Adam Dunn's Reviews > The Beauty of Men

More than a book about the aftermath of the AIDS crisis this is really a book about aging in a youth obsessed gay culture. I had made the decision to read all of Holleran’s work after reading Dancer from the Dance and Grief, but after reading this book and Nights in Aruba, I am rethinking.
Ultimately concern about growing old, especially to this mid-life crisis level presented in the book, just seems so vain. I’ve heard this story before from others, how they are now invisible when they go into a bar after they reach a certain age. These same people will acknowledge that they treated older men the same way when they were younger but are now painting themselves as the victim when it happens to them, as if a 20 year old was looking to hook up with someone who’s 60 on a Saturday night.
I don’t really understand this and I don’t have much patience for it. When I went out when I was younger I never went for the best looking guy in the place, I went for someone uniquely attractive to me and let my attitude and enthusiasm carry me through. My personality has only gotten better with age, easier to control, so I don’t feel I’ve lost anything.
I found the sections of the book about Becker, Lark’s ideal and one-night fling almost impossible to read, I’m reading them looking through my fingers because I’m cringing so much. Even Lark’s rationale for loving Becker is flawed, as this passage about late-night trysting place the boat ramp reveals:
“But that’s why I love Becker. He doesn’t go to the boat ramp! He went that one night just to see what it was like. And he’s never been back since. He said he liked to talk to people first. He’s the exception to the boat ramp. An escape from the boat ramp.”
So Lark goes to the boat ramp to meet someone who doesn’t go to the boat ramp. Do you know how many gay men do this with the bars to this day? It’s maddening and self-destructive and if you can’t get yourself off this cycle I don’t really have time for sympathy.
The book is well written, as is all of Holleran’s work, and full of great observations:
“The functional disappear at the baths almost immediately: They are having sex. The dysfunctional remain in view, sitting in the TV lounge or on a bench in the locker room, like Lark—a penitent in the street before Santiago de Compostela, asking only the pity of the passerby.”
I just wish the characters were a little more aware of themselves. I did like Eddie, the 70 year-old man who cruises during the day like others play golf, it keeps him busy. He goes home to his dog at night and Lark sees it as terrible, every gay man’s worst nightmare, getting old alone. I see Lark’s life as the nightmare, caught up in the past and unable to live in reality. Give me a dog over this any day.