MAY 3, 1996 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRoNiCLE

EVENINGS OUT

How 15 years of AIDS has affected gay men and their culture

Reviving the Tribe:

Regenerating Gay Men's Sexuality and Culture in the Ongoing Epidemic by Eric Rofes Harrington Park/Haworth Press, 318 p.

Reviewed by Samuel Wade

Nearly fifteen years ago, as a first-year public school teacher just beginning to come to grips with my own homosexuality, I tripped upon a paperback by Eric Rofes entitled Socrates, Plato, & Guys

Regenerating Gay

REVIVING

Seality and Cultur

the TRIBE

* the Ongoing Cpidemic

Fric

Rofes

Like Me: Confessions of a Gay Schoolteacher. The autobiographical book enthralled me. I was awestruck and, in a strange sort of way, proud of this brave teacher who had come out to his entire school community. I found in this book a model for self-acceptance and a hope that one day I, who at that time was 100 percent in the closet, would be able to be honest with colleagues and friends.

While I haven't thrown the closet door

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open wide, today I am out to many professional colleagues, my family and friends, and Eric Rofes has once again written a book that speaks to me right here and now in Reviving the Tribe: Regenerating Gay Men's Sexuality and Culture in the Ongoing Epidemic.

He offers us a strange enigma of a text here. Part scholarly thesis, part honest and heart-wrenching memoir. Part self-help book and part one-handed reading. This writing aroused my mind, my emotions, my spirit and my libido.

Throughout the book he seriously examines the effects that fifteen years of living in crisis have had on the gay psyche, individually and collectively. He speaks persuasively of the need for ongoing mental health care for us as a community, and as individuals infected and affected by HIV, if we are to survive and thrive as a culture through what may be a very, very long and tiring battle. He reminds us of what we often try to forget: How very much we have been through as a people, and how very wounded we are, and that those wounds do not heal themselves unattended.

Did I agree with everything I read? Absolutely not! Was I moved by his writing? Yes, on many levels. At one point he recounts, in rather titillating detail, a trip to a San Francisco sex club and his adventures there. First I became very aroused (this was the one-handed reading part) and then I became quite angry that he had been involved in at least one act that I have considered "unsafe" and have not engaged in for at least a decade. Yet he remains HIV negative while I live with the virus. He speaks of the mental health needs of HIV negative men and how they are usually ignored and neglected. As an HIV

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positive man I was challenged to see that the needs of the HIV negative and HIV positive man are equally important, and we can not sacrifice one for the other. Life in this age of HIV/AIDS is not fair,

and Rofes asks many important questions. I'm not sure I agree with all of his answers, but once again I am inspired by his courage to speak the truth as he sees it, and I am given that same beautiful gift-hope.

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