Off Christopher Street

About Off Christopher Street

Historians David Sessions and Blake Smith gossip about the gay life of the past and the gay discourses of the present.

Publisher

David Sessions and Blake Smith

Category

news · society & culture

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

10 Mar 2026

Latest episode

13 Oct 2026

Latest episodes

14 episodes in the feed.

1. 

   13 Oct 2026

   Gay Therapy Slop: 'The Joy of Gay Sex'

   In this episode, we kick off our occasional series on Gay Therapy Slop, in which we’ll talk about how therapy discourse has shaped modern gay self-understandings. What better place to start than with some gay self-help that's not slop, a book that’s simultaneously a sex manual, a political treatise, and a literary experiment: Charles Silverstein and Edmund White’s 1977 classic, The Joy of Gay Sex. Organized A-Z as an encyclopedia of how to be gay, The Joy of Gay Sex is full of surprises, from its powerful introduction about the historical novelty of modern homosexuality to its entries on everything from cocksucking to how to make friends to why life is so hard for hot guys to Cosmo-style acrobatic sex positions no one has ever actually tried. It’s also a turning point in the career of Edmund White as he moves away from the fussy, coded style of his first two novels toward writing clearly, directly, and erotically about gay sex. Despite plenty of dated terms and hot takes to laugh at, we argue that The Joy of Gay Sex is anything but slop: it’s as relevant as ever and absolutely belongs in the modern gay canon. Subscribe to our newsletter OR become a paid subscriber: https://bit.ly/OCSnewsletter (https://bit.ly/OCSnewsletter) SOURCES Eva Illouz, Saving the Modern Soul: Therapy, Emotions, and the Culture of Self-Help (https://link.amazon/B01q7PiWR) (2008) Charles Silverstein and Edmund White, The Joy of Gay Sex (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/joy-of-gay-sex-1977-introduction/)(1977) Edmund White, Interview in Christopher Street (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/edmund-white-interview-joy-of-gay-sex/), December 1977. Edmund White, Forgetting Elena (https://link.amazon/B0gWgTAi3) (1973) Edmund White, Nocturnes for the King of Naples (https://link.amazon/B04FYzINl) (1978) Edmund White, A Boy’s Own Story (https://link.amazon/B041j2Lpy) (1983) Edmund White, City Boy: My Life in New York in the 1960s and 1970s (https://link.amazon/B0bTHiQ4n) (2009) Wayne Hoffman, “On Its 40th Birthday, Revisiting the Powerful Communal Vision of The Joy of Gay Sex (https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/10/the-joy-of-gay-sex-revisited-on-its-40th-anniversary.html),” Slate, October 17, 2017.

2. 

   30 Sept 2026

   Gay Power, Gay Myth: Harvey Milk and Randy Shilts

   Assassinated less than a year into his term as San Francisco city supervisor, Harvey Milk is remembered today as one of the first openly gay elected officials and a symbol of the struggle for gay rights. But he’s less known for the unique style of gay politics he pioneered: a pragmatic populism grounded in neighborhood power and tactical alliances, combined with a skillful use of the media to broadcast a message of “hope” to gay people nationwide. In this episode, we reconsider Milk’s vision of gay power through the writings of another figure we think was an underestimated political thinker: the pioneering journalist Randy Shilts, whose biography “The Mayor of Castro Street” (1982) helped create the Harvey Milk legend and impose a narrative coherence onto Milk’s politics. Shilts celebrated Milk as an alternative to two unsatisfactory types of gay politics: either being subordinated to elite Democratic Party insiders or to a broader radical-left coalition. Shilts saw Milk, instead, constructing a novel type of autonomous gay political power that could be used specifically in gay people’s self-interest. By transforming Milk into a political visionary and martyr, Shilts was also theorizing and re-enacting Milk’s savvy manipulation of the media, in which heroes and villains—sometimes ones he invented—could both catalyze gay power at the local level and connect it to a national struggle for gay rights. We talk about what we can learn from Milk and Shilts today and have more to say about the current state of gay media. *Subscribe to our newsletter for bonus content:* https://bit.ly/OCSnewsletter (https://bit.ly/OCSnewsletter) FOLLOW THE POD --------------------- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christopherstreetmag/ (https://www.instagram.com/christopherstreetmag/) Substack: https://christopherstreetmag.substack.com/ (https://christopherstreetmag.substack.com/) TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@christopherstreetpod (https://www.tiktok.com/@christopherstreetpod) X: https://x.com/OffCSPod/ (https://x.com/OffCSPod/) SOURCES --------------------- Randy Shilts, “The Life and Death of Harvey Milk,” Christopher Street, March 1979. Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street (https://link.amazon/B08TChpBZ) (1982). Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic (https://link.amazon/B0iIrmgMA) (1987). Randy Shilts, “Go EST Young Man (https://holytitclamps.com/go_est_young_man_Randy_Shilts.pdf),” New West, June 19, 1978. (Note: We incorrectly identified this in the episode as appearing in the gay magazine Blueboy). Randy Shilts, “Cleve Jones Rising,” Christopher Street, October 1980. CBS News, “Gay Power, Gay Politics (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cADLwFd76qE),” April 26, 1980. Blake Smith, “Randy Shilts (https://blakeesmith.substack.com/p/randy-shilts),” September 2024. Richard A. McKay, Patient Zero and the Making of the AIDS Epidemic (https://link.amazon/B0a06KuBD) (2017). Michael E. Lee, When the Band Played On: The Life of Randy Shilts, America’s Trailblazing Gay Journalist (https://link.amazon/B0fuFBdK3) (2024). Manuel Castells, “Cultural Identity, Sexual Liberation, and Urban Structure: The Gay Community in San Francisco,” in The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements (https://archive.org/details/citygrassrootscr0000cast/page/n11/mode/1up) (1983). Jasbir Puar, “The Cost of Getting Better: Suicide, Sensation, Switchpoints (https://doi.org/10.1215/10642684-1422179),” GLQ (January 2012). Gus Van Sant, Milk (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_(2008_American_film)) (2008).

3. 

   15 Sept 2026

   Where Have All the Gay Writers Gone? (w/ Dan Oppenheimer)

   In this crossover episode with Eminent Americans (https://danieloppenheimer.substack.com/), we take a step back from our regular programming to talk to our friend Dan Oppenheimer about the state of gay male intellectual life. Does it still exist? If so, where is it located? We talk about why the editors of Christopher Street thought it was important to use new media strategies to cultivate a distinctive gay male identity and a shared, if not homogenous, literary culture around it. Are today’s gay writers part of anything like a common identity or intellectual world? We talk about Gay Twitter, non-gay Substack, the “house gays” at straight magazines, the gay podcasts and the gay slop. We name all the names. Not because we think we have all the answers, but because we hope, in asking the questions, to provoke you to interest in the gay writing and thought we now have to inherit. David and Blake on Eminent Americans: David: “The David Sessions Session (https://danieloppenheimer.substack.com/p/the-david-sessions-session)” (July 2026) Blake: “Homosexual, Gay, Queer (and a Soupçon of Porn) (https://danieloppenheimer.substack.com/p/homosexual-gay-queer-and-a-soupcon)” (January 2026) David: “Left Behind (https://danieloppenheimer.substack.com/p/left-behind)” (May 2025) Blake: “The Fall of the White American Gay (https://danieloppenheimer.substack.com/p/the-fall-of-the-white-american-gay)” (May 2023) Sources Michael Denneny, “Why Gay Men Need a Literary Magazine (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/why-gay-men-need-a-literary-magazine/),” Christopher Street Reader (1983). Ben Nichols, Same Old: Queer Theory, Literature, and the Politics of Sameness (https://link.amazon/B04dJAu9W) (2020). "A Conversation with Michel Foucault (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/a-conversation-with-michel-foucault/)," Christopher Street, May 1982. Ben Miller and Huw Lemmey, Bad Gays: A Homosexual History (https://link.amazon/B0dZ8E038) (2023). Michael Denneny, “A Mouthful of Air: The Case of Larry Kramer,” On Christopher Street: Life, Sex, and Death After Stonewall (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/O/bo189274121.html) (2023). Paul McAdory, “Gay Sincerity is Scary (https://www.gawkerarchives.com/culture/gay-sincerity-is-scary),” Gawker, September 9, 2021. Tom Crewe, “My Hands in My Face (https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n11/tom-crewe/my-hands-in-my-face),” London Review of Books, June 26, 2025. James Kirchik, “Transgendering Stonewall (https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/transgendering-stonewall),” Tablet, July 11, 2019. James Kirchik, “From Queer to Gay to Queer (https://libertiesjournal.com/articles/from-queer-to-gay-to-queer/),” Liberties, Spring 2023. David Sessions, "The Year of the Gay Sex Zeitgeist (https://www.hdavidsessions.com/p/the-year-of-the-gay-sex-zeitgeist)," December 22, 2025.

4. 

   1 Sept 2026

   The Best Gay Novel of All Time (w/ Domenic DeSocio)

   Our reverence for Andrew Holleran is no secret, and the appointed hour has arrived to talk about his 1978 masterpiece Dancer from the Dance, not just, as we argue, the best gay novel of all time but one of the best American novels. Despite remaining untaught in universities, unlike other classics of minority literature, and really having no institutionalized means of transmission, gay men still discover it 50 years later and see themselves in it. A lot of us initially read Dancer as a sociological account of how gay men were in the heyday of the 1970s, or even of how they are in some timeless, essential sense. We discuss how our own readings have evolved over time in different phases of life. But we also try to sort out sociology from artistic invention, and argue for reading Dancer as a work of literature rather than either a journalistic report or a philosophical inquiry into the nature of gay men. We talk about how Holleran constructed the novel from his own experiences and dispositions, and how he sometimes projected his own big thoughts and emotions onto gay life. We piece together Dancer’s complex chronology and unique, elusive style of narration. We consider Holleran’s debts to Proust and Fitzgerald, the stylistic influence of his magazine writing, and the novel’s pervasive Catholic imagery. None of that, of course, diminishes the novel’s powerful themes, which seem to perennially activate new generations of gay men: promiscuity, love, male beauty, aging, friendship. We talk about how Holleran uses the novel form to pose—yearningly, romantically—the search for answers to the Big Questions of gay life through his character Malone, and also to satirize the myopia of that quest with camp humor in the figure of Sutherland. We talk about the way Dancer is fundamentally a novel of gossip, and how gossip is a community-forming activity that holds the web of gay society together. And we ask whether the perennial doubts, anxieties, and questions that lead so many gay men to connect with Dancer are really what it means to be gay, or what it means to be human. Watch the video version of this episode on our YouTube channel: http://youtube.com/watch?v=JwEz7iqW16 (http://youtube.com/watch?v=JwEz7iqW16) Subscribe to our email newsletter and support the pod: https://bit.ly/OCSnewsletter (https://bit.ly/OCSnewsletter) FOLLOW THE POD Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/christopherstreetmag/ (https://www.instagram.com/christopherstreetmag/) Substack: https://christopherstreetmag.substack.com/ (https://christopherstreetmag.substack.com/) TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@christopherstreetpod (https://www.tiktok.com/@christopherstreetpod) X: https://x.com/OffCSPod/ (https://x.com/OffCSPod/) MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE Novels by Andrew Holleran Dancer from the Dance (1978): https://amzn.to/4qIQemJ (https://amzn.to/4qIQemJ) Nights in Aruba (1983): https://amzn.to/3UdUWNv (https://amzn.to/3UdUWNv) The Kingdom of Sand (2022): https://amzn.to/46ezDhz (https://amzn.to/46ezDhz) Christopher Street essays by Holleran “Dark Disco” (1978): https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/dark-disco-a-lament/ (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/dark-disco-a-lament/) “Cities of the Plain” (1979): https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/andrew-holleran-cities-of-the-plain/ (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/andrew-holleran-cities-of-the-plain/) “Dancing: The Past Five Years” (1982): https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/andrew-holleran-dancing-the-past-five-years/ (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/andrew-holleran-dancing-the-past-five-years/) “We Must March, My Darlings” (1984): https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/andrew-holleran-pride-we-must-march-my-darlings/ (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/andrew-holleran-pride-we-must-march-my-darlings/) “Tragic Drag” (1987): https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/andrew-holleran-tragic-drag-charles-ludlam/ (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/andrew-holleran-tragic-drag-charles-ludlam/) Other sources Blake Smith and Domenic DeSocio, “Errands of Love (https://romanticon.substack.com/p/errands-of-love),” Romanticon, October 22, 2025: https://romanticon.substack.com/p/errands-of-love (https://romanticon.substack.com/p/errands-of-love) Blake Smith, “Tyler Anthony Smith (https://blakeesmith.substack.com/p/tyler-anthony-smith),” June 29, 2026: https://blakeesmith.substack.com/p/tyler-anthony-smith (https://blakeesmith.substack.com/p/tyler-anthony-smith) Andrew Holleran’s interview on Emerald City  (http://youtube.com/watch?v=JwEz7iqW16E)(1978): http://youtube.com/watch?v=JwEz7iqW16E (http://youtube.com/watch?v=JwEz7iqW16E) Larry Kramer, Faggots (https://amzn.to/4hWHzel) (1978): https://amzn.to/4hWHzel (https://amzn.to/4hWHzel) Christopher Castiglia and Christopher Reeve, If Memory Serves: Gay Men, AIDS, and the Promise of the Queer Past (https://amzn.to/4xqRA8d) (2011): https://amzn.to/4xqRA8d (https://amzn.to/4xqRA8d) Dennis Cooper, The Sluts (https://amzn.to/4x0g2wr) (2005): https://amzn.to/4x0g2wr (https://amzn.to/4x0g2wr) Robert Ferro, The Family of Max Desir (https://amzn.to/3UdVV09) (1983): https://amzn.to/3UdVV09 (https://amzn.to/3UdVV09) Robert Ferro and Michael Grumley, Atlantis: Autobiography of a Search (https://amzn.to/4daX92z) (1970): https://amzn.to/4daX92z (https://amzn.to/4daX92z) Philip Gambone (novelist): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Gambone (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Gambone)

5. 

   19 Aug 2026

   The Scandalous History of Circumcision (w/ Ben Bernard)

   We’re back from our summer vacation and ready, naturally, to talk about dicks. We’re joined for our tenth episode by fellow historian Ben Bernard to talk about the strange career of circumcision in America, which the writer Edward Wallerstein in 1980 called “a solution in search of a problem.” Wallerstein’s book made an appearance in a Christopher Street dialogue between George Stambolian and Larry Mass at a time when gay men–and increasingly, Americans writ large–were skeptical of medical expertise. We learn that circumcision was recommended in the late 19th century as a masturbation-prevention technique; when this sort of moralism fell out of fashion, it was outfitted with new (but equally dubious) medical justifications. We talk about how our evangelical and Jewish backgrounds shaped our awareness of circumcision, Ben and Blake's experiences of uncut cocks in France, how gay guys think about their own dicks and other guys’ dicks, how sameness and difference can be eroticized in different ways, and why circumcision has never really become a major political issue despite people vigorously objecting to it. Click here (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/#/portal/signup) to subscribe to the Off Christopher Street newsletter. Benjamin S. Bernard (https://benjaminsbernard.com/) is a historian whose work focuses on education, gender and sexuality, and the culture of early modern France. His writing (https://benjaminsbernard.com/writing/) has appeared in The Hedgehog Review, Public Seminar, Inside Higher Ed, the Princeton Alumni Weekly, and others. Sources George Stambolian and Lawrence D. Mass, “The Unkindest Cut of All (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/mass-stambolian-the-unkindest-cut-of-all-circumcision/),” Christopher Street, May 1982. Edward Wallerstein, Circumcision: An American Health Fallacy (https://archive.org/details/circumcisionamer0000wall) (1980). Ben Bernard, “The University’s Never-Ending Crisis (https://hedgehogreview.com/issues/the-fading-promise-of-higher-education/articles/the-universitys-never-ending-crisis),” The Hedgehog Review, Summer 2026. Lawrence D. Mass, “The New Narcissism and Homosexuality: The Psychiatric Connection (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/the-homophobia-of-the-new-narcissism/),” Christopher Street, January 1980. George Stambolian, “Paris and Poppers (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/george-stambolian-paris-and-poppers/),” New York Native (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/tag/new-york-native/), 1983. Todd Shepard, Sex, France and Arab Men, 1962-1979 (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo26955707.html) (2017) Todd Shepard, “Against Vanilla History: Why and How Histories of Sexual Acts Could Matter to Intellectual Historians (https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781003093046-9/vanilla-history-todd-shepard),” The Routledge Handbook of the History and Sociology of Ideas (2023). Danielle Spencer, Metagnosis: Revelatory Narratives of Health and Identity (https://amzn.to/4gfrFJn) (2020). Alan Hollinghurst, The Folding Star (https://amzn.to/4g2IQzd) (1994). John Powers, A Bull of a Man: Images of Masculinity, Sex, and the Body in Indian Buddhism (https://www.hup.harvard.edu/books/9780674064034) (2012).

6. 

   30 Jun 2026

   Are Straight Women Gay Men? (w/ Phoebe Maltz Bovy)

   In this episode we talk about gay men and women: friendships, commonalities, and the often overlooked sexual tensions. We’re joined by Phoebe Maltz Bovy, who deals with some of these issues in her book, The Last Straight Woman: On Desiring Men (https://amzn.to/3SLwRwv), from bachelorettes at gays bars to straight girls on Grindr to the women who fall in love with their gay besties. We talk about how some of these themes appeared in the past, in Christopher Street, and also how Phoebe uses them in her book to think about our cultural understandings of gender and desire. We talk about some famous intellectual straight women who were problematically horny for gay men and some gay men who were oblivious to the fact that their women friends were horny for them. We recover the core commonality that gay men and straight women have—being horny for men—and note how new cultural ideas about sexual fluidity and queerness mistakenly suggest that gender doesn’t matter in who we desire, leading to discourses that are strangely detached from reality. Chapters (00:00) Introducing the last straight woman (08:40) Being bloggers and bad grad students (12:39) Gay men and straight women in Christopher Street (20:55) The fake lesbian straight woman who got Me Tooed (24:18) Are straight women and gay men really platonic friends? (31:39) How we came to think all women are queer (37:34) Phoebe’s concept of “frumpy but horny” (43:02) Are that many people really bisexual? (59:38) You can’t figure out your identity online Follow Off Christopher Street on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/christopherstreetmag/) for video clips from our episodes and subscribe to our newsletter (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/) to get new episodes and bonus content. Phoebe Maltz Bovy is an editor at the Canadian Jewish News and a columnist for the Globe and Mail. She co-hosts the podcast Feminine Chaos (https://femchaospod.substack.com/) with Kat Rosenfield and writes on Substack (https://phoebemaltzbovy.substack.com/). Her new book, The Last Straight Woman (https://amzn.to/3SLwRwv), was released in May 2026. Mentioned Seymour Kleiberg, “Friendship: Gay Men and Women,” Christopher Street, October-November 1979. Phoebe Maltz Bovy, The Perils of “Privilege”: Why Injustice Can’t Be Solved by Accusing Others of Advantage (https://amzn.to/3QDh3vf) (2017). Blake Smith, “The Ethics of Self-Interpretation (https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/ethics-of-self-interpretation),” Tablet, November 18, 2024. Melissa de la Cruz and Tom Dolby, Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys: True Tales of Love, Lust, and Friendship Between Straight Women and Gay Men (https://amzn.to/4eEVBhv) (2007). Randall Jarrell, Pictures from an Institution (https://amzn.to/3Qx7j5u) (1954). Zoe Greenberg, “What Happens to #MeToo When a Feminist is the Accused? (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/13/nyregion/sexual-harassment-nyu-female-professor.html)” New York Times, August 13, 2018. Rachel Aviv, “Martha Nussbaum’s Moral Philosophies (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/martha-nussbaums-moral-philosophies),” The New Yorker, July 18, 2016. Rachel Aviv, “Agnes Callard’s Marriage of the Minds (https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/13/agnes-callard-profile-marriage-philosophy),” The New Yorker, March 6, 2023. Cartoons Hate Her, “I Dress for My Personality, and My Personality is Annoying (https://www.cartoonshateher.com/p/i-dress-for-my-personality-and-my),” June 16, 2026. Avital Ronell, The Telephone Book: Technology, Schizophrenia, Electric Speech (https://monoskop.org/images/1/10/Ronell_Avital_The_Telephone_Book_Technology_Schizophrenia_Electric_Speech.pdf) (1989) Phoebe Maltz Bovy, “Lena Dunham’s Frumpiest-Horniest Scandal, Revisited (https://phoebemaltzbovy.substack.com/p/lena-dunhams-frumpiest-horniest-scandal),” May 13, 2026.

7. 

   16 Jun 2026

   What is Pride For?

   Down with corporate Pride! Pride is a protest! Stonewall was a riot! Pride month has become as much about social media discourse as anything else, and in this episode, we try to look beyond posturing slogans and history-distorting morality tales to confront the many possible meanings and feelings one might have about Pride. We read Andrew Holleran’s 1984 Christopher Street essay, “We Must March, My Darlings,” which suggests a cultural politics of Pride that preserves it as an annual ritual with shifting audiences and meanings, one that need not always be stridently political but which can gather a solidaristic charge in particular political moments. Chapters (00:00) Intro (03:34) What we’re doing for Pride (05:40) David’s ex-wife took his first Pride photo (10:18) Twitter gays trying to improve Pride discourse (14:31) Andrew Holleran’s Proustian Pride essay (23:59) Blake’s high horse about Bernie Sanders (29:11) How “normie” gays feel about Pride politics (36:01) Who is Pride addressed to? (43:00) Why Holleran is a deeply political writer (52:00) Bernie and David’s crisis of being a left intellectual (55:00) How 2020 rewrote the Stonewall narrative (59:43) Why gays being “normal” is what we’re fighting for Sources Andrew Holleran, “We Must March, My Darlings (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/andrew-holleran-pride-we-must-march-my-darlings/),” Christopher Street, November 1984. Walt Whitman, “Pioneers! O Pioneers (https://whitmanarchive.org/item/ppp.00707_00802)” (1865). Lillian Faderman, The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle (https://amzn.to/4vaJ0cY) (2016). Andrew Holleran, “In the Age of Christopher Street (https://glreview.org/article/in-the-age-of-christopher-street/),” Gay & Lesbian Review, May-June 2026. Carmen Maria Machado, “What Does Pride Mean Today? (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/16/arts/author-gay-pride-2020.html)” New York Times, June 16, 2020. Andrew Sullivan, “How the Gay Rights Movement Radicalized and Lost Its Wa (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/06/26/opinion/gay-lesbian-trans-rights.html)y,” New York Times, June 26, 2025. David Carter, Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution (https://amzn.to/4vBqCJS) (2004).

8. 

   2 Jun 2026

   Gay Love in the Age of Dating Slop

   We’re drowning in algorithm-optimized relationship slop, social media sob stories about the supposedly toxic gay dating scene, and ragebait on worn-out subjects like monogamy vs. open relationships. It can feel surprisingly hard to find real gay men talking honestly about what it’s actually like to be in a relationship. Even in the history of gay writing and thinking we talk about on this podcast, it’s easier to find depictions of sex, yearning obsession, or doomed love than of two men figuring out what it means to be together. In this episode, we talk about one exception to the rule: A groundbreaking 1978 feature in CHRISTOPHER STREET that interviewed two men, Philip and Neil, about the drama and power dynamics of their relationship. The article included the beautiful—and sexy—photos they took of each other while they were together. We revisit Philip and Neil’s story a half-century later as a springboard for talking about our own relationships and experiences, and cover topics including: How sex is different in a relationship vs. as a single person How sexual positions and gender expectations shape gay relationship dynamics What’s unique about the male-male couple How gay lovers are different than gay friends What you should NOT talk to your boyfriend about Chapters (00:00) Why love is a perfect topic for Pride (06:50) A groundbreaking look at a gay couple (22:27) Philip and Neil’s images of each other (30:10) Cruising and hookups vs. relationship sex (42:24) How neuroticism and overanalysis kills desire (48:00) What’s unique about the male-male couple (56:44) Boyfriend twins, similarity, and competition (01:04:34) Sexual attraction vs. common interests (01:09:54) How we decided Philip is the villain (01:17:32) Should your partner be your "best friend"? (01:22:44) Sometimes your feelings are boring and stupid Sources Michael Denneny, Philip Gefter, and Neil Alan Marks, “Anatomy of a Love Affair (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/anatomy-of-a-love-affair-michael-denneny/),” Christopher Street, February 1978. Michael Denneny, Lovers: The Story of Two Men (https://archive.org/details/loversstoryoftwo00denn) (1979). Michael Denneny, Decent Passions: Real Stories About Love (https://archive.org/details/decentpassionsre00denn) (1984). Adam Mars-Jones, Box Hill (https://amzn.to/3Py9LZg) (2020) and Waters of Thirst (https://amzn.to/4dLD6Hy) (1994). Renaud Camus and Farid Tali, Incomparable (https://amzn.to/439HaMU) (1999) Jackson Davidow, “Two Lovers (https://thebaffler.com/latest/two-lovers-davidow),” The Baffler, September 7, 2023. Adelle Waldman, The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P. (https://amzn.to/4dS1EQF) (2010). Pillion, directed by Harry Lighton. Don Jon, directed by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Annie Hall, directed by Woody Allen.

9. 

   19 May 2026

   Why Gays Tried to Cancel ‘Cruising’ (w/ Domenic DeSocio)

   Did gay men invent cancel culture? Even before it was filmed, William Friedkin’s gay serial-killer thriller Cruising (1980) attracted massive publicity and protests from gay writers in New York, who feared it depicted the gay men of the city’s leather bars as sex degenerates in a moment of rising homophobia and right-wing politics. In this episode, we talk about Christopher Street editor Charles Ortleb’s strange screed against the film, which also served as a political statement for the magazine’s desire for gay men to become a “people” with a collective identity. We talk about how the controversy over a film now seen as a cult classic foreshadowed contemporary debates about representation and cultural appropriation, the long history of gay men analogizing homophobia to fascism and the Holocaust, and whether there’s a kind of identity politics that might be less dumb than what we experience on social media today. Chapters (00:00) Introduction (07:29) The making of ‘Cruising’ (14:16) How ‘Cruising’ became a gay controversy (18:34) Charles Ortleb’s importance in gay intellectual life (24:21) The “zap” and 1970s gay media politics (31:47) The gay fascism analogy and Holocaust comparisons (42:11) Gay identity politics vs. liberal universalism (50:09) Why Ortleb’s paranoia was better suited to AIDS (57:58) Defenses of ‘Cruising were insane, too! (01:04:01) Art doesn’t need permission from minority groups Sources Domenic DeSocio, “Christopher Street Hits Fifty,” Gay & Lesbian Review, May-June 2026. Blake Smith, “In Defense of Cruising,” Air Mail, November 9, 2024. Arthur Bell, “On Cruising: The Hollywood Hassle,” The Village Voice, September 3, 1979. Charles Ortleb, “The Context of Cruising,” Christopher Street, April 1980. Michael Denneny, introduction to The Christopher Street Reader (1983). Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet (1996). Janet Maslin, “William Friedkin Defends His Cruising,” New York Times, September 18, 1979. Ramzi Fawaz, Queer Forms (2022). Randy Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street (1982). Jonathan Mahler, The Gods of New York: Egotists, Idealists, Opportunists, and the Birth of the Modern City: 1986-1990 (2025). John Rechy, “A Case for Cruising,” The Village Voice, August 6, 1979.

10. 

    5 May 2026

    What's So Casual About Casual Sex?

    We read gay novelist Andrew Holleran’s 1979 column “Fast-Food Sex,” in which he performs a playful exhaustion with gay promiscuity. Now cheap and abundantly available, gay sex has supposedly lost its power to thrill or even to signify. Already at the peak of post-Stonewall gay life, we see the outlines of discourses that persist today in the perpetual rants against Grindr, “hookup culture,” and open relationships. In this episode, we talk about how gays often make promiscuity into a questionable binary: casual sex vs. intimacy and coupling, for example, instead of seeing sex as something that means different things in different contexts, and is part of different modes we move between in different spaces and seasons of life. Chapters (00:00) Andrew Holleran and "fast-food sex" (17:56) Fast-food sex vs. home-cooked sex (27:00) Growing up with evangelical ideas about sex (28:45) Romanticism is a threat to domesticity, too! (31:58) Is democratic abundance less hot? (37:58) The myth of hypersexual-but-lonely gays (40:02) The uniqueness of gay intimacy (43:04) Why straight romance ideas are bad for gays (48:25) The manosphere and sex-negative feminists (50:31) Sex is both amazing and boring Subscribe to our newsletter on Substack (https://christopherstreetmag.substack.com/) for bonus content! Sources Andrew Holleran, “Fast-Food Sex (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/fast-food-sex/),” Christopher Street, April 1979. Andrew Holleran, Dancer from the Dance (https://amzn.to/3R3GTIt) (1978). Andrew Holleran, “Dark Disco: A Lament (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/dark-disco-a-lament/),” Christopher Street, December 1978. Priya Krishna, “Freedom With a Side of Guilt: How Food Delivery is Reshaping Mealtime (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/30/dining/food-delivery-apps-doordash-uber.html),” New York Times, January 30, 2026. Tim Dean, Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking (https://amzn.to/4tSDlHO) (2009). Tim Dean and Oliver Davis, Hatred of Sex (https://amzn.to/4tSDlHO) (2022).

11. 

    21 Apr 2026

    The Messy, Sordid Spectacle of Gay Republicans (w/ Daniel Lefferts)

    By day Terry Dolan coordinated the fusion of free-market radicalism and evangelical fundamentalism known as the New Right. By night he cruised DC's steamrooms and gay bars. In 1982, his face appeared on the cover of Christopher Street with an article about his radical, norm-breaking politics and his hookup with a federal employee. DANIEL LEFFERTS(author of the novel Ways & Means (https://amzn.to/48Fy9hK)) joins David and Blake to talk about the contradictions of right-wing gays past and present. We discuss the pleasures both of being an insider and of hating insiders, and why the right-wing homosexual stirs the gay imagination to fascination, disgust, and sympathy. FOLLOW US ON SUBSTACK (https://christopherstreetmag.substack.com/) to get bonus content! Chapters 00:00 - Our first threesome 06:27 - The important question: Was Terry Dolan hot? 09:55 - The “Rich and Powerful Queens” of the Reagan right 12:03 - Gay hustlers, strippers, and spies 16:25 - What type of gay was Terry Dolan? 21:35 - Why it gets harder to be gay in the GOP 27:04 - Who was screwing who in the New Right? 32:25 - Dolan as a pioneer of norm-breaking 40:54 - Why do we want to confront closeted gays? 48:04 - Right-wing gays and the pleasures of power 50:22 - Dolan’s hookup with a federal employee 54:32 - Daniel’s descent into the world of gay MAGA 57:42 - The petty-bourgeois class position of OnlyFans boys 1:03:08 - The good boys who love Red Scare 1:09:20 - Gay attractions to transgression and order 1:13:50 - The weird homoeroticism of MAGA SOURCES Perry Deane Young, “God’s Bullies (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/gay-masculinity-and-its-discontents/),” Christopher Street, August 1982. Rick Perlstein, Reaganland: America’s Right Turn, 1976-1980 (https://amzn.to/4tvVuug) (2021). Neil J. Young, Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/style/gay-men-trump-administration-republicans.html) (2024). James Kirchick, “The Secret Life of a Gay Political Strategist in Reagan’s Washington (https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/gay-politicians-washington-secret-city-book-james-kirchick-dolan-1387755/),” Rolling Stone, July 28, 2022. Shawn McCreesh, “Donald Trump’s Big Gay Government (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/style/gay-men-trump-administration-republicans.html),” New York Times, August 26, 2025. Shawn McCreesh, “In South Dakota, Neighbors Feel Sorry for Kristi Noem’s Husband (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/31/us/politics/kristi-noem-husband-photos-daily-mail.html),” New York Times, March 31, 2026. Daniel Lefferts, “My Afternoon With the ‘Normal Gay Guys’ Who Voted for Trump (https://www.gq.com/story/my-afternoon-with-the-normal-gay-guys-who-voted-for-trump),” GQ, February 10, 2025. Jack Crosbie, “Hasan Piker: A Progressive Mind in a MAGA Body (https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/27/style/hasan-piker-twitch-youtube.html),” New York Times, April 27, 2025.

12. 

    7 Apr 2026

    Gay Masculinity and Its Discontents

    Gays being masc has been making people mad for half a century now, and in this episode, we read Seymour Kleinberg’s 1978 Christopher Street essay, “Where Have All the Sissies Gone?” to find out why. We discuss the rise of “gay macho” in the 1970s, exemplified by the clone, the leather bar, BDSM, and urban gay male promiscuity. We talk about different gay male stances toward feminism, the enduring belief that effeminacy is inherently radical, and the tendency of gays of all styles to declare that “all” gays are being gay in a way that excludes them. We talk about the origins of our erotic fascination with masculinity and the importance of being able to revel in what we find hot without overthinking it. Subscribe to our Substack to get our longer texts that go with the episode and bonus content (https://christopherstreetmag.substack.com/) Sources Seymour Kleinberg, “Where Have All the Sissies Gone? (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/kleinberg-where-have-all-the-sissies-gone/),” Christopher Street, March 1978. Bruce Schulman, The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Society, Culture, and Politics (https://amzn.to/3PQ0dIB) (2002) Susan Sontag, “Fascinating Fascism (https://web.stanford.edu/class/ihum42/fascinatingfascism.pdf),” New York Review of Books, February 6, 1975. Edmund White, “Fantasia on the Seventies (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/fantasia-on-the-seventies/),” Christopher Street, September 1977. Edmund White, City Boy: My Life in New York in the 1960s and 1970s (https://amzn.to/3PF1m5N) (2009) Quentin Crisp, The Naked Civil Servant (https://amzn.to/3PBIO6w) (1968) Seymour Kleinberg, Alienated Affections: Being Gay in America (https://amzn.to/4bGNwZq) (1980) Midge Decter, “The Boys on the Beach (https://www.commentary.org/articles/midge-decter-3/the-boys-on-the-beach/),” Commentary, September 1980. Larry Kramer, The Tragedy of Today’s Gays (https://amzn.to/4tjwC96) (2005) Brian Pronger, The Arena of Masculinity: Sports, Homosexuality, and the Meaning of Sex (https://amzn.to/3NTiQLh) (1990) Amia Srinivasan, “Does Anyone Have the Right to Sex? (https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v40/n06/amia-srinivasan/does-anyone-have-the-right-to-sex),” London Review of Books, March 22, 2018. Anastasia Berg, “Wanting Bad Things: Andrea Long Chu Responds to Amia Srinivasan (https://thepointmag.com/dialogue/wanting-bad-things-andrea-long-chu-responds-amia-srinivasan/),” The Point, July 18, 2018. Leo Bersani, Homos (https://amzn.to/3PNcXzJ)(1995)

13. 

    24 Mar 2026

    Going Out and the Pleasures of Impersonal Intimacy

    We read Michael Musto’s 1978 Christopher Street cover story “Every Night Fever,” about the gays who go to the disco every night of the week, an example of a journalism genre that fascinates us—cultural trend stories that simultaneously report and constitute a social phenomenon. We discuss the pleasures of displaying oneself in the gay social world, the way gays moralize about and evaluate each other based on how much they go out, clubbing as bookish people, divorces during COVID, why incels should go out, why we hate Hinge, whether Gen Z is bad at going out, and more. Sources Michael Musto, “Every Night Fever (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/every-night-fever/),” Christopher Street, May 1978. Nik Cohn, “Tribal Rights of the New Saturday Night (https://nymag.com/nightlife/features/45933/),” New York, June 7, 1976. Stephen Phillips-Horst, “Have We Reached Peak Gay Sluttiness? (https://www.thecut.com/article/ghb-doxypep-sniffies-peak-gay-sluttiness-era-nyc.html)” New York, August 29, 2025. Kyle Munzenrieder, “Michael Musto Shares His Life in Parties (https://www.wmagazine.com/life/michael-musto-interview-life-in-parties),” W, May 12, 2023. Leo Bersani and Adam Phillips, Intimacies (https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/I/bo5771889.html) (2008) Andrew Holleran, Dancer from the Dance (https://www.amazon.com/Dancer-Dance-Novel-Andrew-Holleran/dp/0063320061?_encoding=UTF8&dib_tag=se&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.Wk5CsLmLzGJlLmYncaaglp6i86afsvsP1KXYO0qi6DEDVpKFfoNwFQHH8M1Bjf8Sb1URTQu4lcf3IVBBssD_Mg4DFDLrv4nZAJjN5ZLtPJO8kF3P2XQt40gY4-toq9Mh8vqkAUL3J5OFV1Om5xZerasmc6OcCcDyXliQ5stdo7ttHQICV-QoMZsBAvQTB1KH4L6BoZZYnNIuSI6ZGQRnKVbaSgInBMGgClp43SwXQ1A.i0g4-n9gYAe6hXsffQ8YMsjRh-8oSOfaW8AzXveDAjI&qid=1774307590&sr=8-1&linkCode=ll2&tag=davidsess06-20&linkId=0b06e017d08a76c401f2f90260d58954&language=en_US&ref_=as_li_ss_tl) (1978)

14. 

    10 Mar 2026

    Gay Men and the Politics of Hotness

    We read George Stambolian's "Interview With a Hot Man" from the February 1983 issue of Christopher Street and talk about the central, yet perennially controversial, role that physical beauty plays in gay culture. We compare notes on our own experiences of feeling hot and wanting hot people, and about the competing – but perhaps not ultimately opposed – tendencies in gay life toward competitive elitism and democratic collectivity. Follow us Christopher Street on Substack (https://christopherstreetmag.substack.com/)Christopher Street website (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/)Blake on Substack (https://blakeesmith.substack.com/)David on Substack (https://www.hdavidsessions.com/) Sources Joe Bernstein, “Handsome at Any Cost (https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/style/clavicular-looksmaxxing-braden-peters.html?ref=christopherstreetmag.com),” New York Times, February 13, 2026. Jordan Castro, “Getting the Pump (https://harpers.org/archive/2024/02/getting-the-pump-jordan-castro/?ref=christopherstreetmag.com),” Harper’s, February 2024. Blake's Substack posts about George Stambolian's interviews (https://blakeesmith.substack.com/p/george-stambolian-part-1?ref=christopherstreetmag.com) and his archival diary (https://blakeesmith.substack.com/p/stambolians-diary-79-80?ref=christopherstreetmag.com) George Stambolian, “Interview With a Hot and Handsome Man (https://www.christopherstreetmag.com/george-stambolian-interview-with-a-hot-man/),” Christopher Street, 1983. George Stambolian, Gay Fantasies / Male Realities (https://archive.org/details/malefantasiesgay0000stam/page/152/mode/2up) (1984). David's Substack post (https://www.hdavidsessions.com/p/wanting-to-be-hot-is-not-fascism?ref=christopherstreetmag.com) about looksmaxxing and contemporary anti-beauty discourse.

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Apple Podcasts (US)

4.9 / 5

12 ratings

Spotify

4.6 / 5

19 ratings

Contact Off Christopher Street

Guest appearances

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