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August 17, 2004
Now that "Queer Eye For the Straight Guy" has
attained a cultural zenith of tedious saturation, the time
is right for Peter Hyman's amusing and perceptive debut.
Hyman, a contributor to the New York Observer and stand-up
comedian, has written less a paean to "metrosexuality" (which
he considers an example of tail-chasing media hype), and
more a consideration across eighteen essays of how personal
tastes command outsized influence upon life's journeys.
In Hyman's case, an extended youth spent in thrall to
rarefied aesthetic sensibilities and affection for top-drawer
consumer goods has had unintended consequences (including
dateable women mistaking him for gay). He gleefully
describes the dissonance of his jockish seventies Michigan
boyhood: "I was a style-obsessed and slightly spoiled
little brat," owing to the influence of a gay
older brother who inadvertently "created a
younger, straighter version of himself: the bitchy curmudgeon railing
against suburban boredom."
Once Hyman has skewered the absurdities inherent in taking
seriously the metrosexual marketing trend, he moves on
to portray more broadly the challenges facing today's
young sensitive straights--well-meaning, under-funded,
confused but randy. "Menage á Faux Pas" details
Hyman's confused participation in a Craigslist-enabled
threesome he found disappointingly businesslike
and banal; in "The Wedding Swinger," a brief,
star-crossed tryst with a beguiling but unavailable Spanish-French
woman at his sister's Tuscan wedding seemed like "an episode
from my summer camp days." More poignantly, in "The
Penultimate Girlfriend" Hyman considers how what seemed
the perfect relationship in a sea of dating mishaps hit
the rocks too quickly: "I desperately wished for more
time and the chance to prove that my words could come to
life."
Elsewhere, Hyman nicely captures a sense
of bungling, "Beat
the Devil"-style misadventure, whether during ill-advised
stints in law school and fact-checking, or a too self-indulgent
trip to Mexico involving a copious drug stash and
the narcotrafficantes. When he does indulge in discussions
of consumer culture ("Dude, Where's My Shirt," "It's
the Hot Wax, Stupid!"), it's with a particular winsome
nostalgia, as Hyman understands that the right coffee table
and hydrating facial can't salve the lonely existentialism
incurred by New York's underemployed army of aspiring
writers and serial daters. --
Reviewed by Mike Newirth < back to main press page
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