All that we had was the doldrums of thirteen -- not so sweet, and definitely queer.Now, some of the finest observers of the gay experience take us back to the homerooms and hallways of our youth, in a collection of original essays that captures that time of adolescence when social and sexual development was at its raging worst.From gym class to kissing parties, obsessive crushes to after-school pummelings, every day held the possibility of discovery -- and complete humiliation. For those of us who are gay, our sexuality added another twist, that extra little way we didn't quite fit in. It was a time of becoming who we truly are, a passage into adulthood that was as memorable as it was agonizing. Queer 13 tells these tales of teenage trauma -- from funny to painful, reflective to literary -- all ringing with the universal truths of a poignant, extraordinary time.

    American Book Award winner Robb Forman Dew, known for her breathtaking ability to depict family love in all its ambiguity and pain, reaches deep into her own heart to write the story of finding out her son is gay.

    As the only son on a remote farm in New Zealand, he’s forced into farm chores that aren’t just abhorrent, but that leave him little time to indulge his theatrical bent. He gets by with the help of his tomboy cousin Lou and a rich fantasy life. The arrival of two outsiders — the freaky, pimply Roy and the sexy David Cassidy look-alike Jamie — changes everything. Billy is drawn to both Roy and Jamie, testing his friendships and loyalties in the process. Funny and engaging, this tale of a gay awakening resonates with anyone who endured an awkward adolescence. Billy struggles with his sexual identity, but also with his weight, in achingly familiar attempts to diet and camouflage his girth. Capturing the period when the adult world begins to impinge on the child’s, the book narrates the agonies of early adolescence with wit and tenderness.

    In his search for new friends and potential lovers, he becomes sucked into London’s gay drug culture, soon becoming addicted to partying and the phenomenon that is ‘chemsex’. Exploring his own journey through this dark but popular world, James looks at the motivating factors that led him to the culture, as well as examining the paths taken by others. He reveals the real goings-on at the weekends for thousands of people after most have gone to bed, and how modern technology allows them to arrange, congregate, furnish themselves with drugs and spend hours, often days, behind closed curtains, with strangers and in states of heightened sexual desire.Something for the Weekend looks compassionately at a growing culture that’s now moved beyond London and established itself as more than a short-term craze.

    He ran the local tavern and was respected by those who knew him. But sometimes life was lonely. When Nikolai decides to help a woman in need, he soon learns that nothing is what is seems. Inside or out, flesh and blood can be deceptive. This free short story explores Nikolai's origins, a character introduced in the fantasy novel "The Cat in the Cradle."

    A political decision to be announced this weekend in California will signal far-reaching ramifications for America's lesbian and gay community.At a cabin in a Southern California mountain resort, three lesbians and a gay man wait in mutual antagonism for Donnelly, the woman who has summoned them here, the woman with whom they have all shared a part of their lives.Publisher Bradley Jones was once married to her. Cabin owner Pat Decker, a teacher nearing retirement, took her away from Bradley.Averill Calder Harmon, in the topmost rank of professional golfers on the LPGA tour, lured Donnelly away from Pat. Querida Quemada, a successful young Chicana professional, is Donnelly's current partner.Donnelly, an activist connected at the highest levels of the national scene, knows about the forthcoming political decision. In the certainty of her connection to these four people, she is convinced that the time is now for each of them to take vital and profoundly personal action.But even Donnelly cannot dream of the extent to which this weekend will be a watershed, with consequences reaching far beyond any of them.Published on the eve of the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Stonewall Inn uprising and the birth of the modern gay rights movement, FLASHPOINT is the novel for our times.

    Never one to be shy of the spotlight, Dusty broke the mould as the first female entertainer to publicly admit she was bisexual, and was famously deported from South Africa for refusing to play to segregated audiences during apartheid in 1964, just a year after the launch of her solo career. Combining brand-new material, meticulous research and frank interviews with friends, lovers, employees and confidants, journalist Karen Bartlett reveals sensational new details about the soul diva’s unconventional upbringing, tumultuous relationships and unbridled addictions, including a lifelong struggle to come to terms with her sexuality. Named one of the Sunday Times’s best musical biographies of 2014, this is the intimate portrait of an immensely complicated and talented woman – the definitive account of one of music’s most legendary figures.

    But to all the creatures who lived there...." Like a shaman, Monette, the novelist, poet, essayist, AIDS activist and National Book Award winner (Becoming a Man) who died of AIDS in 1995, creates a magic space within this animal fable, which resonates with wisdom and grace. This posthumous offering is an amazingly tender parable of same-sex love full of political overtones sounding Monette's lifelong themes of social justice, the need for tolerance of diversity and the fluid nature of sexual selves. The romantic love that blossoms between Renarda the Fox and Lapine the Rabbit is doubly wrong in the eyes of the dictatorial Great Horned Owl who presides over their forest realm - wrong because it's interspecies and because it's between two females. The Owl (not a wise bird here) commands all the forest creatures to spy on one another and to report any "differentness." By splitting up the forest's denizens into two races, First Ones and second-class "refugees" the Owl sows antagonism and fear, fostering a network of spies and snitches. The lovers, once discovered, are charged with "crimes against nature," arrested and banished to separate rehabilitation camps, until a bumbling apprentice wizard, Albertus the Lesser, exposes the Owl as an impostor and transforms the forest into a haven of tolerance and love. Monette's complex, quicksilver prose aims at the heart and never misses. His entrancing tale is illustrated throughout with luminous, spectral pictures that enhance the moonlit aura of enchantment. (Publisher's Weekly.)In a fairy tale that captures the strangeness of society's rules and the liberating nature of love, the Great Horned Owl sets his intolerant agenda for the forest.

    From high-profile figures like Abraham Lincoln and Eleanor Roosevelt to the trailblazing gender-ambiguous Queen of Sweden and a bisexual blues singer who didn’t make it into your history books, these astonishing true stories uncover a rich queer heritage that encompasses every culture, in every era.

    Stoner and Peter A. Conway tell for the first time in full detail the twisted story of a pair of young, aspiring gay adult film producers whose quest for fame at any cost leads to the gruesome murder of the man who stands in their way, gay porn entrepreneur Bryan Kocis.News of the killing of the forty-four-year-old (stabbed twenty-eight times, his throat slashed to near decapitation) in his suburban home sends shock waves through the bucolic Pennsylvania town. Neighbors were horrified to hear about the murder but equally astonished to learn that Kocis ran a small but thriving online porn operation from his home.The murder investigation leads police and prosecutors to the far reaches of the country, from Virginia to New York City, to Las Vegas, and ultimately to a nude beach in San Diego, where investigators facilitate an incredible clandestine suspect surveillance. The manhunt nets Harlow Cuadra and his lover Joseph Kerekes, both former military men, turned male models, turned hustlers, turned porn producers, who finally land at the bottom of a deadly conspiracy.Cobra Killer takes readers into the sometimes alluring, sometimes dangerous and often surprising world of gay porn and the deceit, schemes, and ultimate betrayals lying underneath the fantasy.

    Graham’s heart aches for a friend, and maybe a boyfriend, but is Josiah the answer to his dreams? Why is Bry Hartnett, the school hunk, taking an interest in Graham as well? When strange happenings begin to occur at Griswold Jr./Sr. High, Graham’s once boring life becomes more exciting than he can handle. Mystery, intrigue, and danger await Graham as he sets out on an adventure he never dreamed possible.

    There, in the woods of Connecticut, Arthur meets Katrina Felt, the charming, troubled daughter of a Hollywood movie star. As Arthur struggles with his sexuality and Katrina’s beauty and talent land her in a Broadway musical, the two forge a tender friendship. But while Arthur’s confidence grows, Katrina is pulled down by the heartbreaking secrets and sorrows of her past. By year’s end, their lives will be changed forever, and their friendship will be over. Set in the late 1960s, The Hour Between is a compelling portrait of a time and place, replete with drugs, sex, Andy Warhol, a cast of truly memorable secondary characters, and some of the sharpest and funniest dialogue in recent memory.Sebastian Stuart has written novels, plays, and screenplays. His last novel was ghostwritten (with acknowledgment): Charm! by Kendall Hart, a character on the soap opera All My Children. Charm! spent five weeks on The New York Times bestseller list. A native New Yorker, Stuart now lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with novelist Stephen McCauley.

    For the first time in book form, Judy Shepard speaks about her loss, sharing memories of Matthew, their life as a typical American family, and the pivotal event in the small college town that changed everything.The Meaning of Matthew follows the Shepard family in the days immediately after the crime, when Judy and her husband traveled to see their incapacitated son, kept alive by life support machines; how the Shepards learned of the incredible response from strangers all across America who held candlelit vigils and memorial services for their child; and finally, how they struggled to navigate the legal system as Matthew's murderers were on trial. Heart-wrenchingly honest, Judy Shepard confides with readers about how she handled the crippling loss of her child, why she became a gay rights activist, and the challenges and rewards of raising a gay child in America today.The Meaning of Matthew not only captures the historical significance and complicated civil rights issues surrounding one young man's life and death, but it also chronicles one ordinary woman's struggle to cope with the unthinkable.

    To cover is to downplay a disfavored trait so as to blend into the mainstream. Because all of us possess stigmatized attributes, we all encounter pressure to cover in our daily lives. Given its pervasiveness, we may experience this pressure to be a simple fact of social life.Against conventional understanding, Kenji Yoshino argues that the demand to cover can pose a hidden threat to our civil rights. Though we have come to some consensus against penalizing people for differences based on race, sex, sexual orientation, religion, and disability, we still routinely deny equal treatment to people who refuse to downplay differences along these lines. Racial minorities are pressed to “act white” by changing their names, languages, or cultural practices. Women are told to “play like men” at work. Gays are asked not to engage in public displays of same-sex affection. The devout are instructed to minimize expressions of faith, and individuals with disabilities are urged to conceal the paraphernalia that permit them to function. In a wide-ranging analysis, Yoshino demonstrates that American civil rights law has generally ignored the threat posed by these covering demands. With passion and rigor, he shows that the work of civil rights will not be complete until it attends to the harms of coerced conformity. At the same time, Yoshino is responsive to the American exasperation with identity politics, which often seems like an endless parade of groups asking for state and social solicitude. He observes that the ubiquity of the covering demand provides an opportunity to lift civil rights into a higher, more universal register. Since we all experience the covering demand, we can all make common cause around a new civil rights paradigm based on our desire for authenticity–a desire that brings us together rather than driving us apart. Yoshino’s argument draws deeply on his personal experiences as a gay Asian American. He follows the Romantics in his belief that if a human life is described with enough particularity, the universal will speak through it. The result is a work that combines one of the most moving memoirs written in years with a landmark manifesto on the civil rights of the future. “This brilliantly argued and engaging book does two things at once, and it does them both astonishingly well. First, it's a finely grained memoir of young man’s struggles to come to terms with his sexuality, and second, it's a powerful argument for a whole new way of thinking about civil rights and how our society deals with difference. This book challenges us all to confront our own unacknowledged biases, and it demands that we take seriously the idea that there are many different ways to be human. Kenji Yoshino is the face and the voice of the new civil rights.” -Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed“Kenji Yoshino has not only given us an important, compelling new way to understand civil rights law, a major accomplishment in itself, but with great bravery and honesty, he has forged his argument from the cauldron of his own experience. In clear, lyrical prose, Covering quite literally brings the law to life. The result is a book about our public and private selves as convincing to the spirit as it is to the mind.” -Adam Haslett, author of You Are Not A Stranger Here“Kenji Yoshino's work is often moving and always clarifying. Covering elaborates an original, arresting account of identity and authenticity in American culture.”-Anthony Appiah, author of The Ethics of Identity and Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor Of Philosophy at Princeton University“This stunning book introduces three faces of the remarkable Kenji Yoshino: a writer of poetic beauty; a soul of rare reflectivity and decency; and a brilliant lawyer and scholar, passionately committed to uncovering human rights. Like W.E.B. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk and Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique, this book fearlessly blends gripping narrative with insightful analysis to further the cause of human emancipation. And like those classics, it should explode into America's consciousness.”-Harold Hongju Koh Dean, Yale Law School and former Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights“Covering is a magnificent work - so eloquently and powerfully written I literally could not put it down. Sweeping in breadth, brilliantly argued, and filled with insight, humor, and erudition, it offers a fundamentally new perspective on civil rights and discrimination law. This extraordinary book is many things at once: an intensely moving personal memoir; a breathtaking historical and cultural synthesis of assimilation and American equality law; an explosive new paradigm for transcending the morass of identity politics; and in parts, pure poetry. No one interested in civil rights, sexuality, discrimination - or simply human flourishing - can afford to miss it.” -Amy Chua, author of World on Fire“In this stunning, original book, Kenji Yoshino demonstrates that the struggle for gay rights is not only a struggle to liberate gays---it is a struggle to free all of us, straight and gay, male and female, white and black, from the pressures and temptations to cover vital aspects of ourselves and deprive ourselves and others of our full humanity. Yoshino is both poet and lawyer, and by joining an exquisitely observed personal memoir with a historical analysis of civil rights, he shows why gay rights is so controversial at present, why “covering” is the issue of contention, and why the “covering demand,” universal in application, is the civil rights issue of our time. This is a beautifully written, brilliant and hopeful book, offering a new understanding of what is at stake in our fight for human rights.” -Carol Gilligan, author of In a Different Voice

    Now, after breaking up with his longtime boyfriend, Smith looks back to his painfully normal childhood to see where all the trouble really began. Like every other American kid, Bob's adolescence was marked by alternating moments of blissful ignorance, hazy confusion, and humiliating self-consciousness. And in these pages, Bob evokes his youth with a vividness that will make you shudder and howl with recognition.In these hysterically humorous pages, Bob Smith introduces readers to his comically unsympathetic grandmother, who makes light of his carsickness: "Bob only throws up because he's near the window and he can"; to his first teacher crush, whose "five-o'clock shadow could plunge a room into darkness"; and to his first brush with fame, when he fainted from his chair during a biology filmstrip ("Way to go, Smith!"). Sharp, observant, ingeniously ironic and wholly satisfying, this new Lambda Award-nominated collection is at once bittersweet nostalgic fun and a testament to the unquestionable gifts of a highly original comic writer.