Santino Hassell, First and First

[Ulysses]

First and First (Five Boroughs series, #3)
By Santino Hassell
Five stars

I’m giving Santino Hassell five stars for being a unique voice in gay romance. As a bi man, he clearly understands some gay reality first hand. He’s also a fantastic writer, and creates intense, vivid characters. Moreover, in a world where I grow ever wearier of rote, perfunctory sex scenes, Santino makes it all about the emotional underpinnings. This book pushes into some sexual territory that might make people uncomfortable, but it was all quite necessary for the characters’ story arcs.

Caleb Stone and Oliver Buckley. Two young men with serious daddy issues. Both were raised by rich families on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and both challenged the status quo by coming out and thus causing their families public embarrassment. Each of them bears the emotional scars of their decisions, and while we don’t know Oli Buckley well at all when the book stars, we know Caleb too well, by reputation.

Caleb was David’s boyfriend—David who we know very well from the first two books—the boyish blond school teacher from Connecticut, but not from the rich part of Connecticut. Caleb has been painted as a cold, manipulating character, whom David broke up with because he just couldn’t find love with him. Now we find out why.

This book is Caleb’s redemption. The action takes place through Caleb’s eyes in a first-person narrative. I not only forgave Caleb all his sins almost instantly, I fell in love with him quickly. He became the uptight, inexperienced boy I was in my early 20s. Behind his handsome, forbidding exterior, seemingly confident and even arrogant, Caleb is a lonely boy, desperate to feel loved.

I admit I rolled my eyes at the stereotyping of rich UES people (after all Caleb’s parents are MY age, and I have a lot of friends on the UES). I also admit that I’m not entirely sure I buy into the general notion that rich WASPS of my generation are all homophobic social climbers. But Caleb’s parents are two individuals, as is his sister Meredith. They are not meant to represent everyone in their milieu, and so I ended up taking them at face value. I thought the presentation of the elder Stone was actually pretty brilliant. We begin to understand how broken Caleb is because of the way his father treats him. (My own father was warm and embracing of his gay son, but I had friends who weren’t so lucky.)

What I loved most about this book—aside from the intense romance and emotional exposure Santino brings to his characters—is the forthright way it deals with issues of monogamy in the gay world. Even though this is a contemporary setting, little has changed from my own coming out years in the 1970s. Sex and love are not the same thing. Commitment and pleasure seem to be at odds with each other, especially when magnified through the lens of urban hedonism. This was as true in the clubs and baths of the 70s as it is today, apparently. AIDS shattered my world in the 1980s, but it has become part of the complex background to gay life in 21st century America. The legality of gay marriage hasn’t really changed the truth that it’s still harder to be gay in this world than it is to be straight. The world still isn’t all “Modern Family,” in spite of what it seems to be. Caleb’s pain is real. Oli’s confusion is real.

And that’s why this book shines.