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kaigouToo often these days, when I see a story has "warning: BDSM themes" on it, I pretty much scoff, if not roll my eyes, and decide my interest in the story with that single element dismissed. Read one, read plenty, whatever, what else have you got? ...And that's right when this particular exception-to-the-rule leaped out and smacked me between the eyes.
I've been putting off reviewing Chaos Magic (by Jay Lygon, published by Torquere) and a huge reason is because I'm still not entirely sure how to classify it. That is, it straddles so many genres that I simply can't think of any other book, at all, that could be used as comparison. No chance of "it's like Titanic, but in Alaska, with the Bad News Bears" kind of schtick.
Frex, see teaser:
Sam is a broken young man, searching for temporary escape from his demons--inside and out. Running from abusive ex-lover Marcus, the God of Fear, Sam finds himself in the arms of the hottest man to step foot into his life: Hector. Hector proves to be the Daddy Sam needs and wants, but the road is a very rocky and often terrifying one. As Marcus digs his claws deeper into Sam, it threatens to tear everything Sam and Hector have built together apart.
First, the majority of ebook gay-romance is (for better or worse) written by women, with romancelandia influences; the bottom line is that I think this is only one of three books (out of the hundreds I've read in the past few years) that references any daddy-boy age-play. For whatever reason, it's not common at all in women-writing-m/m, but it's a topic I recall plenty from actual gay guys who were friends. Roleplaying as 'stern poppa' or 'leather-daddy' just doesn't seem to be a kink many women display, at least not in their romance-based writing. I mention it now so you're not caught off-guard when I point out yet another layer in the story; just keep in mind adult-pretending-to-be-younger, with adult-lover-being-parental, and this being both a turn-on for the protagonists as well as a defining element in their interaction.
Second, I think the reason I kept coming back to the story's description was the oddity of Marcus being 'the God of Fear'. There's no real qualifications there, so it's hard to tell from just that whether the author means literally (hence the capitals?) or metaphorically, as in a title Sam's given Marcus (a la no name, only title: 'that asshole' or some such). But in the opening paragraphs, two things struck me. One, the emphasis on those strongly gay-culture (read: not women-authored) roles, and the fact that Sam opens the story with a magical ritual that's not to save the world, or heal someone, or even protect himself or those he loves -- none of this altruistic white-magic kind of stuff. Nope, plain and simple, Sam's doing sex magic to get himself a lover.
Add in the warnings for the story (specifically the S/m and D/s elements), and that excerpt, and I figured I had a pretty good idea what I'd purchased. Romance, sure, with a little bit of magic, and some kink, and probably Marcus stalking; in the end Sam (or Hector) finally ditches Marcus and with a few bits of angst and a lot of smexxing, story is over. I guess I'd call that gay romance with BDSM; I expected that any BDSM would be included because that's just, y'know, kinda what happens. It won't actually be integral.
Boy, was I ever wrong. And wrong in more than just that, because if Chaos Magic were to fit into any genre, it wouldn't be romance, and it wouldn't be S/m, and it wouldn't even really be gay fiction. It's magical realism.
Yeah, magical realism, but without the heavy Catholicism-Other mystical sensation I get when reading the Hispanic greats of magical realism. No, this is more like magical urbanism: it's real, but it's also distinctly Los Angeles, unquestionably American, infused with pop culture and yet magical in a way that's both the taken-for-granted facet of magical 'realism' and at the same time always just a bit metaphorical. Are there truly gods who exemplify/embody so many things, or is that just an easy way of perceiving the world? Can it be both?
Let me try to explain this way: in urban fantasy, there is almost always a point where a character says, oh my gawdz, that's an elf! Or, "a dark world she never knew existed". Or, that kneejerk reaction before the audience-standin character adjusts to this previously-hidden part of the city. Not in this book, though.
The gods, the magic, everything simply is. Sam's strongest and greatest ability is to recognize the divine in others, yet at the same time this divine is so amazingly mundane that it's almost... not quite silly, no, but so very concrete that there's never a sense of needing that kneejerk "I had no idea!" moment to process the reaction. Lygon just weaves in the magical and the divine through nearly every page. For Sam, this divinity -- and his reaction and awareness of it -- is just so everyday, so matter-of-fact, that even what's perfectly normal becomes equally glossed with that sense of magic.
When Hector comes to Sam's apartment for the first time, he notices the altars Sam has up. Sam explains:
That's because the story works on so many levels. Sam's friends refer to him as a Sex God, and despite his perception that he's not much of anyone in the leather scene, Hector's comments reveal that Sam not only got around but cut a bit of a swath. Sam's oblivious to the fact that he makes most people weak in the knees, but only somewhat; he's mostly perceptive about the physical reactions but discounts those. But Sam's also a reluctant sex god; in the wake of breaking up with Marcus, he's stopped dating, stopped going out all that much, doesn't really have visitors other than his closest friends (and his Gods), doesn't really socialize much at all. And, too, he doesn't dance.
Here's one example of why no short description can spoil what's really the meat of this story:
As someone recovering from an abusive and battered relationship, Sam makes perfect sense: but only on the inside. What he shows on the outside... he doesn't really say. You're left guessing based on the reactions to him, which he does see, but in the jagged upside-down reality created by trauma, there's a disconnect.
I admit the first time I read the book, I really didn't like Hector -- at times, I even loathed him. It took a second read, maybe a third, for me to see (even if I still am not entirely sure I like him, as a person) that this sensation of disliking isn't because Hector is necessarily a bad person. That unreliable narrator plays a role, but even more, it's that Sam's voice has a particular duplicity that compounds the usual "not telling you everything" -- because Sam's voice, fundamentally, is brutally straightforward. When he equivocates, or hedges, or doesn't speak, it's with the same matter-of-fact attitude. None of this paragraph of whining about how he doesn't want to talk about himself because of trust issues, or former lovers, whine whine whine: he just changes the topic, just like that.
As much as Lygon expects the reader to catch these gaps and recognize them for what they are, Sam is, and does, recognize them and admit as much to himself. With the entire story told from Sam's point-of-view, by the time Hector's at his last wit over Sam's behaviors or reactions, a reader can't help but sympathize with Sam, if perhaps wrongly. The reader has already gotten all the information, yet Sam has said so very little of it to Hector. Who could blame Hector for misinterpreting? And truthfully, if the story were told from Hector's point-of-view, it would be a strikingly (ahem) different story, I'm sure. Sam appears to play everything on the surface, but very little of him really is.
Again during that first visit to Sam's apartment, Hector is trying to learn more about him ("do you play sports? like music?" etc). Sam is alternately uncertain and somewhat miffed because all he wants -- or is pretty sure he wants, because it's got far less strings -- is just a quick blowjob, and be done with it. But Hector keeps pushing, and Sam keeps backing up.
It's not a story in which two people get together, beat one up, have kinky sex, live happily ever after. Lygon doesn't take that easy route. Sam is complex, and messed-up, even if much of that messed-up-ness is partially, perhaps, due to his own personality and plenty due to what he's been through and the scars he bears. Yet he's also getting into not a domination-submission relationship but a truly sadomasochistic relationship, willingly. As one of Sam's friends comments later, if all Sam wants is someone to smack him around... what's the difference, then, between Marcus and Hector? How is one abuse, and the other, not?
In between this slowly building issue that runs through the story's conflict, Lygon slips in other details that don't make complete sense until you can see more of Sam. There's little description of Sam's place until Hector shows up (in which case Sam is nervously and anxiously trying to cook dinner while simultaneously providing a tour of his minuscule one-bedroom walkup). Even then Sam focuses on what's important to him (he silently prods Hector to notice clean sheets on the bed! clean sheets! in a moment of adorable, if private, earnestness).
It's a passing comment from Hector that prompted me to back the hell up and try to figure out just what, and how, and why, such a thing came about: the mirror.
Also: do you see what I mean about not realizing Sam hasn't spoken? His thoughts carry half the conversation, yet he doesn't voice them, nor does he describe what he's doing, or even much of how Hector's reacting (except in those instances where he's confused as to meaning of an expression). Reading the story, I fell into a pattern of hearing the thoughts-speaking as a dialogue, and that makes it even harder when the disconnect grows wide enough to rip the two apart. Sam is left floundering with no idea what to do -- and his guesses, based partly in the trauma from Marcus, are often off-kilter enough to confuse Hector in turn, and it just keeps going south. It's like... communication but without ever saying anything, and that just doesn't work.
Plus, Lygon has some passages that are just so perfectly Sam, both elegant and yet urban-tainted, that I can't help but be startled everytime I reread. Maybe it's just the world of genre fiction, but poetic passages usually render as purple prose, not as something truly wonderful without going over the top. This part is from a little more down the road, when Hector is out of town and calls to chat with Sam.
Sam and Hector's relationship doesn't go smoothly, but moves forward and then jerks back again. Sam's tendency to only think his reactions makes it even more complicated -- on top of already being complicated enough by the fact that with Hector, he's mimicking (in a sense) what he had with Marcus...
I say, in a sense, because with an abusive lover, the victim has no control over the situation and sometimes the only coping mechanisms are to control one's self: don't laugh, don't protest, don't say no, etc. Yet a dominant-submissive paradigm also requires the submissive relinquish control. Willingly, but in the victim's mind (as Sam displays), isn't also sometimes the victim of abuse willingly giving up control, some parts of the self, as a means to avoid the violence? Not to mention the question of good violence, versus bad violence.
Again, in the midst of dialogue but Sam's lines unspoken:
And yes, Marcus does stalk Sam throughout the story, but again, Sam is a true victim in that he's oh-so-busy not being a victim. After Hector misjudges the best way to handle Sam's apparently too-confrontational reaction (again, as usual, to Hector's perceived prying into Sam's relationship history), Hector finally lays it out that he had been under the impression (and jealous of, per his own issues) Sam's apparent continued love for a former lover. It takes Hector a bit to catch onto the notion that maybe Sam's caginess isn't because he's carrying a torch: that past relationship really was that bad.
Hector damn near begs Sam to communicate, to open up (even as Sam continues to think-speak his responses). The rare instances when Sam does respond, it's not the whiney "let me tell you everything" style I usually see in angst-fest romances, where the author's intention is to make us feel sorry for the character.
That never works on me, at least; what does work is what Lygon does here: Sam is allowed to cadge rather than spill, to draw the shreds of his remaining dignity around himself much as a victim does, at least, a victim who does not want to be a victim, and wants to be healed, and can't figure out how so is reduced to faking it until he makes it. I think it's just the matter-of-fact tone that creates the gut-punch, but what really matters is that Lygon doesn't sacrifice Sam's pride for the sake of gainingthe reader's Hector's pity love. Hector pushes Sam to speak; Sam does -- albeit with great reluctance -- tell a little bit, but the author lets him stop there.
In so many little ways, Sam's everyday, matter-of-fact approach to things underscores how much of a victim he was, and how much damage Marcus really did. When Sam has a flashback-styled reaction to Hector's (well-intentioned if ignorant) actions, he wakes the next morning to find himself alone. He tells himself, "[Hector] thought he wanted to know more about me, but the truth was just ugly and hopeless. If only I could have faked it better, he might have thought I was worth his time." That's it. He doesn't belabor it, and I think it's this quiet fatalism (not really acceptance, not that healthy) that runs under Sam's voice that makes him both fractured and admirable. If he's got a blindspot for understanding how Hector perceives him, he's got an even bigger blindspot for seeing how deep the scar tissue goes.
A lot of that shows up in something I don't see all that often. Similarly to how some authors play the "raised/lived on the streets" card for some kind of hardcore cred but without considering the longterm effects, many authors play the victim card but never seem to really think through how a person deals with the knowledge of that victimization, after the fact. Lygon, however, nails it. In what is probably one of the more realistic (if totally politically incorrect) passages I've read in fiction in a long time, Sam later complains of the same thing to his friends.
Sam may be a walking sex god, and thus it's natural that he'd want to focus on the sex within a relationship, but 'sex' is only the adjective. The operative noun here is 'god'. As much as he denies any chance of his own divinity, so he also denies the role power plays in such dynamics.
That's a recurring bit in the story, the issue of power exchange, but Lygon doesn't push it on you. It's just a few times, mentioned, often in passing, almost as a quip. One of Sam's other close Gods is the Goddess of Negotiation (very powerful in Los Angeles, obviously), aka Deal. After his first date with Hector -- during which nothing happens but some kissing -- Sam goes looking for Traffic but it's Deal that finds him first, and asks him how the date went.
Angelina, the Goddess of Traffic, tries to help -- to a point. She tells Sam there's a reason Hector's acting how he is, but she won't give Sam any hints. She simply says, ""I'm not going to make it easy for you, Sam. What else can I possibly use to bribe you into becoming? Power? You don't want it. Wealth? You make the Spartans look like hedonists. There isn't a temptation I can dangle in front of you that will get your head out of the clouds, except Hector. So if you want answers, you'll have to come down to earth with the rest of us Gods and find out."
This is what I mean by the metaphor of magical realism, turned to the purpose of illustrating -- in a most delightful way -- the crux of the story. Sam can, and does, recognize Hector's divinity, but he's blind to his own. He understands that he's granted Hector power in their relationship (both through the roles of poppa, and dominant, and via Sam's adoration) but fails to see what power he holds in return. And his Gods -- Traffic, Deal, even Crash the God of Computers -- fight a losing battle to get Sam to recognize that he, too, has both divinity and power. Sam won't accept it. Again with the simple statements that hide so much damage:
By the time the story hits its finale, everything is so twisted up together that it's almost impossible to tell Hector and Marcus apart -- because Sam certainly can't. He reacts to one as to the other, and wants to flee both; he loves Hector (as he once loved Marcus), but he fears both even more. That's where the Fear comes in: Hector, the god of Love, and Marcus, the god of Fear, and fear rules Sam's heart and reactions and thoughts, and fear equally rules Hector's world, of being betrayed like he had been before. Both Sam and Hector are afraid of being hurt, and I think they mirror each other -- Sam doesn't get that Hector's reactions are for fear of another broken heart, and Hector doesn't get that Sam's reactions are for fear of Hector's fists.
On a deeper level, sex is the young man, somewhat naive if well-meaning. (Hector several times points out that Sam is a bit clueless, even going so far as to say the rest of the world is rushing down the road at 100mph while Sam sits in the middle lane playing with a rolypoly bug.) But sex is also a young man who thirsts for the absolute extremes, who pushes everything to eleven and beyond. Love is the older man, protective at best and possessive at worst, controlling, even; love (the poppa) limits sex (the boy) to this place, in this way, under these conditions.
One of the reviews for this story really had me baffled: the reviewer praised the story for having sex scenes that were just so hawt! And my first thought was, what sex scenes? There was sex? Where? On the other hand, strongly sado-masochistic scenes with sexual overtones isn't my deal, but that doesn't normally keep me from finding sexual overtones titillating. It's just that in this case, what's going on in the underneath is so much stronger (if quieter) that I just don't think I processed the S/m scenes as 'heavy sexxing' so much as I did with them as 'intense psychological interaction'.
(And in fact, the percentage of actual naked-together, sex-or-close-to-it, scenes is relatively low, which fits my usual perceptions of what I'll get when I order from Torquere. It's just everything else in the story that's so out of the ordinary.)
Now, granted, the S/m scenes in this story are not purpled over, nor are they glossy, and Sam's goal isn't live-to-serve in the usual D/s style. Fundamentally, Sam's reaching for a sort of catharsis in pain/pleasure, and the pleasure of serving in a kind of veneer. His metaphor as sex works here, too: sex not as emotional sensation (to serve) but as just plain sensation -- of which pain and pleasure are both sensation. Racking them up together is just, therefore, more of the same taken to extremes.
It's the quasi-parental-figure of Love, the stern poppa, who reels Sex in, and forces Sex to serve the purposes of love. Yet love, in fear, is as damaging and horrendous as any abuse, maybe even moreso for having love at its core. Is Hector playing the role of dominant-master who controls everything because he has a need to control? Or is that the role of love, and only seen as over-protective and controlling from the point of view of independence-minded sex?
Or maybe it doesn't matter. By the end, Sam can't tell any of it apart, though he wants to... but everyone around him confuses the two (fear and love, Marcus and Hector) as much as Sam himself does, even as he tries to keep them separate in his head.
Another eloquent passage for its brevity, again of a calibre I'm just not used to seeing in something labeled "romance" (not to diss the entire genre, but come on, it's usually more Cartland and a lot less Guterson). This bit is when things are really going downhill. Sam tries to attend the domestic violence group, yet can't seem to concentrate for focus on Hector's return after business trip.
Rather early on in his relationship with Hector, Sam considers the happiness he's (cautiously) starting to feel, compared with where he's been, and it's a return to his personal internal-organization metaphor of the Japanese tea house. (His father is a huge Japanophile, with a stall in their family barn set aside for a mini-onsen, but you don't see that until the second book.) It's where he goes during scenes, and it's where he hid his Self when things got particularly bad with Marcus.
When he first meets Hector, it's one of the few times we see him opening his mouth and really talking at length. It sets up a contrast (though hardly underlined) for how remarkable it must be, from Hector's perspective, when Sam says so little so much of the rest of the time. Hector even comments that Sam spends an awful lot of his life in his own head; Sam's own thoughts about the 'reality' of Los Angeles illustrate that perfectly. (Sam blames the sudden onslaught of self-wierdness-exposure on the Goddess of First Dates answering his prayer a little too enthusiastically.)
And it's all wrapped up in the questions of love, and sex, and fear, and violence, and negotiation -- of deals, of traffic, of ghosts cheating at poker, of friends who try to help but make it worse with their own motivations, of other friends who don't fully understand but try to accept anyway. Under all that are questions of power and divinity: recognizing it not just in the world but in yourself, even if that divinity seems impossible to accept given how helpless, how powerless you'd been in the past. Sure, if the BDSM weren't part of this story, I suppose someone could tell it -- plenty have, come to think of it -- but it's as integral to the story, as pivotal, as the magic. Nothing, not even a single word, is included simply for the purposes of marketing or just to tip the hat to some fad. It's not an easy story, and it's asking some really hard questions underneath Sam's matter-of-fact attitude and refusal to be seen as a victim and all the rest of the scar tissue.
The quote above happens early in the story, but it's a quiet foreshadowing for the story itself. Like Sam's concept of his city and its inhabitants -- those connections are the supporting columns of community, but the spaces between are where we define who we are -- each character, as representative of a community, would support Sam to heal, but what really matters is what takes place in the spaces between.
btw: Chaos Magic has a sequel, Love Runes, currently available. The final installment in the trilogy, Personal Demons, is coming out this wednesday, Mar 25.
I've been putting off reviewing Chaos Magic (by Jay Lygon, published by Torquere) and a huge reason is because I'm still not entirely sure how to classify it. That is, it straddles so many genres that I simply can't think of any other book, at all, that could be used as comparison. No chance of "it's like Titanic, but in Alaska, with the Bad News Bears" kind of schtick.
Frex, see teaser:
Sam is a broken young man, searching for temporary escape from his demons--inside and out. Running from abusive ex-lover Marcus, the God of Fear, Sam finds himself in the arms of the hottest man to step foot into his life: Hector. Hector proves to be the Daddy Sam needs and wants, but the road is a very rocky and often terrifying one. As Marcus digs his claws deeper into Sam, it threatens to tear everything Sam and Hector have built together apart.
First, the majority of ebook gay-romance is (for better or worse) written by women, with romancelandia influences; the bottom line is that I think this is only one of three books (out of the hundreds I've read in the past few years) that references any daddy-boy age-play. For whatever reason, it's not common at all in women-writing-m/m, but it's a topic I recall plenty from actual gay guys who were friends. Roleplaying as 'stern poppa' or 'leather-daddy' just doesn't seem to be a kink many women display, at least not in their romance-based writing. I mention it now so you're not caught off-guard when I point out yet another layer in the story; just keep in mind adult-pretending-to-be-younger, with adult-lover-being-parental, and this being both a turn-on for the protagonists as well as a defining element in their interaction.
Second, I think the reason I kept coming back to the story's description was the oddity of Marcus being 'the God of Fear'. There's no real qualifications there, so it's hard to tell from just that whether the author means literally (hence the capitals?) or metaphorically, as in a title Sam's given Marcus (a la no name, only title: 'that asshole' or some such). But in the opening paragraphs, two things struck me. One, the emphasis on those strongly gay-culture (read: not women-authored) roles, and the fact that Sam opens the story with a magical ritual that's not to save the world, or heal someone, or even protect himself or those he loves -- none of this altruistic white-magic kind of stuff. Nope, plain and simple, Sam's doing sex magic to get himself a lover.
Before leaving my apartment that night, I lit bundles of white sage at the altars of my Gods and offered up a pathetic plea that unlike every other time Joey and Brett dragged me out to a club, Marcus wouldn't stop me from meeting someone. Out there was a man who wanted to dominate a short, slim, farmboy gone bad. I needed to meet him.Most stories, it takes a bit for me to fall in with a voice. I need a bit of cajoling, perhaps, but Sam's voice had me by the end of that excerpt. Just very straightforward, with enough mentioned to make me wonder. And no purple prose, either, or excessive romanticizing about jacking off, just a very realistic and believable wish from a young single man.
And could the Gods make this dream guy someone who could easily overpower me in a naked wrestling match? Well hung, naturally. Don't forget the incredible bod.
My usual approach to sex was like a commando raid. Hit him up; get it on; get the hell out. Yet as I prayed, I was overwhelmed by the need for something more. I wanted hot sex, but craved a deep, spiritual bond. More than anything at that moment, I wished for a chance at Love.
Then my little lizard brain went right back to basics.
Add in the warnings for the story (specifically the S/m and D/s elements), and that excerpt, and I figured I had a pretty good idea what I'd purchased. Romance, sure, with a little bit of magic, and some kink, and probably Marcus stalking; in the end Sam (or Hector) finally ditches Marcus and with a few bits of angst and a lot of smexxing, story is over. I guess I'd call that gay romance with BDSM; I expected that any BDSM would be included because that's just, y'know, kinda what happens. It won't actually be integral.
Boy, was I ever wrong. And wrong in more than just that, because if Chaos Magic were to fit into any genre, it wouldn't be romance, and it wouldn't be S/m, and it wouldn't even really be gay fiction. It's magical realism.
Yeah, magical realism, but without the heavy Catholicism-Other mystical sensation I get when reading the Hispanic greats of magical realism. No, this is more like magical urbanism: it's real, but it's also distinctly Los Angeles, unquestionably American, infused with pop culture and yet magical in a way that's both the taken-for-granted facet of magical 'realism' and at the same time always just a bit metaphorical. Are there truly gods who exemplify/embody so many things, or is that just an easy way of perceiving the world? Can it be both?
Let me try to explain this way: in urban fantasy, there is almost always a point where a character says, oh my gawdz, that's an elf! Or, "a dark world she never knew existed". Or, that kneejerk reaction before the audience-standin character adjusts to this previously-hidden part of the city. Not in this book, though.
The gods, the magic, everything simply is. Sam's strongest and greatest ability is to recognize the divine in others, yet at the same time this divine is so amazingly mundane that it's almost... not quite silly, no, but so very concrete that there's never a sense of needing that kneejerk "I had no idea!" moment to process the reaction. Lygon just weaves in the magical and the divine through nearly every page. For Sam, this divinity -- and his reaction and awareness of it -- is just so everyday, so matter-of-fact, that even what's perfectly normal becomes equally glossed with that sense of magic.
When Hector comes to Sam's apartment for the first time, he notices the altars Sam has up. Sam explains:
I turned my gaze away from Hector and took a deep breath. "Gods aren't immortal. They don't live much longer than humans do. Every time a God spirit is reborn in the cycle, the Dewey Clan stands ready to worship the new deity. That doesn't mean we have to, though, except that Mom would scalp me if I didn't worship the family Gods. So I have altars for the God of Agriculture, the God of Weather, and of course, Mama Fertility, even though I don't farm. My main deity is the Goddess of Traffic." I pointed to the chromed altar. The cabinet doors were open, revealing Harley stickers and a picture of a nasty Italian girl draped over a wicked red racing bike. A bottle of breathtakingly expensive tequila sat on the shelf below the cabinet.I would worry about spoilers (and I will, to some degree) but the story's just so damn good that I don't think it matters that you know the basic plot. Boy meets poppa, boy struggles with trust issues left over from abusive relationship, boy almost loses poppa (and own self-integrity), poppa wakes up and realizes stupid mistakes and misunderstandings, love conquers all. Or, in this case, love conquers sex. Mostly.
"Traffic?"
That one threw everyone, even my family. I often recognized Gods long before anyone else in my clan did. "From Simi Valley to south of Tijuana is a solid band of humanity, probably 20 million people, and every single soul, no matter what religion they think they follow, prays to the Goddess every time they hit the road. That's an impressive power base. I mean, think about it. There's only one true sin in L.A., fucking up traffic."
He let out the laugh he'd been trying to stifle. "I can guess which altar is for weather, agriculture, and fertility, but who is the little red lacquered altar for?" Hector was being polite, but I sensed that he truly wanted to understand.
"The minor deities share. I'm never sure if those nameless ones are old gods clinging to life, or new gods without much of a power base: the God of Exact Change; Goddess of Please Let My Period Start ... Think of how many prayers rise from human lips in the average day. People didn't mind asking for help, but then they refuse to believe in their own Gods. It's sad. A lot of minor deities end up in therapy. No amount of hand patting and 'it's them, not you' can give a God the strength to go on. Only worship, faith, and the occasional bottle of Stoli can do that."
"Or Don Padrone."
I glanced at the bottle I knew was there. "The Goddess of Traffic is a unique entity."
That's because the story works on so many levels. Sam's friends refer to him as a Sex God, and despite his perception that he's not much of anyone in the leather scene, Hector's comments reveal that Sam not only got around but cut a bit of a swath. Sam's oblivious to the fact that he makes most people weak in the knees, but only somewhat; he's mostly perceptive about the physical reactions but discounts those. But Sam's also a reluctant sex god; in the wake of breaking up with Marcus, he's stopped dating, stopped going out all that much, doesn't really have visitors other than his closest friends (and his Gods), doesn't really socialize much at all. And, too, he doesn't dance.
Here's one example of why no short description can spoil what's really the meat of this story:
Hector squinted a bit as he looked me over again, as if he couldn't see me clearly. "A boy like you, I bet you're out every night. Do you like to go out dancing?"Sam is an unreliable narrator not in the sense that he doesn't explain what else is going on, but that he doesn't account for himself as a factor in those goings-on. In fact, he more often dismisses himself, as he does to use hospitality as a way to avoid anything that might resemble a more personal question -- even as he's trying to cozy up to this potential leather-daddy whom he really wants to impress.
"Strange things happen when I dance, so I avoid clubs."
Something about the smile that curved the corners of his lips made me think he liked what I said.
"What do you like to do?"
I got my hand away from him and turned to the kitchen. "Would you like something to drink?"
As someone recovering from an abusive and battered relationship, Sam makes perfect sense: but only on the inside. What he shows on the outside... he doesn't really say. You're left guessing based on the reactions to him, which he does see, but in the jagged upside-down reality created by trauma, there's a disconnect.
I admit the first time I read the book, I really didn't like Hector -- at times, I even loathed him. It took a second read, maybe a third, for me to see (even if I still am not entirely sure I like him, as a person) that this sensation of disliking isn't because Hector is necessarily a bad person. That unreliable narrator plays a role, but even more, it's that Sam's voice has a particular duplicity that compounds the usual "not telling you everything" -- because Sam's voice, fundamentally, is brutally straightforward. When he equivocates, or hedges, or doesn't speak, it's with the same matter-of-fact attitude. None of this paragraph of whining about how he doesn't want to talk about himself because of trust issues, or former lovers, whine whine whine: he just changes the topic, just like that.
As much as Lygon expects the reader to catch these gaps and recognize them for what they are, Sam is, and does, recognize them and admit as much to himself. With the entire story told from Sam's point-of-view, by the time Hector's at his last wit over Sam's behaviors or reactions, a reader can't help but sympathize with Sam, if perhaps wrongly. The reader has already gotten all the information, yet Sam has said so very little of it to Hector. Who could blame Hector for misinterpreting? And truthfully, if the story were told from Hector's point-of-view, it would be a strikingly (ahem) different story, I'm sure. Sam appears to play everything on the surface, but very little of him really is.
Again during that first visit to Sam's apartment, Hector is trying to learn more about him ("do you play sports? like music?" etc). Sam is alternately uncertain and somewhat miffed because all he wants -- or is pretty sure he wants, because it's got far less strings -- is just a quick blowjob, and be done with it. But Hector keeps pushing, and Sam keeps backing up.
"I play basketball. Soccer. Rugby."In just a few paragraphs, there's so much. The way Hector doesn't seem to notice what's going inside Sam (and on second read, I figured: Hector just thinks Sam's nervous, and is making conversation to get past that nervous point). There's the perfectly straightforward treatment of the metaphor (or reality?) of Sam's gods, in this case Misery, who appears as a literal participant in the scene, if one unnoticed by Hector. And, most pivotal to the story in some ways, there's Sam's statement that he likes bruises, which seems like, oh, par for the course, submissive-masochist trying to appeal to sadistic-leather-daddy... except that Marcus beat Sam, and now Sam is asking (or at least hoping for) Hector to do (sort of) the same.
"Rugby? You?"
I nodded.
He laughed. "You're going to get yourself killed."
"Bruises aren't a problem. I like them." Anything to get his mind back on track.
"So I've heard, but that's not what I want to know. What do you do to relax?"
My mind went blank. I stalled by sucking down half my bottle of water, but he didn't seem to notice. I couldn't shrink back any more into the cushions and if I kept picking at the couch, it would have a new hole.
The God of Misery crept across the back of the couch. An invisible silvery snake, she slithered across my shoulders, weighing them down. Her tail wrapped around my mouth. If I didn't move, didn't get away from Hector, I'd suffocate.
"I'm a pretty good c-c-cook," I blurted.
"Are you?" He didn't seem to notice the stammer. I liked the quiet way he smiled.
It's not a story in which two people get together, beat one up, have kinky sex, live happily ever after. Lygon doesn't take that easy route. Sam is complex, and messed-up, even if much of that messed-up-ness is partially, perhaps, due to his own personality and plenty due to what he's been through and the scars he bears. Yet he's also getting into not a domination-submission relationship but a truly sadomasochistic relationship, willingly. As one of Sam's friends comments later, if all Sam wants is someone to smack him around... what's the difference, then, between Marcus and Hector? How is one abuse, and the other, not?
In between this slowly building issue that runs through the story's conflict, Lygon slips in other details that don't make complete sense until you can see more of Sam. There's little description of Sam's place until Hector shows up (in which case Sam is nervously and anxiously trying to cook dinner while simultaneously providing a tour of his minuscule one-bedroom walkup). Even then Sam focuses on what's important to him (he silently prods Hector to notice clean sheets on the bed! clean sheets! in a moment of adorable, if private, earnestness).
It's a passing comment from Hector that prompted me to back the hell up and try to figure out just what, and how, and why, such a thing came about: the mirror.
"Sam," Hector chided me with a sad smile. "I've been hearing stories about you for over two years."I do believe that's the only time the mirror is mentioned, but it's not just in there to fill the space. It's a clue, one that Hector can't entirely read, and one the readers can only interpret thanks to having a book's worth of direct line to Sam's head.
Why would anyone talk about me?
"Honestly, I thought you were more rumor than reality. How could any boy be that hot and have such a bottomless appetite for pain?"
As long as he understood that meant the good kind of pain.
"No mirrors. I didn't believe it. They were right. I didn't notice that you painted over the mirror last time I was in your bathroom. How do you shave?" He reached across the table to run his fingers up my cheek.
Also: do you see what I mean about not realizing Sam hasn't spoken? His thoughts carry half the conversation, yet he doesn't voice them, nor does he describe what he's doing, or even much of how Hector's reacting (except in those instances where he's confused as to meaning of an expression). Reading the story, I fell into a pattern of hearing the thoughts-speaking as a dialogue, and that makes it even harder when the disconnect grows wide enough to rip the two apart. Sam is left floundering with no idea what to do -- and his guesses, based partly in the trauma from Marcus, are often off-kilter enough to confuse Hector in turn, and it just keeps going south. It's like... communication but without ever saying anything, and that just doesn't work.
Plus, Lygon has some passages that are just so perfectly Sam, both elegant and yet urban-tainted, that I can't help but be startled everytime I reread. Maybe it's just the world of genre fiction, but poetic passages usually render as purple prose, not as something truly wonderful without going over the top. This part is from a little more down the road, when Hector is out of town and calls to chat with Sam.
We talked for a long time about books and films. There wasn't anyone, not even Joey, who talked to me about that stuff. The whole time, I kept thinking, 'this is a Master?', because he seemed to respect my opinion. He listened to me. I kept expecting him to tell me what to think or to put me down or tell me why I was wrong, but it never happened.There are dozens of lines like that in the story, with the same kind of melancholy-mundane tossed-off air of a classic throwaway line, easily scanned but when you stop and think about them, they'll get you, hard.
It felt like so much more was going on between us that I couldn't begin to figure out. Everything between Hector and me felt fluid, like looking through a turning kaleidoscope. Even though I wasn't sure what we were doing, I wanted to see what came next.
After Hector said goodnight, I set out rounds of the good stuff for every God and Goddess, threw on soulful music, and danced through my dark apartment.
Like ripples on the surface of a pond, my mood spread in concentric rings through the apartment building, encouraging lovers into sultry blues kisses.
Content as a cat in a patch of sunlight, I put my hand flat against my bare stomach and moved in sinuous waves. The music flowed through me. Madeleine Peyroux and Stevie Ray Vaughan. My bare feet on the chilly floor. Eyes closed, images of Hector flashing in my brain. The memory of his lips on mine...
Miles away, the wave of desire crashed against the hands of a young couple in line at the movies and dissipated into the warm Los Angeles night.
Sam and Hector's relationship doesn't go smoothly, but moves forward and then jerks back again. Sam's tendency to only think his reactions makes it even more complicated -- on top of already being complicated enough by the fact that with Hector, he's mimicking (in a sense) what he had with Marcus...
I say, in a sense, because with an abusive lover, the victim has no control over the situation and sometimes the only coping mechanisms are to control one's self: don't laugh, don't protest, don't say no, etc. Yet a dominant-submissive paradigm also requires the submissive relinquish control. Willingly, but in the victim's mind (as Sam displays), isn't also sometimes the victim of abuse willingly giving up control, some parts of the self, as a means to avoid the violence? Not to mention the question of good violence, versus bad violence.
Again, in the midst of dialogue but Sam's lines unspoken:
Here's a fine line for you, Hector. I want to be spanked, tied up, paddled, whipped, bound, gagged, pierced, waxed, bit, hog-tied, choked, flogged, pinched, and chained, but I don't ever want to be beaten again.It's a fine line between the willing, willed, accepted act of what is -- at heart -- still violence, and yet not violence of abuse. When Hector's misinterpretations (and his own admitted past traumas) go so far as to hit Sam's worst buttons per the way violence would escalate with Marcus, is Hector's anger that of a normal, loving (if angry) adult who's frustrated to the point of yelling, or is it a precursor to violence? Sam can't really tell, and thus he reacts as he would to Marcus, even as he hates himself for it. His worship for Hector gets confused with his fear of behaviors that are Marcus-like. By the time things are coming to a head with Marcus stalking Sam, it's no longer easy (if at all possible) to be really sure which is abuse, and which is not, and where that fine line gets drawn.
And yes, Marcus does stalk Sam throughout the story, but again, Sam is a true victim in that he's oh-so-busy not being a victim. After Hector misjudges the best way to handle Sam's apparently too-confrontational reaction (again, as usual, to Hector's perceived prying into Sam's relationship history), Hector finally lays it out that he had been under the impression (and jealous of, per his own issues) Sam's apparent continued love for a former lover. It takes Hector a bit to catch onto the notion that maybe Sam's caginess isn't because he's carrying a torch: that past relationship really was that bad.
Hector damn near begs Sam to communicate, to open up (even as Sam continues to think-speak his responses). The rare instances when Sam does respond, it's not the whiney "let me tell you everything" style I usually see in angst-fest romances, where the author's intention is to make us feel sorry for the character.
That never works on me, at least; what does work is what Lygon does here: Sam is allowed to cadge rather than spill, to draw the shreds of his remaining dignity around himself much as a victim does, at least, a victim who does not want to be a victim, and wants to be healed, and can't figure out how so is reduced to faking it until he makes it. I think it's just the matter-of-fact tone that creates the gut-punch, but what really matters is that Lygon doesn't sacrifice Sam's pride for the sake of gaining
"Marcus accused me of sleeping with Brett and Joey. He told me I had to quit playing basketball with them. He said I couldn't talk to them ever again." That only started the fight, but Hector didn't need to know all the ugly details.That last paragraph is the gut punch. Hitting someone out of scene, right there, implies abuse, to me at least -- because 'out of scene,' I would think, means 'safewords not in use, rules not in use' kind of thing. But for Sam, it's important to designate that he was only beaten once, just as it is to make it clear that he's okay, now. The simple finality, underscored by the stark and simple statements that create a series of "period, end sentence" repeated thrice -- three words, two words, four words, not complex sentences -- in themselves give full lie to Sam's certainty. His denial is pathetic, in some ways, but understandable in all the ways that matter. He clings to his dignity, and the author lets him, even if that does leave him vulnerable to the reader's annoyance over that denial.
"How bad did he beat you?"
"Marcus hit me lots of times out of scene, but he only beat me once. That was enough." I couldn't bear the humiliation of Hector thinking I was some kind of victim, though. "I'm fine now. Everything healed. I got over it."
In so many little ways, Sam's everyday, matter-of-fact approach to things underscores how much of a victim he was, and how much damage Marcus really did. When Sam has a flashback-styled reaction to Hector's (well-intentioned if ignorant) actions, he wakes the next morning to find himself alone. He tells himself, "[Hector] thought he wanted to know more about me, but the truth was just ugly and hopeless. If only I could have faked it better, he might have thought I was worth his time." That's it. He doesn't belabor it, and I think it's this quiet fatalism (not really acceptance, not that healthy) that runs under Sam's voice that makes him both fractured and admirable. If he's got a blindspot for understanding how Hector perceives him, he's got an even bigger blindspot for seeing how deep the scar tissue goes.
A lot of that shows up in something I don't see all that often. Similarly to how some authors play the "raised/lived on the streets" card for some kind of hardcore cred but without considering the longterm effects, many authors play the victim card but never seem to really think through how a person deals with the knowledge of that victimization, after the fact. Lygon, however, nails it. In what is probably one of the more realistic (if totally politically incorrect) passages I've read in fiction in a long time, Sam later complains of the same thing to his friends.
"The part I hate the most about the domestic violence support group is the way the counselor treats us like victim-saints. I'm not a saint, and neither are the others in the group. We don't deserve to be hurt, but it's not as if we're innocent little virgins minding our own business and some total psycho breaks in and beats us." I tilted the wine bottle between my hands, watching the dark wave slosh behind the green glass. "Sometimes we drink too much. Sometimes we throw the first punch. That doesn't make the violence right, but I hate the way the counselor dismisses our side of the equation, as if we aren't part of what's happening. And another thing—he won't let us talk about the sex. Any time the conversation starts to go there, he makes us talk about power instead. I'm not allowed to say it's cool to be the only person who sees Hector's softer side, or what a turn-on it is when he gives hard looks to a guy who cruises me. It's so hot when he starts growling and making it clear he owns me, but in those sessions, I can't admit I get hard-ons for the jealous rages and fights that end in rough sex."This is a mindset I can't get -- never having been one with even the remotest interest in make-up sex after a fight, nor one who can even comprehend, really, the drive that leads some people from yelling furiously one minute to ripping each other's clothes off the next. That said, what really gets me about this passage (and Sam's attitude towards Marcus' abuse, on the whole) is that there's a subtle, but definitely there, attitude of blaming the victim... while trying not to blame the victim. Because if you accept the blame, then in some ways you're condoning a situation that you hated, that destroyed you, but when you love the abuser (as victims do, both spouses/lovers and children to their parents), it's just as much of a schism to accept that you could love someone who would treat you like that. And that love gets twisted up, much like Hector's controlling side, and tangled in with the control that underlies the violence, such that the control itself is mistaken for love, too.
Sam may be a walking sex god, and thus it's natural that he'd want to focus on the sex within a relationship, but 'sex' is only the adjective. The operative noun here is 'god'. As much as he denies any chance of his own divinity, so he also denies the role power plays in such dynamics.
That's a recurring bit in the story, the issue of power exchange, but Lygon doesn't push it on you. It's just a few times, mentioned, often in passing, almost as a quip. One of Sam's other close Gods is the Goddess of Negotiation (very powerful in Los Angeles, obviously), aka Deal. After his first date with Hector -- during which nothing happens but some kissing -- Sam goes looking for Traffic but it's Deal that finds him first, and asks him how the date went.
"Hector was over at my place, and he was turned on, but he gave me his business card and left without um..." I did not talk to ladies about sex. I was a slut, but I was raised to be a gentleman. "Well, we didn't..."Later, when Hector reacts badly per his own history and Sam in turn reacts badly and things are looking really bleak, Hector's grandmother (a ghost, by the way, who remains at Hector's house), tells Sam that Hector isn't himself. Like Deal, Nanny tries to explain...
"Ink the bottom line?"
I nodded, grateful for the euphemism. "I thought I made it clear that I was a sure thing, but he left without getting any."
"Maybe Hector's holding out for a better deal, Sam."
That never occurred to me. "Negotiating?"
"You negotiated with all your other dominants. You call it power exchange. Use your power."
I ducked my head. "I don't have any power."
"Then what the hell are you exchanging?"
"You know that sometimes people say things that aren't their true thoughts. It's happened to you, Sam. Can't you forgive him for the same mistake?"That scene segues into Sam's depression, again realistically represented -- the lack of energy, the disinterest in eating or dealing with things, the bleakness. It only compounds the difficulties and misunderstandings with Hector, who without any clues from Sam, even goes so far as to accuse Sam of playing the martyr. I hated that response, the first time I read the story, but on rereading, I realized: if I were looking at Sam from the outside, and had no idea he was so deeply depressed, then maybe I'd draw the same conclusion. Which, in turn, just hurts Sam even more, as much as Sam's flat-affect hurts Hector.
"No. If he really loved me, he would see how scared I am of him. I shouldn't have to tell him."
The tears were really flowing. I'd never seen a ghost cry. "He's blinded by fear."
"What does he have to be afraid of? He's the one with the fists."
"He's afraid that you're going to break his heart forever."
As if I had that kind of power. I was the one drowning.
Angelina, the Goddess of Traffic, tries to help -- to a point. She tells Sam there's a reason Hector's acting how he is, but she won't give Sam any hints. She simply says, ""I'm not going to make it easy for you, Sam. What else can I possibly use to bribe you into becoming? Power? You don't want it. Wealth? You make the Spartans look like hedonists. There isn't a temptation I can dangle in front of you that will get your head out of the clouds, except Hector. So if you want answers, you'll have to come down to earth with the rest of us Gods and find out."
This is what I mean by the metaphor of magical realism, turned to the purpose of illustrating -- in a most delightful way -- the crux of the story. Sam can, and does, recognize Hector's divinity, but he's blind to his own. He understands that he's granted Hector power in their relationship (both through the roles of poppa, and dominant, and via Sam's adoration) but fails to see what power he holds in return. And his Gods -- Traffic, Deal, even Crash the God of Computers -- fight a losing battle to get Sam to recognize that he, too, has both divinity and power. Sam won't accept it. Again with the simple statements that hide so much damage:
They didn't understand. They enjoyed being Gods. I wasn't like them. It was some sort of mistake that I had power. Gods were confident. Gods knew what they were doing. If I took that final step and accepted my power, I'd just mess it up. The power would control me, not the other way around. So I figured I'd keep ignoring it and eventually, magically, it would go away. Then I could just be a normal person.It's not like Hector and Sam can communicate all that well even when they are talking. You have to kind of double-think on the dialogue to see both sides, and both hear how Sam means it versus what he actually says. For instance, when Sam's talking about the messing around they'd done that morning, when they neared one of Sam's hard limits (in sex) but one Sam was starting to think about breaking, himself:
"It's not like that. I was turned on, not scared. I wished we would have kept going."That would be a good example, in my opinion, of one of those times when the argument has the characters, and not the other way around.
"Until I pushed your limit."
"You didn't push anything. I couldn't bend over for you fast enough."
"So, I was rushing you."
By the time the story hits its finale, everything is so twisted up together that it's almost impossible to tell Hector and Marcus apart -- because Sam certainly can't. He reacts to one as to the other, and wants to flee both; he loves Hector (as he once loved Marcus), but he fears both even more. That's where the Fear comes in: Hector, the god of Love, and Marcus, the god of Fear, and fear rules Sam's heart and reactions and thoughts, and fear equally rules Hector's world, of being betrayed like he had been before. Both Sam and Hector are afraid of being hurt, and I think they mirror each other -- Sam doesn't get that Hector's reactions are for fear of another broken heart, and Hector doesn't get that Sam's reactions are for fear of Hector's fists.
On a deeper level, sex is the young man, somewhat naive if well-meaning. (Hector several times points out that Sam is a bit clueless, even going so far as to say the rest of the world is rushing down the road at 100mph while Sam sits in the middle lane playing with a rolypoly bug.) But sex is also a young man who thirsts for the absolute extremes, who pushes everything to eleven and beyond. Love is the older man, protective at best and possessive at worst, controlling, even; love (the poppa) limits sex (the boy) to this place, in this way, under these conditions.
One of the reviews for this story really had me baffled: the reviewer praised the story for having sex scenes that were just so hawt! And my first thought was, what sex scenes? There was sex? Where? On the other hand, strongly sado-masochistic scenes with sexual overtones isn't my deal, but that doesn't normally keep me from finding sexual overtones titillating. It's just that in this case, what's going on in the underneath is so much stronger (if quieter) that I just don't think I processed the S/m scenes as 'heavy sexxing' so much as I did with them as 'intense psychological interaction'.
(And in fact, the percentage of actual naked-together, sex-or-close-to-it, scenes is relatively low, which fits my usual perceptions of what I'll get when I order from Torquere. It's just everything else in the story that's so out of the ordinary.)
Now, granted, the S/m scenes in this story are not purpled over, nor are they glossy, and Sam's goal isn't live-to-serve in the usual D/s style. Fundamentally, Sam's reaching for a sort of catharsis in pain/pleasure, and the pleasure of serving in a kind of veneer. His metaphor as sex works here, too: sex not as emotional sensation (to serve) but as just plain sensation -- of which pain and pleasure are both sensation. Racking them up together is just, therefore, more of the same taken to extremes.
It's the quasi-parental-figure of Love, the stern poppa, who reels Sex in, and forces Sex to serve the purposes of love. Yet love, in fear, is as damaging and horrendous as any abuse, maybe even moreso for having love at its core. Is Hector playing the role of dominant-master who controls everything because he has a need to control? Or is that the role of love, and only seen as over-protective and controlling from the point of view of independence-minded sex?
Or maybe it doesn't matter. By the end, Sam can't tell any of it apart, though he wants to... but everyone around him confuses the two (fear and love, Marcus and Hector) as much as Sam himself does, even as he tries to keep them separate in his head.
Another eloquent passage for its brevity, again of a calibre I'm just not used to seeing in something labeled "romance" (not to diss the entire genre, but come on, it's usually more Cartland and a lot less Guterson). This bit is when things are really going downhill. Sam tries to attend the domestic violence group, yet can't seem to concentrate for focus on Hector's return after business trip.
The counselor fingered his bolo tie. "Sam, you seem down. You mentioned that you haven't been eating. And you look tired. Are you having problems sleeping?"That visual says so much, in so few words, that each time I read that, I ache.
"Hector isn't the problem. My ex-boyfriend was the one."
"That wasn't what I asked. And you know coffee won't keep you going forever."
"I'm fine."
All the sadness in the world was in those tightly pursed lips. I couldn't wait for him to choose his next words. I had to go.
Rather early on in his relationship with Hector, Sam considers the happiness he's (cautiously) starting to feel, compared with where he's been, and it's a return to his personal internal-organization metaphor of the Japanese tea house. (His father is a huge Japanophile, with a stall in their family barn set aside for a mini-onsen, but you don't see that until the second book.) It's where he goes during scenes, and it's where he hid his Self when things got particularly bad with Marcus.
...in my mind, I walked through my Japanese teahouse and rediscovered alcoves of Self I'd forgotten about; bold me, happy me, normal me. I didn't know how I had lost track of who I was. It was amazing how much of my Self Marcus beat out of me. Or maybe he didn't beat it out. Maybe he stole it, piece by piece, while he distracted me with sex and violence.Like the questions of power and fear and love and sex, the teahouse metaphor is both internal -- how Sam sees his interior life -- and external -- how Sam sees the world around him, too. So much of the story is a series of mirrors, even as Sam's own painted-over mirror is an echo (so to speak) of how he would cut off reflections -- as it is within, so it is without, and back again. To see the outside is to see the inside, which makes the teahouse -- a structure that's amazingly permeable to the environment, heat, cold, rain, and so on (compared to western architecture) -- such a delicate but perfect metaphor for Sam's interior/exterior reflections. Flimsy paper walls to separate and divide, much as a single layer of paint will stop all reflections, those reminders of outside and thus inside.
When he first meets Hector, it's one of the few times we see him opening his mouth and really talking at length. It sets up a contrast (though hardly underlined) for how remarkable it must be, from Hector's perspective, when Sam says so little so much of the rest of the time. Hector even comments that Sam spends an awful lot of his life in his own head; Sam's own thoughts about the 'reality' of Los Angeles illustrate that perfectly. (Sam blames the sudden onslaught of self-wierdness-exposure on the Goddess of First Dates answering his prayer a little too enthusiastically.)
"More than one reality coexists in the same space, divided into chambers of being by sliding panels. Each reality is only marginally aware of the other, as if we live in the extremes of someone else's peripheral vision, on the edges of other people's Los Angeles, or their universes. We're separated by the thinnest of barriers, but those boundaries connect us, too, like walls of rooms. Every person we meet is an intersection. Sometimes we live side by side, or intertwine, and then veer off in separate directions. There's the gay community here in Long Beach, a goth community, Renaissance Faire types, and the Vietnamese, the Blacks, the Mexicans, the punks, and even the white hetero population. None of us live entirely in one sphere, though. We hold intersections of different worlds inside us, and we're the bridge points where others can enter those universes. We are the keys to the doors. Those connections are the supporting columns of community, but the spaces between are where we define who we are."I know I've been talking in circles about the story, and maybe not really giving a good idea of 'what the story's about' (other than some details), and maybe being too opaque, but in this case, it's not really what's on the page that's of such importance to the story, but everything the character's don't say, refuse to allow themselves to say, and most especially, what they fear.
And it's all wrapped up in the questions of love, and sex, and fear, and violence, and negotiation -- of deals, of traffic, of ghosts cheating at poker, of friends who try to help but make it worse with their own motivations, of other friends who don't fully understand but try to accept anyway. Under all that are questions of power and divinity: recognizing it not just in the world but in yourself, even if that divinity seems impossible to accept given how helpless, how powerless you'd been in the past. Sure, if the BDSM weren't part of this story, I suppose someone could tell it -- plenty have, come to think of it -- but it's as integral to the story, as pivotal, as the magic. Nothing, not even a single word, is included simply for the purposes of marketing or just to tip the hat to some fad. It's not an easy story, and it's asking some really hard questions underneath Sam's matter-of-fact attitude and refusal to be seen as a victim and all the rest of the scar tissue.
The quote above happens early in the story, but it's a quiet foreshadowing for the story itself. Like Sam's concept of his city and its inhabitants -- those connections are the supporting columns of community, but the spaces between are where we define who we are -- each character, as representative of a community, would support Sam to heal, but what really matters is what takes place in the spaces between.
btw: Chaos Magic has a sequel, Love Runes, currently available. The final installment in the trilogy, Personal Demons, is coming out this wednesday, Mar 25.
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Date: 25 Mar 2009 08:50 am (UTC)(I usually have four or five scenes I want to quote as illustration. This time around, I had cut and pasted nearly twenty scenes or phrases, before realizing that it was probably way too much. And then with great sadness, I had to cut it down. I ramble enough; I didn't need to make it even worse.)