Mistletoe in the Marigny, by Kyle Baxter (Five Points #3)

[Ulysses]

Mistletoe in the Marigny (Five Point 3)
By Kyle Baxter
Published by the author
Four stars

Although this is only the third of the “Five Points” series, I suspect there are more stories to be told. I can’t say if “Mistletoe in the Marigny” is my favorite, because each of these books has a rather different appeal for me. This book, however, has the advantage of being largely set in New Orleans, a place I know, and where I have family. The integration of Larry Fonteneau into his native NOLA and his pushy, meddling family is wonderful to behold. The central romantic arc, teaming actor/waiter/caterer Larry with the D-list TV star Joaquin Tapia, is pretty brilliant, too, playing on the inevitable insecurities and past romantic failures of professional drama queens to drive the plot forward.

Both Larry and Joaquin are lovely men, different physically and emotionally, but good at heart and yearning for a partner in their lives. The “betrayal” of one of Larry’s closest cousins down in Louisana adds a bitter taste to his pending Christmas visit home, and he convinces Joaquin, whom he dated very briefly, to pose as his boyfriend for the trip south. (Yes, fake boyfriend tropes are as important as the traditional family Christmas decorations, no matter how tired and dusty). Joaquin has ulterior (and yet not dishonorable) motives of his own, and is quickly seduced by the charm and beauty of New Orleans, the Fonteneau family, and his fake boyfriend.

If anything bugged me in this book it was the high-school level of emotional drama—something I didn’t see in “Bring Me Edelweiss.” The tendency (hell, the guarantee) that characters in romance novels will simply refuse to listen to each other or take the time to talk “until later” is sometimes really frustrating. There are other ways to build emotional tension. These are young professional men in their early thirties, not hormone-driven teenagers.

One very important detail that I both liked and was disappointed by was the subtext in this book of Tennessee Williams’s famous play “A Streetcar Named Desire.” I know both the play and the book from my student years, and it is a crucial fact that (slight spoiler here) both of the actors at the center of the book are trying out for a role in a new version of that play in New York. The Williams play becomes a sort of symbolic hotspot, representing the hurdles that Larry and Joaquin need to jump before they can be what they need to be to each other.

Oddly enough, however, the author never once mentions the fact that the gay subtext—deeply hidden and wrapped in heteronormative tropes—is essential to understanding “Streetcar,” even though it was never taught that way when I was a student. In a romance novel that is so much about keeping secrets, telling the truth, and not being honest about what you feel, the closeted sexuality that permeates this play and Tennessee Williams’s entire life should be woven into the plot of the romance. The fact that both Larry and Joaquin want to play Stanley Kowalski—a pure example of homophobic toxic masculinity if there ever was one—is never even tangentially mentioned. No gay actor would approach this play without all that firmly front-of-mind, especially given all the revelations about Marlon Brando’s fluid sexuality in recent years. I wish the talented Kyle Baxter had given Larry and Joaquin less teen-style angst and more artistic embrace of a great playwright’s tragic dilemma.

Taken in a big picture overview, the “Five Points” books are like Mart Crowley’s harsh “The Boys in the Band” (which I read at 16), but two generations later and a whole lot happier. The “Five Points” family of unrelated gay men is all about support and love and acceptance. It’s just the sort of holiday gift I needed for the end of a very weird year.