10 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE January 11, 2002'

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We all share a little of these funny neuroses

The Little Book of Neuroses Ongoing Trials from 'My Queer Life' By Michael Thomas Ford Alyson, $14.95 paperback

Reviewed by Kaizaad Kotwal

In the astute and witty tradition of Art Buchwald and Erma Bombeck comes another collection of essays by Michael Thomas Ford written through the perspective of rainbow-colored glasses. This is a collection of writing that is both hilarious and keenly observant.

Ford's book follows the style and format of his monthly, nationally syndicated column. "My Queer Life."

This is Ford's fourth compilation of essays, having previously won Lambda Literary Awards for Alec Baldwin Doesn't Love Me, and That's Mr. Faggot to You. Of the 35 essays here, almost all are funny and every single one offers up a unique look at growing up gay and living in straight America. While not every essay is overtly about gay issues, it is obvious that they offer a particular point of view.

Over the past few years, Ford has become one of my favorite writers when it comes to the short essay on our foibles, our oddities, and of course, our neuroses. He is an excellent observer and assessor of human behavior and he captures this with an equal dose of humor and poignancy.

Even at his curmudgeonly best, Ford is funny and lovable. While he shoots his critical arrows at everything around him, his easiest and best target is himself. Ford loves to poke fun at his own neuroses and here he is at his self-deprecating best.

The book also includes several advice and self-assessment quiz columns, styled after those inane ones in Cosmo, Vogue and other glamour magazines. Ford's twist is a bit different, extremely funny and insightfully accurate. He offers help and a series of questions to wanna-bes on how to determine if one is a diva, a leatherman, a gym rat, a porn star, a drag queen, a drama queen or a slut. These faux quizzes are amazing parodies and will have you in stitches as you discover where you lie on the scale of being any one or all of the above.

Ford, a long time resident of Boston, has recently moved to Los Angeles, having found love and hoping to find a film career. All these changes in his life have allowed him to experience an exaggerated sense of insecurity, fears, obsessions, joys, jealousies, and fascinations. He mines these for all they're worth and comes up with a great collection of essays.

While Ford attacks the straight world for its ignorance and hypocrisy towards gays and lesbians, he doesn't spare the queer world its share of criticism and satire.

Ford's thesis for this latest collection is brilliantly captured by him in the introduction, when he writes: "I'm talking about the daily neuroses and worries that most of us have but few of us will actually admit to. We live in the Age of Cool, where everyone is

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supposed to have a handle on their lives and know exactly what they're doing. We have Palm Pilots and personal trainers and St. John's wort to keep us together. We know where we want to go and how to get there, and nothing is going to stop us.

"This is particularly true for queer people. Gay men are, after all, exceptionally handsome, with perfect bodies, flashing smiles, and haircuts that look like they were just done 20 minutes ago. Lesbians too are chic

The Little Book of Neuro

ONGOING TRIAT FROM MY QUEER LIFE

MICHAEL THOMAS FORD

and hip: Our lives are straight out of an Abercrombie and Fitch catalog, decorated with furnishings from Pottery Barn, and filled with nothing but Martha Stewart dinner parties and nights at the theater. It's like a neverending episode of Will & Grace, with witty friends popping in to tell us how smashing we look in our new Kenneth Cole suits."

"Unfortunately, this is all a little too much for some of us to manage. My own life, for instance, is much less like Will & Grace than it is like Roseanne. If friends dropped in for an impromptu cocktail party, they would be served Coors and Pop-Tarts. The most recognizable label on my clothing is Levi's. I am not carrying David Crosby's baby. I know that admitting this will probably keep me out of Out magazine's Out 100 issue, but it's true. I simply can't keep up. For one thing, I'm too tired. More that that, though, I'm just a big gay mess.

It's that sense of detailed observation, tongue-in-cheek satire, honest self-criticism and dry and obvious humor that makes Ford's writing such a great read. But whether we like Coors and Pop-Tarts or Martha Stewart and Kenneth Cole, whether we are gay or straight, and whether we are hip and chic or big gay messes, we all have one thing in common-neuroses. Step into the wacky, zany and truthful world and words of Ford and take a moment to laugh at the world, and at yourself.

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