(New York: Crown Trade Paperbacks, 1997)

When Ken Hanes started writing The Gay Guy's Guide to Love: The Dos, Don'ts, and Definite Maybes of Dating and Mating, he was involved in a relationship. Soon after the writing began, though, the relationship ended.

"This, of course, sent me in a whirlwind of doubt," Hanes says. "Should I be writing this book? Could I? That's when I decided to approach the book as a research project."

What Hanes got from his research and interviews is a collection of five hundred always-interesting and sometimes-funny comments and pieces of advice about gay male relationships.

"I'm not an authority," he said in an interview. "I don't have a Ph.D. in love -- though I'm studying -- and I'm not writing from the far side of a forty year relationship."

Hanes interviewed men with all sorts of relationship experiences. For example, he talked with Johnny and Buster who have been together more than fifty-one years. Also among the many people he interviewed were Oliver and York, both single and looking. Hanes says he synthesized the conversations into the advice format he uses for the book.

Some of the advice is simple and to the point. Number 91 suggests one should "never cruise the groom." Number 42 tells Catholics they should ignore what the Pope says about gay love. "He doesn't know anything about it," Hanes says. "And if even if he does, he shouldn't."

Mixed with the humor, the author provides some really good advice. For example, Hanes writes that it is not necessary to divide household chores equally unless that is really the way you want to do it. He also suggests you give your mate flowers often enough that the florist knows his favorites. The book includes several quizzes, too, adding a little variety and making you think.

Hanes, who says he used to consider himself a theatrical director but hasn't directed anything in two years, divides his time between writing stage plays and books. He always likes to have one book and one play in progress. His 1994 book, The Gay Guy's Guide to Life, spent nine months on the best seller list of Lambda Rising, a lesbian and gay bookseller.

He says he decided to write a book on gay relationships because compared to the amount of information about straight relationships, "relatively few books exist for gay men." It is also a project that he says he thinks can benefit the community and one that he wanted to do. He says sometimes an idea that might sell comes to him, but he doesn't pursue it because he "can't imagine devoting a year or more" of his life to it.

"It's almost impossible for me to get juiced up about writing something unless I think it fertilizes the possibility of growth or change, either in a personal or political way," he says.

Hanes divides the advice in this book into sections about the stages of love: preparing for it, looking for it, expressing it, living it day by day and others. Hanes also provides a section on mourning a lover who has died.

"Of course his death causes you pain," he writes. "That's Mother Nature's design. You're feeling exactly what a human being is supposed to feel."

While that section is somewhat solemn, most of the book is a much lighter read. The Gay Guy's Guide to Love is funny and often contradictory. Hanes meant it to be funny. And the contradictions are necessary, he says.

"Situations are unique and people are individuals," he says. "What is best -- or works -- in one situation might not be appropriate for another."

There is more consistency than contradiction in the book, though.

"While the contradictions in the literature and in people's opinions are abundant, there are certain ideas and concepts that repeat themselves." One example he cites is the declining frequency of sex as a relationship ages. He says people may not want to believe that, but his research says it is true.

"The issue to present in this book then becomes what are the strategies for dealing with it," he says.

If you are looking for a serious volume that explains the one right way to have a relationship, you will find neither. If you want a book that presents good relationship advice in a format people will actually read, this is for you. It could help you find a relationship or help make the one you have more successful.

"The successful couples -- whether traditional or non-traditional, monogamous or non-monogamous -- seem to be the ones who are in control of defining their relationships, whatever form that relationship takes," Hanes says. "They don't try to reinvent the wheel, but they realize there are a thousand different kinds of hubcaps to put on it."