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The Tricky Part: One Boy's Fall From Trespass into Grace
Martin Moran
Beacon Press
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Martin Moran's The Tricky Part: One Boy's Fall From Trespass into Grace (Beacon Press, $23.95, 285 pages) is both seriously unnerving and curiously satisfying. Critics have been quick to call it a memoir about abuse, which is at best a superficial, even wrong-headed reading. At heart, the book centers on a love relationship that was doomed from the start and goes terribly wrong.

Marty Moran is earnest and thoughtful, and attempts to be completely honest. At 12, Moran began having sex with Bob, a thirty-something Vietnam vet and camp counselor. Their relationship lasts, on-and-off, for three years. Bob begins the relationship, and Marty-- who is just discovering erotic desire and his quickly-changing body-- welcomes and enjoys the attention and the sex, even as he experiences confusion with the pleasure. Ultimately he is troubled by the relationship-- to the point of attempting suicide-- but in Moran's compelling writing and narration, the story is so much more than yet another "victim" story about intergenerational sex. Moran's writing-- and I guess this is the "tricky part"-- fleshes out so commandingly, and beautifully, what his relationship with Bob actually is, that as we read the memoir we are engaged with a panoply of emotional responses that are as "tricky" as Moran's writing.

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At its best, Moran's writing is specific and detailed about his feelings. There are no overarching theories or conjectures here-- it is very much, "this is what happened, this is how I felt, this is what was good, this is what was bad, this is what was confusing." And, as with any relationship, Moran's interactions with Bob could get deeply confusing. Not only was there an age and experience difference, but Bob is a troubled man-- unable to be emotionally honest with people (including Marty) and deeply ambivalent about his own sexuality. Much of Marty's stress from the relationship is generated from fear he is gay because of it-- a problem not helped by Bob's insistence that "homosexuals are people without love" who will never be happy. It doesn't help showing Marty that he isn't gay by urging him to have sex with Karen-- Bob's lover and then-wife. Indeed, much of Marty's problems stem from the fact that he is not able to come to grips with his homosexuality-- obviously not just because of Bob, but his deeply Catholic background and societal pressure as well. For Marty, eventual acceptance of his sexual desires, in all their complexity, comes later in life. Hence the book.

Many of the blurbs on the dust-jacket of The Tricky Part (echoed in the reviews, as well) go out of their way to say that the book is not about blame, but about forgiveness. True enough. And at the end, Marty does have a final meeting with Bob (now much older and ill) that rewards the younger man with some emotional benefits. But The Tricky Part is about so much more than that. It is about the wonderfulness and horribleness of sex and how confusing it can be for everyone involved. There will be readers who will read the memoir just as a story of abuse, and readers who will-- perceptively-- find much more in it.

Author Profile:  Michael Bronski
	Michael Bronski is the author of Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility and The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom. He writes frequently on sex, books, movies, and culture, and lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
	Email:	mabronski@aol.com