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If it wasn’t love at first sight, it was certainly fascination. I spotted him one afternoon in the East Village. Pale-skinned and thin, in an oversized trenchcoat tightly cinched at the waist, he looked like no beauty I’d seen before. His large eyes were lined with kohl, and his lips were painted a moist pink. His shoulder-length hair, straight and full, was dyed a kind of ash blond (he let the darker roots show). And as I watched him walk past Gem Spa, where newspapers and egg creams were sold—this was in the early nineteen-eighties—I didn’t think Bowie genderfuck so much as I thought Sue Lyon—not as Kubrick’s Lolita but as the wild, lovesick girl in the film version of Tennessee Williams’s “The Night of the Iguana,” staunch and a little spoiled. As I followed him down Second Avenue to Third Street, where, as it turned out, we both lived, he was even more alluring to me than Sue Lyon, in part because I couldn’t determine his sex right away, and I loved how that made me feel.
This story is from the April 15, 2024 edition of The New Yorker.
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This story is from the April 15, 2024 edition of The New Yorker.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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ANTIHERO
“The Boys,” on Prime Video.
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HOW THE WEST WAS LONG
“Horizon: An American Saga—Chapter 1.”
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Taffy Brodesser-Akner weighs the cost of generational wealth.
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The seditious writers who unravel their own stories.
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The hard-bitten genius of Norman Maclean.
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Four years ago, when Ivan Cornejo was a junior in high school, he had a meeting with his family to announce that he was dropping out. His parents were alarmed, of course, but his older sister, Pamela, had a more sympathetic reaction, because she also happened to be his manager, and she knew that he wasn’t bluffing when he said that he had to focus on his career.
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OPENING THEORY
Ivan is standing on his own in the corner while the men from the chess club move the chairs and tables around.
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КАНО
I’ve dated all kinds of women in my life,” the man said, “but I have to say I’ve never seen one as ugly as you.”