august 1. 2003 *
BOOKS
eatmgout
eatingout
eating out
out
Compassionate catty-ism
In the Bible Belt or in gritty urbania,
gay authors always find plenty of oddballs
H ow l
L earned
to S nap
by Kirk Read;
Hill Street Press,
2003; $13
softcover
irk Read’s
2001 mem
oir Hou> I
Learned to Snap,
just released in
paperback, fol
lows his experi
ences as a gay
boy raised in Pat
Robertson’s
hometown.
Presented as
a series of riffs
on themes (the
ater, fashion,
Kirk Read and Matt Bernstein
pornography),
Snap tells of a young man struggling to find
acceptance in the Bible Belt. Yet Read doesn’t
wallow in self-pity or despair. In fact, he is bold
(premiering a story about coming out in high
school while still in high school) and brash
(demanding that he be allowed to take a boy to
the prom).
Along the way, he is inspired by an assort
ment of oddballs and misfits, including Eve
Hill, a black high
schooler who taught
him to say, “Ooh, child”
and armed him with an
attitude. The author
also relates spending
hours writing in his
journal and scribing
flowery love notes to
the objects o f his ado
lescent desire.
Despite the difficul
ties of name calling,
attacks and alcohol abuse, Read survives. From
truck stops to fixitball to cow tipping, this tale
about coming of age in a nonurban environ
ment is presented without embellishment.
In fact, that’s the problem with the Fxxik.
While the stories are tme and sometimes funny,
just as often they are not very interesting, peter
ing out or falling flat before their point has been
made. It’s as if in being a memoirist Read forgot
that he needed to be a storyteller as well.
Giuple that with disconcerting jumps in
the time frame— tine moment he is in high
schtxil, the next in college and the next back
in elementary schtxil— and readers are left with
the feeling that this is a portrait of an artist in
search of an editor.
— Floyd Sklaver
Lucy's
P u l l in g T a f f y
nyone ctincemed that mainstream political
acceptance threatens to dilute queers cul
turally should find welcome relief in Matt
Bernstein Sycamore's fiction. Drawing from his
experiences as a sex worker (he went by the
handle “Mattilda"), he creates a world William
S. Burroughs would find harrowing with char
acters John Waters would find charming.
Set against a grimy urban landscape, coked-
A
M -F
appetizers & drinks for less $
K
by Matt Bernstein Sycamore; Suspect Thoughts
Press, 2003; $16.95 softcover
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503.226.6126
Biuy R eep ’. s !
)L
• ' .
1
»
Coo I
Hot Nights
on the
Pcrtio!
I
I
R e s t a u r a n t <& B ar
Sycamore on one of their many tea rtxim readings
g l
Alba osteria
SC F N O T EC A
up prostitutes in drag and rent boys embrace
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addiction, fight against abusive parents and a
I
far more hostile world, turn tricks with pathetic
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clients and turn to each other for something
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that concepts of family and friendship do not
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6 4 4 ° SW Capitol Highway (in Hillsdalr)
Sycamore renders their stmggles with a
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Portland, O R 9 7 2 3 9
terse, plain prose that makes possible his preci
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sion with dialect and detail. And what detail!
w w w .b i ll y r e e d s . c o m
Vomit, piss, hkxxl, jissom, grease; coke, booze,
pills; anorexia, bulimia, gluttony; Chanel,
_
Fendi, Hermes; HIV. The surplus of the
grotesque and the crass is meted out with a
tense, angry energy yet in a voice that manages
to be catty, contemptuous and compassionate
all at once.
For all the filth and degradation, this voice
"H u
humanizes its narrator and turns moments of
pain, fury and sorrow into a bleak poetry:
“When JoAnne died,
there was cardboard in
my ears, even though I
don’t know what that
means. W hen you leave
r
cardboard out in the rain,
it rots, collapses but does
n’t disintegrate. Maybe
I’m writing about my ears
because that’s how 1
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I wanted cardboard in my ears, only it rots, col
lapses bur doesn’t quire disintegrate."
Memory and the need to survive compete
for the narrator’s attention, breaking conscious
ness into moments of the immediate and of
remembered trauma. The salve is humor, of
course, not derived from scatology (though
t
there is plenty of that) but from the trauma
Famous
for
itself— finding within the pain elements of the
Specialty Omelettes
absurd that the narrator can extract and
release.
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n,
— K evin M oore
JH
K irk R ead and M att B ernstein S ycamore
join forces to read (apparently quite theatrically)
from then respective works 7:30 p.m. Aug. 13 at
Twenty'Third Avenue Books, 1015 N.W . 23rd
A v e., and 7 p.m. Aug. 18 at Corvallis' Grass
Roots Bookstore, 227 S.W. Second St.
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