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Oct '03
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Majorettes
By: Mitzel
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I recently had a conversation with a handsome young man in his early 20s. He had just returned to New England from Florida and was on his
way to see his Mother and sisters. Since he had an hour to kill before his bus left, I heard his life story. |
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Sep '03
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The Art of Lying
By: Mitzel
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Outside my place of business, and down the street two doors, there is a public waste receptacle. On the side of this item, someone recently placed a
bumper sticker. The sticker reads: "Bush Lied." |
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Aug '03
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Toys in the Attic
By: Mitzel
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I see that one of the premium cable channels has launched a gay-themed TV series, operating on the presumption that gay men have more "taste" and "style" than their straight brethren. One of the producers was quoted, the day after the initial broadcast, that viewership was
much larger than expected. Who watched a show about gay men "making over" straight guys? Women, I suspect. |
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Jul '03
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I Do
By: Mitzel
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The sublime wit of the Canadians is often underappreciated. The Province of Ontario court ruling on June 10-- knocking down gender restrictions on marriage-- has very quickly led to the proposal to recognize same-sex unions all across the dominion. |
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Jun '03
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New Mailman
By: Mitzel
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Every morning, while I am doing my cleaning at work, the mailman drops by with my bundle of, mostly, bills. He is a pleasant man, nicely turned out in his postal uniform. We always say
"Good morning" to each other and I thank him for delivering my mail. For almost every day for the past two and a half years, this small event has been as predictable as any other daily ritual. I
find comfort in such regularity--a small comfort, but a comfort nonetheless in this tumultuous world. |
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May '03
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Repo Man
By: Mitzel
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What are we to do with the past? When does the past even become the past? |
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Apr '03
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Ring! Ring!
By: Mitzel
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I have become my own hydraulic effect; the more exposed I am to the harpy media, that endless shouting, the screechy carping by the worst of the species, the less I want to say
anything. After seeing Ann Coulter just once, how can one use a language that has been so debased? |
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Mar '03
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The Gay Brain
By: Mitzel
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Recently, a friend and I were chatting away on the phone. For some reason, we got onto the Mitford sisters. "Which one of them was the Nazi?" he asked. "That was Unity Valkyrie," I
said, adding "The one who put a bullet in her head." "No, not her," he said, "the other one," indicating a family full of fascists. "The other one was Diana, who had been married to the
Guinness beer heir but dumped him to marry the British fascist, Oswald Mosley." |
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Feb '03
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Look Back In
By: Mitzel
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My Guide colleague, Michael Bronski, has just had his latest book published. It is:
Pulp Friction: Uncovering The Golden Age of Gay Male
Pulps. This is not Bronski's first book. He is also
the author of Culture Clash: The Making Of Gay
Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, And The Struggle For Gay
Freedom. He has also edited numerous anthologies. He has
been an activist, writer, and critic for over three decades. |
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Jan '03
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Hankerings
By: Mitzel
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It's funny how certain conversations come back after years, echoing around in the cortex. Surely there must a reason for the replay. Could it be an emblem for a certain set of events? A conversation I had with some fellow
back in the 70s did a redux on me the other day. This fellow was a member of a gay men's social group, I think they called themselves The Pappagallos, and they staged elaborate wing-dings, all-nighters for the boogie boys. |
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Dec '02
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Participation
By: Mitzel
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I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror. I wasn't so sure I either recognized or particularly liked the image of the person I saw there. Slowly I lifted the razor's edge to my neck. |
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Nov '02
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Little Me
By: Mitzel
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Someone recently asked me if I had ever watched "The Sopranos," an apparently popular and certainly much written-about television series. I told this person: "No." I have no interest in
this phenomenon whatsoever. (Well, maybe if Will and Grace and company guested on one episode....) |
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Oct '02
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Boxers or Briefs
By: Mitzel
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It's funny what lingers. It's strange what sticks. Right now I'm thinking of Bill Clinton. In the moment of this memory, I think he is running for President of the United States the first
time, 1992, and, for some reason he has landed on an MTV show, wherein the MTV young people get to ask him questions as though it were a grown-up adult forum. |
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Sep '02
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Water
By: Mitzel
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I spent my boyhood years in a suburb of Cleveland, Ohio. The nearest body of water was still is Lake Erie. My grandparents had a house right on the lake, as did my aunt and uncle; thus it was a fixture in my life. When I was five or six, I learned that there was daily ferry that
departed Cleveland for Detroit. This sounded exotic to the extreme. Detroit must indeed be a fabulous place if it warranted a daily ferry taxiing to its bosom. For a time, taking this ferry to Detroit was my highest ambition already the theme of escape to El Dorado. |
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Aug '02
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My Cohort
By: Mitzel
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My friend JoAnne is doing a big magazine piece for
Harper's on the scandals in the Roman Catholic Church, and she's setting it here in Boston, where the "epi-center," as the press calls it, of the quake is. |
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Jul '02
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Now & Then
By: Mitzel
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The brackets of today's meditation are two new books. They are:
Thomas Eakins: The Absolute Male and Richard Goldstein's
The Attack Queers: Liberal Society and The Gay
Right. |
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Jun '02
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Tele.cum
By: Mitzel
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For good Crime News these days, I read the business section in my local paper the shreddings, the criminal energy trades, the false valuations, the offshore shells, the flips, the lying |
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May '02
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Unknown Zone
By: Mitzel
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Here's the image that represents so much of what has been lost to me. I enter a great big old movie palace. The carpet has a swirly floral pattern and is slightly threadbare. The movie grinds on, in the second of three reels. |
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Apr '02
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The Blessing
By: Mitzel
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Does this happen in other churches?" A friend asked me this question; the "this" referred to the revelations in the Boston area and elsewhere that a number of Roman Catholic priests have acknowledged sex with young
men in their parishes, activities called "abuse." |
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Mar '02
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My Friend Kitty
By: Mitzel
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My friend Kitty died on SuperBowl Sunday. Kitty was at his home in Roxbury, Massachusetts, in bed, watching the television when he died. It is still too soon to know the cause of
death-- most likely a cardio-vascular event. Kitty was 54. |
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Feb '02
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Over Time
By: Mitzel
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Today is my 54th birthday. How am I celebrating, if that's what one is supposed to do on such an occasion? I am looking at a four-color ad in one of the gay publications. |
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Jan '02
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Resentments
By: Mitzel
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I was thinking about sumptuary laws the other day-- laws put in place by the reigning authority to curtail certain kinds of human activities. Usually they've been applied to behaviors involving attire and food. I live in Boston,
and I ponder on the sumptuary legal history of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. |
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Dec '01
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Wish List
By: Mitzel
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The older I get, the more insane everything seems, the more surreal the reports of events and events themselves. Why live with the crazy? Why not just press that button and have it gone? |
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Nov '01
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Civilized
By: Mitzel
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Gay life is a good training-ground for times like these; you get used to being in a situation wherein you feel constantly under some kind of assault. I cannot fathom why anyone would want
to die in the process of creating mass mayhem, but the fact of a terrible criminal act is not that much of a shock for me as for others. |
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Oct '01
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Holy Mackerel
By: Mitzel
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I have this distinct memory: as a young teenager, back in the very early 1960s, I, along with a pal, would church-shop. We would attend services in churches other than the one into which we had been recently
confirmed (suburban, low Episcopalian). |
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Sep '01
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Dancing Fairies
By: Mitzel
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In a new translation by Theoharis C. Theoharis of the poems of Constantine Cavafy titled
Before Time Could Change Them, there's included a foreword by Gore Vidal. In it Gore writes about a run down
tavern, the Nea Zoe, in a seedy part of Athens 40 years ago. |
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Aug '01
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Tabloids
By: Mitzel
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While at the local drugstore, I always check out the rack of tabloid rags, a quick slide through sleazeland. Usually something about the elder of the English princes, lots of Hollywood
and entertainment types, maybe an update on Jesus and, in its cycle, predictions of the end of the world. |
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Jul '01
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Follow your lights, or pay a price
By: Mitzel
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A friend dropped by right after attending my city's Gay Pride Parade this year. My friend, I'll call him Dwayne (not his real name) wasn't much impressed by the event-- one of the two largest annual events in New England.
His beef? Too many politicians. |
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Jun '01
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Save Me!
By: Mitzel
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Why do people collect stuff? I have asked myself this question numerous times in recent days. It being, finally, spring here in Boston, some guys have done their spring-cleaning, given me a call at the bookstore, and asked if
they can unload some of the magazines, books, and videos they've accumulated. I tell them: bring 'em in! |
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May '01
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The Lasting Thing
By: Mitzel
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My family has been much on my mind lately. Where to begin? The thing about having a family is that it really is always there, no matter where you roam. I tried to get away from mine once, but what I did was put physical
distance between them and me. I know few who have completely broken from immediate family. It turns on what kind of people you're dealing with. |
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