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Songs for the New Depression by Kergan Edwards Stout

Rob Browatzke 0 Comments

Gabe Travers is dying. He knows it. He is surrounded by the people he loves, his mother and her new wife Pastor Sally, his best friend Clare, his lover Jon. These are the people who have clung to him through the years, who have stood by him through bad decisions and bitchy remarks. Dying, he takes Jon to Paris; what better gift to give the man you love than the world?

It was a gift he’d been given 9 years earlier, by a man he loved, and as the book goes back in time, we the readers are taken on that journey with him. And then that journey continues back 10 years, to first kisses, to coming out, to a time when Gabe begins to make those relationships that will set the course of his life. To when he first hears Bette Midler.

When you look back at your life, how do you want to see yourself? Why did you make the decisions you made? How did you get here, to this point? Those are just some of the questions Gabe faces, and while he faces them, we explore his life, stripped away of pretension, bare, honest, pure.

One of the things that resonated most with me is how we push people away when we should be pulling them close. Is it a gay man’s curse, to resort to witty but cruel barbs for humor, being quick to showcase other’s faults to detract attention away from our own? Too often, to prevent being hurt, we strike first. Then it’s always the other one’s fault, never our own. But when it’s done, what are we left with but guilt and regret and the feeling we should have been… what? Nicer, maybe? More appreciative, definitely.

From LA to Palm Springs to Paris, over the course of 20 years, Kergan Edwards-Stout takes us on a beautiful journey. The characters are dynamic, interesting, and real, and the relationships are painful and funny and romantic and sexy and sad all at once. No matter how much changes in life, those relationships are a constant. As are dreams. It is never too late to make a dream come true. And after all, “if you have nothing left to dream, are you really still alive?”

This review was originally published on homorazzi

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The Letter Q by various

Rob Browatzke 0 Comments

This isn’t a novel. This is a collection of letters, written by some of the greatest queer authors of the day, to their younger selves. As such, I don’t recommend sitting down and reading it from cover to cover. Keep it tucked away in your backpack or purse or briefcase, and pull it out when you need a warm fuzzy or a pep talk or simply a few moments of enjoyment.

Each letter is unique. Some even take the form of comics. They tackle all the issues you’d expect: bullying, coming out, sex, and all the emotions that go with them: shame, fear, anger, and eventually pride and contentment.

Some of the authors include Tales of the City’s Armistead Maupin, Wicked’s Gregory Maguire, A Density of Souls’ Christopher Rice, and Love! Valour! Compassion’s Terrence McNally. I will admit I gravitated more to the male writers, but every voice has its own remarkable story. Plus, the variety of writers opens up windows of time over the last 50 years, so that underneath their letters of support and advice, there’s a story of the evolution of the gay rights movement.

These stories aren’t only for kids who are coming out in high school. There are always lessons we can learn, there are always journeys our mind can take. Visiting our old selves can sometimes help put our current problems in perspective. Everything that was so end-of-the-world at the time, turned out not to be. The world kept turning, we got wiser, we got stronger. It got better.

One of the stories that resonated with me most was, of course, Christopher Rice, maybe because we’re the same age, maybe because we both love writing. Maybe because his warning about “the endless party that is the gay nightlife, that always moving train of music, dancing, and drugs that will promise you everything and deliver nothing” is something I wish I had understood better. More than a year into my sobriety, as I have begun to “build a life that feeds [my] soul instead of devouring it”, there are a few lessons I would go back and tell that old me too.

What’s more, half of the royalties from the sale of this book will go towards supporting the Trevor Project’s mission of reaching LGBT and Questioning youth in crisis. So not only is it a series of good reads, it’s for a good cause. And it delivers nuggets of wisdom and truth that are as important for teens struggling with their sexuality, with bullying, with their parents, with themselves, as they are for all us. A wisdom as simple as treating others how you want to be treated. A truth as simple as the fact that it does get better, slowly maybe, and not without bumps along the way, but constantly and consistently better.

This review was originally published by homorazzi

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Fairy Tales by Peter Cashorali

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Fairy Tales:
Traditional Stories Retold for Gay Men
by Peter Cashorali

If you’re a romantic, if you believe in love at first sight, if you believe, like Snow White, that one day your prince will come, then this book is a must-read.

Peter Cashorali takes stories we grew up on and twists them for gay men. Beauty and the Beast, Hansel and Gretel, Rumplestiltskin, the Ugly Duckling and more, all become queerified, and young gay kids and mature gay men will enjoy seeing the fairy tales they knew, now resonating more with tales of Princes’ happily ever afters.

All the magic is still there, all the talking animals, unexpected transformations, ogres, ghouls, and Death. Now, they’re parables on aging, mortality, AIDS, coming out, the shallow and fickle nature of attraction, and, as always, the quest for true love.

Without ruining these stories, I can’t tell you any specifics. The subtle changes he makes are what keeps you flipping pages, from one story to the next. The villains are homophobic bullies, but some see the light. The heros are sensitive and beautiful, yet some are realistically flawed.

You can sit down and read it from cover to cover, or read a story and then come back later on, when you need a little pick-me-up, a little reassurance that happy endings do happen (they just might need a little cleverness, hard work, or a dog in penny loafers). I’ve gone back to this book time and again, and always come away with something new.

We all have demons to slay and ogres to fight. We all want a knight in shining armor. We all want a happy ending.

This book is filled with them.

This review was originally published by homorazzi

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Selfish and Perverse by Bob Smith

Rob Browatzke 0 Comments

Take a writer’s assistant / writer from LA, introduce him to a salmon fisherman / archaeologist from Alaska, then introduce them both to an actor / sex god fresh from prison and you have the makings of one helluva love triangle.

Nelson isn’t particularly happy with his job as a writer’s assistant, nor is he happy with his lack of a boyfriend. Luckily, shortly after meeting the next future man of his dreams in Roy from Alaska, he gets fired for smoking pot with the surprisingly intelligent movie star Dylan. The three of them end up spending the summer in Alaska, and the result is this comic, sweet, and sexy story of friendship and romance, doubts, jealousies, and one helluva threeway.

Bob Smith’s comic voice rings clear; you might have recognized it from his collection of humorous essays “Openly Bob”. He paints Alaska beautifully and for this city boy, all I wanted to do was run away from the bars and catch a fish (with a super hot man next to me of course, it’s amazing what one is willing to do to bed a potential soulmate!). As the narrator Nelson realizes though, the soul of a gay man is a tramp.

But if you’re going to be in Alaska for the summer, why NOT be there with not one but TWO hot men?

The book also has some great insights into art and the act of creation, the frustration of procrastinaton and the pride of completion that any artist (in any medium) would be familiar with. It also explores the nature of gay salmon. It’s a fun read, one that will leave you laughing, sighing, and maybe a bit horny.

This review was originally published on homorazzi

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Gulliver Takes Manhattan by Justin Luke Zirilli

Rob Browatzke 0 Comments

Ok, first off, you should know I’m a little bit in love with the city of New York, always have been, always will be. So, small wonder that when I received my copy of “Gulliver Takes Manhattan” in the mail, saw the skyline glowing on the cover, small wonder I was already a little in love with it.

By page 50, I was hooked like a gay guy on Starbucks.

It’s the story of Gulliver Leverenz (don’t make any jokes about the name, because you only get one), who moves from the LaLa Land of the West Coast to Empire City after discovering that his boyfriend Graham has been cheating on him, dirty lying bastards that some men just tend to be. Gulliver is saved from the pain and drama of his Graham-centric LA life when his former college roomie and best friend Todd extends an invitation to move to New York City and start over.

Todd introduces Gulliver to his circle of friends, and Gulliver and “the crew” set sail into the urban sea, drinking, dancing, fucking, laughing, living. Gulliver gets a job a short-lived and much-despised job at Starbucks before getting a chance to be the assistant to talent agent Stanford. Stanford only has one major rule: “don’t sleep with the talent”. Well, gay men’s brains being located in their dicks, I guess I don’t need to tell you what happens next.

As life in New York blows up in his face, time and time again, Gulliver is forced to fend for himself, and in doing so, learn some lessons about friendship, loyalty, honesty, chlamydia, and independence.

Justin Luke Zirilli’s writing is infected with his love of the city and its club scene. You can tell from the ease with which he transports you into the story that this is a man who knows his parties (small wonder, as he is the co-director and head promoter of BoiParty.com). Justin is like the cab driver at the beginning of the novel, dropping you off in Hell’s Kitchen and leaving you to find your way through the relaxed sexuality, the magic of the nightclub, the debauchery of Fire Island, the endless parade of Braydens, Shanes, Rowans, Zaks, Drakes…

I just have to give props to my favorite line in the novel: New York doesn’t sleep – but if you’re out at the right time of morning, you might catch it blinking. GOLD!

When you are finished this review, order this book. You will be absolutely entranced by this “candid tale of one man’s adventures in the greatest city in the world”. It will captivate and keep you, and leave you wanting more.

Already waiting for more of Gulliver’s travels (that’s my one).

This review was originally published on homorazzi

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Don’t Let Me Go by JH Trumble

Rob Browatzke 0 Comments

I’ve been going through the gay fiction section of my local bookstore pretty fast lately, and some reads have been better than others, and then along came one that punched me in the stomach even as it proceeded to rip my heart out of my chest.

Don’t Let Me Go by JH Trumble is the love story of Adam and Nate, who meet in high school and who are inseparable from that point forward. When Adam gets a chance to go to New York to pursue a career on Broadway, it’s Nate that pushes him to go. That’s where the book begins.

But it’s not just the story of a long-distance relationship, because you see, the book jumps around a bit in time, flashing back to first touches, first times, coming out, and the horrific assault Adam and Nate suffer at the hands of their bigoted classmates. So all through this love story, you’ve got a darker thread of intolerance, homophobia, and hatred, and it’s different than when you see it on the news. More real, because you really start to care about these guys. Well, I did anyway. All of Nate’s feelings, I’ve felt, jealousy and paranoia and the need for some sort of revenge, at the same time as you’re feeling angry at the world for its bigotry and want to make some grand political statement and be a martyr for the gay cause.

It handles coming out in a lot of different ways. From the “you’re dead to me” intolerance and unacceptance of a family rejection to the innocence of a child who doesn’t know there’s even anything to come out from. When you’ve been out for a while, you forget, sometimes, what it was like to tremble in the closet. This takes you back.

It’s mostly a love story though, and it’s so real, in the songs they sing, or the gestures and symbols that mean everything in the world, but only to each other. I found myself thinking about the trinkets of past relationships I’ve accumulated over the years, a ring, a song, and how they can take me back to things part of me will never let go of.

It pulled tears out of me (I’m still teary), and laughter, and rage. I would throw the book down, literally vibrating from the emotions it drew out of me. I would walk away, but I would come right back, because at the end of it, “Don’t Let Me Go” was a book I just couldn’t let go.

This review was originally published on homorazzi

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Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran

Rob Browatzke 0 Comments

This is he story of gay life in New York in the late 70s, from the tenements of the Lower East Side to the beaches of Fire Island, from the bars and the baths to the avenues and the parks, all the places where gay men cruised for cock and love. It is a story about too often having to sacrifice substance for style, and how, once in a while, you do the opposite. It is a story of decadence and despair, of lust, love, and the lies we all tell, of coming out and the end of innocence. It is the story of Malone, beautiful, romantic, idealistic, and Sutherland, queeny, campy, and jaded. It is the story of how they met, became friends, and how their friendship intersected and impacted the lives of the people around them.

The story begins with two friends exchanging letters. One still lives in New York, and his letters are filled with the streets, with the cold concrete and the stench of the city; the other has fled south, and his letters are idyllic, ripped from the pages of Gone with the Wind in their descriptions of the beauties of the deep south. They talk of old times, of the sex, drugs, and disco of their youth in New York, and how they, like everyone, loved Malone, charming, handsome, and searching for love.

Andrew Holleran’s prose is beautiful, breath-taking. Even the most graphic or ugly matters end up painted with that nostalgia that makes every memory brighter and bigger than it was. Men come out. They fuck. They love, if only for a night. They repeat the next night, at a different disco, on a different street, with a different man. But it is the same disco, the same street, the same man. Except for Malone, who stands apart, above, and Sutherland, whose age, whose camp, whose small dick and whose use of speed, has set him apart in a different way.

The New York scene is captured elegantly, a snapshot of a time, just post-Stonewall, when they gay ghetto was just forming. It is a country away from San Francisco, where old gay men go to die. It is a city of Angel Dust and Quaaludes, of red hankies and Pink Parties. Gay men gather, they gossip, they judge, they dance. They dance to feel, they dance to escape, they dance because not to dance is to die. In a dancefloor filled with bodies, shirtless, sweating, swirling, they lose themselves, and find themselves.

This isn’t a light and fluffy read, but it is a glorious one. The plot is one that could be lived in any city, any bar, any Saturday night. The characters blur together, because they’re all the same, except, of course, for Malone, on his pedestal, and for Sutherland, on her throne. I can see why this novel has been described as one of the most important works of gay literature. Its themes of loneliness, of superficial yet enduring friendship, of the quest for love, are as real today as they were then, and its characters could be recognized on the dancefloor of any local club.

The passion for music, for movement stands out. When dancing, it is both a communal experience, and an alientating one. While the dancefloor can be seen as a metaphor for the gay community, how when dancing, you can be a part of something bigger yet still be apart from it, it is also, simply, a place to dance.

This isn’t a novel you read; it is a feeling you experience.

This review was originally published on homorazzi

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