Men Who Love Men
When William J. Mann wrote The Men from the Boys back in the mid-1990s, he probably didn’t seriously expect the book to become a contemporary gay classic. When it did, Mann followed up with Where the Boys Are, which continued the lives (and seriously pretzel-shaped loves) of novelist Jeff "Cat" O’Brien, and his true love Lloyd (also known as "Dog").
Now Mann brings us the final act in the trilogy. We catch up with Jeff and Lloyd, now in their 40s, successful at their careers - Jeff as a novelist, Lloyd as the proprietor of a Provincetown guest house called Nirvana - and (gulp!) engaged to be married. With things going so very well, where will Mann find any dramatic tension?
Rather than play with the lives of the two central characters from the earlier books, Mann allows Henry - introduced in Where the Boys Are - to narrate the tale. Jeff and Lloyd are fine, mostly, aside from a touch of pre-marriage infidelity, which - to such practiced adherents of the open relationship - should hardly be a huge problem. Jeff’s nine year old nephew, however, seems to be having a dark phase of some sort, and as for Henry - he’s in a funk, following his latest failed relationship. He gets together with men, he stays together with men - for a few months anyway - and he walks away, or worse, they do. After his last serious boyfriend, a fellow named Joey, all Henry wants to do is settle down for a lifetime of bliss with some hot, smart, simpatico guy. In absence of such a Romeo to his yearning Juliet, Henry will make do with dettling down in front of TV Land with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s.
It’s hard to hit gay middle age, which Mann identifies as right around thirty. Thirty-three-year-old Henry is no longer the hot muscle boy escort who once commanded big bucks from worshipful, wealthy clients. In his own mind, at least, he’s washed up, chunky, and tired. That doesn’t stop half the men in town from putting the moves on him, though, including a smoking-hot young sex puppy named Luke, a taut, tight guy named Gale with the body of a gymnast and a dream of true love so monogamous that it excludes outside friendships, a tag-team duo of stacked hunks, and a mysterious stranger who services Henry on the occasion of his first, ill-advised visit to an infamous Provincetown cruising spot. (The dark of night and his own confusions lead Henry, at one juncture, to pose the immortal question: "Who blew me last night at the dick dock?")
To all of these amorous would-be partners Henry has some strenuous objections: he doesn’t trust Luke (being convinced that the kid only seduced him to get close to his idol, Jeff), cute but controlling Gale is just too difficult to deal with (Gale chucks Henry out every time the action starts getting heavy: there’s a reason for this, and Mann holds out telling us what it is until past the point of surprise), and as for all the others... well, let’s just say there are issues attached with all of them. Then there’s Martin, a fiftyish guy just extracting himself from a 21-year relationship; to Henry, Martin is the wise gay uncle he always wanted. To Martin, the sobriquet "wise gay uncle" is a slap in the face.
As with the earlier books, Mann plays with questions of identity. Henry has many chances to impose his fantasies and expectations on others, including the only former boyfriend who, he tells us with longing, loved him more than he loved back. But in each case, Henry’s projection of who these men are slips away and Henry is astonished to find someone quite different from the role he’s assigned them in his personal drama. This even holds true of himself, because Henry is obviously not seeing himself the same way his many suitors do. Finding true love might, Henry starts to think, be as much a matter of discovering who’s really out there as it is a matter of going hunting with a list of pre-chosen qualities for a life mate in his hand.
But the plot is simply the framework on which to hang the story. Flying free from Henry’s life lessons is an impassioned letter of love to Provincetown as a place where gay men can go simply to be themselves, among others like themselves. Its light and topography are celebrated here in the most glowing of terms. Another transcendant quality to the novel is the way in which all of Henry’s heartache is set against Jeff and Lloyd’s impending nuptials - less notable for the contrast than for the simple fact that no matter how the legislature (and, if it comes to that, the voting public in Massachusetts) decide to treat the fundamental rights of family and equality before the law for gay people in the only state to recognize same-sex marriage (that is, the only state in America on a social par with places like Spain, Canada, and, er, Mexico), Men Who Love Men will forever exist as a documentation of the fact that there has been a time in America when everyone, regardless of gender and orientation, enjoys a freedom to say his vows to the person of his choice.
Mann has said that he’s reached a place he’s comfortable leaving these characters. Not everyone out there seems likely to agree with him, but then again isn’t that the point of literature - especially gay literature?
Publisher: Kensington. Publication Date: March 27, 2007. Pages: 432. Price: $24. Format: Hardcover Original. ISBN-13: 978-0758213754
