My novel “The Penalty for Holding” will be reissued by JMS Books Sept. 25.

A new chapter in 'The Games Men Play' series

September 11, 2019

They say when one door shuts another opens. Over the summer, I was saddened to hear that Less Than Three Press, the publisher of my football novel “The Penalty for Holding,” had folded and, for a while, I thought that was the end of the book’s publishing life. So you can imagine my joy that the work – about a gay, biracial quarterback’s search for identity in the NFL – will be reissued by JMS Books Sept. 25. And you can imagine my further delight in hearing that JMS has agreed to publish my new psychological thriller “Burying the Dead” – about a rising Russian tennis star whose career masks his real “day job,” political assassin – Oct. 30.

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A scene from “The Ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead” (British Museum), in which the heart of the deceased is measured against the feather of truth.

The company Trump and others keep

July 12, 2019

So Sir Kim Darroch, British ambassador to the United States, has resigned after his remarks about the Trump Administration’s dysfunction — made in private to his own government — were leaked and President Donald J. Trump proclaimed himself “not a fan.”

Everyone but particularly an ambassador should have the right to express his opinion in privacy without fear of reprisals. But in the age of 24/7 social media and Brexit — of which Darroch was apparently not a fan — it was perhaps inevitable that he should be done in. I guess we’ll have to go back to communicating the old-fashioned way — face to face.

“Not a fan”: Darroch should have those words emblazoned on a T-shirt and wear it proudly. Remember, El Presidente wasn’t a fan of the late Sen. John McCain. So Darroch is in good company.

And The Donald had been a former fan of some who are now in the hot seat, including Jeffrey Epstein, who has been charged in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York with sex trafficking of minors in Florida and New York.

Stupid acts, laws in Alabama

July 1, 2019

Alabama has indicted a woman in the death of her fetus after she started a fight with another woman, who then shot her. The shooter was not indicted.

If this all sounds nuts, it’s actually perfectly logical in a place whose laws value guns more than life and the life of the unborn over that of the mother.

Bartholomeus Spranger’s “Diana-Luna” (1566-1611), oil on canvas. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest. The work captures the way art eroticizes the virgin archetype.

America's psychological virgin

May 15, 2019

With the passing of movie star Doris Day May 13 at her home in Carmel Valley, California, at age 97, much has been made of her goody two shoes image on film in the 1960s and the way it was pooh poohed in subsequent decades when attitudes toward women’s sexuality were expanding in the advent of feminism. (It was an image that Day, who had a number of troubled marriages, herself dismissed on “The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson,” and indeed she often played complex wives, most notably in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much” and as the torch singer Ruth Etting in “Love Me or Leave Me.” )

Philippe I, duke of Orleans, in the robes he wore to his brother Louis XIV’s coronation in 1654, oil on canvas. Palace of Versailles. The Met’s “Camp” show would define the bisexual cross-dressing Monsieur as camp, but would he?

Whose identity is it anyway?

May 12, 2019

The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute’s exhibit, “Camp: Notes on Fashion” (through Sept. 9) was inspired by Susan Sontag’s seminal 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp’,” which she defined broadly as style over substance characterized by theatricality, irony, playfulness, masquerade and unselfconsciousness. It’s a definition and a show that cuts a wide swath, but in the end it turns out to be less about camp and more about identity — its mutability and its ownership.

Out of touch: Joe Biden and the male hierarchy

April 4, 2019

The recent accusations by four women that former VIce President Joe Biden touched them in an inappropriate manner that, while not sexual, nonetheless made them feel uncomfortable underscores the complexity of relationships between men and women, particularly in a changing society.

New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand — a fighter against sexual harassment — finds herself accused of fostering it. Photograph by Rebecca Hammel for the U.S. Senate Photographic Studio.

Gillibrand's glasshouse

March 12, 2019

So now New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand — who has made zero tolerance for sexual harassment the cornerstone of her heretofore successful career — is facing her own #MeToo moment. It comes with revelations in Politico that a young woman who worked for her resigned after she said the senator failed to take appropriation actions when a close aide allegedly made unwanted advances toward her. Gillibrand has defended her office’s response to the situation, saying that the aide, who has also served as the senator’s driver, was denied a promotion and given a final warning.