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Among the many things the world doesn't really need is another book about Los Angeles. Why add more volumes to that long, long SoCal shelf when publishers have not yet seen fit to give us works of far greater usefulness (Baking with Diet Sprite; Barbara Bush Riffs on Her Favorite 18th-Century Novels, etc.).

But suppose somebody came along with an L.A. book that was chock full of wit and more than a few shards of hard-won wisdom.

Further suppose this person was a largish gay male from Lubbock, Texas, who, after a stint in Dallas saw the error of those ways and moved with his partner not just to Los Angeles but to that part of Los Angeles where even the noirest of private eyes fear to tread, i.e., West Hollywood.

Which brings us to Mr. Dave White and his memoir, Exile in Guyville: How a Punk Rock Redneck Faggot Texan Moved to West Hollywood and Refused to be Shiny and Happy.

Backstory

Other gay men have made this (and similar) move(s). Some have even profited thereby. Few of these persons have been products of Lubbock. (Buddy Holly tried, and look where it got him.)

You can understand how Port Arthur, Texas, gave the world such disparates as Janis Joplin and Robert Rauschenberg. All you have to do is visit Port Arthur (ten minutes will be more than enough), a hard-core oil refinery town on the border between Texas and Louisiana, and you think, "Bobby McGee? $5-million collages? Sure, no problem."

To understand how Lubbock could give us Mr. Dave White requires digging a bit deeper.

Gertrude Stein perceptively noted that there was no there there in Oakland. Imagine Oakland on the high plains of the Texas panhandle surrounded by thousands of square miles of un-treed flatness where the closest center of civilization (Santa Fe) is so far away it’s over a distant mountain range and in another state.

Imagine growing up gay and gifted in any part of Texas but especially in Lubbock.

R.D. Laing, the late, much-maligned Scottish psychiatrist/philosopher, taught us that every society has certain key unwritten rules that everybody learns but nobody talks about (the one against incest is the most common). He called these "meta-rules."

For boys growing up in Texas, there are two meta-rules:
     1. Texas boys play football.
     2. Texas boys don’t write.

The few Texas boys who don’t play football are either politicians or sissies (and we certainly know what "sissies" really means, don’t we).

The few Texas boys who write confine themselves to either cowboy "poetry" or cowboy "novels."

Mr. Dave White (as far we can tell) didn’t play football, and (as is very apparent from his book) he was clearly a word-person from the git-go. A smart astrologer could have looked at his birth-chart on day one of his life and said, "OK, it’s either the East Village or West Hollywood for this kid."

Humor

The astrologer would have done well to also note that the boy had a mouth on him. Yes, Mr. Dave White is not only a sissy who can write, he is a sissy who can write funny. How welcoming do you think the arms of the First Baptist Church of Lubbock (or Dallas, for that matter) would have been to such a person?

Thus at the first opportunity Mr. Dave White and his life-partner hied themselves to West Hollywood and sought mightily to live there happily ever after.

Which they did. Sort of.

Following a certain period of, um, adjustment.

Exile in Guyville is the rolling-on-the-floor, wipe-away-the-tears recounting of that period of adjustment.

No easy lay, this Mr. Dave White.

Mightily he resists L.A.’s charms, such as they are (and, contrary to East Coast opinion, they are manifold). So what if a down-at-heels Ryan O’Neil walks his shaggy dog down Mr. White’s West Hollywood street. So what if Linda Hunt (accidentally) almost runs him down and then waves an apology at him. So what if Level 60 sunblocker is not enough protection against the UV’s in paradise. So what if he has to travel many miles into the dreaded Valley to find (sort of) real Texas barbecue. So what if his favorite L.A. cultural attraction is the La Brea Tar Pits.

Diamonds

It all adds up to a major, major culture-clash, far beyond the kinds of simple problems Margaret Mead encountered as she diddled about with the Trobriand Islanders. One touching episode finds Mr. Dave White hanging out at a Neiman’s branch to lessen his homesickness at being so far from the Mother Store in Dallas. In another, our hero is seen breakfasting on his tiny balcony while a neighbor across the street makes eye contact, strips, and masturbates for Mr. White’s delectation.

Yes, the book is episodic, like a series of diary entries from Mr. White’s first year abroad (meaning: outside of Texas). But what episodes, and what writing.

Our Lubbock boy’s way with words gets him, first, various free-lance work reviewing music, fashion, and movies, and then finally as the period of adjustment draws to an end, a full-time job as a staff-writer for The Advocate.