California Split: What Became of Chris
AFTER A SILENCE of more than twenty years, I got a phone call from an old friend of mine, living in San Francisco. Now dying in San Francisco. Upon announcing that fact in the voice mail, he said, “And...
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New York City’s Gayest Building
THE SEAGRAM BUILDING and I are about the same age, but as my hair continues to silver and the parentheses bracketing my mouth make me ever more parenthetical to the young, my favorite New York...
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That Scene in The City and the Pillar
AT A TIME in the 1970s when talk at the playground was of the sex scene on page 36 of The Godfather, I was perpetually reading page 47 of The City and the Pillar by Gore Vidal. The post That Scene in...
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Sagas of the City
The Days of Anna Madrigalby Armistead MaupinHarper Collins. 276 pages, $26.99 WHEN PACKING for the annual Burning Man extravaganza, be sure to leave behind all of your MOOP, or what’s referred to as...
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The Vulnerability of a Poet
Wilfred Owenby Guy CuthbertsonYale. 352 pages, $40. WHEN CAVAFY wrote poems about his encounters with lads in Alexandria brothels and pickups in the mazes of bazaars, no critic or biographer...
View ArticleOn the Poetry of Unrequited Love
WHEN I WAS in the grip of despair about a situation of unrequited love, I decided to make a list of the benefits of that state. Alas, I cannot find that list, and I don’t remember a single thing I...
View ArticleThat Scene in The City and the Pillar
AT A TIME in the 1970s when talk at the playground was of the sex scene on page 36 of The Godfather, I was perpetually reading page 47 of The City and the Pillar . Of course, I read Mario Puzo’s wet,...
View ArticleOur Kind of Town
Lincoln Avenue: Chicago Storiesby Gregg ShapiroSquares & Rebels. 100 pages, $14.95 Last Night at the Blue Angelby Rebecca RotertWilliam Morrow. 334 pages, $25.99 WHEN I WAS growing up in...
View ArticleThe Seagram: New York’s Gayest Building
THE SEAGRAM BUILDING and I are about the same age, but as my hair continues to silver and the parentheses bracketing my mouth make me ever more parenthetical to the young, my favorite New York...
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A Scot on the Rocks
Not My Father’s Son: A Memoirby Alan CummingHarperCollins. 394 pages, $26.99 WHEN WE FIRST meet Blanche Dubois, she’s enveloped by a fog that we soon come to realize represents her clouded mental...
View ArticleCome Through for Me
WHEN I MOVED to New York after college in the summer of 1980 to find a job in publishing, I took regular breaks from my daily search at a midtown bookstore on Fifth Avenue. The hardcovers and...
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When Life Imitates a Movie Crush
I WAS A LATE TEENAGER in 1977 when I saw the not-much-older Robby Benson star in the newly released One on One. I bought a ticket to the 2:10 showing at the Varsity Theater in downtown Evanston,...
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“Time to Go Home”
WritersReadOnline.com is a live series in which writers read their essays aloud at the Cell Theater on West 23rd Street in New York City. Founded by Ed McCann, himself a writer and editor, the series...
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N.Y. Showroom Models at Work and Play
ONE OF MY ROLES as a senior features editor at Town & Country was that of men’s fashion editor, a subject and an arena that I didn’t know at all well but was hired to cover, as the...
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Hiding Behind Grindr
There are brands that are practically branded into our thought processes—the swoosh along the sides of sneakers, a pair of golden arches, an apple with a bite taken out of it. But there is another...
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Island of Lost and Found Men
There aren’t many medicines available in our emotional cabinet that cure heartache. There’s the age-old remedy of time. That works, but oh so slowly and it never really seems that it’s working...
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Stardom in the Age of the Selfie
Reading this book, which is subtitled My Life in Stories and Pictures, is akin to sitting with Cumming as he leafs through his ever-growing scrapbook of accomplishments, loves lost and won, and...
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Falling in Lust
I REMAIN HAUNTED by a remark a famous novelist made during her public talk at Sewanee University a few summers ago. She lamented, with much audible derision, that too many poets now write “lust...
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The Ancient, Amazing Diver of Paestum
I AM AFRAID of deep water and I am afraid of dying. I am not alone in these fears. And, yet, an ancient frescoed image discovered at Paestum, of a slim youth diving into the waters of the...
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How Jim Nabors Led the Way Out
JIM NABORS (1930–2017), best known for his TV role as Gomer Pyle, was one of my first heroes in life, even before I understood why. Gay men of my generation—most of us in our 50s—often talk about...
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