editor’s letter Tag Archive

This Is What It’s Like Waiting Years for Your Boyfriend to Propose

Justin and I had only been dating a year when same-sex marriage was legalized in NY. And from that point on, we’d be spending a fair amount of time wrapping our heads around the...

This Is How I Ended Up Photographing My Friend Naked in a Tub of Fruit

Theater can make you do strange things – like convincing one of your best friends to pose nude with fruit. The Greatest Hits of a Band That Never Existed In college and the...

A Proud Gay Uncle Says: “Hello, New Niece; Goodbye, Old Friend”

A few months ago, I was anxiously awaiting the birth of my sister Beth’s first child. I had some experience being a gay uncle because my partner Justin’s sister had welcomed...

Editor Paul Hagen Wonders: Does the Cologne Make the Man?

The year is 1999. I’m at home in New Jersey after my freshman year of college, and having gotten a taste of the freedom and excitement of living in NYC, I’m climbing the...

Editor Paul Hagen Asks: Does Anyone Ever Outgrow Childhood — Or its Artifacts?

Looking at the walls of my home today — generously sprinkled with framed photos, prints, posters and the like — it’s strange to remember a time when I didn’t own a single...

Lessons Learned: Visting Relatives Can Make A Gay Wedding Even More Gay

When I was a freshman in high school, my then-best-friend Pete had an older sister who was (more-or-less openly) a lesbian. It was something that he and I joked about: I suppose...

My Night of Surprises with Frances McDormand and Shakespeare

It did not start out as a good night. my then-boyfriend Jonathan and I had fallen into a pattern of fighting — particularly about whether we were spending more social time with...

Have You Met the Grinch? He Could Be Me, Says Metrosource Editor Paul Hagen

It was the Christmas season of 1990, and I was beginning to have my doubts about this whole Santa Claus situation. How is it, I wondered, that in movies about the North Pole, the...

How to Rub Editor Paul Hagen the Wrong Way

It was on an assignment nearly 15 years ago that I received my first massage. Reviewing a new spa, I was sent for a massage and facial. Though I had no other professional massage...

Paul Hagen Bridges the Divide Between Fear and Brooklyn

There’s something romantic about the idea of bridges. Like most great relationship stories, they are essentially about overcoming obstacles to bring people together. Recently...

FROM PAUL: To Elope or Nope? That Is the Question

As we’ve spent recent weeks finishing up this issue about 2016’s “People We Love,” it occurs to me that this was also the year I very nearly married the person I love....