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Feature-length writing

Cirque du Soleil 1989: In, Under and Up On the Big Top

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 […]

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Feature-length writing

Searching For a Gay Hero

Will Jonathan Demme’s Philadelphia make up for his Silence Of the Lambs— and Hollywood’s history of homophobic cowardice? Mark Freeman looks at Movieland’s hidden queer history in this cover feature of SF Weekly from January 12, 1994 ********** OK, I’m gay and I demand movie heroes who are, too. Is that so much to ask? I’ve […]

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Feature-length writing

Featuring #1: Gay Maoist

Queer Featuring COMING OUT AS AN ACTIVIST IN A GAY MAOIST CELL WHO MOSTLY JUST WANTED TO GET LAID A chapter from “Smash the Church, Smash the State! The Early Years of Gay Liberation, edited by Tommi Avicolli Mecca, City Lights Books 2009 As a not-yet 20-year-old, I was in many of the right places […]

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Feature-length writing

How We Invented Safer Sex in Dangerous Times

I am a sexual male, not—I think—untypical of my generation, living in and among the various gay communities of the San Francisco Bay Area for the past two decades.

Ever since I discovered what my body can do, and unless I’m feeling really bad, I’ve wanted to have sex about once a day. Though this isn’t always possible with someone else, at least I always have myself as an acceptable, if not ideal, partner.