Mad Dogs and Queer Tattoos
Mad Dogs and Queer Tattoos

Author: Robert E. Roberts

Publisher: Fair Page Media, LLC

Published: 2018-03-12

Total Pages: 191

ISBN-13: 9780998909813

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A trained classical musician, Robert E. Roberts forsook composing harpsichord music to become a gifted tattoo artist. In his eye-opening memoir, Roberts, aka "Mad Dog," describes coming out as a gay man and treats us to a mosaic of ink stories that document the height of the San Francisco Gay Revolution. Every tattoo has a story, and Roberts' categorization of the tattoo images and their meaning in gay life is a veritable Rosetta Stone providing new insights into the great social changes that were taking place. Here is a brightly shining memoir detailing the identities, challenges, sorrows and joys of gay life in powerful, archetypal images including machismo, bear culture, tribalism, and mythology.

Thom Gunn
Thom Gunn

Author: Michael Nott

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published: 2024-06-18

Total Pages: 501

ISBN-13: 0374721378

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A no-holds-barred biography of the great poet and sexual rebel, who could “give the dead a voice, make them sing” (Hilton Als, The New Yorker). Thom Gunn was not a confessional poet, and he withheld much, but inseparable from his rigorous, formal poetry was a ravenous, acute experience of life and death. Raised in Kent, England, and educated at Cambridge, Gunn found a home in San Francisco, where he documented the city’s queerness, the hippie mentality (and drug use) of the sixties, and the tragedy and catastrophic impact of the AIDS crisis in the eighties and beyond. As Jeremy Lybarger wrote in The New Republic, the author of Moly and The Man with Night Sweats was “an agile poet who renovated tradition to accommodate the rude litter of modernity.” Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life chronicles, for the first time, the largely undocumented life of this revolutionary poet. Michael Nott, a coeditor of The Letters of Thom Gunn, draws on letters, diaries, notebooks, interviews, and Gunn’s poetry to create a portrait as vital as the man himself. Nott writes with insight and intimacy about the great sweep of Gunn’s life: his traditional childhood in England; his mother’s suicide; the mind-opening education he received at Cambridge, reading Shakespeare and John Donne; his decades in San Francisco and with his life partner, Mike Kitay; and his visceral experience of sex, drugs, and loss. Thom Gunn: A Cool Queer Life is a long-awaited, landmark study of one of England and America’s most innovative poets.

Finding Dan
Finding Dan

Author: Mark Quinn

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2016-11-10

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 1514499681

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Finding Dan is part historical fiction, part genealogical detective story. IRA man Daniel ORourke was the most dangerous man in Dungannon; Mal is his great-nephew, determined to find the real man behind the tales told by his family. This is a legend of evasion from arrest, internment on a diseased ship, and hunger strike; it is the legend too of glories on the Gaelic football pitch and a life spent on the run from the police and from the women who might have loved him. As Mals search deepens, Irelands troubled history interferes and a new legend of Dan emerges.

A Body, Undone
A Body, Undone

Author: Christina Crosby

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2017-10-03

Total Pages: 230

ISBN-13: 147985316X

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Shortly after her 50th birthday in 2003, Crosby was in a bicycle accident that paralyzed her, and here shares her experience of living her new life.

Disasterama!
Disasterama!

Author: Alvin Orloff

Publisher: Three Rooms Press

Published: 2019-10-08

Total Pages: 260

ISBN-13: 9781941110829

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A compelling memoir of social life in the queer underground of San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles at a time when the manic frivolity of gay rights and youth collided with the deadly reality of plague.

Mistakes Were Made
Mistakes Were Made

Author: Meryl Wilsner

Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Published: 2022-10-11

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 1250841011

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"This blazing-hot forbidden romance manages to sensibly, and compassionately, capture the complexities of starting adult life after college and finding love and your identity in middle age. Cassie and Erin’s romance is by turns delightfully raunchy and deeply emotional. This reader hopes Wilsner keeps these scorchers coming." - The Washington Post “[Wilsner writes] erotic yearning in a class all their own.” - Entertainment Weekly From Meryl Wilsner, the acclaimed author of Something to Talk About, comes Mistakes Were Made, a sharp and sexy rom-com about a college senior who accidentally hooks up with her best friend’s mom. When Cassie Klein goes to an off-campus bar to escape her school’s Family Weekend, she isn’t looking for a hookup—it just happens. Buying a drink for a stranger turns into what should be an uncomplicated, amazing one-night stand. But then the next morning rolls around and her friend drags her along to meet her mom—the hot, older woman Cassie slept with. Erin Bennett came to Family Weekend to get closer to her daughter, not have a one-night stand with a college senior. In her defense, she hadn’t known Cassie was a student when they'd met. To make things worse, Erin’s daughter brings Cassie to breakfast the next morning. And despite Erin's better judgement—how could sleeping with your daughter’s friend be anything but bad?—she and Cassie get along in the day just as well as they did last night. What should have been a one-time fling quickly proves impossible to ignore, and soon Cassie and Erin are sneaking around. Worst of all, they start to realize they have something real. But is being honest about the love between them worth the cost? "Wilsner proves their serious romance range with a sophomore novel that laughs in the slow-burning face of their debut by kicking off with a hookup that'll have you fanning your face for days." - Buzzfeed “A steaming hot, thoughtful story about all kinds of love, featuring a firecracker of a couple that’s impossible not to root for.” - Women's Health

To Shake the Sleeping Self
To Shake the Sleeping Self

Author: Jedidiah Jenkins

Publisher: Convergent Books

Published: 2018-10-02

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 1524761397

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “With winning candor, Jedidiah Jenkins takes us with him as he bicycles across two continents and delves deeply into his own beautiful heart.”—Cheryl Strayed, author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things On the eve of turning thirty, terrified of being funneled into a life he didn’t choose, Jedidiah Jenkins quit his dream job and spent sixteen months cycling from Oregon to Patagonia. He chronicled the trip on Instagram, where his photos and reflections drew hundreds of thousands of followers, all gathered around the question: What makes a life worth living? In this unflinchingly honest memoir, Jed narrates his adventure—the people and places he encountered on his way to the bottom of the world—as well as the internal journey that started it all. As he traverses cities, mountains, and inner boundaries, Jenkins grapples with the question of what it means to be an adult, his struggle to reconcile his sexual identity with his conservative Christian upbringing, and his belief in travel as a way to wake us up to life back home. A soul-stirring read for the wanderer in each of us, To Shake the Sleeping Self is an unforgettable reflection on adventure, identity, and a life lived without regret. Praise for To Shake the Sleeping Self “[Jenkins is] a guy deeply connected to his personal truth and just so refreshingly present.”—Rich Roll, author of Finding Ultra “This is much more than a book about a bike ride. This is a deep soul deepening us. Jedidiah Jenkins is a mystic disguised as a millennial.”—Tom Shadyac, author of Life’s Operating Manual “Thought-provoking and inspirational . . . This uplifting memoir and travelogue will remind readers of the power of movement for the body and the soul.”—Publishers Weekly

The Tenderloin
The Tenderloin

Author: Dustin Gray

Publisher: Xlibris Corporation

Published: 2008-12-22

Total Pages: 54

ISBN-13: 1477180176

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When I moved into the Tenderloin district of San Francisco, almost immediately I noticed the epidemic of homelessness that seemed to blanket the entire neighborhood. Even more prevalent was the problem of drug abuse and alcoholism. It would truly be safe to say that 70-80% of the neighborhoods occupants fall into this category. In my experience, San Francisco has the largest number of homeless people as compared to other cities I have visited. I do realize there are locales such as Detroit, Chicago, and New York that have equal if not larger problems with homelessness, but since San Francisco is where I call home, it will be the focus of this project. People in the Tenderloin were pushing everything from street drugs like heroin and cocaine, to prescription pills like oxy cotin and vicodin. There was almost no reaction to these activities by the local police, except perhaps to unjustly harass individuals that didn’t necessarily deserve it. It was almost as if the city created a way to deal with the problem by sectioning off the Tenderloin district for the outcasts of society to thrive in. As long as they stayed out of the wealthy areas, there would be no need for the local government to intervene or develop a long term solution. These are the premises that inspired me. So in the spring of 2006 I walked the streets of the Tenderloin day and night so as I could capture the essence of the area in the most realistic way. All images were shot with a 35 mm film camera. My intention in creating this book is one of enlightenment, so that people of all backgrounds could see the completely ignored deterioration of nearly a dozen city blocks... Streets entirely cluttered with despair placed conveniently within a stones throw of the streets where wealthy tourists shop for thousand dollar handbags and five dollar coffees.

The First Phone Call From Heaven
The First Phone Call From Heaven

Author: Mitch Albom

Publisher: Harper Collins

Published: 2013-11-12

Total Pages: 266

ISBN-13: 0062294393

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From the beloved author of the #1 New York Times bestsellers Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven comes his most thrilling and magical novel yet—a page-turning mystery and a meditation on the power of human connection. One morning in the small town of Coldwater, Michigan, the phones start ringing. The voices say they are calling from heaven. Is it the greatest miracle ever? Or some cruel hoax? As news of these strange calls spreads, outsiders flock to Coldwater to be a part of it. At the same time, a disgraced pilot named Sully Harding returns to Coldwater from prison to discover his hometown gripped by "miracle fever." Even his young son carries a toy phone, hoping to hear from his mother in heaven. As the calls increase, and proof of an afterlife begins to surface, the town—and the world—transforms. Only Sully, convinced there is nothing beyond this sad life, digs into the phenomenon, determined to disprove it for his child and his own broken heart. Moving seamlessly between the invention of the telephone in 1876 and a world obsessed with the next level of communication, Mitch Albom takes readers on a breathtaking ride of frenzied hope. The First Phone Call from Heaven is Albom at his best—a virtuosic story of love, history, and belief.

Monsters in the Closet
Monsters in the Closet

Author: Harry M. Benshoff

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 1997-11-15

Total Pages: 340

ISBN-13: 9780719044731

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Monster in the Closet is a history of the horrors film that explores the genre's relationship to the social and cultural history of homosexuality in America. Drawing on a wide variety of films and primary source materials including censorship files, critical reviews, promotional materials, fanzines, men's magazines, and popular news weeklies, the book examines the historical figure of the movie monster in relation to various medical, psychological, religious and social models of homosexuality. While recent work within gay and lesbian studies has explored how the genetic tropes of the horror film intersect with popular culture's understanding of queerness, this is the first book to examine how the concept of the monster queer has evolved from era to era. From the gay and lesbian sensibilities encoded into the form and content of the classical Hollywood horror film, to recent films which play upon AIDS-related fears. Monster in the Closet examines how the horror film started and continues, to demonize (or quite literally "monsterize") queer sexuality, and what the pleasures and "costs" of such representations might be both for individual spectators and culture at large.