I managed two more loads of laundry this morning before the rains fell in the afternoon, and I FINALLY feel like I've caught up. I've been struggling to keep pace with the laundry, given the crazy weather, and the rather full hamper has been driving me crazy. But now things are back under control, which is just as well since we'll be quite busy with Komiket this weekend.
In other news, I just finished reading The Men from The Boys (Amazon affiliate link), and I have many THOUGHTS and FEELINGS. This is the first book in a duology, and it just so happens I had read the second book, Where the Boys Are (Amazon affiliate link), many years ago. It was one of several hardbound LGBT books I had picked up during my previous relationship, but I also decided to leave with my ex for one reason or another.
This early 2000s book fit the mold of queer writing at the time. It speaks to a specific time period with a setting like Provincetown and explorations of the circuit scene. The closest I've ever gotten to a place like that was probably Puerto Galera (which is a weird comparison, I know), and I was circuit-adjacent at best, given my regular nights at Malate with friends. But like many gay men who experienced their awakening in the early 2000s, there was a particular notion of what the gay world was like (or supposed to be like?) thanks to books like this and shows like Queer as Folk (whether the original UK or the US version). Thus, I had my share of Holy Week spent at the beach and weekends spent at a bar because it's almost what we were "supposed" to do.
Reading William J. Mann really brings me back - or maybe just reading this series in particular. Reading All-American Boy (Amazon affiliate link) was a rather painful experience since that story was so heavy. It was supposed to mark my return to this author to finally go through all of his books, and that one stalled those efforts. But I finally swung back, and it turns out I just needed to read about Jeff O'Brien again.
It's funny that I am now significantly older than Jeff was in The Men from The Boys - and this protagonist does a lot of whining about being old versus the boys on the dance floor. What a difference time makes! Now I'm reading these books with a very different perspective - he's still relatable, but I also have the benefit of experience to temper things. I am not a Jeff, nor did I ever want to be a Jeff...but I understood his world. I lived through the years when AIDS and HIV were such a prevalent topic of discussion, as it was a dark angel that we had to live with as part of our community. I had been part of a similar enclave of friends that had become my found family - complete with older members who had unique wisdom to share with the rest of us. We were all unique, but also echoes of the patterns of queer behavior that our limited media had codified as something for us to follow. This felt even more true in the Philippines as the early 2000s LGBT community had a lot of common ground with its Western counterparts because...what else could we use as a basis to live our own lives?
It was a different time.
The more things change, the more they remain the same, they say. Don't ask me who "they" are - no one knows. I look at the community now, and you still have a significant number of guys chasing after their next hookup - or their next "trick" in the older language of the book. We have people who feel old at age 30, and those of us even older, laughing at their lack of perspective. The local circuit scene is still recovering from the impact of the pandemic, but queer clubs are still around, and Tobie and I are among those older queeer guys at the bar keeping our distance from the shenanigans of younger gay boys. The only real difference is how dating apps have changed how guys find one another, but the resulting behavior is still the same.
In hindsight, part of the reason I left all those queer books with my ex was because I was (unconsciously) trying to leave that life behind in more ways than one. My life with Tobie is VERY different from my life back then. We're a lot more insular and stick to a tighter circle of friends, and I'll admit that I've barely kept in touch with the old found family beyond liking their social media updates. I'm a very different person now than who I was when I first picked up Mann's books and tried to explore the gay world his characters lived in. The themes of this first book touched rather close to home in terms of the need for characters to define their own path in terms of how to live their lives as gay men and a more open mind when it comes to casual sex. Tobie and I aren't that wild - but I have on more than one occasion parroted similar rhetoric about how we're free to define new rules for how to live our lives because that's one of the brilliant aspects of not being straight. So many years later, and there's still no limit to how people can celebrate their queerness, and many continue to apply their own definitions to things.
There's a lot more to unpack, and I'm saying a lot without really saying anything specific. But that's just what happens when nostalgia takes you on a hell of a trip through the history of your emotions or whatever. That's the magic of books in general, but moreso when you're an older gay many revisiting the books of his youth.
Comments
Post a Comment