APRIL 18, 2008
justout 39
The Write Stuff
What's on your bedside table?
I
love a good book. I’m particularly drawn to
fiction, which helps me sleep at night. So the
creased bindings of Rob Byrnes’ The Night
They.Met and Joe Keenan’s Blue Heaven have
more lines on them than my aging face.
Recently I enjoyed a couple of soon-to-be-
published gay memoirs: Joel Derfner’s hilarious
and touching Swish: My Quest to Become the Gay'
Wesley Jacobsen is also into Harry Potter,
although she recently read the last in the series.
“I like the feeling that there might be something
more out there than meets the eye,” she told me.
Tyler Meza just finished Dreamcatcher and reports
that he was enchanted by Stephen King’s twisted
imagination. “I’ve never read a book so concerned
est Person Ever and Craig Seymour’s All I Could
Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington,
D.C., in which he reveals a youthful dalliance
with cyber-gossip Matt Drudge. But now I’m at a
loss about what to pick up next. Fortunately, with
a column due and a couple of events to attend,
there were plenty of readers to ask.
The first event was Just Out's monthly Gay
Nero. Josh Ferrer read Naked in the Rain because
he’s a friend of author Eowyn Wood, who works
message that beauty eventually goes away.” That
might be true, but there was beauty aplenty on
display at Oaks Park, including Jonathan Hill,
who enjoyed Here’s What Well Say by Amazing
out
out
at Cascade AIDS Project. Her novel is about
teen gay runaways. Cutie Marc Kochanski, who
used to work at CAP, is reading The Ethical Slut:
A Guide to Infinite Sexual Possibilities, which he
says “has a clear eye and mixlem view of relation
ships, including polyamory.” (When is that book
club meeting?)
Floyd and Noah Buck clown around at Cascade
AIDS Project's Art Evening and Auction with
Nick the Creative and Barnaby the Bear.
e
Two nights later, two dozen cultured queers
got together for a truly effervescent performance
of Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring at Port
land Opera. During a cocktail reception before
the show, Ted Huffman told me that his current
favorite author is Sloane Crosley, whom he calls
“the female David Sedaris,” and that her book,
I Was Told There’d Be Cake, is “a better Sex and
the City.” Rick Sullivan enjoyed Way of the Weird,
about a shaman and his spiritual path, although
he confessed that boyfriend Greg Mitchell “made
me read it.”
Jared Heiden enjoyed the history of the burn
ing of Rome in Quo Vadis: A Tale of the Time of
Skate Night, where 308 others joined me in cir
cling the rink. Charles Milne recently finished
Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, which
he called an “excellent story with an excellent
Race winner Reichen Lehmkuhl. “It’s all about
his coming out and being raped in the Air Force,”
Jonathan said. Then I turned to boyfriend Drew
Akerson, who, with Jonathan, was dressed in ’70s
roller disco drag. “I’m so behind tl\e ball,” Drew
sheepishly admitted. “The last book I read was the
first Harry Potter."
with farts,” he said. On a more somber note,
Linda Selig found Robin Merrow MacCready’s
Buried— the story of a young girl who is deserted
by her alcoholic mother—to be very healing.
■
Speaking of CAP, its annual Art Evening and
Auction was April 5, and among the attendees,
Kent Matthews told me he is aptly reading Out
law Representation: Censorship and Homosexuality
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____ . ______________ 1 '______________________ 1 a____ .____ _____________ ■ •
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Out Going
BY FLOYD SKLAVER
in 20th Century American Art. Jeff Anderson has
five books on his nightstand, including Bruce
Wagner’s Force Majeure, Lucy O’Brien’s biogra
phy of Madonna and Jcxii Picoult’s latest, Change
of Heart. Ryan Holleran just finished Melanie
Rawn’s The Star Scrolls, which he calls “a good
dorky fantasy.” Jeff Butters has Ursula Hegi’s The
Worst Thing I’ve Done on his nightstand. Butters
Gallery represents the author’s artist husband,
so Jeff stays with the couple in East Hampton
whenever he visits New York. CAP executive
director Jean Ann Van Krevelen is reading The
Encyclopedia of Organic Gardening. Partner Tracy
Turner has a microbiology textbook next to the
bed because she’s got two more years of study to be
a respiration therapist.
Thanks to all for the great suggestions. Now,
if you readers would just let me know about your
events so I can cover them, that would be really
Out Going. ©
F loyd S klaver wants to know about your event.
E-mail him at floydsklaver@comcast.net.
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