These boys' lives: the memoirs of three gay writers

Gay lifestyle. The phrase is a flashpoint in the American cultural wars. But what does it mean?

The most accurate description I ever saw of it was on a placard carried by a pleasant-looking gentleman in the Pride Parade on Capitol Hill some years ago. It read: "My Gay Lifestyle: Eat, Sleep, Go to Work, Pay Taxes."

Three new memoirs make it plain there's not much agreement on what a gay lifestyle is, or should be. While there aren't any answers here, there are two terrific books, Bernard Cooper's "The Bill from My Father" (Simon & Schuster, 240 pp., $24) and Bruce Benderson's "The Romanian: Story of an Obsession" (Tarcher/Penguin, 401 pp., $16.95).

There's also one worthy effort, Kenji Yoshino's "Covering: The Hidden Assault on Our Civil Rights" (Random House, 282 pp., $24.95), which contains a strong memoir element.

Cooper is a memoirist in the Tobias Wolff vein, and his new book is a rueful, self-effacing, yet dazzlingly precise affair, bringing Cooper's father, a retired Los Angeles divorce lawyer, to full preposterous life.

Always antagonistic, Edward Samuel Cooper in his final years became downright impossible. Bernard's mother and three older brothers had all died by the time Ed was 83, and it was up to Bernard alone (and a live-in nurse who promptly became Ed's lover) to handle him. Luckily, Bernard could count on his partner Brian, a psychotherapist, for delightfully common-sense backup.

"Look," says Brian, after one father-son argument, "if the reason the two of you aren't speaking doesn't make sense, then the reason you contact him again doesn't have to make sense, either. If nothing makes sense, act accordingly."

Here we're in familiar territory where one difficult family figure is exhausting the patience and resources of all those around him. Indeed, it's his father, and not his "gay lifestyle," that is the most volatile element in Bernard's life.

As Ed slips into dementia and starts filing lawsuit after bankrupting lawsuit against his doctor, the phone company and even the widows of his dead sons (seven suits each, over "loans," including birthday checks, that haven't been reimbursed), Bernard has real pragmatic problems on his hands, along with emotional distress.

Incredibly, after his father's death, he finds himself remembering the old man's rage with "a mixture of awe and fondness." He sees some parallels between them — in their shared sexual ardor and need, and in their shared shock at suffering so many untimely deaths in the family (Bernard's shock may be the reason he gives strangely varying ages for when his brothers died).

The book's title refers to a bill Ed once sent his son, charging him roughly $2 million for the cost of raising him. Bernard was then 28 — and living on a teacher's salary.

If this is grotesque, other passages in the book are laugh-out-loud funny. When Bernard questions Ed about his Atlantic City boyhood ("Tell me more about the boardwalk, Dad"), the answer is pure Essence of Ed: "What do you want from me? Seagulls or something?"

Thank goodness Brian is there to help his partner steer around this contrarian.

Where "The Bill from My Father" takes for granted a marriage-like domestic serenity flourishing between two men, Bruce Benderson's "The Romanian" does exactly the opposite. Benderson, by his own lights, is a conservative, seeing no "progress" in the assimilationist gay desire to follow a heterosexual model of marriage, and insisting on the value of being a sexual outlaw:

"I still saw my homosexuality as a narrative of adventure, a chance to cross not only sex barriers but class barriers ... Otherwise, I told myself, I might as well be straight."

And so, while investigating European brothels for an online magazine, he picks up Romulus, a Romanian hustler half his age, and proceeds to fall in love with him.

The headlong highs and lows of their eight-month affair make for crazed, exhilarating reading. Think Jean Rhys' tales of doomed and reckless love in 1930s Paris. Think a frenzied gay rewrite of "Wuthering Heights."

For this is amour fou on a grand scale. First Benderson does everything he can to whisk Romulus away from his native Romania to New York, where Benderson lives. When that doesn't work out, Benderson moves to Bucharest.

There it becomes apparent that even the most ardent dedicatee to the gay-outlaw lifestyle doesn't sit around being "gay" all the time. For one thing, Benderson is a sharp observer, and his details on life in Bucharest and in Romulus' hometown of Sibiu (which the lovers visit) are photo-sharp. For another, Benderson soon develops an interest in Romanian history, particularly in the erotic follies of King Carol II, whose reign was cut short by his love for Jewish commoner Elena Lupescu.

As Benderson sees it, love affairs such as his and Carol's are what makes the world go around. "If it weren't for us, the world would suffer from a dismal lack of stories."

Meanwhile, reality intervenes. Benderson has to work like crazy to keep himself and his lover financially afloat (Romulus cooks lunch but otherwise does nothing but chainsmoke, watch TV and disappear with girlfriends). And "work" for Benderson means, hilariously, translating Celine Dion's memoirs from their native Quebecois French into English: "I felt as if I'd been plunged into a swamp of banality whose shores would never be sighted."

Benderson also has an elderly parent in the picture — his much-adored 96-year-old mother who wishes he'd settle down like the nice middle-age gay couple next door to her.

None of this turns out particularly well, but Benderson is such a compelling character, and Romulus such an enigmatic one, that it scarcely matters.

The sex is explicit (unlike in Cooper's book) but it can't be called pornographic — not when it goes so terribly wrong.

What goes right is Benderson's narrative. Taut, driven, culturally astute, politically cranky and packed with Oscar Wilde-worthy epigrams ("Passion is an emotion that rarely respects its own aftermath"), "The Romanian" was the deserving winner of the Prix de Flore in France, where it was first published in 2004.

To come in from the emotional-erotic storms of "The Romanian" and enter Kenji Yoshino's "Covering" is a bit like having to sit down and do six hours of homework. You know it's the responsible thing to do — but where's the Sturm? Where's the Drang?

Yoshino grew up in Boston, the son of Japanese academics who succeeded in the U.S. He became aware of his homoerotic desires in college, and fell into a major depression about them in graduate school. Even after he came out to his parents, he didn't feel comfortable enough to introduce them to his first boyfriend.

In short, he was "covering" — downplaying any gay characteristics he had. And he argues that most minorities "cover" so as to court the approval of the cultural mainstream.

"Racial minorities must 'act white' because of white supremacy, women must hide parenting responsibilities because of patriarchy, gays must hide displays of same-sex affection because of hetero-normativity." He concludes: "If civil-rights law fails to protect the groups against coerced conformity, it will have stopped short of its end."

Yoshino persuasively backs up his argument, citing plenty of court cases. And his dream of legislation that could make covering unnecessary for minority populations is a very nice dream.

But, frankly, I need more bad behavior in my reading matter.

My plan: Fumble along on the homefront, like Cooper ... and check out the wild side, vicariously, via Benderson.

Michael Upchurch: mupchurch@seattletimes.com