Category: 9/11

September 11, 2015; Gay Adult Performer Dead At 24; Troye Sivan’s "Wild;" "Garriage" Not "Marriage"

 September 11, 2015

It’s hard to believe that it’s been 14 years since the attacks on America. This time every year I post something in remembrance, so rather than repeat myself, I’ll link to a few of those posts now. Being so close to New York no one around here escaped that day without some kind of connection.

This is from last year. The photo I took is very recent.

It’s been said that after the sinking of the Titanic the world changed, too. Many consider that the end of the Edwardian Era. There’s debate over that and I’m not weighing in on it here. But I do think the attacks on September 11, 2001 took us from a more innocent time and brought us all into a new era of caution that hasn’t yet been named. It will be interesting to see how these attacks are handled in future years as people reflect on that day in 2001. I have nieces and nephews who weren’t even alive yet and I’m not sure they’ll ever understand the impact it had on those of us who lived through it all that day, and all the days that followed.

And this excerpt is from 2011 where I talk about the Anthrax scare many of us here in the New York area had to deal with.

My first thought was for family and friends in Manhattan. At the time, my brother and his partner were on East 31st Street and I hadn’t spoken to them in a few weeks. I had no idea where they were or what had happened. But when I called their number, I found that all lines going into Manhattan were dead. The entire city was in lock-down and no one could get in or out. 

It’s interesting when you go into Manhattan now because everything seems so normal, as if nothing bad ever happened that day. However, on the drive into New York from New Hope there are still American flags hanging above each overpass on Rt 78, so no one ever forgets. 

Gay Adult Performer Dead At 24

I’m not familiar with adult performer, Mehran Chestnut, who recently passed away at only 24 years old. He was in a reality show I didn’t know about titled, Tha Life Atlanta, and various gay adult films. So far there is no cause of death.

As King B, Chestnut performed in gay porn scenes for several adult film studios, including NextDoorEbony and Raging Stallion.

Tha Life Atlanta producer George Smith posted a video tribute to the performer on YouTube and noted that he was truly saddened by Chestnut’s unexpected death.

There’s more here. 

Troye Sivan’s “Wild”

I don’t know much about Troye Sivan either, however, Taylor Swift recently tweeted him about his gay teen romance video, “Wild,” and he’s getting a lot more attention now.

So what got Taytay so hot and bothered?

Well, for one, Sivan’s “Wild” is a catchy pop ballad in its own right.

But the video features an adorable childhood friendship-int0-teenage romance that got us a little teared up.

It looks as if Steve Grand has a little competition now, which was bound to happen eventually. And I’m glad it’s happening. We need more pop music with gay men singing about romance. I have to admit this video is excellent and the song is as good.


You can see it here.

“Garriage” Not “Marriage”

This is as sad as it is funny.

But first, this particular LGBT publication, Queerty, continues to use the worst ableist language there is with words like “crackpot.” And they don’t even know they are doing it or how many people with mental illnesses they are harming. Sorry, but I expect more from a gay publication with things like this. Ableist language is a form of discrimination that’s as bad as any LGBT discrimination. Someone should tell them.

In any event, with that comment out of the way, there’s this conservative, Pat Fagan, who is the director of The Family Research Council‘s Marriage and Religious Research Institute, and he would like to see gays use the term “garriage” instead of “marriage.” That’s not all…he wants lesbians to refer to it as “larriage.”And, then he suggests “harriage,” to cover all the proverbial bases.Yes. Garriage, Larriage, and Harriage. Sounds like three new stooges in town.

A proposal, something along this line, that we in the pro-family movement start using related terms, but keep “marriage” for what it always was. So we might call — and this is to be worked out — but something like, if you’re talking about gay marriage you call it “garriage.” If it’s lesbian, you call it “larriage.” If you want a generic homosexual marriage, it’s “harriage.” But getting these words into use I think is key. And that will take time, but whomever holds the language ultimately holds the whole game.

I think someone should tell him to go “fuckage” himself.

You can check that one out here. 

New Release





Remembering 9/11 Ten Years Later

I’ve already written a 9/11 post, here. I even posted a photo of mail I didn’t receive until months later from the Princeton, NJ post office. This was one of the post offices that went through the anthrax scare. If you click the link, and then click on the photo, you can actually read the print on the plastic packaging. It’s interesting. And I never thought I’d see the day that would happen.

This anthrax scare was just one of the side effects here in the east coast that happened in the days that followed the terrorist attacks on the United States. I remember terrorist threats on bridges between Wilmington, DE, all the way up to New England. And driving into NY, at the end of the tunnels and bridges, was like driving into a war zone. And the funerals and memorials seemed never ending.

I can’t believe it’s been ten years already. It seems like just yesterday. I have family and friends in Manhattan and I don’t think I’ve ever felt that kind of panic before. Everything changed after that day, from the way we travel to the way we view certain things. I know I changed. But we came back even stronger and better than before. And it’s proof that no matter how hard they try to knock us, we’re still the greatest country in the world.

9/11/01…Run North…

I’d just returned from a week long trip to Provincetown, MA. One of the things I remember vividly was the weather. It was one of those rare September days on the east coast where there isn’t a cloud in the sky, the sun is shining, and there’s a comfortable breeze in the air. I also remember being thankful that the weather was so nice. I wasn’t functioning well that morning. The day before I’d driven eight hours from Cape Cod and it was my first day back to work.

At the time, I owned two businesses. One was an art gallery in New Hope, and the other was a trendy little tanning salon in Lambertville, New Jersey, which is right across the river from New Hope. Running two hands-on businesses at the same time and managing a writing career wasn’t easy. On the morning of September 11th, I was in the Lambertville salon greeting my clients and getting ready to send out a manuscript to Alyson Publications. Alyson was in LA back then and I was worried about getting the manuscript out on time because it was being submitted in hard copy, sent through snail mail.

Then a client came into the reception area and told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I didn’t think much about it. I figured it was a small plane. And then another client came in fifteen minutes later and told me that a second plane had hit the other tower. She didn’t know the details, and I was still working on my manuscript and I didn’t think much about that either.

After that, It didn’t take long for the panic to set in. The phone started ringing and news about the first tower collapsing spread fast. I didn’t have a television in the salon so I couldn’t see what was happening. So I turned on the radio, found WOR, and listened to the absolute panic in the radio announcer’s voice.

My first thought was for family and friends in Manhattan. At the time, my brother and his partner were on East 31st Street and I hadn’t spoken to them in a few weeks. I had no idea where they were or what had happened. But when I called their number, I found that all lines going into Manhattan were dead. The entire city was in lock-down and no one could get in or out.

I started calling on my cell phone. Eight years ago cell phones didn’t have the best signals and even on the best days they weren’t reliable. And while I was calling, I heard about the planes going down in Washington and Pennsylvania. I thought about closing the salon and going home, but I had people coming in who were terrified and I think being there gave them comfort. So I remained where I was.

By some act of pure luck, I finally got through to my brother’s partner in Manhattan. He told me that my brother had left early that morning for a business trip to the mid-west. His plane had taken off only minutes before the first plane had hit the first tower. But my brother’s plane was safe and he’d just landed in Chicago. His partner was talking to me from his office in mid-town, and he was safe, too.

When I hung up with him, I called a friend. I knew this friend worked downtown and I wanted to know if he was okay. It took a while, but I finally got his cell phone. What happened next was terrifying. He didn’t even get a chance to speak. The second tower went down, he dropped the phone on the sidewalk, and all I heard was the sound of screams and someone shouting, “run north.”

Later that day I learned that my friend was fine. But as things started to settle down I started to hear more about other people in my community who had been effected. There are a lot of people who commute to Manhattan from New Hope and surrounding villages in Bucks County. Some lost their lives in the towers, some lost their lives in the planes, and one of the pilots flying a plane that went into one of the towers lived only a few miles from my home.

It was an awful day. But I was thankful that my friends and family were safe and sound. A lot of people I know in Manhattan spent the next few weeks going to funerals. We had many memorials here in Bucks County.
The photo above is a letter I saved from that time. All my mail was delivered to my Lambertville office back then. And all mail that came to Lambertville had to go through the Princetwon, NJ office, which isn’t far away. And that’s where they had some of the serious anthrax scares. The letter in the photo was delayed. I didn’t receive it until six months after it was sent because it had to go through testing to make sure it hadn’t been exposed to anthrax. For a long time, we opened our mail wearing plastic gloves.