In which The Gay Recluse suggests a link.
The most beautiful ads are always for dead companies.

Like this one we recently took on 35th Street between 5th and 6th Avenue.

Does this company still exist? We hope not, because we don’t want to have to think about buying anything.

New York City is filled with ads for dead [...]

In which The Gay Recluse documents the sunset of a dream.

Today the tide seemed to finally turn against Hillary Clinton.

We felt bad about it, but mostly on behalf of our mother. She’s in her seventies now and really wanted Hillary to win.

She’s spent the better part of four decades fighting for women’s “equality.” As people [...]

In which The Gay Recluse retires to our garden in Washington Heights.
Date of photograph: April 28, 2008, around 6:30pm

It’s hardly a secret that sometimes the spring garden looks better in the rain.

Today was one of those days…

One of our favorite plants is the creeping yellow groundcover, which we bought a few years ago at [...]

In which The Gay Recluse updates his informal but rather telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, the weekly Style Section (of The Times) column in which openly gay writers almost never appear, and even less frequently describe a romantic relationship.
This week’s piece: Was I on a Date or Baby-Sitting?
Subject: For some reason a “Scary Sadshaw” [...]

In which The Gay Recluse becomes a flaneur.
Date of pictures: April 23, 2008
Location: 35th Street between 5th Avenue and Madison.

We often think about the city streets as we would the surface of a lake.

We imagine worlds beneath us we cannot ever see.

The windows down are beautiful, however.

Looking through them, we forget how much we long [...]

In which The Gay Recluse provides a somewhat more pessimistic alternative to this week’s Modern Love offering in The Times. Those looking for our quantitative analysis should click here.
By TORIE OSBORN and THE GAY RECLUSE
Published: April 20, 2008
GAY marriage was never my issue — until I actually tried it. A little more than four years [...]

In which The Gay Recluse photographs shipwrecks lining the Hudson north of the George Washington Bridge.
Time and date of photographs: March 30, 2008 (afternoon)

As usual, there were those who did not survive the winter.

We tend to look at the wreckage with some disdain: “That could never happen to us!”

Yet! There is a mythological allure to [...]

In which The Gay Recluse updates his informal but rather telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, the weekly Style Section (of The Times) column in which openly gay writers almost never appear, and even less frequently describe a romantic relationship.
This week’s piece: When The Chutney’s Gone
Subject: A very frightening woman describes a soulless marriage [...]

In which The Gay Recluse corresponds with Harry, an 80-year-old autistic gay man.
Herewith, for those who asked (and for those who did not):
March 24: It is none my business to know, but! My curiosity is tweaked. Who are you? Have you posted something somewhere to give a more detailed bio? or do I have [...]

In which The Gay Recluse updates his informal but rather telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, the weekly Style Section (of The Times) column in which openly gay writers almost never appear, and even less frequently describe a romantic relationship.
This week’s piece: How We Got from Grief to Pancakes
Subject: A woman finds a new [...]

In which The Gay Recluse updates his informal but rather telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, the weekly Style Section (of The Times) column in which openly gay writers almost never appear, and even less frequently describe a romantic relationship.
This week’s piece: Mom, It’s Me, Your Son, Finally
Subject: A man in mid-life crisis tries [...]

In which The Gay Recluse rather quickly gets lung cancer.
Time and date of morning photograph: March 21, 2008, 7:54am.

Time and date of evening photograph: March 21, 2008, 7:34pm

The oily black smoke of 100-year-old boilers disperses daily across the rooftops in Washington Heights, heedless of those who suffer from pneumonia, asthma and tuberculosis. Officials and [...]

In which The Gay Recluse thinks about shit on the daily commute.
As we walk through midtown each morning and each afternoon, we often pause to observe a fading silhouette on a wall; while somewhat decrepit, it provides comforting evidence — of a sort we are always on the lookout for — that Andy Warhol did [...]

In which The Gay Recluse scores selected opinion pieces in The Times.
Frank Rich/McCain Channels His Inner Hillary
The Short Version: Like Clinton, McCain cannot escape his support of the Iraq war, which is a losing proposition with the electorate.
In his words: “The good news for the Democrats so far is that whatever Mr. McCain’s sporadic overlap [...]

In which The Gay Recluse scores selected opinion pieces in The Times.
Gail Collins/Look, Up in the Sky!
The Short Version: Those silly Pentagon geese!
In his words: “If you’re going to play in outer space, you really should clean up after yourself.”
Score: C- (Common)
We’ve no doubt been ruined by The Onion, Gawker, Curbed, the internet, but the [...]

In which The Gay Recluse scores selected opinion pieces in The Times.
Bob Herbert/The Wrong Target
The Short Version: Sex with underage girls is bad. Let’s have a paradigm shift.
In his words: “Across the country, young girls by the many thousands — children — are being drawn into the hellishly dangerous world of prostitution.”
Score: D (Depressing)
The big [...]

In which The Gay Recluse reads an acclaimed book of contemporary fiction and is more than disappointed.
When we first received our copy of Call Me By Your Name (FSG, 2007) by Andre Aciman, we were a bit startled (but pleased, to be sure) that a book about a love affair between a 17-year-old boy and [...]

In which The Gay Recluse is inspired by a classic.
Of all the French photographers who documented Paris at the turn of the last century (and we don’t mean 8 years ago), we are most obsessed with Eugene Atget. Who can resist his urban streetscapes, his ghostly renderings of the city of light? And [...]

In which The Gay Recluse looks at the suffocation of the gay voice at The New York Times and other hallmarks of the new dark ages.
For those who missed it, we would like to point you in the direction of a recent post by Jeff Weinstein, in which he compares a truth about Jasper [...]

In which The Gay Recluse enjoys a game of “Would You Rather,” the elementary school game in which you must choose one of two offered alternatives and explain why.
The Set-up: You are at the gym over lunch, about to get on to the treadmill for fifteen minutes when you realize — fucking-shit! – that you [...]