Charles Alexander
Parting Glances: From Patient Zero to Patient 'Oh'
Gaetan Dugas. Recognize the name? In case you may have forgotten, Gaetan is better known in AIDS infamy as Patient O. A pretty, blond Canadian airline steward, he purportedly brought the HIV retrovirus into the United States and — aware or unaware [...]
Parting Glances: A night wise as snow
That silent night the sound of jackboots grew loud in the streets. The hosannas grew bold. Onward like soldiers marching as to war they came, letting no one bar their trampling way. "We march in the name of charity," they sang. But their hymn was [...]
Parting Glances: Hugs lost, hugs found
An open house I attended was winding down. Two boys were fussing over who'd get to release balloons at closing. Tucker, younger by a year, was losing out to his brother, taller-by-an-inch Sammy, age seven. Tucker ran to his mom in tears. She hugged [...]
Parting Glances: If You See Me, Please Honk
Back in the days when closets were leased for a lifetime, it was SOP to go by a nickname. Some SOPs I recall are Little Bobby, Little Pat, Estralita, Marshmallow, T.D. (Tall Dick), Savoy, B.J. (Butch Jimmy), Miss Bruce, and, among Dykes Anonymous: [...]
Parting Glances: Lemon Merin(gay), Anyone?
It was totally unexpected. Shocking. Downright naughty, even. Yet so deliciously thrilling to the hundreds of angry gays who just happened to be watching a late Des Moines TV newscast 39 years ago. Anita Jane Bryant, America's homophobe du jour, [...]
Parting Glances: Peg Me Once, Peg Me Twice
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: A Bushwack of Jebs
A pleasure of English is the imaginative, poetic use of collective nouns. Such fanciful verbal pedigree goes back to the 15th century. A pride of lions. A murder of crows. A dray of squirrels. A wedge of swans. A pass of asses. These word weavings [...]
Parting Glances: Heil Who? Micro What?
There's a scene in the popular film-musical "Cabaret" where several blond, German, Aryan youths seated at an outdoor cafe, prompted by Nazi zeal, leap up one by one, and contagiously sing, "Tomorrow the world belongs to us." As far-fetched as it may [...]
Parting Glances: Tears for Closet Gay Pioneer
To diddle an old saying: You can't judge a gay author or his book by its — or by his — cover. Case in point: Groundbreaking 1951 sociological expose, "The Homosexual in America." Gay nom de plume: Donald Webster Cory. Real name: Edward Sagarin. [...]
Parting Glances: My Black History CT Remembrance
When Detroit-born, Cass Tech graduate Bernard Johnson died, age 60 in 1997, the New York Times carried a quarter-page obit celebrating his life as "a Renaissance man in dance." Little bigger than a metronome minute — at 5-foot-4 — he started dancing [...]
Parting Glances: Your Anal Probe, or Mine?
Our benighted Michigan Legislature has in its bedroom, busybody, biblically invasive wisdom recently diddled over wording keeping anal sex — with or without lubrication or condom usage — a felony meriting 15 years in prison. (Where presumably anal [...]
Parting Glances: Dreams, Wet and Otherwise
The mind boggling possibility of recording dreams will soon be a reality predicts a British monthly science magazine, How It's Made. The nano technology/brain scanning techniques are now such that translating neural impulses from brain neurons and [...]