By Richard Labonte
"Skin Lane," by Neil Bartlett. Serpent's Tale, 344 pages, $14.95 paper.
Repressed sexuality is taken to spooky new heights in British novelist Bartlett's first novel in more than a decade. Mr. F is a lonely 47-year-old bachelor – his only sex has been with female prostitutes – whose days are governed by routine. He is up at the same time every morning, catches buses and trains like clockwork, and has wielded sharp knives in the same job for more than 30 years: he's a fur-skinner, master of a dying art in London's Skin Lane of 1967. Normalcy first becomes skewed when Mr. F starts waking in a sweat from tormenting sexual dreams inhabited by a faceless, muscular young man. Next, daily life merges with nighttime terrors when a handsome teenager is apprenticed to him – the dream figure becomes flesh and blood reality. Bartlett's portrait of a desperate man obsessed by unattainable male beauty is fiendishly menacing and fiercely atmospheric, a relentless blend of erotic psychodrama and emotional self-destruction.
"Dresses and Other Catastrophes," by Dani O'Connor. Spinsters Ink, 168 pages, $14.95 paper.
After eight years of avoiding the issue of marriage – there was always tomorrow, or the day after, or next year to commit – hard-driving lesbian attorney Sam and her laidback academic lover, Doc, are ready, sort of, to take the plunge. And because they've always wanted to get married in Amsterdam, they head to Europe to scout out the city for their eventual nuptials. But plans change when they are befriended by two brash Irish boys, one gay and one straight, whose whirlwind enthusiasm for an all-girl wedding sweeps Doc and Sam off their feet, and into an unexpectedly sudden ceremony. O'Connor's third novel featuring the vows-avoiding lovers (though this one is admirably self-contained) brims with a riotous abundance of bar crawling, beer drinking, late-night motorcycle rides, legal drug sampling, sexual flirtation with cute Dutch damsels, and – when appropriate after an argument – hot makeup sex. The story's madcap jocularity is a tonic, but the wedding itself takes on a sweet solemnity that adds some heft to what would otherwise be a breezy comic romp of a romance.
"America Anonymous: Eight Addicts in Search of a Life," by Benoit Dezinet-Lewis. Simon & Schuster, 352 pages, $26 hardcover.
In one sense, the gayest thing about Dezinet-Lewis' addictive study of eight women and men whose lives have been defined by their dependencies is the author himself: he's a recovering queer-sex addict with a couple of relapses in his past. The book also profiles a bisexual bodybuilder and hustler with a dual jones for steroids and crystal meth, and that fellow's ambivalence about sexual partners adds to the queer quotient. But the value of this searing portrait of addiction in its different incarnations – there are also gambling, overeating, and shoplifting – transcends sexual identity. Everyone with a compulsive personality, anyone who just can't say no, will find themselves mirrored in the author's depiction of a crack-dependent Harlem grandmother, an obese middle-aged Jewish housewife, a spry Palm Beach octogenarian alcoholic, or a straight man barely out of his teens whose life revolves around pornography and sexual gratification. Dezinet-Lewis tracked his subjects over several years, capturing self-destructive behavior and hard-won recovery with gentle, compassionate candor that is sometimes shocking but never demeaning.
"The Fall of Lucifer," by John Peyton Cooke. Editions Cuir Noir, 348 pages, $18 paper.
Cooke won both mainstream and queer acclaim with "Torsos" and "The Chimney Sweeper," two chilling early-'90s "noir" thrillers with dramatic sexual and psychological intensity. The same propulsive narrative drive marks this smart mystery (and its immediate predecessor in a new series, "The Rape of Ganymede"), featuring young Gulf War vet Greg Quaintance, discharged after being fingered as a homo, now eking out a private eye career in Manhattan. Both novels, set in the late '90s – Quaintance's reliance on payphones to contact his clients (and boyfriends) is atmospherically quaint – have been published by the author, after they were orphaned when the gay book boom of the 1990s went bust. The setting for Cooke's second in the series is the goth underground, a dark world of very thin girls and boys with a yen for black clothes, outre sex, and the occasional desire to drink blood. Quaintance, hired by a distraught father to find his missing goth son, copes with the dysfunctional weirdness with admirable aplomb, and Cooke's prowess with plot, character, and prose makes this a compelling mystery.
Featured Excerpt
Back then, it would have been inconceivable to me that one could think about sex – or, better yet, have sex – too often for one's own good. Sex was definitely not like crack, which I was hearing about with increasing hysteria on the news. Crack seemed very, very bad. Sex seemed like a great idea, especially as it was explained to me in the pages of the "Penthouse" magazines I found while snooping around my father's bedroom. (My parents divorced when I was six, and I divided my time between their houses.) If you had told me when I was twelve that I would grow up to be a sex addict, I likely would have prayed you were right.
-from "America Anonymous," by Benoit Dezinet-Lewis
Footnotes
After almost 30 years of publishing primarily queer books, Cleis Press is branching out into more-or-less hetero titles, with a new line of books targeted as much at straight readers as at gays. The Viva Editions debut, released on Jan. 20 – Inauguration Day – was the humorous "Feisty First Ladies and Other Unforgettable White House Women," by Autumn Stephens (author of the "Wild Women" series), described as "part irreverent portrait gallery, part exuberant expose." Forthcoming titles are "It's Never Too Late to Be What You Might Have Been," by B.J. Gallagher; "Use Little, Live Big," by Clare Cooley; "Living Life as a Thank You," by Nina Lesowitz and Mary Beth Sammons; "Random Obsessions: Trivia You Can't Live Without," by Nick Belardes; and "The Budget Crunch Gourmet Cookbook," by Lynette Shirk. The lineup is quite a departure from the likes of "Best Gay Bondage Erotica," "Hot Cops," and "The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women," books that have helped define Cleis – also the publisher of books by such divergent authors as Patrick Califia, Mabel Maney, Ann Bannon, Joan Nestle, and Gore Vidal – as a sexually provocative press. But associate publisher Brenda Knight says the time is right to expand into the new territory of lifestyle and self-help, "building on the strong foundation of Cleis Press' excellence in publishing…with books that entertain, educate, and inspire readers."
