The Culture of Desire: Paradox and Perversity in Gay Lives Today

In a meditative, journalistic odyssey through the gay male subculture, Browning, a former reporter for National Public Radio, probes the roots of gay rage as he joins Queer Nation protest rallies in suburban malls and talks with health-care activist Jim Corti, who makes unauthorized drugs available to people with AIDS. Browning interviews gay men in rural Kentucky, where he grew up, and in Miami's Cuban enclave. He tours the freewheeling, resuscitated gay sexual undergrounds of Los Angeles, New York City and San Francisco. He also visits safer-sex clubs, analyzes homoerotic images in the gay press and samples the ritualized gatherings of gays at Fire Island, N.Y., and at the twice-yearly ``Hollywood Boy Party'' in Palm Springs, Calif. Browning, who is gay himself, maintains that most homosexuals share a core belief: ``Our friends are our family.'' Yet he harbors doubts about whether the lifestyle of urban gays constitutes an actual culture comparable to black, Jewish or Asian-American communities. A sensitive, searching inquiry. (Mar.)