Charles Alexander
Parting Glances: Bambi, Roosevelt, JFK, Trump
I recall a New Yorker cartoon that appeared years ago. Picture, if you will: two or three animals are gathered in a sunlit forest. A cute rabbit looks up to a chirpy bird and asks, "Where were you when Bambi's mother died?" It's a lighthearted way [...]
Parting Glances: A Rose by Any Other Name
There's a joke about the gay guy who goes for his annual medical checkup. He coughs three times and bends over for the proverbial Pokemon. The proc-doc finds a rose, retrieves it, then another, and finally a blooming dozen. American Beauties all. [...]
Parting Glances: Christmas Un-corked!
I hate to play the Gay Grinch Who Stole Christmas, but there's a movement afoot by the Southern Comfort Baptists to do away with all suspected gay references in Christmas carols and holiday traditions. Unless we act with a united front (and a [...]
Parting Glances: Turn again, Time in your flight!
I turned 80 in May of this year. I have lived 62 of those years as a member of Detroit's rainbow community. I suspect I shall do so for the remainder of life. (So please mark your desk calendars accordingly. Item in italics: Charles, gayly [...]
PARTING GLANCES: The Age of Treason? Perhaps
If one person can be truly said to have single-handedly pushed this country into a War of Independence from England, it was patriot and pamphleteer Thomas Paine (1737-1809). His book "Common Sense" provided a clarion call to open rebellion. When it [...]
Parting Glances: Inaugural Sermon on the Mountebank
NOTE: The following well-known Sermon on the Mount — politically updated — is taken from the Theocratic New World Translation of the New Testament. It is suitable for reading in Thanksgiving Services in all Fundygelical churches. (Trump picture. [...]
Parting Glances, Tamara A. Rees: Transgender Bronze Star Hero
Tamara A. Rees is 92. She leads a reasonably quiet, uneventful, grandmotherly life with her adopted children's children in Los Angeles, California. In 1954, two years after serving as a Bronze Star decorated U. S. Army paratrooper, then Robert [...]
Parting Glances: Now that the Election's Finally Over
For my first go-around at passing for 39, I spent a lot of time in Chicago fancying I was a new face. Especially if the bar lighting was Gloria Swanson dim, the hour late, the leftover pickings just short of panic and desperation. But back then [...]
Parting Glances: JFK, Nixon, Ford, Sipple and Me
I was working at a discount records shop in downtown Detroit in 1959, the year two ill-fated contenders — Sen. John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Vice President Richard Milhous Nixon — campaigned for the 1960 presidency. I stood about 50 feet from the [...]
Parting Glances: Chance and Dr. J Go Drag
GATORADE, Ariz. – I'm a skeptic concerning things supernatural, but the wonder-working weekend I spend BTL-reporting on the Drag Queens for Jesus Halloween Convention is, well, miraculous! It's also ecumenical, as the three-day drama-queen pageant [...]
Parting Glances: Hare Today, Gonads Tomorrow
"Your problems can be solved with this box of amazing cure-alls," hOOty hOOted Exodus P. Barn Owl, Q.D., shoving a package of Miracle Elastics, Assorted Colors, Funny Farm, LTD., across his polished oak-apple desk to Reginald Rabbit, referral [...]
Parting Glances: Were You Ever 'Known' or 'Alleged'?
Just a few generations ago, the term homosexual was often qualified by adjectives. Alleged. Avowed. Rumored. Known! The descriptions were used by cautious media, police enforcement agencies and courtroom attorneys. Not many are aware that until as [...]