My Bad: A Personal History of the Queer Nineties and Beyond

by Hugh Ryan

A powerful and hilarious personal history that tells the true story of the queer ’90s and how it transformed queer life in the decades that followed.“Deeply personal and engaging… A powerful reminder of the enduring importance of preserving our history and sharing our stories.” — Elliot Page, actor and New York Times bestselling author of Pageboy

The 1990s were a decade of transformation. Globalization reshaped geopolitics, and the rise of the World Wide Web revolutionized technology forever. As society shifted from the analog to the digital at the turn of the century, LGBTQ life changed profoundly. Increased visibility arrived, but at a heavy cost. In his most personal book yet, historian Hugh Ryan guides us through a pivotal decade for queer people and its aftershocks—from new breakthroughs in activism, to the early days of AOL chat rooms, and the eventual backlash to progress. Through the prism of his own experiences, Ryan maps how queer life transitioned from private to public in the late ’90s and early aughts, reshaping the challenges and possibilities LGBTQ people navigated in the new millennium. On a Greyhound bus headed to Burning Man and the glittery dance floors of clubs in Manhattan and Berlin, a timeless and all-too-common story how a young queer person chooses silence to protect himself—only to spend another beautiful, complicated decade undoing his shame. Funny, stylish, and deliciously nostalgic, My Bad reckons with the gains and setbacks of a decade that reshaped queer life forever.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Queer, LGBT, Audiobook, History, Essays

272 pages, Hardcover

First published May 26, 2026

About the author

Hugh Ryan is a writer and curator. His new book, THE WOMEN'S HOUSE OF DETENTION, is a queer history of the prison that was once in Greenwich Village. His first book, WHEN BROOKLYN WAS QUEER, won a 2020 New York City Book Award, was a New York Times Editors' Choice in 2019, and was a finalist for the Randy Shilts and Lambda Literary Awards. He was honored with the 2020 Allan Berube Prize from the American Historical Association, and residencies or fellowships from Yaddo, The Watermill Center, the NYPL, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2019-2021, he worked on the Hidden Voices: LGBTQ+ Stories in U.S. History curricular materials for the NYC Department of Education.

Reviews

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this book and was disappointed. Part of this was my own misconception of what it would be. “A Personal History of the Queer Nineties and Beyond” is exactly what this book is, if I’m honest. I don’t think it spends near enough time in the nineties, though, for that to be a grounding point. I more blame the Introduction for making it seem like there would be more analysis of times past, tied to reflections of and from our current moment. These are, more or less, personal essays, some of which take place in the nineties. Many of them do not. Some of them aren’t even rooted in a particular time. I feel like this book would have been more honest if it were called My Bad: Essays or My Bad: A Memoir. That said, there are a few standouts:

* On the Line, which recounts Ryan’s experience working a rape hotline that offers insight into his own experience with sexual violence and the exclusion of queer people from protections against it
* Burying the Twentieth Century, which ties 9/11 as the official ending of the 90s (“Given its slacker identity, it’s fitting that the Nineties drifted to an end well after it was technically supposed to be over”) to loss and grief his family experienced soon after, and how that led to a path of acceptance for his parents
* The Center Cannot Hold, which lays bare the very real accountability non-profits have to their funders and how that limits the definition of their missions and reality of their operations

I wasn’t going to call this out, but Ryan spends way too much time in this space not to. Throughout the book and especially in later essays, he complains at length about how our community prioritized the fight for marriage and makes sure we know that it’s not for him. Is this a valid and worthy conversation to have? Absolutely. Is it good to know that about yourself? Also yes. I find it frustrating, though, that while Ryan argues for more queer ways of structuring our lives and communities, he completely misses the point that there is more than one way to be married and to structure a marriage, and that those relationships can also come with rich and dedicated communities of their own. It’s so short-sighted coming from someone who, at times, feels like he is sitting on a high horse about the “right” ways to be queer.

Ryan is an admitted curmudgeon, but I felt like as the essays moved toward present day (which, again, I just didn’t think we’d see), there was more curmudgeon than I wanted from this book. I was a big fan of both of his other books and was eager to read a different kind of writing from him but am more likely to stick to his histories, of which I hope there will be more.

[Zach Strassburger · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read the entire not-short book in 24 hours. I couldn’t stop. I posted this on my fb wall about 80% through, and it’s a more thorough review than most I do here, so have at it. Review too long? Just know that it’s incredible and I even told my ex wife about it because she lived it too. Read it!!

What I posted earlier today:

Am currently reading a pre-release e-copy of My Bad: A Personal History of the Queer Nineties and Beyond. (I get access to a lot of these for review). It’s incredible and I keep copying out passages and phrases that remind me of my life. Looking for representation in the library and finding only ancient art. AOL chat rooms in ‘96-‘97. The sanitized queer youth message boards in ‘98-‘99 that seemed so tame after the wildness of the chat rooms. The rigidity of the gender binary of the 90s and how it failed to fit my queer self. Even the memories of queer professors who were themselves scarred.

Eventually the narrative progresses to NYC in the early 2000s and I started to realize that although the author is 6 years older than I am (6 important years in the development of the internet, in the loss of queer community spaces and the shift to a push for same sex marriage above all), I had these memories of the Rude Mechaical Orchestra and drinks at Cattyshack too. Then finally I realized that I knew the author (Hugh Ryan) slightly; we had been in community and according to fb have 13 shared friends. Maybe we were at Shavuot or attempted an ACT UP restart action together? Or at a party with Bryn Kelly? Did he phone bank for Obama at the Task Force headquarters, too? It’s all fuzzy but this really is my history, too. I created an email address in 2006, [removed for goodreads site]. I feel so interpellated here. So seen.

The book comes out in May and is available for pre-order now. Highly recommend!

Some lines I pulled:

“In a very queer fashion, I wanted to be him as much as I wanted to be with him. (Queer people don’t carry the baggage of constantly being told that our ideal partner is also our absolute opposite; that in order to find love we’ll need to traverse distances measured in the light-years between Mars and Venus. Instead, we get to worry about rampant narcissism causing us to look no further than the mirror when falling in love—a way of doubling your wardrobe and ego at the same time.)”

“For a long time, I thought that I was really smart and that that mattered and would magically get me past the hurdles of life and structural oppression. Now I realized that not only did it not matter, I was dumb as shit for thinking that it did.”

“They said, “Write what you know,” but I didn’t seem to know anything, or I knew lots of little things that didn’t add up to any big thing in particular. Glitter and wit could get me only so far (about seventy pages, it seemed).”

“I was worried that our Obama-gay-marriage-hopey-kumbaya moment was like a hit of poppers—heady but brief—and that in the aftermath we’d find ourselves spun out: harangued in the public square yet again, but without our private worlds to fall back into. I was becoming history, I realized, and I could either disappear or write myself into the record.”

[Cameron Kuhn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing

Felt like an indulgence in victimhood over an actual history of a time period where acceptance was experienced at an almost rapid pace. Certainly can’t critique someone for their view of their own experience, but there will always be those who see the world as the glass half empty. The most discouraging part is imagining a young gay man picking up this book and thinking this is what his future is going to look like and this is the only way to view the world. It doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t have to be the man in his thirties choosing to live on a boat and hating marriage equality because it’s selling out to the straight world and it doesn’t benefit you personally.

[Erika · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5⭐️

Everything that was lost while gains were made; heteronormativity as the continued forced ideal and the need to assimilate in order to be accepted; the importance of both visibility and private spaces.

A memoir with a dash of history and pinch of analog nostalgia, this wasn't exactly what I was expecting, and I'm so glad for it.

And I'm happy to know I wasn't the only one screaming shut the fuck up when all she wanted to do was have some fun.

[Holly]

Made it about halfway through. I wouldn’t be upset if I never read another burning man recollection for the rest of my life

[Scott]

Audio book.

[Mike · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not sure how to exactly articulate my feelings on this intermittently interesting narrative of someone coming of age in the 1990s (with a lot more aughts and 2010s action than I was expecting or wanting, but my bad on underestimating the "beyond" part of the subtitle). So here's my attempt to suss it out here.

I can say as a fellow queer Gen X'er that "My Bad" captured the spirit of the (queer) 1990s here and there, but on a somewhat surface level. I wanted something deeper, something like explores LGBTQ (and pop) culture that I both recognized and should know more about, that also still explained and informed the evolution of a queer life. I got... some of that. Maybe he had more of that in his first draft and some ruthless editor made him cut and streamline it.

There were parts I was glued to, and parts I just wasn't very interested in. I did like how his love for artist David Wojnarowicz led him into a career in curation and queer history. For that alone, I'm interested in investigating more of Ryan's work, maybe first subscribing to his podcast and then reading an older title of his. Maybe that's the best thing I can say about "My Bad": It could be like starting at "Hard Candy" and realizing I really need to get to "Ray of Light" and "Erotica."

[Bill Arning · Rating 5 out of 5]

I heard Hugh Ryan read from My Bad on a panel about gay memoir writing at Kinderhook Books. Since my own gay memoir has been gathering dust for far too long, I thought I should attend. I had enjoyed Ryan’s history of gay Brooklyn, and hearing him read was great fun, so I knew I would enjoy the book. I bought a hard copy to have him sign but ended up listening to the audiobook instead. Ryan reads it himself, and his wit and comic inflections come through wonderfully in his charming voice.
The book had an unintended effect on me. As a native New Yorker and the baby in my family, I found myself constantly comparing Ryan’s experiences of trying to puzzle out the oddness of gay society with my own. But I am eighteen years older. Stonewall happened when I was eight, the first Pride marches when I was fourteen and living nearby, and I attended my first at sixteen. Those eighteen years turn out to represent an enormous cultural distance.
Ryan’s life was also much more peripatetic than mine. I essentially lived, loved, and socialized south of 34th Street in Manhattan, whereas Ryan seems never to have stayed anywhere for long. He is very much of his generation and became involved early in the debates around constructions of gender and the decentering of whiteness that remain blind spots for much of my generation. His work with queer youth programs is passionately described, and his attempts to help build the queer culture he hoped to inhabit are inspiring.
Did I mention how sexy this book is? Sex is described with humor, pleasure, and remarkably little embarrassment. Ryan writes joyfully about his period as a sex worker until things go badly wrong with a customer called Chef. He is also a brilliant commentator on marriage, monogamy, polyamory, and the limitations of our language for describing relationships that don't fit established categories. His account of joining a couple who become his life partners is especially perceptive. I found myself grateful to hear Ryan’s observations as, in my mind at least, a particularly thoughtful spokesman for a generation of queer people that came of age after mine.
One of the book’s most moving moments, however, concerns his mother. When she experiences a change of heart and becomes a defender of a nonbinary teenager in the family, Ryan finds himself sobbing in a bathroom as he realizes that this new world—and these new family dynamics—are not merely things he has spent his life fighting for. They are now real, and he is living inside them. I was in tears with him.
I understand why some readers resist audiobooks, and I’m usually glad to have the physical book in my hands. But hearing Ryan read these particular words gave me something the printed page could not quite provide: a sense of affectionate intimacy with one of our great contemporary essayists, telling me his story in his own voice.

[Michael Venturiello · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a semi-lost queer thirtysomething living in NYC, Hugh Ryan's "My Bad" felt like a saving grace and a light at the end of the tunnel.

Ryan's memoir does a brilliant job at weaving his personal narrative among broader queer histories at the onset of the internet. It also validated and affirmed so much of my queer childhood and the drastic things some of us did to build community, to feel love, and find a sense of belonging. It was a product of the times, of the environment, and the circumstances we found ourselves in.

Ryan's story is a journey of liberation and freedom, and finding a queer life that works for him within the societal constraints of heteronormativity. So many queer folks (perhaps specifically queer New Yorkers) find themselves in their thirties without wanting to step on the traditional path to marriage, a house, kids, etc. But it leads to the question, well then what else? What's next for us? Ryan so beautifully tells his story about how he paved his own path forward to find a queer life that works for him. Related, I also really enjoyed his political commentary on marriage equality. It brought a new perspective to the topic that I hadn't considered before.

I also really appreciated how he brought all of his experiences together in the last few chapters to share more about the current moment, and how he got where he is today. It felt like a relevant reminder that most of the time, we don't have it figured out, but the journey is still worth taking.

[Vincent Desjardins · Rating 3.5 out of 5]

Even though I'm from a much earlier generation and am old enough to be Hugh Ryan's father, I enjoyed his memoir of growing up in the Nineties and his efforts at self-discovery and coming out in a time when the internet was about to change everything. For me, the most successful parts of the book were when he was discussing the politics of the time, both the gender politics and the politics that arose around the AIDS epidemic. I enjoyed some of the vignettes he shared about the people he met and had relationships with (sexual and platonic), but I felt these parts of the book were a little confusing to follow. He would introduce us to a character early in a chapter, maybe just giving this person a paragraph or two, then this person would disappear until resurfacing at the end of the chapter, or even in another chapter and, when the author brought them up again, it would suddenly seem like this person was hugely important. For me, by the time they were re-introduced, I had already forgotten who they were. I found myself having to page through earlier sections of the book to figure out why this person was so important to him. There are so many characters introduced throughout the book, that I had a hard time keeping track of them. He seemed to do this with his job history as well. Jumping around in time, he would talk about his experiences in one job, then talk about quitting it and then, before long he'd be relating another story about the job he quit. Maybe some of my confusion had to do with how I read the book. Since my husband was reading this simultaneously, I had to squeeze in my reading time in short bursts during my breakfast, after he had already left for work. Maybe if I had been able to sit down and read this in a couple of long sittings, some of the events and characters he introduced would have stuck with me for longer. At under 300 pages, this book is relatively short. While trying to condense 40-some years of his life into around 250 pages, the overall effect winds up being rather scattered, with tiny bits of information about a lot of people and a lot of events. It might have worked better for me if the book were either longer, or if he had concentrated on just the Nineties and not tried to bring the book up to the present. I just noticed that Goodreads now allows us to rate with partial stars, so I'm giving this book 3.5.

[Jen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been a Hugh Ryan superfan ever since reading When Brooklyn Was Queer and The Women’s House of Detention. Stories from LGBTQIA+ people’s lives from the 19th and 20th centuries are inherently precious because of their scarcity, but in these collections, Hugh’s vast historical knowledge and thoughtful scholarship further enrich them with meaning and a bright, fierce humanity.

So I hoped Hugh's new coming-of-age memoir, My Bad, would deepen my understanding of queer life during the volatile, transformative 1990s and early 2000s. It did. I expected to be moved by Hugh's personal stories about living through the AIDS crisis, the emergence of the internet, and the post-9/11 era. I was, deeply. I was also captivated by the memoir's magnetic voice and unguarded intimacy. Reading My Bad felt like the cool, queer, older kid at school threw his arm around me, told me a joke, and then trusted me with a secret.

A triumph of a book.

[Ricky · Rating 2 out of 5]

There's this part where he says he didn't know how to write but he knew how to tell a story and I guess I thought it was funny because I've been thinking this whole book that the writing is kind of lackluster but more than anything he doesn't seem to know how to tell a story.

It's kind of an interesting read for me because on paper he and I have a lot in common. Even to an uncanny extent. I just don't know if he is self-reflective enough for this to be an engaging memoir. Also, I guess I expected him to say more about the times is described, but his focus is so myopic that it didn't really engage me very much after the introductory section. I spent a lot of time wondering to what extent he might be neurodivergent and I also spent a lot of time wondering to what extent is privileged, suburban background explains how he writes and how he moves through the world.

I have to say also that it was a poor choice to have the author read his own audiobook here.

[Cassie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read it in one sitting. Hugh Ryan really submits to the mortifying ordeal of being known, and the most beautiful and horrible part is that he’s going to find there’s a lot of people out there just like him.

I read fully half of it out loud to my wife before she put her foot down and made me stop, because she wants to read it next. I am going to tenderly lend it to every queer person I know and when it inevitably goes missing I will happily buy a second copy, and a third.

It’s a beautiful memoir but it’s also a history of the 80s and 90s, and it’s about what we’ve sacrificed in the gaining the visibility we have, and it’s about the messiness of trying to sort queer identity into a series of boxes, and how to live in a world the isn’t built for you. At points hysterically funny, heartbreakingly sad, but above all hopeful about a world we can build together.

[jairo · Rating 5 out of 5]

what an interesting read! as he wrote about christoper street and the teens who lived there, i sat in washington square park as a loud group from a bachelorette party went by on a pink bus. i think about it all the time. how much im contributing to the negative change of new york.

but back to the book! it’s so easy to feel like your life will always be the same and this book made me think about how crazy it is to think that is ever possible. we don’t know what our life will look like until we take our last breath.

this book also made me think about how much we change in such a short time. from berlin to new york to cornell were some different every day. i loved this book! would recommend!

[Ja · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Hugh Ryan's personal memoir about growing up queer in the nineties and how vastly different the environment was for LGBT people back then. From the AOL chat rooms without any sort of moderation to the expansive growth of queer spaces. From the extremely binary view of queerness, to the slow growth of what it means to be queer, Ryan tells his story through his own personal perspective.

Ryan tells his story with honesty and humor, and offers a perspective that's at times nostalgic, and other times melancholic. True to the time period, some things were simple, but even painful memories from the past deserved to be observed and analyzed.

[Jonathan Gleason · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is brilliantly insightful and hilariously profane. It lives in the register of a natural storyteller: funny, heartfelt, dynamic, and effortlessly deep. In these personal essays, Ryan makes you feel the transformative technologies and politics of the 90s on queer life: the ache of loneliness in the context of the new internet, the possibilities of radicalism in an new age of possible queer assimilation. It's a joyful book about those ambivalent transformations as well as the gifts—both terrible and incredible—we are given on the path to queer adulthood. Highly recommend!

[Brian Hutzell · Rating 4 out of 5]

A genre I generally do not like is that of I Was Really A Screw-Up But I Got Better So Now Treat Me Like A Role Model. There is a little bit of that here, but mostly I was able to forgive it. Ryan’s book is engaging, frequently funny, sometimes tragic, and to all appearances deeply honest. Anyone questioning their gender, sexuality, career, or place in the universe will find something to relate to here. This memoir doesn’t follow a straight line, so the chronology is sometimes hard to keep straight, but the overall scheme makes sense.

[Andrew Rimby · Rating 5 out of 5]

Hugh's book is such a nostalgic and powerful read! I really enjoy how Hugh explores what life was like during the 1990s, especially for the queer community. It works so well that he brings in his personal narrative to explore the in-person LGBTQ+ spaces that existed in NYC, and what it means for so many of these spaces to not exist anymore. I like that his book made me think about the importance of liminal spaces and how important the 90s were for American culture, while also recognizing the progress we have made as a community. Highly recommend Hugh's book!

[Dana Amico · Rating 3 out of 5]

I should have paid more attention to the "Personal" part of the title, since I was expecting more 90s content. Though it gets away from that 90s focus at times, I still thought this was a good read! It made me think a lot about being a 94 baby and how my life might have been different if I lived more consciously through the 90s, or if I hadn't been born until the 00s.

[JJ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really enjoyed though hard to say how much of that was simply sharing the author's world view and experiences. I'm about 5 years older, and it's amazing how different some experiences were int he late 80s and how much is really really the same. But I think if you want to get some sense of being queer in the 90s, this is a realistic depiction of what it was like for some of us.

[Chris Jensen · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Now that I knew I had a future, I wanted a past, too - and I wanted to pass that on to the generations below me.”

Required reading for any late Gen-X or early Millennial queer. You’re not alone, you’ve never been alone, and thank god Hugh Ryan has started the conversation about untangling all of the messy hurt we grew up with so we can heal together.

[Mikala · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightfully honest look at one of the most nostalgic periods in our cultural consciousness. A deeply moving personal history filled with humor, introspection, and the fascinating history of a generation of queers and teens.

[Matthew Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very enjoyable, though the subtitle led me to believe that the book would linger in the nineties a bit longer than it actually did. After finishing it I texted a recommendation to my cousin who is queer and a sophomore at Cornell. He has yet to text back.

[Blane · Rating 2 out of 5]

Though not a complete wash out, this memoir-ish book was not very interesting either. If Ryan had stuck more closely to "a personal history" or just a general "history of the queer nineties and beyond", it might have worked. Instead, he awkwardly mixed it all up, benefitting neither.

[Andy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very nice little read. I finished it in a weekend and it kept me engaged. It gave me a bit of hope back and let me learn a little more about the queer history I so desperately crave. Pretty decent book.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

Check out my interview with the author on the LARB Radio Hour… a great nostalgic trip back to the queer nineties.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast...

[Will Morris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Telling big picture queer history through small personal stories that are entertaining and engaging. Fantastic read—could not put down.

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a gift to have such a dogged historian tell his own story with so much heart and humor.

One million rainbow stars. Highly recommend.

[Sophie Abromowitz · Rating 4 out of 5]

seems like a nice dude. good hang. seems like a cool guy.

[Alex · Rating 5 out of 5]

That last essay is giving Girls finale, but I cried so much anyway.