American Queer Life: How Culture Saved a Little Gay Boomer Boy

When I was 16, I read my first porn. Barry Luce sneaked me a dog-eared paperback during study hall in my high school auditorium. I was most “moved” by the descriptions of male-on-male action, but I felt dirty and guilty … and defiant and exhilarated, and, suddenly, informed. How could that possibly … ohhh …

Part four of my exploration of how culture saved this little gay Boomer boy living in Podunk, CO examines literature. Ignoble as that porn book was, it aided my search for a queer identity. What can I say? Sources were scarce, and in hindsight, surprising.

For a dime, comic books fed my juvenile fantasies with the astonishing adventures of heroic, handsome he-men in skintight costumes—some with capes. Though Superman, Batman, and other justice crusaders taught me about courage, morality, and duty, I would get sidetracked ogling Superman’s wayward curl of blue-black hair crossing his forehead, or fabricating a bold and blissful life being Batman’s Robin.

College and my early New York days led me to the canon of queer classics. The Berlin Stories (1945, source of movie-musical Cabaret) and A Single Man (1964) by Christopher Isherwood exposed me to stories of my kind written in exquisite prose. John Rechy seduced me with his seedy tales of L.A.’s queer castaways in City of Night (1963). Mary Renault resurrected Alexander the Great and the ancient world in her novels Fire From Heaven (1969) and The Persian Boy (1972).

Patricia Nell Warren’s The Front Runner (1974) generated gobs of sobs, then gossip when Paul Newman allegedly optioned the love story between an athlete and his coach for a film starring himself. Interview with a Vampire (1976) by Anne Rice made an eternally damned life homoerotic and tempting. The triple-whammy in 1978 of Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City, Larry Kramer’s Faggots, and Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance was required queer reading. These trailblazers led me to James Baldwin, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, Edmund White, Virginia Woolf.

The romance novel The Lord Won’t Mind by Gordon Merrick was a landmark publication. The story of two men falling in love had a happy ending; it was a New York Times bestseller for 16 weeks, and both achievements occurred in 1970.

A few non-fiction titles added to my education. Gay American History—Lesbians and Gay Men in the U.S.A. by Jonathan Ned Katz was published in the year of America’s 200th anniversary. This revolutionary work chronicled the little-known history of LGBTQ Indigenous natives, explorers, colonists, and citizens since the 1500s. Sitting on my bookshelf with its red cover and wide spine, the title seemed to scream GAY in a 50 point font. More than once, when straights visited, I’d put the book in the closet, myself with it.

Reporting from cosmopolitan cities worldwide, the magazine After Dark (1968-1983), a precursor to Entertainment Weekly, promoted celebrities, theater, movies, clubs, music—an exotic milieu I dreamed of living.

The Boys of Boise (1966) by John Gerassi detailed the 1955 scandal and two-year investigation of a homosexual underground and prostitution ring. From Idaho’s capital with a population of 40,000, 1,500 people were questioned. In this travesty of justice, 16 men convicted on rigged charges faced jail time ranging from probation to life in prison.

Referenced in Gerasssi’s book was Dr. Evelyn Hooker, an American psychologist. I kept coming across her in other books, so I went to the library and dug deeper. Her 1957 paper “The Adjustment of the Male Overt Homosexual” and scientific studies in the 50s and 60s led to the “normalization” of homosexuality and its eventual removal from lists of mental diseases.

I loved two poets: Walt Whitman and Alan Ginsberg. Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1855) is part American history, part homoerotica. A hundred years after Whitman, Ginsberg’s Howl still resonates with rage and despair over existential issues unresolved today.

Notable books with AIDS motifs include: memoirs by National Book Award winner Paul Monette; AIDS and Its Metaphors (1989) by MacArthur Fellowship grant winner Susan Sontag, The Hours (1998) by Pulitzer winner Michael Cunningham, and The Line of Beauty (2004) by the Man Booker Prize winner Alan Hollinghurst.

How did all these stories help me discover my identity? I learned queers were decadent, lonely, shallow, vindictive, rich and ugly, poor and beautiful; that queer life meant potential prostitution, police harassment, betrayal, death by disease, murder, suicide, assassination, or vampiric bite.

But, I also learned about integrity, loyalty, passion, honesty, creativity, family, love—which has nothing to do with being a gay man and all to do with being a decent human—and that gay men have fun. “Life is a cabaret, ol’ chum!” And to the cabarets I bee-lined—bars, dance clubs, baths, after-hours sex joints—meeting many chums along the way.

And what of the porn my high school buddy sneaked me so long ago? I’ve since learned about what I call immoral pornography. It’s like sexual pornography: hostile, deceitful, violent, abusive, void of social ethics, where a person’s humanity is nil. But unlike sexual pornography, this rancor—embodied most noisily from the White House, Christian pulpits, patriotic websites, and alt-right news shows—comes without orgasm; no doubt there are exceptions.

And there are battles ahead. LGBTQ writers fought for our justice, for the justice of everyone. In discovering their sexual identity, they found their humanity. We will have need of our queer justice league. May their capes forever wave, and their words forever sing.