My Body is Yours: A Memoir by Michael V. Smith (Arsenal Pulp Press, $17.95)
"I spent the first 30 years of my life trying to disappear," writes Michael V. Smith in the first sentence of his memoir My Body is Yours, but by the end of the book readers will be glad he did not succeed in that goal. Smith self-describes as an improv comic, filmmaker, drag queen, and occasional clown. He teaches creative writing at the University of British Columbia, having authored two poetry collections and his novel Progress.
Growing up as a sissy in a small town outside Toronto amid a blue-collar family, his early story is not for the faint of heart. His parent's early divorce and his absent, alcoholic father left their mark. His "failure as a man" is intertwined with his failed relationship with his father. Smith's attempts to come to terms with his effeminate body and homosexuality inspire him to create a new definition of masculinity while charting his own gender evolution. He asks, "How can we know what a man is? How might understanding gender as metaphor be a tool for a deeper understanding of identity?" He's led to accepting he is femme, which is a not-so-subtle critique of the gay subculture's obsession with all things butch.
Smith adopts different strategies to derive new ways of conceiving gender by shattering gender norms, beginning with cross-dressing (donning skirts as boywear), then thinking he is trans, but eventually deducing he is a girly-boy who enjoys sex with other men. My Body is the story of learning to feel comfortable in one's body, even if one is stigmatized for doing so. The memoir is also about how one creates a new self after coming to terms with a damaging past. Smith was using his father's version of manhood to judge his own masculinity, but couldn't live up to this ideal of being a man.
Smith is frank about how alcoholism in his teens to mid-20s was ruining his life, leading to booze-induced amnesia during sex. He quits cold turkey at 27, minus AA. Smith is equally candid about his compulsive sexual history, especially all forms of cruising. Public sex figures prominently in the lives of many gay men, but rarely do we read about it in gay autobiographies. Smith doesn't shy away from revealing his attraction to risky sex practices and abandonment of unprotected sex. Miraculously, he escapes seroconverting to HIV.
Eventually realizing his hunt for sex is using up all his free time, he accepts that he is a sex addict and seeks therapy, deciding "no one can lead such a caged life and be happy." Smith has a compulsive personality, but learns to channel it into less destructive areas such as his writing. Smith's sexual escapades are described in graphic detail, as are his queer punk/genderfuck adventures (including a futile attempt to have sex dressed in drag with a lesbian in public!), sparing no intimate detail in the belief that "we are all hiding, fearful, and full of shame. My job as a writer is to help us feel less alone in it."
My Body then takes a radical U-turn into the prolonged ordeal of Smith's father's illness, a lengthy hospital stay and death. He comes to terms with the father he hardly knew, and both develop a hard-won love and respect for each other. The juxtaposition between the two halves of the book is jarring, as we go from the joys of fisting to the horrors of having a gangrenous leg removed. It's difficult to sympathize with Smith's father in light of his past abuse of Smith.
Smith succeeds in creating a broader understanding of manhood as having a "cultural space to be soft and lovely, to be fearful and candid. Bravado is a costume that restricts the heart." No one can accuse Smith of a restricted heart.