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A long
time ago, I had some friends who were really into Poppy Z.
Brite, and they absolutely could not understand why I wasn't
a huge fan. She wrote about strippers who danced to Pixies
songs (as if!—everyone knows you'll never get tips dancing
to "No.13 Baby"), cute boys who kissed each other, and supernatural
crap. I liked the Pixies and bisexual boys. I wasn't particularly
interested in the supernatural, but I looked like I
would be interested in the supernatural.
 So
one of my friends lent me her copy of Drawing Blood,
and well, I laughed and I cried. I laughed mostly at the depictions
of guy-on-guy hook-ups. It was so polite! I think I recall
a line that went something like "Can I unzip your pants?"
Were guys really that formal with each other? It seemed unnatural.
I cried tiny drama-queen tears over the time I lost reading
Drawing Blood when I could have been watching The
X-Files or TV Nation. Also, I was intrigued—I
was 95% sure that Trevor, the book's protagonist, was based
on an old boyfriend of mine whose name, occupation, and back
story were very similar to that of Trevor's. (Did Poppy know
my ex? Did they meet at amateur night at some Atlanta strip
club? I never did get to the bottom of that mystery.)
But Drawing
Blood left me hungry for saucier man-on-man literary action.
Back in those days (the '90s), the spicier gay lit was relegated
to the adult video stores or the gay bookstore for those who
were lucky enough to have one in their town. But a lot of
what those stores carried was porn, which I didn't find very
interesting. Like most of you, I read all the porn I needed
to read in junior high.
It was
ten years later when I finally found what I was looking for—gay
romance! Gay romance existed, but not too many of us straight
girls knew about it. Gay romance isn't porn—which focuses
on the sex act—nor is it regular fiction. In the genre
world, romance books are defined as books that made a relationship
the primary focus of the book, and the couple must have a
happy ending, so to speak. Gay romance novels got a lot of
publicity in 2005 when a new line of books, called Romentics,
were set to be published by Warner Books (now Grand Central).
Romentics
was the creation of Scott Pomfret and Scott Whittier, who
go by the adorable sobriquet of Scott & Scott. Like Harlequin
romances, these books were to be short, sweet, and frequent.
Warner's first—and sadly last—foray into this brave
new territory was the reissue of Hot Sauce, a book
that the Scotts had originally self-published. Hot Sauce,
and the Scotts, got written up all over town, from Publishers
Weekly to The
New York Times, which ran a lengthy profile of the boys
that included loving descriptions of food, clothing, and furniture,
much like the book.
 |
 |
| The
frothy original Hot Sauce cover (top) and the cover
published by Warner Books (bottom). |
Gay romances
have a brief, happy history. Some trace the origins of the
gay/lesbian romance to Patricia Highsmith's 1952 novel, The
Price of Salt, a lesbian romance with an upbeat conclusion.
The Price of Salt was a departure from the more scandalous
pulp lesbian novels of the time like Beebo Brinker
and Odd Girl Out, where the girls struggled with their
illicit love affairs. But the gay and lesbian romance genre
stayed underground for a long time. Sure, you could find serious
gay and lesbian literary fiction, memoirs, and titillating
stories of hot hetero guys on the down low—I'm looking
at you, E. Lynn Harris—at Barnes and Noble or Borders,
but romance was still a dirty little secret.
That
was, until the Scotts came along. Scott & Scott were successful
(one an advertising copywriter, one an attorney), young, and
in love. They had a dream, along with the drive to see it
through. And they knew how to publicize themselves. Their
first venture was self-published and sold a respectable 2,500
copies—that's a lot for a self-published book. When Warner
Books published Hot Sauce, it sold five times that.
No doubt the TV show Will & Grace had lot to do with
making gay men acceptable to mainstream America, but still,
someone had to come up with the idea of Harlequin-style romance
books for gays, and there was Scott & Scott. One of the Scott's
mothers was even an actual Harlequin subscriber, receiving
four thin, lurid novels each month.
I will
admit to having read Hot Sauce, although I was saddened
by Warner's decision to change the cover from the one I originally
saw in Publisher's Weekly—a photo of a headless
buff torso holding a froth-covered hand mixer, the bowl creatively
hiding his goods—to the chick-lit style illustration
it has now. Hot Sauce focuses on Brad and Troy, two
good looking and successful young men in love. Troy is a fashion
designer and Brad is chef, and to make things even more perfect,
they're about to open a club together. Of course, there is
some tension. Troy's old boyfriend comes back to town and
tries to break up Brad and Troy. But mostly there are descriptions:
clothes, apartments, and parties are all affectionately detailed.
There's a whole paragraph about one of Troy's shirts.
I'll
admit a bit of prejudice here—I would have never read
Hot Sauce book if it were about breeders. It was the
novelty that drew me to it. It's a sweet book, more dick-lit1
than Harlequin romance, with likeable characters and almost
realistic settings (you don't want to be too realistic
in this genre).
I'm not
sure what happened between Warner/Grand Central and the Scotts,
but the Romentics books are now published via BookSurge,
the self-publishing wing of Amazon. Scott & Scott are still
pounding these out, and one of their more recent tomes, Surf
'N' Turf, was nominated for a
Lambda Literary award, despite the fact that the Amazon
reviews from long-time Romentics fans call this book
unrealistic and silly. One positive outcome of the break from
Grand Central is the Romentics covers are now more
salacious, and more reminiscent of 1970s and 1980s romance
novels.
Gay romances,
though, are as goofy as straight romances, and my idea of
fun tends to run towards talking dogs and unresolved endings,
not cute guys in matching underwear. But I'll take the Scotts'
idea of fun over Poppy Z. Brite's any day. At least the guys
in the Romentics books aren't unnaturally polite.
(October,
2007)
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