Authors and actors and artists and such
Dorothy Parker
Never know nothing, and never know much.
Sculptors and singers and those of their kidney
Tell their affairs from Seattle to Sydney.
Playwrights and poets and such horses’ necks
Start off from anywhere, end up at sex.
Diarists, critics, and similar roe
Never say nothing, and never say no.
People Who Do Things exceed my endurance;
God, for a man that solicits insurance!
Doors to the Magic Theater
G.J.’ Gallery and the Central Arms I read Hermann Hesse’s novel Steppenwolf as an undergrad in the early 1970s. I had not heard of the recent riots at the Stonewall Inn. And I wasn’t aware of the existence of gay bars. The most striking and lasting impressions I had of Hesse’s novel were the depiction of free…
“Queer Relationships Are Not Like Straight Relationships”
For me, the saving grace of Bros was this statement made by Bobby Leiber (Billy Eichner’s character). We are different, even if Bros (riffing on When Harry Met Sally) undermines its own message by resolving the story (of two gay men professing their rejection of romance) with the romcom cliché happy ending. Fire Island, another recent queer romcom, also undermines its…
The Life and Times of the Legendary Larry Townsend
by Jack FritscherBook Review by Les K. Wright What becomes a legend most? Having his story told by another legend. And who better to tell Larry Townsend’s story than Jack Fritscher? Author of The Leatherman’s Handbook, Townsend has long been recognized as a primary shaper and influencer of the gay leather-and-kink world, his book a founding…
Open Letter to Jack Fritscher
Hi Jack, I was excited to read the news of your latest book, on Larry Townsend. I will let you know when my copy arrives. (I contacted the Leather Journal, and they said they had already reviewed it.) Over the past two years of the pandemic shutdown I have been coming out of retirement, a…
LGBT vs. Queer
“The absence of a Poor Queer Studies paradigm that might counterbalance current state-of-the-field work is particularly curious in light of the fact that concerns about academic elitism within Queer Studies are an undeniable part of the field’s history. Perhaps we used to hear those charges rather more often than we do now. Notably, Jeffrey Escoffier…
I Was a Working-Class Academic
Melissa Korn (Wall Street Journal) Sixteen major U.S. universities, including Yale University, Georgetown University and Northwestern University, are being sued for alleged antitrust violations because of the way they work together to determine financial-aid awards for students. According to a lawsuit filed in Illinois federal court late Sunday by law firms representing five former students…
Update on LTS AIDS Film
Here is the film made of long-term AIDS survivors. Instead of being a documentary, it is a compilation of talking head snippets arranged into a message created by the film-maker. I feel misled. I do appear saying “forty years.” At the time I thought it odd that I did not fill out any paperwork or…
41 YEARS as a Long-Term AIDS Survivor
WORLD AIDS DAY Today I recognize I have been living with HIV/AIDS for 41 years. I am among the small and dwindling generation of long-term (pre-HAART) AIDS survivors. I am one of the interviewees in Steed Taylor’s documentary premiering today as part of the VISUAL AIDS “Day without Art 2021.” I will post a link…
Lou Sullivan Has His Own Coffee Mug
Look who’s got his own coffee mug? (This came in a fundraiser from the LGBT Historical Society San Francisco): My old friend Lou Sullivan, pioneering trans activist and fellow founding member of the LGBT Historical Society San Francisco. I originally met Lou in the 1970s, where he was an editor on the GPU News in…
A Tale of the Coleherne
Thinking about my slight connection with Stephen Sondheim opened a floodgate of memories. Our friend in common was a tall, dark, handsome (aren’t they all?) pre-bear era leather bear named John Scobie. I met John at the Coleherne originally. He stayed with Sondheim when in NYC and I stayed with a friend (who I had…
Gay Men’s Friendships
Friendship in Old AgeGay and Lesbian Review The term “friendship,” for Americans, is a very broad and nebulous concept. Where I currently live, many people (whom I consider casual acquaintances) call me a friend just because we exchange “Hellos.” I lived in West Germany for most of the 1970s, where I learned that Germans’ definition…
Communicating Across the Queer Generations
I am occasionally asked to speak to classes at the local college as a gay activist and long-term AIDS survivor. Last week I was asked to hold a 90-minute Q&A with Tyler Bradway’s AIDS Literature class. Today I received the email below from one of the students in that class. Hi, I just wanted to…
Closing Another Chapter of My Life
My leathers are being moved to my permanent archive at Cornell’s Human Sexuality Collections this December.
The Triumph of Narcissism, Anger, and Resentment?
Review of Our Own Worst Enemy, by Tom Nichols (2021) In recent times I have found the current American ethos best described as “I’ve got mine; you can go fuck yourself.” American individualism, rampant consumer capitalism, and the breakdown of any sense of community – the erosion of fundamental values necessary for a democracy to function…
“All hail, the American Boy!”
A Dismantling of the American Dream In A Cool Million Nathaniel West parodied the myth of the American Dream through the “dismantling” of Lemuel Pitkin. In “All hail, the American Boy!” (The closing sentence of A Cool Million) Les K. Wright recounts his own would-be “dismantling” as the American Dream reveals itself for it truly is. The American…
Queer durch Tübingen
I just received the Queer durch Tübingen catalog of the exhibition on the history of homosexuality in Tübingen put on by the Stadtarchiv of the city. I was an active member of the IHT [Initiativgruppe Homosexualität Tübingen], the gay activist group, from 1975 to 1979. I moved to Tübingen from Würzburg with my lover and began my doctoral studies at…
Guest Opinion: Susan Sontag and me: Epidemics I have lived through
When the COVID-19 shutdown began in the spring of 2020, I posted on Facebook that I expected the pandemic to be, for me, a pain in the ass, a royal pain in the ass. I am a long-term (pre-highly active anti-retroviral therapy, or HAART) survivor of AIDS. I lived through the first 15 years of…
Les K. Wright 