Archive for the ‘Resignation’ Category

In which The Gay Recluse holds a contest. Sort of. Today we present a submission from Seth Tisue, who sends in an entry from the 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. Let’s check it out, shall we? Hot or not…? Are you kidding!!? This is seriously gay and smokin’ hot. Nicely done, Philadelphia! You have not […]


In which The Gay Recluse makes a clarification. Reader Gary Budlong (apparently new to The Gay Recluse) wrote the following comment in response to our most recent “mash-up” of the Modern Love column in The Times. dear pete, thank you. i’m 61, disabled, retired and gay. my partner has died 5 years ago. knew i […]


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 […]


In which The Gay Recluse rather quickly gets lung cancer. Time and Date of morning photograph: March 20, 2008, 6:54am. Notes: One benefit of living in Washington Heights is that it’s truly like the 19th century, not only in the architectural grandeur that splays across the rooftops, but the daily emissions of 100-year-old boilers in […]


In which The Gay Recluse becomes increasingly obsessed with The George Washington Bridge. Time and Date of morning photograph: March 20, 2008, 6:54am. Notes: Seriously, don’t these clouds look a little “Poltergeisty”? Time and Date of evening photograph: March 20, 2008, 6:54pm. Notes: We appreciate the black smoke, which is so good for our asthma. […]


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: The Steep Price of Our Forbidden Kiss Subject: A young woman with […]


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 […]


In which The Gay Recluse scores selected opinion pieces in The Times. Paul Krugman/Betting the Bank The Short Version: Economically, we’re fucked. In his words: “I’m more concerned that despite the extraordinary scale of Mr. Bernanke’s action — to my knowledge, no advanced-country’s central bank has ever exposed itself to this much market risk — […]


In which The Gay Recluse scores selected opinion pieces in The Times. Gail Collins/Unwelcome Surprises The Short Version: Who knew? In her words: “Memo to future disgraced politicians: The nation has discussed this at length, and we do not want to see any more stricken spouses at the press conference. ” Score: B (Boring) We […]


In which The Gay Recluse weighs in on a “controversy.” Obviously, when we endorsed Geraldine Ferraro for president, it was with the expectation that she would hover benovolently in the past and not say unthinking things like: “If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a […]


In which The Gay Recluse scores selected opinion pieces in The Times. Bob Herbert/Sharing the Pain The Short Version: More than ever, it sucks to be poor. In his words: “It is disgraceful that in a nation as wealthy as the United States, nearly a third of the people are poor or near-poor.” Score: D- […]


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 […]


In which The Gay Recluse ponders the dinosaurs. In today’s New York Times, in a shocking piece that has vaulted all the way to number one on the “Most Popular” chart, we learn that golf is on the way out; declining in a popularity, with too many courses built in the 90s, it’s no longer […]


In which The Gay Recluse writes about the Democratic primaries in highly attenuated metaphors. Regular readers of The Gay Recluse know that we have reported on the fierce and unsettled debate over which Clementine — the Sweetie® from Mulholland Citrus or Cuties® from Sun Pacific — provides the most delightful and refreshing citrus “experience.” Initially […]


There is something oddly unsatisfying about The Master, Colm Toibin’s 2004 treatment of the life of Henry James. Odd because we almost always love Toibin’s prose, which is elegant but unpretentious, and — unlike so much contemporary fiction — never shifts tenses or otherwise calls attention to itself in a distracting or superfluous manner. Occasionally […]


In which The Gay Recluse documents the exceedingly beautiful ruins of Washington Heights. Location: Audubon Terrace Address: Broadway between 155th and 156th Streets Remarks: Of all the exceedingly beautiful ruins in Washington Heights, perhaps none is more heartbreaking than Audubon Terrace. Not quite dead, it is like a great whale stranded on a beach; as […]


In which The Gay Recluse ponders the transformation of the monumental into the mundane (and vice versa). Date of Incident: January 21, 2008 Time: 1:35am. Causes of Disaster: Failure to implement long-term planning procedures; budget overruns; bureaucratic miscommunication. Remarks: It was long ago noted that the tube in question was reaching dangerously low and unsustainable […]


Let’s imagine that your name is Rex Cole. You were born in 1887 in Port Huron, Michigan. You drop out of school at the age of 16 to become an electrician. Dissatisfied with the provincial life, you fight the tide of many millions and head east to New York City, where you save enough money […]


It is not just the old architecture of Washington Heights that sends us spinning back in time to a period that was — if nothing else — more grand and spacious than what we see now. Take the corner of 163rd and St. Nicholas, just north of Amsterdam, which is one of the ugliest intersections […]


In our daily travels, we are regularly confronted by some of our more clever but literal-minded critics with the question of why we would ever want to publish our thoughts and observations, if in fact it is our unending desire to be reclusive, or to obtain — in our own lexicon — a “community-free” existence. […]