Truth serum : memoirs

Bernard Cooper

Cooper tells a now familiar life story: growing up with homosexual feelings, first denying but eventually accepting them, coming out to friends and family, taking a lover, and getting AIDS. Yet he offers some gems of self-revelation that will strike evocative chords with gay readers and their families. Cooper, an only child, was very close to his mother--a relationship that filled mutual deep needs but from which Cooper recalls many distinctive moments of mixed comfort and resentment. Also unique is his recollection of reaching out to a close friend in high school, knowing that sexual rejection would be likely but being unable to postpone or control the moment.