tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47954729403698862812012-02-02T08:07:20.849-05:00Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.comBlogger331100tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-92072008816826142522010-03-06T11:49:00.006-05:002010-03-06T18:36:20.983-05:00

Assurance that the biographical facts of Ryan's story were true provided no certainty that the bizarre story of a fifteen year term of imprisonment was also true. He could still be a 23 year old guy living with his parents and older brother, and still be lying through his keyboard about the pathological isolation he described. He could be inventing the weird story he was now telling, just as he

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-49348364242482500882010-03-04T17:04:00.003-05:002010-03-04T18:39:41.174-05:00

I had thought that Ryan and his brother shared an apartment somewhere in Western Connecticut. I was able to establish, however, that when he came to this site to read these posts, he logged in from the New York side of the border. He was fearful about giving me any details because any thing I might do which would reveal his contact with the outside world would certainly precipitate a major

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-29624087850447438052010-03-04T00:09:00.003-05:002010-03-04T00:49:54.090-05:00

The story I am about to continue is surely the most implausible adventure of my rather lengthy life. For the last several weeks, I have played the central instrumental role in the escape of two slaves. I mean that almost literally.Last September I wrote a post about a very bright, very strange boy named Ryan. A few weeks later, Ryan sent me an email explaining that, with three exceptions,

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-24701290387632995632010-01-17T21:11:00.004-05:002010-01-19T16:03:21.646-05:00

It has been so long since I've written here, I might as well resume in a welter of complexity. Two startling things have happened in the past few days which, in weirdly complementary fashion, have dramatized phenomenal changes in the perception of sex in a couple eye blinks of time.First, I had mentioned to a friend that when I was in high-school, the apotheosis of the dirty book was Psychopathia

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-4997994284516738812009-09-22T20:09:00.010-04:002009-09-23T23:14:29.013-04:00

From the late 50's through most of the 60's, The Realist served as what Mad Magazine had been for all of the 20-something lefties in America.. It was shocking, non-linear, funny and way out front. And always irreverent. A number of schools refused to distribute mail subscriptions in dorm mail-boxes. It printed stories about all sorts of semi-unmentionable things, sometimes by famous people.

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-84842868331476278042009-09-05T22:23:00.007-04:002009-09-06T13:41:42.430-04:00

I have a problem. Or several.Many months ago, I noticed that there was someone named Ryan who was posting a lot of comments on Jackdaw's blog, comments which tended to be strikingly smart and insightful. And also shrewd. When Jack posted about getting blown in a gay bar near my home when he made a surprise trip to the States last Spring, Ryan responded with a list of a dozen bars where he thought

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-37178490158959805062009-08-28T10:57:00.003-04:002009-08-28T12:29:38.322-04:00

A couple months ago I had progressed all the way to half a century back in the planned exposition of my life. I had left house and high school and was standing outside a college dorm with a gaggle of other awkward over-read sixteen year olds fervently discussing really weighty topics. I had finally left the hearth for home.What follows is probably egocentric excess, but it does show where I

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-4610919618444099102009-08-20T13:25:00.004-04:002009-08-20T16:51:54.378-04:00

Last weekend I saw a performance of Shakespeare's Pericles, Prince of Tyre This was a play I had never before seen, never read, never heard anything about. This promised to be an almost unique opportunity to experience Shakespeare without any preconceptions.It turns out that there were very good reasons for my ignorance. I have always half believed that man had a moral duty to know everything.

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-25830019463308365722009-08-16T21:02:00.002-04:002009-08-16T21:51:15.405-04:00

Another sweet and I hope short and simple story, with even a shimmer of hope in it.I have been following the soul of Trinidad and Tobago for over 40 years now. For accidental reasons, I have been able to do so from the inside.For years, I was unable to see any significant signs of anything gay down there. There was the transvestite dancer who would make ritual appearances at Hindu weddings.

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-47405481773859543912009-08-11T20:32:00.002-04:002009-08-11T21:21:31.441-04:00

Here is a sweet story about art - high and sometimes low. The Bacchae is the last play Euripides wrote and its is more than a little weird. Pentheus, the King of Thebes, has insulted the demigod Dionysus by denying his divinity and as punishment is clawed to death by a frenzied band of Theban bachiantes, led by Pentheus mother, Agave. Still with me?A new production of the work is opening

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-83365970271810293132009-08-08T10:36:00.004-04:002009-08-08T17:52:22.395-04:00

Jackdaw gave me my first magic mushroom when I was in Europe last month.My kids don't quite believe my claim that when I was a student, the great universities of America were free of fags, drugs and tattoos. Perhaps I exaggerate slightly. It turns out that in addition to myself, I knew quite a few people back then who would have been fags if they had had the balls. But I know I knew no druggies

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-58863808441578351012009-08-06T18:58:00.003-04:002009-08-06T19:39:31.589-04:00

Jackdaw is a little annoyed with me because I have posted nothing about the two and a half days I spent with him when I was in Europe last month.It's hard to write about somebody who has become so emotionally close while remaining at such a geographic distance. It's also fraught. I hurt Aaron's feelings with my first post about him and Bulgaria: he felt that I didn't present him as a sufficiently

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-38664504275714509282009-08-03T22:30:00.007-04:002009-08-04T00:02:55.422-04:00

It has been a quiet, reflective period for me of late. The reality of the loss of a life partner whom I never expected to survive has gotten more firmly wedged in place. There was no sex in the last three years, while Eliza was dying, nor any wish to seek the furtive the furtive, illicit, queer blow job which has been the bulk of my gay experience. Indeed, I can't remember how long it has been

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-81020448230987860002009-07-19T17:07:00.004-04:002009-07-19T18:30:02.724-04:00

The summer of my 16th year I was sent off to the American Legion's week long Boys' State encampment. We (all male) leaders of tomorrow were to spend seven days pretending to by the state government. As I recall, one of us was even elector Governor, but since the election came at the end of the week, he didn't get to enjoy many spoils of office. Wanting nothing much to do with any of this, I opted

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-2840074322171100372009-07-13T15:08:00.007-04:002009-07-17T16:01:45.151-04:00

Sofia is a strange city. History notwithstanding, it is a very young city, and doesn't seem to know exactly what it wants to be when it grows up.Now, I have come to know more about Bulgaria then any normal person normally needs to. Now and then, for weeks at a stretch, I can even actually remember who fought on which side in each of the two Balkan wars. (The First was everybody against the Turks;

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-11520121291050872992009-07-08T19:36:00.002-04:002009-07-08T19:48:00.900-04:00

When the kids and their friends were sloughing through the agony of college selection, my universal advice was to figure our some physical place on campus which they would be likely to visit often - the student union, the bookstore, the gym, the library - and just stand there for 10 or 15 minutes looking around. If at the end of the period they felt at home, they probably were.There are some

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-50444789137312688452009-07-03T01:03:00.005-04:002009-07-04T17:32:22.349-04:00

I am in Europe. If I am silent, it is not because I have fallen off the face of the earth, but only off the immediate continental shelf.Three historic cities spread across Europe -- then home.Before I leave: if there is anyone who reads this anywhere new NYC who has not seen the revival of Our Town at the Barrow Street Theater, don't let that be true much longer. It is every bit as splendid

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-90480232440925250662009-06-28T18:51:00.005-04:002009-06-28T21:22:50.146-04:00

Thirty-nine years ago this weekend, I stage managed a dozen or more young wall street associates to monitor the first Gay Pride march. Stonewall had happened just a year earlier, and the march was an imaginative attempt to commemorate something, with no clear sense what would come of the attempt or, indeed, of Stonewall itself.This was the era of Vietnam, and protest marches were routine and

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-30760972368302418792009-06-26T23:13:00.005-04:002009-07-04T17:26:59.387-04:00

In my last post I mentioned that as a kid I dreaded the prospect of some day having to share my bed with another human being! Dogs were fine, though not with my mother, and cats were a non-issue.Since Eliza's last trip to the hospital ten weeks ago, I have slept alone -- except for the two cats. It's not unbearable, it's just not as warm as it should be.Next week I am taking a trip to Europe

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-7758433872325499682009-06-26T16:01:00.003-04:002009-06-26T16:32:45.561-04:00

Eliza continued to believe that the system(s) worked up until near the end. If a check wasn't credited, it had to be because I forgot to mail it. In truth, my incompetence was only sometimes the reason. The four great historic professions share a common secret: doctors, lawyers, priests and prostitutes know that everything and everybody is fucked up. In contrast, most people mostly feel that

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-46242263019204748762009-06-23T17:44:00.007-04:002009-06-26T22:58:25.887-04:00

My first year as a grad student I shared an apartment with two and then three other guys. Back then it was as inconceivable that the two sexes might share an apartment (unless they were sleeping together) as it was inconceivable that two (or three?) guys sharing an apartment might be sleeping together. It was a very large pad but it only had two bed rooms, so we made an ingenious agreement that

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-23813228156033857292009-06-19T17:10:00.011-04:002009-06-20T16:26:40.061-04:00

About the point of puberty, I found myself increasingly attracted to tattoos. My incredibly antique grandfather had been in the Navy in the Spanish American War and had some faded ships on his arms. They were just there and certainly not the stuff of my fantasies. Sailors were supposed to have things like that done to them. Which wasn't the point at all.If Freud were on to something, maybe I

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-4946579277233131152009-06-16T20:04:00.006-04:002009-06-17T22:46:01.944-04:00

One of my kids was really embarrassed by the fact that I never finished high school. It was only I who suffered embarrassment from the fact that I did have a high school equivalency certificate. My mother had insisted that I pick it up. I had enjoyed finding a way in which I could complete a graduate education and emerge with nothing but a grade school diploma and a Ph D. Mom wasn't charmed by

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-27301266585886970892009-06-14T13:40:00.004-04:002009-06-14T20:36:25.893-04:00

I've been rethinking ritual. Where I went to school, the convention was to be anti-traditional, -- unless instead we were by tradition, anti-conventional. It was a place where the only intelectually acceptable response to a greeting of "good morning" would be: Define your terms. Where only the amateurs would make the faux pas of saying that they "feel" such-and-such is true instead of saying

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-64957899950847916362009-06-11T23:06:00.012-04:002009-06-14T09:32:14.761-04:00

Since I'm trying hard to tell the truth, you can be reasonably confident that at the moment of writing there have been 153 visitors to this page since I started it a month ago. Nothing to write home about, even anonymously. However, one of the hits today came from Mr. Coca-Cola himself, of Atlanta, Georgia.I suspect somebody in the company has the job of checking google at all for references to

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-26869393146638651192009-06-10T12:09:00.007-04:002009-06-11T18:02:50.484-04:00

Two turning points are upon me this weekend. One is the wedding of Jalaal; the second is the memorial service for Eliza, my wife.I was disinvited from the wedding, which, of course, I could not have attended in any event. It seems that Jalaal had shown his husband to be the post which I had written about him, and Aaron took serious umbrage. He wrote to tell me that a lawyer should certainly know

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-50887116179966369702009-06-08T19:16:00.010-04:002009-06-08T19:35:34.828-04:00

I owned a slave for a few weeks, a while back. As an experiment, it wasn't a great success.Unless, perhaps, it was.When I first started to play with gay.com, I spent what time I have in the Caribbean or showing off in the intellectuals' room. Occasionally, I would go exploring. I'm told that everybody has the occasional really disgusting S&M fantasy. There is no real inhibition about the fantasy

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-82845428762210948922009-06-06T15:36:00.002-04:002009-06-06T15:43:30.180-04:00

Before beginning an explanation of how I got to wherever it is that I now am without ever graduating from high school, there is one other aspect whoever it is that I am which got well formed before my departure from my small Midwestern town. There wasn't much music in my home. I think my parents owned three 78 rpm record albums: Wayne King, Guy Lombardo and The Grand Canyon Suite. Not a whole

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-5063895364294257612009-06-02T22:06:00.006-04:002009-06-04T10:21:30.345-04:00

My family, on both sides, was from a great American city, but when my father returned from WW II, my parents opted to move to a little town of 2,000 people a hundred miles away. Nothing but corn and Republicans as far as the eye could see. It was not a natural fit for me. I shall skip quickly past grade school.By high school, I was content to be a somewhat weird troublemaker. Since I made

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-61923904534444916272009-05-30T18:23:00.005-04:002009-06-08T09:28:28.226-04:00

I saw my first Broadway show, quite a few hundred miles from Broadway, when I was six. It was Annie Get Your Gun with Mary Martin playing Ethel Merman. I had already been taken once to watch a visiting opera company do Hansel & Gretel and had seen what became the American Ballet Theatre do a program which included Fancy Free with what must have been the original cast. That was all wonderful,

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-84236711777717656022009-05-28T13:01:00.007-04:002009-05-29T19:56:35.880-04:00

Death, like Sandberg's fog, can creep on little cat feet. This morning, I woke up thinking I had heard Eliza speaking my name in that tone of voice which indicated that I was hogging the covers. Later I found myself referring to "our cats" to distinguish them from the kids' -- and will have to train myself to say "my" and "mine." In the last year, she was in the hospital so often that I grew

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-6166541982385568262009-05-26T15:47:00.004-04:002009-05-27T17:45:29.965-04:00

Jalaal is getting married in the middle of next month, in London. To a white British guy.For nearly 30 years, Jalaal wasn't his ordinary name. Technically, he was named Douglas, after the fashion of his neo-colonial East Indian parents on the island of Trinidad. . It was only after he had left his island for London that I insisted he rename himself, and he plucked the Jalaal from the middle of

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4795472940369886281.post-35787086060588685672009-05-21T05:10:00.009-04:002009-05-22T17:10:26.751-04:00

I am finding it difficult to decide where to begin, since I start so near the end.When I try to describe myself, I often say that there are three broad experiences which are each so central to who I am that I cannot imagine myself without any of them. I simply would be someone very different if I hadn't gone to the extraordinarily university I attended, if I hadn't become a lawyer or if I hadn't

Rickhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16287560987668309638noreply@blogger.com6