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To live in a world meant for other people

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To live in a world meant for other people     Here a bartender carves a block of ice into a near-perfect sphere with a sharp knife and his bare hand.  A geisha steps onto the elevator in the hotel, her hair brushed back with painstaking accuracy.  In the restaurant, food is prepared with care and served with even more care.  Ugly buildings and tangled wires overhead share space with small gardens and handmade signs and window displays and rows of idle bicycles.  Neon skeletons hang by day and become breathing beauties at nightfall.  Preschoolers line up like ducks in yellow uniforms on a train platform.  I hear one visitor refer to these children as the reason why “they are so militaristic.”  My introduction to Japan is a list of quips like this one from other westerners.  I hear them from strangers on the subway.  I hear them from my co-worker who has lived here for several years.  I hear them from the occasio...
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How does a gay author reach a general audience? (No, really. How?)

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My friends ignore me. Can't say that I blame them. I write books that they think nobody wants to read. And maybe they're right. Who wants to read about living in a world meant for other people? Are my friends right? To tell you the truth, most of my friends haven't read my stuff. Only a few have ventured in. Three, to be precise. And of the three, they all like what they have read and encourage me to keep writing. My other friends continue to ignore me. Not a word is spoken about my books. Why am I telling you this? Because, with so many books out there, it is a daunting task to find an audience for mine. Even among my friends. I need to stand out somehow just to get readers to see that I have actually written books. And that's where you come in. I know. "You're gay. I'm not sure that I could be interested in or connect with what you write," you say.  And to that I say, "It doesn't matter. My books are ava...
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Living in the Chelsea Hotel

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The landmark Chelsea Hotel was built in the 1880s as one of the city's first private co-ops. In 1905, it re-opened as a hotel. Over the years, the hotel has been the home of numerous writers, musicians, artists, and actors, including Dee Dee Ramone, Bob Dylan, Virgil Thomson, Sam Shepard, Arthur C. Clarke, Arthur Miller, Charles Bukowski, Allen Ginsberg, Dylan Thomas, Janis Joplin, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, and Patti Smith. In the 1970s, a New York landmark himself, Stanley Bard took over the management of the hotel, and his son David joined him later on. In the autumn of 1978, punk rocker Sid Vicious killed his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, in Room 100, a room that has joined the other ghosts that make up the Chelsea. View from the Balcony, Room 325 The year is 1995 or 1996. I enter the Chelsea Hotel, push through the heavy glass doors. The light in the lobby adjusts to my eyes. Art runs floor to ceiling around the room. Obscure paintings. Little known artists. A s...
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