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An Erotic Novel of Time Travel Angel Lust: An Erotic Novel of Time Travel, by Perry Brass, Belhue Press, 2000, 216 pages, $12.95
Perry Brass' essays in GayToday have always evoked readers' enthusiastic responses. He's not only a master of prose, but is a first-rate poet whose works have already made their way into histories and college texts. Brass' earliest writings appeared in Come Out, the publication of New York's Gay Liberation Front, which he edited. He's a pioneering gay journalist, therefore, whose literary credentials have their unshakable roots in the Stonewall Era.
In the intervening thirty years Perry Brass has written a steady stream of notable novels, including several Lambda Literary Finalists, some of which have been categorized as science fiction. These novels have been peppered not only with his futuristic perspectives, but with Brass' earthy sensibilities, an emotional/ erotic awareness only true poets possess. Brass, in his latest work, Angel Lust, once again plumbs gay sexual roots. Angels have plenty of gung-ho fans in America today. I've got a friend who sells angelic statuary and makes a pretty good living at it. Another, a long-time acquaintance, sells light fixtures embroidered with angelic themes. He isn't short on the big bucks either. Angels are in vogue. Those who see their occasional fellows as angelic representatives will thrill, I predict, to Brass' tale, one which follows two gay angels through today's Manhattan. Their tale involves not only hot sex, but murder.
"I am also dealing in very deep concepts about personality and sexuality," says the author. "Sexuality is one of the most honest aspects of our lives. No matter how people try to repress it, it reveals much about us. I also believe sex is a medium of communication. Gay men have used it for thousands of years to reach out to each other on the most intimate level." In a sexually sanitized gay world in which accommodation to old-fashioned heterosexual standards of propriety are too much promoted by assimilationist activist organizations, Brass reaches into his characters' consciousness to present the brass tacks of sex. On TV, gay characters may show warm and funny sit-com sides, but they seldom exhibit the sexual or sensual parts of their personalities. “They are funny, but none of them have any real…I guess you'd say 'balls',” complains the author about what he sees passing for gayness in the emerging popular culture. Brass wants to rectify this imbalance. He says: “I want to embrace this gay experience all the way. Sexually. Psychologically. good and bad. I do this in my books. Luckily thousands of readers feel this way as well.” The time travel theme in Angel Lust brings not only angels into the fore, but heartless robber-barons too, such as Alan Hubris, a reincarnated power freak from the Middle Ages who is an ally to New York's nameless mayor. Hubris specializes in the spread of political corruption and questionable real estate deals. Only last week I overheard—from another room--the voice of Janet Reno speaking on TV at the memorial service for those slaughtered in the 1995 Oklahoma City terrorist bombing. She encouraged her listeners to feel that the forces of the good, in spite of outward appearances, are winning over the forces of evil. Brass, in his extraordinary works, says much the same thing: “Power is here to stay,” he told GayToday. “As outsiders, gay men understand this. We are now taking power on our own. The question is, how will we use it and keep from having our lives destroyed by it? Frankly, I believe in our goodness, in our ability to reach out and do important things. This has been a part of our history. I love the men who have been our role models, our heroes, despite the pain and oppression around them. Sometimes they have done this with no support at all. This has taken more courage than anything I know. “In Angel Lust, I say that 'heroism is as addictive as heroin.' I think we are all looking for that knight to follow. And sometimes we even discover him in ourselves.” |
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