Seattle Gay News
Issue 24, Volume 40, June 15, 2012
Section 4 BOOK GUIDE
by Mike Andrew SGN Staff Writer
see VICTORY page 20 FILE PHO TO
VICTORY: THE TRIUMPHANT GAY REVOLUTION LINDA HIRSHMAN Linda Hirshman writes with such clarity and self-confidence that you want to believe her premise that the LGBT rights movement has already triumphed over bigotry and discrimination. Nevertheless, reporters are paid to be skeptical, and Hirshman’s title – Victory: The Triumphant Gay Revolution – begs two basic questions. First, have we really won? And second, in what sense can we call the undoubted advances in LGBT rights a revolution? The first question is nicely summed up in a conversation with activist and former Clinton staffer Richard Socarides that Hirshman records in her book. “‘Do you really think you ought to call [the book] Victory?’ Socarides asked. I had called him to ask about the Justice Department’s dropping of DOMA and mentioned the book was almost done. “‘Why in the world not?’ I asked. ‘This is an amazing story.’ “‘But there’s so much that has not been done,’ he replied. ‘People will think you’re saying it’s over and everyone should go home.’” Without question, there have been advances for LGBT rights, and they seem to be coming at an accelerating pace: the repeal of DADT, a succession of court rulings that DOMA is unconstitutional, the passage of marriage equality acts in a number of states, and formal recognition of the rights of Gay and Lesbian couples by the president of the United States, among others. On the other hand, most states still ban same-sex marriage. In most states and at the federal level, LGBT workers still have no legal protection whatsoever against discrimination in the workplace. LGBT people, and especially LGBT people of color and Trans people of all colors, are still targeted for horrific hate crimes. Many young LGBT peo-
ple still feel hopeless, adrift, and unloved. How, then, can we claim that we have won? Hirshman says we can because she has defined the aims of the LGBT movement in such a way that they exist in the sphere of public perception, rather than being grounded in the practical realities that confront LGBT people. “The movement succeeded,” she writes, “uniquely and in large part because, at the critical moments, its leaders made a moral claim.” This claim, Hirshman says, was not simply a right to privacy – the right to be left alone to do whatever distinguishes LGBT people from straight ones – but an affirmation that what LGBT people do is equally deserving of respect, i.e., that “we
Linda Hirshman
e t o v o t RegisteR
www.myvote.wa.gov
2
Seattle Gay News
June 15, 2012
Celebrating 38 Years!
Visit us online www.sgn.org
June 15, 2012
Seattle Gay News
3
by Richard Labonte SGN Contributing Writer ILL WILL J.M. REDMANN Maladies are the motif in the seventh installment of Redmann’s Micky Knight series, set again in the malaise of post-Katrina New Orleans. On the sleuthing side, Knight is drawn into the deadly scam of “natural” immune-boosting and disease-destroying cure-alls. On the personal side, her still-fragile relationship with lover (and M.D.) Cordelia – who was unfaithful earlier in the ongoing saga of their lives together – is further fraught when Cordelia is diagnosed with cancer. As is the norm with this series, Redmann’s hardboiled PI tackles the twists and turns of her case and its attendant violence with dogged determination and a sometimes foolish and defiant denial of danger, which makes for a fast-paced story. Also the norm: the intimate details of Micky and Cordelia’s domestic travails, as the two busy women try to find time for the basics of a relationship – shopping for groceries, cooking for each other, holding hands while dining out, and fumbling their way to a fulfilling sexual intimacy. It’s this blend of professional and personal lives that renders Redmann’s series so engrossingly wellrounded. THE SONG OF ACHILLES MADELINE MILLER There’s a double-barreled delight to this romantic, and at times even erotic, retelling of The Iliad. Readers familiar with the world of Achilles, Odysseus, Apollo, and the rest of Homer’s panoply of gods and mortals, will be enthralled by Miller’s debut novel, a page-turning rendition of a classic tale. Better yet, readers who snoozed through their ancient Greek seminars in college will be immersed in a glorious blend of commercial fiction and impassioned history – a fabulously fun way to engage one of literature’s masterworks. What sets Miller’s captivating reworking of Homer apart from other versions – there have been dozens – is that it’s narrated (even after his death) by awkward one-time prince Patroclus, selected by golden-boy Achilles to be his companion and, as this telling makes
4
Seattle Gay News
clear, his lover. This ravishing novel, with MY TWO MOMS: LESSONS OF its depictions of battlefield savagery and its LOVE, STRENGTH, AND recounting of a sensual connection, honors WHAT MAKES A FAMILY the tradition of Lesbian author Mary ReZACH WAHLS (WITH nault, whose trilogy based on the life of AlBRUCE LITTLEFIELD) exander the Great similarly made clear that In his acknowledgments, Wahls – whose Queers are a classic motif. Iowa state legislature speech opposing a ban on Gay marriage became a YouTube sensation – thanks both the homophobic Boy Scouts (“for underscoring ... the values my mothers taught me”) and the likes of Ellen DeGeneres, Ashton Kutcher, Rachel Maddow, and Neil Patrick Harris. The lad, 19 and an Eagle Scout when he spoke on behalf of his two moms, contains multitudes! This inspiring memoir – each chapter headed by Boy Scout pledges to be obedient, thrifty, brave, etc. – is an engaging blend of youthful passion and eyes-wide-open frankness. In high school, Wahls dissembled at first when asked about his
NINETY DAYS: A MEMOIR OF RECOVERY BILL CLEGG Staying clean and sober for 90 days is a major milestone on the road to recovery. Clegg’s minimalist, mesmerizing follow-up to Portrait of an Addict as a Young Man opens as the author leaves rehab to confront an addict’s haunting triggers and destructive temptations. His successful Manhattan literary-agent career, deeppocket bank account, long-suffering boyfriend, and posh Fifth Avenue apartment have all been devoured by the demons of primarily crack but also of cocaine and alcohol. Clegg’s first book recounted his days before rehab. Here, his impressionistic sketches of his sponsor, and of several recovering addicts with whom he intersects at the meetings he attends – including cute young redhead Asa, who develops a crush on him – are an illuminative reflection of the author’s own hellish descent and hardfought recovery. This depiction of afterrehab horrors, of craving and crash, is harrowing, as the author frantically reconnects with dealers just days after leaving rehab, skips in and out of AA meetings, loses himself in a hedonistic threesome – and relapses just a few days shy of 90.
June 15, 2012
parents, endured some bullying about having two mothers, and eventually “came out” in a student newspaper article. The book’s core message – that marriage equality is overdue for Queer couples – is underscored by Wahl’s account of how, when his biological mom, Terry, was hospitalized, his non-biological mom, Jackie, had no spousal status. Its core lesson is that a kid raised by Lesbians in love is as normal as normal can be. Featured Excerpt “I’m sure this will be taken out of context, but whenever I wished for a dad, it wasn’t because I actually wanted or needed a dad, it was just so I could fit in. Sometimes in awkward situations I’d lie and tell people that my dad occasionally took me skiing, not because I was ashamed of my parents or had this fantasy where he’d swoop in and
save the day, but because, given the situation, a lie was simply less complicated than the truth. This wasn’t a rejection of my parents at all. My dishonesty simply flowed from my desire not to be teased or bullied because of how my family was composed. I’m not Gay, but I know how it feels to be in the closet.” —Zach Wahls, from My Two Moms BASEMENT OF WOLVES DANIEL ALLEN COX A past-his-prime actor who’s a nervous-tic bundle of all-consuming paranoia, a skater-boi with a penchant for concocting blends of toxic chemicals, and a volatile, nicotine-addicted film director scribbling a screenplay as his movie is being shot: Cox has a masterful way of building his novels around characters who are more arch archetype than banal stereotype. The actor is one-time superstar Michael-David, mired in the messed-up movie and losing his Hollywood mojo to more bankable performers; the kid is sexy young Tim, dipping into MichaelDavid’s wallet to fund his scientific forays; the director is Scientologyconnected Chris Culpepper, whose ill-fated film has something to do with wolves, a trombone, and killing Daddy. Their stories, set in the skanky world of Hollywood fame and misfortune, are recounted through Cox’s stylistically risky but scintillatingly successful shift between first-person narration and a free-floating omniscient overview, with prose that is sleek and concise, richly descriptive, and lusciously layered. The New York hustler of Shuck and the Polish pyromaniac of Krakow Melt were Queer outsiders; Michael-David is a man who has folded himself inward. TWELVE O’CLOCK TALES FELICE PICANO Think of Picano as a Queer literary renaissance man. He writes plays and screenplays, poetry and memoirs, sex manuals and sexy thrillers, historical novels and – this is his fourth collection – short stories. These 13, he notes in a preface, pay homage to writers he savored as a young man (and still reads) – the likes of Edgar Allen Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Saki, Algernon Blackwood, Walter de la Mare, and others of their dark, ghostly, eerie, and sometimes downright weird ilk. In that sense, Picano is also something of a literary chameleon – there are echoes of each of these writers and all of those sentiments in this solid collection. The first story, “Synapse,” is a creepily sciencefictional account of how an elderly man has come to inhabit a boy’s body; the last, “The Perfect Setting,” is a masterpiece of detection, wherein an obsessive narrator solves the mystery of a landscape see NEW TITLES page 10
Celebrating 38 Years!
LOOKING TO JOIN A COMMUNITY BASED LGBT AND ALLIED ORCHESTRA, BAND OR COLOR GUARD?
FIND US AT WWW.RAINBOWCITYBAND.COM OR EMAIL US AT INFO@RAINBOWCITYBAND.COM
Visit us online www.sgn.org
June 15, 2012
Seattle Gay News
5
Cleaning out Hoover’s enormous closet by Maggie Bloodstone SGN A&E Writer
J. EDGAR HOOVER & CLYDE TOLSON: INVESTIGATING THE SEXUAL SECRETS OF AMERICA’S MOST FAMOUS MEN AND WOMEN DARWIN PORTER Imagine having J. Edgar Hoover as a Facebook friend: he would probably go by “Mary Hoover,” and his avatar would be a classical Greek statue of a hunky discus thrower. Imagine Hoover in the age of the Internet, period. One would assume he’d be in hog heaven, what with the darkest secrets of everyone from trailer park hoi polloi to the Valhallas of political and cultural power just waiting to be hacked by some truly determined professional snoop. But after reading J. Edgar Hoover & Clyde Tolson, I think the nosy old queen would be miserable, as it certainly appears that his prime reason for living hinged on the fact that so many secrets about the rich, powerful, and notorious were his and his alone. He would no doubt be reduced to trolling gossip sites, injecting unfounded rumors into conversations, and then quickly fading back into the cyber-landscape. Of course, this is all conjecture. If Hoover had been able to be honest about
6
Seattle Gay News
his sexual identity, he might have turned out to be a halfway decent human being. But from Darwin Porter’s straightforward account of Hoover as a sad, spiteful, racist, misogynist, rabidly right-wing self-hater, I tend to doubt it. Hell, he very likely helped the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor simply because he disapproved of an American/Russian spy’s sex life. Whatta guy. Hoover’s life story is loaded with the tragedies suffered by any Gay person in deep denial and prone to right-wing politics. He developed a crush on a minister at the age of 5, later to moon over a strapping cadet named “Biff” at West Point. He debated against giving women the vote, and clothed himself in red-white-and-blue drag his entire life to distract his (many) enemies from suspecting that fellow G-man Clyde Tolson was more than just the Hoove’s right-hand man (if you’ll pardon the poorly veiled insinuation). His professional reputation, now it can be told, was the result of sheer, relentless hype, best demonstrated by his tragically inept handling of the Lindbergh kidnapping and the shameless truth-mangling of his role in the John Dillinger and Pretty Boy Floyd cases, to name only two that helped cement his image as top cop of the 1930s and ’40s. Later in his career, he would turn his attention to “seditionists” like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lennon, with no comsee HOOVER page 20
June 15, 2012
Celebrating 38 Years!
Visit us online www.sgn.org
June 15, 2012
Seattle Gay News
7
8
Seattle Gay News
June 15, 2012
Celebrating 38 Years!
by Jeremy Behrens SGN Contributing Writer
Ken O’Neill
GOO DRE ADS
THE MARRYING KIND KEN O’NEILL Recently, a number of celebrities have come out to show their support for marriage equality by vowing to not walk down the aisle until their Gay and Lesbian friends are allowed the same rights. Brad and Angelina, Jason Mraz, and even Full House alum Jodi Sweetin are thinking “how rude!” when it comes to federal and state governments denying rights to LGBT citizens. And let’s not forget the recent announcement by a West Hollywood Gay bar, The Abbey, that it is banning bachelorette parties until marriage is legal for everyone. It seems that nowadays, support for marriage equality is no longer just an LGBT community issue. People all over are speaking up and holding out for universal recognition of same-sex marriage rights. But what would happen if a nationwide wedding boycott took place? What if wedding planners stopped planning, caterers stopped catering, and hairdressers said no to any more wedding up-dos? In his promising debut novel, The Marrying Kind, Ken O’Neill explores this question in a narrative that is both comically mature and exceptionally heart-
warming. Wedding planner Adam More and his journalist boyfriend Steven have the perfect life: a wonderful home, a loving relationship, and even two “kids” (i.e., cats). But when Adam realizes his career is perpetuating an injustice and that his own
“dream” wedding might never be anything more than that, he decides it is time to stand up for his and Steven’s, as well as other LGBT
people’s, rights. Pushing for a general strike of wedding industry employees, as well as an attendance boycott of all weddings, Adam hopes to cause enough of an uproar to show everyone “We’re here, we’re Queer … and we just want to get married!” But when Steven and Adam’s siblings get engaged, more than the movement is at stake: the couple’s own relationship begins to crack under the pressure. O’Neill’s novel reads like the screenplay
for a smart, sassy, summer romcom (or what a smart, sassy, summer rom-com would look like if one actually existed). Adam and Steven bring a depth of character often missing from Gay fiction – they are more than flamboyant fashionistas trying to lose weight for swimsuit season. One can safely assume that much of what O’Neill writes about the pair comes from his own relationship with his partner. Adam is witty and kind of lazy, but ridiculously fun, while Steven balances out the relationship with his work-oriented lifestyle. Nightmares about Laura Bush calling to plan Jenna’s wedding? Yeah, there’s a workaholic. The story has excellent pacing, moving along quickly enough to keep the reader interested, but never so fast that it feels like O’Neill is attempting to gloss over a detail he didn’t want to think out. Supporting characters vary in quality – some are highly entertaining, while others seem either underdeveloped or stereotypical. With a major election season upon us, and Washington state’s marriage equality referendum in the national spotlight, The Marrying Kind couldn’t be more relevant. This lighthearted novel shows what our fight is really all about: love. O’Neill probably isn’t going to a Pulitzer with this first novel, but he has surely demonstrated that he is a talent to watch in the world of LGBT fiction.
e t o v o t RegisteR
www.myvote.wa.gov
Visit us online www.sgn.org
June 15, 2012
Seattle Gay News
9
NEW TITLES
continued from page 4 painter’s murder. Not a one of the stories is like any of the others – such is Picano’s wide-ranging imagination. What they have in common is their power and their polish. TRANSITIONS OF THE HEART: STORIES OF LOVE, STRUGGLE, AND ACCEPTANCE OF MOTHERS OF TRANSGENDER AND GENDER-VARIANT CHILDREN RACHEL PEPPER (Ed.) One of the contributors to this sometimes wrenching, often inspirational, and always instructive collection of Transgender-acceptance vignettes is an 80-year-old mother happy to finally be connecting with her son; another is a middle-aged Latina Lesbian unsure how her Catholic family will react to her child’s transition. Some of the stories are recounted with a non-writer’s awkwardness, while others are polished mini-essays. But what blazes brightly in each of these 32 pieces is how fiercely even the most initially reluctant or unsure of mothers comes to want what’s best for the daughter becoming a son or the son becoming a daughter – even as many confess they feel a sense of loss. Pepper has collated an invaluable resource for families confronted with the reality of a Trans child – what can possibly be more supportive for mothers than the testimony of their peers? But this collection deserves a wider audience than just parents, educators, and health-care professionals – its message that family love matters is universal, and its lay insights into the spectrum of gender-variant lives are eyeopening.
DAVID HOCKNEY, THE BIOGRAPHY, 1937-1975: A RAKE’S PROGRESS CHRISTOPHER SIMON SYKES Kudos to this first volume about famed British artist Hockney: the biography never shies away from addressing and assessing how central being Queer is to both his assuredly flamboyant life and his often-vividly homocentric art. How Queer? Hockney’s cheeky 1962 work, “Life Painting for a Diploma,” featured a beefcake model drawn from the muscle mag
dier amusement – is to die. That the two young soldiers fall in love is a given. But the majesty of Mann’s masterful storytelling is that he depicts their transformation – from dominant captor and submissive captive to a couple determined to realize their romantic destiny – with a sublime blend of accomplished research and intense S&M action. Elegant historical fiction meets orgasmic Queer prose in this nuanced (if predictable) novel.
quite a few of the models …” — Christopher Simon Sykes, from David Hockney PURGATORY: A NOVEL OF THE CIVIL WAR JEFF MANN Larry Townsend, Jack Fritscher, and John Preston, S&M literary masters (and Masters) of yore, have a worthy heir. First with Fog and now with this Civil War-set sec-
A QUEER AND PLEASANT DANGER: THE TRUE STORY OF A NICE JEWISH BOY WHO JOINS THE CHURCH OF SCIENTOLOGY AND LEAVES TWELVE YEARS LATER TO BECOME THE LOVELY LADY SHE IS TODAY KATE BORNSTEIN Back before she was Kate, a well-deserved genderqueer celebrity, he was oft-married Al. For more than a decade, through the 1970s, Bornstein – still seen as a handsome man by the world, but struggling with the woman within – was a committed Scientologist, first a crewman aboard founder L. Ron Hubbard’s Sea Organization flagship vessel and then a top salesman of the church’s cultish offerings. The author’s account of her Scientology years is both sobering and chilling, even more so when she reveals that she hasn’t been in touch with her daughter – now a high-level Sea Org official – for years, nor has she ever seen her two grandchildren, also Scientologists. Post-church, and “first a girl,” at 38, Bornstein writes about her Lesbian/feminist activism and her performance career, about integrating gender desire with real life, about her bouts of anorexia and “orgasmic” self-cutting and, with beguiling matter-offactness, about her passion for S&M. This memoir manages to be both wrenchingly transformative and luminously wondrous, a sumptuous literary combination.
Physique Pictorial. Sykes’ breezy take on the artist’s life is an engaging blend of chatty artist-as-ayoung(ish)-man anecdotes and cogent analysis of several of his career-making paintings, among them 1967’s “A Bigger Splash” and 1968’s “Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy.” The author’s overview of the artist’s art satisfies a need for critical (but never stuffy) analysis; his account of Hockney’s often-unsettled love life – particularly of his first real relationship with artist Peter Schlesinger, who was 18 when he enrolled in a UCLA class that Hockney, a decade his elder, was teaching – satisfies the standard of candor for a wellwrought biography. Volume One is an expansive, entertaining, illuminating, and lavishly illustrated half-a-life, heralding what is likely to be an equally authoritative Volume Two.
10 Seattle Gay News
June 15, 2012
Featured Excerpt “Ever since he had arrived in L.A., Hockney had been planning to pay a visit to the offices of AMG, the Athletic Model Guild, publisher of Physique Pictorial. He was intrigued by the fact that though many of the storylines were set indoors – in a bathroom, for example – there was often the strong shadow of a palm tree across the bath, suggesting that the pictures were in fact shot outside. He both wanted to see where this happened and to buy some of the photographs, so he took [John] Kasmin to the studios, on downtown 11th Street in a house which the founder of AMG, photographer Bob Mizer, shared with his mother. The city jail, situated close by, provided
ond novel, Mann – a prolific contributor to erotica anthologies as well as a profoundly sensuous poet and an elegantly personal essayist – merges deliciously erotic and decidedly literary writing with whiplash precision. The premise: young Confederate soldier Ian Campbell, slight but wiry and hiding a hankering for man-love, is tasked by his spiteful squad-commanding uncle with guarding captured Yankee Drew Conrad, a Herculean hunk whose tortured fate – after he’s been bound, gagged, whipped, bloodied, and near-starved for Rebel sol-
FUGITIVES OF LOVE LISA GIROLAMI When a romance’s story arc is preordained – Lesbian One and Lesbian Two, despite impediments, are destined to be together – the reason to read the story stems from twists in its plot and a distinctive setting. Girolami’s fifth novel attains both those goals nicely. Lesbian One is art gallery owner Brenna Wright, once-bitten by love and now relationship-shy, committed to her gallery’s success to the exclusion of anything like a personal life. Lesbian Two is Sinclair Grady, a reclusive creator of sea-polished glass art eschewing the possibility of love while shielding a horrific past. When Brenna spots one of Sinclair’s pieces hanging in a Manhattan window, she’s determined to track her down for a show. But when gallerist meets artist, more than art appreciation ensues – both women get past their romantic inhibitions and, for a while, revel in uninhibited sex, until Sinclair’s past intrudes. Cue a truth-telling reveal, a loutish stepbrother, and a pushy but effective attorney, and, hey, the impediment to true love is vanquished in this slight but seductive tale. I MUST RESIST: BAYARD RUSTIN’S LIFE IN LETTERS MICHAEL G. LONG (Ed.) It’s not until the last couple of chapters in this collection of 150 letters from him, and several dozen to him, that Bayard Rustin, an impassioned pacifist and activist for civil rights and against injustice of all stripes, emerges as a mildly activist Gay man – for example, by writing letters in the mid-1980s to the New York City Council in support of Gay rights. He was Gay in an era of homophobia, and when younger was convicted of lewd conduct, the political repercussions of which are detailed in a number of letters in the chapter titled, tellingly, “For me, sex must be sublimated.” That said, “Gay” is a small facet of Rustin’s behind-the-scenes but nonetheless inspirational life, a deep commitment to the movement for social justice detailed in correspondence culled with care by editor Long, who also provides scene-setting historical and cultural annotations. Collected from more than four decades of Rustin’s life, these letters are a reminder of how much difference one man can make. Richard Labonte has been reading, editing, selling, and writing about Queer literature since the mid-’70s. He can be reached in care of SGN or at BookMarks@qsyndicate.com.
Celebrating 38 Years!
Downtown Harley-Davidson
Free Demo Rides! downtownharley.com
Visit us online www.sgn.org
June 15, 2012
Seattle Gay News 11
12 Seattle Gay News
June 15, 2012
Celebrating 38 Years!
Roini Wadhwani, ARNP Offering holistic healthcare to Seattle’s LGBT Community • Annual check-ups and primary care • STD diagnosis and management • Hormone therapy for persons in transition
All major insurance plans accepted 206-525-8015 5312 Roosevelt Way NE Seattle, WA 98105 theuhc.com
Visit us online www.sgn.org
June 15, 2012
Seattle Gay News 13
Five summer reads for enhancing your pride
by Jeremy Behrens SGN Contributing Writer
our own state in the throes of a momentous fight for marriage equality, Gay Power: An American Revolution is essential reading for anyone supporting the cause.
With all the parties, the parades, the shirtless men, and the copious amounts of glitter and booze that characterize Pride season, it’s not easy to find time to pick up a book. But that leaves another eleven months to discover and celebrate the many facets of our colorful and unique community. There is something for everyone on this list, so whether you are a history buff or a fantasy freak, we’ve got you covered. Not all these books are literary milestones, but they are a representation of good material across genres. Whether for entertainment or enlightenment, these books are sure to instill a sense of pride in their readers.
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY OSCAR WILDE A good book should make the
AND THE BAND PLAYED ON: POLITICS, PEOPLE, AND THE AIDS EPIDEMIC RANDY SHILTS While perhaps a little dated, Shilts’ journalistic investigation into the discovery and spread of HIV/ AIDS in the 1980s is still an eyeopening reminder of how far our community has come. A thrilling narrative full of political intrigue, community divisiveness, and heartbreaking loss, And the Band Played On is a pivotal literary milestone and an honest and captivating reminder of just what makes us a community.
name thanks to Sean Penn’s portrayal of him in the award-winning 2008 biopic. However, Milk was just one of a number of important figures in the Gay liberation movement of the 1960s and ’70s. In this book, Eisenbach reaches back to the start of the Gay rights movement, before the Stonewall riots and before the Castro District became the vibrant hub it is today. From the GAY POWER: very first Gay student group at Columbia AN AMERICAN University to the “zap” protest tactics of REVOLUTION ACT UP, Eisenbach gives us first-hand acDAVID EISENBACH counts of historical turning points in the In 2012, Harvey Milk is a household history of the Gay rights movement. With
14 Seattle Gay News
June 15, 2012
reader reflect on his or her own life and decisions, and in a community where beauty is so many people’s top concern, a gentle reminder that looks aren’t everything is oc-
casionally necessary. Alleged homosexual Wilde’s only novel is a gothic tale of doomed narcissism and self-involvement. In an effort to preserve his youthful appearance, Dorian Gray sells his soul to remain as beautiful as a portrait that was painted of him, allowing the image in the portrait to age in his stead. Faustian in nature, The Picture of Dorian Gray is a fictional illustration of the darker side of pride and just how far some are willing to go to achieve everlasting beauty. A classic through and through, Wilde’s dark novel is sure to be different from anything you have read recently. WHY ARE FAGGOTS SO AFRAID OF FAGGOTS? MATTILDA BERNSTEIN SYCAMORE (Ed.) In Sycamore’s collection of essays, LGBTQ writers uncover the various ways our community divides itself. Whether it is the older vs. younger generation, the white ideal that permeates how Gay men view their bodies, the top/bottom argument, and even the way the community defines feminine and masculine, our own community, despite our best intentions, can be our worst enemy. From Gay to Lesbian to Trans to Queer, the essays in this book encompass every facet of our community, the good and the bad. Sycamore has put together a strong compilation of essays that reveal the discrimination inside the Gay world. She is
Celebrating 38 Years!
also a new Seattleite, so what better way to welcome her than to pick up a copy! HERO PERRY MOORE Comic-book superheroes today are coming out of the closet faster than the charge of a pissed-off drag queen. However, back in 2007, young-adult author Perry Moore was the one of the first to pen a story about a super-homo. Written in response to Marvel Comics’ killing of Gay superhero North-
star, Hero follows Thom Creed, a high school basketball star and son of a superhero couple, coming into his powers at the same time he is coming out. Although the book received mixed reviews when it was first published, Moore’s Lambda Literary Award-winning Hero put the spotlight on the Gay fantasy genre and, despite some flat characterizations, broke the mold of the “typical” Gay teen in LGBTQ literature. A funny and original coming-out story, Hero is a great light read for the summer season.
Visit us online www.sgn.org
June 15, 2012
Seattle Gay News 15
Broadway
Farmers Market 16 Seattle Gay News
June 15, 2012
Broadway & E. Pine at Seattle Central Community College Sundays, 11am - 3pm, April 22 - Dec 23. Celebrating 38 Years!
Visit us online www.sgn.org
June 15, 2012
Seattle Gay News 17
Now it’s Mom’s turn Six years after Fun Home, Alison Bechdel shares more family secrets by John R. Killacky Special to the SGN ARE YOU MY MOTHER? A COMIC DRAMA ALISON BECHDEL For three decades, Alison Bechdel has been challenging and transforming aesthetic boundaries – first as a Lesbian whose comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For was widely syndicated for 25 years, and then as an award-winning graphic novelist with Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic. Time magazine named it the Best Book of 2006 and it was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award. This groundbreaking graphic memoir literally and figuratively drew us into Bechdel’s dysfunctional family, particularly her relationship with her father – a stern, obsessive man who was a high-school English teacher and ran a funeral home. It was not until she was in college and came out as a Lesbian that she discovered her father was a closeted Gay man. After only one conversation between them about their shared identity, a few weeks later he committed suicide.
18 Seattle Gay News
Bechdel’s journal became an international literary sensation, a bestseller that also had people calling for it to be banned
in public libraries. The work was game-changing for the genre, as Bechdel disrupted the primarily male and straight pantheon of comic literature with
June 15, 2012
her unabashedly Queer sensibility. Her book was virtuosic, ingenious in its visual construction and literary execution, demonstrating that graphic novels are not solely the domain of youth. Now Bechdel returns with a new graphic work, Are You My Mother? A Comic Drama, filling in the back story of her tumultuous family, but now with her mother at center stage. The journey is both poignant and hilarious as Bechdel excavates memories
to forge emotional connections with her aloof and distant parent, as their Electra complex is played out and she seeks reconciliation and resolution. Bechdel looks back and tries to both understand and distinguish herself from her mother, drawing from photographs, early diary entries, letters, sketches, and transcriptions of present-day phone conversations. She has been obsessively journaling her life since she was 10, so she had ample material to work with.
Celebrating 38 Years!
Living with a closeted husband and raising three children took its toll. At age seven, Bechdel was told by her mother that she was too old to be kissed goodnight any longer, and that her two brothers were more valued than she. Her emotionally estranged parent was most alive and joyful outside the home, acting in community theater productions. Non-linear and recursive, scenes shift back and forth in time and are replayed over and over from multiple points of view. Literary references abound: Virginia Woolf’s diaries are juxtaposed throughout, as well as psychobabble from Sigmund Freud, Donald Winnicott, and Alice Miller, along with Bechdel’s own therapy sessions with analysts. Her signature drawing style, honed over
decades of creating comic strips, is precise, uncluttered, and forthrightly direct – extremely effective in helping to detail emotions and story. Each frame adds nuance and detail, propelling the narrative forward and enhancing the text. It is lovely to see familiar characters from Dykes to Watch Out For chronicles reappear in this memoir, as well as scenes from her father’s tale, now portrayed from a different perspective. In her inimitable style as a graphic alchemist, Bechdel has created another audacious book – insightful, engrossing, entertaining, and courageous. Throughout she dares herself to begin and begin again, challenging herself to stop “writing around something.” As scenes are revisited, more information is teased out and feelings are
ever more intimately exposed. However, the dialectics in this motherdaughter saga are not solely focused on doom and gloom, shame and blame – there is also much humor here. Bechdel’s firstperson narrator is continually tripping herself up with anxiety and self-doubting neurosis, complicating many of the situations in her fraught maternal relationship. While the child within may not be sated in the resolving tableaus, Bechdel recognizes that her mother did indeed give her “a way out” to become the gifted artist she is today. A version of this article originally appeared in The St. Louis Beacon (www.stlbeacon.org) and is reprinted here by permission.
Bill Frisell: All We Are Saying... The Music of John Lennon June 14-17
Seattle’s Own World Class Guitarist Exploring the Music of John Lennon
Benny Green Trio June 19-20
Heralded Master of Hard-Bop Jazz Piano Touring in Support of New Release SOURCE
SPECTRUM ROAD Jack Bruce, Vernon Reid, John Medeski and Cindy Blackman-Santana
June 21-24
All-Star Jazz + Rock + Blues
THE COOKERS
featuring Billy Harper, Eddie Henderson, David Weiss, George Cables, Cecil McBee and Billy Hart
June 26-27
Hard-Bop Jazz Supergroup touring in Support of their new release BELIEVE!!
Diane Schuur June 28July 1 Two-Time Grammy Award Winner The NEW First Lady of Jazz!
ON SALE NOW! Kenny Lattimore July 17 – 18 Béla Fleck & the Marcus Roberts Trio September 6 – 9 WALK-INS WELCOME
Visit us online www.sgn.org
June 15, 2012
Seattle Gay News 19
VICTORY
continued from the cover are as good as you.” In the wake of the historic Stonewall Rebellion, which put the LGBT community on the country’s cognitive map, “The Gay movement was stuck with two choices,” Hirshman writes. “They could ask society to ignore or tolerate their behavior, immoral or not, in the interests of higher values like freedom or privacy.” Or they could assert – along with activist Frank Kameny, who coined the phrase – that “Gay is good.” The moral certainty underlying that assertion – “Gay is good” – undoubtedly helped sustain generations of LGBT activists through even the darkest days of the movement, just as Hirshman writes. And if that affirmation is at the core of the LGBT movement’s aims, then certainly the movement has won, at least in the perception of a growing majority of our fellow citizens – especially those under 50. That certainty, Hirshman says, also led the LGBT movement to make an additional claim: that we have something to teach our straight friends. Hirshman quotes from A Gay Manifesto, written by SDS activist Carl Wittman in 1970. “We have to learn that our loving each other is a good thing, not an unfortunate thing, and that we have a lot to teach straights about sex, love, strength, and resistance,” Wittman wrote. The exemplary role of the LGBT movement advanced and was consolidated in the 1980s, Hirshman says, in what she calls “the terrible political payoff of AIDS.” “The AIDS movement was an inspiration for every progressive social movement of the next quarter-century, including – after the worst of the epidemic was over for the Gay community – the revival of the Gay movement itself,” she writes. “Fueled by its moral ambition,” Hirshman says, the movement not only claimed space for Gay men and Lesbians, but tried to “wrench society … onto a different path,” making a real “revolution” in social perceptions and relationships. But this is a misunderstanding of what activists were up to. While wrenching society onto a different path was certainly the intention of a number of LGBT activists, particularly those in ACT UP, their intentions
20 Seattle Gay News
June 15, 2012
were fueled more by the imperatives of the AIDS epidemic – people were dying – than by “moral ambition.” While straight people might have seen AIDS activism as a moral appeal for help, the objectives of ACT UP were intensely practical. And, while the moral appeal of AIDS activism was successful in winning recognition and funding, and in creating institutions, that result has hardly been revolutionary. In fact, the LGBT movement is almost a victim of its own success, characterized more by bureaucratic organizations and coopted leadership than by revolutionary zeal. Claiming that “Gay is good” inevitably led to pressure to be good, as defined by the dominant culture to whom the claim was addressed – in other words, to assimilate. “We are as good as you” became, in many ways, “We are the same as you.” This is a conclusion that would have horrified the pioneers of the movement, and they would in no way see it as a victory. Harry Hay, founder of the proto-Gay Mattachine Society in the 1950s, wanted to “be respected for our differences, not for our sameness to heterosexuals.” It is also a conclusion that leaves out many people in the LGBT community – especially gender-nonconforming people, immigrants, and people of color – who have the greatest difficulty assimilating to the dominant culture. In the end, Hirshman has written a valuable book. But it is more valuable for the questions it raises than for the answers it claims to give.
HOOVER
continued from page 6 punctions about fabricating evidence and tapping private phones. The Communist regime he so loathed would have been livid with envy at his expertise and utter shamelessness in invading the privacy of others in the name of national security. Hoover’s Gayness and transvestism is common knowledge these days, but Porter, as he has demonstrated in his previous tomes on Hollywood and D.C. celebs of the gone-but-not-quite-forgotten past, has managed to dig even deeper, uncovering dirt too bizarre not to be true, such as Hoover’s tryst with Errol Flynn, his chumminess with Nixon confidante Bebe Rebozo, his sharing of a male hustler with Cardinal Francis
Celebrating 38 Years!
“Nellie” Spellman … and that’s just barely scratching the surface. At the same time Hoover was swanning around in cocktail dresses at parties hosted by fellow closetmate Roy Cohn, he was keeping files on the supposed bisexual activities of King, Elvis (!), and Charlton Heston (!!). This was when he wasn’t frolicking with preteen boys at a Texas oilman/softcore pornographer’s L.A. home. Too much? … You think? In a time of social media and knowing what we now know about the corridors – and closets – of power, would anyone really be all that shocked at some of the more credibility-stretching revelations Porter delineates in J. Edgar (as well as his other books)? This book should serve as a cautionary tale against the potential evils of the closet, and just how destructive one person unable – or unwilling – to be real about his or her true self can be. (Rick Santorum, I’m looking at you.) Despite the grime and deliciousness of the dirty laundry aired in J. Edgar, Porter never feels the need to judge or pontificate. He simply states the facts, “just the facts, ma’am,” in a detailed and objective manner, but one that is readable enough to keep anyone turning the pages. He even includes a few sweet moments – no, really – such as Hoover and Tolson holding hands (under the table, of course) at their favorite stomping grounds, the Stork Club. Fellow Stork habi-
tué Dorothy Lamour agreed to be Hoover’s highly unlikely beard for a time, and Ethel Merman was often Hoover’s shopping buddy. Hell, if I could have ignored the fact that he was a duplicitous, power-hungry, cryptofascist closet case, I might have even hung out with him and his husband back in the day. Darwin manages to paint an almost sympathetic portrait of a devoted pair of old-school queens in these segments, but the skeletons in Hoover’s closet are never far away. Darwin digresses from Hoover’s story later in the book to expand on the Kennedys, MLK, et al., of whom much has already been said in his other books like last year’s scorching The Kennedys, but which is necessary here to fully appreciate the tangled webs of Hoover’s life and times. The section on the overlooked roles of Gay espionage agents in World War II is worthy of a book alone. J. Edgar & Clyde Tolson is (naturally) down-and-dirtier than Clint Eastwood’s film version, which was no love letter itself but, due to Leonardo DiCaprio’s fine portrayal alone, may have given Hoover more credit for humanity than he actually possessed in real life. He was a hot mess, no question, but a fascinating psychological subject and an excellent example of suppression turned outward – never more relevant than it is in these days of abused power and obsession with other people’s lives.
Visit us online www.sgn.org
June 15, 2012
Seattle Gay News 21
by James Whitely SGN Staff Writer BLOODLINES MARCUS JAMES Bloodlines, the fourth novel by Seattle author Marcus James, to be released early next month, is a vampire novel that not only explores what it means to be a Gay teen, with all its unrequited love, loneliness, and bullying, but also looks into what life as a Gay vampire might be like, in a way that really hasn’t been done before. Conceivably, Bloodlines could be touted as the Gay Twilight, an idea James is wary of. “It would be too simple for people to say that this is the Gay Twilight. I understand that because it’s set in Bellingham, Washington, and it’s about teen vampires [so] people could make that connection – but the only humans in Bloodlines are food, and there are no ‘vegetarian’ vampires,” James told SGN. “At the heart of it,” added James. “Vampires are killers. They’re monsters.” “I wrote Bloodlines in July of 2007, two months after a friend of mine killed himself because he was Gay,” James said. The story’s protagonist, Talbot, is a Gay teenager who decides to end his life because of the bullying he faces. However, just after his death, Talbot awakens into a new world, with new eyes to see it. He is a vampire – a killer and a monster – but psychologically he’s still a troubled Gay kid. “Originally, I had no intention of writing about that at all. I was at a place where I just needed to write something and I got fascinated by the idea of raising the question that if a vampire existed, how could that be scientifically possible?” said James. To find the answer, the longtime Anne Rice fan gave himself a crash course in biology and studied vampire lore from around the globe. All his research culminated in an impressive and well-thoughtout plot. “Vampires tap into a part of the human psyche that intrigues us and terrifies us. The vampire is the symbol of temptation, lust, cunning acts, and primal urges. Whenever we go to bars, clubs, or even coffee shops hoping to catch the eye of another person, we are committing the act of hunting right then and there. We relate to vampires as a society, because in a lot of ways, the vampire is the most extreme aspect of our own nature,” said James. Of his identity as a Gay man and as a writer, James said they’re “one and the same.” “Writing is what allowed me to explore being Gay,” James told SGN. “And what it meant to be a Gay person in this world.” And it’s evident in Bloodlines. All the main characters are Gay and deal with problems not just unique to being a vampire, but to being a Gay vampire. These aren’t the disarming, Casanova-esque vampires we so often see – they still have
22 Seattle Gay News
June 15, 2012
much of their human baggage. “What I thought about in terms of Amelia and Talbot and this whole thing, is that just because you’re a vampire doesn’t mean you’re suddenly going to no long e r
have all those same feelings, hangups, etc., just because now you’re this being. That’s why they’re not wearing elaborate clothes or suddenly purposefully speaking as if they are from another time, or trying to fit into a mold,” said James. “They don’t suddenly stop being themselves just because they are vampires. “[When] I wrote Bloodlines … I had no idea that it would one day become horribly relevant, that it would find its place among today’s youth because of its most underlining fact – that Talbot’s journey into self-discovery, his existence as a vampire, why there is this book – is because Talbot took his own life due to the torment he suffered at the hands of his peers. “I thought Bloodlines would finally have a chance because of all the subsequent resurgence [of interest] in vampires, and that that’s what would make it appealing to publishers and to readers. But as always, the vampire’s appeal is that it’s a metaphor for ourselves – only this time what makes Bloodlines relevant, what gives it its chance in the literary sphere, is something that is not a metaphor at all. It’s about a Gay teen who can’t deal with the isolation, the hate, the torture, the brutality, and the cruelty of his classmates and decides to check out because he doesn’t want to live as a young Gay person,” said James. “I wanted to write about it, not just the act itself, but what comes after, if something could exist after it, what would be the regrets, the take-backs, and the do-overs? They were questions that had plagued me for most of my life. Having been a person who had attempted suicide, and as someone who has had people close to me kill themselves, it was something I needed to deal with, something I needed to extract from myself.” James is the author of Following the Kaehees, Blackmoore, In God’s Eyes,
Celebrating 38 Years!
and 15 short stories, predominantly erotica. Bloodlines features a few crossovers from James’ previous book, Blackmoore, which is also set in Bellingham, where James spent some of his youth. Bloodlines will attract Gay teens and adults alike, as well as anyone interested in the vampire phenomenon. The book will be available in paperback and on Amazon’s Kindle, and is currently available for pre-order through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. A portion of the proceeds from each copy sold will go to the Self-Worth Project, created by San Francisco photographer Tommy Corey. “There are hundreds of vampire books out there that are just plain bad,” says James. “It’s not that people are suddenly ‘over’ the vampire, it’s that the public is simply waiting for something great to come along and rip their throats out, so to speak. It takes works that stand out and do something different to capture the imagination, the attention, and the minds of the public. “With Bloodlines we see something that hasn’t really been done before, which is to tap directly into the vein of the Gay community – to speak about issues that are relatable to young Queer people and older Queer people who have spent a lifetime going back and forth, superimposing themselves on the main characters to find a way to relate to the story. Bloodlines is still universal, but now, for once, Queer readers won’t have to do any translating. And that, along with other themes in the story, is what sets Bloodlines apart.”
e t o v o t RegisteR
www.myvote.wa.gov
Visit us online www.sgn.org
June 15, 2012
Seattle Gay News 23
24 Seattle Gay News
June 15, 2012
Celebrating 38 Years!