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WC72 – Jim Van Buskirk

April 23, 2007 Editors Leave a comment

Wish Upon a Star
By James Van Buskirk

I don’t remember exactly how old I was when my father gave me a little plastic Jiminy Cricket mini-puppet, only that I was too old to play with such a silly toy. Another inappropriate gift, I thought, in a series of paternal offerings that continually failed to acknowledge who I really was. But I couldn’t help myself. Again and again I absent-mindedly punched the base of the puppet’s plastic platform to watch the limbs of the dapper cricket collapse and then realign. For some reason I kept the toy. My identification with the character seemed to symbolize something.

Perhaps I remembered that Jiminy Cricket had been assigned by the Blue Fairy to be the conscience of Pinocchio, at least in the Walt Disney version of the story. In that animated film, the cricket, who had lived in the wood carver’s house for over 100 years, accompanies Pinocchio through his journey to the discovery of the values that allow him to become a real boy. I guess I’d conveniently forgotten, as Disney seemed to have, that early in the original Carlo Collodi story, Pinocchio smashes the nameless insect against the wall, and that is the end of the character.

As a kid in the pastel, post-war suburb of Buena Park, a few miles from Disneyland, I felt estranged not only from my own family, but also from the neighborhood kids and from my schoolmates. My alienation propelled me to escape into a world of books and movies. As a boy I was different, and even though I didn’t yet know that that difference meant Gay, I knew to keep my heart’s desires carefully hidden. I took the lyrics of Jiminy Cricket’s song to heart, dreaming that he was singing his words of wisdom to me. “When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are, anything your heart desires, will come to you. If your heart is in your dreams, no request is too extreme.”

Pinocchio was not the only film that starred Jiminy Cricket. He appeared in a fire prevention film that I was forced to sit through annually in the cafetorium of Buena Terra Elementary School. After each safety instruction, he would dance and sing, “I’m no fool, nosiree, I’m gonna live to be a seventy three, “and then”…eighty three,” until finally “a hundred and three!” I may have rolled my eyes, but this odd creature and his worldly advice stuck in my psyche. His morning coat, top hat and spats represented sophistication and self-possession. I wanted to be just like him.

Later, listening to songs from the Pinocchio soundtrack album I recognized Jiminy’s voice as that of Cliff Edwards. Known as “Ukulele Ike,” Edwards was a British vaudevillian who from 1929 to 1968 worked on stage, screen and as a singer. I was fascinated that in 1933, seven years before Pinocchio, he had recorded a novelty number called “Come Up and See Me Sometime.” Its suggestive lyrics and campy delivery à la Mae West made me wonder if Cliff Edwards might have been Gay. This thought was encouraged by the fey portrait of him in a book of character actors I once found, despite the fact that he was listed as being twice divorced.

Edwards, it turns out, is buried at Valhalla Memorial Park in Burbank, near the Disney studios, a fact I uncovered on my last trip there to visit my grandmother’s grave. This odd coincidence also made me realize that my father’s name, Edward Riley, and my name, James Edward, together makes us “Edwards.”

When I became lovers with Rob, he willingly played Pinocchio to my Jiminy Cricket. During a visit to Los Angeles, where I was born, we stumbled into “Fantasies Come True,” a shop of Disney collectibles on Melrose Avenue. This mini-museum of Disneyana was familiar from my many visits to the amusement park. Each birthday my brother and I had been offered the choice of a party or a trip to Disneyland. We negotiated so that one of us would choose the party and the other the trip, thus always ensuring at least one annual visit to the Magic Kingdom. Each visit concluded with a trip to the emporium on Main Street where we got to select a small souvenir from among the many Disney tchotchkes.

Here on Melrose, there were Mickeys and Donalds and Sleeping Beauties and Cinderellas. Far fewer were the Jiminies and Pinocchios from which Rob and I purchased appropriate presents for each other. Over the years I collected a placemat, a candle, two music boxes, a plush toy. I had top-hatted crickets of glass, plastic, lead, metal, ceramic. Friends continue to feed my fixation by offering Jiminy cards and gifts.
One Halloween Rob and I made quite a pair as Pinocchio and Jiminy: In a feathered cap, short pants, big bow tie and vest, Rob carried books and an apple. A long plastic nose completed his elfin look. As his loyal conscience, my spats, umbrella, and top hat set off my green-tinted skin. Somewhere a Polaroid photograph preserves the memory of our costumes’ success.

After years of unconsciously assembling these disparate pieces of a puzzle, I noticed several queer artists also deconstructing the Pinocchio story. What is it about this tale that Gay men relate to? Is it the sense that because we feel we are not “real” boys, we are willing to do anything to become real? I tried to apply Jungian archetypes to the story’s characters but got bogged down trying to distinguish the hero from the trickster from the shadow self. Perhaps Jiminy Cricket was a surrogate parent who provided moral guidance, as the Blue Fairy asked him to, but his message was: “Woe to those who revolt against their parents and run away from home. Sooner or later they will repent bitterly.”

My experience has been just the opposite. Over twenty-five years ago I put my heart in my dreams by moving to San Francisco and coming out as a Gay man. Although I physically “ran away” from home many years ago, I am still trying to psychically escape those internalized messages. I spent much of my life trying to be a “good” boy, maintaining the myths of the family, denying my feelings. Revolting against my parents has had a surprisingly profound liberating effect on me. Rather than repenting bitterly, I wish I’d had the courage to do this long ago. It was only after decoding the messages of my family during years of therapy that I have started becoming a “real” boy.

Now, my father has died, Rob and I are no longer lovers. My Jiminy Cricket puppet sits atop my desk reminding me of the wish upon a star. Suddenly I realize it wasn’t that I wanted to be Jiminy Cricket; I wanted Jiminy Cricket. I wanted someone to support and guide and love the real boy that was me. Slowly it dawns on me, my wish is coming true.

Jim Van Buskirk is the Program Director of the James C. Hormel Gay & Lesbian Center of the San Francisco Public Library. This is his first contribution to White Crane. He can be reached at jvanbuskirk@sfpl.org

WC72 - Cinema

WC72 – Donald Boisvert

April 23, 2007 Editors Leave a comment

Gay Celluloid Markings
By Donald L. Boisvert

Movies can mark, in a powerfully visual way, the major transitions or passages in one’s life. Like an old song, seeing them again, or simply conjuring up their names, makes us think of “where we were” at that particular moment in our lives. We do see ourselves reflected in movies, and their stories or characters, real or imagined, often linger in our adult memories and lives. Movies are like a mirror reflecting ourselves, a painting rich with melded colors, a love letter sealed with the kiss of our youth. They compel and define us, sometimes daring us, more often simply opening up our lives to a different way of seeing and feeling. Movies can be prophetic; they condition our lives. This has been the case for me, and a number of specific films have marked my Gay life.

My earliest such memory is Walt Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. I must have been seven or eight years old. I recall sitting in the very back of the theatre and watching the whole thing, wide-eyed, twice in a row. I don’t recall precisely what it was that so awed me. It could have been the rich color of the production, or the very diabolical looking larger-than-life bad queen, or perhaps it was the sheer romance of the whole thing, or even my own inchoate fantasy of wanting to be awoken from a long sleep by a brave and handsome prince. I suspect it may have had a great deal to do with my best friend Edward sitting next to me in the dark. Perhaps his body was leaning ever so lightly on mine. I really don’t recall. I do remember that there was a considerably older usher who smiled at me attractively. Perhaps he was the one who leaned his princely body into mine. Perhaps, like the sleeping princess, I wanted him to carry me away to live with him happily ever after in the enchanted forest. We would have the seven dwarfs as our neighbors, and Pinocchio and Peter Pan would come for dinner parties, and we would all make believe we were asleep so we could be kissed awake by elegant passing princes.

A few years later, I found myself in a different country. Our local church would organize Saturday afternoon film screenings for the kids in the parish. Because I was an altar boy, I would often be asked to serve as prefect to help keep a room full of hormone-crazed boys in some semblance of order. They showed a series of chintzy French films depicting the travels and adventures of Sinbad the Sailor. Sinbad was an often semi-clad, slightly Middle Eastern swarthy-looking muscular character, who spent most of his time swinging from ropes and fighting off nasty pirates. I was in love. He no doubt appealed to my need for adventure, though his brawny body was definitely an added bonus. The church auditorium itself was a turn-on: all those preening and rambunctious boys oozing a slight aroma of spent bodily fluids. I imagined all of us as traveling with Sinbad on his white-sailed ship: fighting and cavorting, laughing and loving, happy as only carefree and dirty boys together can be. But I would be in charge: forcing these wild teenage sailors to obey my commands and fulfill my every wish. They would no doubt rebel, but that was the secret thrill of it. We all knew resistance could only sharpen desire.

Fast forward several years when, as a young adult and a seminarian, at the tail end of that gloriously mad decade of the 1960s, I saw Midnight Cowboy, no doubt one of the truly great films of all times. So much has stuck with me: the clumsy charm and cocky daring of Jon Voight’s cowboy persona, the brilliant montage of Dustin Hoffman’s Ratso, the exotic and slightly repelling underbelly of New York City depicted as a modern-day version of Dante’s Inferno, the unspoken, yet brave love between the two male characters. As with many others, I saw in this film a contemporary parable. Yet the film opened up other vistas, most having to do with the forces then pulling at me. Here I witnessed sex as a hunger and desperate need, and as a source of power and money. On the screen was reaffirmed my conviction that affection between men was a good and noble thing. In my church-induced religious idealism, I saw Ratso as a Christ figure, dying to save his friend from physical and spiritual perdition. Only months after first seeing the movie, I actually found myself living in New York for an entire summer. It was here that I experienced the first real doubts about my vocation. It was as though the Cowboy had cast a spell over me, gently forcing my head onto his lap, giving me what I had always craved. I had yet to realize that I would have to pay him for the privilege.

That very same New York summer, I was hit full-faced by the glorious and stylish bitchiness of The Boys in the Band. Some may argue that the film is homophobic, laced through as it is with Gay self-loathing. There is a measure of truth to this assertion. But for an 18-year-old who had never really been away from the closed world of the seminary, and who knew, deep-down, that he was what he was, this unusual movie came as a liberating force, compelling me to look at, and secretly long for, the campy fun and good times that the boys on the screen were obviously having. Boys gave me my first vicarious taste of Gay life. It seemed to be a life full of witty and sparkling repartee, of handsome men in tight shirts and even tighter pants, and of intimate dinner parties where alcohol flowed desperately freely — not really all that far off from what Gay lives in the 70s turned out to be like, at least for some of us. The film also told me that I was part of a privileged group with its own codes and habits, that there were men out there who truly enjoyed being with each other, and that, though difficult, we could still arrive at some way of living with ourselves and with each other. All in all, this was not such a bad life lesson to be taught, to say nothing of the memorable one-liners that I have overused at many a glittering dinner party.

Donald L. Boisvert has published several books and articles on Gay spirituality. He is a frequent contributor to White Crane and lives in Montréal, where he teaches religion and sexuality studies.

WC72 - Cinema

WC72 – In Memoriam Barbara Gittings & Ralph Walker

April 23, 2007 Editors Leave a comment

Barbara Gittings July 31, 1932 – February 18, 2007

An Appreciation by David Carter

It was a short while ago in historical terms that if a teenager who felt she might be lesbian bought a novel about lesbians and her father found the book, he could feel it such a terrible thing that he could not bring himself to speak about it to his daughter but would instead write a letter — even though they lived under the same roof — instructing her to get rid of the novel. He might even say that the novel must not be discarded, for then the evil pages might fall into the hands of another: the book must be burned! Such a teenager might then go seek information in libraries but find only subject headings such as “sexual perversion” and “abnormal psychology.” Finally, the youth, though qualified for membership in an honor society, could be rejected on grounds of “character” on the mere suspicion that she was attracted to other girls.

That we no longer live in such a society is in some part due to all of the above having happened not to a fictional girl but to Barbara Gittings, who then went on to dedicate her life to fighting for the rights and dignity of lesbians and gay men.

She founded the first East Coast branch of the Daughters of Bilitis, America’s first national lesbian organization, and edited the organization’s magazine, The Ladder. She used her editorship to try to push for a more militant stance as well as a more positive and visible image of lesbians, which resulted in her being fired as editor. She took part in the earliest gay pickets from 1965 to 1969 and later became active in the Gay Activists Alliance, an organization her lover, Kay Tobin Lahusen, helped found. She assisted her colleague Frank Kameny in challenging the Defense Department’s efforts to revoke security clearances held by gay people in private industry. She and Lili Vincenz were the first lesbians to appear on a nationally syndicated TV show. Gittings also played a key role in challenging the American Psychiatric Association, which classified homosexuality as a mental illness. She became a leader in the American Library Association Gay Task Force and helped change the way libraries treated gay books. She was on the first boards of both the National Gay Task Force and the Gay Rights National Lobby (the forerunner of the Human Rights Campaign).

She did all this and much more while living on low-paying clerical jobs. More impressively, she was a most sweet and loving lady and remained deeply humble even at the end of her life when organizations competed to honor her and name awards after her. No wonder that Frank Kameny called her the “Founding Mother” of the gay movement and after her death wrote that she was “one of a kind in my own life,” and Arthur Evans said, “She was one of the most decent people I’ve ever known. She brought out the best in everyone.”

Truly, Barbara, we will not see your like again.

Ralph Walker May 27, 1919 – January 6, 2007

An Appreciation by Sunfire

Retreats at Easton Mountain, typically begin and end with a circle. I can’t count the number of circles I’ve been part of there, but I do know where and when I participated in my first circle of Gay men. It was in the winter of 1980, at the Barn, which was the home of Ralph Walker, the founder of The Loving Brotherhood.
I had joined that organization a few months before, and I came to The Barn not knowing whether to expect a prayer meeting or an orgy. I found a bit of both. I also found in Ralph, a man committed to a spiritual life, though not always sure of the direction his spiritual life was taking.

Ralph introduced me to A Course in Miracles, but that was just one of the ways he fostered my spiritual growth. By bringing together Gay men with a passion for a spiritual life, he showed us all what was possible.

For about twenty-five years, Ralph edited and published the organization’s monthly journal, often folding and mailing all the copies himself. For many Gay men, his voice was one of the few voices telling us that we as Gay men could have spiritual lives — lives rich in meaning and connected to the Divine.
Ralph Walker does not leave a legacy as recognized as Harry Hay’s. But his work was just as important. Over the life of the Loving Brotherhood, about two thousand men joined the organization. Many of them Ralph knew personally. With letters and long phone conversations he guided many of us through troubled times. He encouraged us to take an active role in political causes and to ground that activism in a very real spirituality. He constantly worked on his own spiritual growth. I wasn’t always ready to follow him in all the paths he explored. He didn’t expect me to.

Early in my friendship with Ralph, I remember his commenting on Last Letter to the Pebble People, a book about how friends supported a dying man. His words, after reading that book, were, “Death is a Victory.”

So, Ralph, congratulations on your victory. No one can really know the full extent of your influence — the number of lives you touched and helped and sometimes rescued. If, Ralph, you have a chance now to speak to God in a way that’s more direct than we have here on earth, please tell God that I’m grateful for your life, and the example you gave to all Gay men.

Donald Engstrom, WC72 - Cinema

WC72 – The Everyday Sacred

April 23, 2007 Editors 2 Comments

Everyday Sacred

Abundance and Wealth by Donald L. Engstrom-Reese

One of the great confusions that appears to touch all aspects of our contemporary lives, is the idea that abundance is a synonym for material wealth. It seems a given in this culture, that abundance is measured by how much we own; be it dollar bills, houses and cars, diamond rings, material goods of any kind. For that matter, many have forgotten that there is a definition of wealth which holds a meaning far beyond a corporate capitalist’s definition.

The Oxford defines it thus:

Those of us called to Queer Spirit and/or to other cutting edge spiritual traditions are reawakening to an abundance understood by our ancestors that many of us never learned about in our schools, homes and workplaces. We are tasting an abundance in our day to day lives that hitherto, had only been tasted in our dreams; both in our day dream wanderings into the realms of possibility untouched by poverty, alienation and hatefulness and our night dreams which have lead us into sweet visions of a transformed life cherished by spirit.

Our sense of wealth and abundance is no longer tied to any particular economic system. Nor is it any longer tied to large bank accounts and hoarded goods. Wealth and abundance is simply living a life with all senses honed and alert, consciously filled with wonder and curiosity. It is a life immersed in glory and graciousness. It is a life rich with relationships. It is a life that consciously surrounds itself with beauty. It is a life filled with sensual pleasures and that chooses to embrace the majesty of everyday life. It is a life that knows when enough is enough.

It appears to me, that post-modern spirit people of all traditions are choosing to become major players in co-creating the sustainable abundance and wealth which are foundational to the emerging Cultures of Beauty, Balance and Delight. Just what do I mean by Cultures of Beauty, Balance and Delight? These are the currently emerging cultures that, among other things;

Focus on transforming the relationships between the human made worlds and the natural realms into loving, sustainable and joyful partnerships,
Choose to live life fully awake, aware and co-creatively,
Are dedicated to pleasure and beauty,
Embrace an ethics of justice and fair play,
Delight in the authentic lives of it’s individuals and communities,
Are willing to accept the consequences of their choices, learn from them and then move on,
Remember that there is always a choice,
Are spinning cosmologies clearly naming love and compassion as foundational underpinnings of the multiverse,
Are committed to abundance and joy.

I am noticing that Queer Spirit people are not only mingled through out the many groups embracing these and other cutting edge ways of being, but are some of the primary voices naming the possibilities emerging from these cultures. I am noticing that we, Queer Spirit people, are essential to restoring and expanding the current definitions of what it is to live wealthy lives of abundance.

More and more Queer Spirit folk are using our own lives to flaunt our notions of abundance and wealth. I have noticed us shamelessly and publicly expressing our queer wealth by the ways we dress, decorate, eat, garden, make love, travel and just plainly celebrate our choices as out confident Queer Spirit folks in a culture consumed by greed and fear.

Queer Spirit people, as do many Earth Centered folk, have the advantage of the outsider looking into the ringing hollow calling out for meaning and substance at the heart of the over culture. We have noticed that this heart has lost its paths to sustainable lives of joy and plenty. Frankly, we are people who have worked hard to remember the ways of those lost paths while learning to live on the razor sharp edges of those over cultures because we simply wanted to survive. But now, not being satisfied with mere survival, we have kept moving forward along unknown roads of possibility. We have dared to create new standards of wealth and abundance to not only maintain our very sanity in this culture, but for the very real pleasures and wonders such explorations have brought to us and our feres.

Queer Spirit people are still feeling the stirring of ancient memories in our bones and blood. With each breath we take, we are awaking further to the fact that we have always been and will always be Living Treasures of planet Earth. This has led many of us to consciously choose to claim our places as co-creators of the multiverse. We are recognizing anew that all Treasures of all kinds; rocks, rivers, plants, animals, planets, stars, Mysterious Ones, ancestors, etc., are eternally co-creating the multiverse together in every instant of every second. This has encouraged us to deepen our relationships to all being-ness, adding immeasurably to our sense of place in an abundant cosmos.

Queer Spirit people are choosing to actively claim our places as co-creators of this and all of our worlds. We are choosing to claim our joyful obligations as spiritual leaders in the human realms. Queer Spirit folk are a people who have dared to learn from the past, while not being afraid to look for new ways of building and maintaining sustainable abundant lives on planet Earth. We find ourselves in the 21st century, continuing to learn how to more consciously choose to take on our co-creators’ responsibilities with dedication, respect and sincerity. We are modeling how to learn to embrace optimism and hope well tempered by the flaming realities of the current situations on this planet. We are learning anew the ancient knowledge, where two or more peers agree on an idea, that agree to invest their skills and time to manifest that idea, that agree to trust each other’s expectations, judgments, abilities, and contributions and that agree to trust in the mystery of co-creation, nothing is impossible!

Queer Spirit folk are again finding ourselves facing the opportunity to join other people of spirit, in bringing this understanding of abundance, this knowledge of well-being, to the forefront of human consciousness.

As we prepare to step into these challenges, I suspect that it behoove us to honestly ask ourselves a few questions.

Do we have the courage to act on our dreams with graciousness and compassion?
Do we dare to openly live lives of spirit and act accordingly?
Do we dare to publicly take the hands of our Druid, Heathen, Wiccan, Shaman, Christian, Buddhist, Jewish, Hindu, Muslim and other peers as we dance together the magic of this great dance?
Do we dare to embrace the realities inherent in nurturing the incredibly diverse authentic communities sprouting up around the world?
Do we dare to dwell in beauty, balance and delight?
Do we dare to declare, as a core truth, the understanding that abundance and wealth are the birthright of all beings?

What will we choose to do? How will we support and nurture each other as we continue this great adventure? What other questions would be good to ask of ourselves? Perhaps it would be a good time to sit down with one another, over a nice cup of tea, and ask them of each other as we witness the wealth of spring emerge, yet one more time?

May abundance and joy flow through our lives like a wild, untamed river.

Bless the Bees.

A longtime activist in gay spirituality, Donald Engstrom/Reece’s work dates back to the mid-1970s when he took part in early consciousness raising communities in the Midwest — communities that foreshadowed later Radical Faerie developments in the early 1980s. In the 1980s he began doing work with the Reclaiming Community and hosted the first Faggot Witch Camps. He lives in Minneapolis with his partner and travels around the country doing work in the Reclaiming Tradition. “The Everyday Sacred” is a regular feature in White Crane.

Dan Vera, Updrafts, WC72 - Cinema

WC72 – Updrafts

April 23, 2007 Editors Leave a comment

Updrafts
Edited by Dan Vera

Abstinence is a “neuter” movement. I don’t care what people do in bed, or if they don’t do anything. I just don’t think that everybody else has to feel how you feel about it. Whether it’s sex, religion or politics.
~John Waters

Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
~Leonard Cohen (shared by Bernard Morin)

As someone who is simply making his best effort to be a rational human being, I am very slow to draw metaphysical conclusions from experiences of this sort. The truth is, I experience what I would call the “selflessness of consciousness” rather often, wherever I happen to meditate-be it in a Buddhist monastery, a Hindu temple, or while having my teeth cleaned. Consequently, the fact that I also had this experience at a Christian holy site does not lend an ounce of credibility to the doctrine of Christianity. ~Sam Harris

The gay social contract allows a different, more generous, permission to center bliss in our lives. “Bliss” here does not mean simply plastering a beatific smile across one’s face. Bliss transcends recreation. It means something more philosophical, akin to what the cultural critic Joseph Campbell meant by his dictum “follow your bliss.” It is what Paul Monette described as our “flagrant joy.” Call it fun, call it play, call it eros, it encompasses a wild gamut of playfulness, pleasure and performance, whimsy and wackiness, silliness and spectacle. By whatever name, there is something markedly different in how our queer customs support the pursuit of happiness. Our bliss is the next page where we color outside the lines laid down by the larger culture. The centrality of bliss and play in our lives has political and social implications, affects our cultural and artistic contributions, and may even shape the well-being of the species. We may be having fun, but we’re not just fooling around.
~David Nimmons, The Soul Beneath the Skin

“For the Greeks the essence of friendship consisted in discourse. They held that only the constant interchange of talk united citizens in a polis…However much we are affected by the things of the world, however deeply they may stir and stimulate us, they become human for us only when we can discuss them with our fellows…We humanize what is going on in the world and in ourselves only by speaking of it; and in the course of speaking of it we learn to be human.” ~Hannah Arendt

Updrafts is a regular feature of White Crane. If you have a little bit of wisdom to share with us, send it to us at dan@gaywisdom.org

Gay Health, Jeff Huyett, WC72 - Cinema

WC72 – Our Bodies: HPV & Gay Men

April 23, 2007 Editors 2 Comments

Our Bodies
HPV
Yes, I’m Talking to You!
A Conspiracy of Silence about Gay Men’s Anal Health

By Jeff Huyett

If you have watched television over the last six months, you’ve seen public service announcements and advertisements about the advances in prevention of human papillomavirus (HPV)-related cancers.

Thankfully, a vaccine has been developed that will prevent nearly all cervical cancers and genital warts in women. Sadly, one will only see a female face in regards to the prevention of HPV-related cancers. Gay men, who face a much higher risk to develop HPV-related cancers, are non-existent in advertising and public health announcements about these medical breakthroughs.

Currently, gay men develop anal cancers due to HPV at the alarming rate that women developed cervical cancer forty years ago when preventive screening began. That means that HIV-negative gay men develop anal cancers at a rate four-times higher than cervical cancer in women today. HIV-positive gay men develop anal cancers at nine times the rate of cervical cancer. Yet most gay men haven’t even heard about HPV. They do not know that methods exist to prevent the development of anal cancer due to HPV. HPV is the most common sexually transmitted infection with six million new infections each year.

Policy-makers and public health officials have known that gay men are getting anal cancer at increasing rates. Scientific papers in medical journals have reported the increase of anal cancer in men in cities like San Francisco for some time now. Why is it that gay men are not afforded the same kind of preventive screening as women if the risk is so much higher?

Just twenty-five years ago, I was part of a small number of gay men’s health advocates sounding the alarm about the impending HIV tsunami in large Midwestern cities. We were told not to worry, this “gay cancer” was only going to happen in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. We knew different. We’d already buried gay men whose families has refused their bodies after they died. We also developed a healthy skepticism for public health officials who relied heavily on outmoded data collection systems and worked in a homophobic climate.

As a gay men’s health advocate during those twenty-five years, I find myself, once again, sounding an alarm about a health issue that impacts gay men more heavily than others and, yet, is being ignored by policy makers, insurers, and even gay men and their health care providers. The alarm isn’t as loud as twenty-five years ago when I watched friends, lovers, and patients dying rapidly from HIV. Nearly 2,000 men a year will be diagnosed with anal cancer. The cancer is treatable with chemotherapy and radiation treatments and it’s dangerous if it spreads throughout the body. The most alarming part, the part about which I speak most loudly, is the ignorance and inaction of gay men, health care providers and policy makers.

While anal cancer isn’t that common, it’s preventable. But you can only prevent anal cancer if you know you have HPV, are screened and have the precancerous areas treated. You can only do this if you live in an area where anal Pap smear testing is available and resources exist to provide preventive follow-up.
So why aren’t these methods employed? Clearly, one reason is homophobia — on the parts of public health officials and gay men themselves. You only have to read the Center for Disease Control’s (CDC) webpage on “HPV in Men” to see the blatant disregard for our health:

The anal cytology test that screens for tissue changes can detect HPV-related cancers in the anal canal and is approved by the Food and Drug Administration. The test to screen for the HPV virus itself, while approved to screen a woman’s cervix is not approved to screen the anal canal for HPV.

The medical establishment — including gay health providers — is waiting for the study that proves that the prevention methods work. Specialists, like me, have been employing various methods to prevent the growth of HPV-related tissue mutations for nearly 10 years. We see it work to prevent cancer. We do not witness cancer develop in those who have preventive treatment. But clinicians demand that therapy be absolutely proven before employing screening. How do you research a currently employed method? You give half the subjects the treatment and you give have the subjects no treatment and see who gets cancer. This just isn’t ethical research when the prevention method is already employed and appears effective in those who use it.

Some officials say we shouldn’t recommend screening and treatment until we have more answers. This was not the approach taken to prevent cervical cancer. We didn’t even know HPV caused cervical cancer when clinicians began screening and offering preventive treatment. But it was considered poor practice not to enlist the methods available at that time to do everything possible to prevent cervical cancer. And it worked. Cervical cancer has been reduced by 500%.

During the HIV epidemic, clinicians like me became used to working in an information vacuum. We learned to keenly read scientific papers, experiment for non-existent treatments, and give full attention to layers of homophobia that existed in policy and procedure. In this information void, with no HIV treatment, we heartily encouraged gay men to run and get tested for HIV.

Anal cancer, and the tissue in the anus that it affects, has many similarities to cervical cancer. We do have an existing model of information to rely on — gynecology. Like other health issues, one employs existing knowledge about a disease state until more details of the disease emerge. I readily employ the methods of anal screening and prevention and see it work! My skill as a gynecological practitioner has informed me in the treatment of these HPV-related tissue mutations. Any gay-friendly health care provider interested in providing comprehensive health can do this.

A simple swab in the anus can detect the presence of abnormal cells. “Anal cytology” is an FDA-approved test and it has utility to inform the patient and the clinician about abnormal anal tissue. More precise examination and testing of anal tissue can isolate precancerous lesions and then one of many “ablative” techniques can be employed to remove this mutated tissue in-office. So why aren’t these methods demanded by gay men who are at risk?

I believe that gay men are plague weary from HIV. I believe that we are reluctant to address another health issue related to our sexual practices so just don’t advocate on our behalves. But, I find it astonishing, that in the midst of the HIV pandemic, we are unaware of another important health risk. Clearly, anal cancer prevention means we have to acknowledge we have butt sex. It dredges up the feelings of homophobia that we thought we had dealt with long ago. To screen properly, and to achieve optimal health, we must honestly admit to our sexual practices.

There is, still, a stigma to anal sex even in gay male communities. Bottoms are considered “less than” tops. For some, anal sex is considered “dirty” and therefore shameful. Even though research shows 40% of heterosexual women have engaged in butt sex, gay men are considered to have a corner on the market of this equal opportunity sex organ. Our sex is still considered unnatural. And we continue to own the shame that is contributed to that part of our body.

The anus is a nether region of the body not commonly inspected or felt by health care consumers or their providers. Standards of care for gay men do not always include inspection of the anal canal if one is having anal sex. It would be unconscionable to forego inspection of the vagina in a sexually active woman. Again, we do not apply the same standard of care for gay men’s sexual health that we provide to women. There should be no more shame in having testing for anal cancer than there is for women who have annual cervical Pap smears.

Like HIV, nothing related to anal cancer will likely change until gay men speak out. We learned this lesson with HIV. No one is looking out for gay men’s health so we must do it ourselves. It is time to demand changes in the health care system to bring our health screening and prevention methods into the modern age to reflect our risk. We must educate ourselves better about potential health risks, especially those that are ignored by governmental and officious bodies who are going to reflect the climate of the federal administration.

It is time that we become aware of anal health risks and prevention practices. We must do this for ourselves. No on else will.

In a recent letter I wrote to the CDC, I exclaimed my dismay that they were doing nothing helpful to prevent anal cancer in gay men. I explained that I would not be silent. I would continue to dog them as they clearly did not have my ass covered.

For more information visit www.gayhealth.com or www.analcancerinfo.ucsf.edu

Jeff Huyett is a nurse practitioner living in NYC. His clinical work has primarily been in queer health with a focus on HIV, rectal and transgender care. He is the Radical Faerie Daisy Shaver and is involved with the development of Faerie Camp Destiny Radical Sanctuary in Vermont and can be reached at JeffANP@aol.com

Our Bodies is a regular feature of White Crane.

Andrew Ramer, WC72 - Cinema

WC72- Praxis

April 23, 2007 Editors Leave a comment

Praxis
CINEMA PARADOXO by Andrew Ramer

The publisher of this journal, wrote to me about the spiritual guidance every little Gay boy gets from films, that “They’re practically inspired texts for us.” I believe that the hushed time we spend in vast dark chambers, or sitting in darkened rooms, taps into the deepest shamanic roots of our history, into the sacred rites of the Eleusinian and other Mysteries, where up from the silent blackness rise the collective stories of our tribe, our people, our lineage.

My evolving Gay psyche was informed by two different kinds of films, which I began to watch around the time that I reached puberty — Steve Reeves muscle flicks, and Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movies. In the argument about whether Gay identity is innate or constructed I always cite this as an example: I’ve never met a single straight man who stayed home to watch Steve or Fred and Ginger. But I’ve met a good many Gay men who did, often long before we came out, because we recognized something about ourselves in those films, something campy, defiant, heroic, and gender-reconstructing that speaks to one aspect of who we are. And for me in my closet, they were sexy — and safe. Steve always got his clothes ripped off by equally hunky adversaries, perhaps an ancestor of porn films. And Fred and Ginger always went from dislike or disconnection to romance, with music and dance, an ancestor perhaps of discos. But none of them kissed.

The first homosexual movie I ever saw was The Boys in the Band, which came out in 1970. I went to see it with my father and stepmother the summer after my freshman year in college, in a theatre a few blocks away from the Stonewall Inn. We’d walked over there the morning after the riot, when a friend of my stepmother’s called to tell her that “the fags” had rioted the night before. I viewed The Boys in the Band as if it were a documentary. Terrified of my fate, not wanting to be that torturously unhappy, I dived even deeper into my closet for a few years. It was yet another film, Women in Love, with screenplay by Larry Kramer, which gave me the courage to finally come out to myself, in my junior year of college, in 1972, sitting by myself in a dark theatre on the outskirts of Jerusalem during a matinee. Even though it had a tragic ending, seeing two men attempting to connect in a physical/spiritual way gave me a sense that something was possible I had only thus far dreamed of.

A year later, and two or three months into our relationship, my first boyfriend planned a surprise dinner for me. Leading me up the stairs to the top of our building in Berkeley, we scrambled up the sloped shed above the stairs – to the flat roof above it where Richard had spread out a yellow tablecloth, place settings, and covered bowls of food. At the far end of that small space he’d set up his little television, having borrowed extension cords from half our neighbors so that he could plug it in up there. The city stretched out below us, rolling down to the bay, with the hills of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge in the distance creating a perfect back-frame for the television. As the sun was setting, gloriously, and twinkling lights were coming on all around us, Richard leaned over to turn on the TV, just as Fred and Ginger in The Gay Divorcee began. He too had stayed home from school as a teenager to watch it.

Fred and Ginger and other movies taught me several things about love and romance, which have led me astray for forty years. I’ve made too many life decisions based on fantasies from films I watched as a boy, and continue to hope for movie love scenes in my real life. Granted, some of what I learned from films came from my hunger to understand a way of living that wasn’t being explained to me. From what I gleaned I assembled a perception of life based on footage rather than on walked experience, because films were the only resource I had. I was in my early twenties before I saw a photograph of two men kissing, and I was in my mid- twenties before I saw a Gay film, the documentary Word is Out, which opened in 1977. It was my introduction to Harry Hay and a world of spirit that I needed to discover. And then in 1982, in the same theatre, I watched Making Love, the big first Hollywood movie to deal with Gay love. I remember the thrill of seeing two men together, larger than life, on a huge screen in a dark packed room. I felt that we had finally arrived, been granted authenticity by the myth-making apparatus of our time. And the film hauntingly paralleled the end of my relationship with Richard. Ginger and Fred began with conflict. Richard and I ended with it, as did the couple in Making Love. And while the newly out and then abandoned lover ended up living happily ever after in a tidy coda to the film, I have yet to find the perfect husband.

Even as a boy I was appalled by the amount of money paid to performers, the amount of money it costs to produce a movie, and I still am. My father, a film lover, tried to convince me that the money went toward paying the salaries of all the people who worked on the film, but I was never convinced. What else could that money do, what else could it be spent on, I still ask myself? Why have we made idols, stars, out of performers, following the minute details of their lives instead of living our own? And do we even respect the collective art that goes into making a movie? Do we sit till the very last credit rolls by, honoring all who are named, or do we walk out, because for us the event ends when the performances stop? Do we clap at the end of movies? Did we ever? Is a movie a play in translation, from stage to screen, or is it a derivative of photographs? After all we still call them motion pictures. Do we get dressed up to go to the movies? We used to when I was a boy. Or is your movie life shaped by Netflix, a very private affair, even if shared with a few others?

Tom Spanbauer, in his magnificent new book, Now Is The Hour, wrote of our time in movie theatres, “Magic when the lights went dark. The dimmer the lights, the more the something inside so covered up and careful in you came up and out.” Sometimes what comes up and out is good inspiration. But sometimes what comes up isn’t such a good thing. It’s what I call un-spiration. Negative guidance that misleads rather than informs.

Write down the names of the three movies that have inspired you the most.
What did you learn from them and how has it enhanced your life?
Write down the three movies that have most led you astray.
What faulty information did you gleam from them, and what can you to do reprogram it in your psyche?

For many of us films are “inspired texts.” But not for all of us. In eight years together my ex and I only went to the movies twice. He found the sound and large screen too stressful and overwhelming, too intense and too artificial, although I did drag him off to see It’s A Wonderful Life and The Gay Divorcee. And when I go to the movies I always take earplugs with me. These days, I don’t go very often. My primary texts were and remain, not paradoxically – books. Hence my place in a magazine and not at a film festival. But what comes up and out for you these illuminated texts?

If you are a regular moviegoer, don’t watch any films for at least a month, and ask yourself – “What am I using movies for? Is it a good thing?” Notice how much time you spend talking about movies, as if what was going on in those fictional dimensions was reality. Are you fed by films, do they inspire you to make the world a better place, or are they an escape from reality? If so, what can you do to change your life?
If you are someone who doesn’t watch movies at all, or very often, please try and see at least two movies and preferably three in the next month. Ask yourself – “Why am I not going to the movies? Is that a good thing?” Are you avoiding films because you are avoiding life, or because ________ (Fill in the blank.) Perhaps it’s time to review your relationship to movies. Perhaps it’s time to explore a new genre.

Movies may be the mass shamanic experience of our time. Or maybe they aren’t. We don’t even have good language for talking about the movies. We say, “I saw…. last night. Have you seen it yet?” as if the seeing were all there is. We have no way to merge the seeing and hearing of a film into one word. And therein the paradox remains. Film cannot capture or duplicate experience. But, perhaps, it can explain it.

Andrew Ramer lives in San Francisco. He is the author of the gay classic Two Flutes Playing from White Crane Press (available at www.whitecranebooks.org)
Praxis is a regular feature in White Crane.

Reviews, WC72 - Cinema

WC72 – Review of The Way Out

April 18, 2007 Editors Leave a comment

The Way Out:
The Gay Man’s Guide to Freedom No Matter If You’re in Denial, Closeted, Half In, Half Out, Just Out or Been Around the Block
By Christopher Lee Nutter
Health Communications, Inc.
189 pages, paperback, $14.95

Reviewed by Toby Johnson

Part edgy memoir, part social criticism, part spiritual writing, The Way Out is Christopher Nutter’s account of his journey from closeted, nerdy Alabamian to hot and sexy New York Gay bartender and party boy, to jaded and unhappy victim of Gay club culture glitz, to spiritual seeker and exponent of Gay wisdom.

There are not a lot of details of Nutter’s autobiography in the book; the book isn’t about him. But his personal story provides the framework within which to share the insights he has gained over his twelve years as an explorer of urban Gay life. There’s just enough personal anecdote, from his own life and from that of friends he cites, to keep the wisdom grounded, and the insights identifiable and personal.

Chris Nutter grew up in straight middle-America, in his case in Birmingham, Alabama, in the 70s and 80s. As a child, he was depressed and withdrawn, he tells, because he didn’t feel attractive enough or masculine and self-confident. Once he got to college, he began to remedy his sense of physical and personal inadequacy by going to the gym, changing his look, and acting the role of privileged pretty boy. But he was still in denial of his sexual feelings. So it was a monumental shift in his life when in 1993 he decided to take control of his own destiny. He dropped his plans for law school to do what he wanted to do, which was to be a writer, came out Gay, took a magazine internship job in Boston, and, most significantly, initiated his new identity by writing an article for Details magazine about life in the closet. He burst out of his own closet on a national scale. And was met with almost universal acceptance.
As he tentatively explored the Gay sub-cultural world of the big cities, he discovered Gay club culture: “gorgeous, glamorous Gay men with hot bodies.” He threw himself into that world. He scored a job as a bartender at a famous Gay bar, wrote for a Gay magazine, posed for classy homoerotic photography. So by the standards of that glitz Gay club culture, he’d made it. He was one of those men with the hot bodies. He could do attitude and fuck like it was an athletic sport. But he still wasn’t happy.

He observes that “coming out of the closet is usually thought of as the singular answer to the Gay ‘predicament.’ But then the Gay world just takes over your mind and fills your head with yet another false reality about who you are. It’s a solution, but only part of the whole solution, a step in the right direction, but only a step. There remains the deeper question of who you really are. And this is a spiritual question.”

Intermixing themes in current spiritual thought: the Dalai Lama, Joseph Campbell, Don Miguel Ruiz, Gary Zukav, A Course in Miracles, the Twelve Steps, Nutter offers an answer to who you really are. And in the process recounts how he came to understand this through his experience in urban Gay culture. The answer, of course, isn’t new or surprising. It’s the age-old answer: we are each a perspective that “God” or “Divine Consciousness” or “the cosmos” …whatever you want to call “IT” is taking on itself. We are not separate beings, competing and fighting with one another. We are each other and so it’s ok to tell the truth, it’s ok to let go of fear, it’s ok to love and respect other human beings as expressions of the divine consciousness.

Nutter identifies five steps in changing one’s life: Decide to Heal; Recognize Your Pain as Your Pain; Look For How You Cover Up or Avoid Your Pain; Refrain From Reacting, Feel Your Pain and Learn What Is Causing It; and Correct Your Vision. These describe the dynamics of psychotherapy and consciousness-raising, but presented in identifiable terms, based in modern day experience. They also echo the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths.

Chris Nutter’s articulation of this wisdom is fresh and current. He speaks with the voice of his generation and in a way that makes this revolutionary mystical wisdom seem obvious and inevitable, even though it is life-altering. And he derives his wisdom from his Gay experience not in repudiation or rejection of it.

Nutter is a little judgmental about that glitzy Gay club culture. There certainly is justification for this. The club culture/Gay bar culture/sexual underworld can be alluring, then addicting, then destructive. Some men’s lives are ruined by drugs and alcohol and compulsive sex. Some men need “the way out” from the Gay world, just as they had earlier needed “the way out” of the closet. For most Gay men, I think, this comes about as simply the natural development of growing older and changing priorities. But even for those who are just naturally growing up, a book like this can be immensely helpful. We all go through those five steps whether we know it or not. It helps to know it and to have some guidance in understanding where the process is going.

It’s refreshing to discover a book like this coming from the youth generation of today. It’s one thing when these ideas about mature Gay consciousness come from psychiatrists and professional spiritual writers. It’s quite another, much more immediately accessible and believable, when it comes from one of those gorgeous, hot bartenders.

Interesting, by the way, Nutter doesn’t use the word queer. There’s a welcome naiveté about the politicized terminology of the Gay movement; this gives the book a feel of personal honesty and straightforwardness and makes it speak its wisdom that much more effectively.
It is exciting and concerning that Chris Nutter has derived this wisdom and spiritual worldview on his own. It confirms the intuition that Gay men are talented at designing worldviews and religions (as we are with flowers and furniture). This is the personal yoga of every one of us today: to create our own religion. What’s concerning is that he had to do it without the help of the generations of other Gay spiritual seekers who’ve done it before him because their wisdom just isn’t readily available to the mainstream — and especially the Gay club — culture. Our Gay history keeps getting lost.

It’s a symptom of collective homophobia — and how it gets expressed in mainstream Gay culture — that young homosexuals seeking to overcome personal homophobia naturally resist instruction from older homosexuals out of the very homophobia they’re trying to overcome. This dynamic is familiar as the notion that homosexuals can’t be trusted to be accurate reporters on homosexuality because we’d be biased! As though personal experience and knowing whereof one speaks is a “bias.” Exacerbating the problem of passing Gay wisdom down from one generation to another is that the very experience of realizing and accepting one’s own homosexuality usually is concomitant with realizing you can only trust your own counsel, everything you’ve been told about sexuality is wrong and you have to discover the secret truth yourself. In Buddhist terms, you’re on your own and nobody’s going to save you. So each generation of “homosexuals” begins by rejecting the past and distrusting all passed-down wisdom, whether it’s from their parents, their church and government or from Gay community elders. (This manifests, of course, as the continual evolving of the “politically correct” name for the movement; every generation rejects the previous generation.)
So in a way I have to think I’m sorry Chris Nutter had to go without the accumulated wisdom of the Gay elders. Our community somehow needs to learn its historical continuity and “apostolic” succession and make this consciousness accessible to youth just joining us. But I am also quite proud of him for having made the perilous journey. I expect him to take his place among the new generation of Gay leaders and luminaries.
The Way Out is a good book. It’s easy to read, interesting and thought-provoking. Nutter’s presentation of the perennial wisdom is fresh and accessible.

Reviews, WC72 - Cinema

WC72 – Review of Pay Me What I’m Worth

April 18, 2007 Editors Leave a comment

Pay Me What I’m Worth:
A Guide to Help You Say It, Mean It, Get It
By Souldancer
Souldancer Network
198 pages, paperback, $19.95

Reviewed by Toby Johnson

When I was first putting up the White Crane Journal website nearly a decade ago now, and discovering that creating links with other websites was the key to carving out a space for oneself on the worldwide web, I found a site called Gay Evolution. The goal of this website was an online community of Lesbian and Gay people committed to personal growth and the general principles of the human potential movement. Gay Evolution proved — not surprisingly, I suppose — a little ahead of its time. Online communities, like MySpace, hadn’t really evolved yet. And Gay Evolution was idealistic, not just social. It came to function primarily as a referral site for career and personal coaches. It certainly assisted me as editor, back then, of White Crane Journal in learning of Gay professionals across the country. But then in the notorious shakeup of the dot-coms and retrenching of the Internet, the Gay Evolution site got left behind.

I’ve stayed friends, and occasional correspondent, with one of the founders of Gay Evolution, the man who now goes by the name Souldancer. He has evolved himself, staying on that cutting edge, now offering, as he says, “a unique blend of multicultural ancient wisdom with the best of global business practices.” Souldancing: The Path of the Masters is the name he gives his approach to personal coaching and set of techniques for helping clients improve their lives and create happiness and satisfaction for themselves. And, of course, Souldancing is the source of the name he’s adopted for himself.

He has now produced a workbook-like text presentation summarizing one of the central themes from his coaching practice. And he has titled it with one of the great complaints career coaches must deal with all the time: “Pay Me What I’m Worth.” From a practical perspective — and that is what coaches specialize in, being practical and realistic — this is one of the most common sources of dissatisfaction with work people have: their job doesn’t pay them what they’re worth, which is to say, what they need to be happy and fulfilled as human beings.

The title might sound like simply instructions in asking for a raise. And it is that, but that is only a small part of the book. For to ask for a raise, Souldancer says, you need to believe you’re worth more to your employer because you believe in your own worth. So while there’s a little advice about how to properly and effectively word a request for a raise, that business practice offers the occasion for a much broader and richer quest for understanding what you really want (and need at the karmic/soul level) from the work you do. That is to say that the preparation for asking for a raise is really a quest to understand what your life is for.

The book offers a series of 33 exercises, all of them aimed at producing a so-called “Worth Passport.” The techniques are all pretty simple—like making post-it notes identifying your positive traits or your personal possessions, skills, and talents, then sorting them in various ways. You need to be able to assess your “worth” if you’re going to ask somebody else to pay you for it. And in the process, you discover there is so much more to you than just what you do in a job or what they pay you for. Producing your “Worth Passport” results in a major investigation of patterns in your whole life. And so the technique for determining occupational worth opens out into a practice for increasing self-esteem, confidence and sense of well-being.

Remember, Souldancer says he is blending good business practice with multicultural ancient wisdom. So it’s not surprising that the mercenary question about salary requirements turns into a spiritual inventory. As the exercises continue, they demonstrate that giving is the way to get and that integrity and ethical living is the best success and the way to get paid by life with happiness and fulfillment.

So the thing about asking for a raise is really a hook to pull you toward enlightenment and wisdom.

If you really are wanting help to ask for a raise, this book could be very useful. There’s good practical advice. BUT it is likely to transform you way beyond just getting a better salary.

For the purpose of writing a review, I read the book fast without actually doing the exercises. I’m sure I’d had benefited more fully if I had done them. But I want to attest that the book was interesting, occasionally eye-opening, and beneficial just read as a presentation on how people’s self-image and self-worth manifests itself in the details of their real lives.

So just like my finding Gay Evolution in the early days of the Internet, I suppose, Souldancer’s gimmick is to link all the various hungers we have for “more” in our lives into the great hunger for personal fulfillment and love. It’s the links that count. This is a useful book on many levels!

Reviews, WC72 - Cinema

WC72 – Review of Absolutely Positively Not

April 18, 2007 Editors Leave a comment

Absolutely Positively Not
by David LaRochelle
Arthur A. Levine Books
224 pages, $16.95
ISBN: 0439591090

Review by Steven LaVigne

An article in the Metro section of the May 26 Minneapolis Star-Tribune captured my attention, because a book fair for middle school students held in Thief River Falls, MN, banned Gay Minnesota writer David LaRochelle’s latest book, Absolutely, Positively Not, because it was thought to be “inappropriate.” Naturally, I had to read this banned book, and it’s an absolutely positively delightful read, perfect for the beach or a quiet night sitting on the porch before the sun sets.

This charming tale follows Steven DaNarski, a sophomore at Beaver Lake High School, “The Hockey Stick Capital of the World.” Like other boys his age, he’s desperate to lose his virginity, but he’s attracted to Mr. Bowman, the muscular sub who replaces the wrestling coach as his Health teacher. His mother has just published a book on raising a tidy teenager, even though her housekeeping skills are questionable. When he tries curbing his budding homosexuality, he follows the advice of a 1970s self-help guru, using rubber bands as aversion therapy. Instead of aversion, however, this create a sensation in school when rubber wrist bands become popular. He pins a Victoria’s Secret ad over a super hero poster, but none of this leads to much, because Steven really enjoys square dancing with his mother, tries to convince his best friend, Rachel that he’s popular by hanging out at the Hockey team’s table during lunch, and dates with girls remain innocent encounters.

There are genuinely witty sequences with every turn of the page. Judging from the knowing manner in which LaRochelle relates Steven’s story, it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s based on his own high school experiences, and judging from his website, Larochelle is as adventurous and daring as his leading character. I don’t want to spoil things for you, but I will let you know that Steven’s prom date is a highlight of Absolutely, Positively Not.
Don’t think twice about it, whether you check it out from the public library, order it online or get it from your local GLBT book outlet, you will Absolutely, Positively Not not be disappointed with this treasure.

White Crane Institute

All posts by Editors

WC72 – Jim Van Buskirk

WC72 – Donald Boisvert

WC72 – In Memoriam Barbara Gittings & Ralph Walker

WC72 – The Everyday Sacred

WC72 – Updrafts

WC72 – Our Bodies: HPV & Gay Men

WC72- Praxis

WC72 – Review of The Way Out

WC72 – Review of Pay Me What I’m Worth

WC72 – Review of Absolutely Positively Not

Building Connections & Community for Gay Men since 1989