Archive for the ‘The Gay Recluse’ Category

In which The Gay Recluse becomes fatigued with the general election before it’s even started. We begin by admitting that we came extremely late to the Janice Dickinson party, having only just caught up in the last few weeks with seasons two and three of her reality television show on Oxygen, “The Janice Dickinson Modeling […]


In which The Gay Recluse provides a fresh alternative to this week’s particularly bland and tedious Modern Love offering in The Times. “I Married a Lesbian Republican: There, I Said It” by Ann Hood and The Gay Recluse IT was happening again. I was at a cocktail party where the hosts were people I had […]


In which The Gay Recluse ponders a sampling of recent search terms used to find the very pages you are now reading. Note: All search terms listed are in the exact form provided by WordPress.com, which is the host (at least for a while) of this blog. Hyperlinks to relevant posts included. Search: two headed […]


In which The Gay Recluse responds (in italics) to reader comments. Dear The Gay Recluse: I also live in Washington Heights, and was led to your blog through curbed.com. I read your parody post On Our Eulogy for Tuck-It-Away Self-Storage with giddiness and glee! We like you already; this has been a banner day at […]


In which The Gay Recluse pays tribute to his friends in Inwood. Of all the kind words and comments we received in response to our Gay Modern Love piece, we must acknowledge our friend Sayd in Inwood, who wrote this on Manhattan’s Peak: Oh, TGR. your story on gawker today was absolutely perfect. if i […]


In which The Gay Recluse — as part of a Valentine’s Day special feature — encourages readers to visit Gawker. For those of you who have followed our informal-but-rather-telling quantitative analysis of the “Modern Love” column in The Times — in which openly gay writers almost never appear and even less frequently write about romantic […]


In which The Gay Recluse celebrates the demolition of an eyesore. Location: The intersection of Amsterdam and Saint Nicholas, between 162nd and 163rd Streets, in Washington Heights. Previously: We wish we had a photograph, but — alas! — a search through The Gay Recluse archives came up empty. Thus you will have to imagine a […]


In which The Gay Recluse — with help from our United Kingdom correspondent, The London Eye — examines life abroad (instead of just dreaming about it all the time). Today, this breaking news from The London Eye: Dear The Gay Recluse Here’s a photo of a TV screen in one of the tube stations (Picadilly […]


In which The Gay Recluse — in case you missed it — reports on today’s media frenzy. So get this: today Gawker “executed” four of its “more-stupid-than-funny” commenters, three of whom we specifically targeted in the post we wrote yesterday about (get out your pencils and paper) Gawker’s original post about Chris Crocker. Say what […]


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 […]


In which The Gay Recluse — with help from our United Kingdom correspondent, The London Eye — examines life abroad (instead of just dreaming about it all the time). Here we contemplate another wall from the Leicester Square station and note striking similarities to the uncommissioned masterpieces of New York City.


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: A Valley of Misery Between Peaks of Joy Subject: In this column […]


In which The Gay Recluse ponders a sampling of recent search terms used to find the very pages you are now reading. Note: All search terms listed are in the exact form provided by WordPress.com, which is the host (at least for a while) of this blog. Hyperlinks to relevant posts included. Search: the winter […]


In which The Gay Recluse ponders the transformation of the monumental into the mundane (and vice versa). Date of Incident: February 6, 2008 Time: 7:14 am Causes of Disaster: Undetected crack in containment vessel. Remarks: A crack in the single-hulled design of the containment vessel went undetected overnight, leading to nasty seepage all over the […]


In which The Gay Recluse contemplates an uncommissioned masterpiece from the walls of an uptown subway station. Dear readers: we invite you to submit any particularly inspiring (or uninspiring) examples of subway graffiti to us at thegayrecluse@gmail.com.


In which The Gay Recluse writes metaphorically about life. Let’s say you were invited to a cocktail reception in the Rainbow Room, hosted by ____ and featuring a talk by _____, a political hero of yours who now works at a prestigious law firm. And even though it was a corporate event, which is never […]


It was difficult to read Maiden Voyage, the 1943 novel by Denton Welch, although not in any of the usual ways. For starters, the prose is relatively simple, marked by compact sentences — very much in keeping with the voice of a sixteen-year-old — but deceptively elegant; sincere and direct without ever being vulgar or […]


In which The Gay Recluse live-blogs the Super Bowl. 5:58. Our friend T___ arrives to give us haircuts. He tells us that his mother, who is only 64 years old, has just been diagnosed with an inoperable form of brain cancer. She has just begun chemotherapy, and to give him encouragement, we tell him about […]


Until now we’ve been careful not to endorse either of the leading Democratic candidates — preferring to hold out for Geraldine Ferraro — but with the New York State primary upon us, we have decided to end our prevarication and officially endorse Barack Obama. Our decision is not based on any particular issue — for […]


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 […]