Charles Alexander
Parting Glances: Dance with me, Michael
I often find myself having the urge when out shopping to buy a ledger notebook or arty journal to record check numbers, daily bank balances, art titles, PG column ideas. It's nothing more than my persistant subconscious nudging – usually ignored – [...]
Parting Glances: While the cat's away
Hi, Parting Glances readers. It's Fr. Manly Everhope here! And it's I, everybody's favorite DKNY wash-and-wear wimple nun, Sr. Serena Scatterpin, Renegade Sisters of Mary. Pox vobiscum. Et cum spiritus a a-go-go. Have a blessed day. Jesus saves. The [...]
Parting Glances: Fairy tale for ex-butterflies
At opposite ends of a small-minded garden, where diva birds formerly came to warble ballads and crickets chirp ragtime syncopations, there were ominous nests hanging in the trees. One for hornets. One for wasps. Rival factions, whose ages-old [...]
Parting Glances: Sister gets origamic at 39
"You gay kids are a lot of laughs. Thanks for the invite to celebrate our jointly shared June 19th birthday. I turn 39 this year," winks Sr. Serena Scatterpin, Renegade Sisters of Mary. "Born on the cusp." "How old are you, Ron? You don't look a day [...]
Parting Glances: Fairy tale for Pride 2009
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 and a hard place, on a far distant hill. The genie had been released – as all [...]
Parting Glances: It beez that way sometimes
I can't count the times I've biked the Dequindre Cut recently. It's a mile and a quarter of get-away biking paths between Gratiot Avenue and the Detroit Riverwalk. When I bike, ideas pop highspeed into my head for Parting Glances. (Wayne Besen, who [...]
Parting Glances: Tempest in a cracked paint pot
Back in the "good old days" of Great Depression #1, following Stock Market Crash '29 – years and years – well, at least a galloping few – before my time, the arts took a real financial broadsiding. Money for spending on painting, sculpture, plays, [...]
Parting Glances: How's it hanging, Philip?
Latest word is that Philip Markoff, dubbed the Craiglist Killer, alleged murderer of 26-year-old masseuse Julissa Brisman, had also been trawling the popular site for gays and T-persons as possible victims. The 22-year-old Boston University med [...]
Parting Glances: Thank Buddha it's Friday
I'm sitting next to Susan Horowitz and Jan Stevenson in the DIA Diego Rivera Court, a venue of special romantic endearment for both BTL co-publishers. Years ago when Susan – living and working in New York City – had her fortune told following a [...]
Parting Glances: Soap on a rope
Journal Entry (WEDNESDAY): "Do you see who that is?" elbows my dinner companion anthropologist Rick Robinson, as we leave a Woodward Avenue restaurant near Birmingham. "And please, don't say anything." I can't resist. Taking seats near the [...]
Parting Glances: Thump now, pump later
I don't consort gladly with Southern Baptists, Hardshell Baptists, Missionary Baptists, Freefall Baptists, Seventh-Day Baptists, or Bible thumpers of similar nose-plug immersion ilk. These wet-brain types just don't cuzzin up to us non-dunkable gays [...]
Parting Glances: What's in a nickname, Feygeleh?
I was in the Sunday habit, a few years back, of taking a suburban bus to Birmingham. Riding with me were regulars, most of whom were off to church, or gave that halo'd impression by dress or demeanor. Motivated by whimsy by a half-hour drive of [...]