The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered (15 page)

Tom tries to ignore the unspoken accusations to focus on his music. His goal is to win the music category in the state finals, get a scholarship to a good school, and get the hell out of Buck Creek. He cinches the prelim-naries but is informed by the principal that he can not attend the state finals. An angered Tom demands to know why. The principal informs him that a parent refused to allow her son to stay overnight with a known homosexual. The school would not tolerate that type of scandal, no matter how talented Tom is. The boy leaves school flustered. If everyone, including the principal and music teacher, believed him to be queer, perhaps it was true. He questions his being a momma’s boy, his passion for music over girls, and his own sexuality, which had never been in doubt before.

Deeply troubled, Tom rushes to his best friend, Ward. After hearing Tom’s predicament, Ward confesses his “homosexual tendencies” and apologizes for being the root of the rumors. Although some future woman might make him commit to marriage and family life, he accepts that he may only achieve an intimate relationship with another man. He ensures Tom that their friendship was prized, but that the boy was never the subject of his romantic interests. Tom is crushed to find his one sanctuary to be the cause of all his trouble. He leaves with an increased sense of isolation.

Tom spends the next few weeks alone and in a state of pronounced depression. He convinces himself that his chances of escaping to a good school are trashed along with his future, questions his feelings for Ward, and feels deserted by his mother, who has started dating. The world closes in on him and he gives up the fight. The rumor mongers win.

The novel ends quickly with a deus ex machina. An overconfident Floyd demands that Tom drive him home after missing the bus. Tom drives recklessly in his haste to get rid of the boy and speeds on icy roads thinking that nothing really mattered. He wrecks his car. Floyd dies on impact, but Tom takes no joy in his demise when he wakes from a coma a few days after the accident. With a new appreciation for life and time to reflect, Tom understands that he had allowed the misinformed opinions of people who didn’t know or care about him to destroy his life and the one relationship he valued. Tom and Ward are reunited in friendship, but one that is strained by the circumstances.

The book was originally published in 1972 and marketed to teens, which seems incredibly controversial as it was barely three years after the Stonewall Riots and the dawn of Gay Liberation. However, neither of the characters commits to being gay — Tom is the straight-arrow all-American golden boy and Ward’s homosexual “tendencies” are reduced to a single thwarted experience that he pays for by being discharged from the army. Although Ward imagines a life shared with another man, he consigns himself to celibate bachelorhood, and writing, until he can be saved by a good woman.

Lynn Hall’s original ending was “open for interpretation” but implied that the two young men did enter into a homosexual relationship. The publisher, Follet Publishing Company, did not feel comfortable marketing a book that ended with a positive portrayal of a gay relationship, which might have been “damaging to young minds.” In keeping with gay literature of the period, they suggested resolving the issue by killing Tom or Ward in a “nice, handy car accident.” With three days to rewrite the ending, Ms. Hall split the difference and kept both men alive, but allowed the accident to change the outcome of their relationship. (
Cuseo, Allan A. Homosexual Characters in YA Novels: A Literary Analysis, 1969-1982)

Despite the editorial intervention, the end result remains daring for the intimate domestic bond the two men share. They spend time rebuilding the schoolhouse as their own world, support one another in their artistic pursuits, and stay up all night talking about their dreams and plans for the future like a newly forged couple. Ward is not portrayed with any of the stereotypical attributes of a closeted queer, but is an honest, vanilla, and decidedly masculine mentor to his younger friend. He is, and remains at the end of the novel, a positive role model.

Sticks and Stones
hit me in two stages through high school. The first was outright denial. If Tom Naylor was really straight but only doubted his sexuality because he was accused of being gay, then perhaps the same was true of me. When I returned to school in the fall I rushed into a thankfully short relationship with a mousy girl, and then into a second relationship with a visionary punk girl, Cheré, who saw me as raw clay. She molded me into Duran Duran’s Nick Rhoades to her Julie Friedman, introduced me to alternative music, pot, and a culture more accepting of differences. We started swapping clothes and makeup, and as Boy George and Annie Lennox introduced gender-bending to MTV audiences, we starred in our own controversial roles as rural New Jersey’s cross-dressing ambiguously sexual couple.

Cheré and I formed the nucleus of a loose knot of outsiders: punks, Goths, and other artistically bent individuals. Together we rejected the mainstream as it rejected us. We felt superior
because
of our differences and inspired one another to be more outlandish, more outrageous, and more combative against our so-called peers. They could no longer force us out if we refused to belong.

The taunting, however, escalated through high school and culminated in my being nicknamed Rocky in honor of Rock Hudson’s AIDS-related death. Despite my unflappable facade, the words and the belittling attitude of the other students, and the general negligence of the teachers and faculty, began to wear me down. I did not defend myself against the attacks knowing that there was nothing I could do or say to change their opinions, but neither did I stand up and say, “Yeah, I am a faggot. What’s it to you?” That would have taken courage I had not yet developed.

The culmination of years of being singled out finally took their toll. I broke things off with Cheré  it was just one more lie to maintain  and withdrew into myself. I erroneously thought I had no one to turn to who could understand what I was going through. I didn’t think I could change, and that I was doomed to a life of hatred and avoidance, where intimacy could only be found in bathroom stalls. I saw little hope for my future, and like one-third of gay teens, I tried to take my life. It was a drastic and embarrassing call for help; I downed an entire box of NoDoz thinking the caffeine overload would stop my heart; instead it only made me puke for thirty-six life-changing hours.

Sticks and Stones
was my only gay text, so I returned to it for some answers. I reread it with a fresh perspective. Tom’s life was nearly destroyed by lies, but in his case they
were
lies; in mine, the only person lying was me. It was Ward who lived in peace with his homosexuality, creating his own world where he could maintain a platonic but intimate relationship with his younger friend. Ward Alexander became a gay mentor, one with whom I shared something in common, writing.

I first outed myself on the page and wrote short stories and bad poetry about being gay; I didn’t show these to anyone. Writing about my feelings helped me clarify my emotions and gain some perspective. It was also easier to have a fictional me confess his desire for straight male friends than to say it out loud and risk losing that friendship. I used my pen to recreate myself on paper before I attempted it in real life.

I came out to my ex-girlfriend, who admitted her own bisexuality. We developed a new friendship after our short affair — one where we could talk about boys
and
girls that we were interested in. Emboldened by her acceptance, I came out as bisexual to a few of my male friends simultaneously. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but they accepted my confession without a hint of surprise. Although our relationships were never the same we did remain friends until I left for college two years after graduation. I would discover years later that two of them had also struggled with their own sexuality, but did not admit it to themselves until well into college. They backed away from me for fear that my outspoken desires might spill over into their lives and tip the balance.

Admitting I was gay to myself and a handful of friends gave me a little courage to face the rejection of the student body, but it did not end the feeling of isolation. I was an alternative queer kid in rural New Jersey who didn’t try to fit in; I was not to be tolerated. The gay baiting continued, even after I stopped reacting to it. I found ways to absent myself from school and attended less than a half of my senior year; my loss in hindsight. Using Lynn Hall’s creation, Tom Naylor, as inspiration, I kept my eyes on the promise of escape after high school. Freedom came in the shape of a car, and allowed me to drive my friends into Manhattan, only sixty miles away but another universe where possibilities thrived. We discovered the club scene where society’s misfits and sexual deviants created their own world out of music, self-expression and recreational drugs. It was only a stepping stone into my future, but offered me the freedom to define myself, to kiss another boy, and to understand that only
I
had to accept myself, it was optional for everyone else.

If I had not come across Lynn Hall’s book when I was struggling to define my own sexuality, I might not have survived to write this essay of my own experiences. In it I had Ward Alexander and the knowledge that there was someone else like me in the world; I wasn’t the only one. Would my experience have been different if the original ending had united Tom and Ward? Not necessarily, but it would have shown me that men could commit to one another in romantic relationships built on love, trust and mutual respect. If I could return and tell my teenage self what I know now, I’d assure him that the isolation and social ostracizing that he’d experienced helped him become the person, and the artist, that he is today. I’d tell him to have enough confidence to look his tormentors in the eye and say, “I’m gay, so what?” and disempower their accusations. I have told this much of my story to my youngest brother, who is coming to terms with his own sexuality. It is both a challenge and an honor to assist him where I can while allowing him the space to learn on his own.

I am astounded at how much has changed since the early 80s when I’d first read
Sticks and Stones
. Literature plays such a minor role in our community now, when it used to be the primary means of uniting and informing our community. I grew up in the brief span between pulp fiction and the representation of gays and lesbians in the media at large, and certainly before the Internet allowed us to connect in ways we’d never dreamed of. Despite those advances, kids continue to struggle with their own questions and suffer the cruelty of their peers. Gay kids are still three times more likely to attempt suicide, develop substance abuse, and run away from home. It is up to us as a community to present positive role models in young adult literature so they know they are not alone, and that there are many ways for them to grow into gay adults.

Grey Fox, 1981

Jonathan Harper

I discovered a friend of mine in a book. It was just one story out of a full collection, but until those 15 pages, I never felt that I had known Simon intimately before.

It feels rather childish to say that and I desperately want to be taken seriously. Simon is a long time friend of my husband, Gordon. They are both 10 years older than me and I’ve learned not to include myself in every conversation between them. Simon is used to my rambling and has mastered the art of selective listening, always with a polite smile. My husband finds my eccentricities endearing. He constantly entertains my exhausting tangents on politics, my analyzing our social circles, my ideas for novels I’ll probably never write . Gordon is patient. So, when I previously pushed the book in front of him saying, “Who does this remind you of? Isn’t this just like Simon? It’s Simon, right?” he read a few pages, nodding his head and complacently agreed before refocusing to more important things on the TV.

Of all places, we were sitting in a diner, Simon monopolizing the conversation with his latest dramas. I had brought my copy of
Couplings
by Richard Hall with the intention of passing it along. Ever since we were introduced, Simon has been getting his heart broken on a regular basis. The latest fiasco: a young man had been living with him for a few months. What Simon had called a platonic friendship was obviously a thin veneer for infatuation. This young house guest had been living rent free and the two of them had invested in a small online business together. Then, instantaneously, the young man lost interest in the business venture, the Washington area and Simon himself. All poor Simon could say was, “It’s the companionship I miss the most.”

And then, there is the book.
Couplings
by Richard Hall. The edition I have was printed in 1982 (I was two years old), is in decent condition with a slightly tattered cover. It was purchased on a vacation in Palm Springs; this was the year after the Lambda Literary Foundation closed its DC offices and I was laid off. In fact, I wouldn’t have recognized the name and title if it weren’t for that job. In 2003, I had helped organize the last Richard Hall Memorial Short Story Contest. Richard Hall was the first openly gay critic elected to the National Book Critics Circle and the author of three collections of short stories and two novels, one published a year before he died of AIDs in 1991 at the age of 65. At work I was suddenly one of the facilitators of the Lammy Awards, my name was printed on the masthead of the
Lambda Book Report
. Each new fact learned, new acquaintance made, was flaunted among my college friends. This was also a much-needed wake-up call: I was not the only aspiring gay writer around. For the first time, I had to acknowledge decades of literature and history that came before me and had to learn as much of it as possible before I could ever hope to contribute on my own.

My involvement was over before I turned twenty-five. I purchased
Couplings
for sentimental reasons: I missed my old job. For the longest time, that organization had defined me. Among my partner’s social circle of government workers, lawyers and security managers, I was the young idealistic nonprofit worker, the kid who “read queer books for a living.” At first, when I read
Couplings
, it was a reminder of being affiliated with something distinct. It also marked those transitional years out of college when I was learning how to be an adult. And a major source of conflict between people is this idea of being “grown up.” These words always come into conflict: younger versus older, innocence versus experience, and so forth. My process started long before I was giving ignorant opinions to experts and now several years later, plenty of people my senior claim that none of us ever really completed it. Richard Hall’s stories seem very aware of this.