Charles Alexander
Parting Glances: When Life Went Gay On Us
For over 50 years, Life magazine informed Americans about current events both in the U.S. and abroad. Photos and content were dramatic — mostly conservative, occasionally controversial and, sometimes, downright shocking. Life folded in 1973. [...]
Parting Glances: LGBTs "our misfortune"
Well-known Spanish philosopher Jorge Agustin Nicolas Ruiz de Santayana y Borras — known succinctly in English as George Santayana — was born in 1863 and died in 1952. He was gay — lived through the worldwide nightmare of Hitler and Nazism that took [...]
Parting Glances: Peel me a grape, Kitty!
In 1953, a madam by the name of Polly Adler wrote a tell-all best seller about her 30 years in the brothel business, "A House is Not a Home." It created a sensation (I was too young to apply for a real estate license; but I do recall my parents [...]
Parting Glances. Tattoos upward for Justin!
Charles Alexander Were I 50 years younger, and given a now wishful-thinking opportunity, I just might make a pass at Justin Bieber, troublesome idol turned born-again celebrity entertainer. What has captured my foolish, libidinous attention is his [...]
Parting Glances : Ex-Gay Fairy Farewell
Charles Alexander This is the story of Dorian Lavender who has vanished from the party scene of music, stimulants, sex and is now ironically beyond the saving grace of suddenly-discarded friends of which there are many. (Perhaps you knew him [...]
Parting Glances. Boys I remember
Charles Alexander Mart Crowley's "Boys In the Band" opened off-Broadway 50 years ago. I bought a copy of the play in Chicago in 1968 and read dialog aloud while driving back to Detroit with my then partner, Larry. We saw a local production a few [...]
PARTING GLANCES Repeat the joyful sound (Pt. 2)
Charles Alexander Contrary to rumors circulating for years in Story Bookland Weekly Tabloid there never was any real friction between Dorothy, Cowardly Lion, Tin Woodsman and Scarecrow.(And those horrid pictures of an aging Dorothy are [...]
Parting Glances. Repeat the joyful sound (Pt. 1)
There are paths that by strange chances on Christmas Eve mix up in time, space, thought, crazy activation. Some fact. Some fantasy. Who knows? So it happened once upon a near but distant whimsical time in a universe that was hoodwinked into [...]
Parting Glances: Memories of A Near-Forgotten Past (Pt. 7)
As a gay teenager I hung out at the Hub Grill in downtown Detroit, a greasy spoon of a place, located at Farmer and Bates Streets, in convenient walking distance of four quite popular gay bars, city hall and the 1st Precinct police station! Just out [...]
Parting Glances: Memories of a Near-Forgotten Past (Pt. 6)
There were two newspaper stands in once-busy downtown Detroit in the 1960s. One was situated at Grand Circus Park. The other at Campus Martius, across the street from the still-standing 1877 Soldiers and Sailors Monument. Each month, I'd stop at [...]
Parting Glances: Memories of a Near-Forgotten Past (Pt. 5)
Fifty years ago Detroit's Washington Boulevard was a busy setting for exclusive shops, upscale restaurants, elegant bistros stretching sedately from Grand Circus Park's popular Statler Hotel to Michigan Avenue's prestigious Sheraton Cadillac. Both [...]
Parting Glances: Memories of a Near-Forgotten Past Pt. 4
For five dynamic years — 1940 to 1945 — Detroit was America's Arsenal of Democracy, a vital source of war materials and weapons. First for England's defense. Later, for our own. Automotive factories focused on round-the-clock, nonstop production of [...]