Salon.com > Sarah Wildman

Queer lit for the gay teen

Tue, 11 Nov 2003 17:21:00 +0000

When I first met David Levithan, he was the editor of my suburban New Jersey high school newspaper. I was a sophomore and he was a senior. He was one of those nerdy-cool kids. He read Anne Tyler novels and was in love with Anna Quindlen. He wrote long loopy notes to friends and passed them off in the hallways, lines upon lines of erudition written in a tiny but consistent hand. He made mix-tapes with music you might not yet know. He would cut out designs from construction paper and frame the song titles, making art that enhanced the 10,000 Maniacs or Julia Fordham tape you had just received. He was smart and funny in a meticulous and offbeat way. Today, in the era of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," and "Will & Grace," you might say that David had a queer aesthetic -- good taste, an eye for new trends. But you certainly wouldn't have said so back then. Because at Millburn High School in 1989, "queer" was far from a friendly epithet.

Petty striving

Wed, 10 May 2000 16:00:00 +0000

It's a rainy and cold Friday morning in February. Adria Petty is packing furiously for a trip to Los Angeles to raise money for and interest in her newest short film, "Issa." Her bed is a crazy mess of cats (three), Indian prints, press packets, suitcases, shoes and clothes strewn every which way. Aimee Mann croons from the stereo.

Petty's plane leaves in an hour and she's ordering in from Tea and Sympathy, the Anglophile eatery in downtown Manhattan. She throws hundreds of shirts onto her bed, searching for something that says, "Give money to a young, hip filmmaker." ("When in doubt," she says, sounding like a pull quote from a celebrity profile, "Agnès B.") You get the feeling this isn't the first time Petty has made a mad dash for a flight or, for that matter, put together a public presentation of herself. Anna Gabriel, Petty's partner on numerous projects, shows up, ready to go, packed neatly into a rolling bag.

In case you hadn't guessed, Adria Petty, filmmaker, is also Adria Petty, daughter of Tom -- a fact that Petty, 25, would like very much not to be the center of attention. Better yet, let's not discuss him at all.

Looking for a female Veep?

Mon, 15 Nov 1999 17:00:00 +0000

Back in 1984, when Walter Mondale was interviewing potential vice presidential candidates, he announced that he intended to share the Democratic ticket with a woman. But, he said, memorably, "there are certain realities" he had to face, namely that women "wouldn't have the same range of experience" as men -- nor could anyone expect that they would.

When Mondale chose Rep. Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate, she was one of only 24 women in the House. Today, there are 56. And while Nancy Landon Kassebaum and Paula Hawkins were the only female senators in 1984, today there are nine.

Fifteen years and four elections later, Ferraro remains the only woman ever to have graced the presidential ticket for a major party. But the picture -- and the VP pipeline -- has changed. The buzz created by Elizabeth Dole's short-lived grass-roots presidential campaign and the rise of politicians like Republican Gov. Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California is helping fuel speculation that the leading presidential candidates may tap women as their running mates in 2000.