“But I feel very drawn to other men,” I said. Although something defiant in me forced these words out, I felt myself becoming a freak the moment I spoke. My hair went bleach-blond, my wrist went limp, my rep tie became a lace jabot: I was the simpering queen at the grand piano playing concert versions of last year’s pop tunes for his mother and her bridge club. There was no way to defend what I was. All I could fight for was my right to choose my exile, my destruction.
So speaks Edmund White’s teenage protagonist in A Boy’s Own Story, echoing the concerns of many a burgeoning American homosexual: how to be openly gay without being received as a cartoon, a lisping, prancing stereotype. While White’s Boy speaks from 1950s New England, this particular concern is unfortunately still relevant today. This story – the first in a trilogy of autobiographical novels – charts the unnamed protagonist’s various young affairs and attempts to override his homosexuality (psychotherapy, religion, dating, relationships with everyone from Bohemian adults to popular peers). As each attempt ends in futile frustration, the Boy gradually approaches an acceptance of and candor about his true, unavoidable self, which is the arc of any coming-of-age tale.
White is a fantastic writer, describing the shades of emotion of his teenage protagonist with economical precision and subtle humor. White’s Boy is quiet and introspective, a keen and insightful observer of the society around him, but at the same time, like any adolescent, he finds the motives and opinions of others inscrutable. As he attempts to suss out his place in the social structure and the extent to which his sexual desires and social longing are normal and realizable, he weathers the sort of awkward fumblings, misunderstandings, humiliations and hurt feelings that all young people must plow through. While it was certainly no picnic being gay in the ’50s, it’s really never much fun being a teenager of any persuasion, anytime, anywhere.
