Archive for the ‘Longing’ Category
In which The Gay Recluse presents a gay/impressionistic alternative to this week’s Modern Love offering in The Times. Those looking for our quantitative analysis should click here. By JULIE BUXBAUM and THE GAY RECLUSE Published: May 11, 2008 SEVEN months ago, I was married in an ivory lace dress to a woman in a gray […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Dream, Gay, Longing, Memory, Search, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse, The Times | Leave a Comment
Tags: Bridal Showers, Death, Dresses, Gay Modern Love, Julie Buxbaum, Lace, The New York Times, Weddings
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 […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Communism, Conspiracy, Decay, Disease, Dissonance, Dream, Gay, Graffiti, Health, History, Infrastructure, Landscape, Longing, Memory, New York City, Obsession, Pessimism, Photography, Quotes, Ruins, Search, Sickness, The Gay Recluse | 2 Comments
Tags: AIDS, Apple, Dead Companies, Gay Blogs, General Electric, Google, HIV, Microsoft
In which The Gay Recluse hopes that a young woman will not succumb to the more conventional pressures that sadly ooze from this week’s Modern Love offering in The Times. Those looking for our quantitative analysis should click here. Want To Be My Girlfriend? Please Don’t Define By MARGUERITE FIELDS and THE GAY RECLUSE RECENTLY […]
Filed under: Gay, Landscape, Language, Longing, New York City, Search, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse, The Times | Leave a Comment
Tags: Conventions, Gay Modern Love, Marguerite Fields, Modern Love, The New York Times
In which The Gay Recluse attempts to use a new “macro” lens. So yeah: The Globularia stygia we bought last year at Stonecrop Gardens is in bloom. These first two pix we took with the regular lens. Then we took some drugs tried out a new macro lens. We are reminded of a record cover […]
Filed under: GWB Project, Longing, Memory, Photography, The Spring Garden, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: Globurlaria Stygia, Loveless, Lush, My Bloody Valentine, Pale Saints, Ride, Shoegazer Rock, Stonecrop Gardens
In which The Gay Recluse lives in an alternate reality. For a long time we’ve kept an eye on the triple vacant lot at 573-577 West 161st Street, which we walk by every day on our way to the 163rd Street subway station. In January, we were pleasantly surprised to see two of the three […]
Filed under: Architecture, Gentrification, Government, Knockbusters, Longing, Monopoly, New York City, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | 5 Comments
Tags: Alternate Realities, Apartment Buildings, Bulldozers, Department of Buildings, Development, Monopoly, Recession, Uptown Real Estate
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 […]
Filed under: GWB Project, Language, Longing, Memory, New York City, Obsession, Pessimism, Photography, Pleasure, Resignation, Ruins, Search, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse, The Spring Garden, Washington Heights, Weather | Leave a Comment
Tags: Alpines, Chasing Amy, Creeping Jenny, Green Markets, Groundcover, Lesbian Conversions, Lysimachia nummularia, Perennials, Rain, Rocks, Sighs, Union Square, Washington Heights
In which The Gay Recluse contemplates an old friend. Date of Picture: April 24, 2008 Location: Our garden in Washington Heights. Even as a child in Pittsburgh, we loved this table. All winter it would sit out on the porch as we stared longingly at it. Every May, when it was finally warm enough (this […]
Filed under: City Pattern Project, Dissonance, Landscape, Longing, Memory, Ruins, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights, Weather | Leave a Comment
Tags: 1970s, Chores, Porch Furniture, Porches, Spring Cleaning, Suburbs, Tables, Wrought Iron
In which The Gay Recluse becomes increasingly obsessed with The George Washington Bridge. Time and date of photographs: April 1, 2008, 7:00 – 8:00 pm (ish). The sunset sky — even this tone of blue — is perhaps not as promising as we’d like to believe. (We think of someone we recently overheard describing her […]
Filed under: Architecture, Dream, GWB Project, Longing, Resignation, Ruins, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: April, George Washington Bridge, Sunsets, Waiting
In which The Gay Recluse provides a gay alternative to this week’s Modern Love offering in The Times. Mom, It’s Me, Your Gay Son, Finally By PETE MacDONALD and THE GAY RECLUSE Published: March 22, 2008 A YEAR after my partner Alan left me, and on the day before my estranged mother would have turned […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Landscape, Language, Longing, Memory, Search, Sickness, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse, The Times | 4 Comments
Tags: Anger, Daniel Jones, Drama Queens, Fashion & Style, Forgiveness, Gay Modern Love, Pete MacDonald, Psychology, Redemption, Stereotypes, The New York Times
In which The Gay Recluse photographs birds. Hmm…what kind of bird is this? (We need to do some homework.) Hi everyone! What kind of birds are you? You kind of look like seagulls. (Omg! Is that an insult!?) Sometimes you just want to be left alone.
Filed under: Animals, GWB Project, Infrastructure, Longing, Search, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Birds, George Washington Bridge, Homework, Seagulls
In which The Gay Recluse holds a contest. Sort of. For those of you who haven’t heard of it, Los Angeles is kind of like New York City except it’s in California, and instead of subways you have to drive everywhere! Crazy, right? But that said, like New York City, there are LOTS of gay […]
Filed under: Architecture, Competitions, Gay, Hot Gay Statues, Infrastructure, Landscape, Law, Letters, Longing, Obsession, Ruins, The Gay Recluse | 1 Comment
Tags: Gay Statues, Hot Gay Statues, Immigration, Los Angeles, The Getty Museum
In which The Gay Recluse kills two birds with one stone. Today we received a certain amount of shit for “trashing” Arthur C. Clarke as a major closet-case only milliseconds after he died. Fair enough, we trashed him a little. But our purpose in doing so — besides being an internet traffic whore, of course […]
Filed under: Disease, Dissonance, Gay, History, Language, Letters, Literature, Longing, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse | 5 Comments
Tags: Arthur C. Clarke, Closet Cases, Closet Queens, Internet Whores, Self-Hatred, The Gay Voice
In which The Gay Recluse provides a postscript to our gay alternative to this week’s Modern Love piece in the Times by Kayla Rachlin Small. (For those looking for our informal-but-telling quantitative analysis of Modern Love, click here.) Dear TGR, I loved your riff on “The Steep Price of Your Forbidden Kiss” (a title which, […]
Filed under: Drag Queens, Film, Graffiti, Letters, Longing, Obsession, Photography, Pleasure, Ruins, Search, Sickness, The Gay Recluse | 1 Comment
Tags: Cystic Fibrosis, Gay Modern Love, Kayla Rachlin Small, Lesbian, Modern Love, Other, The New York Times
In which The Gay Recluse provides a gay alternative to this week’s Modern Love offering in The Times. (Note: For Kayla’s response, please click here.) By KAYLA RACHLIN SMALL and THE GAY RECLUSE THE rules forbade me from being within three feet of her. I knew those rules; she knew them. Sharing a drink meant […]
Filed under: Disease, Gay, Language, Longing, Resignation, Sickness, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse, The Times | 1 Comment
Tags: Daniel Jones, Fashion & Style, Gay Modern Love, Kayla Rachlin Small, Lesbian, Stereotypes, The New York Times
In which The Gay Recluse photographs birds. Mary-Kate and Ashley? Elliot and Silda? Tristan and Isolde? You decide. (Our Jonathan Livingston Seagull moment for the day.)
Filed under: Animals, Dream, GWB Project, Longing, Memory, Photography, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Ashley Olsen, Birds, Elliot Spitzer, Isolde, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, Mary-Kate Olsen, Seagulls, Silda Spitzer, Tristan
In which The Gay Recluse compares the Richard Wagner opera Tristan and Isolde (first performed in Munich in 1865; financed by King Ludwig II of Bavaria and now running at The Metropolitan Opera) with Loveless, the final record by My Bloody Valentine (Creation, 1991). While the music is dissonant, it’s never abrasive; it’s just another […]
Filed under: Dissonance, Good Rock, Longing, Memory, Opera, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Bavaria, Creation Records, Gesasmtkunstwerk, King Ludwig II, Loveless, Munich, My Bloody Valenting, Richard Wagner, Tristan and Isolde
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 […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Decay, Dissonance, Drag Queens, Graffiti, Infrastructure, Landscape, Longing, New York City, Nostalgia, Obsession, Pessimism, Resignation, Sickness, The Gay Recluse | 6 Comments
Tags: Andrea Feldman, Andy Warhol, Candy Darling, Commuting, Dishonored, Edie Sedgwick, Flesh, Geri Miller, Greta Garbo, Holly Woodlawn, Jackie Curtis, Joe Dallesandro, Marlene Dietrich, Nico, Outer and Inner Space, Superstars, The Past, The Velvet Underground
On Roses and Ruins
In which The Gay Recluse contemplates an uncommissioned masterpiece from the walls of an uptown subway station.
Filed under: Capitalism, Decay, Dissonance, Longing, New York City, Photography, Subway, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: 163rd Street, Masterpieces, Roses, Ruins, Subway, Washington Heights

