Good and dirty

Gay anthology I Like It Like That offers up
some sublime erotica. Plus: The Hipless Boy

by MATTHEW HAYS and
RUPERT BOTTENBERG

I Like It Like That:
True Stories of Gay Male Desire
Authors Richard Labonté and Lawrence Schimel have become masters of the queer literary anthology. Between them, they have edited over 40 books of queer writing, much of it gay erotic fiction, winning numerous lit awards for their efforts. As an avid fan told me recently, “When I want my brain and my dick stimulated, I pick up one of their anthologies.”

Their latest, I Like It Like That: True Stories of Gay Male Desire, will not disappoint. An eclectic collection of tall tales of sex and sexual longing, the stories run the spectrum but remain consistent in quality. This is an enticing selection, one that makes you want to reread particular stories, and they’ve once again done the laudable thing of including queer household names (like Sky Gilbert and Paul Bellini) alongside relatively new writers and emerging stars (like Shuck author Daniel Allen Cox).

The book starts out brazenly, with Larry Duplechan recalling when he first realized he was well hung; in “Big Black Daddy-Dick, or the Joys of Being Fetishized,” he recalls losing his virginity to a McDonald’s manager who assured him his member was indeed huge. The story concludes hilariously with a poetic ode to his dick, “Hail to Thee, Magnificent and Mighty Black Cock!” Montreal writer Christopher DiRaddo offers what is perhaps the most touching entry, “The Weight of My Desire,” in which he elegantly recounts his youthful yearning for one of his first and most painful crushes (any girl will relate). And just to prove they’re formally inclusive, they’ve included graphic short stories, Justin Hall’s artfully rendered “Evil Bear Man” and Steve MacIsaac’s “Amanuensis.”

But the most thoughtful entry comes from Cox, who meditates on the gay looks obsession in “Army of Ugly,” learning to appreciate the off-kilter sexiness of people who will never appear in GQ. It’s another great moment in a book that demands that we look at gay sexuality in a different light.

The Hipless Boy
Sully is the nom de plume of Montreal comic artist, illustrator and poet Sherwin Tjia, whose collection The Hipless Boy fits squarely within the realm of the emo comic, the understated, observational slice-of-life genre currently dominated by Adrian Tomine. Tjia takes many cues from Tomine, though not in his actual artwork—whereas Tomine’s is a wooden pastiche of Dan Clowes and Jaime Hernandez, Tjia’s rubbery linework and suggestive simplicity are far more alive.

The outsider status Tjia ascribes to himself, “hipless” among the hipsters of Mile-End, is disingenuous. The café-haunting, compulsively self-revelatory alternative cartoonist looms large amid the hipster panoply, after all. The largely autobiographical yarns draw from the familiar well of the highly educated, politically liberal, artistically oriented urban proto-adult—the awkward dynamics of nerd-on-nerd attraction, the minutiae of the kaffeeklatsch, sporadic bursts of cat love. To his credit, Tjia communicates frankly about carnal matters, but his own peccadilloes—such as are found in the pellucid yet inconclusive “The More the Boys Depend On Us,” about crossdressing—don’t carry the repulsiveness that autobio-comix godfathers Chester Brown and Joe Matt subjected their readers to.

What’s all too lacking here is the acerbic wit Tjia so ably deployed in his earlier short strip, Pedigree Girls. He often strives for a more open-hearted poignancy, applying his poet’s sense of distillation and flow, and on occasion achieves it. “In the Days Before Christmas,” a yuletide suicide story, carries substantial emotional impact.

The most engaging element of The Hipless Boy, however, isn’t so much in his comics, though a couple tap this source. It’s found in the illustrated fragments of prose that punctuate the book, and it’s the episodes with Owen, a brilliant art rogue who seems to be a stand-in for Tjia’s own (in some cases thankfully) unrealized notions.

I LIKE IT LIKE THAT EDITED BY
RICHARD LABONTÉ AND LAWRENCE
SCHIMEL, ARSENAL PULP PRESS, PB,
224 PP., $18.95. LAUNCH AT CASA DEL
POPOLO (4873 ST-LAURENT),
MONDAY, SEPT. 28, 7 P.M.
THE HIPLESS BOY BY SULLY, CONUNDRUM
PRESS, PB, 224 PP., $19.95
LAUNCH AT DRAWN & QUARTERLY
BOOKSTORE (211 BERNARD W.),
TUESDAY, SEPT. 29, 7 P.M.