Sometimes “Y”: Trading in a Closet for a Bubble?

In 2018, I received an apology I wasn't expecting, as well as a kiss I can't remember. Both instances were reminders of what happens when you come out to a large group of people, whether it's family, co-workers...
Ryan Lee

Ryan Lee: Booty call-based interventions

The fewer secrets you have, the more people seem willing to give you theirs. An almost reckless candor about my marijuana use and promiscuity has made me a repository for disclosures that people are reticent to...
Ryan Lee

Ryan Lee: Longer, blessed days

I stopped participating in daylight saving about five years ago, but not like Arizona and other rebellious states that refuse to change time twice a year. Simply, there are no clocks in my daily life that requi...
Ryan Lee

Ryan Lee: Entering ‘the Life,’ after death

While waves of celebrity deaths have washed across Hollywood the past few years, a new trend involving the bygone rich-and-famous has emerged at the dawn of 2018: gay ghosts. The surviving peers of deceased sta...
Ryan Lee

Ryan Lee: Sex with porn stars

I used to think more porn actors, per capita, frequented the LA Fitness I worked out at than any gym in America, and now I feel similarly about my neighborhood grocery store. While that might reinforce Atlanta'...
Ryan Lee

Ryan Lee: When I almost joined a cult

On my way out of the kingdom of God, I did a little trolling for Jesus. My final burst of religiosity occurred around the same time I was fully accepting my homosexuality, and I was determined to not let the la...
Ryan Lee

Ryan Lee: The filthiest bath

The last death of 2017 hit me the hardest: the closure of Man's Country in Chicago, which took my bathhouse virginity in 1999. The news wasn't entirely unexpected; based on my last visits, it was as shocking as...
Ryan Lee

Ryan Lee: Scanning the different sounds of silence

I once was driving through rural Kentucky, pressed the scan button on the car radio and for the first time felt the totality of nothingness. The few seconds of dead air as the digital numbers cycled the dial wi...
Ryan Lee

Ryan Lee: The gift of rejection: a Christmas story

In the early hours of last Christmas, as the crowd at Bulldogs was exiting onto Peachtree Street and Santa was approaching Hawaii, I programmed into my phone the number of a handsome guy with whom flirtatious g...
Ryan Lee

Ryan Lee: Boys in the barbershop

Having been single for all of this decade, my closest and most enduring relationships with other men have been with my barbers. This is not uncommon, as there are few platonic relationships more intimate than b...