© 1994 Rich Grzesiak, all rights reserved.
In a world surfeited with soothsayers, 976 psychics, Heloises, Dear Abby's, Miss Manners's, and Joyce Brothers, what, oh what, have we done to deserve a new book called The Gay Guys Guide to Life [Fireside/Simon & Schuster; $6.95, softcover].
Frankly, it's taken me years to recover from publication of the late Clark Henley's Butch Manual.
But I've also reached the age where, if the face is pretty enough, and the pitch sufficiently direct, I'll put up with anybody's sagacity...
...Even former Los Angeleno Ken Hanes, for instance. He looks like the hunkiest teddy bear this side of a Civil War docudrama.
After the riots and earthquakes and killer bees, he fled L.A. (a delightfully bohemian section called Venice—sort of Greenwich Village by the Pacific) for the Tarheel State (that's North Carolina, bro'), where, trusty word processor in hand, he bled several hundred dozen nuggets of correct living and life sustaining bromide which eventually became The Gay Guys Guide to Life.
Hanes remains quite sanguine on how radical this seemingly 'mainstream' book of gay lifestyle advice has turned out: "Even bookstores don't know where to put it: humor? reference? self-help? One friend found it next to a book for pregnant women."
Nowadays, anybody with access to a PC and a word processing program can claim literacy (let lone writing talent), but Hanes actually has done work in the field. He wanted to be a screenwriter (doesn't everyone in L.A.?), but like hundreds before, during and since, got nowhere. So he went back to where he started his career... playwriting... and got a commission for a work in '89 called Family Chills [his other play is called Freak of Nature, which enjoyed a run at the Road Theatre in Van Nuys, The Valley].
Then came a documentary he did on L.A. AIDS activism called Life on the Line—oral histories of AIDS activists.
Yet there comes a time in every writer's life when he has to Get Honest and See Where the Muse Truly Leads. Writing Was Where It's At, babe—for Hanes. So he linked up with a dude named Chase Langford (name sound like a perfume for men?) and before ya know it, before you can e-mail the thought Gag Me With A Spoon, they had the basis for The Gay Guys Guide to Life.
Langford parted company (unlike many co-partnerships do writing-wise, this one ended amicably), and Hanes struggled on with Words To Live By, like #163: "Write your elected officials and let them know how you feel. When writing Al Gore, include a picture of yourself and a phone number."
Does he worry lest some young impressionable take his guidance seriously? Nah!: "There's nothing in my book that's destructive, but flippant yes, and if someone ...takes it literally, I don't think there's anything wrong with that."
Hanes ain't blind: item #195 of the Guide excoriates Gay Book Bullsh*t: "I know people who are extremely PC who don't appreciate how flip this book is. Where that comes from, I'm not sure, but I clearly made a choice I was gonna have instructions that said, 'Gays can be assholes too. You don't have to like them.'"
He even gets kinky: he urges guys not to "use sex as a weapon," and in #199 tackles "Tantric sex, which goes back to ancient Chinese/Buddhist practices. A man's life force is in his semen and you don't want to ejaculate too often as you'd give up too much of your life force."
As a chronic self abuser, I was transfixed—he claims, "[you] take the energy of your body and keep it there and don't let too much of it out. You probably ejaculate once a month. It doesn't mean you don't have an orgasm, you just orgasm without ejaculating. Instead of a genital centered orgasm, it tingles thru your whole body."
But he admits "I actually don't do Tantric sex as I have had problems with my prostate." So beware, you who are chronically asexual.
Lest you think Hanes' advice is all upbeat, there's item #158: "If you have AIDS be wary of people who think that your having HIV or AIDS means you have to die."
"There's a lot of people out there who, when they find out you're HIV/AIDS, they automatically place you in a different class of someone who is in the death cult—you're no longer someone who's living but someone who's dying. If you look at [my] book the instructions have to do with taking responsibility for yourself, regardless of your health status."
Being gay doesn't mean losing a spiritual connection, either—see his tidbit #310. "I consider myself a spiritual person, though I have no specific spiritual practice."
To summarize the nostrums of Hanes: have a gay life, don't use your roommate's condoms, hold your boyfriend when he asks (and don't even question it), swim nude every now and then, learn First Aid, limit the number of times you allow yourself to watch Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?—and stay tuned for the third printing, and lesbian sequel to—Ken Hanes' The Gay Guys Guide to Life.