Getting Straight About Openly Straight: A Review

Acceptance is an affirmation that you are good enough.

Whenever I reread a book, it is with some amount of hesitation, a slight trepidation in my heart, because it’s not often that the second read quite lives up to that exhilarating memory of the first one. But with this book, I didn’t have that trouble.

The voice of Rafe in Bill Konigsberg’s novel Openly Straight is raw, throbbing with unrehearsed emotions that will choke you at times. He is your typical teenage protagonist who is convinced that his idea of a gratifying life is not being fulfilled, that a makeover is warranted in his life if he is to achieve a semblance of happiness, and nobody is equipped with enough mental facilities to understand his plight.

My sarcasm is not intended to chip away at the validity of the dilemmas Rafe is deluged in – I do think they are justified, to some extent. Throughout the book, Rafe has attempted to dissect the labels that are thrust upon him, and their need in our world, how they proscribe our perception of others, and how they also help us to fit somewhere.

Rafael Goldberg is openly gay in Boulder, Colorado, but he doesn’t want to be. He is plagued by the label, which he thinks is all people see about him, limits his choices, makes people zero in on him in a way that is intruding and appalling. So he decides what he needs is a refurbishment of his life, somewhere where he is not gay, but just Rafe.

So he moves to New England, to an all-boys boarding school. His plan is to just play into people’s heterosexism – the thing we do when we assume someone is straight if they don’t explicitly state they are not – and it works.

For some time, at least.

He is finally able to just be included in the popular “jock” crowd, have un-discomfiting, non-weird conversation with guys and play with them without them being worried about him hitting on them. His roommate Albie and his friend Toby, at first, appear to him too weird and nerdy to be friends with, and he flounders for a time on the conscientiousness of being seen with them in front of his jock friends.

Speaking of whom, he makes friends with Ben, who is an exquisite aberration from the rigid definition of “jocks” – a hulk-like-big guy, but laconic, sensitive, and compassionate, who doesn’t partake in the ritual of slut-shaming in the locker room, who doesn’t shy away from being kind and helpful to others or going on the crazy adventures orchestrated by Albie and Toby – in the event Rafe does overcome his doubts, letting his conscience win – and who is secure in his masculinity enough not to shirk from displaying his emotional side.

Finally someone.

I absolutely adored Ben.

Ben and Rafe’s friendship grows with a relentless speed, and yes, Rafe falls in love with him, but you already guessed that, right?

Anyway, Rafe was bound to crash one way or the other. The problem starts only when that thing of ours called “conscience” stirs up in Rafe again. The thought of hiding a big part of himself – the homosexuality part – devours him.

Bill Konigsberg here has painted a lucid picture of Rafe. He has this sublime way with his words, that you can almost see Rafe and how the thoughts in his brain are whirring and churning, how he arrives at a conclusion and when he does.

The novel also has a throng of imbecile, Neanderthal-like characters, like Mendelhall and Zack and Steve. But that shouldn’t overshadow the motley of interesting and witty and thoughtful characters, like the kind you want to preserve in a box because they give out such sage advice that no one in your entire life would have been able to come up with. We crave guidance, wisdom, don’t we?

So there are Rafe’s parents, Opal and Gavin, who are the hipster version of your dream parents, who are unpredictable and predictable in way that they can both embarrass you and make you look cooler in front of your friends in the same breath. Rafe’s relationship with them is fraught with irritation and love and gratitude and mortification which is pretty much what you’d expect.

And then there is Clare Olivia, the typical girl best friend of the gay guy – kind of bitchy and a bit annoying with her intonation of Shay-Shay (well, in my head, that echo formation made me give her voice kind of a whiny pitch), but you actually want her in your life to slap some sense into you from time to time. The growing distance between them after Rafe moving to New England was depicted so realistically, it hit somewhere close to home. I could really feel the disappointment and hurt crumpling the friendship from both sides before it recovered.

When you hurt someone you care about, it’s like a part of you dies inside. If you can’t talk about it, the death goes unnoticed.

And then in every YA coming-of age book, there has to be a Mr. Scarborough, that one sagacious English teacher who woos us over with his Dumbledory-Zen pearls of words, doesn’t it? (Or wait, is it just me?) The author, through him, has given us short creative writing course too, with him asking Rafe to pin down his history and fast-write his emotions, and then making small illuminating notes at the bottom of each entry. I wanted a teacher like that always.

“It’s hard to be different,” Scarborough said. “And perhaps the best answer is not to tolerate differences, not even to accept them. But to celebrate them. Maybe then those who are different would feel more loved and less, well, tolerated.”

Konigsberg, through Rafe, has made us go on in the deep trenches of introspection, an exploratory sojourn that is bound to make your head ache, but in a good way. It is reeking with humor, and yet the flippancy of the scenes do not make them seem less weighted.

He made us think what it means to be labelled in any way, how that can be limiting and ensnaring, and how the norms in our society are structured and how we seem to buy into them inadvertently, what it means to come out and be yourself, how some of us are showered with privilege in the smallest of ways that others aren’t. He made us question our stamped beliefs, our ways of living, what we take for granted and why.

I tried to imagine what it would be like if gay were normal and all of us were gay. Would we objectify men in the same way?

The process of Rafe’s growth, the moment he actually realizes how insane he has been to upend his life like that to get rid of a label that is not really a label, but more a part of himself, the moment he understands that you cannot just omit a part of yourself and still expect to feel whole is like a gleaming drop of water – it’s so transparent.

I guess I decided the gay thing was an accessory, not an actual internal part of me. Like a sweater I could take off. And I can’t, can I?

The only gripe I have with this gem is gross misrepresentation of the Indian culture that was depicted there. Ben is seen, after a good cuddling session, to be saying to Rafe:

Men in India hold hands walking down the street.

And then he continues to assert that it is “part of their culture”.

Umm. NO. It isn’t.

Men in India are probably more homophobic than men in America, or at least, they are giving them a good run for their money. They cringe at any display of affection shared among themselves or others of their sex, and so, unless they are gay, they very much don’t hold hands walking down the street. And there are fewer gay men out in India than you think, so that’s not an option either.

And calling it the Indian “culture” also calls into question your idea of culture, which India has a potpourri of. So I’d rather not go there.

I am kind of tired of all the innovative ways people keep misinterpreting what being Indian means, the stereotypes piling on by the day, so I thought I should just put it out there. There’s nothing called an “Indian” language, not all of us are yoga enthusiasts, and men here do not hold hands walking down the street.

But otherwise this is a wonderful piece of self-exploration, teeming with poignant, rootable characters and three-in-the-morning-kind-thought-provoking and funny scenes, which is really a novelty. I’d give it a 4.5 out of 5 totally.