I think I became aware of the fact that sexual orientation is supposed to be an important part of one’s identity around 4^th or 5^th grade. I made a special homemade valentine’s card for another boy who had moved in. I was not romantically interested in him; I meant it as a special gesture of welcome. But he avoided me thereafter. In middle school, my male peers would talk knowingly of which female classmates were “hot,” but would profess utter ignorance about which male classmates were attractive. Female peers did the same. Being male (and straight, though this part went unspoken) meant, so we thought or affected to think, that the attractiveness of the other gender was transparent and that of our own opaque. Which, of course, is utter nonsense.

For as long as I have been attuned to the beauty of the human form, I have been attracted by male beauty as well as by female beauty—though my appreciation of male beauty more easily remains purely aesthetic, while my appreciation of female beauty more easily becomes erotic. Continue reading →

Think back with me: what’s the last book you read? Not your textbooks or your washing machine owner’s manual, but your free-time reading. Was it from Oprah’s Book List or maybe the New York Times Bestsellers? The newest spine-freezer or rib-tickler or even (yikes) bodice-ripper?

In the spirit of the coming New Year and self-improvement, let me try to convince you to change up your reading habits. Let’s consider C. S. Lewis’s advice:

It is a good rule, after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between. If that is too much for you, you should at least read one old one to every three new ones.[1]

Ugh, those stuffy relics they tried to get me to read in Humanities 101?

Yes, precisely. Reading old books will save us from ourselves. Continue reading →