Bare-Naked with No One to Fuck
I was having second thoughts about the accommodations I made for a trip to Miami when my friend reassured, “How bad could an American hostel be?” The answer, I’ve learned, is not awful until you want to have so...
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: 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: 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: Generational conflicts in our movement, and me
One of the curses of liberalism is the generational tension that almost destines today’s radical to be perceived as tomorrow’s sellout. The Mattachine Society had been advocating for “homophile” equality for...
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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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...