All I Could Bare: My Life in the Strip Clubs of Gay Washington, D.C. | 
| Author: Craig Seymour
Publisher: Atria
Category: Book
List Price: $23.00
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Avg. Customer Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 48756
Media: Hardcover
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 256
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.5 x 5.8 x 0.9
ISBN: 1416542051
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.77092
EAN: 9781416542056
ASIN: 1416542051
Publication Date: June 17, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: Brand New. 100% money back guarantee. All books shipped from Strand Bookstore, New York City, USA.
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Product Description
A FRANK, FUNNY, EXPLICIT, AND INSPIRING MEMOIR ABOUT HOW DANCING NAKED IN GAY CLUBS IN THE NATION'S CAPITAL HELPED A COLLEGE PROFESSOR DISCOVER HIS TRUE SELF.I felt that I'd made a transformation as surely as Superman slipping out of a phone booth or Wonder Woman doing a sunburst spin. I was bare-ass in a room of paying strangers, a stripper. After years of wondering what it would be like, I had done it -- faced a fear, defied expectation, embraced a taboo self. It was only the beginning.... All I Could Bare is the story of a mild-mannered graduate student who "took the road less clothed" -- a decision that was life changing. Seymour embarked on his journey in the 1990s, when Washington, D.C.'s gay club scene was notoriously no-holds-barred, all the while trying to keep his newfound vocation a secret from his parents and maintain a relation-ship with his boyfriend, Seth. Along the way he met some unforgettable characters -- the fifty-year-old divorce who's obsessed with a twenty-one-year-old dancer, the celebrated drag diva who hailed from a small town in rural Virginia, and the many straight guys who were "gay for pay." Seymour gives us both the highs (money, adoration, camaraderie) and the lows (an ill-fated attempt at prostitution, a humiliating porn audition). Ultimately coming clean about his secret identity, Seymour breaks through taboos and makes his way from booty-baring stripper to Ph.D.-bearing academic, taking a detour into celebrity journalism and memorably crossing paths with Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey, and Mary J. Blige along the way. Hilarious, insight-ful, and touching, All I Could Bare proves that sometimes the "wrong decision" can lead to the right place.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
A MUST read for anyone who missed the DC club era! July 17, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I first heard of this book from a quick blurb on Sirius OutQ. I am fascinated with male strippers, so I knew I had to get this book. I rushed to work and ordered it the second I got online. The book arrived within a few days and I read it from cover to cover in no time flat. This was the most entertaining book I have read in a long time. Craig Seymour writes this book in such a way that you feel like you are right there with him, going through everything with him. It is like reading a graphic novel without the pictures. Every chapter tells another story and you don't want the book to end. As someone who missed the male stripper era in Washington DC, this book made me feel like I was there, but made me wish I was there even more! Told honestly and frankly, Craig leaves nothing out. He should be commended for a job well done. I recommend this to anyone who wants to be entertained. I give it my highest marks!
Amazing read ... confirms a lot of suspicions July 5, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I found the book to be extremely engaging. It answered a lot of suspicions I had harbored for decades. We finally get the truth as to why Matt Drudge and Andrew Sullivan have been such close friends and the part that African-American men play in that bond. Absolutely riveting!
Insert witty title for an A+ read here July 2, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
A no-holds-barred look into a part of Washington DC that never gets mentioned when discussing our nation's capitol in high school, All I Could Bare is as revealing as the title suggests. As a shaker of rump--all in the name of academic pursuits of course--Seymour uses his humor and wit to chronicle how stripping and other brief forays into sex work made him the confident, successful journalist he is today. Inspiring and totally entertaining, All I Could Bare is a must read and speaks to the daredevil in all of us; gay, straight or other.
Refreshing and funny, a not-to-be-missed memoir with a message June 28, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Memoir fans---and anyone who likes a good story---rejoice. "All I Could Bare" offers an intriguing glimpse into a most unusual coming-of-age story. Craig Seymour's tell-all, bare-all tale shows readers of all persuasions how courage and confidence can be sought, and occasionally found, in the most unexpected places.
At a time when memoirists and memoir itself have fallen under suspicion due to recent scandals, Seymour's candor is refreshing and admirable. His commitment to telling it as it was, even when that means portraying himself in a less-than-flattering light, allows readers to relate to his fallibility and humanity and reminds us of the good things that happen when we meet a writer we can trust.
Seymour's story makes great summer reading, a funny and pleasurable trip through one gay man's perilous journey to find himself, overcome his insecurities...and make a few bucks. Yet the book and the man are also unexpectedly inspirational. Seymour captures the challenges and setbacks, the humor and triumphs, of our common search for the choices in our lives that take us from who we are to who we want to be.
P.S. I was lucky enough to hear Seymour read in Atlanta, an hour and a half from my home. The trip would have been worth it at twice the distance and even twice the price of gas. Seymour is an exceptionally charming, funny, engaging speaker and this was one of the best readings I've attended. If he comes to a bookstore near (or not so near) you, don't miss him!
Diane Miller, author of Freedom to Differ: The Shaping of the Gay and Lesbian Struggle for Civil Rights
 Authentically revealing, but . . . June 26, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
On the surface, Craig Seymour's "All I Could Bare," is simply a coming-of-age chronicle of his adventures as a gay stripper in the late 80's and early 90's, in the notorious, no-holds-barred gay nightclubs of downtown Washington, D.C., a scene which had flourished in plain sight for more than two decades. The book briefly traces the neighborhood's historical development and notoriety as a gay mecca and offers up some interesting, if not entirely original, composites of characters. These range from (gay and "straight") chiseled poster boys--who gleefully profited from the attentions (and the hefty tips) of their rapturous admirers--to the largely diverse and self-aware crowd of "sugar daddies" who avidly sought, paid for and indulged in sexual fantasies elsewhere denied them.
But "All I Could Bare" is actually a time-honored search for self, identity, a sense of place and community, the quest to make sense of it all. Unlike the controversial author John Rechy, Seymour is not a nihilist: He inevitably manages to wean himself from the nightclubs (though never quite entirely), gradually morphing into a skillful entertainment journalist and, later still, forging a successful career in academia (Rechy also parlayed his vast experience as a gay hustler into a profitable academic sideline). All told, Seymour's journey is a bona fide--albeit improbable-- success story told with a great sense of humor and insight.
For all its merits, however, the memoir is not faultless. Despite his frankness, Seymour is pathologically selfish, as when he describes the painful break-up of a long-term relationship and scarcely pauses to acknowledge the shattering effect that his obsession with stripping had on his partner. I also wish Seymour had been more forthcoming about the minefield of race relations within the gay community. As a Black man light enough to pass as Latino or "other" than Black, Seymour himself appears to have been exclusively attracted to Whites. For all his self-examination, he offers little to explain his obvious compulsion to seek White (beauty-standard) validation--something that no amount of nurturing from his attentive Black family could assuage. Moreover, his tendency to skim over the persistent problem of gay racism begs the question of whether he would have had such a rewarding run as a stripper if he had not often been assumed to be any other nationality. Indeed, a less amiable writer might have challenged or at least pondered this unsavory aspect of the culture more deeply. These foibles matter, especially in a book that literally and figuratively proclaims full-frontal disclosure. And yet in all other aspects, "All I Could Bare" feels authentic and true. The book is so engrossing that I could not put it down, and it took only a few hours to read. For better or worse, this is one memoir that offers a relatively sunny tour of a very peculiar fun-house that is never less than fascinating.
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