Queer4Decades - Mark H. Freeman
FIVE SHORT STORIES & A RANT on Israel/Palestine: CAN YOU FILL IN THE BLANKS? I have an older cousin who I love dearly; she lives in Tel Aviv where her mother moved her at the age of 14 from L.A. She admits that Netanyahu is a monster but, as she has said on more than […]
I am really happy to share this short, sharp story, Full Day in the Windy City— never before published— as my premiere blog post. The heroism of the gay community and its biting humor during the worst years of the AIDS Pandemic were nothing short of miraculous. And it is in danger of being forgotten […]
Welcome to the colorful new iteration of my website, thanks to a brilliant designer! Having turned 76, those annoying “what was that word/name/place?” moments seem more frequent. So now is a good time to get down all the stories— from being kicked out of three high schools, arriving at one of the first Acid […]
Revised 2022 from a personal essay in Bay Area Reporter’s Arts & Entertainment section July 7, 1994. “Are you from New York?” is a question people frequently ask me. My response: “Nope. I’m just Jewish.” Even my Filipino-Portuguese boyfriend Ken laughs, although he’s heard it more than once. Today we have flown from San Francisco […]
THE HOUSE OF MORE Just a few blocks from the newly gentrified Twitter-verse of Mid-Market Street, on one of the realest corners that San Francisco’s Sixth Street has to offer, is the abode of Mr. David, aka Glamamore. The honorific ‘Mister’ is a throwback to a mid-century usage, applied only to hairdressers or costume designers. […]
May 26, 2022 Los Angeles has less of a pull on me every decade. I went to four high schools there, though my parents never moved during those years in the Sixties, other than apart from each other. Both passed away in their nineties, my dad 21 years ago and my mom five. In between […]
IN CENTRAL ASIA: KAZAKHSTAN People keep asking why we went to Central Asia and Berlin last year, and the easiest answer was “For the food.” Yes, I have always been interested in the land where stone fruit originated: those “Golden Apples of the Sun” from Greek and Roman mythology were likely ancient Central Asian peaches […]
Being a history of my father, Ben Baruch Freeman better known as Budgie, written while I was passing through his hometown on a train in winter, fifteen years before he died. Following that, a series of appreciative vignettes I wrote out for him as his memory was faltering, about ten years later. “I’m Just a […]
The sight of that yellow-and-blue Big Top meant that the five-year old Cirque du Soleil was back in town again. For me it brought back my fondest childhood desire: to run away and join the circus, just like Toby Tyler did in a favorite childhood book.. By the time I had read the strangely spiritual yet earthier […]
Mark Freeman, originally published August, 1988 in Coming Up! (now Bay Times). Revised December 2014 INVOCATIONS “I can’t bear to be losing you, ‘cause I’ve loved you my whole life through. Somebody shake me, wake me, when it’s over.” “Now if you feel that you can’t go on, because all of your hope is gone, […]