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How's Your Romance: Concluding the "Buddies"
By Ethan Mordden
St. Martins Press
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Ethan Mordden published the I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore-- the first in his "Buddies" cycle-- in 1985. All of the stories in the anthology had appeared in previous issues of Christopher Street and won a strong following. And why not? Mordden's chatty, epigrammatic prose epitomized a certain "queen style"-- not "high queen" or "piss-elegant queen" or "literary queen," but always accessible, street-smart, funny, warm, and witty-- perfect for conveying the endless minutia of Manhattan gay life. These stories struck home in a way that was hard to shake off. They were literary-- a cross between E.F. Benson's "Lucia" novels, an Oscar Wilde fairy-tale, and a gossip column in "W," and with the anthropological directness of Margaret Mead. And they avoided the pitfalls of pretension, silliness, or cruelty. Indeed, their most striking quality was their deep commitment-- beneath the party-chatter and sex jokes-- to the humanity of their characters; Mordden loved them and so did his readers.

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Since that first volume, Mordden wrote another "Buddies" in 1986, Everybody Loves You in 1988, and Some Men are Lookers in 1997. Now, How's Your Romance?-- the last book in the quintet-- is here and it's both fine in its own right and the perfect culmination of the series. Five books in 20 years is a good record for anyone-- Mordden has also published three other novels, 11 books on opera and theater, and two on film during this period-- but five great books is a literary jackpot.

How's Your Romance?-- like the volumes proceeding it-- revolves around the lives and adventures of a group of gay friends in Manhattan: Carlo, Dennis Savage, J (who was known as Little Kiwi for the first three books), Cosgrove, and Bud, the stories' narrator and the stand-in for, one presumes, Mordden himself. To say that nothing much happens in these stories is like saying that nothing much happens in a Jane Austin novel. Sure, there are some family fights, someone gets married, someone gets jilted; occasionally minor royalty appear and help or cause problems. But unlike War and Peace (in which a great amount of history occurs) nothing happens in an Austin novel, except the intricate, fabulous, and fascinating weave-'n'-warp of social existence. In this case, it's gay existence in Manhattan. While Mordden's story collections are popular, they've never been given their literary due. Beneath the glib, sometimes extraneous exterior of all these tales is not just a extraordinarily skilled storyteller-- an O Henry or, at his best, a Chekhov-- but also a skilled anthropologist. The "Buddies" cycle tells us more about gay life in Manhattan over the past two decades than any nonfiction study.

Mordden has a sublime talent for capturing and replicating the vocal inflections and nuances of a certain slice of Manhattan gay life. He understands perfectly-- as did Jane Austin-- that the world he's describing is both particular and small, but he manages to extrapolate from that locality a world-view that resonates far beyond. Mordden's subject here is family-- specifically the gay family of friends, lovers, and ex-tricks who form deep, lasting bonds. Mordden's stories impel readers to think about what it means, not simply to be "gay" (whatever that means to the individual) but to be human: to have feelings, desires, longings, fears, loves, and anxieties-- but most importantly what it means to be a community, a family. In some perverse sense, the "Buddies"­for all of their sexual activity, promiscuity, unorthodox couplings, and emphasis on male sexual organ(s)-- are really quite conservative in their insistence on how important is fidelity in bonds of friendship and kinship. In Mordden's world-- and in much of gay life-- these are the "family values" that inform and illuminate men's lives.

If I seem to be harping on Jane Austin here-- and who better, really?-- it's because Mordden invites it. Take the opening sentence of "The Rock People": "It is a statement beyond contention that a young gay guy with Looks Control will be in possession of an etiquette, a lingo, and a major haircut: this is called a subculture." This is a paraphrase of Austin's famous opening of Pride and Prejudice. And like Jane Austin, Mordden is a traditional moralist-- not concerned, of course, with petty, stupid judgments about sexual activity-- but with how we treat our friends and ourselves. That-- as well as the fact that these are great stories that make us laugh, cry, and think-- is why How's Your Romance? and the entire "Buddies" series are great reads and fine literature.

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