Jeb and Dash: A Diary of Gay Life, 1918–1945 [9781250409157]

Overview

A frank and tenderhearted diary of gay life and love in the first half of the twentieth century.

Jeb and Dash brings a lost chapter in American queer history back to life. In the frank and tenderhearted diary entries of Jeb Alexander, a young writer struggling to make his mark on the world, we see a moving and candid portrait of gay life in Washington, DC, during the first half of the twentieth century. Jeb and his group of friends and lovers live through two world wars, the roaring twenties, the invention of the rotary telephone; but they also experience the joys and pains of navigating a nascent queer social scene, heartbreak, and a society that would remain hostile to queerness for generations to come. And running through these recollections like a golden thread that illuminates this diaristic memoir is Jeb’s relationship with C. C. Dasham, his sometime lover and lifelong friend.

Jeb’s Washington was a place entirely inimical to queer life, and yet he imbues it with a sense of great beauty. He also creates a profound story of queer love and friendship in a world that was far from ready for it. As a precursor to later works by Joe Westmoreland, Edmund White, Armistead Maupin, and Thomas Mallon, Jeb’s searching, evocative prose shows us the early forms of community, friendship, and love that were just beginning to take hopeful form in the years before gay liberation.

With a new introduction by Justin Torres, Jeb and Dash brings a crucial episode in our queer history back to life: a time of both oppressive secrecy as well as wild hope.