Meersman, Brent. “Homo Odyssey: Adventures of a World Traveler”, Bruno Gmunder, 2017.

Seventeen Countries on Six Continents: A Travel Memoir

Amos Lassen

In always look forward to a new book by Brent Meersman and I must admit that “Homo Odyssey” stole my heart. It is part autobiography, part social theory, an immersive study of sexual desire and the cultures that shape it and it is written with brutal honesty. Meersman throws sentimentality out of the window and becomes both tender and vulnerable as he gives us his memoir of gay life and sexual desire .

We are reminded that sexual desire “morphs with the times”. Meersman is both self-critical and cruelly objective in this deeply personal account that looks intimately at what it means to be human. His stories transcend gayness as they are stories about man as he makes his way through life and we immediately see that it is not difficult to identify with and to feel the human condition.

The next paragraph is quoted from the blurb of the book since it says everything so much better than I can.

“A gay Muslim in Berlin, a young gay man bewildered and lost on the highways of Los Angeles; a rent boy in Shanghai; a holiday romance in Mexico; a man from Dakar in a bathhouse in Paris; a love hotel in Tokyo; a darkroom in Rio; a hamam in Syria; the burning ghats on the Ganges; Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Buddhist, Shinto and atheist; legal and illegal … blazing through 17 countries on six continents…”

“Homo Odyssey” is an edgy, often very funny travel memoir that allows us to see the world and ourselves differently than we ever have before. We read how men are sexually attracted to other men who live in different parts of the world and how they see themselves. This is about survival in hostile places and how we have made it to where we are today.

Myles, Eileen. “Afterglow (a dog memoir)”, Grove, 2017.

Rosie, the Pit Bull

Amos Lassen

In 1990, Eileen Myles chose Rosie from a litter on the street, and connected instantly and Rosie became central to the writer’s life and work. They were together for 16 years. Myles was totally devoted to her dog and when Rosie died Myles felt empty. In “Afterglow”, she gives us a look at their relationship and the bond that they shared. She begins this memoir on an imaginary talk show where Rosie is interviewed by Myles’s childhood puppet to give us a “critical reenactment of the night Rosie mated with another pit bull, from lyrical transcriptions of their walks to Rosie’s enlightened narration from the afterlife” and we see what it means to be dedicated to a pet. I could easily relate to this and was reminded of the twelve wonderful years I shared with my Jack Russell Terrier, Sophie.

Myles explores the grieving process in its various aspects and shares what it is to lose something that one cars so deeply about. While this is a book about a dog, it is also a book about life. Myles, Rosie and the reader explore the themes of “geometry, gender, mortality, evil, aging, and plaids” together and we see a new kind of prose. We look at love and loss over and over again in an entirely new reading experience. As Myles mourns her dog here, she takes us into her thoughts and her visions as we read about the closeness a master and her dog shared as she, along with the reader, question our purpose in life and why we are here. This is more than a read, it is a total experience.

Hersch, Fred. “Good Things Happen Slowly: A Life In and Out of Jazz”, Penguin, 2017.

The Life of a Sideman

Amos Lassen

Fred Hersch is a jazz pianist, composer, activist, and educator whose talent as a sideman (a pianist who played with the giants of the twentieth century) who defied the boundaries of bop, sweeping in elements of pop, classical, and folk to create a wholly new music. This is his memoir and it is the story of the first openly gay, HIV-positive jazz player and a detailed look into the cloistered jazz culture that made such a status both transgressive and groundbreaking. We also get a profound exploration of how Hersch’s two-month-long coma in 2007 led to his creating some of the finest, most direct, and most emotionally compelling music of his career. Here is a look at post-Stonewall New York and a “narrative of illness, recovery, music, creativity, and the glorious reward of finally becoming oneself.”

Jason, Paul. “Just Your Average Guy”, Beaten Track, 2016.

Gender and Gender Identity

Amos Lassen

Now that transgender people have begun to see a bit of acceptance in modern society, many are writing books about their journeys. In this memoir, we read

About the conflicts, the traumas and the breakdowns that he has experienced as a man who is closeted,, a family guy who tries to balance his straight sexuality with his trans side as a man who crossdresses. He shares his personal thoughts on crossdressing without going into self-psychoanalysis as so many others have one. This is his journey of self-discovery in which he reflects back on the lonely struggles of coming to terms with his crossdressing in a pre-internet era.

When he began dressing as a woman years ago, he felt terribly guilty about it. He was afraid all the time that someone would catch him crossdressing (wearing his mother’s clothes). When he moved out of his parents’ house, he began building his own closet, yet the fear and that guilt came with him. He went to great lengths to protect his secret and we really feel the fear that he felt. It is interesting that

there was no sexual element to his crossdressing, as well as no deep-seated gender confusion behind his identity. Crossdressing never aroused him nor did he ever want to become a woman. He was never aroused by crossdressing, and never felt the urge to become a woman. He simply takes comfort in the clothes and the cosmetics, and finds a sense of peace in his crossdressing, without ever forgetting who he is beneath it all. He writes about double standards and carefully explains that he is quite simply a man who likes to dress as a woman. He simply wants us to understand that.

When I lived in Arkansas, I went to a gay weekend in the small town of Eureka Springs and it just happened that weekend there was a meeting of straight male crossdressers. It was a fascinating experience to speak to the guys (who ranged from truck drivers to stay at home dads) and to learn their feelings on dressing as women while otherwise maintaining straight lives. Writer Jason’s views are also fascinating especially because he writes about how it was before we had the Internet and access to so much.

We do not yet live in a world where men are free to live in have peace and we can only hope that we are moving in that direction. The more that we read and understand, the more likely we will gain that new world. I admire Jason’s honesty in telling his story and I can only hope that as many people as possible will read it.

Green, Howard. “Being Green: A Colorful Journey”, Page Publishing, 2017.

A Memoir

Amos Lassen

Howard Green grew up in the 50s and it was rough. His father was abusive and his mother was insane. It was a time when there were no role models for young gay boys and homosexuality was not spoken about as freely as it is today. Being gay back then caused people to think of mental illness. Green hid from himself and from society. He married to disguise his feelings but the inner pressure got to him and he entered a mental institution for a month. It was only through his inner strength and perseverance that he was able to accept who he was and turn his life around and what a turn that was

Green became a successful film publicist in Hollywood and worked with such celebrities as Lucille Ball, Clint Eastwood, Barbra Streisand, John Denver, Jack Lemmon and many others.

As you read what he writes here, it is easy to sense his confidence and his honesty. It was not easy to gain self-acceptance and how Green went about it is inspiring. Now, in his book, he looks back at his life and lets us see how he did along with the many hurts and bruises he felt. Reading this is akin to Green begins with his troubled past and childhood and he shares how his sad childhood affected his struggles in his adult life. He overcomes adversity, falls in and out of love and builds a successful business. He was able to attain his dreams while remaining humble.

As someone who is now editing his own autobiography, I can tell you that writing about oneself is not easy. Green wonderfully balances “the ups and downs, the triumphs and tragedies, the loves found and sometimes lost, with a certain wry humor and a fearlessness in not allowing himself to come across as a victim or having an inability to point the finger at himself if he somehow fell short”. He writes with total honesty and allows us into his life as if we have always been there.

Buruma, Ian. “A Tokyo Romance: A Memoir”, Penguin Press, 2018.

Tokyo’s Underground Culture

Amos Lassen

Ian Buruma arrived in Tokyo in 1975 with little idea of anything about Japan, other than it having been a faraway place. Ian was a sensitive misfit. He was an upper middleclass guy who longed for raw adventure like he had seen in theater performances in Amsterdam and Paris and he had been particularly influenced by a Japanese troupe made up of runaways, outsiders and eccentrics and directed by a poet. He thought that if Tokyo was anything like the plays, he had to be there. He found Tokyo to be “a feverish and surreal metropolis where nothing was understated, and everything shouted for attention—neon lights, crimson lanterns, Japanese pop, advertising jingles, cabarets, and PA systems.” It was a city He encountered a city in the midst of an economic boom where everything seemed new except for the temple or shrine that had survived the firestorms and earthquakes that had leveled the city during the past century. History remained in fragments in Japan where he found wounded World War Two veterans in white kimonos. He saw the seedy old bars and the narrow alleys where street girls had once ruled. But Buruma’s Tokyo was a city going through radical transformation. His adventures in the world of avant garde theater, with carnival acts, fashion photographers, and moments on-set with Akira Kurosawa, caused him to go through his own radical transformation. As an outsider, he was unattached to the cultural burdens placed on the Japanese and so he experienced true freedom.

 “A Tokyo Romance” is a portrait of a young artist and the city that shaped him. Buruma “brilliantly captures the historical tensions between east and west, the clash of conflicting cultures, and the dilemma of the foreigner in Japanese society who is constantly free yet always on the outside. This is a story about the desire to transgress cultural, artistic, and sexual boundaries.