LAUSR

Where Portmann makes a stronger case is in his investigation of lesbians who offered comfort and care to gay men suffering from the AIDS virus. With reliance on individual accounts, supplemented by discussion of Boston’s Gay Community News, Portmann more effectively grounds his argument in primary source evidence. In arguing that the response to the AIDS crisis ‘highlighted many of the social inequalities’ faced – and opposed by – members of the gay and lesbian community, the basis of the friendship between men and women stands on a firmer ground (73). The second section of the book discusses ‘Categories’ of relationships from friendship to gay husband to pregnancy surrogate. Especially in considering the notion of gay husband as a kind of ‘friend’, deeper engagement with the historical scholarship on marriage would have benefited Portmann’s efforts. He gives a nod to the vast historiography, but provides only limited discussion of the relatively modern emergence of marriage as rooted in compatibility and friendship. This seems a natural place to complicate notions of love, marriage, friendship, and intimacy more broadly, which seems to be a central goal of this text. Portmann relies on memoirs and autobiographies of unions between straight women and (sometimes alleged) gay men, but much of what he writes about these kinds of unions in the past feels speculative. Again, consideration of archival sources, or the collecting of oral histories, might have advanced Portmann’s discussion of the topic. Absent from the text is sustained discussion of cultural representations of these friendships. Throughout the book, Portmann makes reference to the popular sitcom Will & Grace (KoMut Entertainment/Sister Entertainment/3 Sisters Entertainment/ NBC Studios, 1998–2006), but never once does he explain the show – its characters, its setting, the circumstances of the relationship between Will and Grace, the nature of their friendship and how it evolved over the course of their lifespan. Perhaps Portmann assumes that readers know the programme and its particulars. To analyse the show would require a kind of cultural analysis, but given that he provides an appendix of theatre, film, television, comic strips, and social media sources, it appears he believes these sources to be of considerable value, in shaping and/or mirroring American culture. Portmann writes that his book ‘seeks to deepen and fill out the insights of previous thinkers who have pondered friendships between straight women and gay men’ (75). While the text relies too much on speculation and too little on historical evidence, it succeeds in suggesting this is a topic of great potential for helping reconsider understandings of friendship, love, and intimacy, both in the past and moving forward.