Dear Queer Self: An Experiment in Memoir

Description

An unvarnished accounting of one man’s struggle toward sexual and emotional maturity. In this unconventional memoir, Jonathan Alexander addresses wry and affecting missives to a conflicted younger self. Focusing on three years—1989, 1993, and 1996—Dear Queer Self follows the author through the homophobic heights of the AIDS epidemic, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the election of Bill Clinton, and the steady advancements in gay rights that followed. With humor and wit afforded by hindsight, Alexander relives his closeted college years, his experiments with his sexuality in graduate school, his first marriage to a woman, and his budding career as a college professor.   As he moves from tortured self-denial to hard-won self-acceptance, the author confronts the deeply uncomfortable ways he is implicated in his own story. More than just a coming-out narrative, Dear Queer Self is both an intimate psychological exploration and a cultural examination—a meshing of inner and outer realities and a personal reckoning with how we sometimes torture the truth to make a life. It is also a love letter, an homage to a decade of rapid change, and a playlist of the sounds, sights, and feelings of a difficult, but ultimately transformative, time. Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Preface Prologue 1989 "Second Chance"-38 Special “Straight Up ~ Cold Hearted”-Paula Abdul “Listen to Your Heart”-Roxette “Giving You the Best That I Got”-Anita Baker “Two Hearts”-Phil Collins “Waiting for a Star to Fall”-Boy Meets Girl “This Time I Know It’s for Real”-Donna Summer “I’ll Be Loving You (Forever)”or “Cherish”-New Kids on the Block/Madonna “Love Shack” or“Sowing the Seeds of Love”-The B-52S/Tears for Fears “Stand” or “What I Am”-Band/Edie Brickell “Miss You Like Crazy”-Natalie Cole Eternal Flame-The Bangles “Baby, I Love Your Way”-Will to Power “If I Could Turn Back Time”-Cher “Good Thing(Where Have You Gone?)”-Fine Young Cannibals “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” or “Right Here Waiting”-Simply Red/Richard Marx 1993 “I Don’t Wanna Fight”-Tina Turner “Love Is”-Vanessa Williams and Brian McNight “Right Here”-The Grind “Deeper and Deeper”-Madonna “Dreamlover” or “I’d Do Anything forLove (But I Won’t Do That)”-Mariah Carey/Meat Loaf “I Have Nothing”-Whitney Houston “Runaway Train”-Soul Asylum “I Will Always Love You”-Whitney Houston “In the Still of the Night(I’ll Remember)”-Boyz II Men “Do You Believe in Us”-John Secada “A Whole New World”-Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle “Will You Be There”-Michael Jackson 1996 “Who Will Save Your Soul”-Jewel “Til I Hear It From You”-Gin Blossoms “Closer to Free”-The Bodeans “The World I Know”-Collective Soul “If It Makes You Happy”-Sheryl Crow “Be My Lover”-La Bouche “Give Me One Reason” or“Nobody Knows”-Tracy Chapman/The Tony Rich Project “Because You Loved Me” or“I Want to Come Over”-Celine Dion/Melissa Etheridge “Change the World”-Eric Clapton “I Love You Always Forever”-Donna Lewis “As I Lay Me Down”-Sophie B. Hawkins “Counting Blue Cars”-Dishwalla “Time”-Hootie & the Blowfish "Don't Cry"-Seal “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”-Deep Blue Something “Mouth”-Merril Bainbridge “Wonder”-Natalie Merchant Acknowledgments