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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 1, 1989)
"The Gay Mystique" revisited AIDS has a background of social events rooted in thousands of years of gay oppression and represssion that caused deep psychological harm B Y I A N Y O U N G Fisher does not condemn promiscuity in The s the patterns of illness and healing Gay Mystique, recognizing that monogamous within the AIDS crisis emerge, it union is not for everyone. But he seems secure becomes more and more apparent that those and happy in such a union for himself and his who contract the syndrome, are people whose partner. “ A dear friend, and certainly one of the immune systems have already been damaged. keenest minds in the movement, strongly dis There are Africans whose health was impaired approves of the relationship Marc and I share. by a smallpox vaccination campaign that had He views what once was the ideal, as the ulti catastrophic side-effects; Haitians living in con mate sell-out to the straight establishment. ditions of extreme poverty and malnutrition; Marc and I do not love as we do because it is and urban North Americans with a history of more ‘respectable,’ but because it is what poor nutrition, high stress, depression and makes us happy.” frequent use of antibiotics and/or recreational Eight years later, in 1980, Fisher published drugs. In this last category, are the many gay his autobiographical novel. Dreamlovers, a men living what writer John Lauritsen has painfully honest, engaging, idiosyncrtic look at called “ the immuno-suppressive lifestyle.” In gay life and fantasy. By now the gay world was this lifestyle, chemical and psychological in flux. “ Gay people were questioning the factors combine to cause chronic weakening of nature of all their relationships.” The gay the metabolism, laying the individual open to liberation movement, new in 1972, had now destructive infection by parasites and viruses — been around long enough to have been largely including HIV. co-opted by commercialism, “ gay rights” AIDS did not drop from outer space. It was liberalism and the Mafia. Dreamlovers was not not sent by God as a punishment for sexual widely reviewed. nonconformity. It is not “ caused” by a vims. By 1975, Fisher’s lover is urging him to be AIDS has a background of social events rooted free. “ Enjoy yourself as much as possible. Get in thousands of years of gay oppression and into pleasure." and pleasure for gay men was repression that caused deep psychological now defined as the pom-and-poppers lifestyle harm, to Western society as a whole, and promoted in the Mafia mags. Fisher, whose two especially to the many gay men whose sense of great joys in life are his writing and his lover, is balance and self-worth was irreparably confused, but not wanting to be possessive or damaged. rigid, he goes along. He and Marc soon find Only with the emergence of AIDS can the themselves in the dark, orgy room of a bar with seriousness and tragedy of that damage be seen the uncannily appropriate name Folsom Prison, clearly. But some of the best of our artists have where “ poppers perfumed the thick, smoky offered us a picture of ourselves that many of us air.” have not wanted to see — a true likeness. One By 1976. Fisher is writing in his diary, “ My of these artists is novelist and movement fantasies are becoming realities. . . . My type activist, Peter Fisher. writer keeps breaking down. Obsessive depres In his 1972 book The Gay Mystique, still one sions come on me in waves. All I can think of the most intelligent and readable of the early about is what a failure l a m . . . Marc is my only gay liberationist tracts, Fisher describes his reason for not killing myself. . . ” And Marc is entry into the gay world as it was in the days urging him to go to the orgy bars alone. By before Stonewall: 1977, seven years after their exchange of rings, “ When I first came out into the gay world, I only eleven years after the beginning of gay hoped that I would find someone to love who liberation, Pete and Marc are staggering, drunk loved me and settle down together.” What he and drugged, through a frantic, confused tangle found was that “ no affair seemed to last more of emotions, and crowding, ejaculating bodies. than a week or two . . . I remember waiting for Things have reverted, apparently, to the in phone calls that never came and the agony of stability, hurt and self-hatred the author had cast hearing rumors or finding last week’s lover in the bar with someone new. It wasn’t long before I became cynical about the gay world and Parents Matter: Parents’ Relationships with cynical about m yself.. . . I heard myself repeat Lesbian Daughters and Gay Sons, by Ann ing and believing things I had heard others say Muller (Naiad Press, 1987, 218 pages $9.95). and had refused to believe. It was better not to become too deeply involved, because you would only get hurt in the end. You should never really open yourself up to another person nn Muller’s intentions are in the right — you were too vulnerable if you did. Sex was perfectly satisfying, anyway, and there was no place. ^ As the mother of a gay son, she wrote need to waste your time looking for love. . . . 1 Parents Matter to see more clearly the layered felt enormously guilty and cruel.” The period reactions in her own family and others like it. whose frantic slogan was “ so many men, so As an author, she tried to correct the imbalance little time” had begun. in many books about homosexuality, which Fisher recounts his moving away from these contain a primary discussion of gay male issues negative attitudes as he came to a greater under with lesbian concerns tacked on like a post standing of himself and discovered his capacity script. And as an amateur sociologist. Muller for love at the same time as the movement for worked to make sense of a pattern yielded from gay liberation was unfolding. In a moving 71 questionnaires: that lesbian daughters had passage, he describes how he met his lover- bumpier relationships with their parents than Marc . through the Gay Activists Alliance, how gay sons. as they sat on a loading dock in the mist of a But clear intentions don’t necessarily make rainy evening, Marc gave him a ring. Later, for eye-opening conclusions — or for a com they exchanged simple vows in a chapel of the pelling read. Parents Matter raises some pro Cathedral of St. John the Divine. vocative, even radical notions. Unfortunately, “ This was a place where many other people they drop between the cracks in Muller’s had come in the past to join their lives, and simplistic analyses, lists of anonymous quotes although we had no service, no family, no and loose framework built on the results of a friends, no blessing but our own. we were part o f that spirit.” small, unscientific study. A The gay movement wantedfreedom and acceptance from North American society. It was cheaply bought off with the glittering scraps of a Mafia-controlled, commercial ‘gay lifestyle that proved ruinous to psychological and physical health. ‘ aside only a few years before. Only now, drugs and a multiplicity of sex partners give an addi tional intensity to the fragmentation, anguish, and loneliness. In an interview he gave after Dreamlovers was published, Fisher said, * ‘Nowadays I wonder if by participating in such frequent visits to the sex bars, I was acting out the verdict that society had delivered.” Dreamlovers is a poignant portrait of a people in transition — newly recognized, confused, still very off-balance, with an overpowering urge to celebrate being thwarted and repressed. The philosopher Herbert Marcuse warned of “ repressive tolerance,” and how right he was. The two young men who pledged themselves to one another in the Cathedral chapel, now in Dreamlovers, find themselves still not accepted into the congregation as they wished to be, but instead consigned to a Prison that they have been told is freedom. There, they are being driven mad. The novel ends with Pete in the arms of a phantasm. At this point, the first appearance of AIDS in the gay community is less than a year away. As homosexual men of this century’s fin-de- siecle live and die in the wake of the drugged A Ann Muller To her credit, Muller avoids repeating what’s already on the shelves. She cites books such as Now That You Know, which walks parents slowly through myths about homosexuality, popping stereotypes like soap bubbles. She also refers to Coming Out to Parents: A Two-Way Survival Guide fo r Lesbians and Gay Men and Their Parents, which offers concrete help for ’ ’ promiscuity of the gay I ib decade, we begin to see the insidious pattern of social forces and mental states that led so many of our brothers to the slaughter. The gay movement wanted free dom and acceptance from North American society. It was cheaply and easily bought off with the glittering scraps of a Mafia-controlled, commercial “ gay lifestyle” that proved ruinous to psychological and physical health. When the gruesome fact is fully grasped, we may see another wave o f gay anger that will make Stonewall and the Dan White protests look like the street skirmishes they were. For now, the gay movement, such as it is, remains for the most part in the hands of the 40-year old yuppie survivors, shellshocked and battle fatigued, very few of whom are ready to take a good hard look at their recent past (and present!) with even a fraction of Pete Fisher’s honesty. But when the history of gay liberation is eventually written, whoever writes it will find books like A Day and a Night at the Baths, Faggots, Numbers, The Rushes, and Dreamlovrs to be documents of immense sadness, value, and truth. • sons and daughters deciding whether, when and how to come out to parents. The section in this book on parent-child separation issues is especially insightful and applies to all families, not just those with a gay or lesbian child. Muller does not mention Different Daughters, an anthology of personal stories by mothers of lesbians. Muller’s discussion of sex roles — in fact, her discussion throughout the book — fails to recognize cultural differences that might influ ence parents’ relationships with their children. This gap becomes obvious when she examines her statistics on the basis of other variables, including religion, education, geography, parents’ ages, politics and number of siblings. Even with these breakdowns, the size and scope of her sample — all respondents were from the Chicago area — curtail the force of her conclusions. Parents Matter does succeed in giving lesbians and gay men equal representation. It does broach some potentially fascinating thoughts about relationships between lesbian daughters and their parents. But after the back cover is closed, it is up to readers to take those ideas and pursue them in other books, in discus sions or in their own lives. — Anndee Hochman lust out « 1 4 * January 198»)