“He had a mind that needed so much stimulation he was incapable of watching a single channel and instead preferred to surf continuously and watch three shows at the same time.”
“After that semester, I was a confirmed groupie—one of his first.”
“ Because Jim and I lived only a few blocks apart, he sometimes called me on his way to the emergency room with a minutely detailed list of instructions— what books to gather, where to find extra pairs of socks, which magazines to hide from the cleaning woman.”
“I had no idea that Nate was gay while we were at Yale. In fact, I had no idea that anyone was gay. This was the early 1960s. The world was different then.”
“No matter how many students, colleagues, visitors, and admiring strangers sought his attention, he looked at each one of us as if he or she was the most important individual in the world to him, and the very center of his attention.”
“What was it about him that made you want to devote your life to him?”
“He told me about a young chanteuse, Bette Midler, […] describing her weekly performances at an all-male spa, where men would gather around the pool clad only in towels for her midnight show. He did not mention that he had been there.”
“The place was particularly hard on an aspiring artist, which John then was; the colony had little use for the artistic spirit, and John specialized in it.”
“ Ironically, the difference in our sexual orientation removed rather than created barriers to love and understanding. ”
“Whenever I spy an inviting cottage or enticing flat, traveling through the countryside or on a stroll in Manhattan, I hear him calling, ‘Tara! Tara!’.”
“ He loved Show Biz and was, with his twin brother Eric, in every play and musical at Stuyvesant. ”
“John had a great sense of humor, and his antics would often create a minor measure of havoc in our performances that the audience enjoyed watching but which I sometimes found frustrating.”
“Of course, I fell completely in love
with him.”
“Inevitably though, living with AIDS quickened the pulse of his work and acted like a crucible to distill what was most vital and precious to him.”
“The next day, my mom told me that when the curtain rose and I began singing, Uncle Mike asked, “Where did she learn to do that? She is imitating Marilyn perfectly.” My confidence soared.”
“It was this profound capacity for caring about what others said, thought, and felt, that was his greatest gift.”
“There was a certain puppyish quality to him, lots of big teeth and scraggly hair.”
“Harry and I were born on the same day—he was my second birthday present.”
“James A. Snead was not yet 30 when I first walked into his class. At 35 he was dead.”
“What it was like: he’s looking down, and I’m looking up. “There you are.” And now, it’s just me.”
“He was in a hurry. I mean—he was big, he was black, and he was beautiful, but much more than any of those three things, he was in a hurry.”
“[…] blindingly talented, fashionable, whip-smart, and endlessly witty, tossing off aphorisms with seemingly effortless aplomb. […] It was like going to school with Oscar Wilde.”
“Warren’s smooth way of catching the upbeats with his hips cuaght my eye early one evening, and as we danced together through several songs, his dazzling smile and his delight in the joy of dancing caught my heart.”
“[…] ‘You know, Sleeping Beauty is playing at the Cine 1-2.’ Pause. ‘Oh, we couldn’t,’ he replied. Pause. ‘Oh yes we can,’ I said. Pause. The play had not yet started. We put down our programs, walked right out, and drove up I-95 […]”
“Any classroom over which Jack held sway was a special place: words that come to mind are buoyant, effervescent.”
“John was a romantic, a handsome 20th Century Renaissance man who caught the eye, imagination, and heart of many young women, and dated many, though no single one exclusively.”
“He pursued me with characteristic focus, reveling in our being the gay Mutt and Jeff of the American Studies department, preparing to save the world with
cultural criticism.”
“It is not easy to convey what Jack was like as a person to those who did not have the pleasure of knowing him.”
“At the table he’d move the flowers closer to his place, covetous of their fragrance—he couldn’t help himself.”
“In our pre-gay way, we shared a mistrust of the rituals of male adolescence around us, but were equally wary of the potential faggot inside of each other.”
“Tonight, I would ask him the question whose answer I dreaded.”
“In his interview for a job at Yale, he asked if housing would be a problem for the monkeys. Somehow, he found an apartment building willing to sign a lease allowing for “one dozen lowland South American primates.””
“I don’t think I had ever seen Nate as happy as he was that night.”
“How important did I feel reading the lines of Charlie Brown so he could learn his Snoopy?”
“In one phase, illness and medication had swollen his face and thinned his hair. He began at 28 to resemble once again the Charlie Brown he had been at 10.”
“The lyric enumerates all the activities that the singer finds unchallenging including, “I can read Greek—easy.” The Whiff who sang those words looked at Jeb and laughed with recognition.”
“Happily I erred on the side of incaution: “You can crash in my room,” I said.”
“Frank was a phenomenon, and there was hardly a man, woman or child, teacher or student, who didn’t to some degree fall in love with him.”
“By the time he finished with an impish smile I had decided that a) I would attend Yale and b) somehow I’d find a way to date that handsome rogue. One out of two ain’t bad.”
“Whenever Jim came by he reminded me of an idling muscle car, waiting for someone to press the accelerator.”
“While Paul sometimes disparaged his time at Yale, he did learn a great deal.”
“I remember his saying that the death of friends was no longer an event; it was a way of life.”
“When we look to his work, we see Jamie as a symbol of a new generation of black intellectuals: self-confident, no longer anxiety-ridden, no longer looking for approval and legitimacy in the eyes of their white peers, willing to flex their intellectual muscles and move in whatever directions and trajectories they choose.”
“We made it a daily practice to play a game of Scrabble. Embarrassingly, in the over three-hundred times we played, I never once won.”
“The cop wouldn’t let the three of us go any farther. Frank, of course, kept walking. He was wearing jeans, and a messenger bag, and he walked with a great swagger.”
“He urges me on, with wisdom and patience, to expand my world, to hold all the contradictions he saw and make something better of them.”