If you were an editor, say, Robert Drake or Terry Wolverton, what criteria would you use to assemble an anthology of gay fiction? In his introduction to “Circa 2000 –Gay Fiction at the Millennium”, Drake writes, “The end of the 20th century has been about the breaking down of fixed categories—of art forms, of culture, of gender, of sexual orientation…” In other words, conventional boundaries and distinctions between heterosexual and homosexual literature have become imprecise. Witness the short futuristic story “Mrs. Lincoln’s China” by M. Shayne Bell: the nation is in total anarchy and the White House has become a hollowed out source for looters. An elderly African American lady, with her son acting as bodyguard, retrieves some souvenirs which she intends to protect for a time when history is once again valued. The story has no characters identified as gay. Similarly, Colm Toibin’s “The Heather Blazing” features a heterosexual Irish judge who writes a controversial decision against a young girl who has been expelled from school because she is pregnant; the press and his daughter are outraged and he must calculate the unpopularity he must suffer against the integrity of his pronouncement. The theme of unjust persecution of “outcasts” perpetuated by jurists will resonate with gay readers, but the premise is by no means peculiar to one minority. ( A review of Colm Toibin’s novel “Story of Night” can be read on this site.)
Readers seeking experiences more peculiar to the gay experience may find a more interesting narrative in “Rose City” by David Ebersshoff: Roland and Graham are ex-lovers who reunite in a curiously cruisey “straight bar” in Pasadena. Graham has found a new lover, but Roland continues to seek his Mr. Right, or “Hubby-hub” while concurrently bedding down a series of Mr. Meantimes. How “Sex In The City”!
If you are a fan of the “Men on Men” anthologies, then Circa 2000 may not provide adequate erotica for your taste. The most erotic story here involves a man who is obsessed with finding the pedophile who seduced him at the age of thirteen. The identities of the victim and the predator are ironically blurred here, as the younger man seeks to rekindle the kinky passion he shared with the boy-lover. Similarly fixated is the sex addict in “Beneath the Planet of the Compulsives” by Eitan Alexander. His twelve-step program of choice is C.A.A.C.A.A., which is translated as “Coitus and Anal Compulsive Addicts Anonymous”. It is improper to date a fellow program member, but our hero cannot help being attracted to one who fulfills his image of a dream man, a hairy ape with “incredibly defined abs”. When a portion of the Big Book is read, the Neanderthal in giant Converse high tops displays an ill-disguised feral snarl at the mention of a higher power; the two share a secret “inside” joke and a purposeful mutual seduction ensues.
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