Wilson Cruz looks toward future after show cancellation

By Jeff Walsh

Truth isn't stranger than fiction for Wilson Cruz.

When Cruz portrayed Rickie last year on the acclaimed-albeit-canceled television show "My So-Called Life," truth doubled as fiction as he brought his own painful and sometimes repressed memories of growing up gay to the screen.

The show was lauded by critics for its honesty and willingness to talk about real issues concerning teenagers. And as many television shows spent the holiday season making oh-so-hip references to "It's a Wonderful Life" while showing family togetherness scenes that would make Newt Gingrich feel all warm inside, My So-Called Life told a bitter truth as it followed Rickie, who ran away from home before Christmas because he was having problems with his sexuality.

Prayers for Bobby

A new book examines a gay son's suicide, and his mother's new life.

By Jeff Walsh

Bobby Griffith's four-year struggle with being gay and trying to live a Christian life ended on Aug. 27, 1983.

On that day, the twenty-year-old California man backflipped off a freeway overpass in Portland, OR., timing his leap so his body would be struck and killed by an oncoming tractor-trailer.

Gay Pride

By Jeff Walsh

To this writer, gay pride always seemed an uneven mix of sex and politics. But that all changed when I went to the 1994 Pride Parade in New York City. I had written against gay pride parades before attending that event, but my viewpoint changed when I saw the school bus come down the street.

It's all kind of surreal now, so I don't know if it was a real school bus. For some reason, I think it was a fake float made to look like a school bus. In any event, the float was sponsored by the Hetrick-Martin Institute, a gay city high school.

Latest journal entries.

ahumancondition's picture

Help! I need to go to college

In third grade I dissected owl pellets. Despite my usual enthusiasm for science, (I won the state science fair that year experimenting with the feeding habits of Lumbricus Terrestris (known to laymen as "earthworms")), I was deeply troubled- not so much by the pellet itself, after all, I handled the worms without so much as a murmur- but, as I now believe, by the concept of regurgitation. As my schooling progressed I was introduced to a more sophisticated form of pre-digestion: the textbook.

desert13's picture

Wow. I'm finally on.

I'm on Oasis! I'm so excited. It finally worked.

So I guess this is where I just start to spill everything - who I am, what I'm all about, where I'm from...

Well, Sat. night I found out that I suck at flirting. I went to this big pompous formal event with tuxedos and evening gowns and everything. I was at a table with this guy I hadn't seen in months. (Let's just call him Andrew). I knew he was gay when I saw him last September, at a friend's party, playing truth or dare in the hottub. Wow.

bi_treehuggin_dead_lovin'_hippy's picture

what hurts

here is a list of painful memories:
watching my parents shoot up
listening to my parents fight
watching my arents fight
talking to the cops about my parents fight
going to a jail, and seeing my daddy through a glass window, holding back the tears so i could talk to him over the little phone
waiting for hours to see my mom on my birthday, when she promised she would come, but then didn't show

bi_treehuggin_dead_lovin'_hippy's picture

me...what most people dont know

um...here it goes...just a little background:

when i was born my parents were both drug addicts, i was born addicted to heroin and coke. when i was four things at home started to get out of hand, and my grand parents got custody of me. I guess i have always known that im not completly straight...in preeschool i had a "friend"...Chealsea...she and i used to kiss and shit...all the stuff we thought only boys and girls could do. Now dont get me wrong, i have been raise in a very liberal, accepting house...i mean, for god's sake...i live in San Francisco, and my grandma teaches human sexuality at SF state university! we always had gay family friends over, i i was told it was perfectly normal...that it was better than normal, that it was beautiful. However, that is not what our storybooks said, and that is not what the tv said...the media had a major impact on my beliefs and values during the very early years of my life...anyway, chealsea and i would kiss and stuff, but i always, to some extent, thought what we were doing was wrong...but at the same time, i thougt it was normal, that every other four year old was experimenting in this fashion...

Leisa's picture

*glee*

Am happy, like the bi-polar mania kind of happy! LOL! I'm pretty sure its not a chemical imbalance induced happy, but I imagine this is what it would feel like to be on the manic end of the bi-polar episode.

Anyway, I painted tonight. It was fantastic. When I stop and then go back, I always wonder why I don't just do it all the time. Oh wait, starving artist is not my style.

sneezing gurl's picture

Neverending ?s

Okay people. I really need to know how "we" turn out as homosexuals. Is it the chromosomes (x and y genes)? Or do circumstances or incidents shape us into becoming queer? I mean I've always liked girls and I think along the way I got used to liking boys, because it was the "normal" thing to do.

On a totally different note....how can you really tell if a person is queer, without snooping for hints. Do we all have underlying qualities of homosexuality, which are just waiting to be triggered? Or are those "straight" people, just NOT attracted to the sexy girls and hot guys?!?

hol's picture

the art of convenience in a consumer society

a treatise on the rise of the xerox.


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