Guns, Goons, and Gay Boys
I go through phases with my reading. Just lately, I am shifting from classic science fiction to mystery. I love mystery stories, but I’m still searching for a series with a main character I can really love. The tactic that works best so far is to read mysteries where the main character is gay. What can I say? I’m not a complicated girl.
I started reading the Donald Strachey novels after seeing a couple of the movies, which I really liked. The novels are very different, much drier and more reserved. Sometimes, they get a little too dry and reserved for my taste. (I like Neil Plakcy’s Mahu series much better. Mysteries, set in Hawaii, with the occasional gay sexytimes? Sign me up!) However, every now and then, Stevenson reminds me why I keep picking up these novels.
Some context: In “Strachey’s Folly”, Donald and his husband Timothy are visiting a friend in Washington DC when they get caught up in a complex plot involving the AIDS quilt, campaign finance fraud, attempted murder, and a Mexican boyfriend. Timothy gets a bit paranoid as the mystery deepens, but Donald continues to play it cool, and this is how chapter 15 ends:
“Timmy had even brought up the possibility that our hotel had been bugged. I considered that far-fetched. I did not go along with Timmy’s request that we discuss my investigation and our respective plans only in the hotel bathroom with all the sink and bathtub faucets running loudly. Instead, I suggested that while in our hotel room we hold confidential conversations only when our voices were muffled and our words distorted by our lying in bed with our pants down or off and with our mouths stuffed with each other’s genitalia. Timmy said I wasn’t taking our situation seriously enough.”
Best paragraph ever…y/y?