Hold Tight Gently by Martin Duberman

Maccubbin, who would offer his Lambda Rising bookstore as a place to have book signings.
    Michelle sums up the mounting fervor and excitement in black gay circles: “We were beginning to put flesh on the bones of our gay identities . . . our black gay identities . . . and seeing those as primary voices from which we wrote, spoke, and were politicized.”

2
    Reading the Signs
    H aving made some friends and begun psychotherapy, and in general feeling far more settled in New York than earlier, Mike decided to take the initiative and try to set things right with his parents. He wrote them at length and with the kind of blind candor that he characteristically admired in others and aimed for in his own close relationships: “My primary purpose is to communicate . To clean up our relationship.” He made it clear at the top that he had no intention of “trying to prove worthy” of their love. He already had his mother’s—that much he knew—and it was to his father that he mostly addressed his complaints. Clifford, his son felt, was by nature a loner, reluctant to express affection. Mike wanted more from him. He wanted his father to talk openly—“talk to me about your joys; your terrors; your plans for a happy future” (Clifford was in the throes of thinking about retirement). Above all, he wanted a more extended dialogue with both his parents about the pivotal fact of his being gay. 1
    Mike did his best to approach the subject with a straightforward sharing of his own feelings. He’d been hurt, he made clear, that when his parents recently visited him in New York and Mike had tried to broach the topic, his father had pointedly said that he did not want to discuss it, nor—when Mike suggested a book or two on the subject—did he wish to read about it. But Mike, ever persistent, wanted to sharewith his parents the exhilarating joy he’d felt during the National Gay March on Washington, the sense that change was happening “at a mind-boggling pace. The eighties,” Mike presciently predicted, “would be the out decade”—it would, but for reasons Mike could never have imagined.
    He wanted his parents to know, too, that he was about to quit his job at Bradford “and risk all to try to make a go of it as a singer.” He’d saved up enough money to buy a piano and some sound equipment for his new apartment on Jones Street in the West Village, had made a few tapes that had impressed people, and had already hooked up with a musical director who believed in him.
    In response, Clifford made an effort to meet Mike’s entreaty that he be more expressive and honest about his feelings. He admitted flat out that he’d felt “anxiety, anger, hurt, and disappointment” when Mike revealed his “choice of lifestyle.” And Clifford used the word “choice” deliberately: “You consciously and freely chose your lifestyle with the full realization and knowledge that the relationship of family and most friends would be adversely affected” and, moreover, that “conventional religious practices” would be “precluded” and “any service toward your nation would be severely limited.”
    And that was for starters. Clifford felt that no conflict need arise when the family gathered, since he felt it “unlikely we will spend large blocks of time together.” When they did see each other, furthermore, he didn’t feel that it was “asking for the moon” to expect Mike to “play it straight.” If Mike felt the effort would be too “draining,” then the solution Clifford suggested was to “minimize contact. . . . I shall continue to try to prove ‘worthy’ of your love; if you do not wish to reciprocate, then do not.” He ended with his version of an upbeat note: he thought Mike talented and intelligent but he, Clifford, wasn’t “comfortable with the public, physical expression of love.”
    Mike responded with a generosity bordering on sainthood. “I was overcome with emotion,” he wrote back. He felt that his