by itabix | Nov 25, 2018 | Coming out, Earthrise, eBooks, The First Man, The First Man
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...
by itabix | Jul 23, 2018 | AIDS, Ceremonies, Charles Howard, Coming out, Courage, DOMA & DADT, Freedom, inclusive gay community, Nashville, Nashville, Where meaning comes from, Writing
Ceremonies Who were these people? 1 Timothy tells us. He’s sixteen, he’s a male, he’s gay, he’s homeless, he does tricks on “the hill” to get money, he hangs out with an older kid, Bernie, he has sex with Bernie sometimes, he knows Claire who has spiked hair and wears...
by itabix | May 30, 2018 | Alcoholism, Coming to terms with the past, Earthrise, Gay literature, inclusive gay community, language, Memory, the South
This, said to us by the man who says of himself, “Call me Ishmael:” It [the spermiceti] had cooled and crystallized to such a degree, that when, with several others, I sat down before a large Constantine’s bath of it, I found it strangely concreted into lumps, here...
by itabix | Nov 6, 2016 | A single man, Adam in the Morning, Anger, APA, Ceremonies, Charles Howard, Coming out, Coming to terms with the past, Fighting, Fighting Back, Gay Pride, Publishing, Race Point Light, Stonewall Riots, The future, Winter Rain
At the time I started writing my first gay political novel, I had only been out for 24 months, and I was steeping in the literature of gay political theory. The weekend that Charles Howard was murdered (July 7, 1984)—he was the man on whom Bernie Mallett of Ceremonies...
by itabix | Jun 10, 2016 | Assimilation, Barack Obama, Celebration, Coming out, Coming to terms with the past, Fighting Back, Freeing yourself of it, Queer, SCOTUS, Sexuality, The future, The Gay Revolution, Transgender
Last night, Rachel Maddow interviewed Elizabeth Warren. Warren endorsed Hillary Clinton for the Presidency and, toward the end of her comments, spoke of Clinton’s character and what she has shown through the long primary fight. (counter 8:00) She won because she’s a...
by itabix | Mar 27, 2016 | AIDS, Assimilation, Coming out, Coming to terms with the past, Generational Divide, Queer, The effects of bigotry, Walking wounded
Jeff Zirpolo died this week—C’s colleague, our friend—whom we have known since early in the AIDS years. The wake was on Thursday in Watertown. There were about a hundred people there, his birth family—his brothers and his sisters-in-law, and his sister and his...
by itabix | Dec 30, 2015 | AIDS, Coming to terms with the past, Compulsion of time, Courage, eBooks, Fighting Back, Gay literature, Generational Divide, Race Point Light, Sexuality, Stonewall Riots, The future
This excerpt is from late in Race Point Light. The narrator is Fair Shaw. He is just arriving at the Boatslip, a hotel on the water in Provincetown that hosts a tea dance every afternoon during the summer. It is June, 2004. Shaw is with his partner, Chris, and their...
by itabix | Dec 20, 2015 | Coming out, Compulsion of time, Courage, Fighting Back, Gay kid, Generational Divide, language, The future
In the last day or two, I have been buying kids clothes, gifts for grandchildren, and this has caused me to think about kids coming out. Many people think that most kids are going to grow up to be straight, and they continue to think that until the boy or girl tells...
by itabix | Nov 29, 2015 | Alan Turing, APA, bisexuality, Coming out, Compulsion of time, Freedom, language, Sexuality, Straight marriage, Words and their meanings
The man’s name is Nyle DiMarco, and he describes himself as “sexually fluid.” His picture and the article about him—he’s worth reading about—appeared in Towleroad this week. What is interesting about him is the idea of someone being sexually fluid. What does...
by itabix | Aug 18, 2015 | Coming out, Compulsion of time
This afternoon, on Towleroad, I read about an English rugby player who has just come out. He’s a nice-looking guy, but it wasn’t anything I needed to read about—I’ve read about athletes coming out before—and I was about to move on, when I stopped for some inexplicable...
by itabix | Sep 5, 2014 | Coming out
Coming out is a big subject, it’s important to just about all of us, it means many different things to different ones of us, and it’s changing all the time. I had a friend in college—we never talked about our sexuality back in 1957—and at first we took the...
by itabix | May 11, 2013 | Coming out
S. L. Price, writing in Sports Illustrated, May 6, 2013, quotes Patrick Burke on the subject of Burke’s brother’s coming out. “When your brother comes to you and tells you, ‘I’m gay,’ if you say anything other than, ‘Great, I love you, I don’t care,’ that’s where the...
by itabix | Mar 21, 2013 | Coming out
Will Portman came out to his father, Senator Portman, Republican of Ohio, in 2011, which caused his father to announce this week that he had changed his beliefs on marriage equality. Since then we have had a heated debate over coming out and over whether Senator...
by itabix | Jan 20, 2013 | Coming out
First everybody jumped all over Jodie Foster for waiting so long to come out and for not saying what everybody thought she ought to have said, because there were all those people she could have helped (see here, and here), and now there is the mystery around Manti...
by itabix | Oct 18, 2012 | Coming out
Coming out—both the action and the word—differs depending on where you live. It seems it has always been easier to come out in coastal California and in the Northeast than in the South and the middle parts of the country. It has been easier in New York, Los Angeles,...