Charles Alexander
Gaydar Goes Half App'd
Parting Glances I've been told by a high techie source – but perhaps it's just wishful thinking "queersay" – that there's a new app on the market called Gaytection. Its purpose is to determine at a glance just who might be gay. Correction. Who is [...]
OJ made us gay!
Parting Glances It was shocking. Totally unexpected. Downright naughty, even. Yet so deliciously thrilling to the hundreds of angry gays who just happened to be watching Des Moines TV a late newscast 35 years ago. Anita Jane Bryant, America's [...]
A summer day, lost and found
Parting Glances Wednesday of last week is a flawless autumn day for biking. The sun is radiant. The temperature's 76. There isn't a trace of resistant wind to pedal against. I once more unchain my 1982 Schwinn, red-and-white, [...]
Gay History #3, Part 2
Parting Glances During the Nazi terror reign that culminated only in Germany's defeat by the Allies in 1945, about 15,000 gay men were incarcerated in the camps where an estimated 60 percent were brutally worked to death. Those homosexuals who [...]
PC, as in polished correctly
Parting Glances The magic two-way mirror that Alice passed through long ago – recounted by Lewis Carroll in his story of wrong-sided wonderment, "Alice Through The Looking Glass" – sold recently on e-Bay. Alice's mirror went for five times the [...]
Trolley ride to destiny
Parting Glances Who could imagine in 1865 that 144 years after John Wilks Booth murdered Abraham Lincoln in Ford Theater America's first black president would be attending ceremonies in Lincoln's honor? The gala event on the 200th anniversary of [...]
Shading The Seventh Oracle
Parting Glances I've been bike riding pretty much daily from my art studio to the studio of my artist friend Jon Strand in Cork Town, a distance of about three miles one way. My biking – I've been doing about ten to 15 miles every other day for [...]
O Dem Golden Oldies, Mitt!
Parting Glances It was once said of George Romney, Michigan governor 1963 to 1969, "There but for the grace of God goes god." The quip was made in response to his photogenic GOP brashness, but there's a grain of theocratic truth to the [...]
Ah! There's the rub ...
Parting Glances Once upon a time there was a Genie just let out of a confining lamp. How long he had been trapped inside he couldn't say. The Lamp had lain wedged between a smooth rock, a hard place, on a far distant hill. The Genie had been [...]
Why I'm gay, no doubt
Parting Glances There are experiences that are alien to most people: walking on the moon, winning the $337 million Power Ball lottery, weighing 400 pounds, having implant boobs. Because my life tends to be introspective, devoid of untoward kink, [...]
A Fable For 6:30 a.m.
Parting Glances Once upon a time there was a young man down on his luck. He lost his job in January. In February his boyfriend dumped him. His cat died in March. His wallet was stolen in April. Worse, he turned 30 in May. June brought summer; but [...]
Pages past tense #18
Parting Glances My fledgling journalist days began at Harry Burns Hutchins Intermediate School, as contest editor for the Hutchins Star, during my senior year. Three times that long-distanced semester when the four-sheeter was published I'd dream [...]