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Gay – Ennis Smith

Gay

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Current Affairs, Essays, Gay, My back pages, Race, Writing

tiny love story/New York Times Sunday Oct 22, 2023

October 24, 2023

AIDS, Deep Songs, Gay, History, My back pages

Dread aught

December 1, 2019

A few nights ago at dinner out with new friends, our getting-to-know-each-other small talk circled around to coming out to our families. Our stories all had variants, but one thing seemed universal: how the presence of AIDS smoked the edges of each instance. Mine came at the end of a most challenging year, one spent…

Art, Criticals, Deep Songs, Gay, Literature, Museums/Galleries

Man on Fire

August 18, 2018

I was finishing a late-aborning BA when a professor introduced me to the works of David Wojnarowicz. No doubt she fathomed that he could be a model for the writing I was attempting—autobiography of a frank, sexual nature that also had very much to do with loss and the times in which I came of…

Criticals, Film, Gay, History, Short Cuts, Theater

Oscar Bait!

January 2, 2015

It isn’t true for every child that grows up in a large family, but it was true for me: I wanted to be seen. There I was, a middle child (one of ten) convinced of his invisibility, and fighting like hell to rectify the injustice. From where I sat, recognition came either by way of…

Architecture, Current Affairs, Gay, History, Politics, Television, Theater

Scene of the Crime

June 7, 2014

It looks like a hole in the world. Among many other thoughts, that’s what struck me when I finally got a chance to see the 9/11 Memorial Plaza few weeks back. Symbols exist for a reason, and the architects of our country’s newest grief repository have hit on just the right one; it’s hard not…

Current Affairs, Gay, Sports

The Jackie Robinson Moment

May 12, 2014

First Jason Collins and now Michael Sam: the pro-sports glass ceiling has been broken, ushering in waves of support and (no surprise) standard-issue good ol’ American homophobia. Check out the media weigh-ins on CNN and the New Yorker, and don’t forget: when you express your happiness by kissing a loved one, by all means “think…

Criticals, Current Affairs, Gay, My back pages, New York, Short Cuts, Theater

In the theater, giving sorrow words

March 29, 2014

We go to the theater to renew our ties to the world. Sometimes we’re reminded of things, lives, people we used to know, or feelings we’ve tucked away long ago. When it’s working, a play can unearth those buried treasures, though the effect isn’t always pleasant. At a recent performance of Mothers and Sons, a…

Current Affairs, Gay, History, Science

Today is World AIDS Days

December 1, 2013

Because it’s not over yet. Right?

Art, Current Affairs, Gay

National Coming Out Day (Be Yourself)…

October 11, 2013

I could think of no greater tribute than posting some works of Barbara Kruger, many of which read like metaphors for the state of closetness. A toast…to self.

Current Affairs, Gay, History, Museums/Galleries, Theater

Blood Count

July 1, 2013

To draw comparisons between the current Broadway production of Macbeth and the New York Historical Society’s just opened exhibition AIDS in New York: The First Five Years seems a reach. Yet after seeing both in the same week, my thoughts drift to issues of mortality, not to mention body counts. Anyone who lived in New…