Taking Liberties: Gay Men's Essays on Politics, Culture, and Sex

Rating:
Summary: Up, down and all around the lives of gay men.
Review: Michael Bronski came out of the Gay Community News group in Boston. I'll never forget his article about the Hardy Boys in GCN, titled "Franklin W. Dixon Made Me Queer." His smart, brash style is apparent not only in his own writing but his editing as well (although he does do a general introduction, and section intros for this book). Issued in 1996, the collection hasn't dated. Granted, we have seen changes in AIDS protocols, issues related to outing, man/boy love, S/M, gay fiction, political correctness, the new gay right wing, and other matters this book deals with--but the contributions are (with one exception) excellent. The themes covered, with four to six articles for each, are these: politics, sex, literature, AIDS, identity. These aren't firm divisions, but blur in various directions. AIDS isn't far from the minds of any of these writers, no matter what their actual subjects. I'll note the most striking material here. Andrew Sullivan's "The Politics of Homosexuality" shows why he's the posterboy of the gay right; he has the intellect to argue his views effectively, and he's not uptight while doing it. Tony Kushner's "A Socialism of the Skin (Liberation, Honey!)" gives a bracing reply from the left (in his case, far left). The counterpoints on man/boy love are by Jesse Green ("The Men from the Boys"--anti) and Bill Andriette ("Dumbed Down and Played Out"--pro, bitterly so). To balance the sometimes hysterical assumptions about sexual predators, I'll note that several men in my reading group for this book said they'd had sexual experience in their teens with older men and did not feel harmed by it. (I'm not suggesting that sexual predators of children don't exist.) Christopher J. Hogan, who reviews gay adult videos, has a striking article about doing just that in "What We Write about When We Write about Porn" (he doesn't offer apologies to Raymond Carver for the title and should). Reed Woodhouse's treatment of different strands of post-Stonewall fiction, "Five Houses of Gay Fiction," names Andrew Holleran's The Dancer from the Dance (1978) as the best of the lot. The material directly about AIDS is the most powerful material in the book, because it is so personal and honest. Writer Allen Barnett is remembered with excerpts from his diary ("The Reluctant Journal") and a sophisticated memoir of his last days, "Love with the Light On," by Ron Caldwell. Caldwell's piece is the best thing in the book, in fact. He does a triptych on Barnett, starting with a diary of hospital caretaking when Barnett was near death, then shifting to a fictionalization of Barnett's birth and early childhood, and ending with a eulogy at the memorial service for him. It's stunning. Charley Shively's "Malcolm X's Wild Side" offers a fascinating rejoinder to the de-gaying of Malcolm's life by Spike Lee. There is little question that Malcolm hustled gay men extensively before converting to Islam; Shively's case that Malcolm was gay himself is shaky, though, since many straight men hustle gay men to this day. Rondo Mieczkowski's "Danny" recounts a personal relationship that may have saved him from drinking himself to death. It's a beautiful piece. Craig G. Harris's "I'm Going Out Like a F---- Meteor," written a year before his death of AIDS-related causes, gives an Aframerican face to the conditions under which persons with AIDS live. (His title comes from Audre Lorde, a black lesbian poet who died of breast cancer.) I'm saving the worst for last. Lawrence D. Mass's "Musical Closets" was rejected by two other publications before seeing print here. His subject is the uncloseting of anyone in the world of classical music he thinks ought to come out. In order to make these people (some of them ex-friends) face the music of their gayness, he quotes from personal conversations and letters clearly not meant to be shared. He also attacks the people who opposed publication of his essay with a lengthy afterward and interminable notes. This is the ugly side of outing; like Robert Bork, Mass doesn't believe in anyone's right to privacy. One misstep isn't enough to deter me from giving a wholehearted recommendation to this eclectic, wonderful collection. Kudos to Richard Kasak for issuing it.