The Death of a Rock Icon: Freddie Mercury Remembered

As November 24, the 27th anniversary of the death of Queen lead singer Freddie Mercury, receives worldwide attention, it's important to remember the legacy he left, that of his music and his amazing performances.

While other, perhaps more 'important' deaths were commemorated ( John F. Kennedy, Harvey Milk and George Moscone), as I've been immersed in the band's music and Mercury's life while finishing my Queen-infused novel, Now I'm Here, I've taken a specific focus on loss.

Many articles have been published and shared about Mercury's life, as told by those close to him. Peter “Phoebe” Freestone (Freddie Mercury’s personal assistant for over 10 years) talked about Freddie’s last words and final moments on his “Ask Phoebe” blog.

 "I remember Freddie’s last words to me," he wrote. "I was with him the whole of the night on Friday 22nd November. There was someone with Freddie 24 hours a day for the last week. I remember sitting on the bed holding his hand. Freddie would doze, wake up, doze, so I held his hand so that he knew someone was there. One of the times he was awake we had a short conversation… about how things were downstairs and if everything was clean and tidy. The very last thing he said to me was ‘thank you’. To this day I’m not sure if it was for the night I was sitting there with him, or for the 12 years we had been together. I suppose it is something I will never know."

Literary Voices: an appreciation of Mark Merlis and William M Hoffman

Have you ever read a novel only to have the effect of it come back to you like a boomerang that knocks you in the back of the head until the tears spring out?

Such is the case with Mark Merlis' An Arrow's Flight. When I read it almost 20 years ago, I thought it was smart and brilliant. Since the author's death on August 15, I decided to reread it and find copies of his other three novels.

William Johnson wrote this remembrance for Lambda Literary Review. "Merlis’ writing cannily explored the emotional and sexual lives of gay men, in all of their messy, nuanced, and wondrous splendor."

In writing for The Advocate, author Christopher Bram wrote, "His books share a family resemblance: fine literary texture, a keen sense of gay history, a moral complexity worthy of Henry James, and strong sexuality."

 The Washington Post obituary covered his life, and includes this quote:

“I am, of course, a gay man whose... novels are swarming with gay characters,” he once told an interviewer with the website EchoNYC.  “And I have allowed myself to be marketed as a practitioner of a genre called gay fiction. But this is a commercial category, not an artistic one. I write, like anybody else, about how it is to be human.”

Perfectly Queer: July Lit Event, Summer Reading and Serious Themes

Another reading, another bookstore! July 11, I will be part of a reading and panel discussion with two other authors at the new home for LGBT events with Books Inc, at Opera Plaza on 601 Van Ness Avenue. The Market Street/Castro district store closed, as you may know.

Here's the link to Books Inc's listing for my reading with Michael Aleynikov, author of Ivan and Misha: Stories, and Na’amen Gobert Tilahun, author of The Root: A Novel of the Wrath & Athenaeum.

Aleynikov's connected stories share the intimate lives of two brother immigrants trying to survive in Brooklyn with their own family troubles and strife.

Two Memorial Days

It's no small coincidence that the airing of HBO's adaptation of Larry Kramer's play The Normal Heart took place on Memorial Day weekend. While most of America commemorated its war dead, others are still recovering from the war known as AIDS.

The reaction to the groundbreaking play has been overwhelmingly positive, as it should be.

And it took producer-director Ryan Murphy (Glee, American Horror Story, etc) to finally help Larry Kramer wrangle it from Barbra Streisand, who clung to the film rights for decades.

Seeing Mark Ruffalo portray Ned Weeks, the protagonist version of Kramer himself, offers a fascinating look at the best and worst of what critics and fans have used to depict Kramer himself.

Jerry Smith: gay football player featured in NFL film

Jerry Smith was an All-Pro NFL football player for the Washington Redskins. His anonymous coming as gay led to teammate David Kopay's public coming out, which led to the eventual reality that hundreds of professional athletes are gay, lesbian, bisexual and even transgendered. Smith was a pioneer who didn't even want to be one.

The NFL has produced a series of short documentary segments about Smith's life and legacy as part of their 'A Football Life' series.

A friend posted a link to an article I wrote about Jerry Smith a decade ago. I also included two of his playing cards in Sporting Life, the exhibit I guest-curated for the San Francisco GLBT Historical Society in 2005. Poet and pal Alex Gildzen contextualizes it in his eloquent blog entry.

Floored

This is a photo of me with author David B. Feinberg at an ACT UP New York meeting at Cooper Union in 1990. Maybe it was 1991, or 1992. I don't remember. 

What I do remember is my desire to capture us together while the meeting took place in the historic East Village hall, where the AIDS activism group, having outgrown its weekly space at the LGBT Community Center in the West Village, continued to develop ideas for protests and information-gathering groups in the fight against the AIDS pandemic.

On that early evening, some thought in the back of my mind might have been, "He's going to die some day, and this photo, with the very interesting checkerboard tile pattern, may be one of our only documented moments together."

My Left Foot

Last week I almost became permanently disabled, and it wasn't an 'inspirational' moment; nope, actually, it was a pain in the ...foot.

It's all inextricably tied in with life, work and my creative writing, so bear with me if I get a bit tangled up.

On October 5, after seeing Lady Bunny's hilarious show, and while cycling to The SF Eagle for a photo shoot of local drag diva Moni Stat's 30th birthday party, I was riding through a notoriously dangerous intersection in south of Market, 9th and Harrison streets.

Reality Shown

"How much of the stories in your books are real?"

That's one of the most frequently asked questions from readers and interviewers. Undoubtedly, other writers are asked the same question. 

Explaining the various aspects of real life and fiction is kind of like dissecting your dinner before you eat it. It's not pretty. When you order coq au vin at a restaurant, you don't want to see the chicken get plucked.


It also makes me wonder. Why do you want to know? Does figuring out what actually happened versus what I made up make the book better, easier to understand? If I wrote a memoir, would you ask which parts were made up? More than a few memoir writers have been called out for using a heavy dose of "creative nonfiction," a valid genre, but one that's gotten a few authors in hot water (James Frey on Oprah being the most notorious example).

But more, the question leads me to be cautious about revealing the true source of my inspiration. It's not unlike the drag term "showing your candy." You know what's down there, but you don't want to see it.

Unremembering AIDS

As the Academy Awards approach, I'm betting on How to Survive a Plague to win Best Documentary, not only because it's the front runner, but because I'm in it.

Well, not exactly. I'm probably in the background of a wide shot or two at some of the LGBT Community Center meetings, and a protest or three. I think I saw myself. But I was, in a very small way, part of the movement, albeit only in what I like to call Decorations Committee. Making banners and posters was certainly not as essential as the work of the more intellectual affinity groups like TAG, whose determination led to so many achievements in drug treatment approval.

Dark Days

The man who "served" as mayor of New York City during its worst health panic in a century is dead.

The dreaded unavoidable posthumous confrontation with this inept crank is upon us.

I lost count of the number of times I had protested outside, and sometimes inside, buildings where Koch appeared. Those days were dark, horrible and yet energizing for those who fought. And he was The Foe for New Yorkers dying of AIDS.

For an astute summation of the relevance, read Ed Koch and the AIDS Crisis: His greatest Failure. by David France, in New York. Here is my own fictionalized variation on an encounter with hizzonor: