Cornholing, Confusion, and Coming-of-Age

This was one of the first gay books I read – it must be approaching thirty years ago!

It was an important book simply because it was an ordinary story of a young man’s experiences coming to terms with his sexuality, which I read at the same time that I was coming to terms with my own.

I really enjoyed the characterisation, which is excellent; there is a lovely conversation between the “boy” and the Irish opera singer in the boat. He describes the ladies clubs and the pretentious behaviours of their members beautifully.

This time of reading, I am much more appreciative of the prose, perhaps because I write so much more now. Edmund White often invokes scenes through the smells associated with them.

I dare not ask my dad for an explanation, lest he give me one.

Page 3

This line made me smile in recognition: if I asked dad for an explanation it would come with excruciating detail. I learned to choose when to ask for more information because I needed to be prepared!

“Cornholing” was a phrase if never heard before. I’m sure it must be an American term. The description of the two boys making out is at once tender and erotic. I didn’t have any sexual encounters until I was twenty – and that was with a much older guy. I wish that there had been somebody to experiment with together when I was younger – as straight people are often able to.

I think, after the titillation of cornholing, I connected with the “boy” in his frustrations with his family and the sense of not belonging.

The “boy’s” retreat into an imaginary power reminded me of my childhood, where my outer powerlessness was compensated for by inner power, magical or political, that would enable me to sweep away those that hurt me.

Cursed as I was with an overly literal imagination – so that such stock phrases as motherfucker, pussywhipped, and shitfaced took on horribly vivid pictorial detail for me

Page 182

Knowing what I now do about neuro-divergence, this paragraph takes on a whole new meaning that is never appreciated before. I too had a strange parallel understanding of what these words mean alongside my initial confusion, buried in the mists of time, of the literal images they constructed in my mind.

I have long since understood that they stand as metaphors rather than definitions.

Funny though – I do talk in convoluted and confusing metaphors myself sometimes!

Edmund White evokes a lot of smell in his writing, which I feel it’s very rare – but also communicates with me because I tend to note smells, pleasant, unpleasant, and erotic, which I attribute to my neuro-divergence.

Nothing I did or said among the other boys came to me naturally. As a result, every encounter, even the most glancing, I had to be a performer, for all times I was aware I was impersonating a human being.

Page 188

Oomph! This passage got me the first time a read it over a quarter of a century ago, but obviously what I now know about myself, its power has grown: not only hiding my homosexuality, but also hiding my discomfort and dysphoria around my own body, and masking ASD behaviours.

What a blessed relief it is not to have to hide quite so much any more!