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Vada the omi – she’s one of the dolly bona sisters!
Gay men today rely less on specialized vocabulary than even when I came out 40+ years ago. Some of my early mentors taught me phrases like “friend of Dorothy” and “light in his loafers” to refer to myself and my kind. But these American gay-isms had their origin in the sophisticated and extensive lengths to…
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The Entirely Unnecessary History of Gaylord
Ask any gay man born as part of Generation X (Gen X) or earlier and they will tell you of a name they were called. For some it was Fag. Others might have been saddled with Queer. For me it was Gaylord. There was a time when Gaylord was a perfectly respectable name. A dignified…
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The Plus Sign
Happy Pride! The first Pride march was held 56 years ago tomorrow, on June 28, 1970, the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. The Stonewall Riots were a tipping point for the gay liberation movement in the United States, where, after that first march, the last Sunday in June was initially celebrated as “Gay Pride…
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Metonymy
I was born and raised in Los Angeles, and I spent my career in Hollywood. Both of those things are true, but they are not literal. I was born in Santa Monica, on the coast about 16 miles west of downtown Los Angeles, and raised in Glendale, a suburb of the city located about 10…
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Friendship
I have lunch plans today. I’ll be meeting a friend, and his husband, at Billy Reed’s, a famous Palm Springs eatery not a quarter mile from my residence; I wrote about Billy Reed’s last December on the occasion of their 50th anniversary. It is one of four restaurants in my neighborhood close enough I can…
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Money
It’s time to answer one of those questions you didn’t know you had. There are things we all say or do because we always have. Call it growing up. Call it socialization. Call it inculturation. Some of them are practical: don’t put baked beans on a paper plate at a picnic or you’ll soon be…
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On the milestone of my 200th post
Shortly after moving in to Stonewall Gardens Assisted Living in 2015, I turned 50. A milestone. Last week, now in my eleventh year here, I turned 60. Another milestone. And thinking that a good idea for a post, I did lots of research on milestones – their origin in, where else but ancient Rome, their…
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What you say and how you say it matters
Language shapes perception. The words we choose do more than describe reality – they construct it. When speaking about disabled people, language can either reinforce stigma and exclusion or foster dignity, accuracy, and respect. Sensitivity in language usage is not about policing speech for its own sake; it is not an unthinking, cynical, and rote…
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My love letter to writing
Writing is one of humanity’s oldest and most transformative inventions. Long before the printing press, long before the Internet, and even long before bound books, people felt the urge to mark symbols onto stone, clay, and parchment. Those early scratches were more than just records of grain or trade; they were the first attempts to…
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Swearing
WARNING: This post contains strong language. Reader discretion is advised. Yesterday, I underwent an outpatient medical procedure meant to diagnose some issues I am having with my bladder. As it involved the doctor looking inside my bladder with a tiny camera attached to a scope, and as there is really only one way to accomplish that…
Your mileage may vary.