“Without him, am I inside or Out?”

KFB REVIEW

INSIDE|OUT  JOSEPH OSMUNDSON

Sibling Rivalry Press, 2018

I open Inside/Out and immediately I’m greeted with a rustic depiction of Boyhood; “Boys” getting dirty, “Boys” in school who allowed for a gaze to linger, “Boys” one could do homework with and laugh and “Boys” who eventually grew up to be mean. “Boys” where it all started…

The piece about boyhood acts as a black and white prologue to the following 75 pieces on a break-up, and the sadomasochistic love story that came before. Reading the first piece made me question: What is it about boyhood that is so paramount to gay art and culture? What drives artists to infinitely repaint that portrait of a “Boy”? Is it the permitted protogaiety ticker-taped by the growth of musculature? Is it the sexual impotence often misrepresented as “innocence”? the soon-to-be hostile world of men once familiar? Or the lack of universality in…