Morehead San Francisco in the late 1970's, and early 1980's. It was a time of sexual, evolutionary, and political change with both glorious and nearly catastrophic consequences. It was also a great time to be a straight young man in a gay old city. It was a time for Morehead. Morehead,  a new novel by Jeffrey Hickey Preview Reading and Video Shoot Starring Joseph Rende as Dave Morehead Lauren Pizzi as almost all the  women Sandra Allen as Tracy Jeffrey Hickey as everyone else Live  readings The Dance Palace Theater 506 B Street Point Reyes Station, CA July 26 7:30 pm Climate Theater 285 9th Street San Francisco, CA August 8 & 9 First Review of Morehead “Morehead” by Jeffrey Hickey     A Book Review by Charlie Morgan Published July 17, 2008 The West Marin Citizen         When Dave Morehead walks into his first class at San Francisco State College, Fall 1978 and six sets of male eyes fix on him, he knows something different is afoot, and there is a tension in the air right away.  That’s how the first scene in Inverness author Jeffrey Hickey’s latest book “Morehead” opens,  and yes, the author gives the punster in you some tongue-in-cheek freedom with the names in the book.  The times are wild in the student scene and sex and partying seem to be on everyone’s lips as the gay revolution catches traction and the general level of campus promiscuity and drinking celebrate hand in hand with the late 70’s explosive passion, pathos and expressiveness of the gay culture. The opening scene bursts on us with an in- your- face  edge as Hickey serves notice that we’re not here to relax; a sprout has just exploded through the icy ground and its time for some real life schoolin’!                          Dave Morehead is a hetero guy basically trying to get laid, hang with the guys and ride the comfort zone of college for however long it lasts; the book is a compilation of Dave’s  written journals and cassette recordings as Hickey has Dave tell us his story in the first person.  Morehead grows up before our very eyes, riding a sort of stupid, honest, innocent bluntness and a basic classic heroic quality as he negotiates shared lusty leers, lots of beer and music, satories about gay people.  Hickey also uses flashbacks to counterpoint the narration, like Dave’s first sexual experiences, and some of the circles of people he’s been in-basically a community college Los Angeles crowd and the San Francisco scene.                           Dave has lots of encounters with women, many of them sex  partners; as a handsome hetero whose appeal is high with straight women in a mating pond teeming with outed gay men, he has lots of confidence with the ladies and seems to learn through the contact; he also receives direction-as well as erection-from some as all affect him or touch his expanding awareness and sensitivity through gain or loss.                            As Hickey takes us through Dave and the guys at a “blowout” beer and music party thrown, appropriately enough by a guy named “Rave” (where the times are branded into us by the mention of The Clash, Brian Eno, Brand X etc -Hickey may even consider a discography of the book’s music) , he rides a slippery slope; even if a writer’s motive is to impart the feeling of the dementia of student drinking parties and the implied political and interpersonal stupidity, there’s only so much vomit I can take-luckily, Hickey pulls us up short ; soon Dave meets  Gwen, a beautiful, aware bi-sexual woman who urges Morehead to take a Sex Roles and Communication class taught by an older lesbian professor and many women students, mostly gay, pretty dignified and angry.  This chapter energized me in particular;  the class room scene was a vehicle to pull some serious strength out of Dave, who honestly stands his straight man ground under the clever watch of the professor, eventually reaching a mutual common courtesy  with his classmates; Hickey also suggests throughout the book that Dave’s honest questioning is bolstered by the inner security of a loving relationship with his parents.                          Through another woman friend, Dave meets the book’s central character, Roger, Hickey’s dignified voice of the male gay community, responding clearly and honestly to all of Dave’s hetero blunt boundary setting regarding various sex acts and questions regarding homosexuality; eerily “that Gay Cancer” is just beginning to make itself known and soon the world would know the ignorance of President Ronald Reagan and how his faux-moral  politicization of science initially assisted in the spread of a deadly disease.                       No sooner does this happen, than the inauguration of the energizing, visceral and heroic Gay Olympics is embraced; there is a hilarious scene acted out by students where a Howard Cosell type (Carl Badwig) and others press a representative of the US Olympic Committee regarding the USOC’s prohibition of the word “Olympics” being used by the Gay Olympics despite the fact that it had no problem with the name being used by the Special Olympics, K-9 Olympics, Nude Olympics, etc; through this discussion, Hickey also challenges the passages from Leviticus used to condemn homosexuality in the Bible.                            There is physical and philosophical travel in this book, and some of the chapters could stand alone as short tales, like the hilarious chapter about butter flavoring on popcorn, and another where Dave encounters a special person at the ocean.  Hickey is good at keeping the story moving by changing the cadences from one chapter to the next; it is a well-written, honest story is about a restless, curious, student of life and his times; Hickey brings us to the seventies complete with reincarnation groups, gay men in the Castro with a whistle patrol that discourages muggers, muggings, aids, Supervisor Dan White’s murders of  San Francisco gay supervisor Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone, and subsequent light jail sentence ,San Francisco’s “The Hippo” restaurant and lofty college degrees that lead to car sales and temp agency work.                               While this is a book for everyone, I hope lots of  other straight men read it; assertive male sexuality doesn’t change because it’s gay or hetero. There are times when this book made me uncomfortable, but for all the right reasons; ten years before Morehead’s matriculation there, we at SF State had a saying, “A mind blown is a mind shown;”  using a student metaphor, Jeffrey Hickey, has poignantly, lovingly and very humanly defined, for the times, a rite of passage for the loving but tough heart.

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