Oct 22, 2004  |  By: KHEVEN LEE LAGRONE  | COMMENTS     

I COULD HAVE used Steven G. Fullwood’s new book, “Funny,” a few weeks ago. I was in a debate with an African-American, heterosexual male journalist about San Francisco’s white gay organizations’ discussion about boycotting concerts by homophobic dancehall entertainer Beenie Man.

The journalist challenged me to choose a side by asking that notorious political question: “What are you first: black or gay?”

Many black gay people who are still on a quest to find themselves probably wrestle with this question.

“Funny,” Fullwood’s collection of 30 short personal essays, could help find the answer. The book offers a much-needed voice for a population of gay men who many outsiders seem to know little about. This, in part, is because of the deaths of poetic gay writers like Essex Hemphill, Joe Beam and other black men who are militantly black and defiantly homosexual.

Fullwood, who lives in New York City, doesn’t have to choose whether he is black or same-gender-loving. He’s a proud black man who happens to proudly love “his brothers.”

In his essay “Why We Don’t Cry,” Fullwood speaks to heterosexual African-American women who want “sensitive men” but berate black men when they break down in front of them.

“Confessions of a Dick Head” is Fullwood’s “platform to publicly apologize” for the wrongs he did to African-American lovers — and to himself.

His essay “Phone Call” made me look at my own shortcomings.

“There is no real reason to call him, because, really, you have nothing at all to say to him. Not one thing at all. But will that stop you?,” Fullwood writes. “As the minutes walk by, you feel a burning sensation steadily mounting inside of you that propels you to invent a reason to call him. There’s the phone. You begin by rolling past conversations over in your head, till reality and myth intertwine, and soon the only thing that makes sense is that you should call him, call him, call him. Call him.”

FULLWOOD’S WRITING is direct and in your face, perhaps too much so at times. Do readers really need to know whether the author has one or two testicles — or the length of his penis? Just in case, it’s an average size.

Nonetheless, the essays are revolutionary because they challenge attitudes about black homosexuality and sometimes they are just humorous.

In Fullwood’s essay “Celibacy: It’s Not Just for Ugly People,” he describes this as “that choice that chooses us when our dating life isn’t going as planned.”

For same-gender-loving men searching for guidance, “Funny” offers an entertaining affirmation. It helps satisfy those of us who are hungry for literature about our lives.

I wish I had access to it before I turned 30.