He is nearly as famous for his persona as for the films he's directed. With his pencil-thin mustache and his clean-cut look of suit and skinny tie, like some demented '50s high school guidance counselor, he's appeared frequently on TV talk shows, in movies and as a guest voice on "The Simpsons." But mostly, of course, there are the movies. Waters' place in movie history is such that you only need to hear his name to see the picture reeling in your head. You might imagine bodily fluids (both animal and human), rats, roaches and "actors" with bad skin and missing teeth. You might look back fondly on a 350-pound transvestite sensation named Divine. You might also think of deliciously ludicrous dialogue:

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The death threat isn't that surprising. Cooper is a dangerous writer, both for the pedestrian reader unable to get beyond surface, and for those who like their homosexual literary aesthetics cozily free of anything resembling depth or complexity. Cooper is anything but cozy. Prolific but terse, simultaneously poetic and laconic, he is a profoundly original American visionary, the most important transgressive literary artist since Burroughs. America being America, transgressive literary artists are not a highly appreciated commodity. Not surprisingly, particularly for a writer who has been influenced by European literary traditions, Cooper is more respected in Europe and even the Middle East; his books have been translated into 12 languages, including Hebrew. In England, his books are bestsellers.

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I was a little leery about subjecting myself to the 12-step way. I see many gay men -- having suffered the fallout of obsessive-compulsive behavior and various addictions -- who have turned to 12-step groups like a new drug, and sometimes the effects are as numbing as any pill they could pop in at any club. In an attempt to remove pain completely from their lives, they walk around like Stepford wives with pecs. They don't drink, smoke or do drugs. They smile a lot, and hug one another, like the Teletubbies. They are the new gay fascists -- skeptical of irony, downright hostile to whatever constituted a "bad attitude," yet still looking for the supreme male specimen. (That never changes.) Luckily they're in the minority of gay men.

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And then, my relationship of a dozen years was suddenly over, 12
years apparently being a benchmark figure, the double digits either amazing
or appalling my friends. Those who wanted to be in a relationship were stunned that any two men could be together so long. Those who professed they had no use for long-term commitment waxed condescending about how two men could be together so long. Which is why, when I was finally, irrevocably single, I felt like an unmitigated failure: Why couldn't I make this work? What would people say -- especially my family, whom I had finally convinced that our relationship was as valid as the marriages of all the fucking nieces, nephews and cousins all around us?

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The book is a deft combination of six essays written independently of one another and published over the course of eight years in periodicals ranging from Christopher Street to the Washington Post Book World. Manrique knew Puig and Arenas personally, and he weaves his relationships with them in with the fabric of his own life. The book begins with a jaunty chapter of childhood reminiscence in which the author describes the complexities, both erotic and social, of his origins: He was the illegitimate child of a Colombian aristocrat, who already had a family, and a peasant woman who, after her rich lover deserted her, relied on such varied jobs as running a boardinghouse and turning tricks.

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That was 20-plus years ago. Twenty-plus years ago, I was just hitting puberty, outwardly shining, an altar boy, an honors student.
Inwardly I was burning up from the flames of shame, for it was men I craved. Men and only men. Too stricken to act on it (which seemed an
impossibility, anyway, where I grew up), my sole outlet was the only
full-color magazine to feature fully nude men, short of hardcore gay porn
(and where would I have found that in upstate New York?). Playgirl was "Entertainment For
Women." But for me, and no doubt for an entire nation of miserably closeted small-town gay boys, it was nothing of the kind. It was a lifeline to our sexual existence.

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Having spoiled us with the giddy brilliance of his last novel, "Getting Over Homer," "Let Nothing You Dismay" is a disappointment despite its seemingly foolproof O'Donnellian premise: It's Christmas Eve Eve Eve Eve Eve, or five days before Christmas, and Tad Leary, a 34-year-old newly unemployed and evicted Manhattanite, tries to shake off the gloom of his distinctly unseasonal circumstances by spending one day doing nothing but party-hopping. Tad is O'Donnell's queer Ulysses, attempting to find a purpose to his meandering existence, exemplified by his toil (or lack thereof) over the vaguest of doctoral theses, "Social Hierarchies of Imaginary Places."

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Having attended my first stag party for my partner's brother, I can now
say that I have witnessed the manifestation of sexual tension straight men
possess for each other in all its screwed-up glory, and the danger, dear
reader, was more than a little titillating. It wasn't that I was
particularly looking forward to what I imagined would be the ad-man
equivalent of a frat party, but Phil was family. Duty called.

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Feces and other bodily emissions are a collective metaphor for the sick soul of Scotland, inhabited by the underbelly of the chronically grim working class, who shit out their youth, their dreams and their chances of future fulfillment. "Filth" chronicles the mid-level rise and low-level fall of Bruce Robertson, a detective sergeant in the Edinburgh Police Department, a cop who lives to manipulate and who feasts on a daily diet of violence, betrayal, adultery, racism, sexism, homophobia and autoerotic asphyxiation, with an occasional stint of cross-dressing and bestiality thrown into the mix. To Robertson, the world is made for sell-outs, for those who are smart enough to assess whatever side will be the winner of the moment, and he is determined to prove himself master of this universe. "The same rules apply," he mutters to himself over and over -- his rationalization for attempting to steal whatever opportunity comes by, particularly a coveted promotion to inspector.

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Eventually, active involvement in the parade became active observing, either from the sidelines or up six stories, lounging from a window in someone's comfortable apartment overlooking Fifth Avenue, mimosa and bagel in hand -- and I couldn't imagine not being part of that party.

Now, I'd be happy if they just televised the thing and I could watch it, sitting at home in my underwear. Naturally I'm happy it takes place every year, but I'm finding that, more and more in my creeping decrepitude, I can absent myself and not feel like I'm missing out on something important. It's all for the kids anyway, right? Let them have their day.

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For Pears and certain other moderately talented writers, history provides a sturdy hook to hang a shabby coat upon. It gives a sense of legitimacy -- even intellectual clout -- to writers such as Caleb Carr, whose novels are trotted out with Umberto Eco-ish pretensions. (In Carr's case, it's the jacket designer and the marketers who are the real artists, gulling readers into thinking it must be literature because Theodore Roosevelt figures as a character, there's an Alfred Stieglitz photograph on the cover and it's over 400 pages long.) Pears, as it happens, is no Caleb Carr. He's much more boring than that.

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The "others" got their answer that night. By 52 percent to 48 percent, Maine's voters decided that their gay and lesbian neighbors were less than human. Therefore, from now, they should be left to the unregulated mercies of bigoted employers, mercurial landlords and beady-eyed creditors. No longer do they have the right to work where they want, live where they might or own what they can pay for.

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First published in England last year, "The Farewell Symphony" has already created a major stir. The book provoked a vehement response from Larry Kramer, one of America's most strident gay activists, who was turned off by the book's multiple sex scenes. ("Surely life was more than this, even for -- especially for -- Edmund White," Kramer wrote. "He did not spend 30 years with a nonstop erection and an asshole busier than his toilet.") Reaction to the book in the U.S. has also been mixed. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, James Wolcott called White a "wan exhibitionist ... presenting his posterior to posterity before it sags." Many other reviewers -- and White himself -- defend the book as an honest chronicle of an era.

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But can the San Diego festivities overcome the legacy of the area's most notorious homosexual so soon after his demise? Cunanan was ultimately responsible for his own pathology. He was an |ber-queer, the quintessence of sadism and bad form. But if you magnified him a thousand times you might find him emblematic of any number of witless queers I have known: clinically narcissistic, intent in the pursuit of hedonism, zealous in avoidance of consequences and unfeeling in the extreme.

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