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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE August, 1989

REVIEW:

A source for daily (gay) living

Alyson Almanac

Alyson Publications, 1989 $6.95

by Martha Pontoni

When I first received this book, I was very excited. "At last a reference book I can truly use."

Well, the Alyson Almanac is more than just a reference book, it is a history of our people that should be required reading for anyone who wants a sense of history of our community.

The first chapter, titled "Highlights of Our History," spans a time from 1900 B.C. to the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights and everything you can think of in between.

For example:

"1810: The mother of schoolgirl accuses Marianne Woods and Jane Pirie, mistress of a boarding school for girls, of 'improper and criminal conduct' with each other. The British courts debated whether a sexual relationship between women was even possible. Lillian Hellman used this plot 120 years later as the basis for her play The Children's Hour."

Many other citations I had never heard of before. Just the sense of history

Equal Affections

by David Leavitt Weiderfeld & Nicolson 286 pages

by Robert S. Woodward

The narrative strategy David Leavitt uses in Equal Affections is to spend about 150 pages lulling the reader by calmly describing the rituals and routines of his characters, and then suddenly and unexpectedly to interrupt these rituals.

At first, even slowly dying of cancer seems to settle into a comfortably predictable routine. Equal Affections opens by saying, "The first time Louise thought she was dying..." A few pages later we are told: "Illness moved into her house like an elderly aunt in a back bedroom. It lived with them; it sat at the kitchen table with them; it became ordinary."

But it turns out that illness and dying are no respecters of the compromises and evasions that people engage in every day.

There is probably no fiction writer in the United States today who depicts dying of an illness with less sentimentality and fewer philosophical pretensions than does David Leavitt. Although his characters become rather maudlin

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people if they are tested anonymously. If they go to a clinic, test positive and don't return, then the doctors have no way of knowing how to track that person. I feel we should have some kind of follow up for a person who is a known AIDS virus carrier or who already has the disease. If they have not admitted this to their family and do nothing about it, then the doctors should be able to notify the family or the spouse.

How should legislators response to those who do nothing about their HIVpositive status?

that this book provides makes it worth having in the house. But the Alyson Almanac also provides information for the lesbian and gay man which is important to everyday life, and in that sense it is truly an almanac.

Other chapters include:" National Organizations," "Advice for Everyday Life," "Penpals for Gay Teenagers," "A Dictionary of Gay Slang and Historical Terms," and (my favorite), "PeopleOver 175 prominent people who were gay or bisexual-and a few who were merely rumored to be."

The Alyson Almanac is subtitled "A treasury of information for the gay and lesbian community" and it truly lives up to its name.

The story behind the book:

The Alyson Almanac was conceived seven years ago, when gay publisher Sasha Alyson tried to look up the name of the first openly gay person elected to public office in the United States-and couldn't find it anywhere.

In fact, he realized, a great many facts about the gay community were not easily available.

In the years that followed, he and

when they try to stage a deathbed scene for themselves, Leavitt makes it clear that their efforts cannot change the course of the event or make it adapt itself to their beliefs and feelings.

In Equal Affections, Leavitt again very successfully uses the ploy of having the wife and mother (in this novel, Louise) uncomfortably aware that some might regard her domestic situation as an absurd soap opera.

Louise's husband Nat is a nerdy computer scientist whose academic career is in a slump. He has an understanding mistress who is writing a dissertation on the history of the discipline of computer science. In the middle of describing Nat, Leavitt inserts this haiku-like parenthesis: "(He needs eyeglasses for his soul,' Louise used to joke to her friends at the faculty wives' luncheons she hosted on occasional Tuesday afternoons.)"

Louise's son Danny is a gay yuppie lawyer who lives in New Haven, “mired" with his lover Walter, another successful lawyer, “in a morass of shared proprieties too extensive to even contemplate escaping." To top it off (topple it, in the opinion of some reviewers), Louise's daughter April is a well-known lesbian folk singer who is successful enough that her self-centerdness is forgiven and indulged by her friends and associates. April becomes pregnant with

Perhaps it would call for more laws to mandate that they do something about it. If they are having sexual contact with others and spreading the disease, we must stop them. We would have to do something similar to what is done with syphilis. If we identify those who have syphilis and they do nothing to treat their illness, we should notify the next of kin to encourage the person to go in for treat-

ment.

I think the person should be given the first opportunity to tell their spouse. But if they refused, then I think that the spouse should know because we are exposing the spouse and the children entering the world from that union to

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others at Alyson Publications kept a box of clippings, notes and other material that would be suitable for a gay reference book. It rapidly outgrew the box.

"We tried to focus on areas that weren't covered in existing books,” says

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Alyson. "The Gayellow Pages does a great job of keeping abreast of gay businesses and organizations across the country. And there are some excellent travel guides. But many other subjects were being forgotten."

The Almanac originally was planned

semen sent to her from a gay male friend. And she really does use a turkey baster. Recalling an earlier heterosexual period of her life, April says, "It's not a period of my life I look on fondly, full as it was of penises."

Louise is unable to decide if it is out of klutzy kindness or silent malice that her sister Eleanor keeps sending her articles from obscure psychological journals about families with "multiple homosexual children." Louise tells herself that having two gay children is better than the fates that have befalled her sister's children. Eleanor took DES and her daughter is now sterile. Her son Markie is a drug addict who once microwaved the cat. When the articles from Eleanor arrive in the mail, Louise keeps her temper by saying to herself, "I must remember how Eleanor found the cat and how she had to clean the oven afterwards."

Although Leavitt permits us to chuckle and even roar at some of these domestic complications, he does not let us forget that they are more fun for us to read about than they are for Louise to live with. In Equal Affections, as in most of his other fiction, Leavitt approaches his characters with a quiet irony that is missed by careless reviewers and ignored by dishonest ones.

For example, in the March 1989 issue of Vanity Fair, James Wolcott surveyed

AIDS.

But what about the confidentiality issue?

I think that telling the family about a positive HIV test would make the family more protective and watchful over them. I think it would be more of a support for the family to know.

You were quoted as making this statement during a hearing on the bill: 'Speaking as a legislator, as a human being and as a person who reads, the gay community and a few other people at risk want to put the entire nation at risk. As legislators, we are responsible for stopping this.' Do you have anything to add?

Yes, I said that. I don't have all the answers, but I know that as long as one person is at risk, then that puts all of us at risk.

How far should Ohioans go to eliminate that risk?

I feel that I will be better able to say in a year after the first task force report. For now, we don't know who has AIDS among the people we are in contact with daily nor do the doctors who examine patients.

I am going to say this, in the end AIDS will be treated as syphilis, tuberculosis and hepatitis. TB was one of our number

for publication in 1986, but Alyson felt it was far too incomplete to go to press. After two more postponements, he said, "I finally realized it would never be finished. But we had compiled a lot of interesting and useful facts. I hated to hide it all in a box any longer."

Instead, he decided to go ahead and publish the book--and to revise and expand it every year or two.

Among the many chapters in the Al-

manac are:

• A chronology of important events in gay history;

Short biographies of 175 prominent historical figures who are believed to have been gay or lesbian;

• A glossary of historical and slang terms;

The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force's rating of every member of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives;

...and the answer to the question that started it all:

Elaine Noble, elected to the Massachusetts state legislature in November 1974, is often cited as the first openly gay person to win public office. She was not; that honor goes to Kathy Kozachenko, who was elected to the Ann Arbor, Michigan, city council the previous spring.

Leavitt's works in an article entitled, "Yuppie Fiction: Gay Yuppies and the Suburban Idyll of David Leavitt." Evidently, Wolcott has taken it upon himself to punish Leavitt for portraying gay characters without ruthlessly satirizing them. Wolcott tries to get laughs at Leavitt's expense by citing, out of context, details about Danny and April, and suggesting that Leavitt depicts his characters in a completely humorless manner. Wolcott also mocks Leavitt and his characters for being trendy and materialistic. Evidently, Wolcott has failed to notice the incongruity of such a criticism appearing in the pages of Vanity Fair. If Leavitt ever decides to turn to satire, Wolcott has given him subject matter with which to begin his endeavor.

Wolcott and other reviewers are unable to dismiss Leavitt for depicting his characters inaccurately. Consequently, they chide him for depicting characters who do not share their own views and aspirations. Such reviewer antics, however, should reassure, rather than offend, Leavitt's many fans. Being used for target practice means that Leavitt is now assumed to be a familiar figure in the literary landscape. Equal Affections is his third book and too good to ignore. Leavitt has gotten beyond the second book hump and is now a writer who is "established," rather than "promising."

one killers, and there was nothing anonymous about testing for TB. Cleveland even had tuberculosis institutions throughout the city.

However, I don't think that AIDS victims should be quarantined since people caught TB in different ways. But I am concerned with secretions that come from the body that doctors, nurses and other staff have to work with.

What should be done about school age children who are HIV-positive and their need for confidentiality?

I do not have a problem about children with AIDS going to school. I don't feel that everyone in the school should know of the child's condition because other children can very cruel without meaning to be. A child would be put through mental anguish, and it would be unfair for every one to know-just the prinicipal and his assistant in case of an emergancy.

What can you as a legislator do to protect Ohioans from AIDS?

I can't do much more than I did, and that was to provide an opportunity for more people to be tested. The testimony stated that people would be more likely to return if the testing were anonymous, and I am willing to give that a try.