Image provided by: University of Oregon Libraries; Eugene, OR
About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (June 1, 2001)
» ¡una 1, 2001 The dark side of the m an who fell in love w ith the moon nv M arl A lito rainbow ball ** ■ friday, june 15 • crystal ballroom 1332 west burnside doors open at 8:00 pm • 21 & over hosted by tickets: $10 advance $12 at the door What did I d « last sight? Can you relate? Cascade AIDS 4 PHOTOS BY tickets available at all mcmenamins outlets, crystal ballroom, from chorus members or online at www.mcmenamins.com uclced dry.” That’s how Tom Span- bauer describes the experi ence of writing his latest book, In the City of Shy Hunters. Ten years after publishing the highly regarded The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon, five years after almost dying of AIDS, two years after end ing a long-term relationship, the Portland author has channeled his grief, his rage and his longing into an epic of Wagnerian proportions. “It’s the responsibility of the survivor to tell the story,” Span- bauer writes, but he almost didn’t live to tell this tale of a band of eccentric New Yorkers on the front lines of the battle against AIDS in the 1980s. His own brush with death interrupted the writing of the novel, but it also steeled his courage to complete it. into sadomasochism or even leather. I’d like to The phrase “The only way out is in” repeats express that, but then I get there and I always throughout the book as a leitmotif and, like feel so silly.” Dante descending into the inferno in order to The leather world’s loss is literature’s gain, ascend, Spanbauer felt compelled to return to however, and fans of The Man Who Fell in Love his past in order to move on. with the Moon’s sexual frankness will not be dis “I always feel that your writing is strong by appointed by his newest novel. But In the City of going to your own scary places,” he says. “1 think Shy Hunters is not a book meant to be read with of this book like a journey into the underworld one hand— its explicitness is meant to provoke to retrieve something very, very important.” some honest examination of our sexuality. Reflecting back on the injustices of the Despite the image that gay men are 1980s, Spanbauer says: “I still hate the Reagans. obsessed with sex, and genitalia in particular, I still want to see them publicly humiliated.” Spanbauer finds most of them reluctant to Raised in a German Catholic enclave in engage in a meaningful conversation about it. Idaho surrounded by Mormons, Spanbauer first “W ho really talks about big cocks and little found his voice as a cocks in literature?” writer while still living Tm still working out he says. “These are at home and going to all of this abuse and things we all won college. “It was the all this darkness and der about— you early 1960s and every all this sin that I got wonder about me, I thing was so clean and wonder about you— from Catholicism.” so cute and none of it but we don’t talk made any sense to me,” —Tom Spanbauer about it. We’re like he says, “so I started a women in the ’50s; journal and on the first page I wrote the word we get together and what do we do? We talk ‘TRUTHS’ in big, swirly letters.” about flower arrangements.” Revelations like “I jerked off three times Spanbauer relates that the surest way to today” might hardly raise a titter nowadays, but clear a room at a dull gay party is to turn to they sent shock waves coursing through Span- someone and say: “Gee, what’s your relation bauer’s house when his mother found the jour ship to your penis? ’Cause, y’know, I’ve always nal taped to the top of his underwear drawer. been kind of troubled by mine.” “My father said to me, ‘You take that thing you He continues, “Statistics are that the aver call a journal and get out of this house, but first age male’s penis is 5 inches long, but we pick you go in there and apologize to your m oth up Honcho and there’s not a 5 inch penis in er... then the three of us knelt down and there, and there’s not a skinny penis either.” prayed for my soul not to go to hell,” he says. Spanbauer’s candor dealing with issues of Today, Spanbauer routinely goes to hell size and potency in Shy Hunters does much to looking for material. “I’m still working out all dispel the notion that if men don’t live up to of this abuse and all this darkness and all this the Honcho standard they are somehow defi sin that I got from Catholicism," he says. “I’m cient. He describes the time period as being all surprised, after all I’ve been through, I’m not about “rage and genitalia.”
