Charles Alexander
Worth 1,000 words?
Alfred Eisenstaedt's 1945 photo "The Kiss at Times Square," taken at the end of World War ll, is honored as one of the pictorial moments "that changed the world." (There's a published collection by that title.) Eisenstaedt captured the joy in a [...]
Wee bit o'blarney!
What do you give a friend's mother who's celebrating her 93rd birthday? A dozen American Beauty roses? A box of Godiva chocolates? Obvious choices. A very special occasion requires a very special gift. I met the nonagenarian, Virginia Johns, through [...]
A lemon merin(gay) moment
Parting Glances 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 31 years ago. Anita Jane Bryant, America's [...]
Seig Heil der Gay Bund!
Greenwich Village…San Francisco…West Hollywood…Ferndale…the world! There's a scene in the film "Cabaret" where some Aryan, blond-haired German youths seated at an outdoor cafe, prompted by misguided jingoism, jump up and sing, "Tomorrow the world [...]
The poetry of youth
Almost 125 years before the birth of Jesus, a handsome youth named Antinous was declared a god by the Roman emperor Publius Aelius Hadrian. Hadrian fell in love with Antinous when the boy was 13, an age when many post-pubescent males married. They [...]
iPhone on Sarah's steps
Parting Glances I'm really, really quite taken with my iPhone. As a person of refined tastes (few of which my retirement budget actually permits, however), it gives me modest pleasure when my unit, costing 300 smackeroos, caller signals by [...]
Any cock-a-doodle-do?
For whatever reason of erotic senescence or jaded performance acumen (emphasis on the third syllable), I've been giving X-Tube a look see. I've come across no one I know (although a few posteriors bearing the telltale marks of gravitational sag do [...]
Days of Our Wimples
"I've got good news, bad news," the unmistakably seductive voice of Sr. Serena Scatterpin awakens me at dawn from a sound, debate-free sleep. "It must be urgent, Sister," I cuss, wheez, and blink my way into manageable awareness. "What in hell, er, [...]
Parting Glances: Candle queens I've known
"I'm burning my candle at both ends. It will not last the night. But, oh, my foes, and, ah, my friends. It gives a lovely light!" These words are by poet Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892-1950), the subject of the fascinating best-selling biography of [...]
Parting Glances: Where there's smoke, there's gas
Christopher Isherwood met Don Bachardy on an L.A. beach when Don was 18 and Isherwood, 49. For 33 devoted, creative years they were together. Aging writer. Youthful artist. Bachardy drew portraits of Isherwood, including several as Isherwood lay [...]
Parting Glances: Old boys, old band
Mort Crowley's "Boys In the Band" opened Off-Broadway 40 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 years later at the [...]
Parting Glances: Birds do it. Bees do it.
Even educated fleas do it. Let's buzz . . . Last week's New Scientist, Britain's popular science reportage magazine, is an eye-opener about kinky animal sex. "(Animals) participate in kissing, hugging, oral sex, masturbation and every kind of [...]