Author William Maltese comments on
Duane Simolke's THE ACORN STORIES
and on
Ronald L. Donaghe's COMMON SONS
and on
other rural-vs.-urban "things"
Duane Simolke's THE ACORN STORIES
and on
Ronald L. Donaghe's COMMON SONS
and on
other rural-vs.-urban "things"
Fellow writer, Andrew Barriger, and our friend and gracious editor, Betty Conley, accepted my invitation to come out for a road trip through southwestern New Mexico in October. My husband Cliff and I took them from the desert floor near Las Cruces to high in the Gila National Forest, and yet the essence of the setting for Common Sons, while surrounded by mountains is the picture of the highway in this article, contributed by Betty Conley. On many roads just like this one, lonely gay and lesbian teens have no doubt traveled, most likely wondering...
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Not
all that long ago, I embarked upon a road trip that began with my
dipping my toes into the cold water of the Pacific, at a spot near Neah
Bay, at the very northwest tip of Washington state, and ended with
similar contact with the water of the warm Atlantic off Key West,
Florida. In between were hundreds of American small towns with names
like Eltopia, Hays, Kaycee, Haswell, Le Roy, Fredonia, Elida, and
Dilley, mostly just white letters on otherwise green freeway signs,
with an occasional sense of the physical reality nestled somewhere off
to the left or right, usually just by way of fleeting glimpse caught
through trees or among dusty foothills. Periodically, though, I exited at just such turnoffs, finding myself in need of gas, food, lodging, or toilet facilities. Small-town America always an exotic place for me, more foreign than genuinely "foreign" big cities like London, Paris, Rome, Bangkok, Tokyo (all of the latter to which I'd been exposed at an early age to the point where finally touching down in New York City my only comment was: "What's the supposedly big deal?!"). If I spent a good deal of time in one small town, during my university years, there was such a distinct dividing line between town and college, the latter decidedly insular with its theatres (stage and movie), its visiting artists programs, its lectures, its sports and recreational facilities, that I don't recall meeting any "townie" the whole four years (excluding summers, holidays, and many weekends), that I was in residence. Meaning that my road trip exposure to the likes of Wilsall, Glenrock, and Colwich, found me possessed of contradictory fantasies, every time I came across some fresh-faced, blue-eyed, studly country boy, either pumping gas for me (something "attendants" actually still do in middle America), or seated (unbuttoned shirt exposing tanned flesh still speckled with bits of barn straw, cowboy hat cocked seductively to reveal tousled lush blond hair), in the booth next to mine in some country diner.  Was I dropped suddenly into Edensque settings,
handsome country
bumpkins as innocent and naïve as some people (myself included)
sometimes like to imagine (no matter that no one sees more barnyard sex
than a born-and-bred farm boy does)? Was I actually being cruised when
the kid tipped the brim of his hat with his fore- and middle fingers,
in a kind of salute, provided me with a winning smile, and didn't seem
at all surprised -- "Hi there!" - when I followed him into the bathroom
while he let his you-know-what remain exposed long after he'd finished
what he'd come in there to do? Or, was his slight come-hither nod and
look, upon his preparing to leave the diner, not an indication for me
to follow him for hot and heavy sex into the rows and rows of corn
growing on all sides (Toto, seems we "are", after all, in Kansas) but
veiled invitation for me to be beaten senseless by him and his
queer-baiting redneck buddies?All of which brings me to my recent reading of Duane Simolke's THE ACORN STORIES. Simolke obviously knowing more about small-town America than I do. And lucky for all of us who are interested, he's willing to share his insights. Revealing, in the process, that burgs like Alvord, Lott, Yoakum, and/or, in this case, the fictitious west-Texas town of Acorn, are merely microcosms of their big-city counterparts. Filled with the same bigotry, the same dysfunctional people and families, the same jealousies, and fears, and prejudices, the same loves and hates. People, it seems, being people, no matter where you find them. Simolke's sixteen short stories, many of them with overlapping characters and story-lines, providing beneath-the-veneer glimpses of rural life that, if not as salaciously portrayed as in PEYTON PLACE (which, after all, was just a small town), are expertly done by an author who obviously knows the difference between "ironic" and "iconic", with the daring-do to expose his readers to four-syllable words like "nomenclature" and "aberration"- not to mention the likes of "kleptomaniac werewolf multi-generation epic". You want a literary look-see at what's going down in one of those towns often mistaken for idyllic west-Texas boondocks? Then, Simolke's THE ACORN STORIES is just the book for you. Although, there are many people who think "the" definitive "coming-out-in-rural-America" book is Ronald L. Donaghe's COMMON SONS. That the book, originally published in 1989, is presently in its Fourth edition proves that something about it "rings true" with a helluva lot of people. Even I have to admit, already having confessed to being no authority on the subject, that Donaghe's way with words, as regards this particular thematic, comes across with a decided been-there-done-that-got-the-T-shirt reality. Just the way he writes - "He liked the clean sweat to roll down his back. When a short breeze came up, he unbuttoned his Levi's to allow the air to dry the crack of his butt where the sweat ran in rivulets. He stretched occasionally to flex his abdominal muscles. When he stopped working, he was satisfied that the border at the end of the furrows would hold the irrigation water. It would collect at this end by mid-afternoon. Already, the silver strands of the water in the furrows between the beds of tender cotton plants were beginning to lengthen across the field." - says to me that Donaghe has, at some time, stood in a real farmer's irrigation ditches, monitoring their water flow, his Levi's unbuttoned at their crotch. Likewise, his - "The dance was held in the arts and crafts building, where school children displayed their handiwork every October during the Fair and Livestock Show. Around the inside wall of the old hangar, between the partitions that usually divided the fair exhibits, tables were beginning to fill up. The place was alive and noisy, echoing laughter and talk high up in the old rafters; the only light came from the stage where the band was tuning up. The drummer's erratic rhythms cut through the noisy crowd echoing like gunshots in the wide space." - conjures for me a picture of Friday-night rural America that seems "just right". As a matter of fact, as far as I'm concerned, nothing about COMMON SONS comes across "out-of-kilter", not even the author's impassioned depiction of religious intolerance, as regards homosexuality. Hinting that Donaghe's own experiences with "the church" have been anything but uplifting? In the meantime, "my" feeble attempts to steer clear of the ever-increasing criticism aimed at the gay publishing industry, bemoaning it as too geared to big-city people, big-city problems, big-city intellect - author insights into rural America, like those supplied by Simolke and Donaghe being the exceptions, rather than the rule - has been to provide my characters with other than West- and/or East-coast origins [while, admittedly, as in my SS MANN HUNT (sorry, can't help myself!) still plopping them down in more exotic (and more familiar-to-me) locales, like the Brazilian jungle]. In that, if publishers (unlike individuals Simolke and Donaghe), haven't yet realized that there's a vast gay population out there, ensconced between the boundaries of the East Coast (New York City), and the West Coast (Los Angeles / San Francisco), I have. And, any gay author who wants to tap that potential had better start providing those readers with something relevant to their lives and to their life-styles, no matter how tenuous that "something". END |
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