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, 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...
by itabix | Oct 22, 2016 | Coming to terms with the past, Generational Divide, Reparations, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Walking wounded
We will get to the place where the President, the Congress, the courts, and the people of the US will acknowledge the fact that the nation has abused gay people. They will apologize for it, and then they’ll pay reparations. Because this is what Americans do. But this...
by itabix | Oct 1, 2016 | Anger, Coming to terms with the past, Gay kid, Gay literature, Generational Divide, Middlebrow Queer, Sexuality
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...
by itabix | Jun 7, 2016 | Coming to terms with the past, Courage, Generational Divide, The future
It is 10:43 in the evening. C and I spent the day doing errands—the hardware store for screws for hooks in the utility closet in the back stairs—and chores, principally laundry. It is a warm evening, all the windows are open, and the neighborhood is quiet. After I...
by itabix | May 19, 2016 | AIDS, Anger, Barack Obama, Coming to terms with the past, Courage, Fighting, Frank Kameny, Generational Divide, London April 23 2016
I want to look at the issue of fighting versus negotiating. What has brought us our success? In the last couple of weeks, the President has brought this up in London and then again later at Howard. Over last weekend, a person I know wrote me, questioning whether I was...
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...