When he starts jumping rope, boy, that cinches it for the other kids. "You not only a fag, but you good at it, too? You FagMaster," says the less-than-model camp counselor, an eighteen-year-old smartass.
But the hero of Alaric Wendell Blair's novel, "The End of Innocence: A Journey into the Life," meets this painful identity crisis with a healthy dose of humor. He soon realizes that "Being the FagMaster carried with it certain privileges," like not having to get dirty like the other camp kids, and he learns how to stand up for himself. And once he knew how to cuss, Fitzgerald recalls, "People left me alone for no other reason than the fact that they didn't want to hear my mouth."
But it's Fitzgerald's voice - sly, sarcastic, quick to retort, unself-aggrandizing - that separates "The End of Innocence" from your average sexual coming-of-age novel. Fitz grows up on the South Side of Chicago, a smart smart-aleck who bounces from school to school before landing at a magnet high, reading Vogue and going to fashion shows with girl friends. The first kid in his family with a shot at college, Fitz gets along okay with his family - his single mom, who reads him Mother Goose fairy tales and plays Diana Ross and Aretha records on Fridays; his storytelling Aunt Tess; his younger sister Tina - even after "coming out" during college. At fictional Harmon College, in downstate Illinois, Fitz begins to have his first love affairs, rushes a frat, parties and makes good grades, and learns about the gay pride movement.
But his most memorable lessons come during a school break spent in Chicago's gay club scene, where he gets the latest dish and mostly unsolicited lectures on everything from watching out for "the wolves" that prey on new meat, to the racial dynamics of Boys Town. "Those sissies up there are good for parades and shit - everyone united under the rainbow flag," one angry bartender tells a dubious Fitz, "but they don't do anything that includes Black folks...they only include the niggas because they believe that we have big dicks."
Blair's self-published story weaves in the political and personal dimension of being young, gay and black in the Midwest gracefully, with a snappy style and a tremendous ear for dialogue - Fitz is, above all else, a smooth conversationalist (and a "first-rate confrontationalist," he says, proudly, at one point). Given his youthful resourcefulness, it's no surprise that Fitz comes through the personal upheavals and ever-present persecution of being "a fag" with his sharp self intact. "Sitting there on the Jeffery Express, I reflected on the potentially poisonous word, FAG, ....and then Fagmaster," he says near the end. "They became beautiful to me..."
(Sam Jemielity)
- The End of Innocence:
A Journey Into the Life Alaric Wendell Blair
P.O. Box 1062, Mishawaka, IN 46545-1062;
copyright 1998 New City Communications, Inc.