Reader Review: The Best Little Boy in the World
By John Reid (aka Andrew Tobias)
Reviewed by Leticia Flores

This issue’s installment of my media review relates to my recent move to Knoxville, TN in July of this year.  I began at the University of Tennessee as an associate professor position with the psych department, as well as an associate director of the clinical psychology training clinic.  I assumed I would be teaching a class or two in my position, specifically the graduate Cultural Diversity course. I knew that east Tennessee was generally a religious, politically conservative area of the country, so  I quickly began mulling over ideas about how to teach LGBT issues to a possibly more “skeptical” audience.  This is how I came upon Andrew Tobias’s 1973 book, The Best Little Boy in the World (TBLBITW).  

TBLBITW was mentioned on numerous LGBT-focused web sites as a major work in the genre of LGBT literature.  Knowing how works of literature can shift in their importance and perspective over time, I was very curious to see how gay life in the 70’s compared to gay life today, especially in light of the recent legislative triumphs (and tribulations) occurring in 2013.
    Tobias originally wrote under a pseudonym (John Reid) in 1973, because of the very real, negative repercussions one could have suffered at the time for being an out gay man. In TBLBITW, Tobias details his early childhood suspicions about his “difference”, and his instinctual understanding at the time that such feelings were not socially accepted. Like many LGBT people growing up in that era, he feared that something was “wrong” with him, and early on took great pains to hide this perceived flaw from others as well as himself.  He traces his college and early adult years at Harvard and then in Boston, where he engaged in elaborate plots to fool male friends about his heterosexual prowess. Meanwhile, he found numerous ways to avoid engaging in any sexual contact with his unsuspecting female dates, or else endured such contact with barely hidden disgust. Many of these stories are relayed with warmth and self-deprecating humor in the book, which most of the time softened the delivery of what were certainly very emotionally difficult experiences.  He goes on to recount how he eventually came out to one friend and then another, simply because he knew he could no longer hide himself from those he cared for. What follows includes his first forays into the gay scene in the 70’s, and his initially clumsy attempts at exploring his sexual identity and developing intimate relationships after years of emotional self-restraint and self-denial.
    As I read this book, I was repeatedly struck by how different his world was compared to today, where popular TV shows feature prominent and sympathetic LGBT characters; where the NY Times regularly publishes LGBT wedding announcements; and where LGBT high school students can serve as leaders and homecoming kings and queens.  I could also easily hear in between his pages the echoes of intolerance and discrimination that continue to exist, especially in places like east Tennessee. Tobias wrote a follow-up memoir in 1993 called The Best Little Boy in the World Grows Up, this time using his real name.  I look forward to reading this, and learning how he spent the next 20 years as an out gay man.  What became of his friends, who were, unbeknownst to them, living on the cusp of what would become a huge health epidemic among the gay community? How did he manage his love relationships and professional life, given the self-imposed psychological strictures he had to learn to overcome?
    The personal, social and political context that this simply written but emotionally powerful memoir provides is an invaluable tool for any cultural diversity course or reading group. Tobias illustrates and articulates the damage that both externalized  and internalized homophobia can inflict on a developing individual, as well as the enormous resilience and hope that can enable one to wrest a meaningful life from it all.