![]() ![]() ![]() At the same time, I sought out stories about the sheer oppressiveness and caginess of the suburbs, like The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides, a chronicle of a group of sisters experiencing deep ennui beneath the surface of their white picket fence lives. But this pleasure was temporary after serving its masturbatory ends, Mapplethorpe’s beautiful male subjects only reminded me of my own long and incomplete journey out of the closet. ![]() I once surreptitiously took out a Robert Mapplethorpe coffee table book, a chunky volume cataloguing some of the queer photographer’s incandescent and highly sexualized work. I was desperate to read of other gay men or to escape to a far-off world of other people also struggling with social acceptance. I was then languishing at an all-boys high-school, overwhelmed by the intense bullying you can guess an effeminate 15 year old experiences. ![]() I wanted to read tales about gay men finding love, companionship, and self-realization in a larger unwelcoming world. There, I could checkout books without my parent’s knowledge, burying titles like To Kill A Mockingbird and Great Expectations on my way home for late-night flashlight reading.Īs a young gay boy growing up in the quiet suburbs, I hungered for the homoerotic. In my early teen years, one of the great treats of summer vacation was visiting my local library unaccompanied. ![]()
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