Parting Glances A Meeting: Charles Past, Charles Present
It's been 60 years since I last saw the young man who sits across from me. He has, at 20, what a friend calls "the poetry of youth." An eager freshness that's [...]
Parting Glances: BTL and Me (Among Other Things)
I started writing my Parting Glances column in 1999. Its premise was simple enough: choose an important LGB — and occasionally T — historical event that [...]
Parting Glances: Time Flies! That's For Sure!
One of the pleasures for a writer or an artist is to come across an early composition or art piece and experience finding it with a sense of reading or seeing [...]
Parting Glances: God Bless Our Tom Tom
Pitwool Tommy lives with his mommy, Wanda-Rose Pitwool. His daddy, Darnell Prince Pitwool. And a pit bull dog named Lazarus. Tommy's home schooled. Living in [...]
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, [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
