The Crisis of Desire: AIDS and the Fate of Gay Brotherhood
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The authors have written a wise and compassionate book about the gay community's life since AIDS devastated it, and they raise important points to ponder for the future. Although the authors deal mainly with the crisis among gay men, this book is for all of us and should not be missed. A & U Magazine The Crisis of Desire, which grafts a passionate memoir into a cunning social commentary about the impact of AIDS and HIV on the gay male community. Beautifully written by Robin Hardy and expertly edited by David Groff, The Crisis of Desire presents communal sex among gay men as a bonding that will allow us to survive AIDS, rather than a necessary definition of who we are. Hardy (who died before the book was finished) contends that much of the public sex that gay men take part in is safer than what they're doing behind closed doors. His further arguments are positioned as personal revelations and backed up with well-researched facts, so that even unpopular ideas like the futility of romance among gay men ring with truth and beg our consideration. More important is Hardy's position that sexual identity belongs to the individual rather than to some greater gay identity - a point Signorile made early on and that many writers have since devoted their careers to disproving. Hardy's belief that the future of queer brotherhood (read: our survival of the AIDS pandemic) is dependent on the sexual bonds we've forged is the first stirring argument for sexual authenticity that I've read in a couple of years.
Introduction: "Words Where There Was Silence"1The Enemy of Love: AIDS and Its Myths12The Crisis of Desire: Loss and Promise263Hope Inhibited: Medicine, Power, and the Reclaimed Body494Disposal: A Death and Life in Amsterdam895Sex at Risk: The Body and Its Dangers1056Surviving Memory: Toward an Ethos of Desire1337Beyond the Culture of Love: The Fate of Gay Brotherhood169Acknowledgments193Index195
