GLR May June

sex with women; in college he joined a fra- ternity known for its severe hazing. One inci- dent from high school stands out: During a break in a basketball game, Blow crossed the court toward his mother. “Something in my gait” must have alarmed her, he recalls, and “she laid into me in front of everyone. ‘Don’t you run like that!’” The tone of the book is that of a wise adult who’s able to look back knowingly, albeit em- pathetically, upon his younger self. As for the adult who emerged from these uncertain be- ginnings, Blow ended up marrying a woman he met in college, had three children with her, and eventually divorced. He also experi- mented with men. Adescription of a traumatic evening in a gay bar illustrates both his bur- geoning desires and his lingering inhibitions.

Charles Blow, 2014. Photo by Beowulf Sheehan.

The tone changes when he tries to analyze his sexual iden- tity. “I would come to know what the world called people like me: bisexuals,” he reluctantly concludes. To be sure, the overt homophobia of his youth is long gone; now the social pressure, even in liberal New York, is to decide whether he’s gay or straight. Not given to understatement, he suggests that bisexu- als are perceived as “the hated ones. The bastard breed. The ‘tragic mulattos’ of sexual identity.” It’s safe to assume that writ- ing this book was itself part of the effort to address this dilemma.

mother, who simply refused to allow it. Years later, he would be tested as gifted and graduate from high school as valedic- torian. He then attended Grambling State University nearby, majoring in journalism. The incident with his cousin had another importance: it be- came the uneasy backdrop for Blow’s incipient physical attrac- tion to men. “It was in my mind that I now fused together abuse and attraction,” he writes. In the ensuing years he fought to re- press his feelings of homosexual attraction. There were a few bursts of religious enthusiasm; in high school and college some

NEW from Ronald G. Perrier

Dr. Ronald G. Perrier is a pro- fessor emeritus of theatre and film studies at St. Cloud State University in Minnesota, where he taught for the last 27 years of his 40-year teaching career. Persistence of Vision and Septem- bers are memoirs of Dr. Perrier’s life as a gay man spanning the eras of GLBT suppression and expression.

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To order these and other titles Visit: www.archiepub.com Write: Archie Publications 1235 Yale Place, #403 Minneapolis, MN 55403

May–June 2015

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