My first full time week as a Lead Historian at The American LGBTQ+ Museum is in the books! It’s a dream job, even if the office has homophobic overhead office lighting.

I spent the week looking at collections, talking to donors, and building out our core exhibition - the permanent, non-rotating part of our space. I can’t say too much publicly yet, but I’m in love with the team and all that we’re building.

“Becoming History” was the original title of my recent memoir, MY BAD: A Personal History of the Queer 90s and Beyond, but I think it works better for this new newsletter. Consider this issue a tasting menu, a grab bag of all the things I plan to write about in the future, like…

Books

I just finished Henry Hoke’s STICKER and loved it. (Also, I love how much reading I get done now that I have a regular commute again.) His short essays - each focused around a different sticker from his childhood (from the toxic Mr. Yuk to the gold stars on school assignments) - are beautiful and weird and build gradually. On page 40 he writes “This is the book’s introduction. Like most things in life, it’s arriving late. Stickers can be excuses.”

Personally, my favorite stickers were the oily ones that moved and changed color when you pushed on them. They were almost certainly made from cancer.

Dear Diaries

I collect other people’s diaries. One day I’m going to start an archive just of diaries. My most recent acquisition is the 1964-’65 diary of a young air force member during the Vietnam War, written mostly in Okinawa but also in the Philipines and Bien Hoa, Vietnam.

Compared to most of my diaries, this one is very contemplative - aware of both the author’s mortality and his desire to be a different person if he survives the war. As he writes “Perhaps from outlining my opinions, feelings and ideas here, I can discover an outline of myself. Perhaps too I can form a guide or a philosophy of life to fit my character...”

Queer History

Dolly Parton just died - a dark day in queer history if ever there was one.

My favorite piece of Dolly related media is Jean Carlomusto’s 1991 short doc “L Is for the Way You Look,” in which a group of New York City lesbians debate whether Dolly attended a performance of lesbian stand-up comic Reno at PS122 in the East Village (and if so, what it means that she was there). The entire thing isn’t available for streaming, but Jean put some of it up on Vimeo after Dolly died.

~

And for some happier queer Southern news: A few years ago, I got an email from Sadie Spalding, a budding queer historian/librarian/archivist in Texas, who was frustrated by the lack of resources online dedicated to LGBTQ+ Texas history.

Just this week, she reached out to let me she’d gotten her Masters in Library and Archives, and built a queer history site for Austin, Texas! I love that Sadie starts with an overview of how queer people might show up in the archives, and then shows us what she’s found using the methodology she describes. Check it out!

NYC

My partner Tim and I do a lot of long walks around New York City. Last weekend was 20 miles up through Queens, ending along the waterfront, past Malba, up in College Point.

If you’ve never been to Malba, it’s a place where people with a lot of money and very little taste are constantly competing to build the newest, biggest, tackiest mansion. I, of course, love everything about it. My favorite this time was this house whose facade was entirely mosaiced with scenes from Renaissance and Egyptian art:

Events

On the 15th, I’ll be going to the 25th Anniversary presentation by the ACT UP Oral History Project (founded by Sarah Schulman and Jim Hubbard, in collaboration with James Wentzy). In person tickets are sold out, but it will be streamed! From the event website:

A quarter century ago, Jim and Sarah realized that the legacy of ACT UP was fading due to the internet revolution and lack of digitized material. With the goal of creating an archive of uncensored testimony, in 2001 they began 18 years of work in collaboration with James Wentzy, in which 188 interviews were conducted. This material formed the basis of Jim’s film United in Anger: A History of ACT UP and Sarah’s book Let the Record Show: ACT UP, New York 1987-1993. Making all materials available for free at actuporalhistory.org, their website has had at least 14 million hits and over 700,000 transcripts have been downloaded. Jim and Sarah will be joined by CLAGS director Matt Brim, author of the teaching guide to United in Anger for remembrances, analysis, gossip and reflection on how two friends created so many resources for the world.

And on Sunday the 27th, I’ll be on a panel about queer activist archives at the New York Art Book Fair.

That’s all for now

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