Change into that Victoria's Secret thing that I like / Alright, okay tonight you're having me your way / Perfume, spray it there, put our love in the air (Bed – J. Holiday).
I’m sure you can tell by how many of these kinds of books I read in the last week alone that I really really love Dicks! Heh, that was just a little Seattle humor for you. See, because Dicks is a very popular burger joint over here and then there's "dick," as in... penis. A bit of a double entendre, if you will. I mean, I'm a pretty big fan them in the way we're all thinking of as well. Did any of that land? Because trust me, if this weren’t a written review and I had said all this out loud instead, then this joke would have killed, so don't go calling me Arthur Fleck. Now, let me recite the entirety of Macklemore's "Same Love" to give you the full "annoyed by a hipster Seattleite" experience! "When I was in the third grade, I thought I was gay"... just kidding, I wouldn't do that to you (or me). Besides, I'm here to talk about Lace by K.C. Wells, and since it's that time of year where I only have enough bandwidth to handle short stories or novellas, this pithy little thing sure did the trick. So, the story here is about two besties named Dave and Shawn who start hooking up after the former learns about the latter’s proclivity towards wearing women’s underwear. I mean, from a personal standpoint, I don’t think clothing should have an ascribed gender, but this scandalized and heavily specific tone is how this book is advertised, so that’s how I feel I should describe it. Anyway, I enjoyed Lace in much the same way as I love Dicks, because despite the fact that the burgers come out just okay more often than not, I can’t seem to find it in me to completely cut it off. I’d say there's a strong foundation here and I appreciated how K.C. Wells focused on letting the audience get to know both characters before getting into the kinky side of things, and because of this, the sexualized cover feels earned within the narrative rather than just being a bit of click-bait. I also liked how when Shawn and Dave started doing the dirty, they literally just started going at it! What I mean is that a lot of these overly sweet romances tend to focus too hard on making sure everything's laid out nice and proper, and in turn it makes the story feel rather clinical and sanitized, to the point where things start to feel more like an instruction manual than a story made for entertainment purposes. And this naturalistic prose extends to how it handles the idea of coming out through Dave's journey, in that his relationship with Shawn doesn't "solve" all of his issues surrounding his sexuality.
And considering he had just started exploring his attraction to men (to the point where he actually acts like a dick to his girlfriend), I think having him "fully realized" would have felt unearned. Sorry, that makes it sound like a video game or something. You see, Dave is only a level 1 Bisexual at this point in the story, he doesn't have the late game gear that you only get at level 100!Anyway, I'm just saying that a classic "walking on eggshells" approach to the issues surrounding his sexuality would have only served as a detriment to the overarching story and done a disservice to a character that already lends himself to the more "toxic" side of things anyway. In other words, a "John Green" kind of ending full of redemption and realizations wouldn't have worked here because both Shawn and Dave are actually... trash people. But more on that later, for now I'll just say that Lace goes for a Family Stone kind of cozy Thanksgiving vibe with its quirky cast of weirdo characters, but the thing is, I just found most of them to be rather unpleasant similarly to, you know… the movie Family Stone! I straight up hate that movie. But yeah, outside of the fact that both the main characters sound less like the stars of a kinky novella about a guy who gets off on wearing panties and more like those guys who were super into NFT’s a couple years back only to then switch up their game to center around crypto currency, they just really… sucked ass. Well, actually they sucked dick, but you know what I mean. They’re both terrible and impatient to everyone around them except for each other, what with Shawn all talking back to his mother like he's an angsty teenager rather than a twenty-seven year old man, and Dave going ghost at every possible inconvenience. Actually scratch that last part, that bit is actually a pretty realistic response to coming out. Otherwise, It didn't help that the narration made no effort whatsoever to even try making them likable at any point and in any respect. Which I guess is fine from a subjective standpoint, sometimes people are just shitty, but there was a distinct lack of narrative self-awareness that would have otherwise made our protagonists tolerable. There's a difference between an author specifically writing unlikable characters to make a point, and one that accidentally stumbles through writing the shittiest people ever to be put on a page. For one, Dave’s girlfriend breaks up with him not because he’s bisexual (which is what I expected because it would immediately garner sympathy for Dave, and because it's unfortunately a common occurrence), but rather because she catches him flirting with another dude. Like, okay? There's a different story out there where she's the main character of her own Eat, Pray, Love situation!
I just find the whole situation rather funny because I can't get over the fact that... is she not the good guy in this scenario!? The book tries to sweep all of this under the rug in one sentence by being all like, “why is she acting crazy over some flirting!? She needs to lighten up!” and I’m sorry… but in my book, flirting with other people while you're in a committed relationship is a shitty thing to do to your partner regardless of gender, no? But whatever, I guess, let's move on to Shawn, who is even worse than somebody who's toxic; he's annoying and pedantic! Sure, he's understandably annoyed by his mother for always trying to set him up on dates with any gay guy she can find, but the shitty part on his end is where he constantly berates these poor dudes for always “living up to every gay stereotypes” like being hairdressers or acting outwardly fem. I suppose you could argue that his attitude might imply some internalized homophobia on his end considering his whole thing is that he likes wearing lingerie in the bedroom, but none of this is explored... because none of this was considered by the author. So yeah, he's seriously an asshole. You can just feel the undercurrent of unfair judgement radiating off of him where he considers himself a “gold star gay,” which outside of the fact that that’s an offensive term created to divide the community, it's also just something that doesn’t exist. If you don’t support the entirety of the LGBT+ community, every single letter, then your ass doesn’t belong in it. Anyway, this wasn’t great but I'm okay with it. I will say that I'm glad that this book didn't harp too hard on the kink aspect of wearing different kinds of underwear, because I think that clothing can just be used as another form of personal expression rather than always trying to apply gender norms to it. Billie Eilish dresses like a member of G-Unit over here, and Shawn can wear lingerie over there, it's all cool! Otherwise, I probably only rated this as high as I did because I'm always a lot more lenient with stories about friends becoming lovers and I just like the fact that the cover is pretty hot in addition to actually fitting the story it's attached to. But my biggest problem with Lace was that without any of the charm necessary to make a story like this really click, then I just wonder what was the point of any of this? It goes hard on the friendship and "being good to each other" angle, but because both Shawn and Dave are so casually cruel to everyone around them, it just feels bereft of much needed sentimentality. Just like a social media website without a messaging system, there's no human connection!
““Hey. U going 2 the gym? U didn’t say yesterday.”
Oh yeah, also this man texts like an FBI agent.