Troy Masters
Troy Masters has died at the age of 63. “The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner ruled the death a suicide,” Gay City New is reporting. In 1994, Troy founded Lesbian & Gay New York (LGNY), later renamed Gay City News in 2002; I wrote for both versions of the paper and was far more often a news source for both. In 2015, Troy founded the Los Angeles Blade, serving as publisher until his death. Troy and I participated together in the first US LGBTQ delegation tour in January 2012. My condolences to his family and his many friends across the country and around the world.
Tim McCarthy wrote on his Facebook page (12.17.24):
My dear friend Troy left us suddenly last week. When I first heard the news on Friday, on my way back home after two weeks away, I wept. CJ was driving and had never met Troy. He asked: “How did you know him?” I responded: “My roommate in Palestine.” CJ understood and I cried most of the way home.
The tribute below is written lovingly by Paul Schindler, Troy’s longtime friend, colleague, and fellow trailblazer at Gay City News. This captures so much of his beautiful spirit and brilliant work and legacy, so much more than I can possibly say here. His death is a tragedy on so many levels.
My husband likes to say that we have friends for a reason, a season, a lifetime. The older I get, the more I see the truth of this taxonomy.
Troy and I were on the first LGBTQ delegation from the United States to Palestine and Israel. It was the first time either of us had been to the region and we were affected by it in very different ways, which we discussed and also debated during the many nights we roomed together on the trip. He was a journalist and I am a historian. We were watching, witnessing in different ways, from different perspectives. But we shared the deepest impressions, in part, because we experienced some of the most joyful moments together and we were broken in some of the same ways. I met Troy the first day of the trip, at a cafe in Jerusalem where the delegation first gathered, and I’m not sure I have ever laughed so deeply or cried so freely with someone I once may have called an acquaintance, or stranger. Troy became a kindred soul quickly. On our last night together in Ramallah, after the delegation debated how to represent our experience back home, Troy said to me: “We cannot unsee what we have seen.” I felt this truth in my bones—then and ever since.
Troy was a friend for a reason AND a season—and for a lifetime that turned out to be much shorter than it should and could have been. In these moments of shocking sadness, when we try, impossibly, to make sense of suicide, let us hold many things at once, and hold each other in the process. Our community is still plagued, far too often, by afflictions that are not of our design or our doing. Speaking for myself, as a fellow queer who struggles with depression in ongoing ways, I try not to let rage and sadness in moments like this consume me. Community can certainly help with that, in these moments, because we, too, feel it in our bones.
Troy made the most of his time here. He was a brilliant, beautiful, and brave person. Not all of us can say that. Rest well, dear friend, in all the love you gave and deserve in abundance.