The book I am reading right now is Gilgamesh the King by Robert Silverberg.

It is a ripping good book. It is the classic story of Gilgamesh, told from Gilgamesh’s point of view, and so not only is it an intimate look into one of mythology’s greatest heroes (in my opinion), but because this is Silverberg we are talking about here, it is also filled with well researched details about life way back in the city-states which arose between rivers we call the Tigris and the Euphrates.

I love that kind of historical fiction, the sort that really puts you right there in the action of a bygone era and makes you feel like you have traveled back in time to the fabled city of Uruk.

It is not Silverberg’s usual science fiction, and it is not quite straight historical fiction either, although all of the “magic” that happens in the story could be explained away as simply Gilgamesh’s interpretation of events based on his beliefs.

I have always found Gilgamesh to be a compelling character who perfectly embodies his era by being a great hero not simply in terms of martial prowess but a powerful force for civilization. The Uruk city-state that he ruled is a place where yearly floods have been transformed by an elaborate system of sluices, canals, reservoirs, and such from a scourge that destroyed everything in its path to a much needed source of year round fresh water. Buildings are made of baked bricks, there are many specialty professions, and they have a rather wonderfully enlightened attitude about sex.

They are so enlightened, in fact, that they have holy prostitutes, a phrase which is a total oxymoron according to Judeo-Christian erotophobic standards. But to them, sex is sacred, not profane or obscene, and so the temple prostitutes, who make themselves available to any and all men, are considered to be holy priestesses doing the work of their goddess.

Doesn’t that sound a lot more sane than our current fucked up shame and terror system cooked up by old men who condemned what they could no longer enjoy, like a person declaring food evil the minute they are full?

But alas, there is a limit to Uruk’s (and, I fear, Silverberg’s) sexual enlightenment, and it really cuts me to the quick, so I thought I would discuss it here tonight.

It all boils down to a single passage :

But it has been whispered that we were lovers as men and women are. I would not have you believe that. That was not the case at all. I know that there are certain men in whom the gods have mixed manhood and womanhood so that they have no need or liking for women, but I am not one of them, nor was Enkidu. For me, the union of man and woman is the great holy thing, which it is not possible for a man to experience with another man : they say that they do experience it, those men, but I think they deceive themselves. It is not the true union.

Maybe not, Gilgamesh, but it’s awfully nice.

Now is it just me, or does it seem like Silverberg went out of his way to slag us poor homos? He could have just said nothing about the subject either way and just let the reader assume whatever they preferred to assume, and offended nobody.

But no, he had to butt in and say, basically, “Despite what dozens of other scholars of this era, who make it clear that bisexuality was the norm back then, I am going to say that my big manly hero Gilgamesh and his extremely close male friend Enkidu were the only close male friends back then who were definitely no pair of pansy queers, that’s for sure!”

Now admittedly, Silverberg wrote this in 1984, but if Heinlein managed to go from misguided (in Stranger in a Strange Land (1961) , he repeats that canard about homosexuals being ‘confused’) to enlightened (in I Will Fear No Evil (1970), a gay couple are quite accepted and very positive characters) in the space of nine years, you have no fucking excuse for still being in the dark ages fourteen years later.

I tried to ask him about this when he was a guest of honor at Vcon a while ago, but he was quite old and confused and frail and querulous, and I could not get the point across to him. That was too bad, because I really wanted to confront him about this slight.

Oh well, even if he had grasped my question, odds are he would not have remembered something he had written almost thirty years ago.

But it still pisses me off. I had a lot of respect for Silverberg until the first time I read that passage (this is my third reading of the book), and so I can’t help but take it somewhat personally.

Plus, I tend to see science fiction as a very enlightened and socially progressive place, and so to get blindsided like that in a science fiction novel was particularly harsh. I really did not see it coming. Science fiction is usually a safe place for us fags.

So that is why I am writing this for you, dear readers. It is something that has been bothering me ever since I first read that passage, and I felt that tonight, it was time to pluck that burr from my side.

And just for the record, Mister Silverberg, I am not confused. I know exactly what I want. I want men. And you can interpret that however I like. I suspect your type would assume that I have unresolved Daddy issues or some such bullshit.

But no matter why I am gay, I am gay, and not confused or sick or crazy or any of that 19th century moralistic Psychopathia Sexualis Kraft-Ebing bullshit.

I am a perfectly well adjusted adult male homo.

Well, OK, I am crazy as fuck, but that has nothing to do with being gay.

And I say Gilgamesh and Enkidu were lovers, dammit!

I suppose you think Alexander the Great and Hephaestion were just “real good friends”?