Growing up I heard an oft-repeated joke about Church of Christ members. As someone enters heaven, St. Peter leads him on a tour. The newly ascended asks St. Peter, “Who is that group in the corner talking amongst themselves?” St. Peter replies, “Shhh! Those are Church of Christ-ers. They think they are the only … Continue reading
Brontez Purnell is a flaming powerhouse of creativity: writer, dancer, singer, filmmaker. Impressively restless and productive. His latest outing is this bold, sassy, sexy roulette wheel of a book in which he celebrates the marginal, the promiscuous, the lovelorn, the endlessly horny, hookers and hook-ups, fuck buddies and fuck-ups. I read it first in a … Continue reading
“The door closes. He’s gone. I’m alone.” Moore’s narrator feels he’s hard-wired for abandonment, allergic to reciprocated love, only happy when he’s being rejected. Loneliness is the one constant in his life, the one companion that never leaves. “Loneliness can be the greatest gift”, he says. The fragmented nature of the text mirrors the … Continue reading
Reaching sexual maturity is an overwhelming enough experience at the best of times: worrying that everything is functioning properly and there was nothing untoward about what one did or how one did it; but for an entire generation, like myself, reaching puberty in the 1980s, that stage of our lives was made scarier yet by … Continue reading
FASHION CLIMBING A MEMOIR WITH PHOTOGRAPHS By BILL CUNNINGHAM Preface by Hilton Als After Bill Cunningham died in 2016, his family found a memoir he had written about the earlier period of his life. It was an unexpected, and enjoyable, find. Most people remember Cunningham’s work as the photographer behind the On the Street and … Continue reading