It's been a cold winter. Very cold. One of the things that I'm doing to keep warm is to take an imaginary LGBT cruise in my head -- through books -- to exotic lands.
The first stop was the land of queer history, which I entered by reading Katie Gilmartin's mystery Blackmail my Love from Cleis Press. This who-dunnit traces a lesbian narrator, Josie, tracking down her gay brother's disappearance in 1951 in San Francisco. The book begins with Josie donning her brother's clothes, exploring gender as she interviews people who knew her brother. One person she talks to is a deeply closeted, gay, school teacher. At that time, gay school teachers had to keep their sexuality under wraps at all costs or lose their jobs. One of the chief misconceptions was that "homosexual" was synonymous with being a child molester. The thought of being thusly accused is at the heart of this gay teacher's internalized homophobia. He watches himself scrupulously -- his every movement. The story of intrigue also leads us through the underworld of gay bars. This page-turner of a mystery is rooted in historic fact and is a reminder of how LGBT people survived before gay liberation.
My next stop was sunny Thailand in Ladyboy and the Volunteer by Susanne Aspley (Peace Core Writers). I learned a little bit about the Peace Corps but far more about the culture of Thailand where sixty percent of foreign men entering the country participate in the sex industry. I also learned about "ladyboys", who are male to female transgendered women, who in many ways are accepted in their culture. Many of the ladyboys participate in the sex industry to send money home to their families. In my favorite passage in the book, the straight but not narrow female narrator asks her ladyboy friends what their clients do when they find out. One replies:
When I do tell them, they get more excited, because they have never been with a ladyboy. Susan, all men are a little gay. Homo in some way. They just don't admit it. When they travel to Thailand, no one knows them here, so they do things they would not do back home. Experiment.
When I picked up Love Together, Longtime Male Couples on Healthy Intimacy and Communication by Tim Clausen, I thought I would be reading about an experience vastly different than mine. But what I found was that as a lesbian in a long-term relationship (thirty years now and counting), I have a lot in common with these guys. The author interviews many couples by the length of time they have been together, starting with ten to twenty years and ending (in Section Six) with couples together sixty to seventy years. Overall, I enjoyed reading the commonalities between all the couples. Many talked about making each other laugh and gave commonsense advice such as being kind to your lover.
I loved reading the words of the men who had been together many decades -- maybe because they had much wisdom to offer or because they made me feel young again (possibly both). In particular, I enjoyed reading the words of John McNeill described as "one of the true giants of the gay and lesbian community." McNeill is a former priest and in 1976, penned the groundbreaking book The Church and the Homosexual. He's been with his partner Charlie for almost fifty years. In the interview, he says:
Spiritually, I take very seriously that statement in the scripture that God is love. Any if anyone loves, they know God. I have always believed that this includes a gay love relationship, which is a genuine human love and therefore contains the Divine. It's another way of knowing God. That certainly has been the fundamental belief system for me in my relationship with Charlie for the last forty-seven years.
The temperatures were dropping, but I was a little warmer when I came back from my cruise.
You can learn more about Janet's book Tea Leaves: A Memoir of Mothers and Daughters here.