Do you remember Christopher Street Magazine? Near the end of each month, I would march myself down to The Different Drummer Bookstore on Broadway-Capital Hill, Seattle, to purchase my new edition of this magazine, unafraid for the 1st time in my life, of being seen buying homo-stuff. I had 10 years worth of saved copies before getting rid of them during a rare purging of material belongings event. The pieces started as short, journalistic nots in Christopher Street. Ethan Mordden would relate to readers, the semi- fictional tales of his “chosen” gay family in late 1970s NYC. For Mordden, creating such a family is essential for many gay men, as they can help to build "a stable, environment, somewhere you get accepted for what you are without qualifications."
The pieces became a series that I knew as- The Buddy Series & were published as: I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore: Tales from Gay Manhattan (1985), which was followed by Buddies (1986), & Everybody Loves You: Further Adventures of Gay Manhattan (1988). Mordden put aside the series for 9 years before offering Some Men Are Lookers (1997).
He has also written well-received studies of American film: Hollywood Studios: House Style in the Golden Age of the Movies (1988), Movie Star: A Look at the Women Who Made Hollywood (1983), & Medium Cool: The Movies of the 1960s (1990).
I have enjoyed collected his books on Broadway musicals: Broadway Babies: The People Who Made the American Musical (1983), Rodgers & Hammerstein (1992), & The Happiest Corpse I've Ever Seen: The Last 25 Years of the Broadway Musical (2004).
If you love the Tales Of City series by Armistead Maupin, I think you will enjoy the Buddy books. I actually re-read them once every decade. They are very funny & very human, superbly written & accessible. They make me laugh, they make me horny, & they make me cry.
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