First up is Seven Sweet Things by UK based Shaun Levin. A narrative detailing two South African men having an affair in London, what sets Levin's work apart from the rest is the inclusion of recipes, the very same recipes used to make the food in the book. Cheesecake Thingies with a dollop of adultery, Chocolate Coconut Fudge Bars over a delightful explanation of former rimming teachers and Scheherazade's Oatmeal Cookies are some of the culinary creations swirling in the mix. Levin knows how to work his narrative, describing a lover as a cat who always comes to the one who feeds him the most, and lyrical shoot-outs like "I will scrape your tongue with the bristles of my cheeks." Delectable yet short enough not to leave you feeling full.
Sycamore draws from the badlands mapped out by Burroughs, Acker and Cooper, yet adds his own decidedly crooked, handbag-bunny sway to it all. There are momentary flashes of Easton Ellis, as if Robert Downey Jr had taken his character from Less Than Zero, migrated into the gay scene of mid-nineties America, and was so fucked out he worried about his sugar levels and being vegan, whilst tooting his way through half of Columbia, toking up on most of the Amazon and then riding home on the pharmaceutical highway straight back to Crash city. Those were the days. In none of these books do we find happy endings. Or endings at all. But what's reassuring in a reinventing world of identities, amputees and contusions, is that here we find life. Perhaps the gay novel isn't dead after all? Seven Sweet Things by Shaun Levin is published by Bluechrome. The Firebrat by David McConnell is published by AttaGirl Press and Pulling Taffy by Matt Bernstein Sycamore is published by Suspect Thoughts.
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Logged Off loves nothing more than debut books filled with
sexy, smart and occasionally surreal stories, so this month
we're bringing you the best in queer first novels.
The Firebrat is something altogether different. Elliott, our
narrator and struggling writer, is quite simply an emotional
retard, unaware of his failings until the drawn-out death of
the only friend left to put up with him and the imminent
destruction of his old family home wake him from his
interiorty. Partially at least. Amidst all this is an Edmund
White-like character, whom Elliott may or may not be
obsessed with, a gay pilots group, and the larvae Elliott
grows in his lounge, the closest he comes to really caring for
other beings. So why bother with such a neurotic asshole?
Because author David McConnell swings one handedly
from the (unwilling) satirical noose we expect in someone
like Houbelleque, a cutting deadpan that isn't funny, yet
caustically rings the bells of truth. As Elliott watches his
friend wither, all he can manage is reminding himself that
he's enjoyed the suffering, a cosmic payback for the friend
once rejecting any possibilities of romance or love. After a
sometimes lover confesses he's been raped, Elliott muses that emergency rooms should be as
luxurious as museums to mark the intensity of what happens. McConnell pulls just back from
viciousness but his characters remind us that filling our lives with the pursuit of vacuity not only
leaves emptiness but necrosis of what remains.
Lastly we have Pulling Taffy by Matt Berstein Sycamore.
For those who don't know, Taffy is a form of thick, chewy
candy pulled until glossy, and it functions here as a
metaphor for sex, identity, relationships (of a kind) and
quite possibly spunk, the type you play with, fiddle with,
long after its expulsion. Largely plotless and narrated by
Mattilda, who may or may not be the author, Pulling Taffy
covers drugs, clubs, abuse, crabs, the gag reflex and of
course "I don't even know where I am anymore or what I'm
doing and then I feel myself coming but I can't even tell if
I've come yet, no there I'm coming no I've already come
but my orgasm just goes on." Who amongst us hasn't felt
that way?
