I'm gonna work my way through Augusten autobiography books, but I'm reading them in reverse order. Oooookay then.
Lust and Wonder is my favorite gay romance of all time (and a top romance in general), even better because it's nonfictional. It covers three relationships in the author's life, two of which are clearly....settling. Because Augusten has decided to settle down and have a nice normal relationship like a nice normal person, which he definitely is not. I can understand his desire to do that with guys he likes, even if he doesn't actually want to have sex with them and is in denial about that. His first relationship is with a guy named Mitch, who he likes as a writer, but doesn't actually want to bone like, at all really. Augusten goes to therapy, Mitch eventually cheats on him with someone who actually wants to bone and Augusten figures it out, blah de blah. But why is Augusten really with Mitch when he's secretly in love/denial with a guy named George who's dying of AIDS? Well...the AIDS thing. Augusten adores George but freaks out and can't deal with the AIDS thing or being with him while he still can.
Then Augusten writes a book and finds an agent, Christopher, and falls madly in love with him at first sight. Hell, I've got a crush on Christopher after reading this book and this (Medium link), he sounds utterly delightful. He's an Ohio boy that comes off like a cheerful California surfer (he says "totally" a lot) and laughs a lot and is adorable. But after finding out that Christopher has HIV, Augusten makes himself a list of Why This Guy Isn't For Me and reminds himself of that a lot, even as he literally contacts the guy daily trying to make him laugh. Augusten also settles down with another guy named Dennis, who he claims to love, and they're together for ten damn years even though they don't seem to like each other much. Hell, Augusten can't even take Dennis's so called friends, who are basically bumps on a log. They don't have sex either. Ten years of this does tend to drag on, even in a book that's summarizing, and after awhile I was all "oh my god, just break up already, y'all don't even like each other really."
Meanwhile, Augusten adores Christopher, but is in denial until he can no longer be in denial any more. He has psychic dreams about Christopher ("Jeep Guy," and I'm so jealous that he actually does this), even. After ten years, he finally confesses his feelings in an email, which amused me, but Christopher's response cracked me up so hard that I ran around reading it to everyone I could force to listen to me. (See Quote Corner.) But within a page, Christopher starts seeing Augusten in a new light, they get together, Augusten finally ends it with Dennis, and all is happiness and joy and adorableness that made me very happy.
Morals of the story:
(a) Settling doesn't work. I've never been able to stomach settling myself (otherwise I would have forever ago), but this is an excellent example of Why It Doesn't Work. Nor does choosing someone for being "stable."
(b) I dunno on the karmic aspects of things, but trying to avoid a situation seems to have only brought it back on Augusten. He doesn't commit to being with the guy he loves because the guy is dying (the scene where he describes their last sex while George is dying is touching/heartbreaking/oh dear god all at once) and then misses out, and then spends ten years avoiding being with another guy he loves in fears of going through the same thing again, which he still went through with George on some level anyway.
(c) You're going to have to fucking deal with it. You want to avoid dating someone because of their height, age difference, illness, whatever the hell it is on your list of Reasons Not To Date Him (which seems like the anti-version of the soulmate list, doesn't it?), and you may even have some damn good reasons. But in the end, you're gonna have to deal with it because you want to be with them, regardless of whatever the issue(s) are that give you reservations/pause/what have you.
(d) Augusten and Christopher are so MFEO it is adorable. I love how meant to be it seems and how it is a precursor (I say this now that there's another book in the autobiography series) regarding Augusten's magical abilities. I read Toil and Trouble first and wanted to know if it felt magical for Augusten getting together with his agent after knowing him for ten years and by god, it was!
Quote Corner;
- (On starting to date Mitch) "I understood that I was clearly insane. But he apparently hadn't picked up on how many times in one short letter I asserted that I was not. This acceptance of my questionable mental health made me feel confident that we would be compatible, possibly for life."
- "I had long ago learned not to unload all of my sordid past on somebody during the first date. I had done this very thing in the past, and it hadn't worked out well. When people find out your mother was mentally ill, your father was a chronic alcoholic, and you spent most of your childhood being raised by your parents' eccentric and possibly insane psychiatrist in his run down mental hospital of a house, they tend to back away. In order to make them lean in and want more, I had to polish certain elements from my life, while omitting others entirely."
- "I've spent the last two years trying not to love somebody who's dying, but it didn't work. I just didn't know that until..until I did know. And now I can't not know it."
- "Everything is George. He's everything. He's the only thing. He's always been the only thing. I've tried to make him smaller, but it didn't work."
- "In my mind, I chanted, "You will either be my agent or my boyfriend. You will either be my agent or my boyfriend."
- "I'd become addicted to his laughter.... nothing else in the world mattered except making him laugh."
- "From this moment forward, I would take a careful inventory of all of Christopher's flaws, shortcomings, and abnormalities and create my own virtual catalog of deal breakers."
- "He had become, by far, my favorite person in the world."
- (On being with Dennis) "I'd been sober for three years, yet I was still waking up and thinking exactly the same thing: What's the first thing I need to apologize for today?" JESUS WHAT A BAD SIGN.
- "I felt ownership, primal, just a mouth going, "Mine, mine, mine." And there at last it was: absolute recognition. And: Are you fucking kidding me? Not again. This. Is. Not. Possible."
- "I'd spent so much time dissecting his flaws, a process that always made him laugh. I despised whoever took that photograph, but I could not look away."
- "Then another voice, also inside my own head, spoke up: "It never went away, did it?"
- "I had stuffed him and my feelings for him as far down as I could, and for a few years there, I even convinced myself that it worked."
- (On Dennis) "I decided to fall in love. God sees that remark, and he circles it with his big red felt pen, chuckling."
- (After Christopher comes down with a brief case of cancer, lost his hair and got fat during chemo) "He physically revolted me, and I realized, I love him so permanently."
- "I was presented with a gift. It arrived in the form of certainty. Certain things, true things, facts that are made of foot thick steel and anchored miles deep into the earth, are comforting because they provide a fulcrum around which you work or plan or live or figure things out. This is what I knew, my certainty: the thing I felt for the man who was my agent had established roots. It existed; it would continue to exist. It had been there when I first met him, and instead of evaporating, it had penetrated."
- "I believed I could find "somebody like Christopher," but that was ridiculous. I didn't want somebody like Christopher. He was the only one like him. That's the one I wanted."
From Augusten's confession email to Christopher:
"Two things. First, did you ever hear back from the sub-rights agent about a sale for India?
The other thing is slightly out of the blue. I love you, is the thing.
"I want us to be together, permanently. I also need to know certain things about you. For example, I can't even remember your birthday....I want to know everything. Shoe size, dental history, allergies, favorite colors, special abilities or skills, gluten tolerance level. I require complete knowledge and 100 percent access to all of you.
You should know, I tried for many years not to be in love with you, but I failed. And I really did try very hard. But it was not possible, and it never has been, because I have actually loved you from very early in our relationship. Possibly as early as our first meeting.
I also know it's gross for the famous author to fall in love with his literary agent, but on the flip side? At least we're not twenty four.
And no, I'm not drunk."
Christopher's response, in its entirety:
"Well, that certainly qualifies as your most shocking piece of writing in my learned opinion. But as fascinating and flattering and strangely hallucinatory as I found it, it can't possibly be true. I am a crusty old sack of disease with holes blown through it, like a horror movie character that can't be killed. Which makes you, sir, crazy. So snap out if it. This is just a phase."
There is a New York Times article that follows up on this bit:
"When you tell a guy you are in love with him and he quotes “Moonstruck,” except he’s not quoting it, but actually saying it fresh, that’s the right guy.
“It’s a crush,” he told me. “It will pass.”
To which I replied, “After 10 years, I don’t think it’s a crush.”
After Augusten tries to talk him into it a bit more:
"I have AIDS and cancer, and you're a Purell addict."
Augusten continues:
"I'd already lost one boyfriend to AIDS when I was in my twenties, and I decided never again. So when I met you, you were off limits. I decided I couldn't love you. The problem was, I did. And ten years later, here we are. All those reasons I had for it being impossible between us, they're nothing."
Be reassured that they are getting together on the very next page.
"This is crazy."
"You know what else it is? It's happening."
"Yet, there over burgers, there was a transformation."
"We were way too old and worn out for this shit, but there it was, right in front of us."
"I had to find somebody who was immune to me in order to have a great relationship."
"You are my disease pinata, my Death Star, my everything."
And you, are my catastrophist."
4.5 stars. Near epic love. I'm so jealous. They're adorable and I'm so happy for them.
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