Book picks similar to
The Coming of the Night by John Rechy
lgbt
fiction
queer
gay
Kept Boy
Robert Rodi - 1996
Which, in his characters' vernacular, means he's a total scream.Having made a career of deconstructing the denizens of the modern gay world, Robert Rodi now turns his hand to -- and twists the knife in -- yet another gay archetype: the kept boy.Dennis Racine is 31, but looks 23...which might be considered his good fortune, except that even 23 is a bit old for his chosen profession: pampered "companion" to the fiftyish, filthy rich Chicago theatrical impresario Farleigh Nock (a.k.a. "the Papp of the Provinces"). In fact, Farleigh has lately become so resistant to Dennis's charms that he's conferred the ultimate indignity on him: demanding that he get a job.Dennis proves himself astonishingly unemployable, then learns that his old job is in peril as well; for Farleigh's affections have been snared by the lithe young pool boy Jasper Moran. When Jasper is promoted from chlorination duties to directing Farleigh's production of Lady Windermere's Fan, Dennis knows he's in danger of losing his place in Farleigh's life (not to mention his Last Will and Testament).Lending him a hand in a spirit of common cause are his two best friends. Lonnie Roach is the kept boy of an ancient gossip columnist; Paulette Ng is retained by a member of Congress whose anonymity she protects by referring to him only as "the Spanker of the House".Together they devise a plan to whisk Farleigh away from Jaspers influence, landing him in Greece, where Dennis can re-seduce him in exotic privacy. The scheme provokes bigger repercussions than Dennis ever expected and he finds himself fighting for his man -- and his man's legacy-- more fiercely than ever before, aided only by two Iowa co-eds and a maniacal Santorini grandmother.His satiric eye sharper than ever, but never straying from the deep humanity that makes his characters and stories so appealing, Robert Rodi once again delivers a fabulous, unforgettable farce of the kind that has made him so enduringly popular.
The Swimming-Pool Library
Alan Hollinghurst - 1988
"Impeccably composed and meticulously particular in its observation of everything" (Harpers & Queen), it focuses on the friendship of two men: William Beckwith, a young gay aristocrat who leads a life of privilege and promiscuity, and the elderly Lord Nantwich, an old Africa hand, searching for someone to write his biography and inherit his traditions.
Sugarless
James Magruder - 2009
His mother’s second husband is a licensed psychologist who eats like an ape, his stepsister is a stoner slut, and his father is engaged to a Southern belle. Rick’s only solace is his growing collection of original Broadway-cast LPs, bought on the sly at Wax Trax. After he brings two girls in speech class to tears by reading a story aloud, Rick is coaxed onto the interscholastic forensics team to perform an eight-minute dramatic interpretation of The Boys in the Band, the controversial sixties play about homosexuality. Unexpectedly successful at this oddball event, Rick begins winning tournaments and making friends with his teammates. Rick also discovers the joys of sex—with a speech coach from a rival school—just as his mother, reacting to a deteriorating home environment, makes an unnerving commitment to Christ. The newly confident Rick assumes this too shall pass—until the combined forces of family, sex, and faith threaten to undo him at the state meet in Peoria. James Magruder’s Sugarless offers a ruefully entertaining take on the simultaneous struggles of coming-out, coming-of-age, and coming-to-Jesus. A selection of InsightOut Book Club Finalist, Lambda Book Award for Gay Debut Fiction, Lambda Literary Foundation Finalist, TLA Gaybie Award for Best Gay Fiction Semi-finalist, James Branch Cabell First Novelist Award, Virginia Commonwealth University Semi-finalist, William Saroyan International Prize For Writing, Stanford University
What I Did Wrong
John Weir - 2006
Now, Weir follows up with another terrifically moving- and often disarmingly funny-book about loss, survival, and sexuality in the post-AIDS era. Returning to a Manhattan haunted by the memory of all the young men who died in the late 1980s and early 90s, "What I Did Wrong" has at its heart a protagonist for whom that loss is still all too palpable. Tom, a forty-two-year-old English professor, watched his best friend die years earlier and now finds himself sliding into middle age while questioning everything he thought he knew about his "gay identity." His Queens College classes are filled with borough boys displaying their own bravado along with their confused masculinity. As Tom balances their friendship with the occasional displaced erotic overtones, he finds an unexpected common ground with these proud young men and, surprisingly, claims his place in the world and in history. "What I Did Wrong" is a dazzling work juxtaposing low comedy and heartfelt tragedy with astonishing finesse, a book worthy of John Weir's return to fiction that will be warmly welcomed by critics and readers alike.
Looking For It
Michael Thomas Ford - 2004
As Mike pours beer, wipes glasses and hears everything, he's also witness to the men who come here looking for what they need - sex, direction, friendship, spiritual fulfillment, and love. People like: Stephen Darby - As an accountant, he knows many secrets. But Stephen has his own secret, one he's never been able to share with anyone close to him. Being the perfect son costs him dearly, and now it may take from him the one man he longs for. Pete Thayer - Playing it straight, Pete takes out his frustrations on transmissions and engines during the day, then spends his nights trying to quench his needs through anonymous sex. John and Russell - The golden couple in town has the ideal relationship everyone wants. But behind the scenes, their storybook marriage is on the verge of facing some explosive trials. Father Thomas Dunn - More and more the gentle priest is feeling a need to express the secret desires that conflict with his devotion to the church, sending his faith into a tailspin and making him question what he really wants from life. Simon Bird - He's a fixture in town, an old queen everyone finds amusing and entertaining. Still mourning the loss of his longtime lover, Simon yearns to find love and a place in a culture that worships youth and beauty.With unflinching honesty, keen insight, and his trademark humor, Michael Thomas Ford weaves together the unforgettable stories of these seven men, chronicling their dreams, hurts, heartbreaks, joys, and hopes, while taking readers on an emotional journey to find what it is we're all looking for.
Boy Culture
Matthew Rettenmund - 1995
The object of his affections is his roommate Andrew, who is confused about his sexuality. Meanwhile, X's other roommate-a seventeen-year-old precocious partyboy-is falling for X in a big way. The result is an old-fashioned (well, sort of) love triangle peppered with savage one-liners-a touching portrait of love and lust among three very different gay men
A Single Man
Christopher Isherwood - 1964
George, the protagonist, is adjusting to life on his own after the sudden death of his partner, determined to persist in the routines of his daily life. An Englishman and a professor living in suburban Southern California, he is an outsider in every way, and his internal reflections and interactions with others reveal a man who loves being alive despite everyday injustices and loneliness. Wry, suddenly manic, constantly funny, surprisingly sad, this novel catches the true textures of life itself."--BOOK JACKET.
Pennsylvania Station
Patrick E. Horrigan - 2018
Frederick Bailey is a quiet, cultured, closeted architect reluctantly drawn into the effort to save Pennsylvania Station from being demolished. But when he meets Curt, a vibrant, immature gay activist more than half his age, he is overtaken by passions he hasn't felt in years, putting everything he cares about--his friends, his family, his career and reputation--at risk. As the elegant old train station is dismantled piece by piece to make way for the crass new Madison Square Garden sports arena, Frederick must undergo a reckoning he has dreaded all his life. Award-winning author Patrick E. Horrigan delves into the fractured psyches of mid-twentieth-century gay men, conjuring a picture of New York City and the nation on the brink of explosive cultural change.
Pins
Jim Provenzano - 1999
Set in Little Falls, New Jersey in 1993, PINS weaves the classic story of a Catholic saint into a compelling modern life -and near-death- account of Joey Nicci, a fifteen-year-old Italian-American wrestler. After befriending Donald "Dink" Kohrs, Joey and his new posse get involved in pranks and partying that eventually get out of control, resulting in the death of a maligned fellow teammate. The ensuing legal battle and media frenzy alter Joey's life and his self- perception as a gay teenager while shattering his fragile love for fellow teammate Dink. Like his patron saint, his battle against his own teammates forces him to suffer for his beliefs. His survival becomes a literary miracle. A compelling story of a loving yet confused family, coaches and teachers struggling with multiple issues of violence and homophobia amid the clan-like world of teenage athletes, PINS brings together elements now frighteningly common in the media; bullying jocks, assaults on weaker students, faculty and families unwittingly allowing such behavior
Perfect Freedom
Gordon Merrick - 1982
Tropez -- dapper American expatriate Stuart Cosling, his ravishing French wife Helene, and their stunningly handsome son Robbie. To his parents, Robbie was still a boy, but in the spring of 1938, on a cruise of the Greek islands, Robbie discovered the pleasures of manhood. It wasn't until a certain season in St. Tropez that Robbie discovered the endless passion that comes only once with first love.
Imre: A Memorandum
Edward Irenaeus Prime-Stevenson - 1906
Described by the author as “a little psychological romance,” the narrative follows two men who meet by chance in a café; in Budapest, where they forge a friendship that leads to a series of mutual revelations and gradual disclosures. With its sympathetic characterizations of homosexual men, Imre’s 1906 publication marked a turning point in English literature.This edition includes material relating to the novels origins, contemporary writings on homosexuality, other writings by Prime-Stevenson, and a contemporary review.
Getting It
Alex Sanchez - 2006
On TV the guy always gets the girl. As Carlos watched, he recalled Sal, the supposedly gay guy at school. It was then that the idea first popped into his brain: If Sal truly were queer...could he possibly help Carlos?...Not to propose to Roxy, of course -- at least not yet -- but to get her to maybe like him?
The World of Normal Boys
K.M. Soehnlein - 2000
Soehnlein captures the spirit of a generation and an era, embodied in the haunting, unstoppable voice of thirteen-year-old Robin MacKenzie, a modern-day Holden Caulfield, whose struggle for a place in the world is as ferocious as it is real.The time is the late 1970s--an age of gas shortages, head shops, and Saturday Night Fever. The place, suburban New Jersey. At a time when the teenagers around him are coming of age, Robin MacKenzie is coming undone. While "normal boys" are into cars, sports, and bullying their classmates, Robin enjoys day trips to New York City with his elegant mother, spinning fantastic tales for her amusement in an intimate ritual he has come to love. He dutifully plays the role of the good son for his meat-and-potatoes father, even as his own mind is a jumble of sexual confusion and painful self-doubt. But everything changes in one, horrifying instant when a tragic accident wakes his family from their middle-American dream and plunges them into a spiral of slow destruction.As his family falls apart day by day, Robin finds himself pulling away from the unquestioned, unexamined life that has been carefully laid out for him. Small acts of rebellion lead to larger questions of what it means to stand on his own. Falling into a fevered triangle with two other outcasts, Todd Spicer and Scott Schatz, Robin embarks on an explosive odyssey of sexual self-discovery that will take him beyond the spring-green lawns of suburbia, beyond the fraying fabric barely holding together his quickly unraveling family, and into a complex future, beyond the world of normal boys.In The World Of Normal Boys, K.M. Soehnlein has created a dazzling gem of a debut novel in the tradition of Ordinary People and A Boy's Own Story, one that sparkles with raw honesty, poetic beauty, wry insight, and a rare richness of emotion that reverberates long after the last page is read. It is a story about growing up and falling apart, of rebellion and acceptance, of unspoken lives and irreversible choices that are made.
Tales of the City
Armistead Maupin - 1978
A naïve young secretary, fresh out of Cleveland, tumbles headlong into a brave new world of laundromat Lotharios, pot-growing landladies, cut throat debutantes, and Jockey Shorts dance contests. The saga that ensues is manic, romantic, tawdry, touching, and outrageous—unmistakably the handiwork of Armistead Maupin.