Growing up Gay
To suggest the author is quite open about being gay is a huge understatement. He does not shy away from the subject even at its most primal level. Open and above board he may be, but that doesn’t mean metaphor isn’t useful:
“To the rest of the group, a naked boy was like a lamp or a bath mat, something so familiar and uninteresting that it faded into the background, but for me it was different. A naked boy was what I desired more than anything on earth.”
Like Goodfellas, but Not Really
Remember the scene in Goodfellas when Henry is taking Lois to get her stupid lucky hat and as soon as he starts up the car, the feds descend upon him with drawn guns and ludicrously loud profanity? Cut to Henry’s wife Karen inside the house manically trying to flush bricks of cocaine down the toilet. The same sort of scene happens in this book when a family that doesn’t know better shows up the night after Halloween trick-or-treating and the author is terrified his mother will make him give up all his well-earned candy collected the night before:
“Had I been thinking straight, I would have hidden the most valuable items in my dresser drawer, but instead, panicked by the thought of her hand on my doorknob, I tore off the wrappers and began cramming the candy bars into my mouth, desperately, like someone in a contest.”
The Problem with Autobiography
The author is a writer who has made his career conveying intensely personal information about his family. And not a semi-fictional way, either. Such success is inevitably bound to lead to problems. It begins with a sister:
“She’s afraid to tell me anything important, knowing I’ll only turn around and write about it. In my mind, I’m like a friendly junkman, building things from the little pieces of scrap I find here and there, but my family’s started to see things differently. Their personal lives are the so-called pieces of scrap I so casually pick up, and they’re sick of it.”
Romantic Movies
Love stories are not exactly what might be described as the author’s favorite genre. But he has a reason beyond the predictability factor. A rationale best explained through metaphorical imagery:
“The theme is universal and encourages the viewer to make a number of unhealthy comparisons, ultimately raising the question `Why can’t our lives be like that?’ It’s a box best left unopened, and its avoidance explains the continued popularity of vampire epics and martial-arts extravaganzas.”
A Thing Called Guilt
The author admits to the strange quality of feeling guilty even for things he would never possibly do. Like being moved to shroud his face from passersby if a serial killer is on the loose:
“My conscience is cross-wired with my sweat glands, but there’s a short in the system and I break out over things I didn’t do, which only makes me look more suspect.”
