[Larry Kramer] even wrote this angry letter to the president of Yale, and in it he said what he said to us, that he was so disappointed in his straight friends because of AIDS and everything. He wrote the letter around March. And in it he wrote, "I usually go to the Trillins for Christmas, but I just couldn't do it this year."

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

I could appear in this million-word book [Larry Kramer] are working on. Nobody would even notice me.

I think it's a Jewish Yale custom. I wasn't aware that other people celebrated Christmas. My wife was very big on Christmas, and I was very big on my wife.

I never appear in any of your work, come to think of it, Calvin [Trillin]. And I look.

I think I just felt a sadness at some points in my career that what is available to a straight writer is not available to a gay writer.

[Robert Gottlieb] wouldn't have published 'Remembering Denny' . Denny was a Rhodes Scholar. He was on the swimming team. Had this great California crew cut and this great smile. Life magazine covered his graduation, and Alfred Eisenstaedt photographed it. We all expected him to be president some day. But he committed suicide when he was in his 50s. If he were gay in the 1950s, then the rest of what I wrote was commentary because life was so miserable for gay men back then. And that's why he committed suicide.