Out for Blood.

Young Man From The Provinces: A Gay Life Before Stonewall

By Alan Helms

       I just wrote an email to Andrew Christian and chewed their asses for using "your" instead of "you're" in an ad about underwear for the well-endowed. Then I electronically bitch-slapped a friend for using "alright" instead of "all right" on his private blog.

       This bitter old queen is brought to you tonight by Robert Mondavi's Private Selection Pinot Noir and a renewed self-hatred thanks to all the beautiful men at my gym.

       So I've started reading this book: "Young Man from the Provinces" by Alan Helms. It was recommended to me by that aforementioned blogger friend after my "Call Me Crazy" post. This is a sort of review before I get very far at all into it. Because I'm curious if my perception will change. It's a memoir by this gorgeous man who was something of a gay icon/sex symbol in the pre-Stonewall days. And we're supposed to feel sorry for him.

       First of all, I don't really trust people who write memoirs. We get it. You think your life is important and has meaning. You are a unique and beautiful flower. Just like the rest of us. Except you happen to be genetically gifted and that makes me want to hate you all the more. Yes, this is the first memoir I've ever read. So far I'm on page 20 and all he's done is try to make us cry over his tortured childhood, giving intelligence to a 4 year-old that you'd probably believe as much if I attributed it to my 4 year-old cat.

       I'm having trouble wrapping my head around it. The redeeming quality thus far was in the epigraph from Walt Whitman's "Calamus" in which he kind of acknowledges my frustrations: 

Who is now reading this?
Or may-be a stranger is reading this who has secretly
         loved me,
Or may-be one who meets all my grand assumptions
         and egotisms with derision,
Or may-be one who is puzzled at me.

As if I were not puzzled at myself!
Or as if I never deride myself! (O conscience-struck!
         O self-convicted!)
Or as if I do not secretly love strangers! (O tenderly,
         a long time, and never avow it;)
Or as if I did not see, perfectly well, interior in
         myself, the stuff of wrong-doing,
Or as if it could cease transpiring from me until it
         must cease.

 *sigh* Sometimes I have to remind myself that pretty people are indeed people too. If we cut them, they do bleed. Well, Mr. Helms, I'm sharpening the fangs of my wit. You have 186 pages before I strike.

Call me crazy.

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Not me. 

       Boy crazy, that is. I saw one of the most beautiful men I've ever laid eyes on today. Perfect muscular body, not too big, not too skinny, just the right amount of body hair in all the best places. He was riding by on his bike, shirtless, of course, and stopped about twenty feet away ostensibly to make a phone call, but I know he was just teasing me. I tried my best to stare as much as possible. I was very close to asking him for a picture, he was just that gorgeous. The bitch.

       I'm getting back to that point in my own fitness where I'm close to maxing out half the machines at the gym again. And it pisses me off when the 6-foot-2 Adonis next to me is struggling with about half the weight. I mean I've accepted the fact that my 170cm frame just won't do some of the things that theirs will. I say 170cm because it sounds so much better than 5'6.9". Yes, that .9 is extremely important because then I can officially round up to 5'7" and avoid the "pocket gay" status of the 5'6"ers. But there I am, a (barely) 20-something Average Joe who could probably kick the panties off the Greek gods.

       Beauty is such a funny thing in this big gay world of ours, though. How much time and energy and money and tears do we spend on trying to make ourselves look better? Does it even matter? Don't they always say that it's what's on the inside that counts? Funny that it's often the ugly people who say that while the beautiful are getting everything they could dream of.

       Perhaps that's why I prefer to dream and forget to live.

       It can sometimes be very difficult to believe in yourself if you're not typically counted among the wealthy or beautiful or highly intelligent. Perhaps that's why we watch those who are thusly gifted, hoping to experience some of their greatness for a moment, perhaps even wishing that some of their je ne sais quoi will rub off on us. If anyone finds out how this works, let me know.

       But when the world seems to crumble around us from greed, bigotry, incompetence, shady government surveillance, etc., at least enjoying something beautiful can make the ride to hell a little less ugly.