Gary in Your Pocket: Stories and Notebooks of Gary Fisher (Series Q)

Rating:
Summary: Art is meant to provoke, but this was a brotha's real life?!
Review: Gary Fisher was a graduate student, fledgling writer, and Black gay man living in the Bay Area before his death in the mid-1990s. This book consists of two parts: a sample of short stories and poems and an autobiographical sketch based upon his diaries.

I don't know whether to thank the author, editor, and publishing company for challenging me and most other readers or to throw this book into an incinerator. One reviewer in the gay press called this writing "outre" and I wholeheartedly agree. I am thoroughly surprised that this book is available at non-pornographic outlets. Rafael Campo, Don Belton, and Eve Sedgwick all have raved about Fisher or helped this book come into fruition. I admire all three of those writers and enjoy their work, so I have no idea what they were thinking here. E. Lynn Harris' fans would roll over and die if they read this book! It's one thing for art to push the envelope, but an actual Black gay man made all the poor and crazy choices that Gary Fisher made. I had to work hard to keep my eyes in their sockets trying to get through this book.

While the fiction and poetry demonstrate the potential Fisher had, they are worthless. Things don't really get started until the autobiographical portion begins. This book invokes every "disrespectable" aspect of some gay people's lives; the Far Right could have a field day with this text. The shock value and goriness is very reminiscent of David Wojnarowicz's "Postcards from America" and Eve Sedgwick, the editor, basically admits as much in her conclusion. Adding racial matters into the mix only intensifies the uncomfort I felt. Issues such as dangerously unsafe sex practices, size-queeniness, Uncle Tom-ism, coprofilia, anonymous and public sex all come up and readers will be thoroughly shocked at how. The action in this book comes out of nowhere. Fisher never clearly states when he started to identify as gay, when he decided to practice masochism, when he tested positive for HIV, or when he met Eve Sedgwick. They all kinda just happen. Furthermore, he is a closeted gay and a black self-loather. He never once challenges homophobia or racism.

Eve Sedgwick praises Fisher's feelings on race as "complicated." Ha! Fisher makes very clear that he hated being black. Throughout his life he hardly associates with other blacks. He lets white gay men do all kinds of degrading things to him. While he listens to black music, you hardly hear anything about black literature, heroes, or friends. He does have sex with some black men, but he places white men on a pedestal and even enjoys when he is called racist epithets. Not only will straight Black readers be appalled, but gay Blacks will be both appalled and embarrassed. If bell hooks hated "Paris Is Burning," you can just imagine how she and others would trash this book. He is very race-conscious, but this guy didn't have an ounce of Black pride. Additionally, Fisher thinks in strictly black-white terms though he moved to California, a state with many Latinos and Asians. Sedgwick makes clear that Fisher wanted the book's title, but it nevertheless underlines all the ugly issues that his life brings up.

Possibly due to Sedgwick's editing and institutional connections, this book has the format, height, and font of many gay studies texts from Duke University Press. This is odd to see in a non-academic book. Some of the autobiographical part is ramblings of his fiction. I understand that characters sometimes speak to writers when they are creating art, but this made the book even more confusing, capricious, and repetitive. Fisher asks many rhetorical questions that need question marks, yet Sedgwick fails to edit them in. Fisher obviously read much yet music seems to have moved his life far more than literature did.

I do love the fact that Fisher was attracted to heavy guys. There is a lot of prejudice against fat men in the gay community and this one aspect of Fisher was a breath of fresh air. At a time when many coming-out stories are being produced by gay men, few are done by gay Blacks and SM-practitioners. Also, Fisher is an "Army brat" and not enough has been written about their lives. This book adds to the collection of AIDS writings which is formidable. The reader does get to observe how AIDS has robbed us of someone who had talent. And it is provocative in a way.

STILL, LET ME WARN ALL READERS THAT THEY BETTER HAVE A STRONG STOMACH, NO POLITICALLY CORRECT LEANINGS, AND AN INCREDIBLY THICK SKIN IF THEY ARE GOING TO READ THIS BOOK. YOU HAVE BEEN ADVISED!