Jerome Kugan

First of all I would have liked this Anthology even only for the preface, the story how Jerome Kugan and Pang Khee Teik decided, planned and arrived to publish it. It’s at the same time funny and sad, and a stunning picture of the LGBTQ world in other countries other than USA or Europe. After that, the stories, but without that preface, they would have not probably the same effect on me.

WHAT DO GAY PEOPLE EAT? by Brian Gomez (M/M). This is a wonderful little story, really. It’s not even a gay story, at least not for the main characters point of view: two parents are waiting for the coming back home of their son, but it’s not an entirely happy moment, the son is gay and he is bringing back his boyfriend. This is not the story of how the two parents react to the news, this is probably happened before, this is the story of how the two parents manage to find a balance after the news. We are inside the father’s mind, all his brainstorming, all his struggling to come to pact with the news, the love he has for his son and the difficult he has to digest the news, love against tradition, love against expectations, love against prejudices… love against all, and love wins it all.

BREATHING PURE OXYGEN by Cheryl Leong (F/F). Again a nice story of a homosexual experience that it wasn’t sad or terribly angst filled. It’s a little bio piece, Cheryl, the author and the main characters, retells her coming out experience, how she struggled to arrive to an internal decision first with herself and then with the world. How she carefully planned her coming out, expecting it to be painful and heartbreaking, probably led to that idea from what she read around and how instead she was lucky to have around her supporting and comprehensive friends and family. But probably it was not luckiness; it’s that Cheryl is a balanced and attentive woman, the product of her family and being her like that, she surrounded herself of people like her and like her family. So no, it was not luckiness, it was the obvious outcome of a good upbringing.

ROOMMATES: NOT A LOVE STORY by Sharil Dewa (M/M). More than 15 years after being roommates, a man receives a wedding invitation from his former friend and this leads to a walk on the memory lane. Michael was his first and unrequited love, something he has never really had. Michael was not gay but he was a good friend, and when he found out about his friend’s feelings, he tried to still be only a good friend. It didn’t work, and years later he is still missed and mourned. Seldom is your first love also your forever one and this happens independently of being gay or straight. And the guy in this short story behaved badly not since he was gay, but since he was in love.

THE WEDDING PRESENT by Sonia Randhawa (L/L). No names for this story, probably since this is the story of so many women before. She is one of many children of an ordinary family; not an unloving family, only the typical Malaysian family where the father decides, the mother agrees and the children have no right. For a brief period on her life she was free, at college, and, all in all, it was no good, since she tasted something that it was not for her, she tasted freedom, something it was no planned in her life. Someone else would see that it is not for her.

THE MAN FROM BERALI CARPETS by Maya Tan Abdullah (M/M). A policeman working the street falls in love for he man he doesn’t even know, a blind salesman working at Berali Carpets, a shop on his part of the city. In his line of work being gay is not possible, but I don’t even think that the main focus of the story is for the policeman to be gay; the policeman is tired of all the ugliness he sees around, and the man from Berali Carpets represents his pure love, something he will never touch to not soil him with the ugliness. The policeman can go on with his ugly life only since he knows that, when he is on the edge of craziness, he can go to Berali Carpets and sees the man, the man who is his anchor to sanity.

AND I LOVE YOU by Hwa Yi Xing (F/F). A woman’s brainstorming who is in love and, at the same time, so mad with life. There is not real story, there is not even punctuation, and they are mostly thoughts, and flashbacks, and feelings. All tangled together in her mind, and the only mainstay is another woman, the woman she loves, and hates, and loves.

HAFIZ’S DILEMMA by Ann Lee (M/M). This is a nice story, a moment in time of a couple who can’t believe how good life can be for them. They couldn’t believe it and so one of them is searching for a reason to be upset, but there is no reason. It’s basically a simple and good story. But I had a problem, I didn’t understand the sex of the couple! Are they two men? A man and a woman? Two women? I think they were two men and sometime they referred to each other with a female pronoun; what I didn’t understand is if the author did it consciously or if it was a problem of translation.

DUDE DON’T TELL ME by Kung Khai Jhun (M/M). Another story of denial, a young man, David, is forced to go to the marriage of his best friend and former roommate, Amir, the same man he is silently in love since years. Also in this case friendship seems stronger than prejudice, but in the end, David will have only the consolation to have not lost his friend.

THE FRIENDSHIP DICTATOR by Faizad Nik Abdul Aziz (M/M). I actually had to think twice if listing this one as a M/M story, since it is not basically a M/M or F/F story, or even a straight one. It’s probably a paraphrase of separation: a guy is heading towards his birthday party with a female friend; the night will be spend with a mixed group of friends from work (I believe). While in the car, he explains to Bianca that the previous year he spent his birthday with another group of friends; he doesn’t want to go into details, and the reader has the idea that it’s since the other group his made by gay guys. So this guy is guy and in the closet? This is the first impression. But then something happens, another friend call, a friend who is not of the first or the second group, another friend that the guy maintains separated from all the other. The guy is living in separate compartments, without communication… he is, unconsciously, helping the separation, not since he is ashamed of his friends, but since he is not able to create a whole, supporting and comprehensive, community. And the little separation he is creating in his circle of friends, is reflected in the outside, and enlarged.

MUSLIM 2 MUSLIM by Shanon Shah (M/M). This is the personal journey of the author, not really towards the realization that he is gay, but more towards the man he wants to be. He is Muslim and Gay, but he doesn’t want for these two words to define him; and he also doesn’t want for these two words to deny each other. The author is not struggling to being accepted as “gay” or “Muslim”, he is fighting to be himself, cross-boundaries and cross-definition. He wants to be judged for what he does or doesn’t, not for what he loves or prays.

CREAM OF THE CROP by Pang Khee Teik (M/M). Probably another bio piece, Pang is both the main character than the author. He is attending the funeral of Larry, a guy he knew from school and that, maybe, if they had more time, he would have become something more. But fate was against them, and now Pang is wondering, he has a lot of “ifs” in his mind and no answers to them. Pang is probably mixing art with rebellion, being an artist with being free from conventions, and so being gay. We don’t know if Larry was gay, we don’t know if Pang is gay, probably he is still fighting the idea. For sure, what we know is that Pang feels constricted by the society he is living in, and he would like to escape, like Larry did, only that Larry found death in his escaping.

PIRATE GIRL by Marisa Repin (F/F). This is probably the farewell of a woman to her lover than was never hers. Two girls that everyone considered best friends, that probably everyone considered more than best friends, have not really spoken to each other of what they were. Probably they were too scared of the truth. And when, in the end, the love was too much, the connection too tight, the only solution was to break free of that bond, since admitting its existence was impossible.

GOOD JOB by O Thiam Chin (M/M). Actually I don’t want to think too much to this story; I don’t want to analyze it enough to really understand how old the guy is. A young man has a part-time job during his school holidays working for a friend of his father. And he is having a sexual relationship with said friend. His first sexual experience, the first time he realizes that his body has needs and that those needs tend to be satisfied more with a man than a woman. But unfortunately, like most stories like this, there is not an happily ever after for him, at least not in this relationship. We can only hope that he will not loose his belief in love.

HARRY IS DEAD by Shih-Li Kow (F/F). This was a little dread story, I was almost expecting for it to be “bigger”, bigger in meaning, maybe Bunny is the daughter of some Mafia boss, bigger in genre, maybe this is a paranormal story and now Harry will rise from the dead, bigger than a simple jealousy drama. And so the ending, in its simplicity, was even more dreadful.

THE OLD FIG COUNCIL by Zed Adam (M/M). The love and death of two lovers seen and told on reverse form unexpected witnesses, the little and big animals that are around us, but no one take notice to. This story has an ancient flavour, like some old fairy tales, not the Disney type one, but more the Greek and Latin ones, where seldom the lovers had an happily ever after.

THE WIVES’ STORY by Tan May Lee (F/F). One husband, two wives. The first wife is asked to train the second one, but the training lead to something else, to something completely different. They are not free to love each other, not openly and not outside the marriage they were forced in, but they can love each other, secretly, inside that marriage. And so why I don’t feel like they are happy?

HAVE YOU SEEN MY SON? by Abirami Durai (T). Alex is now Anna and he is coming back home from England. Like often it happens, he does the big mistake to not warn his parents, he thinks to be able to come home, to show them the new Alex, and to be welcomed like a lost child. But neither in fairy tales life is so simple, and Anna will have to search her happily ever after in the tiny details, in the unsaid words.

FRIENDS OF EVERYONE by Julya Oui (M/M). A gay man thinks to be suddenly able to turn straight. I think it’s more a choice leads by the need to be finally accepted by everyone, not only friends, but also family and strangers, than a real firm belief. He joins a religious groups, the Friends of Everyone, and he starts to happily call all his friends, a straight girls, a gay guy, a transgender woman, and one by one he realizes that, joining the Friends of Everyone, he is losing his friends. Probably you can’t be friend of everyone if you are not first friend of yourself.

MONSOON MASSAGE by Paul GnanaSelvam (M/M). Two former schoolmates meet years later, and one of them is quite changed. Reza is dressing as a woman, has a lover in town and works as masseur. Kumar, married and father of two, thinks to have nothing in common with him, but a raining afternoon under the skilled hands of Reza will help him change his mind.

THE NAKED MEME by Ray Langenbach. I don’t know what exactly think of this short story. It’s the biographical story of Lan Gen Bah, nickname LGB, and her “theorisation of paranoia and queer interpellation”. There are biographical references, and thesis to support it. There are notes and appendixes. There are citations. And I don’t understand if they are real or the outcome of the author’s imagination. Probably they are real, but I have no way to refute them, and if they are real, the life of Lan Gen Bah was at the same time interesting and dramatic.

IN SEARCH OF by Ho Sui-Jim (M/M). Two men meet for anonymous sex in a department store and they were trapped when it closes at night. A little illicit affair seems to turn in an horror, but it’s probably the guilty sense of one of the two men to let him see it like that.

ALVIN by Jerome Kugan (M/M). Two men meet when one of them is in a relationship with another one, and they had an affair. It’s good and nice, but it’s not the moment for something more. The narration is brought on two time level, in contemporary with the development of the affair and in the soon aftermath of it. Then a third level enters the scene, a shift in time when both men are now free to be together. The reader almost has the illusion that it’s a fated love story, that they are destined to be together and happy, when abruptly the story ends with a note for a possible sequel, a note that explains that it’s probably not the time for them, neither this time. And probably it will never be.

SUNSET by Azharr Rudin (M/M). More than a short story, this one seems a screenplay, the script for a slow and almost silent movie, with big sequences and basic colours, dawn, sunset, night… a movie where most of the action is in the eyes of the actors more than in their bodies.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/9834359691/?tag=elimyrevandra-20… (mais)