Some didn't survive the AIDS crisis, and countless others didn't survive the angst of knowing they wouldn't die, that HIV was a chronic, manageable illness, and so they dove deep into the darkness of crystal meth, alcohol, and the like, dancing their way into the arms of death. I remember all those beautiful masculine faces that grace the walls of my memory. Next year I will cross the half-century mark, and my mind wanders back through all those winding corridors of years in San Francisco, New Orleans, Key West, and New York. Good friends, work that I love and am passionate about, andânot the leastâI am alive.
As the noon sun is peaking just overhead now, my heart is full of gratitude, for I've been so lucky in life. I'm sitting on the patio in front of the weather-worn, shingle-clad cottage that my good friend, Randy, has rented for the summer in Provincetown, Massachusetts, where every summer evening he gives an entertainingly realistic performance as Cher to eager sun-drenched and alcohol-infused crowds.
It's now late August and another summer is quickly slipping away. While many gay readers will fail to recognize themselves here, others will find Downs's logic warming and even generous. For Downs, the only thing that will bring an end to this spiral of torment is, finally, "validation," which produces "authenticity." Downs is an engaging writer, though prone to repeating the same few points in different words, while his patients, quoted in sidebars, often make witty quips that rival Quentin Crisp for dry, bitter sarcasm. Through this mechanism of rejection, gay men feel unlovable, correspondingly angry and, he says, driven to heights of creativity and "fabulousness"-in addition to shopping addiction and obsessions with fat, muscle and penis size-in a bid to distract themselves from their inner shame. , and its anatomy of unmet desire, therapist Downs's book describes the paradigmatic ways in which early childhood molds the future lives of gay men: scorned on the playground, disrespected by Dad, loved only by Mom until their first sex with men. With a title that plays on Janet Jackson's epochal 1997 LP The Velvet Rope
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