In Search of a Gay Identity II

In those early years of discovering a sense of who I was, I read voraciously. It was a good time, in the late 60s and early 70s to be gay. Stonewall had jump-started the revolution and gay lib was flowering. There was a new and true sense of liberation for gay people which was heady in its breath and intensity.

All sorts of men and women were coming out and writing about it. Professionals in all types of fields were taking chances and creating a new emergent gay community; psychologists, artists, teachers, doctors, lawyers, nuns, priests – you name it and they were coming out! Those were the halcyon days of the gay liberation movement. Civil rights were no longer the privilege of the white, straight male, but all people, gay, straight, black, white, women and men: we were all entitled to the same civil rights.

New gay-friendly or gay-owned publishing houses were churning out gay self-help books, editions of gay poetry, anthologies of early gay fiction, and even books on how to have great gay sex. Most were good, some great, many mediocre at best. But all of a sudden, we had choices. We had books about us and by us. We no longer had to read between the lines to find references to our existence. We were no longer the antagonists but the protagonists and most revolutionary of all, we didn’t kill ourselves at the end of the novel, but could actually live “happily ever-after.”
I couldn’t get enough.

In 1975 I bought The Gay Mystique by Peter Fisher. Fisher writes in the first person, giving gay men advice and the benefit of his own experiences as a gay man in New York City. I didn’t agree with everything he wrote, but the book was enlightening and revolutionary. With chapters like “How do you know you’re not gay?”, “Can a homosexual get a fair trial?”, and “Should your son marry a homosexual”, Fisher delves into serious questions on discrimination, marriage, and sex with insight and humor. One of his most important messages he gives to his readers is to reject the straight world’s negative attitudes toward homosexuals. It gave me a real look at who was gay, how they fit into the world and how I could relate to them. The Gay Mystique is definitely a classic of gay lib writing.

Men Loving Men: A Gay Sex Guide and Consciousness Book by Mitch Walker was the first book that I ever bought that actually talked positively about and illustrated gay sexual techniques. First copyrighted in 1977, I bought mine in 1981. The author published a 2^nd edition recently with updated information and a newly designed cover showing two naked men in a sexually suggestive pose. The men obviously represent today’s gay male ideal; hairless with six-pack abs.

I find the 1981 edition's cover, which also shows two naked men, more charming and sexy than the new edition. These men have long hair, both with beards, one with almost no body hair while the other is actually hairy. Granted the cover shows its age but the men represent a time that celebrated a more natural ideal body type.

I also found the incredible poetry of Constantine Cavafy.

So much I gazed --

So much I gazed on beauty,
that my vision is replete with it.

Contours of the body. Red lips. Voluptuous limbs.
Hair as if taken from greek statues;
always beautiful, even when uncombed,
and it falls, slightly, over white foreheads.
Faces of love, as my poetry
wanted them.... in the nights of my youth,
in my nights, secretly, met....

Constantine P. Cavafy (1917)