In 1998, Dennis James, a physician's assistant at San Francisco
General Hospital, was the subject of a co-worker's formal complaint. Apparently,
among the various teasing beach postcards, Dilbertcomic strips and indestructible
plants in his work cubicle, James had a picture of himself and his gay partner
at their commitment ceremony. It was an unorthodox photo, as they were dressed
in leather, but James works in the hospital's AIDS ward, and homosexuality
was not unheard of on either side of the bedside manner. Who lodged this complaint,
then? A cranky patient? Anita Bryant? Rev. Fred Phelps making his spiritual
rounds? Actually, several gay men felt the picture made them uncomfortable
and reported him. Even some homosexuals are not willing to recognize all aspects
of their own community.
David Nimmons' new book, The Soul Beneath the Skin, is perhaps
the first gay-studies book that is not uncomfortable or afraid to take on
all of the gay male experience, including the wide and often elaborate
forms of sexual expression. The goal, Nimmons says, is to tell the whole truth
we know in our lives, and what we may feel in our gut. That is, to widen the
analytic lens to view more of ourselves and our practices.
What are these practices? Besides sex, Nimmons has written in-depth chapters
on a number of cultural aspects rarely discussed: the low rate of violent
crime when gays congregate socially; the high level of philanthropic giving,
volunteerism and public service; and novel forms of caretaking. It gives any
reader pause to consider the level of safety one feels inside a gay bar as
opposed to that of a singles bar: In gay bars, they still serve drinks in
glass glasses.
Nimmons has been able to get a fresh look at the gay male subculture by first making it look as if we've never encountered it before, often from a sociologist's point of view, surveying an alien civilization. He also uses new and odd (and perhaps too unorthodox) statistical data. For instance, he gathers numbers of violent crimes by talking to police officers with gay-neighborhood beats. He revisits old findings and draws new conclusions. (He found that in a 1997 study of domestic violence, lesbians and gays had been lumped together as one statistic; when he split the two groups, the percentage of crimes committed by gay men was 10 percent lower than that of crimes committed by heterosexual men-- or lesbians).
It would be enough for most social studies to present this fresh new information, but the real substance of the book comes in the large middle section, in which Nimmons unflinchingly parses every possible aspect of gay male sexuality, from circuit parties to nonmonogamy to unprotected sex to bathhouse orgies. Again, he looks with two lenses: those of outsider (Jane Goodall-style anthropologist) and insider (funny queen, making Tallulah Bankhead jokes). Mostly, the schizophrenia works. One wonders whether homophobic citizens would be so scared if the gay subculture were something unearthed from an ancient civilization in which the citizens built intimate relationships in both couples and webs, created elaborate tribal sexual rituals and crafted new ways of being men with women.
It doesn't seem beside the point to add that Nimmons writes with a warm, chatty--Dare we say it?--queer voice. While covering the question of whether gay men are genetically different, he writes, One can find a study suggesting that gay men's fingerprints show a different pattern of fingerprint ridges from straight guys' (I think it's all about moisturizer, myself) Even when he must give dry data or lists of information, he infuses it with this voice. Referring to a study of gay men's career choices, he writes that they don't fix photocopiers, lay bricks, sort grain, fix cars, fit pipes . . . or ever sign up as boring machine operators (no, really, that is the job title, #708, you can check).
If there is anything about the book that gives pause, it is
Nimmons' relentlessly rah-rah attitude. He risks proclaiming one social group
better than any other, specifically when he embraces the belief, expressed
in Plato's dialogue The Symposium, in the superiority of gay men ( '[T]hese
are the best of boys because they are naturally bravest.' ) But if Plato was
right, and we are the best of boys, Nimmons says, we remain largely unaware
of it. This is the purpose of the book: to make gay men aware of a superiority
one is hard-pressed to let any single social group claim (that kind of thinking
seems to end, occasionally, with genocide). But despite low violent-crime
rates, gay men are men, and men have dominated Western civilization since
Plato's time, more from force than bravery.
But one can understand the bra-burning zeal of Nimmons' text. He is tired of misread data and sensational headlines; he is weary of bigotry and hate crimes; but most of all, he is fed up with the low self-image he belives too many gay men have. For whom is this book written? In certain ways, it preaches to an as-yet unformed choir of liberated gays and straights. There are, however, other people who might never read this book and might dismiss it as written by hippies and free-love druggies, but who should read it: the people like those gay men who complained about Dennis James' photograph of himself and his leathered-up partner at their commitment ceremony. Where do we speak of how we might imagine an old age we'd actually relish? Or what kinds of touch friends might best give each other? Nimmons asks, with no available satisfying answers. So we discuss Ecstasy, but not ecstasy; body fascism, not affectionate touch. Ultimately, what's wrong with gay men is what's wrong with all men, at least in this country: an emotional illiteracy that is wrongly equated with weakness. Copyright 2002 Chicago Tribune Company