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The Gay Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft
When I was in high school in the 1970s, a series of paperbacks appeared at Readmore Book World with weird, evocative titles: The Dream Quest of Unknown Kadath; The Doom that Came to Sarnath; At the...
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Kissing Boys to the Bee Gees
For good or bad, I'm a child of the disco era. The songs of the Bee Gees bring back a rush of memories, especially those from their annus mirabilis, 1977-78:When I brought Tyrone to the harvest dance,...
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Fall 2007: What Happens when College Students Daydream
There's a secret that all college professors know, but students don't.We can see what they are doing in class.We're standing, and they're sitting, so we always have an excellent view of the first row....
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5 Places to See Naked Men in Australia
The Australians love their nudity.1. There are nude beaches near Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, with several that cater mostly to gay men.2. The Meredith Music Festival, held every December in the...
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6000 Ways to Say "Penis"
As an undergrad, I studied Spanish, French, German, and Greek. In grad school, I studied Italian, Russian, and Turkish. Since then, I've studied several others. Of course, I didn't get far in most;...
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Fall 2007: The Linguist Who Wouldn't Shut Up
People who hear about the various languages I've studied always ask "Why didn't you become a linguist?"Because linguistics is not about world languages. It's about phonetics, phonology, morphology,...
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Fall 2003: Straight Guys Never Figure It Out
When I was living in Florida, newcomers from the small towns (or big cities) of the vast homophobic Straight World often went crazy with joy: "You can be open here! You can be free!" They found a job...
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Fall 2005: Gay People Absolutely Do Not Exist
Heterosexual SoldierIn the spring of 2005, after twenty years in the gay neighborhoods of California, New York, and Florida, the only academic job I could find was in Dayton, Ohio, an hour's drive from...
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Looking for Love in the Encyclopedia
My parents married on the spur of the moment,while my father was on leave from the navy. They immediately drove cross-country from Indiana to Long Beach, where Dad got back on his ship, leaving Mom...
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Frasier: The Gayest Show on TV, or the Most Homophobic?
In 1993, Frasier Crane (Kelsey Grammer), the stuffy, elitist psychiatrist who hung out at Cheers (1982-93), moved back to his hometown of Seattle, Washington, where he hosted his own radio program,...
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15 Simple Rules of Gay Dating
Dating is not cruising, and a date is not a hook-up.Both activities are interesting and pleasurable, but cruising has one goal: to find a physically-attractive partner for immediate erotic intimacy....
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Summer 2004: Finding Larry's New Fetish
I've never understood how you can be friends with someone for years, and then there's an incident, and it's over.They just stop answering the phone when you call, or responding to your emails. They...
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The Nutcracker: Men in Tights
When I was a kid, our church forbade movies, theater, carnivals, circuses -- basically anything that had a plot. And my working-class parents disapproved of anything "long hair." So ballet and opera...
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The Drew Carey Show: All About the Beefcake?
When I was living in New York, my favorite tv program was The Drew Carey Show (1995-2004). I'm still not sure why.Not because of the beefcake: Diedrich Bader (left) rarely disrobed on screen, and the...
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Guide to the Code Words in Gay Personal Ads
Back before dating apps like grindr, guys met by hanging out in internet chatrooms. And before internet chatrooms, they met by posting or answering personal ads in gay magazines.Every gay magazine had...
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Fall 1997: Gay Panic and the Obnoxious Roommate
When I first started out in grad school at Stony Brook University, I couldn't live in Manhattan right away: everything there was frightfully expensive, $900 to sleep on someone's couch, $1000 for a...
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The Walking Dead: Gay People Unwelcome at the End of the World
I saw an episode or so of The Walking Dead on Netflix a couple of years ago. I wasn't impressed.It begins, like 28 Days Later, with Georgia cop Rick (Andrew Lincoln) awakening from a coma to discover...
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Summer 1998: The Truth About the Formosan Penis
My doctoral program in New York (1997-2001) was not only about studying sexuality. I spent a lot of time seeking out ethnic groups with legendary penises:The Basque, reputedly the largest in the...
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The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie
When I was in junior high in the 1970s, the anthology series The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie grabbed kids and teens (and sometimes adults) from live-action sitcoms and put them into badly-animated...
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The Secretary: The Bottom Always Calls the Shots
It's not often that I agree to watch a movie about heterosexual romance, but Jeremy wanted to see The Secretary (2002), so I watched.I wasn't happy: first, it's set in a weird faux-retro world with...
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