Archive for the ‘Homosexuality’ Category
August 30, 2026
(all the way at the end, we get to some sexual street talk, which I think has exactly the right shock value for its context; but if s*cking c*ck offends you, skip the next-to-last sentence)
It starts with Steven Levine — a sparkling vehicle of joy, enthusiasm, and congeniality — roused to anger and protest, as I reported in the 8/3 posting “Two notes on gay moral purpose”:
SL breaks out in a combination of, on the one hand, genuine pride in occasions of humane concern and (to put it grandly) moral purpose in the gay world and, on the other, righteous anger at a long-standing tradition in psychology, sociology, and medicine of blanketly treating homosexuality as dysfunction and disease. With, as sideshow, celebration of the raw sexuality in homosexuality — recognizing the physical and emotional pleasures of the associated sexual practices — in the wonderful BIG FAG t-shirts created by Steven (which he’d been distributing with abandon at Amsterdam Pride).
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Posted in Art, Clothing, Homosexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Moral worlds, Music, My life, Poetry, Social interactions, Social life | Leave a Comment »
August 25, 2026
This morning, I went to get a bunch of lab tests done at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation (for a nephrologist consultation tomorrow) and discovered that a lot of the phlebotomists recognized me, greeted me enthusiastically by name, and asked about my life since they had last seen me. The thing is, I’m really visible (well, I also remember them, and facts about their lives too; they’re interesting people, and the question “How did you end up working here?”, while they are drawing my blood, elicits some extraordinary stories). Almost always wearing stunningly gay clothes (today, rainbow-flag track shorts and a honking big rainbow-colored DEI t-shirt).
(#1) The DEI shirt
The PAMF staff find these clothes cheering, which is indeed one of the things they’re for.
This makes me happy.
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Posted in Clothing, Connotation, Homosexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, Lexical semantics, Moral worlds, My life, Rainbow clothing, Social life, Taboo language and slurs | Leave a Comment »
August 22, 2026
My right hip joint is now a metallic wonder, a titanium replacement in 2012 for the joint nature gave me, which had excruciatingly degenerated from osteoarthritis. I love the name titanium: it trips off the tongue, and as a proud gay man and an enthusiast of MND (A Midsummer Night’s Dream) in several of its incarnations, I choose to understand the name as a reference to Titania, Queen of the Fairies — silly faggot, titanium is for ur-deities.
Now to unpack all of this.
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Posted in Chemistry, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language and medicine, Language in advertising, Music, My life, Myths, Physics, Play, Plays | 3 Comments »
August 20, 2026
Having just done two little postings on brief subjects this morning, I’m now going to wade into a few somewhat meatier subjects that have the potential to explode into larger matters of some weight.
The first of these came to me in tv commercials for the Liberty Mutual insurance company, featuring a Struggling Actor character — all of which delighted me and made me laugh out loud. One of my favorites, “Biberty Bungle” (the one with the bubbles), you can view here.
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Posted in Acting, Actors, Errors, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Humor, Identities, Language in advertising, Masculinity, Movies and tv, My life | Leave a Comment »
August 19, 2026
In the last few days, I’ve returned to two movies from long ago that gave me great pleasure then and have just brought me fresh joy. From 1953 (when I was in high school, in Pennsylvania), Roman Holiday, starring Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck (which came up on a free classic movie channel on my cable service). And from 1963 (when I was in grad school, in Massachusetts), Tom Jones, starring Albert Finney and a cast of wonderful character actors (which I had just gotten the DVD of in the mail).
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Posted in Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Movies and tv, My life, Smell | Leave a Comment »
August 18, 2026
About the moment. From my 8/17 posting “Cool nights”, on my greatly increased prednisone dosage:
it seems to me that my already unusually keen senses of smell and taste have heightened; all my food is fabulous, especially if jazzed up to be even more bitter, more sour, more aggressively fermented, or more spicy than before, and I’m now getting stronger sniff bulletins from my environment
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Posted in Homosexuality, Language and the body, Language of sex, My life, Smell, Social class, Taste | Leave a Comment »
August 17, 2026
It’s mid-August, and still hot summer in Palo Alto, but the nights are now cool (quilt time is upon me) and it’s cool when I get up (around 3 am), moving me to put on a thick flannel shirt and gelling the coconut oil I use to treat my body (it becomes a thin clear liquid in the heat of the day, but the gel is what you want if you’re using it for skin and hair).
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Posted in Chemistry, Clothing, Gender and sexuality, Homosexuality, Language and medicine, Language and the body, My life, Smell, Taste | 1 Comment »
August 15, 2026
— an arresting dictum from Sundance Kidd, in my short story “The interview” (from my XBlog on 3/15/11 — edited from several 1996 drafts); the piece serves as a kind of vertiginous magic-realist summary of my Sundance and Butch saga (Sundance denies that his book is magic realism, but this isn’t that book, although it is in part a story about that book), alluding to many details of the two men’s lives that you will just have to fill in from what Sundance says.
This isn’t exposition, Mr. Bond; this is a 150-foot waterfall.
Tom of Finland — Touko Valio Laaksonen — famously got off enthusiastically on his own homoerotic drawings, and good for him. In turn, I still find parts of this piece achingly funny and am pleased no end at having written them.
Occasionally, Sundance tosses out something that looks like genuine insight. Well, he may be fictional, but he’s no fool.
Then, yippee, I get a cameo appearance, as a Stanford professor named Alex — Alex Adams being my principal pseudonym and Alex Adams a complex alternative identity.
The 2011 version, with only minor editing…
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Posted in Fiction, Homosexuality, Humor, Language of sex | 3 Comments »
