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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE December 24, 2004

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evening'sout

The kids are all right

A literary quartet approaches childhood from many different directions

by Anthony Glassman

Childhood is meant to be the best time of life, an epoch when there are parents to take care of needs, when everything is fun and games.

Except for gay kids.

Or time-traveling kids.

Or, presumably, time-traveling gay youth, for that matter.

Whether the story is true or fiction, adding sexual orientation to the equation immediately complicates things, whether in the realm of reality or fiction, serious work or tonguein-cheek reflections

on old favorites. Starting on the light side, Quirk Books' Escape from Fire Island, written by James H. English with illustrations by Pamela Hobbs, is an adult reinvention of the perennial youth favorite, "Choose Your Own Adventure." This one's called "A Date with Destiny Adventure," and it presents readers with almost 30 possible endings to a

CLAY'S WAY

blair mastboum

simple, realistic problem: What does one do when radioactive waste unleashes ravening hordes of zombie drag queens on a gay vacation mecca? Go to the wax museum hoping for an anti-zombie vaccine, or head to the disco for a drink and a hunk? Oy.

For a slightly more believable, not to mention more linear novel, Benbella has reprinted The Man Who Folded Himself, a queer-inflected science fiction novel by David Gerrold, the gay man who wrote the seminal Star Trek episode, "The Trouble with Tribbles."

When Danny's uncle Jim dies, he leaves him

are inevitable, but unlike Holden Caulfield, Sam is very connected to his family and friends. What he lacks is the love of his life, and Clay seems to be just that. Whether Clay can open up enough to be the love of Sam's life, however, is another matter entirely.

Of course, Clay's Way and Catcher are similar in their use of idiom, although Hawaiian surfer-boy slang has been around since before the time of Catcher in the Rye, and is far less dated that some of Salinger's vernacular.

Mastbaum's debut is a fine book, and one of those rare finds that could entertain someone who is 14 or 40.

While the little dramas of life are seldom as sweeping as those in literature, often writers create semiautobiographical works. What remains for the devotee is to decipher what the author encrypted, to separate the kernel of truth from the bushel of fabrications.

In Edmund White's A Boy's Own Story, much of the anonymous narrator's life is true to its author's

ESCAPE FROM FIRE ISLAND!

The Man Who Folded Himself

DAVID GERROLD

a box containing a strange belt and instructions. Since it's a science fiction novel, the belt can move the wearer through time.

Danny goes gallivanting through the ages, doing absolutely horrible things to the timeline like erasing Jesus, then talking himself out of erasing Jesus, all while learning that the more changes he makes, the less likely he is to beat all.

Along the way, he meets himself, a virtual army of himselves, in fact. Male, female, Danny gives narcissism a whole new dimension while surfing waves of paradox.

Former Ohioan Blair Mastbaum's debut novel, Clay's Way (Alyson), presents a story every bit as fantastic to those trapped in the Midwest a gay 15-year-old in Hawaii who falls in love with a cool 17-year-old surfer.

While John Rechy called the book "a gay Catcher in the Rye," the description is not particularly apt. Comparisons between Catcher and any novel about disaffected youth

life. Some details were changed to make the boy less precocious, or to hide the depths of White's youthful depradations.

All this comes out in Original Youth: The Real Story of Edmund

White's Boyhood,

written by his

nephew Keith

Fleming and re-

leased by Green Candy Press.

Delving into letters between White's parents, interviewing old acquaintances as well as Fleming's mother who is White's sister, a portrait is painted of a complex youth man in a less accepting age, who wanted "to love men and be loved by men without being homosexual."

Fleming documents the first instances of a recurrent pattern in White's life, betraying his sexual partners in trying to establish this paradoxical gay-butnot-gay construct.

Fleming also creates a loving portrait of a man who obviously has always been a strong influence in his own life, a man who has reached the pinnacle of his profession yet keeps striving on.

It will be interesting to see if Fleming, who earlier wrote a memoir of his own youth, will continue to mine his family life for material. It's served him in good stead thus far.

Best of all, he presents a snapshot of gay youth in a bygone era, both in Cincinnati, where White spent much of his childhood, and in Chicago. There is a great deal of seediness to be found, but it's handled in a tasteful, matter-of-fact way, not in the sordid manner it could have.

Fleming's work might one day be required reading in LGBT studies classes across the country.

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