Saints & Sinners: New Fiction from the Festival 2023 – Tracy Cunningham & Paul J. Willis, eds. (Rebel Satori Press)

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Rebel Satori Press

As regular readers of Out in Print know, Saints & Sinners is a yearly LGBTQ literary festival that takes place in New Orleans, and their short story contest produces some of the finest LGBTQ fiction collected. This 2023 edition is no exception. As with all short story collections, however, some tales will pique your interest more than others, but these anthologies have a particularly high batting average as far as I’m concerned. The contest this year was judged by Lambda Literary Award winning mystery author Michael Nava, who I’m sure had some difficult choices to make.

The winner of this year’s competition is Ariadne Blayde’s “Minor Difficulties In BigEasyWorld,” an interesting look at love between two boys working in a futuristic New Orleans theme park, the real thing having been destroyed by unnamed forces some years back. The park has neighborhoods like Bourbon Street and Storyville that tourists roam through drinking Hurricanes, Hand Grenades, and Voodoo Daquiris (which are the same thing in different collectible glasses), experiencing characters like Ambient Alcoholic, Upstairs Ghost, Jazz Musician, and Enslaved Person, all overseen by the Historical Truth and Reconciliation Coordinator. As a current NOLA tour guide, Blayde’s barbs hit with deadly accuracy, and the disconnect with reality is alarmingly real, but the facades and fakery never obscure the love story between teenagers Wes and Neal. Well-balanced and solidly constructed, this story is a delight.

Also set in New Orleans, but in the present rather than the future, is William Christy Smith’s charming “By Hook or By Crook,” which features one of those NOLA “characters” who seem to populate every block, this one a delicate antique collector named Bug DeCote. DeCote’s health is failing, and the members of his writing group are tasked with cataloguing, unbeknownst to him, the items in house to sell after his imminent demise. Also set in the South is J. R. Greenwell’s “Water Between My Legs,” an atmospheric and immersive story of a gay teen coming to terms with himself in small town Appalachia, a milieu Greenwell writes most comfortably about.

But there are wonderful stories here also taking place above the Mason-Dixon line. Powell Burke’s “Man In Sunglasses With Newspaper” is a Fire Island oriented look at pre-Stonewall gay life in that enclave as seen through the lens of a photographer named Harry. Slightly surrealistic, this story floats with a languorous intricacy bound to capture your imagination. Philip Gambone blends two Boston couples together, striking sparks of betrayal and jealousy in “Big Boy,” while John Whittier Treat takes a New York City couple to Broadway to see the Boys in the Band revival in “The Boys Not In The Band,” but he doesn’t let them sit together, creating some interesting tension.

For my money, however, the story which most captivated my attention was Eric Peterson’s “Banjo.” Like his “Little Boy Blue” from last year, it tugs all the right heartstrings only this time with a dog named Banjo who helps grief-stricken Arturo move forward through the death of his partner, Ben. The turn near the end of the story keys in to so many emotions, I ended up ugly-crying at Gate B7 in the Dallas airport on my way home from Saints & Sinners.

I’ve submitted to this anthology more than once in the twenty years of the conference but have never yet made it to finalist. Career goals, right? But I’ll try again this year and hope to find myself in company this fine in 2024. Wish me luck.

JW

© 2023 Jerry L. Wheeler

With: New Gay Fiction – Jameson Currier, ed. (Chelsea Station Editions)

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With: New Gay Fiction, edited by Jameson Currier and published by Chelsea Station Editions is a pleasure not to be missed.

As the foreword states, “These stories portray relationships with men: gay men with our friends, lovers, partners, husbands, dates, tricks, boyfriends, hustlers, idols, teachers, mentors, fathers, brothers, family, teams, co-workers, relatives and strangers.”

This is an anthology of sixteen beautifully written short stories from authors with diverse and compelling voices, voices you likely already know and respect. More than that, With is the relatively rare anthology that is emotionally and intellectually more than the sum of its parts. Each story shines a unique light on relationships with humor, depression, grief, adoration, kindness, pride and fear.

How can kindness from an idolized swimming teacher change a boy’s life forever? Why would a man grieving the loss of his partner steal an infant from a shopping mall at Christmas time? How can friendship be witness to rudderless self-indulgence? These and other story questions help make up the rich weave of the anthology, different ways of being with.

From the first story, of a grad student and a hustler who doesn’t know how to make his life better to the last, a triumphant ramble delivered in Jack Fritscher’s signature beat-poet cadences and strewn with period song titles which sort of relate but sound so cool when the line is read aloud, a story of two men proudly together almost fifty years — this collection’s skilled authors bring to focus some quality or insight about relationship that is worth thinking about longer than it takes to read the story. Especially impactful for me was the life-in-reverse-motion of David Pratt’s “What is Real,” a stunning way to experience the grief of a man lost without his dead partner.

Kudos to Jameson Currier for arriving at such an intellectually and emotionally flexible, powerful theme, and kudos to each author for adding his unique and polished facet to the exploration. After finishing With, I found myself in that reflective, inspired, satisfied space that is a gift of every good book. I think you’ll have the same experience.

Reviewed by Lloyd A. Meeker

Sensual Travels – Michael Luongo, ed. (Bruno Gmunder)

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For me, one of the most basic enjoyments of the travel experience is the sampling of the sexual landscape. It ranks right up there with food, architecture, and natural wonders. At times, it’s all three rolled into one. And like good sex (or sex of any kind, really), travel is ephemeral. It’s only alive for the moment you’re there. Once you’re gone, it’s gone; the pictures and journals can only bring back an echo of the experience. But thankfully, Michael Luongo has brought together some of the finest gay and bi writers to echo their journeys for you in Sensual Travels.

As Luongo states in his introduction, the sex in this book is almost “Clintonian,” not as much about the old in and out as it is ancillary acts–nuance and possibility–which is only fitting given the sexually repressive atmospheres some of these stories take place in. But no matter the quotient of sexual heat, these tales manage to convey the excitement and sense of discovery that accompanies playing away from home.

That quotient is high in Lawrence Schimel’s “Water Taxi,” which sees a voyeuristic Spanish encounter taking place on the a dock in front of a gaggle of men gathered for Gay Pride and also pretty hot in Jeff Mann’s “Bondage Tape in Budapest,” which has appeared in another collection of Mann’s essays. These two stories are also related by the fact that the protagonists’ partners are also along for the ride. Schimel’s experience is more positive, but Mann’s carries a hint of problem, thereby increasing the danger and, perhaps, the allure of his interlude with Tibor. Simon Sheppard’s Ecuadorian romp, “The Last Bus to Riobamba” also features his long term partner, but this sex is all fantasy and no reality. Still, Sheppard both educates and titillates while retaining that air of mystery.

The aforementioned danger is not far behind in many other entries here. Trebor Healey’s brilliant “The Cervantino Baby,” featuring an affair with a Mexican boy that gets Healey tossed out of the household he’s staying at to improve his Spanish. His frankness about desire, reprisal, and consequence is personal and universal, and his musings are wholly in line with the expectations raised by Healey’s other work. This was one of my favorite pieces here, as was Felice Picano’s “A Gaijin in Gay Japan,” where Picano and his traveling companion, Dr. Charles Silverstein, undertake a publicity tour of Japan. Insightful in terms of Japanese culture as well as its sexual mores, this is Picano at his finest.

Any sex travel book worth its salt has to feature a trip to Thailand, and Alan Hahn does the honors here in “The Sodom and Gomorrah Show: How Not to be a Sex Tourist in Bangkok,” which is not only witty and engaging, but also deals–however tangentially–with the aftermath of vacation and facing one’s daily routine. Asian culture is also central to David C. Muller’s “You Want, I Come,” which contains a missing ATM card and a very willing guide to the city.

But no matter if it’s the Croatian men in Dominic Ambrose’s “Croatian Heat,” the Aussie beach escapade of Dallas Angguish’s “Sleep,” or Jim Nawrocki’s Parisian escapade in “The City of a Thousand Steeples,” you’ll find something in this collection that will send you scurrying to Travelocity.com to plan your next vacation. Or rescheduling the one currently on the horizon.

Happy traveling!

©  2013  Jerry L. Wheeler