Best Gay Romance 2012, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Introduction
GOMORRAHS OF THE DEEP, A MUSICAL COMING SOMEDAY TO OFF-BROADWAY
CHARMING PRINCES
TO BRANDON WITH LOVE, JUSTIN
THE CURTAIN STORE
THE PRISONER
SPLATTERDAYS
PRECIOUS JADE
FROM A JOURNEY
PROM KING
CODY BARTON
HELLO, YOUNG LOVERS
THE BACHELORS
Episode One
Episode Two
Episode Three
Episode Four
Episode Five
Episode Six
CINEMA LOVE
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Copyright Page
For Asa. Who else?
Love you.
INTRODUCTION:
THE HEART FINDS MANY WAYS
After reading several hundred submissions for the Best Gay Romance series—this is the fifth I’ve edited—I’ve compiled a mental checklist of recurring romantic themes, including (but certainly not limited to):
Young love. Love, unexpected. Lost love. Love, interrupted. “Straight” love. Rough love.
You’ll find all of these in Best Gay Romance 2012, a spectrum of stories ranging in sexual intensity from sweetly romantic to hot-and-heavily lusty.
Most popular this year? Young love. Two boys in love bust open one boy’s closet with musical passion, in Steve Berman’s bubbly “Gomorrahs of the Deep, a Musical Coming Someday to Off-Broadway.” Two schoolboys meet backstage at the theater, and the curtain rises on their romance, in Anthony McDonald’s nostalgic “The Curtain Store.” Two young cinephiles whose imaginations embrace different centuries find each other on the big screen, in Aaron Chan’s charming “Cinema Love.” Two twentysomething metalheads learn to make beautiful music together in Steve Isaak’s cautious “Splatterdays.” And two high school seniors transform a rocky friendship into boyhood romance in Martin Delacroix’s dark “Cody Barton.”
Love, unexpected: A rebel by day and a prince by night swoons into capitalist arms in Jamie Freeman’s faaaabulous “Charming Princes.” A man mourning his dead lover rekindles emotions after an encounter on the beach in Håkan Lindquist’s moving “From a Journey.”
Lost love: Two boyhood chums learn how much they love each other when one reaches out to the other from his grave, in Ron Radle’s heartbreaking “To Brandon with Love, Justin.” One man’s memories of a lover departed are rekindled by the sight of two young men at play, in Simon Sheppard’s reflective “Hello, Young Lovers.”
Love, interrupted: Unattainable jock reunites with lovesick geek at a high school reunion and the tables are turned, in Rob Rosen’s spunky “Prom King.” Two men transcend the pain of their closeted military academy affair when they meet a decade later in C. C. Williams’s pained “The Prisoner.”
“Straight” love: Two hunks cast in a reality show for their testosterone-fueled masculinity vie for each other rather than for the Bachelorette in Gregory L. Norris’s dick-heavy “The Bachelors.”
Rough love: A Master loves his lad, with the aid of a whip, in Fyn Alexander’s S/M-set “Precious Jade.”
The heart finds many ways. Different intensities, yes, but these stories share the comfort of falling in love, of being in love, sometimes for a moment, sometimes for a lifetime.
Richard Labonté
Bowen Island
GOMORRAHS OF THE DEEP, A MUSICAL COMING SOMEDAY TO OFF-BROADWAY
Steve Berman
When I was seven, my babysitter sat me down on the plump couch in our basement and promised me an entire bowl of butter pecan ice cream if I would be quiet while she watched a DVD. I think she had a report due for class and had decided to rent the movie rather than read the book. As the opening credits ran for Kiss Me, Kate I stuffed spoonful after spoonful into my mouth. But by the time the cast sang “We Open in Venice” I had forgotten about the ice cream and stared wide-mouthed at the television. My legs began to swing with the music, upsetting the bowl. Melted, sticky goo spilled over both our laps.
That night my eyes opened to new wonders, my ears heard a new heartbeat. I began begging my parents to buy me that DVD, and others, too. My fairy tales were movies featuring Princes Charming like Danny Kaye and Gene Kelly. I didn’t lack for ogres—such as Audrey II from Little Shop of Horrors—or wicked witches with appetites—for that, there was Lola from Damn Yankees.
Since then I have wished life were more like musicals. But people don’t burst into song and dance when their emotions rise or fall. Mouthing lyrics while listening to your iPod or wailing in the shower while shampooing your hair don’t count. I want a chorus to warn me of danger while singing verse. I want the romance of being serenaded, of the duet. And all I get is high school.
One night, my boyfriend asked me to come over to study. My hope was we’d be making out rather than struggling through Moby Dick, a book that squashed my brain like a lead weight whenever I tried to read more than a few pages. Then I saw what Hugh had done to his bedroom. Photocopies of thick-bearded old men had replaced the posters of Bob Dylan, Morrissey and the Red Caps.
“Herman Melville and Walt Whitman,” he said, with the blatant ardor most gay boys reserve for pop stars thick with eye shadow or young actors infamous for stripping off their shirts on film.
“Like the bridge?” My experience with Whitman involved crossing the Delaware River from South Jersey into Philly so we could hit the Trocadero Theater to watch indie bands.
“Like the gay poet.”
“Oh.” I collapsed on his messy bed. I lay on my stomach and rested my chin on my hands. “So you like…really want to study?”
He nodded. “Remember, our oral presentations are due this week.”
“Fine,” I sighed. Being at the tail end of the alphabet, I had planned on procrastinating until Thursday. “Can we work out an incentive program? I’m thinking it’s about time someone invented Strip Book Report.”
Hugh raised an eyebrow. The left, which went a little wild near the center of his forehead. I wanted to pluck the few errant hairs while he slept. But it matches his mop of unruly curls. “Not book reports…oral presentations—”
“Imagine. We take off our sneaks after writing the introductory sentence.” I rolled over and dramatically kicked off one cherished Converse All-Star. “State our thesis, off come the shirts. By the time we’re at the conclusion, the floor is covered with our clothes.” I stretched my head back, off the side of the bed, and offered my best leer, seventeen years in the making.
He leaned over and kissed me. A bit sloppy, but that’s fine because we both laughed. Then he shook his head. “No. I need to work on this.”
“So I’m moral support. I can help you navigate Wikipedia for answers.”
He clamped a hand over my mouth at that. “Heresy!” I stuck my tongue out and licked his palm, which doesn’t taste that great but one has to know. No boyfriend was ever perfect.
“I have this tremendous idea.”
When he took his hand away, I felt the beginning of a frown. Hugh’s ideas, especially when he considers them tremendous or monumental, usually end up being problematic. Like last summer when he decided to rewrite Shakespeare’s Taming of the Shrew as a webcomic featuring actual critters. I cured him by downloading the awful movie The Killer Shrews on my netbook and loudly playing clips whenever he mentioned the otter Petruchio falling for a furry Kate.
“Do tell.”
“I’m going to do a whole presentation—not some sixth-grader’s book report—on the homoeroticism in Moby Dick.”
I laughed. Awful move. Worse, I tell him: “You might as well sing it.”
His expression grew pensive, then hurt. Like last summer when he went through a phase he called Inner Fat and wore nothing but baggy clothes. At one point, I pulled his boxers over his navel without giving him a wedgie and told him he was ridiculous. He sulked for nearly two weeks before I dragged him free of the bad mood by insisting he watch quirky French films with me.
“It’s not a dumb idea.”
I sat up in his bed. “I never said that. But even if there’s some gay in the book—”
“There is. Lots. Whole scenes.” He blinked at me, as if trying to wake from a bad dream. “Didn’t you read it?”
“I’m more a SparkNotes kinda guy. But why would you want to rub their noses in it?”
“They’re not puppies,” he said.
I suddenly envisioned the students in Mr. Shimel’s English class as dogs. Tracy Borland’s thing for scrunchies earned her labradoodle status. Brian Coleman’s jaw belonged to an English bulldog. When Derek Fiesler wore his basketball jersey—a glimpse of muscled arm and hairy pits!—that would be one hot Great Dane.
“Besides. I’m out. You’re out.”
“But neither of us wears pink shirts. We’re like…assimilated. Why call so much attention to being different? Different is death in high school.”
“I’m tired of acting like everyone else,” he said. “We’re not—”
“Maybe I am.”
“You’re not. You’re a theater geek.”
“I prefer thespian.”
“You work stage crew.”
“Ersatz thespian.”
“You just used the word ‘ersatz.’ That’s an SAT expression.”
“Now a good vocab is being lavender, too?”
“Help me,” he said.<
I shook my head. “And feel all those fears from when I first came out rush back into my chest? No thanks.” Even as I said that, my heartbeat raced faster, my stomach parkoured around my middle. I didn’t even want to be in class if he was going to be writing G-A-Y on the whiteboard in front of everyone. I heard phantom laughter.
“Not with this.” I grabbed my backpack, zipped up my hoodie and left his room; rushing down the stairs, I didn’t even bother to call out a good-bye to his folks.
The suburban streets were quiet and cold, but my anger was keeping me warm. It was late November, but few houses on the block were lit because the neighborhood prefers menorahs to tinsel. I kept to the middle of the street. My hands were tucked away in the pocket of my white hoodie.
I soon heard my boyfriend’s car whining behind me. When he rolled down the window, music from the radio filled the air.
Then he sang: “Get in the car. It’s cold. Don’t be so angry all the time.”
I kept walking, but more slowly.
“Get in the car. Don’t make me beg. Don’t make me rhyme.”
I stopped and turned. “Don’t call me Ishmael.”
“I won’t.” he said. “Your name is Greg.”
I took a step forward, resting my hands on the open car window.
“Tell me you won’t go through with this. Tell me that tomorrow will be sane.”
He shook his head. “I can’t. I won’t. Don’t you see? That would go against my grain.”
“They’ll laugh at you and, if I stand by you, me as well.”
“What else does English class do than make our lives a hell?”
“It’s only Melville.”
“Only Melville?”
I kicked his car door, shouted, and walked away. “Don’t call me Ishmael!”
He drove after me.
“You’re afraid of what? That I’ll make of fool of us? But I can’t stay quiet anymore.”
“It’s just a book about a whale. Nothing else. You’re finding fags where there aren’t, all to start some stupid war.”
“You saw the line. ‘Bosom friends.’ If that’s not the gayest thing you ever heard a sailor say—”
I blinked into the glare of his headlights.
“I’m drawing a line. Right here and now on the street. Abandon please this Moby Dick essay.
It’s only Melville.”
He stopped the car and leaned his head out the window. “Only Melville?”
“Please,” I sang. “Don’t call me Ishmael.”
He opened the driver’s side door, singing right back:
“He had a voice. Like any of us, he wanted to be heard!”
“He’s long since dead. Are you some literary nerd?”
“I won’t put the man in the closet, like all the teachers do.”
“He’s better off in the dark. Find another book to review.”
“Why won’t you be my Ishmael, why won’t you be my first mate? I need your strength for this effort, I need you to relate.”
I stepped back from the car.
“I’m not some Ishmael, I am only a Gregory. You’ll do this alone. I won’t be part of some classroom…infamy.”
And I ran all the way home.
The next day, during lunch, my best friend Casey lowered her vintage cat-eye glasses farther down her nose and then poked me with a french fry. “You look like someone took away your pixie sticks and your parents blocked Bravo.”
“I had a fight with Hugh.”
She dipped the offending fry into mayonnaise puddled atop a napkin on her lunch tray. “Not ‘we had a fight.’ So you admit this was all your fault?”
“Did not!”
“Well, what weren’t you solely guilty of offending him with?”
“He wants to give a presentation in Shimel’s class. On how gay Melville was.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s crazy. Capital C crazy. The kids will tear him apart.”
Casey rolled her eyes. “Please. You know how much of the assigned reading has a gay subtext? We’re all used to it by now.” She nudged Sharon, who was sitting beside her, causing her to spill milk down her chin. “Right? Some of us like reading about all that boy-smooching.”
Casey stood on the bench and sang:“If you squint real hard you’ll actually see
great works of literature don’t shy from sodomy.”
My eyebrows rose. I glanced around but the rest of the cafeteria seemed ignorant that a senior wearing thrift store chic was singing in their midst. They only cared about their greasy carbs or wilted salads.
“It’s all subtext I’ll have you know,
of boys wanting to find some beau.
Read ’tween the lines if you don’t believe me.”
Then Sharon and the other girls sitting at our table lifted their lunch trays over their heads, swiveled around and swayed.
“And we girls, how we love to think of those guys
stranded on the beach in Lord of the Flies,
waiting for fair-haired Ralph to conquer his Jack,
while the choir boys ’round them didn’t hold back.”
Casey kicked away a foil-wrapped burger.
“Think fan-fic is only recently?
I’d wager folk in the sixteenth century
wanted that hunk Romeo
to dump Juliet for Mercutio.
Read ’tween the lines if you don’t believe me.”
The chorus of girls joined in:“And we girls, how we love our gamecock.
That Watson adored his roomie Sherlock.
Sure Doyle gave the good doctor a wife.
But we all know Holmes was his fantasy life.”
Casey leaned down and offered me a hand to step up onto the table. I shook my head no, so she grabbed my arm and pulled me up with surprising verve.
“Mark Twain’s books aren’t immune to such gaiety.
Or did you miss the crossdressin’ Huckleberry?
Running off with his Jim
for reasons not so prim.
Read ’tween the lines if you don’t believe me.”
“You’re crazy,” I said. And looked down to see I had stepped in mac ’n’ cheese. My poor Converses. Dairy and canvas don’t match.
After cleaning off in the bathroom, I was late to algebra. Ms. Benress turned from the blackboard, already marked up with problems galore, to give me the stink-eye as I took my seat.
I began copying x’s and y’s in my notebook. Why anyone would ever want to add two such different numbers was beyond me. X’s were…well, like me. A bit naughty by nature (you never see moonshine jugs with YYY on them or hope to see a Y-rated movie). X’s were complicated. Like an intersection or a crossroads. But passionate, especially with O’s. But Hugh was totally a Y. Always wondering about things. Y this? Y that? And yet… you couldn’t spell so many wonderful words without Y. Dearly. Sweetly. Smartly. Yummy needed two.
Ms. Benress asked the class who would like to solve the latest equation she had chalked on to the board. Hands went up. Not mine. Yes, still she called on me. I groaned and slid out from behind my desk.
But my mind wasn’t even attempting to do the algebra. Instead, it put words to the patter of my feet, the tapping of someone’s pencil, even the ticking of the old clock on the wall.
“Answers aren’t ever easy,
not when you’re unsure you’re right.
Not when you love him dearly,
perhaps I’m just too uptight?”
“The X’s and Y’s please,” Ms. Benress said.
“X marks the spot of my heart.
Only one boy has the map.
If singing keeps us apart,
I’ll end up feeling like crap.
How does he ever love me
when I only question Y?
