A review by rachelwalexander
High-Risk Homosexual by Edgar Gomez

5.0

This was the memoir I didn't know I needed to read. Edgar Gomez's memoir is at times hilarious and at times a punch in the gut, but so often I found myself thinking, "Oh, I'm not the only queer person who's felt this way." Being a Nicaraguan-American 20-something from Orlando and being a white bi lady from Seattle are wildly different contexts to be queer in, and I love queer memoir because I learn so much every time I read another person's account of how they've survived or thrived or gotten to a point in their journey where they at least felt they could sit down and write a book about it. But my god - the ache to have the straight people you love call you after Pulse to check in, the sterile doctor's office where a disinterested professional who doesn't know a thing about your life labels you "high-risk" without telling you that - I've never read anyone writing about those particular experiences of being a millennial queer. Gomez is gifted in his ability to keep the mood of the book readable throughout - there's plenty of trauma but no wallowing, and so much to think about. His reflections on being the post-AIDS generation of gay men are especially salient: "To go from “If you sleep with someone, you’ll die” to “Just kidding! Be a hoe!” was such an earth-shattering shift that I still couldn’t believe one pill a day was all it took."