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mother, who simply refused to allow it. Years later, he would
be tested as gifted and graduate from high school as valedic-
torian. He then attended Grambling State University nearby,
majoring in journalism.
The incident with his cousin had another importance: it be-
came the uneasy backdrop for Blow’s incipient physical attrac-
tion to men. “It was in my mind that I now fused together abuse
and attraction,” he writes. In the ensuing years he fought to re-
press his feelings of homosexual attraction. There were a few
bursts of religious enthusiasm; in high school and college some
sex with women; in college he joined a fra-
ternity known for its severe hazing. One inci-
dent from high school stands out: During a
break in a basketball game, Blow crossed the
court toward his mother. “Something in my
gait” must have alarmed her, he recalls, and
“she laid into me in front of everyone. ‘Don’t
you run like that!’”
The tone of the book is that of a wise adult
who’s able to look back knowingly, albeit em-
pathetically, upon his younger self. As for the
adult who emerged from these uncertain be-
ginnings, Blow ended up marrying a woman
he met in college, had three children with her,
and eventually divorced. He also experi-
mented with men. Adescription of a traumatic
evening in a gay bar illustrates both his bur-
geoning desires and his lingering inhibitions.
The tone changes when he tries to analyze his sexual iden-
tity. “I would come to know what the world called people like
me: bisexuals,” he reluctantly concludes. To be sure, the overt
homophobia of his youth is long gone; now the social pressure,
even in liberal New York, is to decide whether he’s gay or
straight. Not given to understatement, he suggests that bisexu-
als are perceived as “the hated ones. The bastard breed. The
‘tragic mulattos’ of sexual identity.” It’s safe to assume that writ-
ing this book was itself part of the effort to address this
dilemma.
May–June 2015 37
Charles Blow, 2014. Photo by Beowulf Sheehan.
Dr. Ronald G. Perrier is a pro-
fessor emeritus of theatre and
film studies at St. Cloud State
University in Minnesota, where
he taught for the last 27 years of
his 40-year teaching career.
Persistence of Vision and Septem-
bers are memoirs of Dr. Perrier’s
life as a gay man spanning the
eras of GLBT suppression
and expression.
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