Journal of a Working Boy

"Miami Township..." Benoit Denizet-Lewis said, and before he could finish the sentence with "Ohio," I was already shaking my head. Lewis was introducing a story he wrote titled "A Road Sign By Any Other Name..." in which he travels to the small Ohio town to visit residents of Gay Street. Growing up in Cincinnati, I used to go to the batting cages in Miami Township, which is located about twenty miles north of Cincinnati, near the Indiana border. I knew that something unsettling was about to be revealed.

Apparently the residents of Gay Street had petitioned to have the street name changed to "Green Apple Road," due to the "unpleasant repercussions" of the name Gay Street. Lewis read the story as it appeared in Out Magazine, much to the amusement of the audience, at the University of Oregon's Gerlinger Hall, which had gathered to hear Lewis' speech, "Hot Type: Writing about Sex and Sexuality in America."

Lewis was respectful of the Gay Street residents, many of whom were skittish when disussing the potential for living among homosexuals. Because Lewis didn't fit the part of the stereotypical gay man, the residents spoke frankly to Lewis about how unfriendly the neighborhood actually is to homosexuals. What struck me was that Lewis' writing never showed judgments of the people. He sometimes poked fun at the childishnes of worrying about gay jokes, but he generally portrayed the characters as small-town inhabitants with good intentions. I thought that Lewis showed a lot of class in overlooking their ignorance and telling an acurate story rather than an all-out mockery, which the situation might also have deserved.

Lewis' characters shared common perceptions of the world with many greater Cincinnati area residents. When I wrote for the Unversity of Cincinnati's student newspaper, I reviewed a book called "487 Indisputable Truths... for people who are not un-American weasels, hypersensitive PC types, or humorless bores," by Jack Klinger, a suburban Cincinnati man whose sexist, racist and homophobic judgments pervaded this disastrous work of literature. In my story (which you can read here), I ripped the book and the hypocrisy behind many of his statements. I felt emotionally involved in the story because I was so offended at the book's content. Having listened to Lewis read his own story, which dealt with issues sensitive to the reporter, I have learned a valuable lesson about reporting: It is not necessarily my job to attack the dominant culture's biases. It is my job to tell the stories that will allow readers to make that decision on their own.

Lewis was tactful and creative, drawing comparisons of the residents' "unpleasant repurcussions" of living on Gay Street to the repercussions of actually being gay. I'll definitely consider this lesson when I'm supposed to be reporting impartially. But as far as the book review goes, I think that, as a reviewer, I was justified in taking the liberty of editorializing. The worst stuff came out of his own mouth anyway.

Check out Lewis' work by clicking on these words.

Here's Klinger's website if you're interested.