Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong

by John Preston

Frankly gay in its identity but universal in its themes of belonging, alienation, and community, Hometowns is a powerfully emotional, heartwarming exploration of how gay men fit into our society in every culture and every part of the country. A Lambda Award nominee.

Genres: Gay, Nonfiction, LGBT, Essays, History

366 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1991

About the author

John Preston wrote and edited gay erotica, fiction, and nonfiction.
He grew up in Medfield, Massachusetts, later living in a number of major American cities before settling in Portland, Maine in 1979. A writer of fiction and nonfiction, dealing mostly with issues in gay life, he was a pioneer in the early gay rights movement in Minneapolis. He helped found one of the earliest gay community centers in the United States, edited two newsletters devoted to sexual health, and served as editor of The Advocate in 1975.

He was the author or editor of nearly fifty books, including such erotic landmarks as Mr. Benson and I Once Had a Master and Other Tales of Erotic Love. Other works include Franny, the Queen of Provincetown (first a novel, then adapted for stage), The Big Gay Book: A Man's Survival Guide for the Nineties, Personal Dispatches: Writers Confront AIDS, and Hometowns: Gay Men Write About Where They Belong.

Preston's writing (which he described as pornography) was part of a movement in the 1970s and 1980s toward higher literary quality in gay erotic fiction. Preston was an outspoken advocate of the artistic and social worth of erotic writings, delivering a lecture at Harvard University entitled My Life as a Pornographer. The lecture was later published in an essay collection with the same name. The collection includes Preston's thoughts about the gay leather community, to which he belonged. His writings caused controversy when he was one of several gay and lesbian authors to have their books confiscated at the border by Canada Customs. Testimony regarding the literary merit of his novel I Once Had a Master helped a Vancouver LGBT bookstore, Little Sister's Book and Art Emporium, to partially win a case against Canada Customs in the Canadian Supreme Court in 2000. Preston also brought gay erotic fiction to mainstream readers by editing the Flesh and the Word anthologies for a major press.

Preston served as a journalist and essayist throughout his life. He wrote news articles for Drummer and other gay magazines, produced a syndicated column on gay life in Maine, and penned a column for Lambda Book Report called "Preston on Publishing." His nonfiction anthologies, which collected essays by himself and others on everyday aspects of gay and lesbian life, won him the Lambda Literary Award and the American Library Association's Stonewall Book Award. He was especially noted for his writings on New England.

Although primarily known as a gay fiction writer, Preston was also hired by a local newspaper, The Portland Chronicle, to write news articles and features about his adopted hometown of Portland. He wrote a long feature about the local monopoly newspaper, the Portland Press Herald, as well as many food articles movie reviews and other writing.

In addition, Preston wrote men's adventure novels under the pseudonyms of Mike McCray, Preston MacAdam, and Jack Hilt (pen names that he shared with other authors). Taking what he had learned from authoring those books, he wrote the "Alex Kane" adventure novels about gay characters. These books, which included "Sweet Dreams," "Golden Years," and "Deadly Lies," combined action-story plots with an exploration of issues such as the problems facing gay youth.

Preston was among the first writers to popularize the genre of safe sex stories, editing a safe sex anthology entitled Hot Living in 1985. He helped to found the AIDS Project of Southern Maine. In the late 1980s, he discovered that he himself was HIV positive.

Some of his last essays, found in his nonfiction anthologies and in his posthumous collection Winter's Light, describe his struggle to come emotionally to terms with a disease that had already killed many of his friends and fellow writers.

He died of AIDS complications on April 28, 1994, aged 48, at his home in Portland. His papers are held in the Preston Archive at Brown University.

Librarian Note: There is more th

Reviews

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a pleasure revisiting “Hometowns” 29 years after its publication. John Preston selected a diverse assortment of outstanding gay male writers to write about their hometowns; many also contributed to a similar collection of essays in Preston’s “A Member of the Family.” Just as that book explored how toxic family relationships can lead gay people to create their own families, “Hometowns” explores how many gay men leave the hometown they grew up in to find love and security in often larger towns and cities. Though I did not notice it on my first reading, many of these authors shared a similar journey. Leaving small towns where they were lonely outcasts, they came out at universities in large cities, went on to grad school, then settled in gay friendly college towns with careers as English professors. There are some exceptions, of course, and at least one author (Les Wright) found his new hometown college unwelcoming to gay faculty and their partners. While a few authors settled in the gay Meccas of San Francisco, L.A., Boston and New York, others were happy living “gay adjacent” to cities with big gay populations. Among many fine essays the most poignant is by editor Preston about his new hometown of Portland, Maine and how straight friends accepted and supported him when they found out about his HIV status.
Though Preston is no longer living, most of these writers in “Hometowns” are. It would be interesting to follow up and find out if they still identify with the hometown they selected for their essays, or did they move on? Only one author, Scott Tucker, a construction laborer in Key West, mentions the cost of living as a barrier to setting in his town, but that factor has surely made some of these writers rethink living and retiring in expensive cities like San Francisco. And what of gay men who never left their initial hometowns? Some gay men find themselves stuck in a small hometown where they never leave due to family, jobs, or fear; the voices of these men are not heard in the mostly upbeat progressive stories in “Hometowns.” Still, this book remains an admirable effort that holds up well on rereading. Recommended.

[Alana Cash · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am neither male nor gay and I found this book very readable and interesting. I didn't read it to "get" the gay experience, but to understand how people felt about their hometowns. Some of the hometowns were where they grew up - not all experiences were tragic or alienated - and some of the hometowns were where these men settled. Stories were sentimental, lonely, angry, poetic, and journalistic. All of them well-written, because these men are professional writers.

I'm going to say it - the story that I enjoyed the most was the one written by John Preston, the editor. I wasn't aware that it was his story until I closed the book and saw his name on the cover and had that "aha" moment. That isn't to say that any of the other stories are "less" somehow. New York, Alaska, Deming, New Mexico (that I visited last year), all the places were painted well.

I think there might have been too many stories - hard to give each one enough mental space. That's why I gave it four stars.

[Owen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm loving this book. A new friend swiped it from a gay bar library because they know my intense relationship with my hometown. I'm only ten essays in, but I want to recommend it. It is actually rare that a book about and by gay men, particularly about the gay male experience, would be compelling to me. I rarely find significant common ground with gay men, whether that's because of some internalized homophobia, or more likely because my community and therefore my queer experience consists more of dykes and transpeople, than gay men. But this book really speaks to me.

I just spent 8 months living (and farming) in my hometown, for the first time in over ten years (since high school) and totally fell in love with it. Being surrounded by people who never left, and the richness of a small town where I am not a visitor, not from elsewhere, where I 'belong'. But then grappling with the idea of 'belonging' because, while it is a very progressive New England town, as a gay kid, I didn't feel I could be myself there, and since I've left, I've become someone new, and fallen in love with a global urban queer community, which only slightly shows its face in my hometown occasionally.

So anyways, this book is great so far. Because it speaks to this relationship of a gay to a hometown. And while it is over 20 years old now, and the childhoods described are more of my parents generation or older, it makes me want to write my own story. And that is a good sign in a book. It is an inspiration. And I love being inspired by my gay elders. So thanks go out to the writers in this book.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

29 is a lot. all very poignant beautiful etc but as preston himself says they become a bit formulaic

[Brianna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I could definitely identify with the sense of having to leave your hometown to find yourself. Some of the essayists grew up in small narrowminded towns; some of them grew up in ethnic divided communities of larger cities. Sometimes it was a little hard to follow the 'modern' parts of the story, which tended to focus on the '80s AIDS awareness and fright, but just referred to those things in passing, almost assuming everyone reading had lived through it and a n explanation would be redundant.

[George Snyder · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm in it.