March 21, 2010
September 6, 2009
Five Married Men
No one knows how many married men live their lives hiding a secret.
Men who have chosen a traditional life, who have concealed their sexuality, who have tried in vain to ignore the pulls and tugs inside them, who have never allowed themselves to explore their attraction to other men. Perhaps you married one of them. Perhaps he lives next door. Perhaps he’s your father, your brother, your cousin or your best friend. Perhaps you are him.
Five Married Men is a story about men who have found themselves in this situation, their lives and their emotions; five happily married men who finally decide to act on their urges. The reader sees inside their minds, sees how this dilemma affects their lives and the women they are married to.
An Excerpt from chapter 11:
In a room high above the city, a small island of space and time, five men plan to give themselves over to the mysteries ingrained in them before leaving the womb. In their hearts they had become brothers-within the privacy of four walls they were five nervous men on the threshold of an age-old fantasy. Together in secrecy they would explore the compatibility of their minds and bodies, knowing very little of each other, yet more than the rest of the world would ever know.
The first to arrive, Tim rented the room. One by one they dialed his cell phone from the lobby, and he let them in when they knocked on the door. The last to arrive, James took a chair near the window that overlooked the downtown skyline. They sat around the room in skittish knots, the world that would condemn them locked beyond a bolted door. They were a collection of sweaty palms and bodies comprised of identical poetry, of minds filled with doubt and adventure; five men standing shoulder- to-shoulder, trying to cast off their guilt on a road with no clear horizon.
May 16, 2009
Johnny Feelwater’s Sexual Revelation
The Strange Haunting of Johnny Feelwater is a story about a thirty-two year old man who realizes, during a onslaught of astonishing circumstances, he has set his stride on the wrong path.
Like countless men like him, another man lives inside his head, a man he can’t allow himself to be, a confused identity shunted into the darkest corners of his consciousness. He had married Marrilee, started his career, took on a mortgage–he was normal.
Then, one morning he innocently steps into another world, Cassandra and Julian Mott’s world, and everything begins to unravel, his career, his marriage, his peace-of-mind. He comes face-to-face with the other side of his sexuality. After lifting his legs and resting them on another man’s shoulders, nude and vulnerable, he realizes, if he is to get his life back, he needs help.
Johnny knows that a man called Dr. Brian Fowler is the one who can help him, the one man that can deal with Cassandra and Julian Mott; but Fowler is in Africa, where he goes every summer to donate his time to the people of Kenya known as the Maasai. For Johnny, there’s no choice other than to exhaust what remains of his finances and journey to Africa, where he finds answers to his unmasked questions.
Johnny’s senses are overwhelmed during his stay with Bryan Fowler in the Maasai village, the human smells and visuals, humanity’s oneness with the earth. His imagination is set ablaze and his self-recognition begins to blossom as he lives among these dynamic people and sleeps so close to Brian in the tiny confines of a Maasai hut.
One day he and Brian attend a traditional ceremony, where the two of them sit on a knoll with the village elders, watching the festivities. Here is what he sees:
(From The Strange Haunting of Johnny Feelwater) . . . It was a time of waiting. Puffing their pipes, Johnny and Brian continued to observe the activities from their positions on the knoll. Johnny’s reprieve held. There were no omens in his hands. Locking his fingers around a knee, he sat comfortably, the pipe clenched in his teeth, his shoulder and neck muscles tension free. While the elders next to him spoke among themselves of their important concerns, Johnny continued his private study of Maasai contentment. He watched young mothers with newborn infants at their breasts, tiny babes engulfed within loving arms and gazes. A toddler emerged from a forest of long legs, wailing. So distraught was his small face that Johnny’s heart felt a pang. The child had lost his mother, not yet old enough to know there was no safer place on God’s earth he might be. The younger men, the warriors, stood in small groups, conversing and comparing adornments and body paint. From them came no shortage of teasing; for it seemed where go the warriors, so go the girls and the catcalls and flirting.
Johnny had been watching one of them in particular. A young man who would be king, Johnny surmised as he leaned forward and stared, resting his forearms on his knees, letting his hands hang limp. The warrior, shouldering no more than twenty-five years of life’s trials, stood an inch or two taller than his companions; a stature enhanced by a magnificent, horseshoe-shaped headdress, feathered with stuffed orioles and kingfishers. Flaring nearly as wide as his shoulders, he wore it like a crown. Chalky white paint formed a raccoon-like mask around his eyes and strands of beads crisscrossed his forehead. Set in the perfect symmetry of a longish, oval-shaped face, his eyes shone with self-confidence and arrogance, his nose long and broad with large nostrils, his lips a voluptuous, omnipotent smirk. Tied at the back of his neck, a bright red cape draped down over his torso to his knees. It hung loosely open down the back, which allowed shadowy hints of rich black skin and the masculine contours of his lower back and buttocks. (more…)
May 10, 2009
Call Me by Your Name
You’d like to find a thoughtful, well-written novel about like-minded men (or like-minded boys in this case). You don’t want two naked men on the cover because you might want to read it in a restaurant or on an airplane.
Andre Aciman has written one I highly recommend. It’s rare when you find yourself involved in the muscle and grit of a character’s innermost emotions, including desire that you’ll probably identify with and feel on the tips of your fingers. This is one you’ll want to read twice; perhaps not right away, but the day will come you’ll want to relive this story.
From School Library Journal
Seventeen-year-old Elio faces yet another lazy summer at his parents’ home on the Italian coast. As in years past, his family will host a young scholar for six weeks, someone to help Elio’s father with his research. Oliver, the handsome American visitor, charms everyone he meets with his cavalier manner. Elio’s narrative dwells on the minutiae of his meandering thoughts and growing desire for Oliver. What begins as a casual friendship develops into a passionate yet clandestine affair, and the last chapters fast-forward through Elio’s life to a reunion with Oliver decades later. Elio recalls the events of that summer and the years that follow in a voice that is by turns impatient and tender. He expresses his feelings with utter candor, sharing with readers his most private hopes, urges, and insecurities. The intimacy Elio experiences with Oliver is unparalleled and awakens in the protagonist an intensity that dances on the brink of obsession. [...] His longing creates a tension that is present from the first sentence to the last. -Heidi Dolamore, San Mateo County Library, CA. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
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