Southern California, which is shaped somewhat like a coffin, is a giant sanatorium with flowers where people come to be cured of life itself in whatever way .... This is the last stop before the sun gives up and sinks into the black, black ocean, and night -- usually starless here -- comes down.

Gay men should not adopt the sophomoric model of heterosexual dating; gay men should always have sex first.

It's that magnificent interlude in New York between winter and spring, when you feel the warmth stirring, and you remember that the dreadful naked trees will inevitably sprout tiny green buds, soon. Everyone rushes into the parks, the streets -- and you even forget that, very soon , summer will come scorchingly, dropping from the sky like a blanket of steam.

No, I did not tell him about the raids on gay bars; cops invading private homes to arrest men having sex, the sexual act being illegal; entrapment, lying, aroused cops, years-long prison terms, suicides, violence.

I discovered the jungle of Central Park--between the 60s and 70s, on the west side. In the afternoons, Sundays especially, a parade of hunters prowled that area--or they would sit or lie on the grass waiting for that day's contact.

I'm Mexican-American, but for a long time I was pushed out of any references to Mexican-American writers. It was easier to come out as a gay man than it was to come out as a Mexican-American.