As a gay man, you commonly come across the idea that the life you lead must be one of endless partying, unremitting casual sex and a fabulousness wrapped in feather boas, soaked in glitter and strung about with rainbow-hued neon.
That’s understandable in one sense since it is the popular image bandied about by everyone from media to gay men themselves, and while it’s accurate to a point, it doesn’t, like any good unquestioned stereotype, fully reflect the truth or actual extent of many peoples’ lives.
For a start, scratch down through the glitz and the glam, and you will often find men dealing, whether they will admit it consciously or not, with a host of self-worth and relational stemming from years of scorn, neglect and bullying by a society and often family and friends who repeatedly invalidate their very sense of self at every turn.
One author who understands this intimately, and write about with beautiful insight and empathy is Luke Rutledge whose book, A Man and His Pride, examines what happens when a gay man’s past, in this case twenty-year-old protagonist, Sean Preston, comes up against his present, resulting in a clash that either requires immediate action or the dubious medication of nightly hook-ups, alcohol and a ruthlessly tenacious commitment to working out.
No prizes for guessing which is the healthier option, but like everyone, gay men often choose the easier option which is to push away, ignore and hope the problem goes away.
‘Haven’t you ever wanted to build a nest? Surround yourself with things you like?’
I decided to ignore him.
‘You know it’s okay to have possessions, right?’ William pressed as we climbed into the ute. ‘ And gosh, I don’t know, become attached to certain things.’
It won’t, of course, and never does, and so when Sean is dumped by his venally superficial boyfriend of three years, a man who is the narcissistic embodiment of the aforementioned gay stereotype, he finds himself unable to healthily to what he mistakenly thought was a nascent happy-ever-after.
His response?
Not one recommended by therapists; rather than taking a good hard look at himself at a time of great emotional stress, Sean does what many of us do and try to “lalalala” the problem from existence.
But just as doing the existential equivalent of putting your fingers in your ears and “lalalala-ing” far louder than the problem screaming in your figurative face didn’t work when we were kids, so it doesn’t work in adulthood, something Sean discovers when all the sex, booze and gum routines in the world don’t heal a soul still broken raw from some terrible moments in his relatively recent past.
He knows his life is in trouble with work in a state of perilous near-collapse thanks to a poor lapse in sexual judgement some two years earlier, his friendship with his female bestie Abby still affected by the fact that he dumped after coming out (or not coming out really) and his life having gone nowhere fast with no friends to cushion the blow but he has no idea how to make it better.
That is until he meets quiet, unassuming nurse William at the nursing home where he visits a lady called Meredith who has dementia and who relationship with her sole visitor isn’t clear to anyone but Sean who won’t talk about how it is he is visiting her.
William, caught in an unhappy relationship that may or may not be over, wants to get out there and live the danceable fun of the stereotype, and Sean is sort of happy to help him – as a man who tries very hard to get attached to no one, the way in which William slowly becomes his best friend is manifestly unwelcome and yet all but necessarily inevitable – but it soon turns out that perhaps William has the secret to healing that Sean has been missing.
What makes A Man and His Pride such a compelling read is how sensitively and thoughtfully it explores how easy it is to get lost in brokenness.
We can know we’re mired in a past that scarred us deeply, and we can see its disruptively, corrosive effect in our present life, but we can utterly powerless to do anything about it.
Rutledge seems to get them that completely, and invests Sean with a likeability born of universally understandable, ailing humanity that means while he is a grade-A a***hole at times, he is always relatable and wonderfully human, a gay man who wants everything that comes from friendship, love and connection but who feels manifestly ill-equipped to make it happen.
And I could see now that it would mean something to some people. Like Ryan and Liam, whose lives would change, at least in their minds. And William would benefit from it one day. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he would eventually walk down the aisle and greet his new husband.
The thought of it made my heart swell.
As a gay man myself who suffered a considerable amount of hellish, soul-sundering bullying growing up which has taken a lifetime of therapy to somewhat ameliorate, the hardcore emotional resonance of A Man and His Pride really strikes deeply.
It is testament to the arrestingly affecting way in which Rutledge writes and for his gift for being brutally honest in the most gently moving of ways that A Man and His Pride makes such a substantial impact so quickly.
You quickly come to understand that while Sean has issues, they are issues that exist for a reason, a combination of self-sabotage and painful moments from his past over which he has no control, and that if they came from somewhere, they might, over time, with the likes of his friendship with William, and a gathering self-awareness of what he might need to do to remake life in a healthier image, go away too.
It’s the getting to that point that makes this novel such a rousingly grounded read.
There is no fairy godmother waving a wand to make it all better, and Sean has to work hard, and often reluctantly, putting in more backward steps that forward ones much of the self-loathing time, his progress playing out against the backdrop of Australia’s 2017 same-sex marriage plebiscite, to get anywhere.
But get somewhere he does in ways that feel real and true; A Man and His Pride, as a result, rich in character, a nuanced but rigorously immersive narrative and dialogue that feels relatably human, is the deeply appealing story of one man’s journey from severely painful inertia to life-healing forward momentum, of realising there is more than one way to be gay and true to yourself, and of the holding fast to the sort of transformative connection we all need and which can, in ways we never see coming or knew we needed, make all the lifechanging difference in the world.