sunday, it was announced by his husband. The 2005 autobiography Tab Hunter Confidential: The Making of a Movie Star is filled with true surprises -- his vicious Jewish father and rocky childhood -- and relative ones, like his being gay when Hollywood would have none of it. I wrote about his serious, brave story when the book came out, hopeful that younger folks in public life and private would have a much easier time. Was I wrong? Was I wrong. Here's that piece, published in my … [Read more...]
A Shroom With a View
"Sex" in a headline could once skew a reader's attention, but I risk vanilla using it here. Grade-schoolers of all nations do porn homework online. That coy teen you meet at your niece's bat mitzvah has fastened on techniques you once only imagined. "Once only imagined" is a familiar phrase, no? What happens to imagination when we walk past the bloody slash on the ground and the other eyes walking with me call to stop. A short time before, my companion and lover said quietly but in amazement, "Look at that big fella!" as an elegant plum … [Read more...]
‘Dirt Always Wins’ (Part Six) — Conclusion
This would normally be where a guy like me concludes by showing how I resolved my dirt issues, or at least negotiated a balance between cleaning and living free. But that would be a kind of cleaning up, wouldn’t it. At the same time, because pornography has entered the building, the dirty-string gatherer is tempted to state that he can literally visualize dark-blue passages in his introduction to printed dirt: James Baldwin’s Another Country, which was passed around in high school till it disappeared. Don’t believe me? “Did he fuck … [Read more...]
“Dirt Always Wins” — A Story, Part Two
Sterile Technique There’s a curiously moving photo in a 1930s medical handbook put out by Dr. Elliott P. Joslin, who started a clinic in Boston that still specializes in treating diabetics. It shows a sweet Shirley Temple clone, almost 3 years old, the caption says, sitting on a wooden table and injecting her doll-like thigh with a needle and syringe that contains a dose of insulin. (A darling voice muffles an “ouch!”) She’s just a baby, yet she’s her own life-saving nurse. I became diabetic at 7 and almost died because the family doctor … [Read more...]
Vazool
A Note to My Readers — Part 2 His name was Harry. Don't think English king; instead, it's from the Yiddish "Herschel," although his three brothers, three sisters and many friends called him "Hashel." When I stared at my freckled, rusty-skinned dad as he watched Gunsmoke or smoked Chesterfields while having his cup of Chock full o'Nuts, I often thought of the Irish name Dinty Moore, the hash that came in a can. I'm watching him now as he drives the Buick Special -- bottom of the line, only three portholes -- on his weekend rounds through … [Read more...]
Writing: My 9/11 Time Machine
Like many of my colleagues, I am quesy about the full-scale media attack on the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Of course, I understand the civic need to weight the event and personal need to recount our losses, but I am less sure about the form any media memorial should take. Still, I'm going to take a risk and post a piece I wrote right after 9/11 for the Philadelphia Inquirer, if only to demonstrate to myself how words can erase a decade. I was then a back-of-the-book arts editor, and though departments dissolved as we all pitched in to … [Read more...]
Will Bert and Ernie Ever Eat Zabar’s ‘Lobster’ Salad?
Oh, the sadness in Friday's New York Times. Hundreds if not thousands of Upper West Siders have been scooped, scooped! by one Doug MacCash, art critic at the Times-Picayune in balmy New Orleans. Doug, who's a charming and sensible guy, usually gets embroiled in what-price-graffiti tussles or wins team Pulitzers for rowing the newsroom skiff with his managing editor on the night Katrina visited. But this time, he was visiting New York with his family and must have hopped on the wrong subway, because he found himself on the Upper West Side -- … [Read more...]
Gay Performance, or Why the Director of the National Portrait Gallery Should Resign
This is a short post about long-held beliefs.If you know the abbreviated world of performance art or the run-on-sentence world of gay activism, you've heard of Tim Miller. Thirty years ago, the nervy tyke co-founded PS 122 on First Avenue and Ninth Street in Manhattan's East Village. His lightning struck twice in Santa Monica, when he co-founded the performance space Highways more than 20 years ago. Tim is also known nationally as one of the NEA Four. Although I've seen Tim perform throughout his career and urge you to attend his latest, … [Read more...]
Super Bowl — Gay-Guy Version
If an American guy says proudly that he's never watched a Super Bowl, the American imagination assumes he's either a professor who resents the moron sports-money his department isn't getting, or gay. He could be both, but American imaginations aren't as flexible as American tight ends.Too bad that most popular assumptions are demonstrably wrong. You've never been to a gay sports bar? Lite beer or boutique EPA only. Plenty of gay-guy house parties as well -- those wings had better be hot hot hot and not drip on the Eames.(Sorry, there's a long … [Read more...]