Category: Uncategorized

Slut shaming was rampant when I grew up and unspeakably worrisome for gay boys. The perception someone taken advantage of is lying, or to blame for not reporting their sexual abuse in this culture is stunning. I had no idea I was even a victim as a young teen because I believed it was my…

In our culture, if you like to cook, you don’t have to become a chef to enjoy making nice meals for appreciative family and friends, but it’s rare for artists to express ourselves in the same way. Unless musicians are “entertaining” in appropriate settings, performing for others especially one-on-one makes people uncomfortable. People with dementia…

Rearranging weeds in my mother’s neglected, salt-inundated flower beds on Long Island Sound drove her out of her mind as did most things I did including making miniature water gardens with running hoses. Only trolls and plastic horses appreciated acorn walls and daffodil bird baths or how fresh rhododendron blooms would remain fresh plunged in…

I’d always been half-empty,wrapped in thick transparent walls, watching eagles nest across the creek— twenty percent wonder, eighty percent bored. Tried everything to break the glass: meditation, medication, prayer and shopping sprees, sex and certainty, Jesus dying just for me. Until one day in traffic, knitted eyebrows judging gated communities and eroding shores, when my…

I was hired as a laborer to help build a church in Burlington Vermont in the summer of 1985. I knew nothing about commercial construction and was struggling with my sexuality but the hexagonal design of the house of God looked intriguing and I wanted to learn new skills. Normally carpenters, masons and roofers would…

“What the hell does a Jewish kid from Connecticut know about Indians?” Homer said when I met him in his kitchen. I stood in the doorway of the run-down railroad station that served as the tribal office in Swanton, Vermont, responding simply, “Not much, but I know what plants to avoid eating in the woods…

My gym has become unrecognizable lately, transformed by an influx of members from across the globe. Where I once knew everyone in the locker room—their politics, their prejudices, their daily routines—now I find myself swimming in unfamiliar waters. The change has made my workouts more thought-provoking than any amount of weight training ever could. The…

The chronic pursuit of my demons is irksome and boring to some. Even when I try to hide it, it’s pretty clear I’m roped on. Last summer at gay camp, I overheard a couple referring to me as a “buzz kill,” and the label stuck. Apparently, I’m about as much fun socially as Captain Ahab.…

So what does “Aging Gracefully” mean, if anything at all? Does it mean keeping a low profile as we decline into the “hoary age” so as not to trouble juveniles with the inevitability of doom? Or is it about etiquette, maintaining a dancer’s physique? Who benefits if we modestly mature, humbly crumble, or wane without…

I hit peak winter depression today, drowning in the sargassum of negative thoughts bobbing around my head (yes, I’m using fancy seaweed metaphors now—that’s how desperate I am), when something extraordinary happened at the gym. There I was, mindlessly watching my biceps refuse to cooperate, when I spotted what appeared to be a celebrity. Now,…