Frank Browning
- 1991
Fellowship Title:
- Community and Identify: The Search for Gay Culture
Fellowship Year:
- 1991
A Gay Family
Photos by Marc Geller Derek grew up in Washington, D.C. in a strong, stable dual income family with a number of brothers and sisters. He was trained as an accountant and made rapid progress; by his late twenties he was named head of payroll operations at a bank. Nights and weekends he took classes and worked part-time as a massage therapist. Derek’s lover, Gunther, a Swiss national, was a highly paid professional whose family he had visited in Zurich. One day, more than four years after the two had been coupled, Derek’s mother spoke to him about his future. “Why don’t you and your sister buy a house together?” she asked. “You’ve both got good jobs, you’re single, it’s a good investment, and your father and I could help with the down payment.” A gay couple in San Francisco. Derek began to consider the idea, musing about how he and his corporate-lawyer sister would get along. And then he shook himself. “Morn, I can’t buy a house with Liz. If I were going to buy
How AIDS has Changed Gay America: Illegal drug networks, revamped sex clubs and a new culture of caring
Photos by Marc Geller The first time I saw Jim Corti was in Miami, on a hot, sticky night in May 1989. We were both seated in the restaurant at the Howard Johnson’s motel on the north edge of the city, a rather sad establishment that had seen too many humid, tropical summers since the last paint job. We were at separate tables, eyeing each other from time to time. I was alone. Corti sat with three other men. We had not yet been introduced and were not sure how to recognize each other. I had come to witness and record an underground treatment of four HIV-positive gay men, two with AIDS, who had volunteered to be injected with a promising but possibly deadly Chinese drug. Corti, I had been told, was a famous, or at least notorious, crusader. A doctor, one person told me. A nurse, said another. In fact, by his own account, a nurse and a smuggler. AIDS activism showed up in protests against Louis Sullivan, Secretary of the U.S. Department of
Queer Rage
Photos by Marc Geller. DISNEYLAND, CA–Eighteen-inch golden tresses fall softly atop the pleated, puff-shouldered blouse of an immaculately scrubbed and smiling Alice-in-Wonderland. Nearby, Cinderella, her hair in a bun, a black choke-band around her neck, looks on as Alice smoothes out the mock-linen gloves of a large, black-nosed six-foot mouse wearing a pointed Dutch-girl cap. Closing in from behind the mouse comes a cheery young man, white shirt, bright spackled tie, creamy pleated trousers, carrying a thick docker’s rope. “Are you from Wonderland?” asks Alice, in the most incredulous sing-song voice, her query directed at the peeled head of a young man in a white-quilted leisure suit and 3-inch blue-mirrored platform shoes, the leader of a troop of drag queens and leather-boys who’ve staged this mid-winter raid on America’s most wholesome fantasyland. Ggreg Taylor, dressed for a “raid” on Disneyland, waits for others in Beverly Hills. “N-o-o-oh,” he answers with a verbal dip. “I’m from San Francisco. Can’t you tell?” “Well, we simply must talk later,” Alice answers, traipsing off with Cinderella and the mouse
Gay Politics
Photos by Marc Geller NEW YORK-The walls of the elevator were polished mahogany. Inside stood four people. A somewhat severe elderly woman in a business suit was coming home at day’s end. An unmistakably wealthy gentleman with a maroon silk ascot and yellowish white hair made chit-chat with his companion, a young, very athletic Puerto-Rican man whose thighs pressed tight into his jeans and whose dress shirt opened deep into hairy cleavage. The young man in turn was visually grazing over and allowing his hips to drift against the body of the fourth person, a thin, middle-aged man who seemed to relish the spontaneous tableau of flirtation which remained invisible to the tired businesswoman. The three men stepped out onto the fifth floor of this upper Fifth Avenue apartment building. A varied assortment of model-pretty young men took jackets, poured champagne, and directed the guests to silver and crystal bowls of caviar, cornichons and exotic canapes. “So nice to see you again,” the host, an auction house executive greeted his guests, handing them a card