26 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE MARCH 19, 1993

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"INNOVATIVE PROGRAM

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If you're a member, thinking of ecoming one, or interested in becoming involved, THIS MELTING IS FOR YOU!!

!It's Our Future!

University of Akron Gay/Lesbian Student Resource Gardner Student Center Elm Room -WE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU.

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ENTERTAINMENT

Tales of being different

Maybe the Moon by Armistead Maupin HarperCollins, 305 p. $22.00 hardcover

Reviewed by Eric Sellen

It is often fascinating how fact and fiction are related. Or perhaps it's not fascinating at all. Perhaps the relationship of fiction to the facts of our own lives is exactly what makes fiction speak so powerfully to us. We relate to a character, we empathize, we identify. We begin to understand the character, and then we are fascinated with the character's insights, triumphs, and failures--and how they can help us to better understand ourselves.

While recuperating recently from a broken ankle--with crutches, cast, and limited mobility--I read Armistead Maupin's latest novel, Maybe the Moon, released with much fanfare and flourish last fall. Immobilized on the sofa, I became psychologically linked with the book's main character. Maupin is best known for authoring the much-beloved Tales of the City series. Initially published in weekly installments in the San Francisco Chronicle in the late 1970s, the series came to an end in 1990 with the publication of its sixth and final novel, Sure of You.

Many readers were dismayed that Maupin had announced his completion of the ongoing San Francisco Tales saga. But after nearly 15 years, it was not surprising that Maupin, like an actor in a long-running television series, might desperately desire a change of identity and scenery for himself. But this raised a larger question: Could Maupin write up to his own reputation? Could he create a world of credible new characters in a single novel?

Although something new is never the same as something old, with Maybe the Moon Maupin seems to have managed just fine, in part, because he had learned how to write during the Tales series. And, particularly, because he'd learned how to write for changing times. 1992 is not 1976.

In Maybe the Moon, Maupin tackles the problem of "being different," and how people react to, interact with, and accept one another based on limited impressions. "Being different" is, of course, only one aspect of being gay in America today, but Maupin searched high and low to find a fictional metaphor that would not only challenge the straight world, but gay and lesbian perceptions, too.

Catherine, the narrator of this new book, is straight, with a difference. She is a midget--and the world's shortest woman. Too short to drive, too short to reach high

Ellen

Bass

coauthor of The Courage to Heal

Survivor Art on Display

cupboards in the kitchen or the closet shelf. She is, quite simply, the wrong size for a world built for "normal-sized" people. Additionally, because of her natural medical condition, Catherine is destined to die young (almost all midgets do). And while she is accepted by many of her acquaintances, she suspects that most of them don't want to know about her sex life--for them, it's just "too kinky" to imagine a midget having sex at all. Catherine is, in other words, a homosexual with AIDS, but from a different planet.

So much for apt metaphor. The storyline is a touching blend of excitement, love, action, and feelings, throughout which Catherine fights for acceptance on her own terms. She wants to be accepted as herself rather than via the "freakiness" that first brought her stardom in a major motion picture ten years before. Here the novel's metaphors cleverly deepen even further, for in the movie Catherine didn't appear as herself, but instead was dressed in a headto-toe elfin suit that completely disguised her own body and face. And the director insisted on keeping her real face unpublicized. Nothing like being famous and in the closet! There is a '90s gay romance involving one of Catherine's best friends. And Catherine, too, finds a love of her own, with a tall black man. How many taboos can we pile up here?

As in the Tales of the City novels, the time sequence is anchored in real events: the Persian Gulf War, the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court hearings, the tenth anniversary of the movie E.T. (upon which Catherine's hit movie is based). Although these real-life events may make the book less readable in twenty years, they make it all the more immediate today.

Like other real-life events, my own broken ankle affected my reading of Maybe the Moon. Just like Catherine, I couldn't drive, I couldn't do many "normal" things with any grace or ease. I kept thinking I was short (which at 6'2" was quite an accomplishment!) or that Catherine also had a broken leg. We all have handicaps in life, manifested in differing ways.

If you liked Maupin's work in the past, read Maybe the Moon. Of course, some diehard Tales of the City readers may feel that Maybe the Moon is several sandwiches short of a picnic, to borrow one of Catherine's own phrases from the book. But sometimes it's our own expectations that are off the mark, not the product or experience being judged. And closedminded expectations are exactly what Maybe the Moon is all about.

“Ellen's work has depth and illumination.”

"Ellen Bass is an empowering

and dedicated healer."

AN EVENING WITH

Ellen Bass

FOR ADULT SURVIVORS OF CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE

The Power of Creativity in Healing

Ellen Bass talks about writing, drawing and art in healing

Thursday

April 22 at 7pm

The Civic

3130 Mayfield Rd, Cleveland Hts.

Tickets $16.00 available in advance

at Gifts of Athena 216/371-1937

and TicketMaster outlets

Phone Charge 216/241-5555 FOR LECTURE INFO 216/371-1937 Professional Training April 23 FOR TRAINING INFORMATION

212/274-1948