What It’s Like

I was very impressed by “What It’s Like.” Rarely does one find the literary ambiguities of such writing, in the wake of Anaïs Nin or Henry Miller, coming off so well. It is an exploration of consciousness that startles the reader with personal comparisons; at the same time it is a story with development and climax. And I thought the ending — endings being most difficult — witty and provocative. And, then, because one cannot tell if the author and the persona are the same, how much is supposed to be fact, how much true, the erotic admissions to and stimulations of the reader are dreamily enhanced.

As a hetero male, married, four children, with homo friends from way back, I know what it is to ask myself why and how I am not homosexual or bisexual, how I would feel if, don’t I really want to ever, why am I afraid, etc. It’s something I have never been able to discuss well with hetero friends, if only because no one ever knows what anyone else really does except the person he or she does it with. It’s always been easier for me to talk to gay friends about why and how people are sexually oriented. But as with religious belief, the subject can be fully discussable only if one doesn’t take it too seriously. What I like especially about “What It’s Like” is the easy way it slips from seriousness to play.

I loved Dana Branscum’s “What It’s Like” [Issue 146]. It was lyrical and captivating and honest and ambivalent, and dealt with things I’ve been thinking and feeling over the years. The editor Gordon Lish says there are three criteria in judging writing (and I’m paraphrasing): Do you wish you’d written it? (Yes.) Does it change the way you see the world? (Not so much, only strengthens my commitment to honesty.) Did you want it to keep going? (Yes. Yes.)