Archive for the ‘Sickness’ Category
On Whether Asthma Is Caused By Dirty Air: Myth or Not Myth? (And If So, Does It Need To Be Stopped?)
In which The Gay Recluse explores mythology. In response to our post on the nasty black smoke seen snaking around the rooftops of Washington Heights, reader David writes: FYI – asthma is caused more by a bad diet than by the air we breathe. Love your site, but the “asthma is caused by dirty air” […]
Filed under: Animals, Capitalism, Conspiracy, Health, Sickness, Stereotypes, Washington Heights | 2 Comments
Tags: Asthma, Diet, Dirty Air, Mayo Clinic, Mythology
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 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. […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Communism, Government, GWB Project, Health, Pessimism, Photography, Sickness, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: 311, Asthma, Boilers, Exhaust, Lung Cancer, Rooftops, Tuberculosis
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 […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Conspiracy, Decay, Government, GWB Project, New York City, Resignation, Sickness, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: 2007, Asthma, Boilers, George Washington Bridge, Gray, March, Morning Light, Pneumonia, Slumlords, The Gay Recluse, Tuberulosis, Twilight
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. […]
Filed under: Architecture, Capitalism, Communism, Decay, Disease, GWB Project, Resignation, Ruins, Sickness, The Gay Recluse, Washington Heights | Leave a Comment
Tags: 1947, George Washington Bridge, Gray, Le Corbusier, March, Morning Light, Poltergeist, Twilight
In which The Gay Recluse provides a more accurate obituary for Arthur C. Clarke than the one that just appeared in The Times. (For the AP version, click here.) Arthur C. Clarke, Premier Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 90 By GERALD JONAS and THE GAY RECLUSE Published: March 18, 2008 Arthur C. Clarke, a writer […]
Filed under: Drivel, Search, Sickness, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse, Travel, Writers-British | 22 Comments
Tags: 2001, Arthur C. Clarke, Arthur Clarke, Gay Obituaries, Gay Stereotypes, Gay Voice, Gay Writers, Homophobia, Sri Lanka, Stanley Kubrick, The New York Times
In which The Gay Recluse provides a more accurate version of Arthur C. Clarke’s obituary than the one that was just released by AP. (For The Times version, click here.) Arthur C. Clarke, Science Fiction Writer, Dies at 90 By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS and THE GAY RECLUSE Published: March 18, 2008 Filed at 6:41 p.m. […]
Filed under: Drivel, Gay, Science, Sickness, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse, Travel, Writers-British | Leave a Comment
Tags: 2001, Arthur C. Clarke, Arthur Clarke, Associated Press, Gay Obituaries, Gay Stereotypes, Gay Voice, Gay Writers, Homophobia, Sri Lanka, Stanley Kubrick
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 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
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: Me, My Daughter and Them Subject: A lawyer who sounds seriously bitchy […]
Filed under: Conspiracy, Drag Queens, Search, Sickness, Stereotypes, Technology, The Gay Recluse, The Times | Leave a Comment
Tags: Daniel Jones, Fashion & Style, Gay Modern Love, Gay Stereotypes, Gay Voice, Gay Writers, Heidi Wendel, Homophobia, Lesbian, Modern Love, Republican, The New York Times
In which The Gay Recluse wonders if Deborah Solomon thinks we’re impressed. (Because we’re not.) Usually we skip Deborah Solomon’s weekly interview in the Sunday Magazine, in which the notoriously harsh and arrogant New York Times critic tersely interrogates a publicity hound hawking a useless book about the latest nonsense du jour. But this week […]
Filed under: Architecture, Conspiracy, Drivel, Sickness, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse, The Times | Leave a Comment
Tags: Asshole Republicans, Deborah Solomon, Gawker, Homophobia, New Media, Old Media, Rick Perry, Stereotypes, Texas, The Gays, The New York Times, The Straights
On Gawker Commenters: Pretty Much Just as Homophobic, Ignorant and Self-Hating as YouTube Commenters
In which The Gay Recluse celebrates The New Dark Ages. Last night Gawker posted a piece about Chris Crocker, who has released a new video in which he responds to YouTube comments such as the following: –Next time you are walking in the street I hope you get run over by cancer –I WANNA KILL […]
Filed under: Drag Queens, Gay, Language, Sickness, Stereotypes, Technology, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: AIDS, Chris Crocker, Gawker, Homophobia, Homophobosphere, Self-Hatred, The Gays, YouTube
On Gay Sex in the Seventies
First, it’s a great title for a documentary; just to say Gay Sex in the Seventies makes us a little more forgiving than is perhaps our natural tendency. Plus you get to see some great shots of vintage Big Apple; the west-side piers, the notorious truck bays across the highway, the Upper West Side when […]
Filed under: Film, Gay, Gentrification, Health, History, New York City, Nostalgia, Sickness, Stereotypes | Leave a Comment
Tags: Disco, Gay Sex, Gay Sex in the 70s, Gay Sex in the Seventies, Poppers, St. Mark's Bathhouse, Studio 54, The Saint, Vintage New York, West Side Piers
While we are the first to admit to possessing character traits that would regularly be described as obsessive, addictive and quite possibly manic — and is this not part of our charm? — we nevertheless take no small consolation in having never descended into the ranks of the toilety neurotic and insane. We were just […]
Filed under: Addiction, Capitalism, Health, Infrastructure, Obsession, Sickness | Leave a Comment
Tags: Degradation, Hatred, Insane, Interviews, Manners, Neurotic, Toilet, Toilet Covers, Toilet Seats, Toilety, Toilety Neurotic, Work, WTF
We have long suspected that “Modern Love” — the weekly column in the Sunday Styles of The Times — has been a startlingly barren landscape for gay writers, particularly when you consider its location in what is undoubtedly the “gayest” section of the newspaper (and — oh yeah — the gayest city in the world), […]
Filed under: Gay, New York City, Sickness, Stereotypes, The Gay Recluse, The Times | 4 Comments
Tags: Daniel Jones, Fashion & Style, Gay Stereotypes, Gay Voice, Gay Writers, Homophobia, Modern Love, Morrissey, The New York Times
Did you see the story in today’s Times about the man — the window washer — who fell 47 stories (500 feet) and survived? He’s in the hospital and while basically a bag of broken bones, doctors say he should be walking within a year. Incredible. It reminds us of when we were at Cornell […]
Filed under: Addiction, Animals, Drag Queens, Faith, Memory, Sickness, The Gay Recluse | Leave a Comment
Tags: Ann Coulter, Cascadilla Gorge, Cornell University, Miracles, Raccoons, Tragedies
Recently we arranged a visit to the doctor, who in frantic tones described the many maladies he had encountered just that morning in his other patients. “One young man just contracted ____, which means he will probably not live more than _____; meanwhile the drugs I prescribed for Ms. _____are not exactly helping with the […]
Filed under: Capitalism, History, Politicians, Sickness, Writers-French | Leave a Comment
Tags: Baudelaire, Medicine, Spleen, Symbolism, United States
Do you remember what it was like to be sick as a child, when you would stay home from school and relocate to your parents’ bed to watch television? Some days we were faking and would do anything to avoid the tedium of school (if only that were an option now!) but when we were […]
Filed under: Dream, Gay, Memory, New York City, Sickness | Leave a Comment
Tags: Childhood, Delirium, Fever, Queens, Television, Wallpaper
The Gay Recluse 