Clik here to view.
I Didn't Do It: Disney Channel Teencom with Underwear Models
I'm mad at the Disney Channel. They bragged for months, "We're going to have gay characters on our teencoms! Aren't we just too, too progressive?" The gay characters appeared on a single episode Good...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Grant Wood: More Than Pitchforks and Cornfields
When I was growing up in Rock Island, we had a lot of local celebrities. Grant Wood wasn't one of them, even though he was born in Anamosa, Iowa, just north of the Quad Cities, oversaw Stone City Art...
View ArticleClik here to view.
ABBA: Not Drag Queens
I first heard of ABBA in the spring of my sophomore year in high school in 1976, when "Fernando" hit #13 on the U.S. charts.It was about a freedom fighter in a South American country and his...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Jewel in the Crown: Gay British Officer in Love/Hate with India
When I was in grad school in Bloomington, Indiana, I watched the tv miniseries The Jewel in the Crown (1984), only because my roommate Viju had invited me to India next summer, so I was boning up on...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fall 1997: Me and the Gay Russian Teenager
In West Hollywood in the 1990s, we practiced a strict age segregation: dance clubs when you were a Cute Young Thing, then leather bars when you started greying, balding, or getting a belly.If you had...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Kafka's Boyfriend: 10 Surprising Gay Facts about Franz Kafka
The one thing I learned from studying literature for ten years at Augustana College, Indiana University, and USC:Writers must never, ever be gay.If their gayness is undeniable, it is a trivial thing,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Brandon Cruz and his Best Friend
Former child stars are subjected to all sorts of weird rumors. Jerry Mathers of Leave It to Beaver died in Vietnam. Josh Saviano of The Wonder Years donned deaths-head makeup to become Marilyn...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fall 1970: Mouth-to-Mouth Resuscitation
Looking back to my childhood in Rock Island, it's hard to believe that we crammed so much activity into the 12 weeks of summer:Camping in Michigan or MinnesotaNazarene summer campVisiting relatives in...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Kojak: Who Loves Ya?
The 1970s was the era of the quirky detectives: cowboys, rabbis, obese gourmands, rumpled nebbishes, nogoodnicks, representatives of various ethnicities. All they had in common was a big-city beat, a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Kensington Runestone
Every summer from kindergarten to college (when I decided to stay home), my parents dragged me on a week's camping trip somewhere up north, to Minnesota, Michigan, Wisconsin, or Canada. Other than the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fall 1988: Ronald Reagan and the Unwanted Houseguest
For gay people, West Hollywood is a sacred site, a heaven free from the homophobia and other injustices of the straight-dominated world. Everyone visits at least once, often for an extended period as...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Michael Strogoff: Jules Verne's Gay Couple
Jules Verne is most famous today for his science fiction novels, like 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island, but during his lifetime his biggest fame came for a romance, Michel...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Kaspar Hauser: Too Beautiful for the Heterosexual World
As you know from the story of My Date with Richard Dreyfuss, I have always been fascinated by the paranormal, especially mysterious disappearances and appearances, like the puzzling case of Kaspar...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Gay Anthropologist and the Cannibals
Michael Rockefeller, the "secretly" gay son of New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, heir to one of the wealthiest families in the world, graduated from Harvard in 1960. Interested in anthropology,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Sasha Jenson: The Bulge of 1980s Teen Horror
You probably remember Sasha Jenson as Don Dawson in Dazed and Confused (1993), one of the high schoolers who spends graduation night in 1976 carousing and buddy-bonding. Don is the most physically...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Andre Norton: Gay Subtext Science Fiction in My Junior High Library
I found The Hobbit during fifth grade, in the Folklore section of the Denkmann Elementary School Library, and thought it the best book ever written. There were rumors of a sequel, something about...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Thomas Gibson: Gay-Free since 1998
We often see actors taking gay roles when they're young and struggling. Then when they become famous, the gay roles fade into oblivion as they concentrate on "real" heterosexual characters. You may...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Spring 1979: Why I'm Not a Novelist
When I was in high school, I thought of becoming a writer. After all, my friend Darry and I wrote a heroic fantasy novel back in junior high, I was the editor of our literary magazine, and I published...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Gay Tales from Junior High English Class
When I was going to Washington Junior High, I read science fiction, heroic fantasy, and maybe some jungle adventures. Unfortunately, my English teachers -- Miss Dunn, Miss Sunstrom, and Mrs. Wood --...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Fred Dryer's Nude Modeling Career
Hunter (1984-1991) aired during the Reagan-Bush years of conservative retrenchment, on Saturday nights, aimed at an audience of oldsters sitting at home complaining about how much better things when...
View Article