JUNE 21, 1996 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE " 25

BIG TIPS

A brief pause to spend the week reading on the beach

by M.T. "the Big Tipper" Martone

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend my 10-year college reunion. Although I'm not much of an institutional flag waver, I knew that several far-flung friends would be there, and ultimately, I felt that it was my duty to be visible as a clam-happy, single, chunky lesbian with absolutely no plans to attend med school.

As I lay reading on the narrow cot in my dorm room with the door propped open (ostensibly for air, but really waiting to see if anyone "good" would happen by), I felt a bit like I was at some bathhouse, peering hopefully into the hall, waiting for some action. I suddenly realized that for the four years I had actually slept on that creaking, plastic-mattressed pallet of a bed, I had done a lot of waiting for something or somebody "good" to come along.

In the past ten years, the best and hardest lesson I've assimilated is that very few people are actually called to their ideal career, and probably fewer have been stopped by the stare of true love at the ball. You have to work hard, not just for what you get, but even just to know what you should be working on getting. It takes a lot of energy, but I sleep much better these nights. Then again, I have a much more comfortable bed.

Big Tips 101

Summer Quarter Reading List

Sister and Brother: Lesbians and Gay Men Write About Their Lives Together, edited by Joan Nestle and John Preston. A great collection of essays that catalogue the trials, solace and screaming fun we suffer at the hands of our oppositely gendered friends.

■Two or Three Things I Know For Sure, by Dorothy Allison. One thing I know for sure, and that's that if you haven't read

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everything Dorothy Allison has written, you've got catching up to do, and it'll be an intense pleasure. Two or Three Things is a brief memoir that feels fresh but familiar to readers of her earlier work: The Women Who Hate Me (poetry), Trash (short stories), Bastard Out of Carolina (novel), and Skin (essays), all of which chronicle, biographically or fictionally, the violent lives of poor white Southern girl children, and the challenges facing the women they grow to be. Brilliant; Allison is hands down the greatest living lesbian writer.

■Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us, Kate Bornstein. He used to be a salesman for IBM, now she's a performance artist. Kate lays out gender identity issues in a friendly, easy to understand tale of a boy who grows up to be quite a woman.

■The Passion of Alice, Stephanie Grant. This is a challenging book about an anorexic woman in a residential treatment program, and her increasingly intimate and puzzling relationship with a bulimic woman there. Grant's spare style picks clean the bones of ritual, denial, and longing. Excellent.

Your high school yearbook. Yikes! Aren't you glad you're not still trying to get your hair to do that?

Shade: Fiction by Gay Men of African Descent, edited by Bruce Morrow and Charles Rowell. Haven't read it yet: it's in my stack. It gets a good review from my editor friend Anne in New York, and you can probably trust her more than you can trust me.

■Flesh and the Word (and its volumes 2 and 3), edited by John Preston. I wouldn't be me if I didn't throw a little porn on this list. These three books are targeted to gay men, but the stories are written by both men and women, and contain some of the best erotic writing I've read anywhere. Even if this isn't

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Assaults on Convention: Essays on Lesbian Transgressors, edited by Nicola Godwin, Belinda Hollows and Sheridan Nye. This is a wide ranging series of essays on all means of lesbian "badness": Obsessive fandom, sleeping with guys, becoming guys, domestic violence, etc. Cute girls on the beautiful bright green cover.

■ Virtual Equality, Urvashi Vaid. Yeah, it's a tome, but it's a neat package of the gay, lesbian and bisexual movement's recent past, and what may be coming to pass in the near future. What is the price we're paying for what may ultimately be an illusion of “equality"? One of our pre-eminent thinkers.

Harriet the Spy, Louise Fitzhugh. Read it again for the first time. Bone up and be fresh for the movie.

■ The most recent issue of Factsheet 5. There are tons of fabulous independent writers doing zines, and F5 is the guide from which to pick a few. You have all the excitement of sending a dollar or two out in the mail (send cash!) and getting back something cool. It's a game of quality roulette, but that's part of the fun.

A tourist guidebook to your own city or region: Pretend you're not jaded. When I lived in Brooklyn I had a fabulous guide to the borough, and took myself on lots of great field trips, like to a Polish meat store with over 100 kinds of sausage; and I'm a vegetarian. Go crazy.

Cerealizing America, Scott Bruce and Bill Crawford. A fun and accessible chronology of the 20th century American health culture, advertising, business, and popular life told via the history of cold cereal. Did you know that the first jingle was a doleful tune for Wheaties? That Pink Panther cereal

failed because it made kids' poop pink? That the hippo who was the box character for Cap'n Crunch's Punch Crunch was purged because he was considered "too gay"? If you even care, this comprehensive book is a must read.

■ Valley of the Dolls, Jacqueline Susann. So, so much better than the movie. Lots of historical buildup to the hysterical drama of three overwrought and underaware women. The usual abundance of homophobia and sexism found in any trashy novel from the '60s, but somehow this rises above that to become the ultimate beach reading.

Thrift Store Paintings, Jim Shaw. Bad paintings, great book. You don't even have to buy it, just flip through it in the store, then buy a craft book on wood carving or making Fimo beads, and just make some stuff. Obviously these painters didn't let anything hold them back.

Remember, don't leave them folded open on the table; use a bookmark.

M.T. Martone will return to readers' questions on love and life in the next issue. Send them to her, care of the Chronicle, P.O. Box 5426, Cleveland, OH 44101; or fax to 216631-1082; or e-mail ChronOhio@aol.com.

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