About

I spent the first half of my life being impeccable. Straight A's. Firm handshake. Thank-you notes mailed within the week. I said no, after you at doorways and meant it. If you'd met me at a dinner party, you'd have told your mother about me.

What you wouldn't have known — what I barely knew myself — is that the impeccable part was a costume. Beautifully tailored. Dry-clean only. I came out later than the brochures recommend, and I arrived with something unexpected in my luggage: thirty-odd years of grace, and nowhere impolite to put it.

So I built this place.

The Graceful Gay is etiquette for a life the etiquette books never imagined. Field guides for late bloomers. Verdicts on modern behavior, rendered weekly on the Grace-or-Disgrace scale. Confessions — mine first, then yours, traded like contraband under the table settings I still can't help getting right.

Grace in the streets. You'll have to find out about the sheets.

Three house rules, non-negotiable: the joke is always on me first. Nobody gets read who didn't volunteer. And everything here — everything — ends warm.

Pour something. Sit properly. Or don't.

— The Graceful Gay