Here’s My Story

“A Gay Wedding?” I asked Gerd in German. It was late April; we had just ordered our suits – comparable blue ones, mine blue with a silver vest and his blue gray – and we were discussing plans for our July wedding in our apartment in Berlin where we had lived together for the past four months.

I debate with myself, back and forth, for a week, and now I have to choose one photograph to give to the designer. All three elegant black and white photos in front of me are beautiful shots with lovely dramatic lighting, great contrast. …

Virginia Beach in the 1960’s was a genuinely exotic, if earthbound, destination long before exploding into the garish paved-over Virginia Beach of today. Even with incursions of asphalt and neon it resembled such pleasant gray-shingled venues as Cape Cod or the Hamptons.

We struggled emotionally after my father’s sudden death and we were destitute financially. A few years later my mother became sexually active with other men.
What I didn’t realize or appreciate at the time was that my struggles at home, and especially around mum’s sexual adventures, were heightened by the confused feelings I had towards men.

Paul wanted to see crazy layering, pants under skirts, t-shirts over button downs, suit jackets with cargo pants. “Mix it up, mix it up,” Paul would say. He was like an annoying bald parrot.

At that moment, looking into his sad, ancient eyes filled with vintage mascara, I realized that Quentin Crisp must be the loneliest man I had ever met. His deep melancholy was only exceeded by the abject bitterness he had learned to temper with acerbic wit and self-depreciating humor.

A cable had come from Washington on October 20, 1995—four months after I had filed for early retirement—informing the Consulate that my application had been approved. I was told that from that moment on I was no longer permitted in the Consulate building, that I should pack up all my personal belongings and leave the building as quickly as possible.

A SHAFT of light entered through the high school doors. I immediately turned to it, totally enthralled by its brightness. I had never felt those feelings before. Who…More