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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE September 29, 2000′′
eveningsout
Comments on gay and lesbian life are pointed, but funny
It's Not Mean If It's True
More Trials From My Queer Life by Michael Thomas Ford Alyson Publications, $12.95
Reviewed by Kaizaad Kotwal
In his third collection of essays, Michael Thomas Ford returns with a comedic vengeance and flair all his own. His previous two books Alec Baldwin Doesn't Love Me and That's Mister Faggot to You proved that Ford's writing doesn't simply tickle the
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funny bone but it also provides great fodder for stimulating discourse about the state of contemporary gay and lesbian lives.
Ford tackles subjects from the deeply personal to the intensely controversial. Under Ford's pen and sharp tongue (a Freudian implication he is sure to enjoy) there are no sacred cows. For the past five years, Ford's syndicated column "My Queer Life" has appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
He has won several Vice Versa awards for writing in the queer press. More impor-
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tantly, Ford has won an enthusiastic and faithful following of readers.
Accepting his second Lambda Literary Award last year, in front of an audience of publishing industry insiders, Ford said, “I can't tell you how many editors, agents, and well-meaning friends have told me that I could be much more successful if I could just write books that weren't so queer. Well, my last two books have been very queer indeed. They were published by a queer press. They were reviewed in queer papers and magazines. They were bought, by and large, by queer readers. They are it seems, inescapably queer .”
"So, while I may never get reviewed in the New York Times, or end up on People magazine's list of most beautiful people, I am incredibly proud and happy to be writing about my queer life—and about our queer lives—I am incredibly thankful that so many of you enjoy reading about it."
It is clear from Ford's essays that he loves the community that he belongs to, that he writes about, and that he is willing to skewer towards a greater self awareness. Ford's writing is always by, of and for queer people.
The essays in this third collection, like in the previous two, range in topics from personal dating and penile size to the Columbine massacre and queer history in all its gore and glory. While all the essays are extremely readable, enjoyable and thoughtprovoking, some stand out as gems of precise and insightful writing.
The essay titled "Prom Queen" about Charles Rice, a senior at Taylor High School
in Pierson, Florida, who attended his prom in full drag, mixes nostalgia with a hope for the future of gay youth everywhere.
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Ford concludes, with simple sincerity that, "I love thinking of Charles Rice dancing the night away, the lights flashing off his rhinestones as he laughs and enjoys himself with his friends. I'm proud of him—and of all the openly gay young people out there— for being who they are. And I hope at the end of the night, Charles Rice got kissed by the man of his dreams."
Three essays titled "The Condensed History of Gay Pride," "The Condensed History of Gay Sex," and "The Condensed History of Queer Cinema," allows Ford to play with facts and events in a rib-tickling way. His observations about the state of gay affairs are always astute, seriously funny, and dead-
on.
Ford confronts the self-righteous Laura Schlessinger in a piece called "Not What the Doctor Ordered." Ford's indignation against the self-proclaimed messiah of normalcy culminates when he proclaims, "I hate to break it to the good doctor, but if what she is passes for normal, I'll happily stay in my sick bed."
In "Thou Shalt Not Have Any Common Sense," Ford skewers the obsession by some in the right wing whose misguided thinking leads them to believe that posting the Ten Commandments in schools is the panacea to all that ails the public educational sys-
tem.
Like all good satirists, in the vein of Art Buchwald and David Sedaris, Ford is not immune from poking fun at himself or at the leaders of the GLBT community. There are many things that rankle Ford and that provide him with ample fodder for brilliant satire. But few things offend him more than the segregation between gays and lesbians and the push towards homogenization of the gay community by certain self-proclaimed messiahs of the cause.
Ford bristles at the notion that some gay men feel they have the right to tell other gay men how to live their lives, inside and outside their bedrooms. He is rankled by the fact that "Pride celebrants are no longer distinguishable from straights." And Ford tackles issues that few in the gay community want to discuss, much less ameliorate the rampant misogyny and body obsession consuming much of the gay male communities across the country.
In an interview in the press materials, Ford talks about his role as an activist. He observes that anyone who encourages people to think is an activist.
"I'm not a flag-waver," he writes. "I haven't marched for anything in over a decade. But I do try to get people to think about their lives, and about what their place in the gay community might be. My writing has always been about looking at what's going on around me and trying to find the experiences that either we have in common or that make us unique."
Ford's book ends with a moving call to self-realization. "Be gay. Be queer. Be homosexual," he writres. "Be a faggot or a pansy or a faerie, a dyke or a bulldagger or a butch. Be anything you want to be. Fit in or stand out or live somewhere in between. But whatever you decide to be, be it with as much joy and strength as you possibly can. Because ultimately it doesn't matter what we put on our banners and signs. What matters is being who we are, and not what someone else wants us to be."
It's Not Mean If It's True is a must-read for anyone with a sense of humor or the need for a series of rollicking laughs. While Ford's essays move wildly from subject to subject, it is hard to put the book down.
If you haven't read his two earlier books, grab those as well. Some of the earlier essays, albeit still relevant, may not quite have the same punch as reading them around the time of the events to which they allude. Nevertheless, Ford's writing is not simply funny or profound, but a rich and rewarding portrait of a community and subculture, painted in lush, vivid strokes, exposing it for all its brilliant beauty and frail foibles.