Toby Johnson: Toby Johnson is the editor of White Crane: A Journal of Gay Men's Spirituality. This review was originally published in White Crane Journal (#44). It is reprinted with permission from www.whitecranejournal.com online.
“How to Survive Your Own Gay Life” is a remarkable book. It would make an ideal workbook for a gay discussion group. In a way it's about everything that concerns gay consciousness. And that's the problem, as well as the strength of the book.
The book opens with lots of practical and good advice about how to think of oneself as gay and how to connect with other gay men. Not exactly advice for the lovelorn or tips for meeting strangers, the book delves deeper into how gay men's self-concepts influence their social and sexual lives. Lots of observations follow about the nature of love and relationship. Brass's ideas are often insightful and acute. He has a way of telling it like it is, in ways that get behind stereotypes and social conventions.
Following one of the cultural stereotypes, Brass often speaks in the voice of a camp queen, scornful of gay men and gay culture, wickedly funny sometimes, but dismissive and judgmental. Clearly this is a recognizable gay voice. It is part of the heritage of big city life, and so justifiable as a way of articulating the sometimes awful truth. But one might argue that that very scornful tone that so many gay men affect (out of humor and defensiveness) is a big part of the problem.
The middle section of the book is about surviving gay violence. This is the most practical discussion in the book and the most disturbing. Here the scornful tone disappears, to be replaced by a wounded innocence that comes from having faced anti-gay violence and survived with all the hard lessons learned.
The richest section of the book then follows in a discussion of what Brass calls “the Gay Work.” Now both the scorn of the bitch queen and the wounded practicality of the survivor disappear in favor of the philosopher/alchemist struggling to present the mystical meaning of the patterns of gay life. Just as the “Work” of the alchemists of old was to transform dross into gold as a sacrament/allegory for transforming human life into the divine, Brass suggests that engaging in the Gay Work transforms not only ourselves, but the whole world. There is a reason for us being gay in the spiritual ecology of the universe.
The Gay Work includes creating for ourselves the idealized Male Companion. In that, we also recreate ourselves and our understanding of our lives. But we also demonstrate to the world what maleness is really about, i.e., beauty and tenderness, qualities mainstream culture seldom attributes to men. It is also to provide a normal brake on population growth, to become the scribe (or point of consciousness) of families, and to enrich and enlarge the role of men.
The problem with the book is that Perry Brass says too much. There are just too many ideas and comments, asides, and loose associations: Too much wisdom….
There is a lesson in all this about the richness of gay experience. The “first generation” of gay liberationists is now reaching the time in their
lives for reaping the wisdom of experience. In contrast to the misrepresentations of gay life perpetuated in mainstream society and, as Perry Brass might add in his scornful voice, in the gay media and gay consumer culture as well, we aren't just sexual outlaws, pretty bodies, and dissipated libertines. As we begin to gather our wisdom and share “the secrets of life” we've learned from our perspective as enlightened outsiders, we discover rich, intricate tapestries of meaning. We have so much to say to ourselves, each other, and our descendants in the gay tribe. Almost too much to say.
Whether you find the occasionally campy tone annoying or hilarious, you'll find much to love and agree with in this book. You'll want to talk about
these ideas with other gay men. You'll probably want to share your own survival secrets. And that's the mark of a good book. And it's an important part of the Great Gay Work.
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