Documenting the fantasia of gay culture: Raziel Reid and Jesse Trautmann
20 Oct 2018.

by Drew Rowsome -

Two former colleagues have new books out and while vastly different, the combination is an intriguing commentary on contemporary gay life. Or on how quickly contemporary gay life is changing.

Raziel Reid wrote a scene column and articles for the Vancouver version of Xtra before it went under. Reid's writing was fast, funny and fabulous, always entertaining even if the scene being discussed was unfamiliar and in a far off city. But then that is part of the point, a gay scene is the gay scene no matter where it is. There are variations but there are usually lots of similarities.

In 2014, Arsenal Pulp Press published Reid's young adult novel When Everything Feels Like the Movies and it was an instant sensation. And instantly notorious. When Everything Feels Like the Movies won the Governor General's Award for English-language children's literature, a richly deserved honour that triggered a backlash. The novel is not only well written but it is also realistic and frank, describing gay sex, teen sex, drugs and violence as facts of life.

Perhaps it was not so much the depiction as it was the tone that upset moral arbitrators. When Everything Feels Like the Movies is written in the first person by a gay teenager struggling to survive in a small town. He is too fabulous to fit in and too fierce (and stubborn) to surrender to the status quo. He talks flippantly and explicitly, partly because that is the gay vernacular, but also to cover up his very real terror of the danger he lives in and, even worse, having his fear and true lifestyle exposed. Everything may feel like the movies as a coping mechanism, but his life is not the glamorous movie he projects in his head and prose.

We're used to novels where gay sex, drugs and fantasies are either praised, condemned or used as spice, but it was apparently shocking in a novel aimed at the young adult market. LGBT teens certainly recognized themselves in When Everything Feels Like the Movies, and were undoubtedly too smart to feel the novel was a glamorous how-to guide to gayness. I'm pretty sure straight young adults would be too smart as well.

The protagonist's story is actually hardcore Canadiana bleak, it's just told in a gay voice which gives it humour, pathos and substantial style. It is a remarkable, heartbreaking read that generates almost unbearable tension between wanting to cheer the fantastical on and cringing at the pain. I can only dream of having been so flamboyant and exuberant, I fortunately did not endure as many hardships.

Reid's second novel, Kens, dives headlong into fantasy by positing a world where gay culture rules high school. It is a rewrite of Heathers and Mean Girls in an alternate universe where the trio of Kens are the mean girls in charge. Reid struggles to get the balance right, while it is very gratifying to have gay boys in charge instead of being bullied, they are also the bullies and the indictment of the worst of the shallow aspects of gay culture is scathing. It is not just gay culture that gets dished, as the title implies, plasticity of all kinds is mocked from plastic surgery to pill popping to consumerism.

Realism is abandoned as the Kens run amok and while Kens is very, very funny, it also doesn't have the consequences, the weight, of When Everything Feels Like the Movies. Wish fulfillment and social satire mesh together uneasily instead of giving the reader either an indictment or a pass. The central dilemma of desperately craving to be part of the ruling class versus the price on has to pay gets muddled in the fantasy and sci-fi elements, and all the wit and comic brilliance that Reid applies can't give Kens the gut punch intended.

In a world where there are real life self-manufactured Ken dolls like Justin Jedlica and Rodrigo Alves, and where Mattel has released a line of diverse Ken dolls (and 1993's Earring Magic Ken is a coveted collectible), Reid's more fantastical elements aren't that fantastical, just exaggerated for comic and horrific effect. When dolls meet their demise, it is hard to be emotionally invested, but one is definitely entertained.

Kens has a frontspiece which lists much of the gay slang that peppers the narrative. Kens was published in September 2018 and, illustrating the rapidity of the evolution/devolution of gay culture, much of it is already out of date. Raising the question: what is timeless and what is fleeting?

Jesse Trautmann was a contributor to the Toronto edition of Xtra and also wrote occasionally for fab magazine during my tenure there, as well for MyGayToronto.com. His new book Seriously, I Manscaped for This? Book One collects many of his creative non-fiction personal reminisces from his early 20s and 30s as well as some new pieces. Seriously, I Manscaped for This? also comes with a lengthy subtitle/blurb: "This Book Will Not Get You a Boyfriend but it Sure as Hell Will Make You Laugh!"

The original title, I Shaved My Ass for This?, has been reworked because of Amazon's erratic censorship policies and that minor change reflects the tenor of Seriously, I Manscaped for This?. Manscaping is a term that was once hilarious and vaguely shocking, now it is part of not only gay vernacular but the common language and suburban salons. Trautmann adopts the breezy tone and stylistic quirks of his idol Sex and the City's Carrie Bradshaw, who also was once hilarious and vaguely shocking but is now as familiar as any other series in re-runs.

Trautmann is at his best when he is blunt and explicit but, as he claims to have been looking for love, or more accurately "a boyfriend," the sexcapades are more Charlotte than Samantha. (And wasn't Samantha the coded gay man?) Trautmann drinks a lot, attends parties, dates relentlessly in pursuit of monogamy, and is generally an aspiring middle-class Ken. The chapters are short and structured in imitation of what we heard/saw of Bradshaw's work. When the punchlines land on target, they are fun, but often they peter out and Trautmann is forced to editorialize to explain why it is funny.

The charm of Seriously, I Manscaped for This? is in revisiting the time in life when gay men dated instead of ordering in. When there was a third date rule and cruising was something done in person, in real time, instead of swiping on a phone. fab used to have a column called "Together" where couples were profiled, how they met, how they made it work. Trautmann made an appearance in the column at the point where real life couples were being supplanted by comic essays, almost lampooning and lamenting the possibility of relationships. His brand of cynical romance was a perfect fit.

Gay life is rich material to work with. Culturally, sexually and emotionally it is its own entity but also a reflections, distillation or contradiction of society at large. The specific becomes the universal. That is, if one can relate. When Everything Feels Like the Movies is so specific and full of glittery grit, that it leaps off the page and into the psyche and heart. Kens has its moments but the fantasy forces distance and an easy out from caring, while the assimilationist hint of morality in Seriously, I Manscaped for This? distances in an opposite direction. 

The Kens party hard and commit endless acts of debauchery in the pursuit of status and power, Not pleasure (of course Ken dolls do have a conspicuous lack of the basic equipment for gay male sexual pleasure). One Ken is the high school equivalent of gay-for-pay just to fit in. Trautmann too is on a determined quest and doesn't seem to be having as much fun as he should be along the way. It is easy, and very gay, to comment sardonically, to sit in judgement. But it is also, or I believe it should be, very gay to dive in and experience the pleasures of the flesh. Or, like the hero of When Everything Feels Like the Movies, to create and commit to the pleasures in one's head to combat the horrors of reality, one gay cultural strategy that is timeless.