Feb 23, 2007  |  By: ZACK ROSEN  | COMMENTS     

Proof that the most noble intentions can be swept away by bad prose and a lack of focus, “Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling,” edited by Toby Johnson and Steve Berman, is a collection of short writings meant to “offer alternative stories to the ones the culture is telling about what it means to be gay.” And therein lies the problem, as the anthology swaps one stereotype for another. Gone are the oversexed party-boys, traded instead for a portrait of the gay man as a hippy-dippy victim of fate.

The bulk of the stories in the collection deal with the death or loss of a partner and a multitude of unlikely spirit guides — cats, teddy bears, St. Sebastian, Michelangelo’s David — available to ease the pain.  Interspersed with opinion pieces and factual essays on, for example, the final months of gay pioneer Harry Hay, “Charmed Lives” rambles about through its own wide scope until all the stories within blur to a single, rainbow-colored smudge.

The blame for this, it would seem, lies more with the editors than with the contributors. Some redundancy shouldn’t be surprising, but a great number of stories feel exactly the same. Rambling tales of “how I met and/or lost that special someone,” with only background details — this one liked Ella Fitzgerald, this one smoked pot — to keep the stories distinct are common. An overabundance of background and tangential anecdotes in Bill Goodman’s “Shades” and Mark Thompson and Malcolm Boyd’s “Charmed, I’m Sure” are reminiscent of talking to a person with no inner monologue, and two of the more interesting tales, Mark Horn’s “Musuko Dojoji” and Toby Johnson’s “Avalokiteshvara at the 21st Street Bath” break up a compelling narrative to deliver author commentary on the preceding action, a strategy akin to having a sonorous voice-over in the middle of a guns-out action movie.



THE MAGICAL REALISM pieces fare better here. While perhaps overly cute, there are a couple of stories throughout “Charmed Lives” that are unlikely to be replicated anywhere else. In Ruth Sims’ “Tom or an Improbable Tail,” a lonely gay man’s cat spends six months of the year in the shape of a hot twink and the owner must decide which form he prefers. J.R.G. De Marco’s “Great Uncle Ned” is about a crotchety gay ghost who can’t move on to the next world until he drops his prejudice against sissies, and Andrew Ramer’s “The True and Unknown Story of Andrew Gale” tells of the hard life of Dorothy’s un-magical older brother, who finds a happiness he would never give up for Oz. These and several other stories manage actually to be fun, and the spirituality in them doesn’t come at the price of their readability.

The best selections, though, are the stories that actually acknowledge the dark side of one’s spirituality, or simply the kind of pain that can’t be removed through a fanciful excursion or serendipitous encounter. Neil Ellis Orts’ “My Grandfather’s Photograph,” one of the best in the collection, uses a blessed economy of language to tell a story that’s effective without being schmaltzy. Christos Tsirbas’ “Get Thee Behind Me,” about an alcoholic gay man’s confrontation with the devil, finds a very creative way to depict a man wrestling with his demons and the well drawn characters make his victory seem well-deserved. Victor J. Banis’ “The Canals of Mars,” also admits that even the most enlightened of men can still be swayed by beauty, and that a small dose of self-deception can do wonders for a happy life.

Though it could easily have been shorter, “Charmed Lives: Gay Spirit in Storytelling” fills a void that must surely exist in gay literature. Those with a spiritual bent can glean something from the collection, and anyone recovering from a loss might find inspiration as well. The casual fiction fan, however, will be better served browsing through an old favorite after their bedtime prayers.