Blink, by Rick R. Reed

[Ulysses]

Blink
By Rick R. Reed
Dreamspinner Press, 2015
Cover by Reese Dante
Five stars

Well, this one made me cry, and not for the obvious reasons. Here’s a prime example of a book in which the love story is at the core of the narrative, but the purpose of the book is to illuminate bigger things about what it is to be a gay man.

A brief prologue section sets up the story: in 1982, twenty-two-year-old Andy Slater sees a beautiful young Hispanic man on the Chicago El – Carlos Castillo. In spite of his upcoming wedding to college sweetheart Alison, Andy makes an assignation with Carlos. That assignation is interrupted by a phone call from his mother, and their lives move on, whatever might have been between them unconsummated.

The bulk of the story is set in the present, thirty-three years later. And that’s all I’ll tell you, because you can guess the main point of the plot. But let me tell you, it’s not that simple. What I will tell you is that here is a romantic gay novel about two men in their mid-fifties. Both of them are happy, but not completely happy—for different reasons. Each of them has lived a life that included surviving the 1980s and 90s. For me, that’s enough to trigger some strong emotions, making me relive my own life over the past 30 plus years. It’s powerful to be acknowledged in this way in a novel, to have an author remind us that life is not always what we plan or we want. Whatever life throws at us, we do have some agency in how it plays out. To some degree, our happiness is ours to own.

Andy Slater and Carlos Castillo are the dual narrators. They are not alone in their voyage, and we meet people along the way who illuminate and crystalize their characters. I don’t want to reveal more, because it is a pleasure to meet everybody as they appear, and to incorporate them into our understanding of these two good men. It perhaps made it more enjoyable for me to read this book because men my age (I’m actually 61) are largely ignored in modern gay fiction. So much of this narrative echoed—even indirectly—my own voyage as a gay man in a world that has changed dramatically since 1982.

If I had one mild irritation, it was the author’s insistence on how hot and fit these two fifty-five-year-old are. This simply isn’t true for most men, gay or not. But it’s a romantic notion, and I embraced Reed’s fantasy at face value. We all remember who we were when we were young and slender and had thick heads of hair, even if nobody else does. Much of our present lives are filtered through those persistent memories, and Reed catches that beautifully.

I seem to be a fan of Rick R. Reed’s stories. Surely, he’s an author I want to support.