There are wince-worthy moments that allow empathy here, and experiences that are unique but oddly ubiquitous, which leaves space for a sense of sympatico.

Yeah, this memoir is good: author Edgar Gomez's literary wandering makes it feel much like an honest conversation with readers. And you won't care about any of this, because you'll be enjoying every bit of it. It has its high peaks, but also low valleys. It's really quite random and told (mostly) linearly, but not quite. In a way, you could say that 'High-Risk Homosexual' is a book in search of a point. If he never considered what he didn't have, he says, 'I wouldn't miss it.' That hurt, both physically and emotionally but like so many things at so many times, Gomez tried not to think about it.

His virginity, but that wouldn't happen until later, during a painful one-afternoon-stand with a hot man who said he Things he wanted to lose, while in college: his room at his mother's house. Things he still had, while in college: his mother and older brother. A ban on the stereotype of a macho Latinx man. He befriended a drag queen, but 'Princess' used him. He came out to his mother, who freaked out about it. Instead, after his brother left for college, Gomez got his first boyfriend, a boy he came out to but who couldn't come out to himself. He wanted his brother to acknowledge that Gomez was gay, and to tell him that he loved him. He wanted his mother to see his love of pretty things and say that it was okay. He wanted to be liked by other kids and so he told lies in school to make himself stand out. In retrospect, he says, nobody wanted him to be a man more than he did. He wasn't there without her for long, but it took years for him to understand that his time with his uncles was meant to make him more masculine.

He was 13 when he figured out that he was a problem to be solved.Įdgar Gomez's mother had left him in her native Nicaragua with his tíos, just for a while because she had to return to Florida to work. As in the new book 'High-Risk Homosexual' by Edgar Gomez, when something's right, it's right. That's not your style, so try something else until you find the thing that looks like you. It's too long, too short, too tight, too loose. It fits you, but the color isn't flattering.

High risk homosexual