From the "I-Enjoy-Being-A-Girl" File: perched right on top of a batch of semi-serious ( and semi-not ) reviews of books about total girlhood in The NY Times ( 9/1 ) is Miss Vera's Cross-Dress for Success: A Resource Guide for Boys Who Want To Be Girls by Veronica Vera. Quotes from VV: "For every woman who burned her bra there is a man ready to wear one." "Change your outerwear and you reveal the inner you." VV is conjuring up a "tranny planet" which includes anyone who wants "to transcend the confines of gender."
From the "Is-It-A-Dating-Service?" file: the Economist magazine ( 8/31 ) reports on the establishment by investment banks in Great Britain and America of gay and lesbian networks. Of course these banks, such as J P Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, U.B.S. Warburg, and Merrill Lynch, hope that increased money comes their way; but there are interesting complications...the networks are encouraging lesbigays to come out at work...the members are at first drawn from in-house employees, and it has caused social groups with names such as the BBOMS ( the Beautiful Boys of Morgan Stanley ) to form.
From the "Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell-Just-Look" file we learn from the 365gay.com newscenter ( 9/5 ) that the Canadian military is using a gay fitness video tape to train the troops. Urban Fitness is a creation of personal trainer ( to John McEnroe, John Cusak, Maria Shriver and Rutger Hauer ) Derek Noble.
The Chicago Tribune ( 9/1 ) doesn't much like Jeffrey Eugenides' new book Middlesex, about a hermaphrodite raised as a female but living as a male. It's "bloated" and has a "smell of inauthenticity" but apparently is worthy of a review nearly as long as the book. Middlesex was inspired by the memoirs of real 19th century French hermaphrodite, "Herculine Barbin." Calliope, Eugenides' hero/heroine apparently believes she's a lesbian because she falls in love with a girl just before morphing into a boy. Unless you're truly into all this you probably could skip this one.
That play about naked homo baseball players going big in London has, according to The NY Times ( 9/6 ) migrated to New York. Take Me Out, however, is not really about nude athletic shower scenes, or a super hot biracial hero who comes out, or the tension between macho straightness and sensitive bentness, but about the glories of baseball. According to the Times critic. Sure. If it makes it on Broadway, as it well may, the big three productions this season, The Producers, Hairspray, and this one would all be gay-tinged and/or inspired.
Move over, Bruce ( Springsteen ) , here come those damned gay gentrifiers. The NY Times ( 9/6 ) has noticed that many post-Fire Island gays are taking over, moving in, fixing up Asbury Park on the Jersey shore across from NY City. The "guppies" have noticed run-down mansions in the formerly glorious beach colony and are grabbing up fixer-uppers. Replacing crack vials with front-yard magnolias is part of Asbury's resurrection. "Gays are the vanguard of urban renewal," according to Mitchell L. Moss, director of the Taub Research Center at NY University. "They are innovative in how they organize their life, and it's the same with where they live."