Gay Teen is the New Pregnant Teen
Would that I had read the two books sitting atop my library pile--Beth Goobie's hilariously named Hello, Groin and Peter Cameron's Someday This Pain Will be Useful to You--when I wrote that "Gay = Yay!" post. Both address homosexuality in very different ways, and both could have served as lovely accompaniments to help underscore my little manifesto. As in all things, timing makes such a difference.
I want to address Someday... first, because I was so taken by it, with the protagonist's unforgettable voice and the wonderfully drawn characters that surrounded him. James was entirely frustrating most of the time, but he felt real to me and (SPOILER ALERT)
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though his homosexuality came as no surprise to me by the time it was revealed by book's end, I love the way that it was incorporated as just part of him, a part of his makeup and possibly the one thing that didn't reduce him to a ball of angst.
Here's pretty much all you hear about it, after James's mother comes out and asks him if he's gay (p.192):
I knew she wanted to help me. I knew she was my mother and loved me and I didn't want to be mean, but there was something else inside me, something that was hard and stubborn that was mean. It just bugged me that she thought if I was gay she could do something to help, like give me a Band-Aid or something. And besides, being gay is perfectly cool these days, so why should I need help? And what help could my mother, whose third marriage only lasted a matter of days, be? I knew I was gay, but I had never done anything gay and I didn't know if I ever would. I couldn't imagine it, I couldn't imagine doing anything intimate and sexual with another person, I could barely talk to other people, so how was I supposed to have sex with them? So I was only theoretically, potentially homosexual.
Campbell is such a skillful writer. I admire his elegant and seamless way of making it known without making it an issue. Even though I read Hello, Groin first, I think my own mindset is so similar to James's that I couldn't help but be so impatient with Dylan (HG's protagonist) until almost the very end.
I liked Hello, Groin--particularly the passages about sex and masturbation which I thought were positive and well written--but I didn't love it because I couldn't help wanting to throttle Dylan because of the way she dealt with her constant inner turmoil. That's obviously not fair of me, but I just wished she could see what a pill she was for letting the popular kids impose on the way she lived her life. She was brave and likable in a number of ways, but every third sentence all I could think was, "You know you're a lesbian. For the love of god just come out all ready!" I couldn't relate to how she could find it preferable to live her life in constant fear of catty idiots.
When she finally did get around to being honest with the people in her life is when I really started to enjoy the book. Her parents (particularly her dad, you don't hear much about her mom) were awesome, as was her girlfriend Joc's mom. Cam, her perfect, sensitive jock boyfriend, was so much more than the one-note he could have been, and I appreciated that. I was pretty meh on the "out of the mouths of babes" five-year-old sister, but that's also my perpetual axe to grind. I guess my real reason for being so critical about this book is because of what I touched on last post, that I think the world is increasingly becoming one where we don't need "gay issue" books anymore. But just because we might not need them as much doesn't mean they aren't still important, or have any less right to be written. In all, I guess I should be happy that Dylan gets a happy ending and nobody dies. And I am. But you can't blame me for hoping that such books are becoming a thing of the past, can you? If my reviewing process were informed by Highlights for Children magazine, Hello, Groin would be the Goofus of YA novels with gay protagonists, and Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You would the the Gallant.
Written material © 2008 Dawn Emerman
