This Week's Guest: Dan Corkery
You can't accuse this week's guest of ever making things easy for himself. Growing up south of Boston, he was the town's only gay metalhead before he decide to join the army, deploying to the middle east in the 1990s. Now he's enjoying his retirement by going back to school to become a physician's assistant, while also occasionally noodling around with other musicians and singing on military bases. It's hard to imagine that anyone else on Earth has lived a life like Dan's, or so many different lives from his small town to metal bands to Saudi Arabia to supporting the health of his community.
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BTW, I hope you'll join us for the next Sewers of Paris live chat. It's on Saturday September 15th at 2pm pacific. There's a link at the top of the Sewers of Paris twitter feed.
Check out the podcast Queens Of Adventure to hear me lead a troupe of drag queens on an epic Dungeons & Dragons adventure -- that's at QueensOfAdventure.com. We just started a new story arc this week, so if you've been waiting for a time to jump in, look for episode 8: Operation Watersport.
This Week's Recommendation: The Glory Hole
Thanks again to Dan for joining me, and for recommending the men's bathroom on the base in Saudi Arabia. It's easy to forget how recently queer people had to engage in subterfuge even to acknowledge each other's existence, and how in many places, they still do. For my recommendation this week, keep your eyes peeled at queer film festivals for a short documentary called The Glory Hole. It's a quick watch -- just four minutes -- and it's about how an adorable elderly gay couple met many decades ago under circumstances that we can call "not safe for work."
The interview with the two men is woven effectively with footage of a dramatic recreation, and it really takes you back to the seedy, often dangerous underbellies where gay men cruised and met up and sometimes even found love. There's a lot of stigma around glory holes and bathrooms and peep shows. But when mainstream culture pushes good queer folks underground, thriving in the dark isn't something to be ashamed of -- it's something to be proud of.