The Action Is at the Cuban Ballet
If life in the ballet company provides only a highly restricted space for gay identity, the real gay space takes place in the audience.
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Starstruck
Money, Murder, and Dominick Dunne is a tale of resentment and revenge, of enemies who become friends who become enemies of a man with an extraordinary appetite for life and a character that mixed generosity and pettiness, fair-mindedness and bias, snobbery and sympathy for the underdog.
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The Multi-Talented Harry Hervey
Harry Hervey’s academic career had not been distinguished, but amazingly, at sixteen, he sold a lurid adventure story to a magazine edited by cultural critic H. L. Mencken.
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Camping in the Cold War South
Many contemporary San Antonio natives would describe Cornyation as a hilariously campy political satire, a veritable Beach Blanket Babylon performed every spring for six shows as a major fundraiser for HIV/AIDS and other causes.
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Camille of Fire Island
“A DAY AT THE BEACH” was a well-established national pastime by the turn of the 20th century. Beach colonies developed on land adjacent to waterfronts—Coney Island in New York,…More
When the Movies Went to Sodom
IF YOUR ACQUAINTANCE with Sodom and Gomorrah were limited to what you see in movies, your impression might differ only slightly from the story in Genesis 19. That’s because the biblical version is already as farfetched as the script of a Hollywood epic.
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Kirstein’s Letters 2: Friends & Lovers
In Part I of this essay, published in the January-February 2017 issue of this magazine, I described the recent discovery of a large amount of new archival material on…More
Seasons in Hell
DAVID FRANCE’S HISTORY of AIDS opens with a memorial service for Spencer Cox, an ACT UP activist, to whom we come back in the epilogue. In between are approximately thirteen years of Hell. Although How to Survive a Plague pretty much follows the plot of the documentary film he released four years ago with the same title, the difference between the two is enormous. When the film came out, this reviewer wondered if a book would not give us more nuance, more insight into what people were really thinking in those ACT UP meetings we saw on screen. Well, here is the answer to that wish.
MoreGay Resilience and HIV Prevention
WE HEAR a lot about advances in HIV treatment, the use of Truvada or PrEP to prevent HIV infection for the sexually active, and the latest programs designed to promote safer sex. Largely unreported, however, has been a huge shift toward addressing “upstream” mental health issues—such as depression, substance abuse, or partner violence—because it has finally become clear that gay men who don’t feel good about themselves or their lives are less likely to protect themselves and more likely to take risks.
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Where HIV Has Not Been Tamed
OVER THE PAST DECADE, we’ve seen a great deal of progress on HIV/Aids in the U.S. Data released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in late 2015 indicate that diagnoses of HIV in the U.S. declined significantly over the last decade. … However, black and Latino gay and bisexual men actually saw an increase in HIV diagnoses of 22 percent and 24 percent.
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