By Doug Miller
The stories were written because June is Pride Month. I didn't know that, either, though I guess all those parades on the news should have been a tipoff. And in honor of the last day of June, we'll call this column the third installment in our series on gay life in Long Beach - despite the fact that we have nothing else to report.
We're doing so because the paper was given notice by a caller that if one more story appeared in the Herald about gays or gay life, or if we "become a gay newspaper," then ... well, the caller didn't specify what would happen, other than to say that he would use his "financial resources" to ruin us.
Nobody gets to talk to me that way.
So, simply for the joy of knowing that somewhere in Long Beach there is a lonely, disturbed hick with smoke pouring out of his ears, we hereby present this, the third in our series.
Thanks again for the call.
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Another letter arrived from Joseph LaMarca, the Long Beach native and Attica inmate whose downfall inspired the movie "City by the Sea." He didn't care for the headline I wrote for his last letter, which I thought was clever but he thought was insulting.
Since our relationship is strictly one-way - we obviously waive the daytime-telephone-number requirement for his letters - perhaps he'll read this and accept my explanation.
In the letter, he surveyed some fellow inmates and asked what they looked for when they scoped out houses to rob. Then he reported to us - as a helpful public service - what people should do to make burglars rob someone else.
My headline? "Protect yourself from my friends."
It wasn't meant to infer that he maintains friendships with our local criminal community - just that he was friendly with the fellas in the yard, at least a few of whom, I'll bet, are recidivists.
Anyway, this week's is something like the sixth LaMarca letter we've printed since he went to prison in 1999, and as far as I can tell, we are holding steady at zero responses to them from the public.
So a killer writes from prison and there's no reaction. We write two stories on gay life and the earth moves. Go figure.
