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 | Jul 7, 2018 | Ceremonies, Earthrise, Gay literature, LGBTQ suicide, Middlebrow Queer, Teenage Suicides, Writing
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...
by itabix | Jan 7, 2017 | Ceremonies, Ceremonies, Charles Howard, gay community, Gay kid, inclusive gay community, Stonewall Riots, Timothy, Transgender
When you’re telling a story, before you say your first word, you have to decide how you start. Once upon a time gets you into a certain kind of story, and Call me Ishmael gets you into another. To get into a story about what happened after Bernie Mallett was murdered...
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 | Jul 10, 2016 | Coming to terms with the past, Marriage, Save the raw material, Stonewall Riots, The effects of bigotry, the South, Walking wounded
Elie Wiesel, who died this week, said in his Nobel Prize speech, “I have tried to keep memory alive […] I have tried to fight those who would forget. Because if we forget, we are guilty, we are accomplices.” But it’s worse than that. If we forget what has happened to...
by itabix | Jun 11, 2016 | AIDS, Celebration, Ceremonies, Charles Howard, Courage, Freedom, Gay literature, Sexuality, Stonewall Riots
Derek is an actor, in Maine for summer stock in the summer of 1984, when a young gay man named Bernie Mallett was murdered by three homophobic teenagers. Bernie’s murder changes the lives of LGBTQ people in Maine—the town is called Cardiff—and makes just about...
