Armistead Maupin, Michael Tolliver Lives

Back when I was coming out in the early 90’s, I found community online through IRC (internet relay chat for you youngins who aren’t familiar with the precursor of IM). Of course, like many other budding young queers who felt isolated and alone, I found solace in reading books about others like me, and devoured them as fast as I could.

One of the things my IRC community supplied me with were titles of must-read books for queers. I still own every single one of those books today, and look forward to the day when I’ll have a library of my own with all my books (and I do mean ALL of them) out on display in bookcases, instead of safely tucked away in carefully inventoried banker’s boxes as they are now.

Among the authors/books initially recommended to me were Rita Mae Brown (Six of One), Jeanette Winterson (Sexing the Cherry, Oranges are not the Only Fruit), Patricia Nell Warren (The Front Runner), Radclyffe Hall (The Well of Loneliness), and Armistead Maupin (Tales of the City).

When I saw Maupin’s recent publication, Michael Tolliver Lives, I was transported to those early college days in California—riding my bike from my dorm in Irvine to Laguna Beach, where I would pick up a new book at Different Drummer (the then lesbian-owned, independent bookstore) and then spend the rest of the day reading on the beach. I couldn’t think of a better way to spend a weekend day (and still today, that sounds pretty damn good!).

Online reviews on Amazon were more mixed than I expected, and almost deterred me from purchasing it sight-unseen. But, since I was shopping with “free” money in the form of a gift certificate my boss gave me, I decided to take the chance.

I can’t say how glad I am I did.

Despite some reviewers’ unwillingness to accept Michael Tolliver Lives as a stand-alone novel as opposed to a continuation of Maupin’s Tales of the City, and their disappointment with it in that context, I found it to be a very satisfying read and am proud to have it as an addition to my collection.

At the same time that it was a comforting familiarity to read about Michael Tolliver, it was also interesting to see him in different contexts than 28 Barbary Lane. I appreciated that Maupin took us on a journey into his life decades later to contemporary day, complete with acknowledgements of how things have changed (or not changed) with time.

I especially appreciated Maupin’s addressing the issue of FTM gay male sex and sexuality. While no one fictional character (or even real-life individual) could ever represent the wide diversity of men who were assigned female at birth, it was nice to see the issue raised, not only in Maupin’s character of Jake, but also in including a reference to real-life FTM porn star Buck Angel.

As he acknowledges in his video, “Hey, Buck #1” he certainly isn’t heralded as a role model by transmen everywhere, but I’m sure that he certainly is by some.

(Transmasculine sexuality is something I’d definitely love to discuss more, maybe more posts on this later.)

Another element about Michael Tolliver Lives that I really liked was the different ways in which “family” was played out.

And, of course, I’m a sucker for the sappy romantic moments of the book, showing love in a variety of ways.

As usual, my favorite passages:

Maupin, Armistead. Michael Tolliver Lives. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2007.

(201) This was all I needed for my heart to swell: a plan for the future, the promise of new memories, one more shot at the pipe dream of forever.

(206) “It’s good to be a tourist,” Anna said at last. “We joke about them, but it’s quite a worthwhile thing. To…appreciate…deliberately.”

(208-209) “You know. It’s mostly the unspoken things that always [end page 208] cause trouble later. They find their way out of us one way or the other.”