Never Turn Your Back on the Tide, by Kergan Edwards-Stout

[Ulysses]

Never Turn Your Back on the Tide (A Fictional Memoir)
By Kergan Edwards-Stout
Published by the author, 2020

Four stars

This vivid, personal narrative is complicated and multi-faceted. On the one hand, it’s about a California boy with stars in his eyes, who works hard for years to make it in Hollywood—and never quite does. It is a fascinating look at the world of young hopefuls on the fringes of the entertainment industry. On the other hand, the rest of Kergan’s story is suggested by the slightly hysterical subtitle to the book: “How I married a lying, psychopathic wannabe-murderer and kinda lived to tell.”

I am a passionate advocate for memoirs by gay men (memoirs by all LGTBTQ+ people, for that matter, but this is my personal niche). Mainstream publishers, and even LGBTQ+ friendly publishers really aren’t much interested in memoirs, especially by men, these days. Fortunately, self-publishing grows more sophisticated and makes it possible for gay men who are NOT Elton John or Chasten Buttigieg to get their stories out there for the world. I am grateful for this.

I bought Edwards-Stout’s first book, “Songs for the New Depression,” back in 2011, and have been waiting for this culmination of the author’s personal tale for some time. I only knew fragments of his life story, and was anxious to read all of it.

The author is a decade younger than I am, and while he grew up in Southern California, in LA and Orange Counties, I grew up in the Northeast, and have spent my entire life in a triangle between upstate New York, Connecticut, and the New Jersey suburbs west of New York City. That ten year age difference, as well as the geography, make for a major and fascinating difference between the memoir Kergan Edwards-Stout has written and the one I completed just before the pandemic tipped out global world on its ass.

Of course, even if every life story is unique, it’s also true that every story of an out gay man will have some points in common with all others. Edwards-Stout’s coming out narrative will resonate with many gay readers, but the rest of his tale is by turns poignant and harrowing, in spite of his efforts to use what amounts to a lighthearted tone as he lays out his traumas. There is resilience and compassion here, but there’s also a lot of pain, even if the author tries to mask it. It feels like he has to work hard for his happy ending.

One odd detail that resonated with me is the fact that Kergan’s family took him to Maui when he was seventeen and they stayed at the Hana Maui Hotel. My family did the same thing and stayed in the same hotel when I was seventeen—ten years earlier. Difference is, he got laid for the first time, while I watched “Applause” live on television with my brother at two in the morning.

You see, every story is different.