You probably don’t know the name Paul Fasana. But the librarian was instrumental in preserving hundreds of thousands of artifacts of queer history.
Read MoreThe Thrilling Power of Queer Indifference
Perhaps you have noticed, of late, that society is “collapsing.” That the incoherent babbling of the vicious and insane now dominates prime-time news and every corner of the internet…
Read MoreRea
BOMB Magazine has been a bucket-list, dream publication of mine since I went to grad school. Now, thanks to Mattilda B. Sycamore’s new collection, BETWEEN CERTAIN DEATH AND A POSSIBLE FUTURE, they’ve published my essay “Rea,” about getting tested for HIV in the 1990s!
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Three's A Crowd?: Finding the Language to Describe My Three-Person Relationship
"Thruple" is a hideous neologism that sounds like wet paper being torn. "Threeway" and "threesome" are great if you're writing copy for a porn site, but not if you're trying to have a polite conversation with your boyfriend's Sunday-school-teacher Southern mother. "Love triangle" comes with too much baggage, while "triad" calls to mind gangsters in Southeast Asia. "Tribunal" is too judicial, "troika" too communist, and "triumvirate" is just too damn long.
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What Does Liberation Look Like?
Walk along Waverly Place in New York City’s West Village and you’ll hit the narrow end of Christopher Park, a sharp shard of public land inhabited by four lovely but melancholy figures. Covered in white plaster, they are clustered in pairs: two men, standing, and two women, seated. They’re called “Gay Liberation”—but there’s nothing liberatory about them. With their mournful expressions and restrained physical contact, they seem more like a vision of gay tolerance, liberation’s anemic shadow.
Read MoreFor Queer People, There’s Already 2016 Election Fatigue
"Usually, when I want to see people get hit while running an obstacle course, I binge-watch Wipeout, the popular ABC show. But as anyone on social media is certainly well aware, there is no escaping our country’s least-enjoyable reality show: America’s Next Top Presidential Candidate (until the Next One, and the Next One, and the One After That)."
Read MoreThe Myth of Gay Progress
Here’s the truth: If you’re a gay person driving across America, your right to dignity is like a radio station fading in and out. In many areas, there is just a vast silence, or a blaring wall of static. At best, your basic humanity is somewhat written into law and is accepted by most people. At worst—well, I’m sure some Hoosiers could tell us horror stories.
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How Auntie Mame changed my life
My grandma loved me as much as anyone ever has or will, but she was raised in rural, religious Ireland, a country so theocratic that she had no birth certificate, just baptismal records. I was her kin, but when I caught her worried glances in the mirror, I knew she was trying to understand the thing that neither of us could say.
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