In Search of Lost Time, Vol. 6: Finding Time Again – Marcel Proust, Translated by Ian Patterson (Penguin Classics)

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Finding Time Again is a new translation of the final volume of Marcel Proust’s classic epic novel In Search of Lost Time, the culmination of Viking Penguin’s new translation, begun in 2005, with each volume handled by a different translator. Translated by Ian Patterson, this volume follows Marcel as he observes the changes wrought by the Great War in his high society friends.

In Search of Lost Time has an intimidating reputation with its lengthy sentences and deep look at early twentieth century French society, but once you begin, it’s hard to stop. Patterson especially captures the language well here, which feels surprisingly easy to follow and almost addictive to read, drawing us further into the story. Plus, Marcel makes for an engaging narrator, giving us all the gossipy tidbits about the large cast of characters.

His candid discussions of homosexuals (or “inverts” as they were known back then), are simply amazing. He remembers his childhood friend Gilberte’s husband, Saint-Loup, who had a longstanding affair with the violinist Morel, and he wonders how much Gilberte knew and understood of Saint-Loup’s secret life. Later, he wanders into a hotel and accidentally spies on Baron de Charlus being chained and beaten by working-class men as part of his fetish. Afterward, the baron talks to the men, whom he’s paid to pretend are rough, dangerous criminals, and he gets offended when one of them forgets it and mentions a minor crime. Years later, Marcel encounters the baron again, now decrepit and lowered in society after Morel “outed” him, and another aristocrat denounced his German leanings. Still, according to his valet, the baron continues to chase after young men; in fact, during their conversation, the valet must intervene in the baron’s conversation with the gardener’s son.

It’s easy to forget how groundbreaking this was at the time, as American and English novels never talked about homosexuality so openly. Even E.M. Forster’s Maurice, which was written in 1913, wasn’t published until after his death in 1971. And it’s fascinating that while Proust himself was gay, Marcel comes across as fairly straight, although in the first volume, Swann’s Way, he seems smitten with Charles Swann.

There are plenty of other juicy, soap opera-like events. At an aristocrat’s party, where for the entertainment a young actress is reciting poetry, Marcel discusses another party across town, hosted by the actresses’ dying former rival, to which only one young man has shown up. In fact, her own daughter and son-in-law sneak away to the more popular party, where the younger actress, not actually the host, has them beg to see her as a way of humiliating her rival.

Marcel also makes profound observations about life and art. At the party, he’s surprised at how old everyone’s become. He takes a while to recognize friends he’s known for years, and he mistakes younger people for their elders. Walking over the paving stones to the party dredges up memories of his childhood, which he analyzes while waiting in the library. At the volume’s beginning, he thinks he doesn’t have the talent to be a writer, but by the end, he realizes he’ll finally work on his novel, with time as its subject.

For the full Proust experience, it’s probably useful to read the earlier volumes, to become familiar with the many recurring characters who frequently pop in and out. Indeed, early on, Gilberte talks about her perspective of a pivotal event in Swann’s Way. She sent a signal to the young Marcel at that time that he totally misinterpreted. But for being nearly a century old, and about a society that no longer exists, Finding Time Again feels almost contemporary and can certainly be read on its own. Endnotes for now-obscure figures and events, as well as a synopsis, are helpfully included at the end.

Reviewed by Charles Green

Proud Pink Sky – Redfern Jon Barrett (Amble Press)

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So far, this has been a banner year for excellent books, and I’ll be hard pressed to narrow them down to a top dozen for my list in December. But that’s a few months away, so I’m just going to enjoy the bounty–including Proud Pink Sky, a gem from Redfern Jon Barrett and Amble Press that turns out to be a totally absorbing exploration of a gay metropolitan utopia.

In this version of late 1990s Berlin, the entire city is a gay community of twenty-four million people with its own boundaries, neighborhoods, government, and language–the latter an updated Polari, natch. Into this milieu come William and Gareth, a teenaged gay couple desperate to escape the south of England, and Cassie and Howard, a straight couple seeking job opportunities for Howard, who works in construction. As William and Gareth are not married, a requirement for full resident status, they settle in the transitional Q neighborhood. Cassie and Howard are relegated to the straight Hetcarsey. Although their lives do not intersect, each couple integrates itself into the city, blurring their boundaries as they find new friends and other pursuits.

Redfern has built a unique world here that mirrors our own in terms of conflict as trans and polyamorous rights move to the forefront of the LGBTQI+ struggle. The trans and non-standard gay or lesbian elements have been ghettoed into the Remould neighborhood, a shadowy enclave deemed “less than” the rest of the city. In particular, this is where Cassie strays as Howard immerses himself in a men’s Bible study group intent on bringing more traditional values to the city. Gareth gets a bartending job and becomes a regular part of the gay community, but William’s interests lie elsewhere.

An integral part of the world-building is the excerpts from “The Honest Guide to Gay Berlin” sandwiched between the chapters, covering the area’s history, customs, and, of course, language. As stated above, the language is the long-dead Polari, a pidgin British tongue copped from a variety of sources, some of which survives to this day: “camp” (effeminate), “bevvie” (drink), and “drag” (clothes). A glossary of Polari terms, some created especially for the novel, is at the end, and provides some interesting reading. Most of the words, however, you can understand from context.

Redfern shines most admirably, however, in the creation of their characters. Cassie is suitably adventurous while Howard is unexpectedly progressive–especially in the beginning. But his descent into a more hidebound point of view is among the most fascinating parts of the book. William begins as the driving force in their escape to Berlin, but he stagnates once they arrive. This leaves Gareth to provide the impetus for them to succeed as a couple, but it turns out he’s not quite up to the task, preferring to be out and about when William doesn’t care to.

Proud Pink Sky is an impressively readable piece of work that captivates you early on and drags you effortlessly into a utopia that isn’t quite what it’s cracked up to be. You’ll enjoy the charcter, the story, and the setting. What more could you ask for?

JW

© 2023 Jerry L. Wheeler

My Cat’s Guide to Online Dating – Christian Baines (Queer Mojo/Rebel Satori Press)

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Rebel Satori Press

Full disclosure: Christian Baines is a good friend of mine, and I’ve edited a couple of his previous books. None of this, however, prepared me what happens in this dark, disturbing, and deliciously funny novel. Oh, I’m aware of his tendency to write narratives that take the reader to some fairly bizarre places, but he surpasses himself brilliantly in My Cat’s Guide to Online Dating, melding revenge, hookups, cats, fever dreams, cannibalism, and freezer space with a WTF plotline to come up with one of the most entertaining books I’ve read this year.

Zach, on summer break from his freshman year at university in Toronto, comes home to his parents who, thankfully, are going to be away for six weeks on a religious retreat. His plan is to have lots and lots of sex, starting with Bttm4discreet, an online hookup. Bttm4discreet, however, happens to be Alistair Conway, the guy who ruined his high school life by outing him on social media and causing his parents to home school him his senior year. Zach recognizes Alistair, but Alistair doesn’t recognize him since he’s slimmed down. During Alistair’s exit, Zach’s cat, Grace Jones, trips him on the stairs, and he breaks his neck. With Grace Jones’s help, Zach has to deal with the body. However, that doesn’t mean he still can’t hookup…

Baines knows by now that the secret to making an unbelievable plot believable is keeping one foot firmly planted in reality, and the easiest way to do that is to create plausible characters. Zach is the glue that holds this whole thing together, and Baines works hard to keep him normal in spite of a texting cat and hookups that continue to go south. One of the best bits is the incident with Ethan, who is trying to maintain his own concept of normality by inviting Zach to post-sex dinner with his wife, Beth. They have an open relationship. You can see clearly the path toward the threesome, but then Baines zags by including a mother-in-law who also knows Ethan has outside sex with men. The frisson is wonderful, and Baines writes some snappy-ass dialogue here.

But Zach seems to be on a losing streak with sex. There’s Ben, a closeted former classmate, Dorian, a professional dom who’s a sub when he’s not working, and, of course, Cascade. Cascade is a movie buff who seems to have the most in common with Zach and is the most normal of the men he meets. Unfortunately, he has a partner he’s not willing to leave. However, they seem to come back to each other time and time again.

One of the dangers in reviewing books with such dangerously warped premises is that you really can’t reveal too much or risk a spoiler or two, and I wouldn’t do that to such a precariously balanced book. Best you take my word that My Cat’s Guide to Online Dating is well worth your money and time if you like something different and offbeat. I can just about guarantee you’ll enjoy it. Highly, highly recommended.

JW

© 2023 Jerry L. Wheeler

Consecrated Ground – Virginia Black (Bywater Books)

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World-building is a tough process, and it’s easy to go wrong. You really have to start off on the right foot–preferably one that doesn’t require explanation, which is the death of action. You definitely don’t want to lose your reader on the first page. Many books wither on the vine trying to get the balance between movement and pause right, but Virginia Black’s Consecrated Ground isn’t one of those. Her very first scene is full of action but has just enough explanation to make you understand why the action is important. It’s a perfect beginning to an excellent story.

On the death of her binder witch father, war witch Joan Matthews goes back to her home in Calvert, OR only to find the town besieged by attacks from a nearby vampire lord named Victor. The binder coven protecting the town all these years has been ineffective against him, and the surrounding magical border has been breached. Joan also has to face her former lover, Leigh, who is now living in the house she shared with Joan’s late father and has a dark secret that may just be the key to triumphing over Victor and saving the day.

One of the reasons Black’s world-building is so effective here is that she sets up the situation, giving us the indication that her war witches and binder witches and coven law and vampire territory are universal. How the world got that way is immaterial. So many authors would have to give background to their background and explain that. In Black’s world, it simply is, and that’s enough. She wastes no time before moving on to establish her well-defined characters.

Joan is set up to be larger-than-life from the first scene, but she is more complicated than that. She also has a sense of vulnerability concerning the town, its traditions, her father, and, of course, Leigh. Leigh is also set up to be the lover-with-a-secret, but what I find interesting about that is that Black subverts the trope by (and I have to be vague here to avoid spoilers) ensuring the reader understands her secret will not go away just because the lovers reunite–and you know they will. The other characters are ancillary, and though I wish they were a bit more fleshed out, this is really Joan’s show, and Black rightly keeps the focus on her. Black also has a way with the fight scenes, providing just enough tension to keep the outcome in doubt until the killing blow.

Consecrated Ground is an interesting and fully realized entry in the paranormal sweepstakes with some novel approaches and a great turn at world-building. Fans of the genre won’t be disappointed in either the magical or the romantic aspects. It’s a solid start from an author I look forward to reading again, and it’s definitely worth your time (great cover, too!).

JW

© 2023 Jerry L. Wheeler

First Born Sons – Vincent Traughber Meis (Spectrum Books)

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Stories don’t get much more modern than Vincent Traughber Meis’s First Born Sons. Set against the COVID pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement and its violent backlash, and the California wildfires, Meis’s latest novel had me marveling at how it was possible for him to chronicle such recent history and get the book through production in short order until it hit me that all happened three years ago. Somehow, 2020 feels more recent. I guess it was the lingering impact of what was probably the most tumultuous year in modern memory. Meis takes us back there with all the familiar uncertainty, fear, heartbreak, anger, and even moments of absurdity. A diverse cast of queer and non-queer characters also provides readers the opportunity to see something of themselves on a more personal level.

First Born Sons has the feel of a sweeping family saga, in part because that year encompassed so much. Each chapter takes place in the recent past, but point of view characters span three generations and some are products of historical traumas such as Black persecution in the 1960s South and the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. It’s a uniquely American story that speaks to repeated cultural patterns, from queer suppression and the country’s long standing problem with racism to worsening natural disasters.

As suggested by its title, Meis’s novel focuses on the eldest sons of an extended family, and those characters were carefully chosen to reflect the evolving meanings of manhood. Many of the male characters are queer, including M, who is transitioning from female to male. Others are young adults who are feeling out their identities. Devlin, a twenty-year-old with mixed race parents, is happily enchanted by the sexual attention he receives from both women and men. Jason, a fifteen-year-old, is leaning into white male self-righteousness and militancy. Those characters alternate with mothers, sisters, and younger siblings who are each, at times, point of view characters with important stories to tell. The result is a loose web of storylines that gradually intersect at a portentous family birthday party.

Lamar, a young, Black, free-spirited, blind gay man is introduced first, escaping from a cabin in the Northern California forest beset by wildfire. He has collected the equipment for his livelihood as a deejay but is stopped by patrolling policemen who presume that he’s a looter. His older friend and the owner of the cabin, Byron, arrives and tries to defend Lamar, but it takes the intervention of a neighbor, George, to persuade the policemen to release both Lamar and Byron. From there, we learn of Byron and Lamar’s interconnected families and tragedies in New Orleans, both men having left behind a bitter past. For Lamar, he traded out the homophobia of his Louisiana hometown for the subtle and overt racism of the Bay Area along with the ableist tendencies of its gay community.

Interracial situations permeate the lives of many of the characters. Augie and Ruben, an upper-middle-class white/Latino gay couple are raising a thirteen-year-old Black son, Colton, who has recently decided he wants to have a relationship with his Black surrogate mother. AJ is in the midst of a custody battle with the father of her two sons, who is drawing their eldest, Jason, into white supremacist ideology. Meanwhile, she’s having an affair with an undocumented Mexican man, Chato, who is trying to reform from a criminal past.

M, who was born Augie and AJ’s older sister, is finally ready to do something about a long-deferred dream to live as a man and must break the news to her husband of twenty-five years. As 2020 would have it, M faces that conversation while stuck on a cruise ship in which COVID has broken out and forced everyone into lockdown in their cabins.

The dilemmas faced by these characters ring true for our times, touching upon the increasing freedom to love who we want, identify how we want, and create the families that we want, while posing necessary questions. How do two gay fathers prepare a Black teenager for survival in a racist world when neither of them have experienced anti-Black racism? What can a divorced woman do to mitigate her ex-husband’s white nationalist influence on her son when that son is badly in need of a relationship with his father? Are gay men beholden to a conventional moral code when it comes to pursuing sex and love with men who are partnered, however ambivalently?

There’s much more plot to the book, but given its surprises, I recommend discovering it with fresh eyes. Meis has created an enjoyably provocative story about contemporary queer families that’s a tribute to all of us who made it through the past three years as well as the ones we’ve lost.

Reviewed by Andrew J. Peters

A Transcendental Habit – James Callan (Queer Space/Rebel Satori Press)

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As I’ve often said, one of my favorite things about doing this blog is running into new books, especially the odd one I can’t classify or stick into a convenient box for labeling. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s sublime when it does. Such is the case with James Callan’s A Transcendental Habit, which is part quest, part buddy/caper novel, part romance, and part urban fantasy. But its congealed whole is a fascinating, wild ride you’ll heartily enjoy.

Our POV character, Jarred, lives in Nyvyn–known to the locals as Palindrome or Drome–making a living flipping chicken at Taco Nirvana and cruising the mean streets of nastytown. Until he runs into Bee, that is. Bee is a powerfully attractive stranger Jarred meets during one of his street sojourns, bearing a bionic eye and leg. They have a drink at the Bee and Lily, named after Bee and his sister, Lily, who runs the bar. Jarred finds out Bee is the ex of a guy named Avid Argyle, who discovered a drug called Squidge, a miracle psychedelic curative made from caterpillar larvae. Argyle, however, took too much and became a demigod who parted with Bee on bad terms. Bee wants to stop Argyle but needs help and so turns to Jarred as well as his sister and her significant other, a shapeshifter named Ren. Together, they fight enemies underground in the sewers and on a debris-laden landscape to achieve Bee’s goal.

If this sounds convoluted, it only does so in summary. The story unfolds rapidly and logically, hooking the reader with Jarred’s incredibly tasty voice. It’s just world weary and cynical enough to be interesting without sounding harsh or judgemental. The world he and the others inhabit is also fascinating–properly dystopian but not alien. Callan’s world building is subtle yet distinctive, with a polished finesse guaranteed to take you out of your everyday life and drop you somewhere very, very different.

What I really liked here is that the narrative defies your expectations. Take, for example, the relationship between Jarred and Bee. Jarred, at more than a few points, thinks he might have found The One (hence the part romance I referenced above), but after the denouement, that doesn’t happen–any further, and I’d have to give a plot point away. What appear to be answers only lead to more questions, especially where relationships are involved. The one between Lily and Ren is more stable, but you get the feeling they’ve been together longer and have a lot of history.

Callan’s battle/action scenes run with clockwork precision, well mapped out and executed with speed and tension. However, that leads me to my only caveat. The final battle feels anticlimactic at first. On reflection, though, you’ll find that it’s the only way it could have ended considering what had gone before. And if this leads you to suspect you’ll think about this book for a while after you’ve finished it, you’d be right.

A Transcendental Habit, then, is a terrific read. It’s funny, it’s fast, it’s unusual, and it’s totally absorbing. I finished it in a couple of sittings and found myself wanting more. Highly recommended!

JW

© 2023 Jerry L. Wheeler

Something Inside: Conversations with Gay Writers – Philip Gambone (ReQueered Tales)

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ReQueered Tales

My initial approach to Something Inside: Conversations with Gay Fiction Writers, another astounding ReQueered Tales reprint, this time from 1999, was to read one author interview a day. This seemed like a great way to digest a big book and start my morning; I quickly realized that any other tactic and I would have been overwhelmed – I needed the train ride or long walk that followed to fully digest the wisdom and life-experience contained within each discussion. Philip Gambone, then a budding journalist with a literary bent (he proceeded and followed this compendium with a short story collection, a novel, and additional works of nonfiction) proves not only exceptionally well-read, but a keen listener, mining an author’s answers for further insight. The list of interviewees is astounding: twenty-one gay writers discuss their work, their lives and education, occasionally each other, in ways that define, explore, and expand our definition and understanding of gay life during the 80s and 90s. Starting with Joseph Hansen and ending with Michael Lowenthal, including powerful voices lost to AIDS: Paul Monette, Allen Barnett, and John Preston, the book resonates with our history and can be considered a masterclass when it comes to craft.

For the writers herein who I’ve heard physically read their work, Christopher Bram, Edmund White, Brad Gooch and Scott Heim, I felt like I was again in the room with them, their commentary so resonated. While I had read or had a general awareness of every writer within Something Inside, the conversations with authors on my “what’s-wrong-with-me-why-didn’t-I-read-them-years-ago?” list were oftentimes the most surprising and transformative as I added yet again more titles to the mental tally of books that I’m regularly scouring The Strand for.

This was another reason why I enjoyed reading one interview at a time, as it was an invigorating continuation of the conversation to go online and check out the author’s work, reflect on the course of their career, how reputations expand and contract with the passing of time. I would exit the train as certain phrases lingered, impressions deepened. I always get off at the 4th Street exit, near Christopher Street, and I would reflect on how a plague shaped our culture in ways tragic, heroic and prescient. Paul Monet so poignantly remarked toward the end of his interview, “I want gay and lesbian people to be strong for what’s going to happen in the next twenty years, for the millennial earthquake that’s going to happen. It’s going to be a tough, hard place. The very rich are going to have all the money and everyone else is going to be poor…There are real dark forces out there.”

That’s from 1990. Monet died in 1995.

While every conversation is unique to the author and their work, Gambone does conclude most interviews with a variation on the question: What advice would you give to a young gay writer today? The answers are fascinating, often complex, from the heart, and it would be a disservice to all if I were to quote a favorite morsel or two here, though Holleran and White certainly deliver. Perhaps someone should compile them in a separate essay and asking our contemporaries to continue to pay it forward. But that’s work for another soul.

What probably surprised me the most about these conversations, was for the most part how central a writer’s relationship to New York City was to their identity as an author. Some were fully consumed lovers, others acted as if Manhattan was the worst boss they had ever had at a job that still somehow paid dividends. I haven’t yet fully conceptualized what this means as it relates to the publishing world and gay culture at the time of these interviews but it was the brightest among the multitude of filaments linking these peers, forefathers, and the-then up-and-coming talent contained within.

Something Inside is a singular collection. In fact, halfway through the book I stopped and surveyed my shelves and then jumped online to see if anything else quite like it existed. I am in possession of both Conversations with Edmund White (2017) and Samuel R. Delany’s Silent Interviews (1995) -both are focused solely on one author and, interestingly, the Delany interviews were conducted in writing. I was excited to learn that Christopher Hennessy has two collections of interviews with gay poets available. However, when it comes to fiction and nonfiction, as far as I can tell no other collection of interviews with the writers who witnessed and participated in the birth of gay liberation and the rapid growth of modern gay literature has been preserved in book format. Decade after decade of author interviews and conversation are increasingly separated by time, existing momentarily online or in out-of-print magazines, which makes Something Inside not only recommended, but essential.

Reviewed by Tom Cardamone, editor of Crashing Cathedrals: Edmund White by the Book, and the author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning speculative novella Green Thumb as well as the erotic fantasy The Lurid Sea and other works of fiction, including two short story collections. Additionally, he has edited The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered and co-edited Fever Spores: The Queer Reclamation of William S. Burroughs.

A Quiet Foghorn: More Notes From A Deaf Gay Life – Raymond Luczak (Galludet University Press)

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Galludet University Press

A Quiet Foghorn:  More Notes from a Deaf Gay Life collects twenty-seven essays written by the prolific Raymond Luczak, who has written numerous novels, plays, poems, and nonfiction. While obviously a continuation of Assembly Required: Notes from a Deaf Gay Life, Luczak’s writings here explore new ground rather than being purely autobiographical. Which is not to say that there isn’t plenty of Luczak in these writings: while he continues to examine life through the prism of being a Deaf Gay man, he ventures deeper into both the deaf and queer communities with thoughts on ageism, disability, and the different strata and intersections of each community.

The collection is divided into two parts of roughly equal length. The thirteen essays of the first section (ironically titled “Of Blood, Born”) are connected by ideas of community and are foreshadowed by the question asked on the back cover: How Does One Find a True Family? Clearly as the only Deaf and Gay member of his birth family (he has eight siblings), he is an outsider twice over among his immediate family; a fact intensified by his living with a foster family two hours away while attending elementary and middle school for nine years. That Luczak found his true family among books (“The World Is Full of Orphans”) both queer and otherwise, will not surprise Gay readers; ditto when he writes about joining the LGBTQ+ community for UP (for Upper Peninsula of Michigan) Pride (“A Sort of Homecoming”).  A similar homecoming occurred when he attended Gallaudet University and met other signers. While he can speak, he emphasizes that ASL is his true language, and how his hands contain “the truest home of my voice” (“My Truest Home”)–as eloquently depicted in his retelling of a date with another ASL signer (“Hands, Romancing”).  Oftentimes the homecoming is a slowly dawning realization, as when he writes, “I had long been a radical faerie before I joined the tribe” (“Chants of Silence”).

The fourteen essays in the second section (“Of Hands, Tendered”) continue to be heavily autobiographical, but examine the audist attitudes of hearing people, especially in media. Several essays are reviews. These essays are among the longest in the book and contain the most valuable insights for a non-Deaf reader. “A is for American:  A Book Review” examines the intersection of language and nationalism in Jill Lepore’s A is for American: Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States. Lepore examines the lives of seven individuals who attempted to use language to unify the fledgling United States during the nineteenth century, either through standardized spelling (Noah Webster), a “universal alphabet” (William Thornton) or a universal sign language (Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet). Luczak is quick to point out that there is no such thing as a universal sign language, and in fact argues against any universal language (“…we need indigenous tongues–and hands”) in another essay, rightly noting that diversity of languages is essential to our own diversity as a species, and indeed for the diversity of the flora and fauna of our planet (“Against a Universal Language”).

He also reviews two movies that prominently depict Deaf characters  Children of a Lesser God (“Impositions: On Children of a Lesser God“) and The Tribe (“No More Savagery, Please: On The Tribe“). Admittedly I have not seen either movie (I have seen Children of a Lesser God performed on the stage, albeit thirty-five years ago), so most of Luczak’s analysis on specific scenes went over my head, but his larger points about conventions from the hearing world being out of place in media portraying Deaf people remain pertinent. For example, a dimly-lit room signals romance to the hearing, but to the Deaf it inhibits communication; moreover, the Deaf use their faces (indeed, their entire bodies) while signing to convey emotion, just as speakers use vocal inflection to convey additional information while speaking–to the hearing, this is “overacting.”

Overall, many of the writings in this slim volume are short in length, but this is one instance where I urge you not to judge by size alone (I know it’s difficult, especially for Gay men).  All of these essays are packed with astute observation and keen insight, and deserve the widest readership possible.

Reviewed by Keith John Glaeske

Watch Me – Owen Keehnen (Rattling Good Yarns Press)

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Rattling Good Yarns Press

Described by the author as a book about the gay men of porn, given the “Jacqueline Susann treatment,” Watch Me is a story with big drama, big glitz, and lots of big you-know-whats. It requires a generous helping of suspension of disbelief, but fans of gay pulp and the aforementioned Susann should be happy to take it for what it is and enjoy the fantasy of gorgeous men in titillating sexcapades, vying for exposure, fortune, and the all-important claim to be the best in the biz.

Vincent is an ambitious stud in his early twenties. His rapid transformation from an aimless Chicago waiter to a porn star poster boy is the story’s central motif. When a photographer friend, and sometimes lover, sends Vincent’s photos to a top-name porn studio, Vincent gets a call to fly out to Los Angeles for an audition. Vincent is in the perfect mindset for the news. He just caught his boyfriend cheating, so he’s happy to take a pause from serious relationships. Vincent also longs for stardom and the intoxicating thrill of being watched and desired. His audition at Xclusiv Studios goes great, and Vincent’s new sex god persona Vinnie Lux is born.

While there are hints that not everything is as perfect as it seems, Vinnie laps up his newfound sex-fueled, partying lifestyle in L.A.. The studio puts him up in a WeHo apartment with four Xclusiv models, and he’s quickly cast in films with his idols from the industry and building a respectable social media following. This is pulp, so everyone is beautiful, spectacularly endowed, and open to screwing on and off the set. The studio execs are hot daddies who ooze power and Alpha Dog energy. Vinnie is particularly drawn to Woody, the sexy, rich president of the company who has a big house in the Hollywood Hills. He’s certain that once he learns how to navigate the personalities of his bosses and his co-stars, he’s going to be the biggest thing to ever hit the adult entertainment world.

One could stop there with the summary as Watch Me is not the sort of novel with things to say about life choices or lessons learned from career disillusionment. Some layers peel away for Vinnie as he gets snubbed at times and witnesses his colleagues self-destruct, but he’s all-in to make a name for himself from start to finish. There’s no sweet revelation that a simple life settling down with a boyfriend in Chicago is what he needed all along (and arguably, from the perspective of innovation, the book is better for it).

What you have instead is a soapish live-fast-die-young fantasy as promised, with foul play mixed in to provide an air of danger for young Vinnie. His roommate A.J. drowns under suspicious circumstances, and the incident may be related to the recent death of another Xclusiv star. Clues suggesting a bad guy inside the studio fall into Vinnie’s lap, and he must figure out what to do with them while protecting his skyrocketing career.

Keehnen paces the mystery subplot nicely and creates an enjoyable cast of characters who are each plausibly underhanded. Woody has a tendency to eat up and spit out young, rising stars and punish anyone who’s disloyal to the studio. Bad boy Reed Connors will do anything for top billing, including ruining the careers of his competitors. Many of the porn studs are doing escort work with A-list closeted celebrities who have a lot to lose if their secrets are revealed. There are excesses galore, from drugs to orgies in Palm Springs, and personal betrayals aplenty. It’s a perfect world for the dark scandal theme.Watch Me may disappoint readers expecting a noirish tale about the realities of the porn industry. It even feels a tad out-of-step with the current state of porn consumption (i.e., when’s the last time you paid for a full-length film versus took a quick perusal of the latest amateur videos on Only Fans and PornHub?). But on the other hand, for readers who have been waiting for a splashy 80s-style melodrama like Dynasty and Scruples with an all gay cast, Keehnen has hit on something brilliant.

Reviewed by Andrew J. Peters

Confessions – Sean Eads (Hex Publishers)

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Hex Publishers

Sean Eads is a terrific writer whose genre chops have been established with such great entries as The Survivors and his most recent, The Feast of Panthers. With Confessions, however, he turns his cybernetic eye on so-called literary fiction with an examination of how three lives in the small Kentucky town of Wentz Hollow intertwine. Predictably, his work in this area of queer literature is just as well-imagined and satisfying as his alien invasions or time traveling in Victorian England.

Nathan Ashcroft, Wentz Hollow’s funeral director, is tasked with the cremation of a stillborn baby, but said infant is the offspring of Ashcroft’s old high school crush, Steve Malone, whom Nathan hasn’t seen in thirty years. The child causes some problems not only between Steve and his wife, Meghan, also a high school friend of Nathan’s, but also for the newly arrived in town dentist, Tim Sawyer, a long-out and proud gay man who has fallen into his first ever heterosexual relationship. The third component of the story is Sarah Lawrence, a retired high school biology teacher who has some history with not only Nathan but Steven and Meghan as well. Her suicide and subsequent arrival at Nathan’s mortuary brings along some unwanted memories.

The most impressive thing about Confessions is the differentiation between the characters’ voices. So many times these days, I read stories told from multiple points of view which all sound the same. It’s not author intrusion, exactly, but you can tell the voices are all coming from the same head because they use the same phrasing, sentence patterns, and crutch words. I sometimes find myself having to go back to the beginning of the chapter to see who’s talking, provided the author has labeled them with character names. Although Eads has posted these signs clearly, they’re unnecessary. Nathan’s voice is careful and cautious, taking the feelings of others into consideration over his own welfare. Tim’s is far looser and given to hyperbole, befitting his actions. And Sarah’s voice carries the stern, matter-of-fact precision you’d expect from a retired biology teacher.

What does Eads do with these people? He puts them through their paces, trying to piece their lives together after they’ve destroyed themselves. Bad decisions equal worse consequences, and all of them are attempting to live with or reconcile themselves to the results of their choices. The result is a twisted mass of small town intrigue that defies description without spoilers. Does it have a happy ending? Well, it has a satisfying ending–which is by no means the same thing.

I’m always surprised by the plot and writing choices Eads makes, and this first foray into something other than genre fiction is no exception. Tightly woven and well told, Confessions is a story that will stick with you whether you like it or not. Highly, highly recommended.

JW

© 2023 Jerry L. Wheeler