Thomas Westerfield’s début short story collection focuses on queer trauma, and while the topics are difficult to read at times, one comes away with an appreciation for his ability to not just tackle taboos but to place them under a physician’s lamp for ruthless examination. That’s the best way I can describe his thirteen stories, which mainly feature gay men who are living through or recovering from incest, child sex trafficking, homophobic violence, and/or the indignity of aging, to name a few issues. Indeed, it’s no light pastime reading through each character’s story, but by challenging the reader to sit with some of life’s most painful and shameful realities, Westerfield’s collection offers an unexpected sense of healing.
The themes are dark and uncomfortable, but there is some variety in mood and context. A support group for male survivors of sexual abuse turns confrontational and nearly mutinies against their platitudinous therapist. A boy can’t sleep at night for fear his closetful of Barbies will murder him as soon as he closes his eyes. A young man must decide on his next step after escaping from years of physical enslavement during which he was sold to men for sexual and sadistic gratification. The obituary of a high school classmate triggers memories for a middle-aged man who was viciously bullied by the deceased.
These are stories that are more vignettes than journeys to a new destination, at least in terms of external events and circumstances. Several of them are recounted almost entirely in the narrator’s head and have very little interaction with the present world. As such, they make for dense, cerebral reading that relies on evoking the reader’s connection to a single character’s inner world and history.
For me, some stories provoked questions and self-reflection more than others, based on the author’s focus on one man grappling internally with one specific situation, however deeply and carefully considered the thematic study. I suspect the stories will resonate the most with older gay male readers, like myself, Gen X and Baby Boomers, who had to carve out paths to self-acceptance against social and political persecution and a dearth of role models. One of the most essay-like entries in the collection, “The Boy in the Audience,” is about a small-town teenager in the 1970s who watches the long-awaited premiere of The Boys in the Band. While three quarters of the story reads like the narrator’s effusive review of the film, it turned out to be one of the most successful in raising unresolved debates in my own mind. Seeing how a gay boy of that era could feel transformed and validated by a wide-release film with an all gay cast changed my point of view quite profoundly. I saw the film myself in the 90s as a young gay man and struggled with what I saw as the portrayal of men like me as cruel and tragic, entirely unlikeable. Through the excitement and catharsis experienced by Westerfield’s young character, I found myself reconsidering my reactions and arriving at a more favorable attitude toward the film.
While there’s something to be learned from each story in the collection, I found the ones that were told through dialogue and interpersonal exchange to be the most engrossing. In “Mr. Sissy in Sin City,” the unlikely pairing of an aging gay man and a young, straight (though drunken) bro at a Las Vegas roulette table conjures possibilities, which the author handles with lovely subtlety and some surprises. In “Today’s Agenda,” a confrontation between academic colleagues, one older, white and gay and the other younger Black and lesbian, is thick with spoken and unspoken tensions around social privilege and equity versus academic freedom. The final story, “His Father,” could be said to be the boldest as it concerns an adult son and his aging father who sexually abused him in his teens, resetting their relationship after both have gone through years of alcoholism and rehabilitation.
Westerfield has a remarkable feel for the humanity of people, no matter how destructive their flaws or whose side of the argument they’re on. He’s skilled at capturing the nuances of highly charged situations, which one might prefer to avoid or seal up in a mason jar with a warning label, placed high up on a shelf. It’s a brave path–pushing past one’s assumptions of how a character should act or feel when they find themself outside of socially acceptable territory. For those who are brave enough to walk beside Westerfield on that path, the terrain is difficult, but enlightenment lies ahead.
Goes On, Without The World’s Understanding is an important contribution to our understanding of how gay men process, persevere and even triumph over life’s greatest traumas.
Reviewed by Andrew J. Peters
Out in Print: Queer Book Reviews 