Man Alive

Michael Wynne

In its unusual intelligence and heartfelt urgency this selection of the Bootboy column, which Hot Press magazine has served us since the early ’90s, comes as a liberating counter-balance to the trite wholesome silliness in which queer culture is notoriously – albeit mostly harmlessly – steeped. The words “searingly honest” have been used to describe this book and, in this context, that is no lazy journalistic piece of glibness, for it actually articulates something of the painfully and passionately challenging conscientiousness with which Moore examines, on several levels, the sheer disposableness and the blithely savage lack of communal caring inherent on the gay scene, specifically in London where the column is written, but really of course in every Western city.

Moore is driven by an admirable yen for an elemental understanding of himself and those that make up, as it were, the larger collective, a yen that fulfils itself simply by stating the brutal, undiluted truth in terms marked by a brave, naked tenderness. In the main, these ‘entries’ are born of the agony that comes from real, deep-probing, irresistible questioning of, and efforts to comprehend, how we allow – and cannot help allowing – our sexualities to dictate our fates and our natures.

Whether his subject be late-night al fresco cruising, or child pornography, or the wantonly dehumanising aspects of the gay club scene, Moore’s primary concern is always the recognition and validation of the emotional response implicated, or suppressed. It is this – along with the ease of maturity and experience, and the intensity of yearning compassion – that makes his column so appealing and so universal. His empathic earnestness, especially regarding the never fashionable area of ethics, has been deemed humourless by some; but, on the contrary, these pieces abound in humour that is at all times sober, considered, loving and never in the least trivial, or trivialising.

Diary of a Man is well-named. The upholding throughout of the vital importance of personal morals and the power of individual feelings distinguishes this book as a remarkable chronicle of the inner life of an emotionally responsible and fearlessly emotional – and thus truly manly – contemporary queer commentator.

This is in the print version of Gay Community News, November 2005