ZIGZAG: And Other Stories
by Philip Gambone
Rattling Good Yarns Press. 367 pages, $18.95
SOME OF US who came out in the 1960s and ’70s are still here, and there are enough of us to constitute a significant demographic in American society. Yet only rarely are the lives of older gay men portrayed in our fiction. Whether it’s due to ageism or this community’s obsession with youth, it’s difficult to find fiction that addresses the complex, day-to-day lives of gay men over fifty. While our stories of coming out, first crushes, first heartbreaks, and the like are relatable, many of us older readers yearn for works of fiction that explore and reflect our lives now as gay men. Philip Gambone’s second book of short stories, Zigzag, rushes into this void. In sixteen interrelated stories, he writes about “ordinary” gay men in their fifties, sixties, seventies, and eighties as they experience the everyday joys and letdowns in their lives in Boston.
Gambone creates a diverse set of characters that are readily recognizable to those of us who live in the world they describe. Perhaps we even recognize a bit of ourselves in some of them. In flashbacks, confessions, and tall tales, these men tell us that they, like us, have loved and lost; been hurt and hurt others; succeeded in a chosen career or failed miserably at another; had loving supportive families or bigoted, hurtful siblings; been monogamous in relationships or pursued a more complicated sex life. They endured the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and ’90s, and some still wrestle with the losses and grief from those years. They are survivors, and most are intent on indulging in as much love and companionship as they can in the years left to them.
Selecting only a few representative stories from the sixteen in Zigzag was difficult. Two will have to suffice. In “The Bohemians,” Patrick, the narrator, is a 64-year-old man who has just moved to the South End, Boston’s gayest enclave, after breaking a fourteen-year relationship with Lincoln. Patrick goes to a local diner, Crumble, for coffee one Saturday morning and soon befriends three guys, Jake and Wilson, a couple, and Henry, the youngest at 48. They soon form a literary klatch and, over Patrick’s objections, the group adopts the nickname “The Bohemians,” a nod to Puccini’s La Bohème. (“We are all just a bit too middle-class to think of ourselves as bohemians,” Patrick thinks.) One Saturday morning, Henry announces that he is adopting a baby. Patrick wastes no time letting the group know that he thinks it’s a horrible idea. As Henry assumes parenting duties and Jake and Wilson start making plans without Patrick, the group grows apart. Patrick reflects on his relationship with Lincoln and the other Bohemians and tries to come to grips with people and things that have come and gone. As he laments the extent to gay life has changed, we feel his loneliness and sense of being left out of things, and his sadness at being unable to deal with change.
In “The Walker,” Tavish, a cynical seen-it-all 68-year-old curmudgeon with fast-progressing multiple sclerosis, has had balance problems and has fallen in the bathtub a few times. His doctor insists that he use a wheelchair when he leaves his apartment. An agency sends Tavish a walker, a fresh-faced 23-year-old straight man named Danny whose job it is to wheel Tavish around the city three days a week. As weeks go by, Tavish rues the changes to his city: old churches converted to condominiums; glass and steel columns replacing Victorian houses. He laments having never had children, notices the deterioration of his older bridge club players, and bemoans the disappearance of gay clubs that he used to frequent. Eventually, Tavish comes to feel real affection for Danny (and his toddler daughter Stella), and, against the advice of his bridge friend, he invites Danny and Stella to live with him in an extra bedroom. Now at least he will have someone to talk with and to take to the theater.
The unifying character holding these stories together is the city of Boston itself. Characters from all the stories know and frequent the same places: the Crumble, a coffee-and-pastry restaurant; Sporters, a gay bar; another gay bar, Cru/Cuts; the same parks, theaters, and cruising areas. Even for someone like me who has never seen Boston, Gambone makes it easy to “feel” the city’s personality and to recognize the ways in which it has shaped the lives of these characters. We also get the feeling that, even though Boston is a large city, the characters live in a small, tightly packed enclave. Thus it doesn’t surprise us when Harry, the eighty-year-old painter in “The Portrait,” shows up at the opening of Raul’s art show in “Zigzag,” the final story.
Throughout these stories, Gambone’s writing is economical and unadorned, but affectionate and precise in its detail. Several times I was reminded of Christopher Isherwood’s A Single Man. Both books are humane, knowing, sexy, and honest about the joys and frustrations of gay men in the autumn of their lives, and both display a palpable compassion for their characters. Gambone apparently reveres these older men, the pioneers of gay identity and survivors of great loss. Their stories are part of the history of this generation of gay men. _______________________________________________________
Hank Trout is the former editor of A&U: America’s AIDS Magazine.
