Drawing from the December 18, 2006, issue of "The New Yorker"; Iraq Study Group - Arabic Speakers - Gay; Report on Death of Diana, Princess of Wales; "The Revelation" by Alan Bennett Ilagan; Some Muted Personal Recollections

A wonderful drawing showing President Lincoln asking, "Should I free the gays, too?"

Also from the December 18, 2006, issue of "The New Yorker" in "The Talk of the Town" section - "Comments: Studies Say." are some comments about the recent "Iraq Study Group."

"We are told that, five years after the 9/11 attacks, our one-thousand strong Embassy in Baghdad has just six fluent speakers of Arabic, plus twenty-six who aren't fluent. (As the Report does not mention, fifty-five Arabic language specialists have been cashiered from the military for being gay.")

It's this telling and not telling of a governmental report that makes people even more suspicious of our rulers. Whether it be the Iraq Study Group (see Monsters & Critics "Outside View: Denying reality on Iraq" or the Report into the Death of Diana, Princess of Wales (see The Independent's "Diana: Just a car crash or a murder mystery?" A few oddities I'll mention from the article:

Forty per cent of the British public have also weighed-up the evidence - and they detect a distinct whiff of fish about Diana's untimely death.

Alberto Repossi, a Monte Carlo jeweler, had claimed that the couple had bought a £230,000 emerald and diamond engagement ring weeks before their death. Although the story was apparently backed-up with CCTV footage and receipts from his Monaco showroom, Mr Repossi has since changed his recollection of events.

Henri Paul, the couple's 41-year-old driver who was instantly killed in the crash, turns out to have been in the pay of the French intelligence services. Lord Stevens has traced more than £100,000 he had amassed in 14 bank accounts. In addition, French sources have claimed that in the hours leading up to the crash, Paul received a further £2,000 from an agent of the Gallic equivalent of Mi5.

CCTV footage of Paul leaving the Paris Ritz with the couple does not indicate that he was intoxicated, Fayed claims. He was not an alcoholic, and had passed a medical for his pilot's licence just three days earlier.

US intelligence agencies were bugging Diana's phone on the night she died, without the British secret service's permission. The American National Security Agency refused to release its files on the affair because of an "exceptionally grave" threat to the country's security.

There were more than 14 CCTV cameras in the Pont d'Alma underpass, yet none have recorded footage of the fatal collision. Sources have claimed that they were turned to face the wall, or were simply switched off. The official French judicial enquiry into the crash was told that none of the cameras were working. However, one motorist received a speeding ticket after being caught on a nearby camera 15 minutes before the accident.

A white Fiat Uno was seen to collide with the Mercedes as it entered the tunnel. Unexplained white paint was later found on the car's wreckage, and part of a bumper and tail-light were found near the scene of the crash. James Andason - This French photographer, who had been following Diana and Dodi all Summer, was known to have owned a white Fiat Uno, which was sold and resprayed days after the crash. He was also a paid informant for both British and French intelligence, but insisted that he was not in Paris on the night of the accident. Three years later, his charred remains were found in a locked car in remote farmland in the South of France. Local authorities said it was suicide; conspiracy theorists say it was murder.

Four nights after the crash, a photographer called Lionel Cherrault, who had been acting as an agent forwarding pictures to international media, had his flat in London broken into. The intruders left all the valuables, and took only two computer hard-disk drives and a lap top.

As anyone who is familiar with "The Lord of the Rings" knows the ring has a will of it's own. It's not that a person finds the ring, it is much more that the ring finds the person.

Now and then, I wonder if that's the web. You try to find something, but you, in turn, are found.

This is what I think has happened to me of late. I went down a path, now forgotten, and found myself in the grip of a story by Alan Bennett Ilagan titled "The Revelation."

The tale concerns a 13-year-old altar boy, Jesse, and a priest, Brother Logan. A boy taller than the more compact cleric. But it no typical story of an ecclesiastical sexual predator. In a way, the boy has more to do with the initiation of the relationship than the priest.

It is a brilliant portrait of intergenerational homoerotic sexual tension. Fulfillment of which is taboo by society and by law.

I've literally reached the point, for it is an ongoing work, that I deep down don't want either to get caught.

(Update 02/07: The story is no longer available.)

It is especially poignant to me for I remember the sensations of being a very tall, shy, clumsy Roman Catholic 13-year-old and knowing I was somehow different. But I never felt any sexual longing for a member of the cloth.

I have a memory of Fred Mosley telling me I was a queer, but I looked so puzzled, that Fred said in disbelief, "You don't know what I'm talking about!" But oddly, enough I don't recall any hostility on his part. And I never got the sense that he told anyone else his thoughts. And it didn't effect our friendship. I'd discovered my own brand of masturbation by then, but any other type of sexual act was totally unknowable.

PAX!