stanleybennettclay

READY TO MALE A Collection of Letters by Lamar Ariel(AuthorHouse ISBN 9781438903897) Reviewed by Stanley Bennett Clay:  “I recently met this boy who has officially made me forget that I am bitter, sarcastic, judgmental, and eccentric as hell,” the author accurately self-observes near the end of this funny, poignant, articulate, witty and brutally honest collection of 27 letters based on incidences in his perfectly normal dizzying black gay life, but exaggerated and fictionalized for maximum entertainment value. Both of Mr. Ariel’s barrels are fully loaded with Addison DeWittisms lethal as paper cuts or an arsenal of Dorothy Parker slams, often at his own expense, resulting in a delightfully caustic read; hysterical and humanized by self-deprecation and keen observations of not only the world around him but his deepest thoughts and the bright and dark sides of his heart and soul. He opens his slight but potent collection (113 pages) with a letter to his best friend revealing deftly the all-too-familiar nuances of such an alliance, especially in the black gay world. A lovely letter of gratitude and love to his mother follows, filled with sentiments all mother-loved sons have felt but have rarely been able to articulate on paper as well as this writer does. It is sheer poetry, as poetic as the letter to his father, divorced from his wife, but clearly not divorced from his son.  I laughed out loud at Ariel’s poison-pen-damn-you-to-hell-and yo-mamma-for-birthing-you-too tirade when he saw his ex with another man (come on, we’ve all written one, if only in our minds) and the about-face apology missive that follows (been there, done that). Among the many delectable morsels served up by our middle class, well-educated, proudly gay, New York loving-hating narrator is a surreal close-encounter with a fake Prada-wearing she-devil on the crowded A train in the bowels of the city on a hot day when he ain’t feelin’ it and ends up explaining to the men in blue why he went off and got physical with Shaniqua.  One of the most touching letters is another A train observation; a homeless black man, invisible to most, becomes fully present when a young white ‘prippie’ engages him in a discussion of James Baldwin’s “Another Country.” And while Ariel’s letter to New York City, a funny-bitter thanks-for-the-memories-but-me-and-my-man-are-about-to-do-the-white-picket-fence-thing-in-North-Carolina, is a bridge-burning denunciation of urban squalor, excess, and stress, and homage to the joys of country living, his letter to Mr. Funeral Director is a piss-elegant drag queen’s list of every filigree indulgence to be served up in honor of his demise. Oh yes, our narrator is one bourgie, label-loving, class-conscious, color-struck bro, but that’s half the fun. There is much to be admired about this author who is willing to let his mind dance so nakedly on the stage of life. The thoughts he has committed to paper (in prose beautifully and artfully composed) feel authentic, paining us with truth at times, causing us to laugh with recognition quite often, and showing us a way to examine what’s really on our minds, as scary as that sometimes might be.  And although Mr. Ariel’s non-linear approach renders the ending a bit anti-climatic, even somewhat arbitrary, his collection of autobiographical fiction is as winning and as neat as a very dry martini!  A penny for his thoughts? Hardly. Mr. Ariel’s thoughts are worth their weight in gold.

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