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BOULDREV BRIAN EDITOR Best American Gay Fiction Edited by B R IAN B 0 U L D R E Y BACK :BAY R 1111 n JK.:-. LITTLE, BROWN AND COMPANY Boston Ne-UJ York Toronto London Copyright© 1996 by Little, Brown and Company (Inc.) Introduction copyright© 1996 by Brian Bouldrey All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review. First Edition The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. Copyright Acknowledgments appear on pp. 316-318. ISBN o-316-10320-9 (he) ISBN o-316-10317-9 (pb) ISSN 1088-5501 HC: 10 9 8 7 6 54 3 2 I PB: 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I MV-NY Published simultaneously in Canada by Little, Brown & Company (Canada) Limited Primed in the United States ofA merica THIS BOOK IS FOR Hugh Rowland, ENTHUSIAST. Contents Acknowledgments X Introduction Xl EDMUND WHITE 3 "His Biographer;' from Skinned Alive JIM PROVENZANO 26 "Split Lip;' from Queer View Mirror R. S. JONES 29 "I Am Making a Mistake;' from Walking on Air JASON K. FRIEDMAN 37 "The Wedding Dress," from His SCOTT HElM 59 "Don't or Stop;' from Mysterious Skin CONTENTS DICK SCANLAN 8o "Banking Hours," from Does Freddy Dance ROBERT GLUCK g8 "The Early Worm;' from Contact, the 1 14th Annual Exhibition of the Walter/McBean Gallery ERNESTO MESTRE "Monologue of Triste the Contortionist;' from The James White Review JIM GRIMSLEY "On the Mound;' from Dream Boy ADAM KLEIN 1)0 "The Medicine Burns;' from The Medicine Burns MATTHEW STADLER 151 '~Ian Stein;' from In a Different Light: Vzsual Culture, Sexual Identity, Queer Practice CHRISTOPHER BRAM "Posterity;' from Father ofF rankenstein BERNARD COOPER 194 ''Arson;' from His JOE WESTMORELAND 211 "The Spanking;' from Mirage/Period(ical) • viii • Contents MICHAEL LOWENTHAL 220 "Going Away;• from Flesh and the Word 3 JL SCHNEIDER 237 'Mer the Change;• from Modern Words STEPHEN BEACHY 243 "Distortion; from Men's Style ALDO ALVAREZ "ghosts, pockets, traces, necessary clouds;• from PenN Sword RICK BARRETT "Running Shoes;• from Christopher Street KEVIN KILLIAN "Hot Lights;' from Gerbil MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM "Cassandra;• from Flesh and Blood Contributors )IO Honorable Mention 315 Copyright Acknowledgments p6 • IX • Acknowledgments Several people were helpful in the creation of this book. The edi tor wishes to thank the following people for their help with this project: Mark Chimsky, Peter Ginsberg, Hugh Rowland, Don Osborne, and Catherine Crawford. A very special thanks to Judith Rees, who provided the quiet and space to work and entertained with the Wahkiakum County Eagle sheriff's report: She "do the po lice in different voices." Introduction I am a restless reader. When friends come visit me at home and inspect my bookcase, I watch their eyes narrow as they try to peg my tastes, only to come away puzzled: What do The Wooings ofJ ezebel Pettyfer and How to Make Your Own Stradivarius Violin have in common? My peripatetic reading agenda is satisfied by anthologies, which are plentiful these days. The nature of the an thology is restless because it is a patchwork of different voices and moods. Some of the pieces of that patchwork clash, some harmo nize; one story's theme will augment and inform another's and create a new, more complicated theme. Contributors to an anthol ogy find themselves under one cover because they share a subject or the writers share a certain background-but after that there are more differences than similarities in style, substance, mood, length, and effect. The mutual restlessness of an anthology and a reader like me creates an exciting energy. Stories speak of each other, leading me on a search for other, similar stories or authors investigating a certain trend. I explore anthologies the way I rummage through the refrigerator looking for a midnight snack-sampling salty pickles, hot salsa, sweet ice cream-waiting for something to please my taste, sate my appetite. That's how I put this book together. It was created not to be • XI • INTRODUCTION an exclusive club that leaves many deserving writers out in the cold, but as an inclusive, enthusiastic gathering, a party. I aimed for breadth and I hope that it shows in the collection: Michael Lowenthal and Rick Barrett write about AIDS, but one story is erotic while the other is told from the point of view of a middle-aged, middle-American father. Bernard Cooper and Jim Grimsley explore the coming-of-age genre, but one story is brainy and imagistic while the other is a mythic fantasy sunk in a too-real world. There are stories of transsexuals, drag queens, call boys, porn stars, and political dissidents. There are also stories about parents, closeted rock stars, and teenage girls. Tapping into this restlessness is also a way to contemplate di versity. In an age when political correctness has become little more than bean counting, it's time to look at quality over a breadth of subject matter, individual aspirations, and experiments. This doesn't mean, however, that the same criteria should be ap plied to every story. Each one has to be judged on its own terms and by its own goals for success. In my restless search for the stories that make up Best American Gay Fiction 1996, I sought variety. I pored over shelves full of nov els and short story collections, haunted the 'zine racks in alterna tive magazine shops, quizzed other avid readers about their discoveries, even flipped desperately through my in-flight maga zine on plane trips, hoping to stumble on that perfect story in the most unlikely place. A friend calls with an urgent message: "Have you looked at this new Caribbean anthology? There's a story by Gil Cuadra, the Cuban who wrote Strawberry and Chocolate." "Yes, it's great;' I say, "but it was published six years ago in Spanish and there's nothing particularly fictional about his mem oir of his relationship with his father." • xii •