News

If you’ve heard a shambolic percussion rattle echo across the Great Plains recently, do not be alarmed. Those are merely the desultory remains of Anita Bryant whirlybirding against the lead-lined insides of her rococo vampire coffin at the ushering in of yet another Pride Month. But the annual month-long celebration of queerness isn’t just about cynically rolling one’s eyes at the newly-refreshed-and-rainbow-ized corporate logos sprouting up on social media. As good-guy ally and country-rock troubadour Jason Isbell tweeted last week: “Pride. Victory of the human spirit and the only antidote to the poison of shame.” Or, in other words: slay all day.

This month’s Fiscal Spotlight column is looking at three short narrative projects about complicated, fractured or otherwise incomplete gay relationships–sex of course being an inextricable element of the drama dynamics. Here we have stories of fractured relationships on the tentative road to recovery,...