Harrison Brace

“Buchanan realized before any other major politician that white anxiety about their impending minority status could be a powerful issue, especially for Republicans, and he styled himself as a leader of a “new restrictionism” movement that advocated for the toughest limits on immigration since the 1920s.”
― Ari Berman, Minority Rule: The Right-Wing Attack on the Will of the People—and the Fight to Resist It

“We make love without a condom. AIDS is there though. We even know its true identity. It’s no longer referred to as the “gay cancer.” It’s there but we think we are safe from it. We know nothing of the grand decimation that will follow, depriving us of our best friends and old lovers, that will bring us together in cemeteries and cause us to scratch out names in our address books, enraging us with so many absences, such profound loss. It is there but we aren’t afraid yet. We believe that we are protected by our youth. We are seventeen years old. You don’t die when you are seventeen years old.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“It’s torsos that join together and then withdraw in a hurry to remove clothing, the Nordic sweater, the T-shirt, so that finally it’s skin next to skin. His torso is muscular and hairless, with nipples that are flat and dark. My chest is skinny, not yet deformed as it will be four years later by the blows of an emergency room doctor. It’s skin that is frantically caressed. My fingers find a constellation of moles, just as I guessed, on his back. It’s jeans that we unbutton. I discover his sex, veiny, white, sumptuous. I am enthralled by his sex. It will take many years and many lovers before I ever return to this sense of amazement. Love, it’s taking each other in the mouth, maintaining a certain comportment despite the frenzy. It’s exercising restraint not to come, the excitement is so powerful. It’s abandonment, that crazy trust in the other. I guessed that it was not the first time for him. His movements are too sure, too simple not to have been practiced before with someone else, maybe with many others. And then, he asks me to take him. He says the words, without shame, without ordering me to either. I obey him, though I’m afraid. I know that it can hurt if the other person doesn’t know how to do it, that the body can resist.”
― Philippe Besson, Lie With Me

“In fact, the removal of those books is one cut in the death by a thousand small cuts being meted out to democracy. Given that so many of the recent political cataclysms have unfolded when more countries than at any time call themselves democracies, just imagine the number (and severity) of calamities possible in a world dominated by totalitarian regimes. Picture America being one of those countries, ruled by an autocrat, with no regard to the history that has shaped us, and nothing but disdain for anyone who does not hold the methods of tyranny close to the heart.”
― Wesley Morris, The Best American Essays 2024