The Americans have coined a phrase for such grumpiness: ‘fatigue-gay’. Perhaps this newly discovered syndrome helps to explain the appeal and success of Adam Sutton and Neil McMahon’s autobiography–biography, Say It Out Loud: Journey of a real cowboy. Adam Sutton is a horse-wrangler in his early thirties; he is also gay. Until the 2005 cinematic version of Annie Proulx’s short story ‘Brokeback Mountain’, that combination might have seemed unlikely. As noted in Say It Out Loud, Bob Katter, the conservative MHR from Queensland, waved aside the possibility of gay cowboys when the film was released. ‘It’s not the sort of profession that attracts those sort of people,’ Katter snarled. That is how Sutton experienced himself as a young country man, almost fatally divided by desire and identity. He writes about sitting on a ledge in the bush and contemplating leaping. There is more to his flirtation with suicide than sexuality, but the major theme of this book remains Adam’s struggle to reconcile seemingly incompatible aspects of himself. This is not an especially new task for gay men; it is a credit to Sutton and McMahon that they imbue yet another coming out story with freshness and vitality.

It helps that Sutton is something of a lad. ‘Crazy Adam’ is the name that Adam gives to that part of himself which is up for anything. For a long while, the authors suggest, ‘Crazy Adam’ protected gay Adam from exposure. Whether it was spraying walls with graffiti, drinking too much, travelling the rodeo circuit with his beloved horses, or accidentally setting himself alight and suffering facial burns, Crazy Adam lurches from one boy’s own misadventure to the next. Even after Adam acknowledges his homosexuality, his crazy side is never far away. He meets his co-author, Sydney Morning Herald journalist Neil McMahon, at a huge gay nightclub in Sydney, where the A-listers graze on recreational drugs and each other. Ignoring the narcissistic etiquette, Adam picks up McMahon, a self-described ‘giant of a man’, and hurls him across the dance floor – not the sort of pick-up McMahon might have had in mind.

A recurring theme in coming-out narratives is redemption. Say It Out Loud dishes out redemption in bucket loads. The title is a give-away, a product of our confessional and therapeutic age. Better to speak the truth about the self than suffer in silence is the gist. The book doesn’t limit itself to sexual redemption. As a nineteen-year-old, Adam wipes out a car and a life in an alcohol-related driving accident. He is sent to goal for eighteen months and released after six. Unable to resettle emotionally in his small country town, the site of the accident, Adam spends the next few years wandering the continent, from Cairns to Western Australia. Adam’s father is a Vietnam veteran; the corollary between father and son is made explicit. Over the course of the book, both son and father face their demons, emerge stronger, and forge a deeper and richer relationship. Foucault would have had a field day with all of this. But Foucault is long dead, and probably didn’t have a strong grasp on emotion and human frailty anyway.

Sutton related his tale to his journalist mate, who wrote it up. McMahon has done an admirable job, avoiding mawkishness and sentimentality. I am a jaded old soul, especially when it comes to matters gay, yet I found this book sweetly moving. Even so, I couldn’t keep the critic down. In an author’s note, McMahon explains that although a good friend of Sutton, he chose not to include their relationship in the book, for fear it would be ‘too jarring’. I’m inclined to think the occasional jolt might have been refreshing. It might also have helped me to unpack Neil from Adam. Perhaps I’m not the only gay Sydneysider suffering a case of fatigue-gay.