Boys Like Us: Gay Writers Tell Their Coming Out Stories - Softcover

Merla, Patrick

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0380788357 ISBN 13: 9780380788354

Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks, 1997

Synopsis

In stunning essays written especially for this collection, twenty-nine noted gay writers recount their true "coming out" stories, intensely personal histories of that primal process by which men come to terms with their desire for other men. Here are accounts of revealing one's sexual identity to parents, siblings, friends, co-workers and, in one notable instance, to a stockbroker. Men tell of their first sexual encounters from their preteens to their thirties, with childhood friends who rejected or tenderly embraced them, with professors, with neighbors, with a Broadway star. These are poignant, sometimes unexpectedly funny tales of romance and heartbreak, repression and liberation, rape and first love defining moments that shaped their authors' lives. Arranged chronologically from Manhattan in the Forties to San Francisco in the Nineties, these essays ultimately form a documentary of changing social and sexual mores in the United States--a literary, biographical, sociological and historical tour de force.

About this title

About the Author:

Patrick Merla edited two of the most influential gay publications in the United States: Christopher Street and New York Native. He is the author of The Tales of Patrick Merla. He lives New York City.

From Kirkus Reviews:

A collection that transforms the ``coming out'' story, examining its meanings and challenging its conventions. Too often, ``coming out'' is a narrative formula rife with clich‚s and shortcuts that tend to underemphasize individual experience. This collection regrettably, does have its share of boys who ``always felt different.'' But most of these essays go far beyond such stock condensations. Allan Gurganus describes his erotic fascination with and love for Dan, a golf buddy of his father's, who ended up being arrested for fondling a young boy in a shopping mall restroom. Edmund White describes a trip to Acapulco with his stepmother and racist father, in which he loses his virginity to the hotel bar's Indian pianist. Some stories involve coming out to oneself: the specific crush or sexual experience that lets the narrator know he was homosexual. Others focus on the disclosure to others, usually parents, friends, or girlfriends, but David Drake amusingly relates coming out to his broker. The essays are arranged chronologically, a sound editorial choice, given that the dramatic changes--and equally startling continuities--in gay experience over the past 40 years make compelling stories in themselves. Samuel Delany provides a thoughtful analysis of the changing meanings of ``coming out''--at first, taken from the parlance of debutante balls, it referred to an entrance into gay society and gay life. Post-Stonewall, it meant ``coming out of the closet.'' The contributors to Boys Like Us intend both meanings and many more; this diversity of interpretation, as well as of prose styles and experience, is an important part of the anthology's richness. Not all of these essays are stellar, but there is enough truly artful material here to elevate the ``coming out'' story into a literary genre. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0380788357
• ISBN 13: 9780380788354
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384