“Tom Robinson of the Tom Robinson Band was—for me—the first queer punk rocker. I’m sure others came before, but Tom was the one who broke through into my consciousness—via the eclectic record collection…

“Months later, Dr. Naib would tell me about those first moments of our relationship from her perspective. She was sitting in her office when my file appeared in her queue. She read the…

“You do not make a habit of blowing your own horn or celebrating the defeat of your adversaries. You do Good Works, and then you do more Good Works. You do this because…

“Chapman was just so different. So human and real. Her voice and talent felt—back then, and again in February—like a marble-smooth boulder somehow preexisting the river itself.  There was all this stuff—all these…

“As the Fates would have it, I had also contracted mononucleosis the summer after graduation, so when I went to sleep-away college in September, I was unable to participate in the initial months of…

“I never liked church. It was boring and stupid, and if not for the little wooden dowels you could pop out of the missalette rack with a carefully prizing fingernail, I would have…

“Shortly before we met, my bestie and roommate, Mercedes, started making noise about wanting to get a dog—a decision about which I was truly ambivalent. While we had had a dog for a…

“When I go on dates, what I’m really looking for is an invitation into someone’s story for a little while—the way that happens when you’re traveling and happen to sit next to someone…

“In the spring of 2003, The Royal Shakespeare Company helped to bring a theatrical production of Rushdie’s allegorical novel Midnight’s Children to the stage of the Apollo Theater. At the time, and still…