by itabix | Oct 16, 2019 | Anger, Being gay, Channing Smith, Coming to terms with the past, Courage, Earthrise, Freeing yourself of it, gay community, Gay kid, Marriage cases, Queer, Reparations, Sexuality, suicide, Teenage Suicides, Words and their meanings, Writing
I wrote this a week ago: It is a truth that LGBTQ+IA persons do not have a literature that reflects us. We have a literature that reflects some of us, and we have a literature that reflects many of us partially. We don’t have a literature that reflects how varied the...
by itabix | Dec 3, 2018 | Coming to terms with the past, Larry Kramer
The Congress, at this moment, is delivering eulogies in the Capitol Rotunda. Somebody said, “A man of grace.” Vice-President Pence was moved to say, “He was a good man.” Well, no. George Herbert Walker Bush, in his campaign for president, accepted the help of the...
by itabix | Sep 25, 2018 | AIDS, Anger, Earthrise, eBooks, Gay literature, Gay Pride, Where meaning comes from, Winter Rain, Writing
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....
by itabix | Aug 28, 2018 | Adam in the Morning, Anger, Earthrise, gay community, Gay literature, Stonewall Riots, Straight marriage, Uncategorized
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...
by itabix | Aug 5, 2018 | AIDS, Alcoholism, Ceremonies, Courage, Daniel D'Addario, Fighting Back, Middlebrow Queer, Publishing, Race Point Light, Writing
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...
by itabix | Jul 28, 2018 | AIDS, Alcoholism, Ceremonies, Earthrise, Fighting Back, Gay literature, inclusive gay community, Stonewall Riots, Straight marriage, Where meaning comes from
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...
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 | Mar 23, 2017 | Courage, Courage, Fighting, Fighting Back, The effects of bigotry
Race Point Light is my third novel, and it is about a man finding out that, when his culture wants to destroy him, his first duty is to protect himself, and his next is to change his culture. Here is an excerpt from Race Point Light. The narrator is Fair Shaw is...
by itabix | Feb 17, 2017 | Ceremonies, Charles Howard, Courage, Fighting Back, Uncategorized
Ceremonies is a novel based on what happened in Bangor, Maine, during the weeks after Charlie Howard was murdered on July 7, 1984. An excerpt from that novel, given below, depicts a moment after a court appearance by “the boys” who committed the murder. In the crowd...
by itabix | Feb 4, 2017 | Courage, Donald Trump, Donald Trump, Fighting Back
Twenty-four hours ago, on Daily Kos, Jeff Garrett considered the mode of our opposition to Trump’s presidency. He considers where we are at this moment and says, Now we must sustain the outrage, the unity, and continue the work. Then he gives ways of actually doing...
by itabix | Jan 31, 2017 | Anger, Courage, Fighting Back, Stonewall Riots
Rachel Maddow often begins a story and makes me wonder Where is she going with this? She began her lead story Friday night with a Harvard scientist working with hydrogen in its various states. She informed us that hydrogen can have a gaseous or a liquid or a solid...
by itabix | Jan 26, 2017 | Courage, Fighting, Fighting Back
I’m proud of this. See here and here. Resist!
by itabix | Jan 20, 2017 | Adam in the Morning, Anger, Barack Obama, Ceremonies, Coming to terms with the past, Courage, Fighting Back, gay community, Generational Divide, Hillary Rodham Clinton, Michelle Obama, Race Point Light, Stonewall National Monument, The Myth of Sisyphus, Winter Rain, Writing
Many people are quoting Martin Luther King’s “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” And many people believe that means that eventually things are going to get better. But you know that’s bullshit. There is no “moral universe.” And we...
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 | Nov 6, 2016 | A single man, APA, Charles Howard, Coming to terms with the past, Gay literature, Generational Divide, Middlebrow Queer, Publishing, Sexuality, The Gay Revolution, Writing
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...
