Levi Huxton's Blog - Posts Tagged "lgbt"

This wonderful collection reflects gay experience in surprising and entertaining ways. With a strong undercurrent of dark humour, a splash of supernatural and a lot of imagination, Wheeler's short stories are anchored by erotic desires but buoyed by wit and a love of language.

They're also very diverse, which is rare with single-author collections. I was expecting a mixed bag, but the strike rate was high. Even the stories that failed to transport me held my attention. While it's fair to say some owe a debt to great writers such as Poe, Dahl or Rod Serling, the author brings a wealth of personal style, flair and lived experience which make these tales feel original and authentic. In fact I was struck by Wheeler's ability to write in a variety of voices yet retain a unifying style.

There's great joy as a reader in getting into the passenger's seat and being taken for a ride by a confident driver. From the initial erotically charged, supernaturally infused delights of Strawberries and Spider Strands, you know you're in good hands. You can relax and and enjoy the sights. Wheeler's masterful tonal shifts means the journey scales the gears of storytelling seamlessly, accelerating from introspective memoir to hilarious farce, taking a sharp turn into the macabre only to speed down surreal highways.

The sex is explicit but recognisable, which is refreshing. It is used to propel the stories forward, define characters and underscore the themes. And at times, it subverts the cliches of gay fantasies to satisfying effect. Wheeler makes the most of the potential of lust (and its gratification) to clarify characters' frustrations and aspirations, and help them come to terms with their true identities. Some of these erotic scenes are also loaded with powerful insights (The Fireside Bright, Changing Planes). Most are a lot of fun.

Highlights for this reader (aside from the aforementioned) include the incredibly moving Templeton In Love, in which music helps two exes figure out the way forward, and Yuri: a Pride Memoir, a simple but elegant reminder of how easily we can take our rights and freedoms for granted.

These berries were sweet and juicy and I'll be back for more.



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Strawberries and Other Erotic Fruits: Revised Edition

This volume of British gay erotica is a minor masterpiece.

Everything at first points to a simple one-handed read: the generic title, the "porn category" concept (college boy moves in with hot straight roommate), the half-naked guys on the cover.

It starts predictably enough. Tom is a virgin, it's his first day at university and he's nervous about who he gets to share a dorm room with. In quick succession, he meets three other boys - the nerd, the emo kid and the straight jock - and by the end of the book (spoiler!), Tom is no longer a virgin.

Straight Boy Roommate, however, is much more than what it advertises.

The first stroke of genius is to condense action that might logically have spanned a term or a year into 48 breathless hours. (More semen gets spilled in this timeframe than seems physiologically possible, but we'll call that magic realism.) This conceit propels the action forward with infectious kinetic energy. No character stays put for very long, and there's no time for doubts or rumination: action precipitates action. That choreography of perpertual movement and insatiable lust is an inspired and accurate portrayal of youth, capturing the restless mind and jittery body of late adolescence, the relentless obsession with accruing sexual experience, the giddy thrill of being suddenly freed from school and family.

This wouldn't work without excellent writing. With an economy of style, Troughton writes short, fluid sentences. Deceptively simple descriptions situate the action (and body parts) with impeccable clarity. The dialogue consistently rings true, alive with an authentic sense of place, class and character - it's also sometimes incredibly funny. The thin plot, an escalation of cover-to-cover sex talk and sex acts, belies a clever narrative construction, in which accelerated character arcs turn archetypes into three-dimensional beings whose acquaintance, by the end, the reader is thrilled to have made.

Without calling attention to what he is doing, Troughton bestows an invaluable gift to the reader - especially if the reader is a gay man - in the character of Dan.

Dan is the big straight rugby player, uncomplicated, maybe even a little dumb, extraverted and always up for a laugh. We all know him. He's the jock of countless movies, novels and real-life experiences. If you're a gay youth and you've not come out, Dan is the portrait of unattainability: the guy whose body you secretly lust after, whose social ease and popularity you envy. He's also the guy, traditionally, who might beat you up.

Troughton rewrites this archetype into a kind giant who just might turn out to be an unlikely ally. If Dan can relate to Tom's queer thirst, it's because he too is led by his dick and he knows resistance is futile. The expansion of his horizons is driven by horniness, not moral or philosophical epiphanies.

And yet by grudgingly giving Tom the permission to be himself - including sexually - Dan lifts a gigantic weight off many gay readers' minds. This generous gift is akin to the liberating monologue delivered by Elio's father in Call Me By Your Name, that explicit permission to desire and to love another man, granted to so few of us growing up.

Straight Boy Roommate will turn you on, big time. If you let it, it might also very well win you over.

Montana, 1880. A desolate homestead in the Eastern plains. Tom, a young widower, discovers a wounded outlaw hiding on his farm. The corrupt sheriff and his deputies are after Abe, the fugitive, and they don't care much for Tom either.

It's a great set-up for the illicit relationship that sparks between Tom and Abe. The stakes are high: the defense of private property, the survival of good men, and a love that dare not speak its name.

Desolate Homestead is no revisionist Western, attached as it is to the force-justifying founding myths of settler colonialism. The subversion here is in characters daring to imagine for themselves an alternative to traditional marital bliss (even if it involves the performance of heteronormative marital bliss).

A lot of the plot of this erotic period romance is predictable, story beats and sex scenes hitting with the predictability of crutching and shearing seasons. But I suppose there can be comfort in that, if you're so inclined. Overused devices are also beloved tropes (I'm a new reader to romance as a genre).

Harder to dismiss is Tom's plodding and repetitive internal monologue, in which he describes in minute detail what he could do, what he should do, what he might do, what he will do, and then what he is actually doing to keep his lover safe. Writers are often invited to show, not tell, and here we are told (again and again) about every aspects of the logistics of hiding a wounded man from the law.

Like the novel's title, the tone here is passively descriptive, leaving little room for pulse-quickening action or breathless surprise. This includes the sex scenes, which don't always contribute to the character's search for meaning (past the initial intimacy of a sensual bath) and whose repetitive nature (every orgasm results in "shooting thick white ropes of semen") doesn't bode well in the unlikely case of a long term relationship.

Thankfully, the two central characters are compelling enough that you care for their predicament. If these queer men are our ancestors, then their fight is our fight. We root for their future not just as characters threatened by ignorance and hatred, but as the brave men whose shoulders we now stand on. The novel is never more alive than when Tom imagines living his truth in plain sight.

Donnie Vakarian keeps Tom and Abe's backstories ambiguous enough that our imagination remains engaged (it was a relief to this reader when, despite having fallen head over heels, Tom acknowledges that after only a fortnight, he might not know Abe as well as he thinks). There's a good ending that picks up the pace and allows for a couple of curveballs, while setting up the sequels nicely (this is the first in a Montana series).

Farm life in 1880 Montana rings true, and Vakarian infuses his rural tale with authentic language and detail. He writes about dogs, horses and sheep with credible authority, and knows how to describe not just farm work but, say, the sequential smells of a stillborn lamb consumed by fire. Against this deftly painted backdrop of isolated plains, the loneliness of queer men with slim odds of finding one another reverberates in the mind long after the final page.

As a reader, the rush of excitement when you stumble across a voice that’s specific and authentic – one that stands out from the crowd yet speaks to you personally - is hard to beat.

I’m not generally a reader of mysteries, which is my loss since it’s kept me away from Michael Nava all these years. That was a mistake. Reading Lay Your Sleeping Head, a reworking of his 1986 Henry Rios mystery The Little Death, it quickly became obvious Nava is one of those quietly original and influential queer writers that should be household names – and not just to readers of mysteries and procedurals.

The strength of this dark slice of Californian noir isn’t the mystery that needs solving, however tightly plotted. Uncovering the truth behind the death of troubled golden boy Hugh and the corruption at the highest levels of Linden University (Stanford?) certainly kept me turning the page, but what kept me riveted was the character of Henry Rios himself, a gay, Latino public defender in the Bay Area.

You need a strong protagonist if you’re going to build a series of seven novels on the man’s broad shoulders. Nava borrows the well-worn tropes of the hardboiled genre – Henry’s dinner is two bowls of cereal washed down with a shot of Jack Daniel’s – only to subvert them by giving his guy a singular perspective informed by ethnicity, class, and sexuality.

Nava gets Henry’s mix of anti-hero resignation, hard-earned wisdom and persistent idealism just right. His marginalisation is born not just of a sexuality that doesn’t conform to its milieu (law enforcement, the 1980s), but how it intersects with a poor upbringing and the migrant experience. Henry doesn’t feel like he belongs anywhere, and that includes San Francisco’s flourishing gay community. Many will relate.

Henry is locked in a constant struggle to get at the truth and expose the lies of others, while wrestling with his own self-delusions and deceptions. Placing a truth-seeker in an environment where one must lie to survive is very smart indeed.

Without sentiment or psychological over-explaining, we discover how a man is driven to pick a side in the fight between justice and power. This struggle motivates his actions, but also animates Henry’s interior conflict. He’s forever “swimming up from deep water, [his] lungs about to burst, trying to reach the surface and breathe.” From the first page we believe (in) this character: his quest becomes ours. When rays of light pierce through the clouds of misanthropy, manipulation and murder – in the form of a fleeting chance at human connection – we root for Harry to curl up in the sunlight and rest his weary head.

In one scene, Henry tours a man’s study. "On a bookshelf was the same small collection of gay novels that every gay man owned: City of Night, The City and the Pillar, A Single Man, Dancer from the Dance, Tales of the City." Michael Nava’s name belongs in the canon and Lay Your Sleeping Head wouldn’t look out of place on that shelf.

Come for the mystery, stay for the social commentary, and fall in love with a great character, safe in the knowledge there are more books where he came from.

Richard is lonely and who can blame him. Around him, other gay New Yorkers seem to effortlessly glide through an instagram-ready world of expensive restaurants, Fire Island beaches, gym-toned bodies and orgiastic sex.

He’s stuck in a rut, suffers from academic paralysis, hates his roommate, and app-enabled hook-ups are showing diminishing returns. It’s a brand of millennial angst so common as to render his low-grade depression invisible, even to himself. Richard has a lot going for him, just not self-awareness.

So when our protagonist meets not one but two individuals with the potential to rescue him from himself, we can’t help but root for him, at least at first. Blake is a lawyer who looks like he could be a good match for Richard, not least because he actually likes him. Anne is also a lonely academic, who agrees to write his papers in exchange for a companionship that eventually turns into something more intimate.

After years of solitude, it’s hard to resent Richard for pursuing both options simultaneously, stringing along two people who probably deserve better. It’s not easy being broke in Brooklyn. After years of going dutch, he’d finally found someone to pay the metaphorical cheque.

In the end, Richard’s self-delusion, narcissism and indecisiveness are no match for Blake and Anne’s goodwill. In a masterful crescendo of anxiety, the situation comes to a head and the reader has no choice but to turn on our sympathetic hero.

The harder it was to like Richard, the more I felt compelled to understand why. I quickly realised two things that convinced me to stick around.

Firstly, Richard is a product of his late-capitalism surface-obsessed environment, in a city where every relationship seems transactional. James Gregor’s novel is filled with sharp observational insights into a society that discourages any kind of healthy inner-life.

Secondly, Richard holds up a mirror to the reader, and I could see some of my own flaws reflected there (and I’m not talking about attractive flaws either). Unmoored, Richard moves through life without logic or planning. He’s unable to recognize that this is true of most people, whatever their curated social media profiles might advertise.

New York City has grown up, left its adolescent excesses behind as it gentrified into middle-of-the-road consumerist adulthood (a land of “solar-powered taco stands” and “metallurgically bitter coffee”). Richard is unable to do the same, late to grasp that coming out is only half the battle (especially in a world where being gay fails to raise an eyebrow), taking responsibility for oneself is much, much harder.

Going Dutch is a skillful portrait of a life in stasis, of a man in a permanent state of deferral. Many will be put off by the unlikable Richard. It’s a shame because Gregor James has created a complex and revealing character whose meandering journey holds the key to understanding a much wider malaise. That the ride is uncomfortable is precisely the point.

Did YA exist when I was a teenager? Probably not as the genre it is today. The books that broke through my teen angst and spoke to me of other ways to be were by Donna Tartt, Douglas Coupland, Michael Chabon: adult novels I could decipher and from which I could imagine new pathways beyond the options presented by my peers. And then there were the gay writers whose work felt illicit or impenetrable and, writing with other adults in mind, did little to assuage my adolescent fears.

Today there’s an entire corner of literature for and about teens, and it’s as diverse and ambitious and ground-breaking as anything in the literary fiction aisle. I wish I was 16 again so I could immerse myself in this universe. More to the point, I wish my 16 year-old self could have found some of these unwritten books then. I can’t count the ways in which my life might have been different.

In The Boy From The Mish, Yuin author Gary Lonesboroough tells the uplifting story of a seventeen year-old Indigenous boy making sense of his desires, his beliefs and his future during one hot Australian summer.

It's almost Christmas, school's out, and Jackson’s looking forward to hanging with his mates. Just like every year, Jackson's Aunty and little cousins visit from the city - but this time they’re joined by another teen with whom Jackson has to share a room. Tomas is just out of Juvie, snores and would be annoying if he wasn’t so damn… cute.

What follows is the marvelous story of a queer awakening told in the simple but limpid voice of a mischievous boy who for the first time in his life, needs to make some serious choices.

An Aboriginal perspective on the coming out story is exactly what the world needs right now. Speaking from lived experience, the author tells a familiar tale but illuminates it with new insights. Well, new to this white reader anyway.

Lonesborough deftly captures the inner-monologue of a misfit youth wrestling with that particular brand of anxiety, the tug of war between fear and excitement, vulnerability in the face of self-doubt and the sense of invincibility common to young men of that age. Without positive models of gay life to refer to, Jackson wants to “get back to the way things were before I met him. Get back to me, to who I was, who I can still be.”

The stakes are high. Being different on The Mish is already perilous: Jackson and his friends have to contend with racism, both systemic and in their daily encounters with white kids and tourists. Rejection from his own community would break up the only real support system available to Jackson. The author makes subtle but very real references to the dead ends Aboriginal men too often face growing up in systemically racist system: juvie, jail, substance abuse, suicide.

Throw queerness in the mix and the environment becomes volatile indeed. “This is the Mish. No one does that here. I don’t do that.”

At the same time, Jackson discovers that connection to the land and to his community is also where he can locate the strength to be who he wants to be. In this respect, it’s particularly refreshing to see the rites of adolescent passage play out against a natural backdrop. Key moments in Jackson’s journey of self-discovery take place canoeing on a river, hiking up a mountain or during a smoking ceremony.

In an incredible conversation with an Elder, Jackson is told of the enduring suffocating shame of colonization, and its antidote: a pride in who we are, who we love and where we come from. Drawing that line between cultural revitalization and self-determination in the context of coming out is incredibly powerful. It’s a fleeting but defining moment in a book that rarely preaches, dispensing its lessons with a light touch.

When Tomas and Jackson discuss their collaborative graphic novel, an Aboriginal superhero origin story, it’s clear to the reader who the real superheroes are, and what they have to teach us. This book should be on the high school curriculum across the land.