Best of
Gay

1996

And This Too Shall Pass


E. Lynn Harris - 1996
    What happens when rising stars collide?In And This Too Shall Pass, Harris takes us into the locker rooms and newsrooms of Chicago, where four lives are about to intersect in romance and scandal. At the heart of the novel is the celibate Zurich, a rookie quarterback for the Chicago Cougars whose trajectory for superstardom is interrupted by a sexual assault charge by Mia, a sportscaster with her own sights on fame. With his career in jeopardy, Zurich hires Tamela, a high-powered attorney, to defend him, while Sean, a gay sportswriter, covers the story and uncovers his heart. All of these characters face the challenge of keeping the faith--in themselves and in God--while Harris's heartfelt storytelling reveals how the love of family can help one to face the terrible legacy of long-held secrets. Throughout these characters' search for self-knowledge, Harris weaves the stories of MamaCee, Zurich's grandmother, whose lessons of faith teach one and all that "this too shall pass." Breaking new ground in contemporary fiction, And This Too Shall Pass entertains and affirms with its stirring message about the healing power of family and faith.

Heaven's Coast: A Memoir


Mark Doty - 1996
    His reputation as a poet of formidable talent is growing, he enjoys his work as a college professor and, perhaps most importantly, he is deeply in love with his partner of many years, Wally Roberts. The harmonious existence these two men share is shattered, however, when they learn that Wally has tested positive for the HIV virus. From diagnosis to the initial signs of deterioration to the heartbreaking hour when Wally is released from his body's ruined vessel, Heaven's Coastis an intimate chronicle of love, its hardships, and its innumerable gifts. We witness Doty's passage through the deepest phase of grief -- letting his lover go while keeping him firmly alive in memory and heart -- and, eventually beyond, to the slow reawakening of the possibilities of pleasure. Part memoir, part journal, part elegy for a life of rare communication and beauty, Heaven's Coast evinces the same stunning honesty, resplendent descriptive power and rapt attention to the physical landscape that has won Doty's poetry such attention and acclaim.

Luck in the Shadows


Lynn Flewelling - 1996
    But one thing he never expected was his cellmate. Spy, rogue, thief, and noble, Seregil of Rhiminee is many things–none of them predictable. And when he offers to take on Alec as his apprentice, things may never be the same for either of them. Soon Alec is traveling roads he never knew existed, toward a war he never suspected was brewing. Before long he and Seregil are embroiled in a sinister plot that runs deeper than either can imagine, and that may cost them far more than their lives if they fail. But fortune is as unpredictable as Alec’s new mentor, and this time there just might be… Luck in the Shadows.

The Waterfront Journals


David Wojnarowicz - 1996
    Written as short monologues, each of these powerful, early works of autobiographical fiction is spoken in the voice of a character he stumbles upon during travels throughout America.

Geography of the Heart: A Memoir


Fenton Johnson - 1996
    With grace and affectionate humor, he follows their relationship from their first meeting through Larry's death. "I'm so lucky, " his lover told him repeatedly, even as he was confronting HIV. "Denial, pure and simple, " Johnson told himself, "until our third and final trip to Paris, where on our last night in the city we sat together in the courtyard of the Picasso Museum. There I turned to him and said 'I'm so lucky, ' and it was as if the time allotted to him to teach me this lesson, the time allotted to me to learn it had been consumed, and there was nothing left but the facts of things to play out."

Simple Justice


John Morgan Wilson - 1996
    He is called back to the world of the living by an unexpected, and unwelcome, visit from Harry Brofsky, his former boss. Brofsky wants Ben to do some background work (strictly off the record) with another reporter on the investigation of a seemingly motiveless killing outside a local gay bar.Sucked in for reasons even he doesn't quite understand, Justice finds himself back in the life of gay bars, spurned lovers, dysfunctional families, and tawdry secrets--all the things he had been trying to escape. While fending off passes from his sexy, young female partner, he finds himself falling hopelessly in love with the man he must ultimately nail for murder--a killing that turns out to have far more personal and political implications than a simple bias crime.Simple Justice is a subtly plotted mystery that takes a piercing look at not only violent crime but violations of the heart and soul in the sometimes glamorous, more often dark and dangerous gay life of West Hollywood.

Beautiful Thing


Jonathan Harvey - 1996
    The gaucheness, the rush of excitement, and the inarticulate tenderness of young love are beautifully captured in writing of great truth and delicacy. Only the most irrational of homophobes could fail to be moved by it."—Daily Telegraph"Deliciously upbeat ... seldom has there been a play which so exquisitely and joyously depicts what it's like to be sixteen, in the first flush of love and full of optimism. Truly a most unusual and beautiful thing."—Guardian"An unfakeably truthful portrait of adolescent self-discovery, showing sensitivity and fun pushing up like wild flowers through the concrete crevices of a Thamesmead estate. This is the most heartening working-class comedy since A Taste of Honey."—Independent on Sunday

Between Us: A Legacy of Lesbian Love Letters


Kay Turner - 1996
    For any lover, letter writing is an act of urgency: for the lesbian lover, it has often been an act of necessity. Collected here for the first time is a sampling of poignantly revealing and often breathlessly passionate love letters between women, written over the past 140 years, including intimate musings by such famous writers as Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, and tatiana de la tierra. Illustrated with more than sixty full-color collages, Between Us is a landmark work, shedding light on lesbian love with candor, humor, and grace.

Longer Views: Extended Essays


Samuel R. Delany - 1996
    Delany, a Nebula and Hugo award-winning author and a major commentator on American literature and culture. In this collection of six extended essays, Delany challenges what he calls "the hard-edged boundaries of meaning" by going beyond the customary limits of the genre in which he's writing. By radically reworking the essay form, Delany can explore and express the many layers of his thinking about the nature of art, the workings of language, and the injustices and ironies of social, political, and sexual marginalization. Thus Delany connects, in sometimes unexpected ways, topics as diverse as the origins of modern theater, the context of lesbian and gay scholarship, the theories of cyborgs, how metaphors mean, and the narrative structures in the Star Wars trilogy."Over the course of his career," Kenneth James writes in his extensive introduction, "Delany has again and again thrown into question the world-models that all too many of us unknowingly live by." Indeed, Delany challenges an impressive list of world-models here, including High and Low Art, sanity and madness, mathematical logic and the mechanics of mythmaking, the distribution of wealth in our society, and the limitations of our sexual vocabulary. Also included are two essays that illustrate Delany's unique chrestomathic technique, the grouping of textual fragments whose associative interrelationships a reader must actively trace to read them as a resonant argument. Whether writing about Wagner or Hart Crane, Foucault or Robert Mapplethorpe, Delany combines a fierce and often piercing vision with a powerful honesty that beckons us to share in the perspective of these Longer Views.

All American Girl


Robin Becker - 1996
    . . . Becker is acutely aware of, and devastated by, her many losses, but emerges defiant and admirably without regret or shame.”—Boston Review

Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence


Michael Rocke - 1996
    In the seventy years from 1432 to 1502, some 17,000 men--in a city of only 40,000--were investigated for sodomy; 3,000 were convicted and thousands more confessed to gain amnesty. Michael Rocke vividly depicts this vibrant sexual culture in a world where these same-sex acts were not the deviant transgressions of a small minority, but an integral part of a normal masculine identity.In 1432 The Office of the Night was created specifically to police sodomy in Florence. Seventy years of denunciations, interrogations, and sentencings left an extraordinarily detailed record, which Rocke uses to its fullest in this richly documented portrait. He describes a wide range of sexual experiences between males, ranging from boys such as fourteen-year-old Morello di Taddeo, who prostituted himself to fifty-seven men, to the notorious Jacopo di Andrea, a young bachelor implicated with forty adolescents over a seventeen-year period and convicted thirteen times; same-sex "marriages" like that of Michele di Bruno and Carlo di Berardo, who were involved for several years and swore a binding oath to each other over an altar; and Bernardo Lorini, a former Night Officer himself with a wife and seven children, accused of sodomy at the age of sixty-five. (Mortified, he sent his son Taddeo to confess for him and plead for a discreet resolution of his case.) Indeed, nearly all Florentine males probably had some kind of same-sex experience as a part of their "normal" sexual life.Rocke uncovers a culture in which sexual roles were strictly defined by age, with boys under eighteen the "passive" participants in sodomy, youths in their twenties and older men the "active" participants, and most men at the age of thirty marrying women, their days of sexual frivolity with boys largely over. Such same sex activities were a normal phase in the transition to adulthood, and only a few pursued them much further. Rather than precluding heterosexual experiences, they were considered an extension of youthful and masculine lust and desire. As Niccolo Machiavelli quipped about a handsome man, "When young he lured husbands away from their wives, and now he lures wives away from their husbands." Florentines generally accepted sodomy as a common misdemeanor, to be punished with a fine, rather than as a deadly sin and a transgression against nature. There was no word, in the otherwise rich Florentine sexual lexicon, for "homosexual," nor was there a distinctive and well-developed homosexual "subculture." Rather, sexual acts between men and boys were an integral feature of the dominant culture.Rocke roots this sexual activity in the broader context of Renaissance Florence, with its social networks of families, juvenile gangs, neighbors, patronage, workshops, and confraternities, and its busy political life from the early years of the Republic through the period of Lorenzo de' Medici, Savonarola, and the beginning of Medici princely rule. His richly detailed book paints a fascinating picture of a vibrant time and place and calls into question our modern conceptions of gender and sexual identity.

Furious Cooking


Maureen Seaton - 1996
    It gets very, very hot in Seaton's kitchen and in her poems. As this inventive and imaginative poet states, "Furious Cooking is a stew of accidents and incidents roiling across universes." Seaton creates curious and energetic juxtapositions; she revisits violence and assesses its damages. The poet/woman in the thick of this caldron instigates polarities and assumes the roles of inquisitor and heretic, perpetrator and child, painter and artifact, scientist and specimen. She careens circularly through the hypocrisies and atrocities of church and partner, established sanctioned realities, the seeming senseless death of loved ones in this life and long ago.

Hell Soup: The Collected Writings of Sparrow 13 Laughingwand


Sparrow 13 Laughingwand - 1996
    poetry, from hillbilly childhood to savage sissy

A Natural History of Homosexuality


Francis Mark Mondimore - 1996
    Since the word homosexual was coined in 1869, many scientists in a variety of fields have sought to understand same-sex intimacy. Drawing on recent insights in biology and genetics, psychiatrist Francis Mondimore set out to explore the complex landscape of sexual orientation.The result is A Natural History of Homosexuality, a generous work that synthesizes research in biology, history, psychology, and politics to explain how homosexuality has been understood and defined from ancient times until the present. Mondimore narrates tales of love and courage as well as discrimination and bigotry in settings as diverse as ancient Greece and Victorian England, early America and fin de siecle Vienna. He also tells fascinating stories about societies which accepted, incorporated, or institutionalized homosexuality into mainstream culture, stories illustrating that same-sex eroticism was often accepted as a normal aspect of human sexuality. In twentieth-century America, researchers first recognized that homosexuality might not be "pathological" when Alfred Kinsey and Evelyn Hooker conducted the first studies of sexuality not biased by preconceived notions of "normal" sexual behavior.After exploring sexual development in the human fetus, Mondimore reviews current biological research into the nature of sexual orientation and examines recent scientific findings on the role of heredity and hormones, as well as Simon LeVay's 1991 brain studies. He then turns to a very important focus: on people and their individual experiences. He explores "what happens between childhood and adulthood in an individual that makes him or her come to identify himself or herself as having a sexual orientation." He also explains our current understanding of bisexuality and the transgender phenomena of transsexualism and transvestism.Finally, Mondimore analyzes the circumstances of such prominent scandals as the anti-homosexual trials of Oscar Wilde and Philip von Eulenberg, and recounts the Nazi persecution of homosexuals during the Holocaust. This far-reaching discussion includes a description of the ex-gay ministries and reparative therapy as well as the Stonewall riots and AIDS, ending with the emergence of gay pride and community."The preponderance of the scientific evidence is converging on a view which homosexual people have had of themselves for as long as any had the courage to record it," writes Mondimore. "Homosexuality is a natural, abiding, normal sexuality for some people. It is not a disease state, not simply a behavior, and not subject to change.""Thoughtful and readable. Dr. Mondimore tells us an enormous amount about homosexuality in a lively manner. This book belongs on the bookshelf of anyone who wants to be informed about this important subject."—Richard A. Isay, M.D., clinical professor of psychiatry, Cornell University Medical College, and author of Becoming Gay: The Journey to Self-Acceptance

Emerald City Blues


Jean Stewart - 1996
    A gritty, enormously readable novel of contemporary lesbigay life which raises real questions about the meaning of family and community, and about the walls we construct. A celebration of the healing powers of love.

God's Gym: Divine Male Bodies of the Bible


Stephen D. Moore - 1996
    God's Gym is about divinity, physical pain, and the visions of male perfectability. Weaving together his obsession with human anatomy and dissection, an interest in the technologies of torture, the cult of physical culture, and an expert knowledge of biblical criticism, Moore explains the male narcissism at the heart of the biblical God. God's Gym is an intensely personal book, brimming with our culture's phobias and fascinations about male perfectability.

Shade: An Anthology of Fiction by Gay Men of African Descent


Bruce MorrowGreg Henry - 1996
    Powerful and often stunning, the stories in Shade are so brilliant they will cast a long shadow for years to come.

Anesthesia


Kenny Fries - 1996
    "This is no ordinary love story. Fries has recorded all the forward, backward and sideways movements we make as we struggle with despair and hope, denial and fear, the unanswerable questions of an epidemic. These poems become tools which can help us survive" -Ruth L. Schwartz, San Francisco Bay Times.

Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism in Photography and Film from Their Beginnings to Stonewall


Thomas Waugh - 1996
    This comprehensive work explores a vast, eclectic tradition in its totality, analyzing the aesthetics of the visual imagery, its production, circulation, and consumption, and broad social and legal implications.

What the Body Told


Rafael Campo - 1996
    Exploring the themes begun in his first book, The Other Man Was Me, Campo extends the search for identity into new realms of fantasy and physicality. He travels inwardly to the most intimate spaces of the imagination where sexuality and gender collide and where life crosses into death. Whether facing a frenetic hospital emergency room to assess a patient critically ill with AIDS, or breathing in the quiet of his mother’s closet, Campo proposes with these poems an alternative means of healing and exposes the extent to which words themselves may be the most vital working parts of our bodies. The secret truths in What the Body Told, as the title implies, are already within each of us; in these vivid and provocative poems, Rafael Campo gives them a voice.Lost in the Hospital It’s not that I don’t like the hospital.Those small bouquets of flowers, pert and brave.The smell of antiseptic cleansers.The ill, so wistful in their rooms, so true.My friend, the one who’s dying, took me outTo where the patients go to smoke, IV’sAnd oxygen tanks attached to them—A tiny patio for skeletons. We sharedA cigaratte, which was delicious butToo brief. I held his hand; it feltLike someone’s keys. How beautiful it was,The sunlight pointing down at us, as ifWe were important, full of life, unbound.I wandered for a moment where his ribsHad made a space for me, and there, besideThe thundering waterfall of is heart,I rubbed my eyes and thought “I’m lost.”

Partings at Dawn: An Anthology of Japanese Gay Literature


Stephen Miller - 1996
    It includes stories such as "The Tale of Genmu" and "The Story of Kannon's Manifestation as a Youth"---how a Buddhist Bodhisattva gives his blessing to a gay relationship. The renowned 17th century writer Ihara Saikaku is well represented with his stories of samurai and actors and their boyloves. The amazing 17th century collection Wild Azaleas (the world's premier gay anthology of stories and poems) is presented here for the first time within the pages of a book. There is an indepth section of 20th century writers, including Mishima Yukio's story "Onnagata," and the erotic stories/poems of Takahashi Mutsuo. His massive poem of gay sex, "ODE," is consider by publisher Winston Leyland as "the single great gay poem of the 20th century." Masterfully rendered into English by twelve translators---all scholars of Japanese literature---this pioneering anthology deserves a wide readership.

Whitman's Men: Walt Whitman's Calamus Poems celebrated by contemporary photographers


David Groff - 1996
    This version of "Calamus," taken from the 1860 edition of Leaves of Grass, shows us the poems at their purest and most spontaneous - an expression of man's desire for his fellow man. Themes that are integral to the "Calamus" poems - the search for self-awareness, for love and companionship; loneliness; and death - are reflected in the photographs, which evoke the timelessness of Whitman's writings and add an extra dimension of life to his ageless lines. The featured photographers whose works pay tribute to this great American bard are Mark Beard, John Dugdale, Robert Flynt, Bill Jacobson, Russell Maynor, Steve Morrison, and Frank Yamrus.

Out of the Blue: Russia's Hidden Gay Literature; An Anthology


Kevin Moss - 1996
    

The Arc of Love: An Anthology of Lesbian Love Poems


Clare Coss - 1996
    The broadest, most erotic, most sophisticated collection of lesbian love poetry exploring all aspects of women loving women, this book includes contributors ranging from Sappho to Audre Lorde, Joy Harjo, June Jordan, and a new generation of Latina and Asian-American, African-American, and Native American poets.

Spells of a Voodoo Doll


Assotto Saint - 1996
    "Angelic and brazen."--Jewelle Gomez.

Man to Man: Surviving Prostate Cancer


Michael Korda - 1996
    Although prostate cancer is a disease that strikes nearly 200,000 men every year, it is a disease that has been shrouded in silence, in part because it strikes at the very core of masculine identity.  But in Man to Man, bestselling author Michael Korda breaks that silence, turning the story of his illness and recovery into a candid and instructive book that speaks not only to every man and woman whose life has been touched by prostate cancer but to everyone who lives in fear of it.With unsparing frankness, Korda describes how he survived the ordeal of prostate surgery and its painful and humiliating aftereffects.  He tells us how tumors are graded, evaluates different treatments, and makes sense of prostate cancer's mystifying "numbers."  Practical, immensely readable, filled with information, and, above all, hopeful, Man to Man is literally a life-saver.

The Mark of the Wolf


Derek Adams - 1996
    

Working Light: The Wandering Life of Photographer Edith S. Watson


Frances Rooney - 1996
    Watson, self-supporting, itinerant, artistic and commercial photographer, travelled across Canada documenting the lives of rural people, frequently women, at work. Working Light is her story. From outport Newfoundland to the Queen Charlotte Islands she captured images of labouring people in the precarious, poignant, often gruelling act of building a country. Her subjects and their ways of living are gone, but Watson's pictures are recognizable and compelling talismans of Canada's national psyche and a social history that is very much alive. She photographed women working the fish flakes in Newfoundland and Nova Scotia; making soap, weaving, and spinning in Quebec and across the Prairies and into British Columbia; mending fish nets outside Vancouver; caring for children from Newfoundland to northern Ontario, The Pas, and Brilliant, B.C.; harvesting beets outside Winnipeg and flax in Saskatchewan. Watson explored established communities, newly settled immigrant ones - she spent three summers among the Doukhobours in Alberta and British Columbia - and Native and Inuit life. Watson lived and worked with Bermudian journalist Victoria Hayward, who coined the phrase "Canadian mosaic" in their book Romantic Canada.

Home in Three Days. Don't Wash.


Linda Smukler - 1996
    "The subject is sex - of these written things. I won't call them poems or prose, to tell you the truth I think it's secret speech gone public. Linda Smukler talks us through the rooms of sex, along telephone wires, to hotel rooms and rustic streets. And a terrifying absence looms alongside all its cagey fullness - the missed message, the desperation, the erratic fumblings towards orgasm or whatever. It's lesbian sex, lesbian speech, the bubbling details of a life lived and spoken, who has a job, is married, owns a dog, drinks juice and tea, drives a car and is utterly totally obsessed with sex. It's disturbingly true. If sex has a flag, this is it" -Eileen Myles, author of 'Chelsea Girls, and co-editor of 'The New Fuck You.'

Wild Things


Karin Kallmaker - 1996
    Lovely professor Faith Fitzgerald is a dedicated scholar and award-winning author. Engaged to Sydney's brother, Faith prays that this marriage will save her from the pain of the past. Thrown together by fate, these strong, independent women find themselves impassioned by a dangerous longing that threatens the very foundations of their carefully constructed lives.

Secret Muses: The Life of Frederick Ashton


Julie Kavanagh - 1996
    Julie Kavanagh is the first person to have been given complete access to Ashton's papers, and with Secret Muses she has written a brilliant account of his life and work, from his colorful childhood in Lima to his prolific career as a dancer and choreographer, first with the Ballet Rambert and then as Resident Choreographer of the Vic-Wells Ballet (later known as the Royal Ballet), the company that Ashton directed from 1963 to 1970. Among Ashton's more than eighty ballets and shorter works for operas and films were such masterpieces as Symphonic Variations, Scenes de ballet, La Fille mal gardee, Enigma Variations, as well as the famous collaboration with Virgil Thomson on Gertrude Stein's full-length avant-garde opera Four Saints in Three Acts. Kavanagh describes them all in lively and illuminating detail, highlighting as well the fascinating interaction between Ashton and the dancers with whom he worked: Tamara Karsavina, Alexandra Danilova, Margot Fonteyn, Rudolf Nureyev, and Mikhail Baryshnikov among them. But Ashton's influence extended far beyond the world of dance. The economist Maynard Keynes and his ballerina wife, Lydia Lopokova, championed him early on; W. B. Yeats asked him to stage plays at The Abbey; and Edith Sitwell was a friend and fan who relished his celebrated imitations. Bringing to light important new material, Kavanagh has written a definitive account of one of the most important cultural figures of the twentieth century.

Stranger Among Friends


David Mixner - 1996
    "From my fear of coming out to coming on strong in the struggle for human rights, this is my American journey, the story of an outsider on the inside, a gay man proudly committed to a life of standing up for freedom."President Clinton and I were born three days apart.  We had both dreamed of serving our country.  There was one difference:  He could pursue his dream, while I felt I could not.  The President was born straight and I was born gay."In this stirring personal history, one of America's most influential gay rights advocates recounts his extraordinary career as a policy maker and adviser to the major political leaders of our time, and his own often anguishing, ultimately triumphant life as a gay man.  A longtime personal friend of Bill Clinton, in Stranger Among Friends David Mixner offers an insider's look at the power struggles that occur every day in our nation's capital and candid insights on the Clinton administration's successes and failures.  Spanning three decades of human rights activism--from the behind-the-scenes negotiations to the painful betrayals to the hard-won victories--his forthright story unflinchingly explores what it means to be an outsider on the inside, and sends a message of hope to all who have ever stood up for what they believe.

Absolute Hell


Rodney Ackland - 1996
    The 1995 production at the Royal National Theatre starred Judi Dench and was directed by Anthony Page.

Coming Out of Shame: Transforming Gay and Lesbian Lives


Gershen Kaufman - 1996
    By adolescence, such negative attitudes have produced and reinforced a single, powerful emotion: shame, the feeling that you're inferior and judged as "bad," for what you are--gay.In Coming out of Shame Gershen Kaufman and Lev Raphael expose the role shame has come to play in gay and lesbian lives. Rarely discussed but vastly important, shame powerfully shapes each individual's development of self-esteem, identity, and intimacy--three areas in which gay men and lesbians have been extremely vulnerable to the crippling effects of shame. Tracing the historical and cultural sources of gay shame, Kaufman and Raphael reveal how gay men and lesbians have internalized shame, resulting in self-loathing and destructive behaviors.The hallmark of shame is silence, and by breaking the silence around the dynamics of gay shame, Kaufman and Raphael offer a way to "come out" of shame and begin the journey toward wholeness and self-acceptance. Filled with the experiences of those struggling to overcome shame, Coming Out of Shame includes strategies for:- Storing self-esteem- Creating a positive gay identity- Healing scenes of shame- Developing partnerships in intimacySelf-affirming and inspirational, Coming Out of Shame guides the transformation of gay shame into gay pride and empowers gay men and lesbians as no other book has done.

Couples: A Photographic Documentary Of Gay And Lesbian Relationships


John Gettings - 1996
    The result is this stunning collection, a comepndium of words and images that provides the clearest window yet into the thoughts, emotions, and devotion of same-sex couples and their struggles and joys enroute to each other. 85 photos.

Truth Serum


Bernard Cooper - 1996
    He recounts the schoolboy crushes, the family strife, and the ebb and flow of youthful desire, all with a "humor that animates just about every sentence" (New York Times Book Review).

Fodor's Gay Guide to the USA


Andrew Collins - 1996
    In this expanded and revised edition, gay travel expert Andy Collins recommends more gay-friendly places to eat, sleep, shop, and play, in 150 destinations including Canada. Some of the hot new destinations include: the Hamptons, NY; Santa Barbara, CA; Telluride, CO; Asheville, NC; Park City, UT; as well as the Canadian cities of Toronto, Quebec, Montreal, and Vancouver. The book is organized geographically by region for easy use and each city or town entry includes a section on The Lay of the Land; Eats; Scenes- for both men and women; Sleeps; and The Little Black Book which lists additional resources including media, bookstores, gyms, etc. The book offers lodging and dining options in all price ranges. Information is provided for every segment of the community including both exclusively gay resorts and beaches to mainstream hotels and nightlife. Also included throughout the book are over 50 helpful maps for navigating.

The Woods


David Vance - 1996
    This book of photographs is as much a visual fairy tale as it is a collection of David Vance's art; men and women exploring the woods and its mystical powers of good, evil and fantasy -- Naked!

All-Stud


Clay Caldwell - 1996
    --

Diary Of A Thought Criminal


Mark I. Chester - 1996
    

The Regulation Of Desire: Homo and Hetero Sexualities


Gary Kinsman - 1996
    Battles are being fought over lesbian and gay rights, same-sex benefits, sex education for young people, sexual violence against women, and the needs of people living with AIDS. Sexual relations have become a major terrain of social and political struggle.In this revised edition, Kinsman traces the historical and social roots of these contemporary conflicts. The Regulation of Desire offers insights into the social forces that have organized and maintained lesbian and gay oppression, and pinpoints allies for building coalitions that could allow us to gain more control over our bodies and sexualities, and to build a world free of sexual violence and danger.

Mad About the Boys


John PatrickLeo Cardini - 1996
    This anthology is written for you! Mad About the Boys is the second release of John Patrick's popular anthology about men who want, desire and need men. Featuring stories by well-known erotica authors, Ray Burrell, Ian Stewart, L. Amore, Thomas C. Humphrey, William Cozad and Edmund Miller, Mad About the Boys also features as a bonus, YOUNG & WILLING, a novel by John C. Douglas. This book is intended for ADULTS ONLY.

Clothes Make the Man: Female Cross Dressing in Medieval Europe


Valerie R. Hotchkiss - 1996
    The author examines a wide variety of religious, literary, and historical sources, which record interpretations of sartorial attempts to overcome gender hierarchy and also illustrate, mainly through the device of inversion, a remarkably sustained desire to examine and reexamine the nature of social gender identities.

Pederasty and Pedagogy in Archaic Greece


William Armstrong Percy - 1996
    William Armstrong Percy III maintains that Cretan sages established a system under which a young warrior in his early twenties took a teenager of his own aristocratic background as a beloved until the age of thirty, when service to the state required the older partner to marry. The practice spread with significant variants to other Greek-speaking areas. In some places it emphasized development of the athletic, warrior individual, while in others both intellectual and civic achievement were its goals. In Athens it became a vehicle of cultural transmission, so that the best of each older cohort selected, loved, and trained the best of the younger. Pederasty was from the beginning both physical and emotional, the highest and most intense type of male bonding. These pederastic bonds, Percy believes, were responsible for the rise of Hellas and the "Greek miracle": in two centuries the population of Attica, a mere 45,000 adult males in six generations, produced an astounding number of great men who laid the enduring foundations of Western thought and civilization.

Eros In Boystown: Contemporary Gay Poems About Sex


Michael Lassell - 1996
    It includes contributions by such authors as W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Hart Crane, Allen Ginsberg, Tennessee Williams, James Baldwin, and Paul Monette.

Massengill


Reed Massengill - 1996
    Massengill's work combines the very best qualities of classic male nude photography with a keen and often sublime artistic insight. 49 black and white photos.

Sinuosities, Lesbian Poetic Politics


Jeffner Allen - 1996
    It illustrates a deep knowledge of the issues raised by the postmodernists, yet she does not succumb to the playing field, constructing instead her own philosophical direction and aesthetic." --Sarah HoaglandJeffner Allen shapes a poetic politics that transforms textual and everyday realities. The surprising, resilient, and transformative windings of lesbian writing and lesbian lives--a poetics of sinuous movement, the turning of women to women--informs these reflections.

Classics in Lesbian Studies


Esther D. Rothblum - 1996
    Thus, it is devoted exclusively to the lesbian experience and serves as a vehicle for the promotion of scholarship and commentary on lesbianism from an international perspective. Not only does it ensure that "classic" pieces are not forgotten by new generations of students and scholars, it also spurs further lesbian research, writing, theory, and scholarship.In Classics in Lesbian Studies, you are introduced to descriptive, theoretical, empirical, applied, and multicultural perspectives in the field of lesbian studies. Interdisciplinary, the book presents pieces from various academic areas in multiple formats, including personal accounts, poetry, editorials, debates, and commentaries. For your convenience, the chapters are organized primarily across four categories: identity, history and literature, physical and social sciences, and "back to lesbian politics." You will find the discussions of the following issues and subjects provocative and insightful:ways black women in the diaspora construct and name their sexual and romantic feelings for other womenlesbian identity formation in a changing social environmenthow lesbians maneuver in the dominant culture and their own subculturelesbianism as a political movementthe experiences of lesbian adolescentsteaching lesbian studieslesbians and societal institutions, including the work place, the media, the political arena, the legal system, and religionusing lesbian-feminist scholarship to reexamine women's lives in the pastStudents, scholars, lesbian feminists, and others interested in lesbian studies will find Classics in Lesbian Studies a vital examination of lesbianism since its grass roots. Not only does it consider the progress made since the initial days of fighting for liberation, it also explores a more distant, repressed past and anticipates future possibilities lying before us. This powerful, insightful collection is sure to become a classic as it grapples with virtually all aspects of lesbianism, from its inception as a political movement to its identity as a lifestyle choice to its implications of community.

The World Out There: Becoming Part of the Lesbian and Gay Community


Michael Thomas Ford - 1996
    Brief profiles offer examples of men and women who have successfully incorporated their gay identities into their personal and professional lives.Ideal for the thousands of young men and women who migrate to urban gay communities every year, The World Out There is also for the thousands of others isolated in less receptive settings for whom this book will open up a whole wonderful and reassuring universe of possibilities.

Fire and Ice


Kyle Stone - 1996
    

Queer Street Cookbook


David Shenton - 1996
    The recipes are provided by gourmets such as Quentin Crisp, Lilly Savage, Michelangelo Signorile, Peter Tatchell and Bert Tyler-Moore.

Perfect Enemies: The Battle Between the Religious Right and the Gay Movement


John Gallagher - 1996
    In the new paperback edition, the authors expand their examination of the gay rights debate to cover the controversy of gays and lesbians in the armed forces; statewide antigay initiatives in Oregon, Colorado, and Maine; recent debates about same-sex marriages and the legal recognition of gay relationships; the surge in hate crimes; and the religious right's struggle to regroup behind President George W. Bush.

Hide and Seek: Stories About Being Young and Gay/Lesbian


Jenny Pausacker - 1996
    In this passionate and thought-provoking collection some of Australia's top writers explore the complex and ever-changing maze of sexuality.

Benno Thoma (Edition Euros Number 3)


Benno Thoma - 1996
    Swathed in soft light, perfectly photographed in moments of unsuspected observation.

Sex with God


Thomas O'Neil - 1996
    

Immortality


Kirsty Machon - 1996
    Just because I don't have a body doesn't mean I can't enjoy pleasure. It's the liberation from the finality of orgasm that makes my existence a hundred times more pleasurable".A young boy falls in love with his golden-haired brother. A jilted ghost with gallows humor plots the ultimate revenge of the dead. Jackie Traval finds the body of a murdered weather-girl, and for the first time is in love. And an ex-rentboy contemplates (im)mortality high above the seductive sea. In these twelve stories about death, Kirsty Machon writes of the darkness and sunlight, of gender and the flesh. The resonance of earthly and deathly desire are explored through the eyes of the victims, of those left behind, and a phantom victor from the other side.

The Gay Almanac


The National Museum & Archive of Lesbian and Gay History - 1996
    Compiled by two nationally known and highly respected gay organizations, a unique, comprehensive almanac designed for gay men traces the history of the gay community, offers a directory of gay and lesbian organizations, and much more.

A Crisis of Meaning: How Gay Men Are Making Sense of AIDS


Steven Schwartzberg - 1996
    Regardless of HIV status, all are called on to maintain vigilant safety with sex, to face down a cultural stigma greater even than homophobia, and to somehow find a way to go forward in a world heavy with loss. As exhaustion and grief threaten to overwhelm the activism and optimism of earlier years, and with new infections on the rise among young gay men, the challenge of finding meaning in a world turned upside down is more than an idle philosophical exercise. It is a matter of psychological and perhaps even physical survival. In this poignant and uncompromising new book, Dr. Steven Schwartzberg offers a ground-breaking perspective on how gay men (and particularly HIV-positive gay men) find ways to rebuild a world of meaning amid the trauma and uncertainty of the AIDS crisis. Eschewing both glib prescriptions for turning tragedy into triumph, and theoretical abstractions, Schwartzberg grounds his insights in his own experiences as a gay man and as a practicing psychotherapist, and in in-depth interviews with nineteen men living with HIV. Ranging in age from twenty-seven to fifty, the men include a construction foreman, a physician, an art historian, a waiter, a librarian, and a licensed massage therapist. With candor, insight, eagerness, and a remarkable ability to share of themselves, they speak eloquently about how HIV has affected their views of the world, their senses of themselves, and how they live their lives. Interweaving the men's stories with observations from his research and clinical practice, Schwartzberg bears witness to the remarkable transformations some men have accomplished, and the anguish of meaninglessness that weighs others down. He strives to uncover why some view HIV as a catalyst for change or growth, while others see it only as punishment. And though he passes no judgment on the coping strategies he describes, Schwartzberg does insist on the vital necessity of balancing somber reality with healing, life-sustaining hope. He argues that men who opt for too much illusion and too little reality risk shoddy self-care and inadequate preparation for the future, while those who find no escape from reality may teeter into rage or suicidal despair. Beautifully written, with piercing awareness of the enormity of the challenges confronting individuals with HIV, this book celebrates the resilience of the human spirit. It is both a keen psychological guide and an elegiac chronicle of what life for many has become. Gently pointing the way to an oasis of growth, strength, and love that exists amid the epidemic's bleak terrain of loss, it is essential reading for people living with HIV, for their friends, families, and the mental health professionals who care for them, and for all gay men grappling with the enormous changes AIDS has brought to a community under siege.

Sex Between Men: An Intimate History of the Sex Lives of Gay Men Postwar to Present


Douglas Sadownick - 1996
    Combining personal testimony, thoughtful commentary and glimpses of social history from archival material, Sex Between Men puts the sex back in homosexual.

Three Plays by Mart Crowley: The Boys in the Band / A Breeze from the Gulf / For Reasons That Remain Unclear


Mart Crowley - 1996
    This collection brings together three of his most powerful works: the classic The Boys in the Band (1968); A Breeze From the Gulf (1973), which deals with the early life of one of the characters in The Boys in the Band; and the previously unpublished For Reasons That Remain Unclear (1993). Additionally, Crowley wrote the plays Remote Asylum (Ahmanson Theatre, Los Angeles, 1970) and Avec Schmaltz (Williamstown [Mass.] Theatre Festival, 1984), adapted and produced the film version of The Boys in the Band, wrote the television movie adaptation of James Kirkwood's There Must Be a Pony, and produced the TV series Hart to Hart.

Split Britches: Lesbian Practice/Feminist Performance


Sue-Ellen Case - 1996
    Split Britches: Lesbian Practice/Feminist Performance is a long awaited celebration of the theatre and writing of Lois Weaver, Peggy Shaw and Deborah Margolin, who make up this outstanding troupe. This unique anthology comes complete with: * seven of Split Britches' best loved performance texts * a critical, historical introduction by Sue-Ellen Case * programme notes to accompany each of the plays * a range of stunning photographic illustrations The publication of the Split Britches play texts, collected here for the first time, provides invaluable access to these celebrated performance pieces for both the student and contemporary arts audience.