I find myself applying the addict's impulse to how I cruise. I don't look at the ass. If I see a hot guy walking towards me I look at his arm, and if he has a vein I fantasize about shooting up with him.

[Calvin Trilllin] is not writing about things that I can criticize. I can call these other people out for what I think they are not doing. There's a big difference.

I haven't had sex in two and a half years. A guy I met in San Francisco gave me a sympathy blow job. It didn't really work. I said, "You're just doing this 'cause you feel sorry for me." We stopped in the middle.

Another example of what I have to put up with from him. But there was a time I was mad at all my straight friends when AIDS was at its worst. I particularly hated the New Yorker, where Calvin [Trillin] has published so much of his work. The New Yorker was the worst because they barely ever wrote about AIDS. I used to take out on Calvin my real hatred for the New Yorker.

If there was criticism about [Oscar Wilde], it was because it was written by a straight man who wasn't very educated about the gay world.

My father always wanted me to be president of the United States, and his fallback position was that I not become a ward of the county. I think my father was okay about my going into journalism, though.

I don't write poetry for the New Yorker. My poems appear in the Nation, mostly.