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All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, D.C. |
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| Author: Craig Seymour Published: 2008-06-17 |
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List price: $23.00 Our price: $15.64 |
Usually ships in 24 hours As of: December 01st, 2008 04:01:22 PM |
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Customer comments on this selection. Can't Put DownCraig Seymour is a wonderful writer. His latest book "All I Could Bare" had the can't-put-down quality of a great novel. I'd read and loved his biography of the late singer Luther Vandross and I was anxiously awaiting the release of his latest book "All I Could Bare". It did not disappoint. It gave me great insight not only into Craig's life as a stripper but also his personal relationship with his boyfriend. It's official. I now have a HUGE crush on Craig Seymour!!! Interesting Slice of LifeThis was fun reading and it was interesting to read about the life of a stripper. One always wonders what kind of person does it. He seems sort of a different type from others who go into it and certainly had different reasons but there was enough explaining of other characters so it covered things pretty well. I'm always curious. I wasn't really aware that bars allowed that kind of thing but now I remember going to one in Houston and I was so embarrassed to touch the guy. I didn't want him to think I was just exploiting his body. It sounds like these kind of places don't exist anymore. Would I ever have the nerve to go to one? I don't think so. What else can I say? Good book. Always interested in knowing the experiences and life of gay people. Craig sounds pretty level headed. Oh yes, but one thing. I don't understand how Seth could have put up with that. It's very close to having an open relationship. So when Craig wanted to experience other men sexually Seth took it so hard and it ruined their relationship. That part was quite different from normal relationships. The Bare FactsBack in the early 1990s, a handsome, young, and affable African American graduate student and teacher found himself nervously attending his first gay strip club to see a live performance by his favorite porn star. Here, customers were allowed to freely fondle the naked dancers. Openly gay but a gay-sex virgin, nervous and slightly apprehensive, Craig Seymour gets his good friend Seth to accompany him. Excitement soon replaces apprehension and Seymour finds himself falling in love with the clubs as well as his good friend Seth, to whom he ultimately surrenders his virginity. They become live-in lovers. But as the strip clubs are becoming an ever growing obsession, our hero is able to appease both his lover and his jones by making strip clubs the topic of his master's thesis, with the cautious approval of his school advisor. Now a club regular, Seymour interviews and gets to know a cast of characters as colorful and crudely affectionate as anything in a Bob Fosse musical. His first interview subject is dancer Jake the Guess Model, a straight `gay-for-pay' former construction worker who tells his customers he is bi `because [they] like to think there's a chance.' And then there is Dave, a customer just out of a twenty-one-year monogamous heterosexual marriage and now having the time of his life hanging at the clubs and fondling beautiful young male dancers dangling their eye-level rock hard jewels for his perusal approval. Dave's favorite dancer is Matt who sports leather chaps publicizing everything usually known as `privates.' Sassy drag queens, dirty old men, sugar daddies, and dis-effected club owners abound throughout this breezy, affectionate tome. Author Seymour also learns of and writes about D.C.'s rich gay history, dating back to the 1800s. Then, knowledge of fifty-year-old poet Walt Whitman's love affair with Irish immigrant Peter Doyle, thirty years his junior, was as casual as the then published stories of sexual liaisons between black and white men in Lafayette Square "under the shadows of the White House." The story of how the gay strip club scene began in the 1960s, where dancers could legally bare all, is beautifully told. The owner of a local bar on O Street, Chesapeake House, offers a pair of sailors $50 each to strip down and dance for his patrons. Soon the club is drawing huge crowds that include the likes of Truman Capote, Tennessee Williams, and Rock Hudson. Other clubs (as well as bath houses) soon open and prosper on O Street, the city's gay red light district. Although Mr. Seymour's depth and fascinating chronicle of how this charmingly tawdry industry evolves is both interesting and informative, it is his personal transition from thesis writer to booty dancer that makes his memoir a thoroughly entertaining read. Likable and self-effacing, the author writes thoughtfully, ironically, and humorously about his second job: "...get on stage, disrobe quickly, try to get a hard-on, and then walk out among the customers, who for a tip--generally a buck--got to stroke, fondle, poke, and prod [your] bod. It was more like sex than dancing, and it had become my job." He also writes with great care and much soul-searching about maintaining his monogamous relationship with Seth while almost every night allowing strangers and regulars to feel him up. Seymour's partner is more trusting than most, and it is admirable that the author repays that trust with honesty and a form of fidelity. However, after six years of being with the only man he's known sexually, the author approaches his partner with a proposition that dooms the romance, if not the friendship. With the cocaine bust of Mayor Marion Barry, a champion of D.C.'s liberal sexual exhibition laws, restrictions are shortly thereafter imposed on the strip clubs. Customers are no longer allowed to fondle dancers, and dancers aren't allowed to fondle themselves. This, of course, cuts into everyone's income, and author Seymour, now single and sparked on by the success of his thesis, embarks upon a career as an entertainment journalist, which eventually takes him to New York. Thanks to his unique literary gift and ability to ask his celebrity interviewee's frank and probing questions, he quickly ascends the ranks. His ability to get such stars as Janet Jackson, Mary J. Blige, and Mariah Carey to open up and discuss such things as masturbation, size-queendom, secret babies, cheating boyfriends, and mental depression are shocking, revealing, and often quite poignant. His discussion with TLC's Lisa Lopez regarding her romance with Tupac, his death, her premonition of her own death, is particularly moving. Craig Seymour's keen observations of human behavior, particular with regards to his celebrity subjects, are empathetic and caring, always intelligent, never fawning. Eventually, Mr. Seymour's busy schedule--writing for The Washington Post, Entertainment Weekly, Vibe, the Buffalo News, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, to name a few--become all-consuming, making it nearly impossible for him to have a personal life. He re-thinks academia, and eventually returns to the University of Maryland to finish his Ph.D. While working as a professor at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, he hears that the old strip clubs on O Street will be torn down. He returns for a bittersweet farewell that brings him full circle. The year is 2006. Craig Seymour's warm, witty, and honestly rendered self-examination of his seemingly unlikely but totally plausible life as grad student turned gay stripper, turned journalist, turned college professor, is quite the odyssey, and quite a lesson for us all. There is so much life out there for all of us to enjoy. This story reminds me of the famous quote from Auntie Mame: "Life's a banquet but most poor sons-of-bitches starve to death!" Author Craig Seymour definitely heard the dinner bell.Looker: A Novel Great bookThis was a very well written and entertaining book. This was the type of book I couldn't put down once I started to read it. I feel that Craig is very brave writing this book seeing he teaches at the college level. I get so tired of people writing stories after they retire and have nothing to lose. It is great to see him write this type of autobiography. I also learned several things I didn't know before so this book was also educational in a way. I never knew about the strip clubs being cracked down on the patrons touching the dancers at the end. I am ashamed to admit this, but I had no idea about Frank Kameny until I read the book and also learned a couple other things about gay history when he mentioned his research. This is a very good book to read and you might even learn a few more things about gay history like I did:) Informative and gossipy, sexy and intellectual all at the same time!I just finished reading "All I Could Bare," and what a great read it was: poignant, smart and informative all at the same time. It's a genuine contribution to cultural studies about the sex industry but also a very moving portrait of what it's like to be in a relationship as a gay man. It' a rich book on so many levels and the run ins with Mariah and Janet don't hurt! You'll love this book. |
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