Looking for Love in Mostly Wrong Places
Review of the films Strange Journey: The Story of Rocky Horror, Sauna, Dreams (Sex Love), Jimpa, and Cactus Pears.
MoreBrowsing: September-October 2025
September-October 2025
Blog Posts
Remembrances of Edmund White (1940–2025): Last Meeting with a Friend
As time went on, I asked if I could take his picture to capture a few more cherished memories. He gladly agreed. But when I picked up my camera for our final meeting, a kind of melancholy came over me. I didn’t feel capable of capturing anything truly evocative. Still, I took a few photos—ones that may some day have value, but only as documents.
MoreRemembrances of Edmund White (1940–2025): Vignettes from Memory
I’ve kept thousands of emails that Ed sent me through the years. Whenever I need a lift and a laugh, I pull one up and feel much better. Ed’s company, whether in person or on the page, made of life something sparkling, something special. The thought that this reservoir of creativity has left us forever is shocking.
MoreRemembrances of Edmund White (1940–2025): Ed’s ‘Intimacy Repertoire’
MY FAVORITE ED WHITE STORY took place in Yale’s beautiful Beinecke Library, where I was doing research for a book on the Violet Quill. Yale had purchased Ed’s papers, and I was the first person to open the boxes in which he had unceremoniously dumped the contents of his drawers; …
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Picturing Kindred Spirits
AS QUEER PEOPLE, we seldom learn our community’s history through the same channels as our straight siblings. Instead, we must seek it out ourselves and either rely on published histories or piece together our own research. Finding LGBT historical figures before the mid-20th century who were not white, cisgender, or bestowed with significant privilege is especially difficult. Queer historical figures often fall into two categories: those who had the safety or social cachet to tell their own stories, or those whose lives were recorded only because they were caught, institutionalized, or sensationalized. More Butch Heroes, Ria Brodell’s sequel to their 2018 book Butch Heroes, uncovers and memorializes historical gender-nonconforming figures, affirming that queer and trans lives today are not new but the continuation of a once-hidden legacy.
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Edna St. Vincent Millay, Sexual Adventurer
PERHAPS THERE IS no more famous celebration of madcap fun than “First Fig,” by Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950). This gifted writer created extraordinary works while living a remarkable and unconventional life, romancing both women and men. English novelist and poet Thomas Hardy said of her work: “The America of the 1920s made two major contributions to the world: skyscrapers and the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay.”
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Martin Sherman on Bent and Its Relevance
LIKE MANY OF US of a certain age, my life as a young gay man was transformed when I went to Broadway for the first time (at age 21) to see playwright Martin Sherman’s world-changing play Bent. My Jewish boyfriend Peter’s aunt took us to the New Apollo Theater in 1980 to see Richard Gere in Bent as it uncovered the hidden history of the Nazi genocide against gay people and both the oppressive and liberatory meaning of the pink triangle.
MorePoem from the Sept-Oct 2025 Issue
Argentina In Buenos Aires The thunderstorms Roll in off the pampas Like crashing surf The city is a sand castle Pretty Insubstantial Illusory I fell in love there With a…More