Andrea Reese and Alice Ro have been engaged for just over a year. The Brooklyn residents, both in their forties, had hoped to get married in a civil ceremony in Manhattan City Hall this September and to celebrate with a ceremony in Park Slope. But that possibility remains doubtful as of press time. more

ONLY ONE THING takes place at 8 o’clock on Friday night in a Manhattan church basement: 12-step recovery meetings. But the meeting I’m sitting in on tonight, at the corner of 12th Street and Fifth Avenue, isn’t Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous or any of the myriad other substance abstinence programs that so many New Yorkers find themselves intersecting with in one way or another at some point in their lives. This is a meeting of Debtors Anonymous, DA, the “numbers program” as it is often referred to in 12-step culture. more

THE CAST OF Hair was late. Instead of palpable political unrest, the tardy Broadway belters caused more anxiety in the crowd than anything else.When the young, attractive cast of men and women did arrive, they sang “Let the Sunshine In.” It’s got to be the first time in history that a free-love anthem was used to endorse the institution of marriage. That’s right: Instead of angry, fist-pumping protest, the love that dare not speak its name now holds concert rallies in the middle of Midtown. more

It's friday night, and I’m headed to the East Side Club, one of the last two remaining gay bathhouses in New York City. Ostensibly a relaxation and social club for gay and bisexual men, it’s located on two floors of a non-descript office building on East 58th Street. I take an elevator to the sixth floor and wait behind a thick, Plexiglas window in a dark cell of a foyer, reminiscent of a vintage, blue movie theater box office. Posters for events such as the International Mr. Leather Contest, prominently featuring half-naked men, line the walls. more