Tag: homosexuality

Mayor of Castro Street

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Shilts, Randy. Mayor of Castro Street: the Life and Times of Harvey Milk. St. Martin’s Griffin Press, 2008.

Reason read: the “How Weird Festival” happens in October in San Francisco.

What a different (but same) time we live in. We have moved beyond having a Director of the Coors Beer Boycott and yet, yet, yet we still persecute (and prosecute) those different from us. Haven’t we learned anything? But I digress.
Shilts portrayed Harvey Milk as ambitious to a fault. Using a plethora of sources he was able to bring Milk to life, covering extensively both his political and private life. Milk would stoop to incredible lows to create controversy and promote his agenda in the name of the homosexual lifestyle. The betrayal of Bill Sipple’s privacy being just one example. What struck me the most was how Milk knew all along he would die by a bullet to the brain. His ambition was so great that even the fear of assassination couldn’t stop him from fighting for the underdog. He knew how to connect with his Castro Street constituents and collect lovers for a lifetime. Ever the consummate reporter, Shilts turned over every rock to find the detailed story of Milk’s life. Shilts interviewed over one hundred and forty people and poured over thousands of documents for his biography of Harvey Milk. He even sought the audience of Dan White and his attorneys to offer another perspective of the Castro Street Mayor’s tragic end. It is too bad he was unsuccessful.

As an aside, I had to do a deep dive into Bob’s Burgers. In Milk’s time it was a hangout spot on Polk Street in San Francisco. I wanted to know if the cartoon of the same name had anything to do with the restaurant. It does not appear so.
An ah-ha moment: discovering the muse behind Lou Reed’s “sugar plum fairy” in the song “Take a Walk on the Wild Side.”

Author fact: Shilts also wrote And the Band Played On which was on my Challenge list.

Book trivia: Mayor of Castro Street includes a smattering of photographs. I would have liked to see the Castro Street camera shop where Milk first set up a campaign office.

Setlist: “Theme from Rocky,” Jefferson Airplane, Grace Slick, “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” Joan Baez, Carmen, Bob Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind,” Leslie Gore, Lou Reed’s “Take a Walk on the Wild Side,” “Danny Boy,” “Notre Dame Fight Song,” “Ain’t No Stopping Us Now,” “Happy Birthday,” “Star Spangled Banner,” Moody Blues, Rolling Stones, Cher, “As Time Goes By,” Judy Garland, “Anchors Aweigh,” “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot,” Mahler, Strauss, Donna Summer, Barbra Streisand, Wagner, Verdi, Bidu Sayao, Mills Brothers’ “Always,” Mick Jagger, Liza Minelli, Puccini’s Tosca, Meg Christian’s “The Rock Will Wear Away,” John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, Elton John, David Bowie, Mahler, “God Save the Nelly Queens,” and “We Shall Overcome.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter simply called “San Francisco” (p 196).

The Temple

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Spender, Stephen. The Temple. Harper and Row Publishers, 1987.

Reason read: June is Pride month. Read in honor of love, no matter how you find it.

To know that The Temple is a semi-autobiographical fiction gives weight to Spender’s words. Most everything that happens to the main character, poet Paul Schoner, in The Temple is something that happened to Spender in and around 1929. He thinly disguises his relationship with other writers (most significantly W. H. Auden and Christopher Isherwood) as he travels to Hamburg from Oxford. It is important to remember that in the 1920s censorship was prevalent in England. As a homosexual, Spender needed to live his life in lies. His true identity was hidden like a secret. Germany in 1929, while more forgiving about lifestyles, was also going through its own dark period. Spender includes the growing sense of foreboding as Hitler comes to power. Though fascists and Nazis Spender paints a picture of a society that foregoes the history of friendship for the sake of power. It’s violent ending is a sign of dark days ahead.

Author fact: Spender was the first non-American to serve as Consultant in Poetry in English to the Library of Congress.

Book trivia: The Temple could be a movie.

Setlist: Cole Porter’s “Let’s Fall in Love”, Mozart’s Clarinet Quintet, Wagner’s Ring cycle, Beethoven, and Schubert.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “Oxford” (p 170). As an aside, I am not sure I would have included this in the Oxford chapter. I would have thought it more appropriate it a chapter on Germany or homosexuality.

Boy Meets Boy

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Levithan, David. Boy Meets Boy. Alfred A. Knopf, 2003.

Reason read: August is the new back to school month. Since most of Boy Meet Boy takes place in a school, read in honor of lockers everywhere.

The world inside Boy Meets Boy is the fantasyland where we all want to live, or at least visit whenever the mood strikes us. A place where kindness reigns supreme and hate just does not seem to exist. At. All. Main character, Paul, is unlike any teenage boy you will ever meet. He is sensitive, smart, funny, romantic, thoughtful, and a serious empath. His environment is a high school where students, dissatisfied with clubs of the cultural norms, create groups like the Joy Scouts, the French cuisine club, and the Quiz bowling team. The janitors are closet (pun totally intended) wealthy day traders. The parents form groups like P-FLAG (Parents and friends of lesbians and gays). The town itself is ultra-accepting – there is a bar called the Queer Beer bar where straight guys sneak in to hit on lesbians. It’s like a paradise for the LGBTQ community: the perfect world where everyone is welcomed and joyfully accepted. Even insults are always playful and harmless. The quarterback can also be the homecoming queen – shoulder pads and manicured nails come together in one character, Infinite Darlene. Cheerleaders can afford Harleys. Mothers make pancakes that resemble the topography or states or continents. Imagine that.
But. In order to have an interesting story, you need conflict. Right? The conflict is love and all of its broken hearts. Paul was once dumped by Kyle. Now Kyle wants Paul back, but only after Paul has started something with a new boy, Noah. Noah has been burned himself. So when Noah finds out Paul kissed another boy, he’s a goner. Now Paul wants Noah back while Kyle chases Paul. Then there is Ted who was dumped by Joanie for Chuck. Somehow, Paul tries to mend all these hearts, including the ones he has no business mending. The big question is, will he win Noah back or will Kyle win his heart?

Author fact: Even though David Levithan wrote a long list of books, I am only reading Boy Meets Boy for the Challenge.

Book trivia: I could easily see this being made into a movie.

Music: Dave Matthews Band’s “All Along the Watchtower” (but not really DMB) and “Typical Situation”, “One More Day”, Depeche Mode’s “Personal Jesus”, “We Are the Champions”, Cole Porter, Pink Floyd, “Bizarre Love Triangle”, “I Will Survive”, “She’s All Mouth”, Elvis’s “Love Me Tender”, “Heartbreak Hotel”, “All Shook Up”, Ella Fitzgerald, PJ Harvey, Erasure’s “Always”, Indigo Girls, Chet Baker’s “Someone to Watch Over Me”, Beatles, “If I Had a Hammer”, “Time after Time”. “It’s Always You”, and “Let’s Get Lost”, and “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore”.

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Best for Teens” (p 23). Interestingly enough, Pearl thought Boy Meets Boy was more appropriate for boys than girls.

Well of Loneliness

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Hall, Radclyffe. The Well of Loneliness. Anchor Books, 1928.

Reason read: Hall’s birth month is in August. Read in her honor.

When her parents were disappointed that their newborn had not been the boy they expected, they went ahead with the name they had picked out pre-birth: Stephen. For 1928 that was pretty progressive, especially since no one in their society circles really questioned it, not even Stephen herself. Her full name was Stephen Mary Olivia Gertrude Gordon. It was a name that seemed to overshadow her true identity and caused her some confusion as she navigated her way through childhood. Living in an environment where societal norms and expectations were rigid, Stephen often found herself clashing with the traditional gender roles.
Hall uses all the clichés to make obvious Stephen’s sexual orientation even as a young child: Stephen developed a strong romantic attachment to her nanny, she wanted to hunt, climb trees, and ride horses like a boy. She instinctively needed to change her appearance by cutting her hair and building her muscles and wearing pants and ties. She thought dresses were ridiculous, girlish emotions even more so. These feelings and desires were contrary to what was expected of a girl in her society, leading to a sense of internal conflict and confusion as she tried to understand and accept herself. She knew she was different but could not articulate why. As a teenager, Stephen was thrilled to make the acquaintance of a boy with whom she seemed to have so much in common. Here was a person with whom she could be her true self…until he admitted he was falling in love with her. Of course she could not love him back in the same way, as her own feelings did not align with his blossoming romantic affection. All through her formative years, Stephen’s father could not tell her the truth about her “strangeness” and yet he knew. As a result, he was overprotective and sheltering. There is a naivete to Stephen throughout The Well of Loneliness. Even when she found reciprocated love with Mary, a young woman she met during the war, she was never secure in her feelings, often plagued by a persistent fear of rejection and misunderstanding.

Quotes to quote, “My God, child, you’ll have worse things than this to face later – life’s not all beer and skittles, I do assure you” (p 113) and “This will happen sometimes, we instinctively feel in sympathy with certain dwellings” (p 249).

Book trivia: Well of Loneliness includes a note from the author which assures the reader that even though a motor ambulance unit of British women existed in World War II, the particular unit Hall wrote about only existed in her head.

Author fact: Hall led the life described in Well of Loneliness. It is thought that many of Stephen’s experiences were actually Hall’s memories.

Music: “Ole Sole Mio”.

Nancy said: Pearl pointed out that Well of Loneliness could be the first novel to address homophobia.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Gay and Lesbian Fiction: Out of the Closet” (p 94).

Easy Way Out

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McCauley, Stephen. The Easy Way Out. Simon & Schuster, 1992.

Reason read: McCauley celebrates a birthday in June and it’s Pride month. What better way to honor both occasions than by reading The Easy Way Out?

Patrick O’Neil has been called the anti-hero and I have to admit, when I read that I thought of Taylor Swift (I love that song…only Dermot Kennedy’s version). Patrick is not exactly the best lover to his partner, Arthur. He isn’t the best brother to Ryan and Tony either. He is an even worse travel agent. How he manages his relationships, both personal and professional, is a conundrum. In all honesty, I didn’t like any of the characters well, except Sharon. Everyone was someone who took the easy way out (hence the title of the book). Am I supposed to applaud Patrick for finally not compromising his feelings? The way he did it wasn’t admirable either.
As someone who took the easy way out because I thought I knew what I wanted, I have learned that life isn’t always lived in regret. I do have my moments of oops, but for the most part I do have my share of gratitude for the mistakes I’ve made and how it all turned out.

As an aside, did anyone else notice the multiple comments about global warning?

Lines I liked, “I sometimes worried that he might suddenly disappear, especially when I’d been spending a lot of time fantasizing about leaving him” (p 19) and “I was in that oddly euphoric state that accompanies fasting, sleep deprivation and natural disasters” (p 281).

Book trivia: I could easily see this as a movie.

Author fact: I have three MCauley books to read. Man of the House and Object of My Affection are next.

Setlist: “Ill Wind”, “Put the Blame on Mame”, “MoonSlide”, “The Shadow of Your Smile”, Richard Tauber, Ben Webster, Mozart, La Traviata, “Surrey with the Fringe on Top”, “Hello Dolly”, Uccini, and “La Vie en Rose”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in two different chapters. First, in “Gay and Lesbian Fiction: Out of the Closet” (p 93) and again a few chapters later in “My Own Private DUI” (p 165).

On Being Different

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Miller, Merle. On Being Different. Random House, 1987.

Reason read: Merle Miller celebrated a birthday in May. Read in his honor.

The prejudice one has for homosexuals borders on insane, yet it exists. Why anyone would see a link between homosexuality and communism is beyond me. Same with thinking marriage could be a potential “cure” for homosexuality. These are the beliefs of the ignorant. It took Miller fifty years to come out of the closet. That is an unimaginable length of time to hide one’s true self yet it happens all the time. Miller’s essay “On Being Different” is a valiant attempt to respond to the ignorant and expose the human side of love. He discusses the prejudices and fears without flinching. There is grace threaded throughout his anger.

Book trivia: the foreword was written by Dan Savage. Afterword One was written by Merle Miller. Afterword Two was written by Charles Kaiser. Acknowledgments were written by Carol Hanley. On Being Different is only a twenty-one page essay, but with all these other additions and appendices A through C is becomes a much longer book.

Confessional: I, too, like Halloween for all of its mask wearing.

Playlist: Paul Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Peggy Lee’s “Love Story”, Liberace, Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, and “We Shall Overcome”.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Merle Miller: Too Good To Miss” (p 155).

Farewell Symphony

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White, Edmund. The Farewell Symphony. Alfred A. Knopf, 1997.

Reason read: I started White’s trilogy in June to celebrate pride month. Farewell Symphony is the last of the three.

We continue the autobiography of an unknown protagonist (okay, okay! It’s White). By now he is a full fledged adult and it is the early 1960s. Whereas the other books in the trilogy spanned a short period of time, Farewell Symphony is much longer and covers nearly thirty years, ending in the early 1990s. By the end of The Farewell Symphony Mr. Nameless has outlived most of his friends. AIDS has infiltrated his love life. But I am getting ahead of myself. Let us start at the beginning. Brice, a former lover, died six months before the story opens. From there, the author experiences a string of sexual encounters barely qualifying as relationships: the heartbreak over Sean, a man who was unobtainable. Lou and Kevin. Fox. I could go on. For the most part, Farewell Symphony seems to be a running commentary on sex within the homosexual community. The nameless protagonist prowls for hookups, threesomes, and orgies all fueled by an insatiable desperation to not go lonely. When he isn’t trying to get laid, he desires to be published. The most poignant and sorrowful portion of The Farewell Symphony is the bitter end. True to the title of the book, the symphony of gay men die off, one by one, leaving one voice to take a final bow.

I’ve having a mental block. I cannot think of the word when several coincidences occur at the same time. I just finished reading Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past and White’s character is also reading the epic story.

A weird moment of deja vu: I came across a passage in The Farewell Symphony where a character defends sex with children. I feel like that exact same passage was either earlier in the book or in a previous volume of the trilogy.

Quotes worth quoting, “I’ve never liked to feel things in the appropriate way at the right moment” (p 3), “I invited him home and found him to be complicated in ways that bored me” (p 23),

Author fact: at the time of publication, White was a professor at Princeton University.

Book trivia: some reviews of The Farewell Symphony called it trashy.

Setlist: George Thill’s “O Soave Fanciulla” from La Boheme, Sgt. Pepper, Haydn #45, Billie Holiday, Helen Morgan, “Chopsticks”, Verdi, Wagner, Aretha Franklin, Gerard Souzay-Dupare, “Why Did You Leave Me?”, “Strangers in the Night”, Muddy Waters, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Paolo Conte, Bartok, “the Magic Flute”, Frank Sinatra, “I’ll Be Seeing You in Apple Blossom Time”, Phoebe Snow, Diana Ross, Joni Mitchell, Bette Midler, Puccini, Schubert’s “Erlkonig”, “Up on the Roof” by the Nylons, and Helen Morgan.

Nancy said: Pearl said nothing specific about The Farewell Symphony.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the obvious chapter called “Gay and Lesbian Fiction: Out of the Closet” (p 93).

Beautiful Room is Empty

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White, Edmund. The Beautiful Room is Empty. Alfred A. Knopf, 1988.

Reason read: to continue the series started in June in honor of Pride Month.

When we rejoin our nameless narrator he is now seventeen years old and exploring deeper relationships, sexual and platonic. He has moved from the Midwest to the culturally explosive Greenwich Village of New York to pursue college and a career. There he keeps his relationships in different compartments. The fraternity brothers do not mingle with the bohemians and the bohemians do not know the Chinese. And no one knows of the anonymous hairy legs and hard penises of grimy bathrooms. There is a lot more descriptive sex in The Beautiful Room is Empty. Our narrator is less concerned with “going straight” then he is finding a handsome man with whom to link arms and entwine legs. The shame of homosexuality burns with a smaller flame but is always there.

Favorite lines, “A small black toad of a laugh hopped through his lips” (p 137)

Author fact: Edmund’s middle name is Valentine.

Book trivia: The Beautiful Room is Empty is the second book in the trilogy.

Playlist: Bach, Barbra Streisand’s “Happy Days are Here Again”, Bartok, Baroque Revival, Beethoven, Brahms, Brenda Lee’s “Break It to Me Gently”, Caruso’s “Oh Ginnie Whiskey”, Charles Mingus, Charlie Parker, Des Grieux aria, Dionne Warwick, Everly Brothers, “God bless the Chile That’s Got His Own”, “Good Morning Heartache”, Hammerklavier Sonata, Handel, Haydn, “I’ll Be Seeing You in Apple Blossom Time”, “I’m Travelin’ Light”, “Kitten on the Keys”, “Mister”, Pucci’s “Marion Lescaut”, “My Guy”, Rosemary Clooney’s “If I Had Known You Was A-Comin’ I’d’ve Baked a Cake”, Stravinsky’s “the Firebird”, Tchaikovsky, “This is Love”, Timi Yuro’s “Make the World Go Away”,

Nancy said: Pearl did not say anything specific about The Beautiful Room is Empty.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the outdated chapter called “Gay and Lesbian Fiction: Out of the Closet” (p 93). These days we would say LGBTQ Fiction: Loud and Proud!

Boy’s Own Story

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White, Edmund. A Boy’s Own Story. Iconic Books, Open Road Media. 2000.
White, Edmund. A Boy’s Own Story. Vintage International, 1982.

Reason read: June is Pride Month.

First published in 1982, A Boy’s Own Story‘s main character has been compared to Teddy Roosevelt and characters from Lolita and Huckleberry Finn. The first in a trilogy and supposedly autobiographical in nature, A Boy’s Own Story introduces themes of desire, coming of age, and identity. The book’s nameless young narrator navigates his own sexuality in an age when parents simply warn their children about predators who seem “oversexed” and “take advantage of younger boys.” Our hero fights his homosexual tendencies while wondering why the adult camp counselor doesn’t rub his back in the middle of the night. Torn between propriety and passion, he struggles to find normalcy in his desires. Will his feelings for other boys fade in time? It this something to grow out of? In an effort to “change” he first seeks the advice of a priest. When that does not work, he convinces his father to send him to an all-boys boarding school. Maybe being in the presence of so many males would normalize his sexuality and set him straight? Not so. Next came a psychiatrist. Maybe he can address the psychological aspects of being attracted to men? Ultimately, he is looking for a way to have sex with a man and then disown him so to disavow his homosexuality. The secret to his longing is power which makes A Boy’s Own Story all at once poignant and sad.

Line I liked, “The subject of this book might be that brief eloquence between the fantasies of a dream-bound child and his implementing through charm, sexuality, his wits” (p 6). The saddest sentence in the book, “I had spent so much of my childhood sunk into a cross-eyed, nose-picking turpitude of shame and self-loathing, scrunched up in the corner of a sweating leather chair on a hot summer day, the heat having silenced the birds, even the construction workers on the site next door, and delivering me up to the admonishing black head of the fan on the floor slowly shaking from left to right, right to left to signal its tedious repetition of no, no, no, and to exhale the faintly irritating vacillations of its breath” (p 126).

Author fact: White lists Proust as one of his influences. I love it when I’m reading a connection to another book.

Book trivia: A Boy’s Own Story is autobiographical.

Playlist: “Dies Irae”, Juliette Greco, “Nothing Like a Dame”, Odetta, “Pat Boone’s “Twixt Twelve and Twenty”, “Now is the Hour”, “Zip-a-Dee Doo-Dah”, “Kitten on the Keys”, “I’ll Be Seeing You in Apple Blossom Time”, “The Tennessee Waltz”, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Liberace, Schubert’s “Unfinished”,

Nancy said: Pearl said Boy’s Own Story was “set prior to Stonewall” (Book Lust p 94). For those who don’t know, Stonewall refers to the Stonewall Rebellion or Stonewall Uprising; a riot in the early morning of June 28th, 1969. Police violently raided an establishment known as Stonewall. The community in and around Greenwich Village, New York, protested the attack.

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the too-short chapter called “Gay and Lesbian Fiction: Out of the Closet” (p 93). There are so many other great novels Pearl could have mentioned (like Annie On My Mind by Nancy Garden).

On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous

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Vuong, Ocean. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous. New York: Penguin Press, 2019.

Reason read: Are you holding onto your hats? Are you sitting down? I’m going off the Challenge list for this one. Why? Basically, I will read everything my sister recommends. Why? She’s cool and she doesn’t waste her time with boring books.

Is it enough to say that On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous is heartbreakingly beautiful? I could go on to elaborate: the language is harsh yet poignant, stark yet lush, truthful yet magical. Little Dog writes a letter to his mother to…what? Explain his choices? Tell her how her life has shaped his? Make a declaration of love to the world around him? His motives are unclear, but the language stirs the heart. For example, the imagery of a lighthouse: seen as both shelter and warning. Could a woman be both monster and mother?

Lines I loved: “We sidestep ourselves in order to move forward” (p 53). If I were a lecturer and I had actually coined that phrase I would repeat it and ask the audience to let the words sink in. There is more truth in those eight little words than I care to admit. One more to quote, “Maybe we look in mirrors not merely to seek beauty, regardless of how illusive, but to make sure, despite the facts, that we are still here” (p 138).

Book trivia: this should be a movie. Seriously. For something completely random, Vuong thanked Frank Ocean. I am wondering if this is the same Frank Ocean Dermot Kennedy thanked for the song, “Swim Good.”

Author fact: According to the back flap of On Earth… Vuong lived in Northampton in 2019. I am not a stalker so I don’t know if that’s still true. If it is, this author is less than 30 minutes from me. Cool. In a more widely (undisputed) fact, Vuong is a poet which is abundantly obvious in On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous.

Playlist: Khanh Ly, Neil Young, 50 Cent, Etta James, Curtis Jackson, Chopin, Justin Timberlake, Miles Davis, Black Eyed Peas’ “Where is the Love?,” Led Zeppelin’s “Get Rich, or Die Tryin’,” “His Eye Is On the Sparrow,” “This Little Light of Mine,” and “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.”

Three Junes

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Glass, Julia. Three Junes. New York: Pantheon Books, 2002.

Reason read: November is National Writing Month so I chose Three Junes in honor of the category of debut novel.

You start Three Junes by following widower Paul McLeod on a guided tour of Greece where he meets a woman who will change the course of his life. Six years later Paul’s passing brings his sons, Fenno, and twins, Dennis and David, to Scotland for his funeral. Fenno, a normally reserved New York West Village gay man, faces a family he barely knows while remembering a father he has always wanted to know better. Both of his brothers are married and living very different lives. The mourners who approach Fenno present difficult choices. For a good chunk of the book Fenno’s story is told in first person, bouncing back and forth in time as we follow his complicated relationships with cerebral friend, Mal, dying of AIDS and sexy photographer, Tony, who remains uncommitted despite near daily sexual encounters.
Speaking of Tony, he appears in the last chunk of the book as Fern’s lover. This relationship circles the story back to Paul, as Fern was Paul’s chance encounter in Greece. Artfully written, Glass plays with chronology and people’s emotions. You want unreachable resolutions and conversations that don’t or won’t happen.

Quote I liked, “There the letter ends, as if he wrote himself over the cliff” (p 55).

Author fact: Three Junes is a debut novel for Julia Glass.

Book trivia: “Collies,” the first section of Three Junes was originally a novella and earned Glass the 1999 Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society Medal for Best Novella.

Playlist: “Flowers of Scotland,” “Gone Away,” Gome to the Ground,” “Skye Boat Song,” Lotte Lehman, Pavarotti, Streisand, Bee Gees, Gershwin, Porter, Jerome Kern, Gene Kelly’s “‘S Wonderful,” Kenny Rogers, Stravinsky, Copeland, Hendrix, Holiday, “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” by Bob Dylan, Elton John’s “Daniel,”, Maria Callas’s “Violetta,” Bette Midler, Van Morrison, Lyle Lovett, “100 Years From Today,” and “And If I Were Like Lightning.”

Nancy said: Pearl included Three Junes in her list of “wonderful books.”

BookLust Twist: from More Book Lust in the chapter called “Maiden Voyages” (p 158).

My Life on the Line

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O’Callaghan, Ryan with Cyd Zeigler. My Life on the Line: How the NFL Damn Near Killed Me. and Ended Up Saving My Life. Brooklyn, New York: Edge of Sports, 2019.

Reason read: as part of the Early Review program for LibraryThing.

When I requested My Life on the Line I was not prepared to have my heart broken. This is the simple story of an NFL football player trying to conceal his true self throughout his sports career. For twenty eight long years he had a secret. Hiding behind anything and everything to make himself look “manly” Ryan O’Callahan was in constant fear of being outted as a homosexual. No one could find out. No one. Tough language, big trucks, country music, guzzling beer, deer hunting, drugs, and bullying were all part of the smoke and mirrors game; all tactics O’Callaghan used so no one could accuse him of even a hint of being gay. His perception was a homosexual man wouldn’t use foul language. A gay man wouldn’t drive a big truck or take drugs and he certainly wouldn’t listen to Garth Brooks! At the center of it all was being a professional football player. For as long as O’Callaghan was playing this manly game he reasoned he could stay alive. Without football he was convinced he couldn’t hide; being exposed meant certain death at his own hand. Even when people close to him started to suspect, O’Callaghan would emphatically deny it, thinking the NFL was his perfect cover.
Then came the injuries and the surgeries and the pain, one after another like unrelenting sea surge. The more O’Callaghan damaged his body the faster his addiction to pain killers grew. He had easy access to prescriptions and at one point was using from nine different doctors. The prospect of playing football professionally hung in the balance as his drug use spiraled out of control and like all dangerous games, it had to come to an end sooner or later.

An added bonus to O’Callaghan’s story was learning a little more about NFL quarterback, Aaron Rodgers. His story was a little disappointing…

“Brokeback Mountain”

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Proulx, Annie. Brokeback Mountain. New York: Scribner, 1997.

Reason read: June is Short Story Month and LGBTQ Pride month.

Confessional: I saw the movie before I even started the Book Challenge. As a a rule, I would rather read the book first so my imagination is not tainted by images of the movie. I can only compare this avoidance to a hearing a song and how you sometimes lose the interpretation after you see the accompanying music video.
Having said all that, I was surprised at how the written story moved so fast. In a mere sixty-four pages Proulx tells the devastating story of Jack Twist and Ennis Del Mar. Both young men find themselves on the same job as ranchers guarding sheep on Brokeback Mountain in beautiful Montana. One accepted amorous advance leads to a deep connection that time and space cannot sever or erase. The love they have for one another remains strong despite the fact they put distance between them and move on to have relationships with women.

Line that moved me the most, “In a disquieting way everything seemed mixed up” (p 16).
Oddly enough, I didn’t take notice of the movie’s most famous line “I wish I knew how to quit you.” It is an original line from the book but there were others I liked better.

Author fact: E. Annie Proulx has ties to Connecticut.

Book trivia: Everyone knows of the 2005 movie starring Jake Gellenhaal and Heath Ledger. It won an MTV award for best kiss…or something like that.

Nancy said: Pearl called “Brokeback Mountain” Proulx’s “most famous story” (Book Lust To Go p 264), but that surprised me. In regards to the written word I would have figured Postcards or Shipping News to be more well known. Maybe the movie is the reason “Brokeback” is more widely known. Pearl calls the movie “superb.”

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust To Go in the chapter called “WY Ever Not?” (p 264).

Patience and Sarah

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Miller, Isabel. Patience and Sarah. Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 1969.

Reason read: Alma Routsong was born in November; read in her honor.

This is such a fascinating story. Isabel Miller learns of two real life pioneering women, Mary Ann Willson and her partner, known only as “Miss Brundage,” and has to write about them. Willson and Brundage set off to find a place where they could live as an openly homosexual couple. Their courage sparked a story in Miller and Patience and Sarah was born.
To meet the women: Sarah Dowling was raised as a boy; taught to shoot a gun and chop firewood like a man. In Patience’s mind, Sarah needed rescuing from that existence. Patience White was a demure and quiet painter, but it was she who started planting the seeds of running away early in her relationship with Sarah. “But could you take it pioneering with you?” Patience asked of the ax Sarah was wielding.
Patience and Sarah was originally published under the title, A Place For Us. The book ends with Patience and Sarah leaving their old lives behind to find a new place where they could be themselves as a couple. Their love endures ridicule and prejudice and even among themselves they harbor doubts. Sheer courage carries them forward.
Patience and Sarah could be considered the very first lesbian historical novel.

Lines I loved (and there were many), “Women might peck at her with their sharp mean noses” (p 18), “There would be no way out except through” (p 49), and, “…but as soon as he kissed me I knew I could not live a life where that happened all the time” (p 102).
Lines about love, “I keep thinking every shadow is you” (p 47), and “I felt my heart melt and drip off my fingertips” (p 105).

Author fact: Isabel Miller is a pseudonym for Alma Routsong. Alma took her mother’s maiden name (Miller) and an anagram of the word lesbia (Isabel) to form her pen name. Another interesting fact is that Isabel left her husband and four children. Luckily, they all forgave her.

Book trivia: The American Library Association honored Patience and Sarah with its first ever Gay Book of the Year Award in 1971. Another last piece of trivia: the book was made into an opera in 1998. That seems a little odd to me.

Nancy said: Pearl said it would be “interesting to compare” The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe Hall to Miller’s Patience and Sarah. (Book Lust p 94).

BookLust Twist: from Book Lust in the chapter called “Gay and Lesbian Fiction: Out of the Closet” (p 93).

November New

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What do you do when the most inappropriate sentiment unexpectedly comes out of someone’s mouth? A confession that should never have left the lips of the confessor? Instead of thinking of the actions I should take I chose to take none. I do nothing. Distance makes it easy to ignore and deny. When I can’t avoid I read. Here are the books started for November:

Fiction:

  • Foolscap, or, the Stages of Love by Michael Malone – Malone was born in the month of November; reading in his honor.
  • Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko – in honor of November being Native American Heritage month.
  • The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman – November is National Writing month. Choosing fantasy for this round.
  • Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller – Routsong’s birth month was in November. Reading in her honor.
  • Martin Dressler by Steven Millhauser – reading in honor of Millhauser’s birth place, New York City.

Nonfiction:

  • Expecting Adam: a True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic by Martha Beck – in honor of my mother’s birth month.
  • The Caliph’s House by Tahir Shah – in honor of Morocco’s independence was gained in November.

Series continuation:

  • Scales of Gold by Dorothy Dunnett – to continue the series started in honor of Dunnett’s birth month in August.

Fun: nothing decided yet.

Early Review: I have been chosen to receive an early review but I will refrain from naming it in case it doesn’t arrive.