Race Point Light What kind of person is Fair Shaw? Only partially like me, I should say at the beginning. Taller, darker, more handsome, certainly sexier, that long dolorous list of qualities that show we don’t measure up. I think he is more in control of his emotions than I am, less resentful, less angry, more charming. More athletic. Because, at seven, being athletic on the playground is … [Read more...]
Earthrise 5
Ceremonies When my friend Charles Howard was murdered on July 7, 1984, in Bangor, Maine, I had already quit my job teaching and was planning to leave Bangor at the end of the summer, in about two months. After Charlie’s murder, and thinking that someone was going to write a book about this—it needed to be written down—I collected a box of flyers and newspaper clippings for the person to use … [Read more...]
The political novel: 2
Even though I didn’t have many extended, free-wheeling conversations with friends about the military’s rules against my serving (I served anyway), still the fact that what I was doing sexually was a crime occupied me deeply. A novel about me during the sixties in graduate school which didn’t show that I agonized over the fact that my culture had set up all sorts of barriers to my living freely and … [Read more...]
RIP Tom Britt
In 1957, when we were students at a school in Tennessee (I was eighteen), students understood that it was against the law to engage in same-sex sex. You could be arrested, tried, and convicted and sentenced to imprisonment for a felony. What I think we were more immediately afraid of was that somebody might say, “You’re queer,” and report us to the dean of men or to our fraternity brothers. We … [Read more...]