The Inevitable Good

The closest I ever came to being gaybashed was at a convenience store in the late 90s. I came out of the store and got into my car, and just as I started it, two teenagers appeared, one at each of my windows. My window was halfway down, and the kid on my side leaned…

Wisecracker: The Life and Times of William Haines, Hollywood’s First Openly Gay Star

(This is a copy of a Goodreads review.) An encouraging bit of Pride Month reading of the "Nice to know we've always been here" variety. "Openly gay" in the context of the 1920s held a different meaning than today, not an affirmation, but a refusal to lie, evading direct questions with clever evasions (making Haines…

Two Spirits

When I saw Little Big Man years ago, I had mixed feelings. I almost wished Dustin Hoffman wasn’t in it. I thought it was one of his worse performances, bouncing between clownish and Capital-A Actory, and his character took up most of the time while being the least interesting part of the story. When you…

The New Black

When I first came out and started learning about gay life in the 1990s, I had a couple of eye-opening experiences. One concerned how little cooperation and socializing there were between gay men and lesbians (something I only recently found historic roots for in After Stonewall). The second came from my naive assumption that most…