billie, on a december afternoon

bended notes freely given

harbor me so long as i hear her voice

and i am willing to submit.

but outside the wind is cold and caustic,

eroding cynicism and bravado

until only rich loam remains,

fertile with sadness and also with something else,

something deeper, nameless, and dense:

equal parts memory, god, matter, and time;

chimerically tangible, comforting,

heartbreaking and true.

Mom's Fabulously Rainbowy and Awesomely Soft Christmas Socks

It just doesn't get any better than this! Happy Holidays to everyone!

Eva Cassidy - Time After Time

It just doesn't get more beautiful than this. The incomparable Eva Cassidy, who could sing just about anything better than just about anybody . Cassidy died of cancer in 1996, at the ripe old age of 33. But as you can see, she's still very much here.

Hat tip to Echidne for this one.

"I have a problem with faggots."

Bilerico Project has a moving post today on the power of hate language. It's well worth the time.

Codependent No Mow.

Okay, I have this friend who has this gardener named Marshall, see?

All right, fine. Marshall is MY gardener. He mows the lawn because I don't own a lawnmower.

Anyway, he's very inexpensive and very good, but he's also kind of undependable. And, uh, he's sort of needy. Like, at all kinds of odd hours of the day and night.

Marshall never asks for handouts per se - except when he asks if I have any leftovers - but he is always asking me to give him cash in exchange for future discounts. If I can, I help, even though I think he's using the money for booze or some other substance. Sometimes the reasons he gives are pretty lame.

Anyway, he did some work I wasn't anticipating, and then asked me for a little extra money. Which I gave him. And then he asked me for money to buy leaf bags to clean up all the raked leaves, which I also gave him.

Alas, the piles of leaves are still sitting there, days later. And I feel bad knocking on his door to bug him, but I know I'm probably going to have to. And it's kinda blowing my karma a little.

I think I'll make Marshall a pie, or Peking duck or something, so I can give it to him when I ask him to get rid of the leaves. Yeah. That'll work.

Better yet, I suppose I could just clean up the leaves myself. Saves me all that time and effort of learning how to cook.

It is Christmastime, after all.

Engine trouble

Okay. My car is dead. Depending on what’s wrong, it’s probably going to stay dead for the next couple of pay periods at least. Terribly inconvenient.

Now, I don’t know much about cars, or any heavy machinery for that matter. In fact, I may know even less about cars than I do about sports. And that's saying a lot! But I’ve had some clunkers before, and I know how to add some fluids.

So when the oil light went on, I knew what to do. I stopped right away, and checked the oil. Barely registered on the dipstick. I just happened to have a quart of oil in the car (lucky break!), so I poured it in. Cranked her up, and the oil lamp went off. Yay!

Except then, the oil light went back on and the engine heated way, way up to the point where a huge steam cloud was about to blow the hood open.

Got to a Shell and bought four quarts of oil. Let it cool for a while. Checked the dipstick again. Funny… Doesn’t look like it needs much oil now. But since there was room for another quart, I added it. Got back on the road and headed home.

And then overheated. Damn!

But wait… Doesn't the oil light look like a little genie lamp? That’s not what lit up on my dash. Turns out it's the temperature light that keeps going on. Duh.

(Um, does anyone need some 10-30 motor oil? I’ve got plenty!).

Stopped and bought some coolant. Opened the hood. Couldn’t find where in hell to put the stuff. A nice lady came and showed me and then put the stuff in. And then asked for $10. All I had was a $20. Merry Christmas, lady.

Alas, the car is still overheating, and I see buses in my future.

Sigh.

Zombie Science. For Real.

The New York Times Magazine has come out with its ninth annual Year of Ideas. There’s some really intriguing stuff in here, like printable batteries and stilleto claws (you know, just in case those six-inch heels were a little too comfy for you). And some creepy stuff, too, like Ruppy the fluorescent dog. But this is my favorite:

Epidemiologists today worry a lot about swine flu. But earlier this year, Philip Munz got interested in a more devastating possibility: an outbreak of zombies. A graduate student at Carleton University in Ottawa, he was watching a lot of movies about the undead and realized that zombification could be regarded as a classic paradigm of infectious spread: people get bitten by zombies, after which they turn into zombies themselves and start biting others. So Munz decided to use the tools of epidemiology to answer a sobering public-health question: could humanity survive a zombie outbreak?

Working with a professor and two other graduate students, Munz built a mathematical model of a city of one million residents, in which an outbreak occurs when a single zombie arrives in town. He based the speed of zombie infection on the general rules you see in George Romero movies: after getting bitten, people turn into zombies in 24 hours and sometimes don't realize what's happening to them until they change.

Sweet!

So who prevails, the living or the undead? Well, let's just say you probably won't be using that time share in Provincetown after all.

Pleasant dreams, dearies!

Marketing 101 for Sapphires

I’ve often heard lesbians wonder why we don’t seem able to raise as much money for our causes as gay guys. So I thought I’d check it out for myself. And here’s what I found: Gay guys have waaay better writers. Consider the following:

In the early days of our political struggle, gay men had the Mattachine Society. Mattachine. Bold. Snappy. In your face. Even better, it was named after a French medieval form of festive courtly entertainment. I mean, how gay is that?

What did lesbians have? The Daughters of Bilitis. The Daughters of Bilitis?? Are you kidding? Isn’t that a disease of the digestive tract? I’m pretty sure there’s a pill for that now.

And then there’s the word “lesbian” itself. Lesbian. Lesbian. God, how I hated that word when I was coming out. Sounds like I have some kind of incurable skin condition. Couldn’t they have come up with something a little more, you know, pretty?

Yeah, yeah, I know that we’re called lesbians because Sappho, the Greek poet, was queer and she was from Lesbos. A fact, by the way, that has been a source of great consternation for current-day residents of that island. But geez. I mean, why not “sapphy” or “sapphron” or -- I've got it! -- “sapphire”!

“Hi, I’m Judy and I’m a sapphire. Shall we reserve a U-Haul?” Now, isn’t that nice? But no, they had to pick "lesbian." I still like “gay” much, much better.

I mean, the guys even have a better epithet:

Faggot [fag-uh t] n. A bundle of sticks, twigs, or branches bound together and used as fuel, a fascine, a torch, etc.

I saw Martha Stewart use one of those to add a special festive touch to her Christmas wrapping.

Our epithet, on the other hand:

Dyke [dahyk] n. A really large and intimidating immovable object.

Oh, all right, so I made that one up. But honestly, don’t you think it's time for a new and more appealing lexicon?

Hey. Just sayin'.

Saint Nick, Revisited

For your holiday viewing pleasure, here's lovely Anita Mann reading 'Twas the Night Before Christmas. The sound quality could be a little better, but it's funny and sweet and well worth the effort.. Enjoy!

For the Pessimist Who Has Everything

Golly, readers! The news has been so interesting that I can’t possibly limit myself to just one topic today. So here’s a little collection. Stocking-stuffers, if you will.

First, from the successors of the folks who brought you mayhem and devastation on the Gulf Coast a few years back (I’m guessing it’s not the same place these days), I offer these really, um, interesting (but admittedly very practical) ideas for your holiday gift-giving. Perhaps they know something we don’t?

Second, if you’re a boss to any secretaries, administrative assistants, paralegals, office clerks, copy people, couriers, or, well, anybody, the best gift you can give them this year – along with a bonus – is to read and internalize this article from Assistant-at-Law.

Okay, this story is, like, a week old already but I don’t care. I love a weird, wacky tale about life in the OTP (that’s “outside the perimeter” for you non-Georgians). So… would you let this elf sit on your lap?

And finally: I’m guessing I’m the last one to know about this delight. Oh, how I could have used it when I was teaching legal writing! Hmm. I may just have to try this Twittering thing after all.

Missing Bobby

I hooked up my desktop today after a long period of dormancy. The thing about reuniting with an old computer is that you find stuff you forgot you had. In this case, I found something I wrote when my friend Bobby was dying from AIDS-related cancer. He passed just a few days after I wrote this, and I never opened the document again. So, I’m posting it now, with few changes:

Bobby and Brian

I confess that I am writing this while Bobby is still in hospice care, while we’re all waiting for him to die. I’m writing now because I’m not sure if I’ll be capable of writing later, when I hear that he’s gone. And of course, like Bobby, I have a flair for the dramatic.

A world without Bobby is still unfathomable to me. Maybe always will be. I’ve never been so good at accepting the unacceptable.

Bobby was my best friend here in Atlanta, although I don’t believe he felt the same way about me. In fact, I don’t believe I was in his “inner circle” at all, although I sure wanted to be. That’s what happens when you make friends with someone so funny, so kind, and so clever. You have to stand in line. And I was happy for the privilege, just to get to know him better. I mean, who else knows the entire screenplay of Mommie Dearest by heart, can rattle off the name of every member of British Royal Family, and is willing to screen your ex-husband’s voicemails, like a protective big brother, to shield you from all that rage?

Bobby was an incredibly important part of my sobriety. He was leading the discussion at the first gay meeting I shared in, when I was beginning the coming-out process. I raised my hand and said I thought I was bisexual and since the club's literature didn’t mention bisexuals I wasn’t sure if I belonged here or not.

I have no idea what Bobby said, but I remember very clearly the message he conveyed: I belonged. That simple response changed my life forever.

A few years later he changed me again with this email, which he sent as he watched me sinking into the quicksand of mental illness:

I have been keeping my distance because, quite frankly, there is an air of chaos and distress around you that is hard for me to be around. God knows, I have my problems, but it seems that your life has gotten progressively more and more out of control over the past 2 or 3 years. You've repeatedly made promise after promise to do something about it, but you don't follow through and it just gets worse.

Quite frankly, you're living the life of an active alcoholic without the liquor, and I think it's time you did something about it before it swallows you up completely.

This is not easy stuff to write. I'm not comfortable doing it because I'm definitely taking your inventory, but dammit, Lynne, I do love you and you've got to stop this downward spiral! You are smart enough to learn to manage your life, and it's time for school to begin.

He was right, of course, and I loved him for his honesty. I kept spiraling for three more years after that, but his words eventually took root somewhere deep down and gave me the strength to start climbing out of that massive crevasse.

One of the gravest inequities of life is this: that when someone like Bobby dies, the earth continues to turn, the sun rises and sets just like always, and people continue to go about their business, completely oblivious to the fact that the world has just diminished to nothing.

But then again, if the world looked the way I think it should right now, it would be too dark to ever find my way back into the light again.

I don’t believe for a minute that God caused Bobby’s death or made him suffer out of some grand element of design. A virus caused Bobby’s death. But I do believe that God – whatever he/she/it is – can help us through.

Not too long before he got sick, Bobby and I got interested in a film called What the Bleep?! It’s basically a semi-documentary film about physics, and about how the material world isn’t nearly as real as we’ve been taught to believe. Instead, perception and spirit and thoughts and ideas are the real substance of the universe. Bobby was a closet intellectual (whereas I’m more of an intellectual wannabe) and I loved talking to him about stuff like this.

If the film was correct, and I believe in essence that it was, then Bobby has not been diminished at all. Maybe that’s why the world doesn’t look any different. Bobby is just as much here as he ever was, not just symbolically in our hearts and memories, but really and truly here. I like that idea and it’s pretty much the only way I can continue to function.

Wherever Bobby is, he knows how it all turns out. It’s damned inconvenient that he can’t tell us. And I plan to tell him that when I see him again. Until then, God’s got his hands full.

I miss you, Bobby.

(Brian, thanks for the picture. I love you too.)

Pam's House Blend:: Register For ENDA In Jeopardy: Emergency Conference Call Tues

Wow. Sort of an emergency town hall via phone. I don't know enough about this event to make (or withhold) a recommendation, but it's certainly intriguing. I'll be eavesdropping during my lunch hour. Hat tip to Pam's House Blend.

Pam's House Blend:: Register For ENDA In Jeopardy: Emergency Conference Call Tues

Oh, and I hope you had a wonderful, healing Thanksgiving holiday. Welcome back to reality.

Happy Thanksgiving from your Lazy Ass Librarian

Okay, so I woke up at 4:00 a.m. this morning with an inspiration for today's post: I'd make up silly Thanksgiving trivia-type facts. Like, maybe ten of them.

Three hours later, when I was still trying to think of one, I realized I really had no interest in thinking.

Fuck it, people. It's Thanksgiving, I've got the day off, and I'm going back to bed where I belong.

But just so you don't feel slighted, I'm re-posting one of my very very oldest posts about How My Blog Got Its Name. Well, that's sort of what it's about.

Whatever. Got your popcorn? Your tissues? Your unabridged dictionary? Here goes:

“The subversive librarian.” Now, that's an oxymoron . . . . or is it?

The archetype librarian is about as subversive as, well, spinster Donna Reed in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” We all know the stereotype, and there’s no point in flogging it to death here.

Librarians take great pains to prove that we’re really nothing like our stereotype. In fact, listen in on a library listserv and sooner or later, someone will start a thread about how utterly cool we really are. First, there will be a picture of a librarian on water skis. A flurry of comments and photos will quickly follow. Before it’s all over, somebody will post a picture of a half-naked librarian sporting his huge Marilyn Manson tattoo and multiple tongue piercings. Ok, I concede. There are some cool librarians.

Unfortunately, none of that silliness undermines (or subverts, if you will) the one stereotype about librarians that has spawned all the rest: Librarians love their rules – at least when it comes to books.

This rule thing has nothing to do with coolness. I don’t care if your librarian did get arrested in Juarez last May for peeing in the fountain at Plaza de Armas. He’s still not going to let you check out more than two books with the same call number. Why? Because it’s The Rule. And that’s why the words “subversive” and “librarian” just don’t seem to go together.

I’m not here to defend your librarian’s peculiarities. I’ve been to library conventions and frankly, some librarians are just plain weird. Especially law librarians.

But (and isn’t this predictable?) I do want to tell you why I think librarians are cool. Our coolness lies not in our hobbies, or what we look like, but in the profession’s fundamental subversiveness. And yes, I do mean that as a compliment.

What does it mean to be subversive? Well, according to my Brand X dictionary, to “subvert” is to destroy completely; to undermine character, morals, or allegiance; or to overthrow completely. I checked a couple other dictionaries and they said basically the same thing.

But that’s not what subversion means to me. The word “subvert” comes from the Latin sub, meaning below, and vertere, to turn. To me, that doesn’t say destroy. To me, it says dig, explore, and turn the soil if you need to. Even – especially – if someone says you’re not supposed to. And isn’t that just what librarians do?

I’m not the only one that thinks librarians are subversive. Author Michael Moore thinks so, too. We revealed our true nature after a publisher threatened to drop his book because it contained comments criticizing the President:

I didn't know who any of these people were. They -- this one librarian found out about it, and she got in a, I don't know, library chat room. Or she sent a letter out to a list of librarians, and they sent it out to a bunch of people, and the thing kind of mushroomed from there. . . . I really didn't realize the librarians were, you know, such a dangerous group. . . . They are subversive. You think they're just sitting there at the desk, all quiet and everything. They're like plotting the revolution, man. I wouldn't mess with them.

Now is that cool, or what?

Of course, some people are afraid of subversives, but that just means they think we’re powerful. A few years back, the American Library Association came out opposing mandatory Internet filters on library computers. Dr. Laura Schlessinger accused the ALA of “boldly, brashly contributing to sexualizing our children. . . . [a]nd . . . mak[ing] sure your children have easy access to pornography, under the guise of free speech." We did all that? Of course not. But I figure if we got that kind of reaction from Dr. Laura, we must be doing something right. By the way, whatever happened to her?

At any rate, that makes at least three people – Michael Moore, Dr. Laura, and me – who know just how subversive and powerful we librarians are. And while I’m a little embarrassed to admit it, I sort of like being feared for my unbridled power.

My job as a librarian is to help you dig and explore so you can turn the soil if you think it needs turning. It’s really none of my business whether you want to start a new chapter of the Communist party or just find a recipe for cabbage au gratin. Do I make judgments about you? Well, yeah! But do I tell you what I think, or discourage you from digging, or censor what I give you? Nope. I just give you a wise and mysterious look – kind of like the Mona Lisa – and wonder why on earth you would eat cabbage if your mother isn’t making you.

Still, what’s so subversive about that, and what’s so cool about being a librarian? I mean, aside from the fact that last year I got to go to a seminar on mold prevention (as if that weren’t enough!).

There will always be someone who doesn’t want you to know something. In some cultures, women are prevented from reading – supposedly for their own good. The entity that’s trying to keep information out of your hands claims to have good reasons too. But being sincere doesn’t make it right.

Librarians get to right the wrong. We get to put the decision-making process back in your hands, where it belongs. We get to provide the digging equipment, let you find what you find, and let you decide what to do with it. And sometimes we get to watch your garden grow, knowing that we helped plant the seeds.

And if it’s bad? Well, then, soon enough, another of you will come looking for a way to fix it, and we get to help plant those seeds as well. In fact, every once in a while, librarians are the only ones willing to help you start digging. And if the government will let us (and for some librarians, even if it won’t), we even get to keep your secrets.

Quietly subversive. Just powerful enough. And very cool.

KEYWORDS for FBI file on Lynne Rhys: Subversive. Librarian. Communist. Cabbage.

Goodbye, Old Friend

Southern Voice is no more. That’s old news now, but I can’t let this solemn occasion pass without a short eulogy.

When I started the coming-out process, I was around 42. At the time, I was living in an outer suburb of Atlanta with my husband of 22 years and my seven-year-old kid. If there were gay people out in Powder Springs, I sure didn’t know where to find them. I wasn’t willing to cheat on my husband, so learning-by-doing wasn’t an option. With so few outlets, Southern Voice, Atlanta’s gay newspaper, was just about my only link to, well, gay stuff. I was starving for information, and SoVo provided my weekly ration. SoVo was my primer in How to be Gay. Coincidentally, for a while, I worked in the same building as SoVo's office - and felt even closer to the newspaper, as silly as that might seem.

Last week, Southern Voice shut down suddenly and without warning.

It’s been ten years since I read my first issue of SoVo. I’m out now to pretty much everybody. I can actually say the word “lesbian” without blanching. I am actively involved in the gay community of my city. In short, I’m pretty comfortable with the whole gay thing now. You wouldn’t think I would still need the comfort of a weekly gay newspaper.

And yet, when I saw that barren newsstand last Friday, I felt disconnected, lost in Powder Springs once again. I felt that old hunger. And then, I felt emptiness.

Adieu, Southern Voice.

The Gift of Making Amends

I got to make an important amend yesterday to my daughter. At least, I thought it was just for her but it turned out to be an amend to myself as well. I took a friend (or more accurately, he took me) to pick up some important stuff I had left behind at my ex’s; mostly I wanted to get my kid’s stuff. Since it was a bit of a drive, my friend and I made a day of it, complete with long, leisurely conversations. After I came back, my kid and I had a wonderful, important conversation of our own.

No need to go into it any further, except to say that I have gained a new respect for the power of the ninth step.

Yeah. It was really good.

Pornigami - How To Make a Penis

Don't ask.

AAAAAHHHHHHH!!! (Mommy Needs Some Terra Firma Now, Dear)

If I ran the world, children would not be allowed to drive or date until after their parents are dead.

What was I thinking, letting my kid get a learner’s permit? Somehow it didn’t really occur to me that she was going to want to, you know, drive.

But then three things happened. First, she started asking if she could drive. The nerve! Second, someone (you know who you are!) pointed out that when she’s 18 she won’t need my permission to drive and it might be good for her to get lots and lots of practice before then.

And third, her father lets her drive. Dad is great, but he drives aggressively. Frankly, I’d rather she doesn’t pick up his bad habits.

So, I let her get behind the wheel yesterday. And not just in our quiet little neighborhood, either. From home to Little Five Points to Phipps Plaza on a busy Saturday afternoon. And all the way home again after dark.

My kid will actually be a good driver. Considering it was only her third time on the road (as opposed to bank parking lots on a Sunday afternoon), she did really, really well.

As for me, though… Well, I had a death grip on the seat pretty much the whole time. But I met the nicest paramedics later, when they they pried me out of the car with the Jaws of Life.

It really was quality mother-daughter time, though (and I’m serious about that; it really was). We even developed some new special, secret mother-daughter lingo. Let me share it with you now.

ME: “stopstopstopstopSTOPSTOP!!!!!!!!!!!”
Translation: “Sweetie, could you please brake a little earlier?”

ME: “DRIFT!!!!!”
Translation: “Darling, you’re drifting to the right again and I’m afraid you’re going to rip the passenger door off of the car and then I’ll be impaled on that tree.”

MY KID: “Isn’t it nice that you don’t have to drive anymore?”
Translation: “If you don’t let me drive, I’m going to have Dad teach me.”

MY KID: “I am sooo driving us to Phipps.”
Translation: “If you don’t let me drive, I’m going to have Dad teach me.”

MY KID: “Dad was calmer than you.”
Translation: “I mean it, Mom! Dad’s gonna teach me!”

ME: “You did really, really well today. I’m proud of you.”
Translation: “You did really, really well today. I feel pride, sadness, happiness, fear, guilt, gratitude and wonder watching my incredible kid become an incredible, independent adult. And now, Sweet Pea, I'm going to go get my affairs in order. You know, just in case.”

Sigh.

Good Ole Miss

Let me be very clear about one thing: I loathe team sports. I don’t care if I am a lesbian, I just hate them. I don’t care if it’s college or pro or football or hockey or baseball or volleyball or whatever. It’s all just so much bullshit to me.

Don’t get me wrong. I know from sports. Football is the one with innings and basketball is the one with the tight ends, right? Oh, of course I know that’s wrong. I’m just playing with you. Even I know that baseball is the one with the tight ends. (What the hell is a tight end, anyway?)

Okay, so I wasn’t a jock. Is that so bad? I admit, maybe I have some painful memories of gym class. And maybe I do resent – just slightly – every past president of the United States of America for that goddamned President’s Physical Fitness Test they made us do every year.

And I suppose I’m still not too fond of the teacher’s aide who felt it was her sworn duty, at said fitness test, to call out my weight loud enough for it to echo off Camelback Mountain and back again, just to make sure that everyone in Phoenix and Scottsdale knew that I was Officially Obese. Every single fucking year.

And perhaps I have just a teeny little resentment against every gym teacher I have ever had (except Mrs. Gans, who was perpetually pregnant and gave me a “B” for trying hard, to which my dad said, “Wow. How did you manage to get a B in gym?").

And okay, so maybe I’ve thought some unkind things about that big brute of a fourth-grade gym teacher who made me run around the field even when I told him I couldn’t, and I got my one-and-only-ever asthma attack and they had to call my mother. I told you so, asshole.

And maybe I do think that dodgeball is the funnest game since “Let’s Pull Everyone’s Teeth Out Without an Anesthetic and See Who Bleeds the Most.” I read somewhere that Bluto invented dodgeball just for Popeye and Olive Oyl, and then Benito Mussolini took it from there. Yeah. I’m pretty sure that’s true.

And all right, so the first time I ever had to undress in front of anybody was in the showers for gym class in a brand new town at my brand new middle school, and all the girls kept calling me a lesbian and since I didn’t know they were right it didn’t occur to me to just say “thank you.”

And by the way, I think history will show that the squat thrust was invented by some sick, perverted pedophile.

Umm, where was I?

Oh, yeah. Ole Miss. They’re not going to let the band play “From Dixie With Love” anymore at football games, because the crowd keeps yelling “the South shall rise again!” before and after. Good for Ole Miss.

What, you were expecting some insightful sports analysis? Please.

P.S. A great big thank you to the group of girls in the fourth grade who lifted me up while the teacher wasn’t looking so I could say that I had done one chin-up. I adore you all.

Oh. My. God.

I'm home sick today. And I fear it's very, very serious, because I posted a recipe on here this morning. A recipe, for God's sake! Is there a doctor in the house?

Book Review! A Place Like This: A Memoir, by Mark S. King

I tend to avoid memoirs, especially Hollywood memoirs, because they can be so pretentious and tedious. Some people, though, have stories worth telling. HIV/AIDS activist and writer Mark S. King is one of them.

King has managed to survive numerous lifetimes of adventure and misfortune in his relatively few years on the planet. He weathered several of those lifetimes in the 1980s, the decade that is the subject of his book, A Place Like This: A Memoir.

A Place Like This covers a lot of territory: Mark King himself; his family and friends; a deadly disease; a movement; and an era. The narrative begins in 1981 with 20-year-old King moving to Hollywood to pursue a career in acting; it ends a little over a decade later when he moves to Atlanta to head the AIDS Survival Project. In between, the universe is utterly transmogrified, and King follows suit with relative grace, all things considered.

I note here that King has been public about his battle with substance abuse. While drugs are a part of this story, King wisely focuses instead on the transformative nature of the AIDS epidemic.

King’s portrayal is honest and unvarnished. That, of course, can be said of any good memoir. A Place Like This, though, goes much further: King not only lets us observe his seamy youth, but also lets us see who he is today because of it. And then, as a bonus, he shines the light outward, inviting the reader to recognize himself as well. Thus, unlike most memoirs, which only feign intimacy, this book truly is intimate. It’s the distinction between a good memoir and a great one.

Consider this passage, where King, in describing his successful foray into the gay phone-sex industry, talks about one of his female customers:

It would be easy to reduce her actions to something comical but I can’t, I won’t. It was a meaningful and well deserved Calgon moment for her, and when her calls suddenly stopped soon after she mentioned a possible suitor in her life, I was truly glad that her life might become less lonely and I missed hearing from her. I hope she’s happy.

Through most of the book, King skillfully balances pathos, sly wit, and bawdy humor. This balance changes once he begins to address the AIDS epidemic. Then, there is just enough humor and hope to keep the reader afloat, but no more; otherwise, the pain is unrelenting, just as it is in real life and just as it should be in the narrative. It is almost too much; but King resists indulging in maudlin self pity, thus shielding the reader from the final precipice. (For an excellent supplement to this book, I recommend HIV in the U.S. Epidemic's Darkest Hour: An Interview With Mark S. King; this interview provides a strong historical and cultural backdrop to the story.)

King is the best kind of writer of all: the kind you don’t notice. His style is conversational and seamless, allowing the story, instead of the writing, to take center stage. This is quite a feat considering his liberal use of flashbacks and flash-forwards. In less capable hands, the story would have been nearly incomprehensible. But King, remarkably, switches between time periods so gently that with very few exceptions, I didn’t even notice. I just knew.

I can only find two faults with A Place Like This, and I had to look hard for both of them. First, photographs would have been awfully nice. King has presented a family portrait full of interesting people about whom I came to care. As wonderful as it was to hear “Uncle Mark” tell all the family stories, I wanted to see the picture album, too. What’s more, King’s persona as an actor is a separate character in this book, and it needs a face. The cover graphics hint at it, but only just. And unless you’ve actually seen how impossibly good-looking King was (and, in fact, is), it’s hard to understand how the hell he got away with as much as he did.

The other minor fault is an occasional and slightly distracting change of voice. Once in a great while, a sentence popped out at me that sounded a lot like writing. Don’t get me wrong: they were perfectly good sentences. But they removed me, just for a second, from the action. Fortunately, within a sentence or two King always recovered and put me back in the passenger seat so I could continue to ride with him, instead of just watching him fly by. In any event, I don’t believe I’ve ever read a book that didn’t skip a beat here and there.

Mark King is the rare person who has a lot to say, says it exceedingly well, and then both gives and gains strength through his words. Perfection is merely theoretical; it does not exist in reality. But A Place Like This comes about as close as it gets.

(Updated to link King's book and to change the first sentence, which was driving me nuts)