Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 2008. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
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Washington Blade - February 29, 2008
Laura Douglas-Brown
You might come for the lurid details of King's life in '80s Los Angeles, but you'll leave with a touching account of a gay man's often difficult quest for redemption for both himself and his community.
"I probably should have bitten my tongue here and there," says King. "I think in the process of writing it, I forgot that anyone would ever read it. I just concentrated on telling the story and telling the truth." King insists that even the most outrageous incidents recounted in the memoir are true, yet also acknowledges approaching the writing of the book as if it were a novel - a choice that shines through in the memoir's well-constructed plot and moving, descriptive prose.
"I thought of it in terms of character and story structure, without actually changing any facts. ... I approached it in terms of building a story that had an arc to it," he says.
THE ARC OF KING'S STORY often doesn't position its main character in a flattering light, and the author is unflinchingly honest in exploring his own faults.
"I saw myself as a character, and not a very likable one," King says. "I certainly know that Mark is a character who is selfish and makes bad choices, and I wanted redemption for him. Fortunately, the facts allowed that."
After arriving in L.A. in 1981 hoping to parlay his Opie good looks into acting success, Mark quickly becomes involved in a gay world of casual sex and recreational drug use. He exploits the fantasies of lonely men and neglects the man who loves him most.
Mark's world, like the world of all gay men, changes when AIDS begins its horrific onslaught, chronicled in shattering detail through the deaths of several characters. But even after his friends fall ill and he himself is diagnosed with HIV, Mark at times succumbs to unsafe behavior - decisions that literally haunt him in the later chapters of the book.
"Not only did I know better - it was heretical, and truly, deeply dangerous and shameful," King says.
Still, the author says he doesn't fear backlash for telling the truth about behavior that departed from the mantra of "use a condom, all the time" preached by the AIDS groups for which he later worked in L.A. and Atlanta.
"Those of us who lived through it are not going to have any problem accepting my behavior," he says.
THE STORY OF MARK, the character, ends as he leaves Los Angeles for Atlanta. The story of King, the writer and activist, continued first as executive director of Atlanta's AIDS Survival Project and later as a prominent spokesperson for AID Atlanta.
King wrote most of "A Place Like This" in 1995 then "tinkered with it" for years. Meanwhile, his struggles against his personal demons continued, as he acknowledges in a note at the end of the memoir and in his appearance in the film "Meth," a documentary about the drug's toll in the gay community.
"As I said, I tried to approach Mark as a character, and I am so sad for him," says King, who is now in recovery and recently moved back to Atlanta. "He seemed to be getting it - there was some spirituality to the guy as he's leaving L.A., and a sense of maturity. And then as I know now, if I didn't squander all those things, I certainly lost my way all over again."
Given the material, it's a testament to King's writing talent that his memoir descends neither into blithe anecdotes nor bleak admonishments. Instead, it deftly captures the tensions and contradictions that were the hallmarks of a decade when unbridled sexual freedom gave way to unimaginable despair.
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