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Me and My Telephone: A Love Story
I started my long-term relationship with the telephone back in elementary school. Things got serious in fifth grade when I went steady with Vicky Thompson — my very first girlfriend. I don’t remember how long she wore my ID bracelet. Outside of school, I may have seen her twice, at most. The lion’s share of…
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Carbon Copies, Typewriters, & Dot-Matrix Printers
Technology moves so fast, it’s easy to forget how we used to do things. Back in the 1980s, a Ph.D. student from Ohio State University paid me to type her dissertation. She’d finished her coursework and was living in Lexington, commuting back to Columbus as needed to meet with her committee. Experiencing the process with…
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My Miraculous Recovery
Yesterday I had surgery — inguinal hernia repair. The operation went well. I feel great today and am getting around fine with little to no pain. In fact, I feel so good, the biggest challenge of my recovery is going to be keeping myself from doing too much. I had my pre-op appointment at the…
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The Cloak of Anonymity
Athens was all astir last weekend about a bunch of random shootings on my end of town. Several moving vehicles had windows shot out. A jogger and an eleven-year old girl were hit, too. The weapon: a high-powered BB gun. The incidents got front-page coverage in the local newspaper two days in a row. I’m…
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Potty Mouth
The use of colorful language is not foreign to me. In certain settings I may occasionally use words that would, were I fifty years younger, result in certain punishment. My parents were more likely to spank me and send me to my room for an extended time-out than to wash my mouth out with soap.…
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Hypocrisy in Action
The selection of Chaz Bono as a contestant has certainly generated a lot of buzz about the upcoming season of Dancing with the Stars. In case you’ve been sleeping under a rock, Chaz underwent female-to-male gender transition a few years ago. For the totally clueless, his parents are Sonny Bono and Cher. Conservative religious groups…
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My Gay Wedding
I “came out of the closet” nearly thirty-two years ago at the tender age of twenty-one. Thanks to the pervasive homophobia that existed then, coming out really did a number on me. Much of the struggle to come to terms with my identity is chronicled in my memoir, Glass Houses. Back then, you didn’t hear…
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Tomatoes: A Great Investment?
The older I get, the more I appreciate the taste of a good, home-grown tomato. Back in Kentucky the plants went in the ground toward the middle of May with hopes the first fruit would ripen by the Fourth of July. Without buying big plants or cherry tomatoes, the first ripe tomato didn’t usually appear…