• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Advertise
  • Contact Us
  • About Towleroad
  • Towleroad on Social Media
  • Privacy Policy

Towleroad Gay News

Gay Blog Towleroad: More than gay news | gay men

  • Travel
  • Sports
  • Law/Justice
  • Celebrities
  • Republicans
  • Madonna
  • Books
  • Men
  • Trans Rights
  • Royals
  • Monkeypox
  • US set to ease AIDS-era blood donation rules for gay men
  • Learning From COVID: Early Detection, Isolation, and Elimination Beats More Defensive Responses As Global Strategy for Future Pandemics
  • Phew! Truck-sized asteroid misses Earth

Later: Paul Lisicky Reads from His Stunning Memoir of Belonging, Queer Identity, Sex, and the Plague Years in Provincetown

Andy Towle March 17, 2020 Leave a Comment

later lisicky

TOWLEREAD: LGBTQ BOOKS FROM THE AUTHOR’S MOUTH

I first met author Paul Lisicky in 1991, when we both were introduced to Provincetown, Massachusetts as fellows at the Fine Arts Work Center, an artist and writer’s colony founded in the ’60s which awards off-season residencies to emerging writers and artists. Today, nearly 30 years later, I’m thrilled to feature him in our returning ‘TowleRead’ feature in which authors read from their works. Because our arrivals in this singular queer resort town coincided, his memoir has personal resonance for me, and carries the feelings of freedom, joy, fear and pain unique to those gay men who experienced the height of the AIDS crisis in their early 20s. If you’re looking for something relevant and relatable during your social distancing in the plague year we’re currently living through, I can’t recommend it highly enough. You can get it right here.

I asked Paul to speak a little about the brief excerpts he reads below in the Soundcloud player.

Later

Said Paul: “My book Later: My Life at the Edge of the World is about so many things. It’s about coming of age in Provincetown in the early 1990s at a time in which the town was a refuge for people with HIV and AIDS. It’s about how one community with a winter-time population of 3,000 pressed on when ongoingness wasn’t guaranteed. How do you stay vital and awake under those conditions? It’s about belonging, and sex—trying to figure it all out. It’s about identity and saying goodbye to your family when you know you have to say goodbye in order to live. It’s about finding your tribe and home at a crucial moment, and for me that meant a place in which I could live my writing and queer lives simultaneously. That doesn’t mean that my Provincetown came without challenges. How to read the social rules of an inscrutable place that made itself up on its own terms, in those last days before HIV drugs started working, and the internet changed everything?

“One of the four passages I’m reading is called ‘New Boy.’ The new boy in town is longed for and resented: a mirror, a projection screen, a cipher, an archetype, born out of our collective desire to stand out and matter at a time in which so many of us had to turn down our light in order to survive. He’s both known and unknown. And he’s close enough that you could possibly be him for two weeks and not even know you’d stepped into that role. And as soon as you figured it out, the new boy would become someone else, walking down the street with his back to you, too immersed in the feeling of his shirt against his lats to hear you calling out his name.”

LINKS.
Later: My Life at the Edge of the World [graywolf press]
Later: My Life at the Edge of the World [amazon]
Paul Lisicky [paullisicky.net]

Topics: Books, Entertainment, Health, towleroad More Posts About: AIDS, Books, Entertainment, Paul Lisicky, Provincetown, TowleREAD

Related Posts
  • 13 Reasons to Join Some Of The Most-Buzzed Next-Gen Queer Music Artists (and In-The-Know Fans) At A Provincetown Festival Next Week
  • Studio 54 owner Mark Fleischman dies by assisted suicide at Dignitas, says his business partner
  • Govt’s Halting Response In Ramping Monkeypox Tests, Vaccines May Have Missed Chance to Contain Outbreak Over Last 30 Days.
  • Learning From COVID:  Early Detection, Isolation, and Elimination Beats More Defensive Responses  As  Global Strategy for Future Pandemics

    Learning From COVID: Early Detection, Isolation, and Elimination Beats More Defensive Responses As Global Strategy for Future Pandemics

    Imagine it is 2030. Doctors in a regional hospital in country X note an expanding cluster of individuals with severe respiratory disease. Rapid whole-genome sequencing identifies the disease-causing agent as a novel coronavirus. Epidemiological investigations suggest …Read More »
  • Phew! Truck-sized asteroid misses Earth

    Phew! Truck-sized asteroid misses Earth

    Published by AFP Small asteroid to pass close by Earth Los Angeles (AFP) – Bruce Willis: you can stand down. A truck-sized asteroid that suddenly loomed out of the darkness a few days ago — with …Read More »
  • ‘Trump fatigue’ in New Hampshire complicates 2024 White House bid

    ‘Trump fatigue’ in New Hampshire complicates 2024 White House bid

    Published by Reuters By Tim Reid WEARE, New Hampshire (Reuters) – When Donald Trump trounced his Republican rivals in New Hampshire’s 2016 primary, the stunning win announced to other states the reality TV showman was a …Read More »
  • Monica Bellucci ‘scared’ to play Maria Callas on stage

    Monica Bellucci ‘scared’ to play Maria Callas on stage

    Published by BANG Showbiz English Monica Bellucci felt “scared” about making her stage debut playing opera legend Maria Callas in a one-woman show. The ‘ Spectre’ star portrays the soprano in the play ‘Letters and Memoirs’ …Read More »
Previous Post: « Jared Kushner Encouraged Trump to Treat Coronavirus as PR Problem Rather Than Take Immediate Action: Reports
Next Post: Coronavirus Comfort Concerts: Pink, Chris Martin, Yo-Yo Ma and Others Offer Social Media Songs During COVID-19 Outbreak — WATCH »

Primary Sidebar

Adjacent News

  • Madison Square Garden’s facial recognition blacklisting sparks outcry

    Madison Square Garden’s facial recognition blacklisting sparks outcry

  • Over half of LGBTQ parents surveyed in Florida considered leaving state over ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law

    Over half of LGBTQ parents surveyed in Florida considered leaving state over ‘Don’t Say Gay’ law

  • Watch: George Santos closes door on reporters asking about amended FEC report

    Watch: George Santos closes door on reporters asking about amended FEC report

Good Trash: Going to Read It Somewhere, Y'know

  • Steamy! Miranda Lambert Shows Off Shirtless Husband Brendan McLoughlin To Celebrate Their Anniversary

    Steamy! Miranda Lambert Shows Off Shirtless Husband Brendan McLoughlin To Celebrate Their Anniversary

  • ‘Sister Wives’ Alum Leon Brown Debuts Gender-Affirming Top Surgery Seven Months After Announcing New Pronouns

    ‘Sister Wives’ Alum Leon Brown Debuts Gender-Affirming Top Surgery Seven Months After Announcing New Pronouns

  • ‘Unfollowing Now’: Rebel Wilson Faces Backlash For Attending Lavish Hotel Opening In Dubai As Critics Address Anti-LGBT Laws

    ‘Unfollowing Now’: Rebel Wilson Faces Backlash For Attending Lavish Hotel Opening In Dubai As Critics Address Anti-LGBT Laws

RSS Partner Links

  • WATCH: Bowen Yang shares with Seth Meyers the struggles of impersonating George Santos on SNL
  • Sarah Michelle Gellar Reacts to Fan Theory 'Wolf Pack' & 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' are Connected
  • “Taylor Swift directs Taylor Swift for the ‘Lavender Haze’ music video” links
  • ‘Spare’: Prince Harry told his family about Meghan’s pregnancy at Eugenie’s wedding
  • Alan Cumming Returned His OBE To The Palace Because He Doesn’t Want To Be Associated With “The Toxicity Of Empire”
  • Pamela Anderson Defends Tim Allen And Talks About Walking In On Jack Nicholson Having A Threesome
  • Prince Andrew Has Reportedly Been Kicked Out Of His Office And Palace Apartment

Most Recent

  • US set to ease AIDS-era blood donation rules for gay men

    US set to ease AIDS-era blood donation rules for gay men

  • Learning From COVID:  Early Detection, Isolation, and Elimination Beats More Defensive Responses  As  Global Strategy for Future Pandemics

    Learning From COVID: Early Detection, Isolation, and Elimination Beats More Defensive Responses As Global Strategy for Future Pandemics

  • Phew! Truck-sized asteroid misses Earth

    Phew! Truck-sized asteroid misses Earth

  • ‘Trump fatigue’ in New Hampshire complicates 2024 White House bid

    ‘Trump fatigue’ in New Hampshire complicates 2024 White House bid

  • Monica Bellucci ‘scared’ to play Maria Callas on stage

    Monica Bellucci ‘scared’ to play Maria Callas on stage

  • ‘You’re An Embarrassment’: Kimberly Guilfoyle Gets Backlash For Making Fun Of The FBI’s Skills When Raiding President Joe Biden’s Home For Documents

    ‘You’re An Embarrassment’: Kimberly Guilfoyle Gets Backlash For Making Fun Of The FBI’s Skills When Raiding President Joe Biden’s Home For Documents

  • Tyre Nichols death: Memphis braces for protests when police video is released

    Tyre Nichols death: Memphis braces for protests when police video is released

  • Stevie Nicks Announces 2023 Tour Dates

    Stevie Nicks Announces 2023 Tour Dates

Most Commented

Social

Twitter @tlrd | Facebook | Instagram @tlrd

Footer

Copyright © 2023 · Log in

×