Openly Straight

I read this one after "Honesty Ben"--not the best sequence. In both of the books I was much impressed with the writing, especially the excellent dialogue and the expression of feelings. (In fact, it closely approached that of my all time favorite, Anthony MacDonald, which is saying a lot.) The "situation" is a bit unusual within this genre, bringing out issues and emotions dealing with "labeling" in general and especially regarding sexuality of course. Yet, at the end of the first book, I felt some disappointment--something didn't seen fulfilled, and that's why I turned to this book detailing the "main players'" prior interactions. It didn't help much. The great writing of dialogue and feelings of love, honesty, faithfulness, etc. were there, and finally I realized that (for me) the missing element--the lack of luster--was indeed the lack of lust. It appears (to me) that the author chooses not to express the lust part of a young loving relationship--I noticed that I had looked in vain for the beauty that this fine author could bring to a, say, four-or-five page situational build up and consummation of erotic love. As it was, it was left as though the guys, perhaps especially Ben, had but little libido-- lacked testosterone perhaps or hadn't gotten past their inhibitions. So for me, a really good read but missing the luster this writer could have given it. Maybe, in it's place, are the good but seemingly "too much" or "out of place" SERMONS (it felt) about labeling, total "honesty," etc. Admitted, of course, is that for M2M stories to be really complete (for me, again) is at least one good/great scene that gets me hard and leaking--that didn't happen.

When I read the synopsis of this I thought "oh this will be good". And yes the story is good and the message the main learns is great. BUT the main character is just awful! He ruins what could be a coming of age story. Without giving spoilers, it's an openly gay teenager who moves across the country to go to a new school to get away from the whole being labeled as the token gay guy. Which I get is totally understandable, our society is all about labeling people. So he goes to another school and doesn't tell anybody he is gay, he even goes to lengths to lie about being gay. Now his family doesn't understand why he is doing this and think it's a bad idea......Which it is. But he keeps playing the whole I want to get away from labels. Which again is all fine and great, BUT HE IS ALL ABOUT LABELING EVERYONE ELSE!!!!!! He first started hanging out with the jocks and talks about how he doesn't really like them and wouldn't be friends with them, but since he is doing his whole "no labels" thing he sticks around them. *face palm*. Like I said this would be a great story but the main character is just so infuriating he makes the story less then enjoyable to read. I was over it after the 2nd chapter but I needed to finish this. There is a second book from another characters view but I don't think I could read it when this one left a bad taste in my mouth.

Books are very much a matter of taste. YA books are a sub-set of that, and I happen to love them, generally.But this was a special book for me, both as a gay man who came out in the 1970s and as the father (with another man) of two teenagers. (Straight ones, just for the record.) Having read Konigsberg's "Out of the Pocket," which I liked a lot (did not love, to be clear), I took his recommendation to look into the next book. Very glad I did.From the very beginning, the book's core premise was destined to make me squirm - Rafe Goldberg, a loved, self-assured, well-adjusted gay seventeen-year-old decides to move away from his bubble of liberalism and go to a New England all-boys prep school so he can shed his label - "the gay boy." He yearns to be "just one of the guys." And he succeeds. He's just butch enough to pass in a setting where no one knows him, without his hippy parents proclaiming gay pride every time he walks into a room. He is thrilled to be "normal."Oh, Lord, was I uncomfortable from the get-go. Because I went to prep school in New England, and I never, ever managed to be "one of the guys." I tried to start over again at my Ivy League college (still in the 1970s) and that failed in the first twenty-four hours. So I hated what Rafe did. I hated what he wanted to do, because he could do it and I couldn't when I was his age.But I trusted the author. I thought I knew where Rafe's journey would take him, and I was almost right. I was right in that I knew that Rafe was a great guy - a good kid - in spite of the dickish thing he was doing. I know that teenagers make poor choices for what seem like good reasons. I know that the boys Rafe interacts with at prep school are archetypes - and, having teenagers, I know that there is a great deal of truth in these archetypes, so yelling "stereotype" is beside the point. All teenagers are trying out roles, trying to see who they want to be; figuring out who they are.Rafe, and Ben and Toby and Albie and Claire Olivia - even the jocks - felt pretty spot-on to me. I've had the dubious pleasure of reliving high school these past four years through my kids(arrgh) and my own memories support Konigsberg's setting pretty closely. Rafe and Ben are the only two characters who get to develop deeply. But the secondary characters are vivid and compelling - and you watch as Rafe labels them - all the while trying to avoid his own label! - and then begins to appreciate them (or not) according to who they really are.And my favorite YA books are the ones in which parents matter. Rafe's parents matter, and are living proof that supportive loving parents are just as annoying as distant disapproving ones. Except that they love you, and that, in the end, is what makes all the difference for Rafe. Rafe makes a journey of self discovery (NOT of self-acceptance). And he takes us with him, in one of the gentlest, most intimate YA books I've ever read.

This reverse-coming out story is about Rafe, who's tired of being The Gay Kid and a champion of his own identity, and so puts himself back in the closet at his new school so as to shed his label and be taken for who he is rather than who he feels he's perceived to be. I wasn't convinced about this premise at first - after all, telling readers of the same age as the lead character that your life will be a lot easier and arguably more fulfilling if your repress and conceal your sexuality is a very dodgy message to be sending out - but the way author Bill Konigsberg invests us in Rafe and his [equally but differently conflicted] love interest Ben goes a long way to make up for it. In any case, the narrative inevitably concedes that Rafe's choice to 'play it straight' is a betrayal of who he is; it's a hard lesson for him to learn, as it has disastrous consequences, and more than just for his relationship with Ben. The characterisation is raw and real enough that by the end of the novel I was writing further chapters in my head, determined to extend the lives of Rafe and Ben and put them on the path to reconciliation the denouement only vaguely hints at as a possibility. Come what may, I look forward to reading the follow-up, which is told from Ben's perspective.On a purely technical note, I was underwhelmed by the conceit of the creative writing assignments written by Rafe employed by Konigsberg, not only as a means of filling in the character's back story but also because it came across as a fairly lame and pointless (self?-)critique on the process and value of writing. It wasn't enough to make me not enjoy the novel as a whole, but it did feel clunky and just a little bit lazy.

I really enjoyed reading this book, mostly because of the positive take on being openly gay. It's fun to read about a teenager with loving and accepting family and friends, instead of the usual "everything is horrible, my parents hate me" stuff.But don't be fooled, this book is not some sugar-coated pile of fluff. There are moments when you'll laugh out loud, facepalm, get water in your eyes, try not to cry, and smile so hard your cheeks hurt. Many meaningful things happen in this book and it's good that they are handled with the "positive openly gay" approach. Even when Rafe is hiding his "gay part" at his new school, things still happen from a different perspective than they would if Rafe was really still "in the closet" or didn't have supportive people in his life. Rafe himself acknowledges that because of the support he knew his parents would give him, he completely skipped the self-examination part most gay people go through before "coming out".There is amazing character development with Rafe, when he starts really thinking about who he is and what he wants from life. He learns a lot about himself and also starts to understand better his parents and other people close to him. Rafe also starts to see how being gay really is for people who don't have supportive parents and friends.There is also some clever reverse-use of the stereotypical things a not-so-supportive parent might say to their gay kid. Rafe's parents are very OK with him being gay, but when he announces that he's taking a brake from being gay, his parents are not okay with that. They call it a phase and question Rafe if he gave any thought about how this new change would affect them. All of a sudden supportive parents are not supportive at all to the idea that their gay son is not gay. It really gives the reader a good glimpse to what Rafe is feeling, when it seems that the only thing his parents care about is him being gay.Including Rafe, the characters are well written, with different personalities and qualities, and it's easy to picture them as real people. I find myself wanting to know more about them, and not just from Rafe's perspective. The relationships (romantic and friendly) are also realistic, and it's enjoyable to read how they develop. I would very much like to read a sequel about Rafe's next year, and see how things go when he's openly gay again.To conclude, the book is not so much about being gay as it it about what it's like being different. Tolerated. Accepted. Not just "one of the guys", but always having some label put on you, that causes a wall between you and the others.I highly recommend this book to all teenagers struggling to find themselves, and not just to people who are gay. I think people older than teenager will also like this, as long as they keep in mind that this is a book about a 17 (ish?) year old young man trying to get to know himself.(also, as a side note: there is underage drinking in this book, on multiple occasions. I myself am not a fan of this, especially when it's so frequent, a bit normalized, and without a "proper" reason. It didn't bother me too much, but I would have liked the book a bit more without it.)

Labels...love 'em or hate 'em?? GAY. STRAIGHT. JOCK. NERD. FAT. THIN. BIGOT. HOMOPHOBE. WIFE. HUSBAND. CHRISTIAN. MUSLIM.... At the end of the day, we're all human, and everyone gets labelled, whether we like it or not; however, why should we be restricted to how other people perceive and label us??Rafe is gay but dislikes the label immensely, he is so, SO tired of people only seeing that part of him. His mother relishes the idea of his 'gayness', she's the PFLAG chairperson in Boulder, Colorado...an ageing hippie who loves her son to bits and both she and her husband are definitely a little OTT, but they can't hide their dismay when Rafe chooses to go to college on the East Coast of the U.S., an all boys college where he will try to blend in and forget that he is gay, or at least not acknowledge it. He wants to be 'normal', try out for the sports teams and have jocks for friends for a change BUT when does denying something which is an inherent part of you and withholding that information from friends become a weapon to break someone's heart??This was a fascinating read, so well written with lots of humour. I felt for Rafe, and got really annoyed with lots of his so-called friends from Natick College, because isn't it amazing how people treat you differently when they discover you're not who they think you are?? Hopefully the sequel will appear later this year. 5 stars from me.

Many first-person novels of coming out are written by supposedly late-teens. But they are often too articulate, too astutely self-analytical, to be quite credible. They try too hard to make the narrator character cute, charming, ultra-savvy. This book is different and will appeal to LGBT people of any age who have to come out time and again and want to be themselves without always having to declare themselves. Rafe, the narrator, is certainly smart, amusing and perceptive. He is also an entirely believable narrator in his own story. As a gay man, I both sympathised with his desire not to be pigeon-holed by his sexuality and rebelled against it, perhaps because that echoes the issues with which Rafe himself wrestles daily. And Rafe is a subtle and credible character and his friendship with Ben, which grows into passion and love, is both credible and moving. Altogether, a beautiful and memorable book.

Rafe has always been defined as being gay. Not in a bad way, but in a way where it's always there, affecting everything he does and everyone he meets. He's always seen as gay, rather than just Rafe.I thought this was a great concept. Too often LGBT stories are focused on bullying and the harsh realities of being gay and, while that can be an accurate reflection, it's nice to see a story that shows yes, actually, some people can come out as gay and have it be no big deal.I thought Rafe was a really interesting character, driven to hide his sexuality not because he's ashamed, but because he's sick of everyone being so supportive of it. It's an interesting look at how different sexualities are still seen as something to be made a fuss of.I think it's a great social commentary in a way and really pokes holes in even the 'accepting' members of society. Why is being gay something that needs to be accepted? Why can't it just be? Why do gay people need to 'come out' and establish their sexual orientation, when straight people don't?This is definitely a novel of self-discovery and Rafe's character growth is fantastic as he discovers who he is, what's important and who he really wants to be. Through writing assignments set by his teacher we get glimpses into his past, including his family's reaction to his sexuality and his friendships back home. It was nice to see snippets of Rafe's old life and gauge the differences in the way he behaved back home, versus how he behaved at his new school.I also found myself falling in love with Rafe and Ben's relationship, because it wasn't based on any labels or any clear ideas of sexuality. Ben isn't necessarily gay, but he doesn't necessarily need to be either. Their relationship was about feeling; a close bond that didn't really need to be categorised either way. AGAPE FOR THE WIN (yeah, you'll get it if you read the book). It's one of my favourite pairings in literature because, really, it was the purest and most well-developed.This is a book that manages to be original, smart, and flat-out fun. It's one of the few novels that have made me smirk, giggle and then burst into laughter. It's rare to find a book that manages to be this intelligent and poignant, but is also filled with wit and a refreshing zeal.