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A writer goes through “the most invasive process in politics”—being vetted as a running mate by the same person who vetted Sarah Palin in 2008: “It starts unobtrusively enough. ‘So you’re the vice president, and the president is visiting Seoul,’ Frank begins, unspooling an elaborate scenario in which the president’s hotel gets decimated by a […]

A love letter: “Wednesday, July 18, is the 20th anniversary of our marriage. How can I begin to tell you about Chaz? She fills my horizon, she is the great fact of my life, she has my love, she saved me from the fate of living out my life alone, which is where I seemed […]

Steven Thrasher has been named the 2012 National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association journalist of the year. After gay marriage was legalized in New York last year, he followed two same-sex couples who finally earned the right to consider whether or not they wanted to get married: “‘We never did this saying, “We’re going to […]

A marriage of convenience between two socialites in D.C. leads to murder: “Drath’s murder seized the front page of The Washington Post, which was as awkwardly tangled in the story as the rest of the city’s elite. One of The Post’s columnists attended the couple’s dinners, as did the reporter who covered the case for […]

On boxer Manny Pacquiao and gay marriage: “It’s here at this church that Manny Pacquiao comes to pray after his fights. He kneels down and gives thanks. In that same way we knelt with a rosary all day when my kuya died of AIDS. All day for seven days, with lots of food, and lots […]

Cooper played heroic cowboys and espoused all-American values while the studio system helped hide his offscreen affairs: “Cooper became a hero to many, even as he developed a reputation as one of the most notorious philanderers in Hollywood. He had stiff competition — Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, the list goes on — but Cooper may […]

Whitney Houston was destined to become as revered as her godmother, Aretha Franklin, before drugs and a toxic marriage caused her to hit rock bottom. A look at the pop icon’s rise and fall, and her final days, when it looked like Houston was going to make a comeback: “[Clive Davis] enlisted Diane Warren to […]

[Fiction] When one person loves the other just a little more: “William was tall and thin and shy and awkward in school. His best social tool was that he played the piano, and so was recruited for school musicals, which placed him at rehearsals and cast parties with kids he would otherwise scarcely have known. […]

Life as a cop in 2012, from the officers’ perspective. How Commissioner Ray Kelly and the legendary CompStat system have changed New York’s police department, both for better (dropping crime rates) and worse (increasing pressure on officers to make the numbers): “The disaffection from the public and anger at the department aren’t universal, but they […]

When your wedding doubles as a covert operation. A look at the complications of CIA marriages, and how secrets often lead to separation: “The Fredericksburg woman divorcing her husband laid out all the messy details, including the most secret of them all. Her husband, she wrote in now-sealed court documents, is a covert operations officer […]