REVIEWS Book Marks Richard Labonte | March 30, 2005 The Underminer: Or, the Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life, by Mike Albo with Virginia Heffernan. Bloomsbury USA, 164 pages, $19.95 hardcover. The Underminer – the funniest book of the year so far – is not so much a novel as it is a mordantly hilarious monologue from performer Albo, who honed his masterfully passive-aggressive fictional persona on the stage (with some zingers supplied by Heffernan). What exactly is an "underminer"? Remember high school, when you discovered your best friend was saying mean things behind your back? Imagine that best friend as an adult – gorgeous and accomplished, hip to every hot trend and friend to all the hip and trendy – saying really mean things to your face, but in the nicest possible way. Effortlessly successful while you flounder, he steals your friends, dates your exes, and sucks the essence out of your life: "I just saw your ex-boyfriend and he looks amazing...You're eating bread pudding? How brave. It's like the embodiment of carbs." He's there at the Burning Man desert be-in to rescue you from a dust storm; he's at the gallery opening where you're serving hors d'oeuvres; he happens by your desperate yard sale – he's everywhere, astonishingly condescending, undermining you at every turn. Acqua Calda, by Keith McDermott. Carroll & Graf, 314 pages, $24 hardcover. There was a time when the gay "AIDS novel" was all about dying. A few recent AIDS tales – Brian Bouldrey's fine The Boom Economy comes to mind – are more about living. That's the essence of this eloquently wry novel. It's about Gerald, an actor in his mid-40s who – after tossing out his porn collection while hoarding his barbiturates – is unexpectedly summoned back to both artistic and emotional life by an eccentric director from his past, for a role in an avant-garde production being mounted in Sicily. McDermott, a veteran stage actor, neatly captures first the crankiness of Gerald's diva-like self-imposed solitude and sexless despair, and then his hesitant pleasure at being wanted again, both as actor and as object of desire. But the real delight of Acqua Calda ("warm water") is its flamboyant depiction of a theater troupe's rivalries and romances, its singular egos and collective talents heightened by the thrill of rehearsing on the brink of disaster. Even as his health fails, it's an ecstatic ride for Gerald – and this is an extraordinary debut novel for McDermott. Major Conflict: One Gay Man's Life in the Don't-Ask-Don't-Tell Military, by Jeffrey McGowan. Broadway Books, 278 pages, $24.95 hardcover. Retired army major McGowan is fighting the good gay fight on three important fronts. Major Conflict is being promoted primarily as one man's poignant experience as a closeted queer through a decorated (and decorous) 10-year military career that included duty in the Persian Gulf War. But a few years after leaving the army, McGowan married – he and his partner were the first gay couple wed by the Green Party mayor of New Paltz, N.Y. And before he enlisted – even as he was reveling in the rigidly straight camaraderie of the ROTC (Reserve Officer Training Corps) – the author was fumbling his way through the sort of confused adolescence that most middle-class gay teens might empathize with. His coming out to self and others is recounted here with earnest directness and honesty. McGowan's gung-ho love for the military and pleasure in his marriage are both fundamentally conservative urges along the spectrum of gay liberation, but he's so darned disarming about championing barracks life and married life that he makes both seem like core queer values. Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse: My Life in Comedy, by Phyllis Diller. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 266 pages, $24.95 hardcover. Show of hands! Who under 35 (40?) knows who Phyllis Diller is? Never mind if you don't (hint: she was the first breakout female stand-up comedian 50 years ago). Like a Lampshade, an amiably ghostwritten autobiography, is mostly the story of how an oppressed housewife carved out a fabulous career against all odds, enlivened by snippets from Diller's comic routines. ("Condoms for old guys are called software...") But as an account of how a straight dame's career intersected often and everywhere with "the gays," it's totally fascinating. While writing ad copy for a California radio station, she befriended poet Rod McKuen. Her guardian angel at The Purple Onion – one of the many nightclubs with a gay bar attached that kick-started her career (and where Maya Angelou was once on the bill with her) – was Barry Drew, a gay man from the Barrymore clan. Her teenage son played the banjo in a Greenwich Village band led by a gay man. And – lamentably for her – she was married for a decade to a debonair queer who was forever bedding houseboys and chauffeurs. Featured Excerpt: The venues where I worked – Mister Kelly's, the Blue Angel, the Purple Onion, and, later on, the hungry i, the Bon Soir in New York, and the Crescendo in L.A. – were known as "discovery clubs" and they always had a gay bar. It was a circuit, the gays had a great sense of humor, and they also liked our exaggerated personas. They liked Judy Garland, they liked me, they liked Joan Rivers – we were the kind of women they wanted to be. They wanted to be onstage, they wanted to be entertainers, and they wanted to be funny. – from Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse, by Phyllis Diller Footnotes: AND THE WINNERS ARE: Alison Smith is the 2005 winner of Barnes & Noble's Discover New Writers Award for nonfiction, for her memoir Name All the Animals, an account of three troubled years after her brother's death in an auto accident – and her own first lesbian affair. The honor comes with $10,000 and a year of marketing and advertising support for her book from the superstore bookseller... TREBOR HEALEY'S DEBUT novel, Through It Came Bright Colors, about a college dropout's first gay romance with a teenage junkie, is this year's winner of InsightOut Book Club's Violet Quill Award for new voices. The author receives $1,000 – and a plaque – at the Saints & Sinners gay literary conference in New Orleans in May... A HELPFUL BOOK to watch out for is 50 Ways to Support Lesbian and Gay Equality: The Complete Guide to Supporting Family, Friends, Neighbors – or Yourself (Inner Ocean Publishing), by Meredith Maran with Angela Watrous. The anthology, due in June, is in the same vein as 50 Ways to Love Your Country, the election-year collection of lefty advice assembled by the activists of MoveOn.org; it includes essays from Margaret Cho, Judy Shepard, and Candace Gingrich, and from the leaders of organizations including the ACLU, Amnesty International USA, and GLAAD. Richard Labonte has been reading, editing, selling, and writing about queer literature since the mid-'70s. Previous edition Book Marks