This is the sequel book to “A Boy’s Own Story” where the “boy” of the first book moves through adolescence into adulthood. One gets a clearer idea of when the book is set (we’re told it’s the mid-fifties).

I was probably breaking a rule, but it had never been formulated because no student has ever wanted to infringe it before.

Page 6

This little observation by the “boy” created a wry smile in me: sometimes we have a feeling that something is “against the rules” because we know the spirit of the rules – whether the rules are fair or not or sensible or crazy is not the issue, somehow we have a sense that we are transgressing an unwritten or unspoken rule. Such is the nature of the life experience of any one of the members of the LGBTQIA+ community.

…the most intimate things in our lives can’t be discussed with strangers, except in books.

Page 10

…or in blog posts!

Boy’s confusion over blow jobs (“tell me, do you really blow?”) matched my own hilarious confusion over the phrase. In the same section, a wonderful Texan used language that is more familiar to me than modern parlance – back then, indeed only twenty-five odd years ago, young gay boys were known as chickens and not twinks. Without looking it up, I don’t know where the idea for young blood being a chicken comes from, but I associate it with polari, the “gay language”. Finding a Texan using it makes me question that idea.

There’s plenty of examples of gay dialogue, where the pronouns are inverted and everyone is throwing shade around, and referring to sexual encounters as “trade” reminds me of the first year after I came out: I was with an older guy (by “older” I mean he was older than my own father – I’ll tell you about him someday) – he and his friends talked to each other using female pronouns, female names, and threw constant shade. They also used polari. In all, they were a fascinating and hilarious bunch!

As I read, I slowly became aware of something missing in this book that was present in its predecessor: smell. In “A Boy’s Own Story”, he White uses a lot of reference to the smells of a particular event in the Boy’s story. I missed that in “The Beautiful Room Is Empty”, and I find I miss it – smell is a powerful sense for me, linked as it is to memory.

As the “boy” moves through high school and college to starting work in New York, the way he talks about his fellow gay men switches from masculine pronouns to feminine – much the way that the old queens of my youth referred to each other.

I wonder what has been lost by becoming mainstream? What parts of gay identity and culture are gone?

Thinking back on those times lived in fear and hidden rebellion, which were nearing their end when I was in my early twenties, I marvel at the wonderful complexity and richness of identity and personal expression that is possible now.

Is the explosion in exploration of gender and sexual identity because the lid is off and we are free to be who we are – or could it be that some of us need to feel different and edgy? Perhaps, there must always be something to rebel against.

With a friend we recognise bounds but within those bounds we respond with candour; with a lover we expect limitless communion but resort to stratagems.

Page 139

How true this is! How easy it is to open up and tell a friend everything about some intimate or private matter, yet know that others are out of bounds. And how difficult it is to be open with the person who is the most important in one’s life. Why is that? Why doesn’t it get easier to be open with people the closer they are to you, yet the stranger on the bus – or in the internet chat room – can know every dirty secret about you except your real name.

There are strong elements in “The Beautiful Room Is Empty” that today we might say suggest gender dysphoria. I wasn’t able to recognise, process, or accept these when I was in my twenties.

Now they speak very loudly.

Then I caught myself foolishly imagining that gays might some day constitute a community rather than a diagnosis.

Page 183

Writing as a witness of the Stonewall riots, “boy” has been through conversion therapy, which destroyed his loving relationship and nearly killed his boyfriend. All his life he has felt shame and been pathologized – now he images that perhaps being gay might be normalised and that they (we!) might act as a community and in the collective interest.

It’s a radical shift that hooks us from the angst and trauma into a sudden twist of hope.

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I enjoyed this second book, although it lacked something from the first, which was much more of a sensual feast evoking the vignettes of “boys” life through sound, touch, sight, and smell.

This last book was less evocative, but nevertheless enjoyable.

I’d read this and its prequel over quarter of a century again. I knew about the final book, but I never read it, until now…