GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE July 5, 2002

eveningsout

Stranger than fiction

Two true stories illustrate the best and worst of the genre

Sex-Crime Panic

by Neil Miller

Alyson, $14.95 trade paper

Jodi

The Greatest Love Story Ever Told by Richard M. Brodsky Trebloon, $21.95 trade paper

ony Glassman

Mention reading a history novel or an autobiography, and people's eyes roll. Nonfiction, in the popular conception, tends to be dull, dreary and dismal. History books are full of dry facts, once-important deeds that now have as much sociological relevance as a medieval minstrel or a maypole.

Autobiographies tend to run one of two ways: either incredibly dull, as when some scholar endlessly talks about her quest for the ultimate truth in some arcane topic like astrophysics, or incredibly self-serving, some fading star talking about his battles with prescription painkillers and the writers of his formerly popular television show.

Neil Miller's Sex-Crime Panic, however, disproves the myth of the historical nonfiction novel. In engaging narrative style, Miller examines the darkest of days before the Stonewall rebellion, the McCarthy-era, Communist-fearing 1950s.

Two children were abducted and killed in Sioux City, Iowa, in 1954. The crimes were apparently unrelated. A pre-adolescent boy was the first victim, followed by an infant girl, taken from her crib at home.

In the manhunt and, some would say, witch hunt that followed, lawmakers needed a quick and easy remedy. What they came up with was a law that allowed courts to send people deemed "sexual psychopaths" to mental institutions instead of prisons. Sending criminals to the psychiatric ward instead of jail was supposed to be the caring thing to do. Instead of simply being punished for a crime, the perpetrator could be treated and made into a productive member of society.

However, when the police couldn't come up with any viable suspects, they caved in to public pressure and put the new legislation to use, rounding up gay men.

The men were arrested and interrogated, often tricked into giving up the names of other men with whom they had engaged in sexual activity. Those men were, in turn, brought in and faced the same treatment.

Miller examines the time, investigates the events, and, where possible, updates the reader with information on the men involved, explaining where they went once they were released, and what they're doing now. Some of the men, understandably, wanted nothing to do with Miller's research. Others, however, were relieved to finally unload the burden of what occurred almost five decades ago.

On the other end of the spectrum, there is Richard M. Brodsky's vanity-press release Jodi: The Greatest Love Story Ever Told. This volume falls quite firmly into the selfindulgent category of autobiographies, and is a miserable book in more ways than could probably be explained in one review.

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Jodi tells Brodsky's story, how

met his wife, had affairs with

men, discovered he was HIV-positive, told his wife and daughters, and ultimately got on with his life. The subtitle, however, is a little deceptive. Brodsky spends far more time talking about which relatives he likes or dislikes, which of his architectural clients tried to screw him out of money and why the New York Marathon should give him a lifetime pass than he spends talking about why he loves his wife and why she loves him.

In fact, the latter question is the most mystifying. Jodi-unfortunately, her real name so she can't live in anonymity away from this book-seems to be little more than a doormat. Perhaps this would have been a better book had she written it; at least then, that question would have been answered. Luckily for her, however, few people will probably read it.

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Another tremendous problem with the book, although quite enlightening from a sociological standpoint, is Brodsky's perfect illustration of the causes of bi-phobia, although he fluctuates from referring to himself as bisexual, bisexual leaning towards gay, and gay.

At least twice, he mentions that Jodi understands his "need" to have sex with men, never quite realizing the utter fallacy of his words. He doesn't need to have sex with men, any more than he needs to find reasonably-priced restaurants with good service. He wants to, it is a desire that he has. Brodsky fails to understand at any point in the book that his bisexuality does not give him a license for non-monogamy. That is a ground rule that should have been set long before, but wasn't, and he strayed.

Perhaps Brodsky's greatest sin, however, is in the poor structure of the narrative. The book seems to have started off as a journal, but looks as though he kept returning and embellishing pieces to the point where it becomes an almost stream-of-consciousness meandering stroll through his psyche, with all the repetitions that might entail. He mixes his metaphors, makes up words in a miserably failed attempt to be cute, and writes poetry that, as a rule, rhymes no matter what.

My high school creative writing teacher would be absolutely appalled.

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Headwaves

HAIR DESIGNS Dawn Perry

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