What was the deal with your absence?

For years I provided flippant answers to this question because addressing it truthfully was too complicated. The bottom line is I got mixed up with a controlling partner who didn’t want me writing here or elsewhere, even though this site was anonymous.

What have you done in the meantime?

Gotten older and slightly wiser hopefully a bit less stupid. Resumed writing, but elsewhere and under different names. Eventually revived this site, though updates have slowed since a surprise early-onset Parkinson’s diagnosis at 40.

How has the site changed since the aughts?

It used to be very political, more out of necessity than anything else, because the internet was much smaller when it came to the intersections of gay issues, pop culture and the media. This time around I’d rather stick to film and TV retrospectives and occasionally books, though I still think it’s worth asking hard-hitting questions about whether Mayor McCheese is a homosexual.

Any interest in YouTube videos or podcasts?

No, I’ve been asked to appear on podcasts and my monotone would put you to sleep. YouTube videos require a whole new skillset I’m not interested in learning.

How has the gay internet landscape changed over the years?

We’re everywhere now so you don’t have to go to niche sites for gay content. In some ways that’s fantastic but mostly I’m underwhelmed. Marginalized identities are currently very sexy to younger folks and everyone’s claiming a piece of the LGBTQ+ pie, regardless of whether they eat it.

Our online presence is as big as it has ever been, but there’s often something insufferable about it—a tendency toward clique-y, sanctimonious groupthink that verges on the absurd. And frequently, despite all the flag-waving, it doesn’t seem particularly gay to me. It’s more redolent of what precocious, fanfic obsessed teenage shut-ins (and their older, predominantly straight-lady-with-colorful-hair counterparts) perceive or romanticize as gay.

I no longer use the word “queer” much, for similar reasons. As a young adult I liked, perhaps foolishly, the idea of reclaiming that word from homophobes. These days its meaning has again shifted and it’s an empty, even tedious buzzword that’s become the “cool mom” of the moment for older folks and a meaningless pose for younger people. When you tell grizzled gay veterans “I identify as queer,” what we usually hear is that you’re terminally online and struggling to accept your heterosexuality.

“Queer” voices are now the loudest in the so-called LGBTQ+ community, at least in North America, which is unfortunate for all the gays and lesbians whose opinions and experiences they neither share nor represent.

There’s that crankiness again.

I was once a precocious teenage shut-in, albeit not one who was into fan-fiction (other than a Scully story or two, I’ll sheepishly admit). I was also an out gay teenager in the Midwest in the ’90s and early aughts, which makes me less sensitive to the plight of today’s mollycoddled youth turned Twitter scolds, Discord addicts and pathologically attention-seeking TikTokkers.

On the bright side, it’s an inspiring sign of progress when young people in North America complain about how persecuted they are and you listen to their tirades and think, They weren’t kicked out of the house for being gay or sent to conversion therapy. They weren’t in danger of being disowned or abused on the basis of their sexuality. They don’t know what it’s like to love someone they’re legally barred from marrying, or to lack representation everywhere they look. They’re mad because their parents meekly asked how they could possibly know they’re a polyamorous pansexual demiromantic asexual with a stuffed animal fetish when they’re prepubescent.