Alan Helms

This book was sold to me on the promise of it being the memoir of a highly literate looker. With that promise, I was expecting something like a cross between Truman Capote and James Dean (like Helms, a fellow Hoosier), a gay man's version of Alison Bechdel's Fun Home, minus the graphic art and from an age gone by. Alas, there is only one Truman Capote, there is certainly more than one looker on par with James Dean (and Helms), and Fun Home is indeed literate to an extraordinary degree with which few can compete. Helms said he started in his academic career by teaching Freshman Composition, which I figure he must have had wicked street credibility since his prose reads like the stuff my friends used to write for their Intro to Creative Non-Fiction course. (Essential: lots of ampersands and breathless run-on sentences.) The style matches the substance: callow.

And I say that feelingly because I really wanted to like this book.

Helms' numerous reflections on ageism (both participating in and being a victim of) *are* interesting. However, he might keep things in perspective by referring to the comments made by, say, nearly any Golden Era Hollywood starlet (c.f. sobering lamentations made by likes of Kim Novak, Greta Garbo, or later even Diana Rigg or Corale Brown, a woman certainly not to everyone's taste but who still felt the brunt of the inglorious fall.)

An alternative recommendation: Kristina Lindström and Kristian Petri's documentary, The Most Beautiful Boy in the World. It tells the life of Bjorn Andresen, the man who played Tadzio in Visconti's adaptation of Death in Venice. (Incidentally, Visconti appears, much more benignly, across the pages of Helms' memoir.) Andresen as a young man was an incomparable beauty, a trafficked golden boy, and later a highly intelligent wreck of a man.

Or, heck, try Scotty Bowers' book, Full Service. Also a pre-Stonewall romp, it has all of the gay promiscuous fun without any of the agonizing pretensions to profundity.

Given its title, Young Man from the Provinces, Helms makes clear that his provenance does matter, or at least he thinks it does. Between growing up with an abusive, alcoholic father and being born and raised in Indiana, Helms seems to make the case that between the two it's far worse to be born in Indiana. Ah, well. Best of luck on the east coast, but if nothing else Helms' memoir is a cautionary tale that you take your baggage with you, wherever you are from and wherever you might go.… (mere)

Alan Helms autobiography narrates the tale of a young, brilliant, and attractive man who moved to New York City in 1955 after escaping a difficult upbringing in the Midwest. Helms was denied a Rhodes scholarship due to his sexual orientation, and following that he quickly rose to fame in the gay underground scene that was frequented by Noel Coward, Leonard Bernstein, and Marlene Dietrich, among many others. Helms outlines the business of being a sex object and its psychological and bodily toll in this extraordinarily detailed and empathetic depiction.

I found the book riveting and beautifully written. a documentation of the LGBT community that, throughout the past 25 years of liberation and the previous 15 years of AIDS, had all but vanished. Even as I realized the differences between Helms and myself I also noted resonances with parts of my life in this personal memoir. Helms sped through the fast lanes lined with famous people, but he knew how to take a step back and gain some perspective. Stunningly humorous, captivating, pitiful, extremely literary, and excruciating to read. In this disrespectful environment, Helms seems to be a gay Everyman whose search for self-awareness, respect, and satisfaction is similar to that of many other disenfranchised persons.

I found Alan Helms' memoir of his life touching and inspiring. I could identify with some of his qualities as I imagine many gay men can - especially those who grew up in midwestern small towns in the fifties and early sixties when things had not changed much from the earlier decades described by the author.… (mere)

Rating: 3.5* of five

Beloved Boston cultural institution Alan Helms had a wildly exciting past! See the film! Admire his art collection, appreciate his cultured and elegant way of speaking, his breadth of cultural knowledge, and his charming sweetness.

What does a young, abused man from flyover country do the moment he realizes he's queer? RUN! Get to New York City as soon as possible. He got to Columbia University in 1955, leaving behind a life in Indianapolis, Indiana, that could charitably be described as "uncongenial." A father who thought his son was a bitter disappointment...how many of us queer boys can relate to that...a mother whose situation wasn't a lot better than his, a younger brother whose close brush with death was the single moment in his childhood when peace reigned. None of this is a recipe for a healthy adulthood...and add in the author's understandable, if off-putting, self-absorbtion and you get a difficult-to-empathize-with narrator.

But he was So. Beautiful. Look at that face on the cover! Hoo-ee!

And the awfulness of that...wow...to be so pretty and so readily available and so snobby, who can claim to be surprised that he wasn't a pleasant person? His sexual awakening came at the price of being raped. His family life prepared him for a life of abuse. He dived into it in the glamorous world of closeted gay life pre-Stonewall. Pretty sexually available intelligent boys found innumerable lovers, and the author wasn't about to say no. (I totally relate to this and would've done precisely the same in his shoes. Damn the bad luck of not being pretty!) So a decade and a half passed in what I imagine was a golden haze...this book's largest part. It's a bit less charming to me than it might be to a younger reader. I look at the wreckage he glosses over and think, "there's the real story."

Yes, sleeping with famous Hollywood stars and titled Eurotrash is all very well. But the people you stood up, the ones whose parties weren't quite glam enough that you said you'd attend, and so on and so forth? How did you sleep, look in the mirror, launch yourself at the next big fish in your hifalutin' pond without thinking about them?

The Fall took place when he was thirtyish, and some semblance of human feeling broke the ice he'd cultivated to keep his agony at bay and under the surface of a freezing cold lake he called his heart. Escape to Boston and the tender mercies of a shrink who began the process of waking the author up from his frozen state. Then it happened: His body aged. He wasn't the hot young muffin anymore; he wasn't even visible to the hot young muffins. That had to be a bad, bad day.

Now, let me not try to hide my glee here. This event has occurred in my life, too. I can not imagine how much worse it was for a formerly gorgeous creature, feted and celebrated and wined and dined, to be cut off from that gushing geyser of distractions. Luckily for his sanity, Helms had a brain and a deep love of the life of the mind that he'd never left behind or neglected. While learning what he'd never known, that feelings are best felt in the moment and not in retrospect, I'm sure he left more carnage behind in his wake. But the fact that no one ever killed him means that he learned enough to at leas fake his way through professional, if not personal, relationships. So hope still shines for him to pull his head out of his ass and recognize that, in his swan-paddle through youth, he got into some ugly emotional habits that would be wise for him to shed before he's patted in the face with a shovel and 120 cubic feet of dirt dropped on him.

I guess it shows that I don't like the man too much. Yes, part of it is envy: I would've LOVED to live among those glittering parties and glamorous people, and I'm jealous that he won nature's looks lottery. But more of it is the sense that grew and grew as I read his (ampersand-laden) memoir that he wasn't sharing his journey with me.

He was bragging that it happened.

I suppose I would too, and that is a disappointing self-revelation that elicits deep sadness in my shallows. Read the book, o ye queer boys over 50 to relive a lovely, dead time when we were few but fabulous; QUILTBAG youth, especially young and pretty ones, definitely think about your history; y'all straight folks, mm, on balance I'd say not unless your Gay BFF approves it for your personal tastes.… (mere)