1 Neil Armstrong was difficult to live with and probably denied Janet, his wife, and his sons what they may have wanted most from him—warmth and love—but Armstrong stumbled into the one place on Earth where what was wanted from him was exactly what he had to offer—a man with an encyclopedic memory, a scientific orderliness to his mind unperturbed by emotion. If he had ever allowed the churning … [Read more...]
Earthrise 10
Winter Rain 1 I set out to write a gay novel about alcoholism, and when I completed it and then couldn’t get it published, I put it in a box on the floor at the back of my closet. It eventually was moved to my first computer, and then moved from computer to computer. The editor who had rejected it had suggested that I try other publishers—these decisions were inevitably subjective, he said—but I … [Read more...]
Earthrise 9
Adam in the Morning At one in the morning, 28 June 1969, the New York policemen from the 6th Precinct, led by Deputy Inspector Seymour Pine, raided the Stonewall Inn, a gay bar, on Christopher Street in the West Village in New York. This was normal. The cops had raided the same bar earlier that week, and they had raided three other bars in the weeks before. What was unusual that night was that, … [Read more...]
Earthrise 7
Race Point Light This novel begins in Provincetown, out on the end of Cape Cod, and ends in Provincetown sixty years later. It has one narrator, who sticks with the task all the way through the novel, and it has one subject—the narrator’s life—and one focus, the narrator’s life as a gay man. It begins when the narrator is about two, and it ends when the narrator is about sixty-five. Along the … [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...]