“Ulysses Grant Dietz grew up in Syracuse, New York, where his Leave it to Beaver life was enlivened by his fascination with vampires, from Bela Lugosi to Barnabas Collins. He studied French at Yale (BA, 1977), and was trained to be a museum curator in the University of Delaware’s Winterthur Program in American Material Culture (MA, 1980). A decorative arts curator at the Newark Museum for thirty-seven years before he retired, Ulysses has never stopped writing for the sheer pleasure of it. Aside from books on Victorian furniture, art pottery, studio ceramics, jewelry, and the White House, Ulysses created the character of Desmond Beckwith in 1988 as his personal response to Anne Rice’s landmark novels. Alyson Books released his first novel, Desmond, in 1998. Vampire in Suburbia, the sequel, appeared in 2012. His most recent novel, Cliffhanger, was released by JMS Books in December 2020.
“Ulysses lives in suburban New Jersey with his husband of 45 years. They have two grown children, adopted in 1996.
“Ulysses is a great-great grandson of Ulysses S. Grant. His late mother, Julia, was the President’s last living great-grandchild; youngest daughter of Ulysses S. Grant III, and granddaughter of the president’s eldest son, Frederick. Every year on April 27 he gives a speech at Grant’s Tomb in New York City. He is also on the board of the U.S. Grant Presidential Library and Museum at Mississippi State University.”
And frankly, the novels sound like they slap:
Desmond was nominated for a Lambda Award.
“With his husband of 45 years.” You kids don’t know … they got together before AIDS, at the peak of the Gay Glam Life. They stayed together as their generation died around them, and made through it to the point where they could marry and have a legal family. He looks like a chipper preppie who never had a serious thought or care in the world, but it took *incredible* determination, commitment, and also luck to get here.
Telling your kids “You have to obey me because I’m feeding and housing you” is just gonna train them to never ask for or accept help as adults because the attached strings just aren’t worth it. I believe parents who say this also send their friends a bill when they pay for lunch.
Having to explain yourself to your kids is part of what you signed up for. Kids are learning machines, it’s what their brains are wired to do. “Because I said so” is generally not a good reason and kids shouldn’t be taught to listen to rules that don’t make any fucking sense. Any relationship predicated on fear, obligation, or guilt is liable to become abusive in a fucking hurry.
Parents chose to bring kids into this world, the kids don’t owe you shit for your decisions, you’re the one who owes them for bringing them into this world. Is taking a minute or two to explain things to your kids a bit of a hassle? Yeah, and they can keep asking follow up questions and be annoying, and you’re tired, I get it, but your kid’s trust is a precious thing. Earn it.
on todays edition of “we need to legally require people to google words before using them”: there is a girl on tiktok doing a diet where she only eats slavic food to “connect with her ancestors” and she is calling it an “ethnic cleanse”
do you all remember in the early 2010s where people were talking about freeing the nipple and that mixed-gender sports should become a thing and the removal of period tax and all of that and then some people realised that would mean trans people too ans they instantly decided to revert to bioessentialism 101 and now i have to see grating sentences like Well maybe jeopardy should be gender-segregated because males have a biological advantage in pressing a button
Gideon has no game while being the most desirable dyke in the galaxy bc she inherited maximum rizz from her mom & negative rizz from her dad & both cancelled each other out
tumblr being all adults nowadays is so funny because my mutuals are either unemployed chainsmokers or Ezra, Bioengineering PHD Candidate at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
one of the important lessons to learn about adult life is that the gap between an unemployed chainsmoker and a bioengineering phd candidate is actually not that large
