Comfort & joy

"Oh, it's true. I love her to death, but the only meal she cooks is Christmas breakfast, and that's enough."
"Do you have somebody who cooks for you?" Allen asked, then grimaced and amended, "I mean, does your mama have somebody who cooks for her?"
"Yes, she does, thank God." General laughter.
"Is that true?" Allen asked, turning to Danny, "Does she really cook that bad?"
The question hovered in all innocence through the silence that followed. "I don't know." Danny's air, as he spoke, communicated much more.
Ford said, "They've never met," in a small voice.

I was not expecting to devour this book in under 24 hours, but this story hit really close to home. Not so much because this was how my own coming out went but more because I could've easily seen it going this way had I been born in a different time.

This story was written and set in the late 90's and there are a lot of unintentional details that really hammer that home: no security lines at the airport, characters actually use the yellow pages and landline phones, there's a scene involving a brand new VCR player unveiled as a Christmas present, etc. But what was more noticeable about this time setting was that we're far enough away from the 80's that this book wasn't hyper-focused on the AIDS crisis, but still predating the marriage equality movement and general acceptance. It landed in that kind of temporal gray area where generations of gay men weren't being wiped out anymore, but it was still risky to draw too much attention to themselves, and anything more than a marriage-in-name-only was a fantasy. There wasn't any outright homophobia or hate speech, but I could sense the implicit threat just around the corner like the characters could.

Narratives follows two characters: Ford, a doctor who's from a long line old money Savannah, Georgia aristocracy, and Dan, an administrator who works in the same hospital who had a much poorer and violent childhood. The narrative kind of skips around between the present and extended flashbacks, but not in an incoherent or hard-to-follow way. We see the big moments of their relationship and I recognized and could sympathize with the dynamics: Ford being too afraid to display affection in public or even use the word 'gay' at all, while Dan increasingly grows frustrated at the alternating treatment he receives because he's not afraid to be publicly out at all. The innate financial power imbalance also reminded me of a difficult chapter of my own life.

There were many small moments included as well that lent the novel a feeling of authenticity; dozens of small acts of love that combine into something that means more than words ever could. The dialogue sounded real and the arguments and conflicts that arose made perfect sense within the context. I felt like I was reading the story of an actual relationship.

Family obligations, specifically around the holidays, weighs heavy as a recurring theme throughout. Ford's parents constantly pester him to finally find a nice girl to settle down with, and his repeated attempts to come out thwarted by last-second cowardice were extremely relatable. Dan weighs staying home with Ford for Christmas like he wants, vs. going out of state to visit his mother like he feels obliged to; that doesn't seem like a compelling enough conflict when I write it, but this book framed it in a way that managed to stress me out.

I went into this wanting a genre palate cleanser from all the horror and brutal wilderness survival I've been reading lately, and got way more emotionally invested than I expected to. There were some moments especially towards the end that had my gay little heart clutching my pearls and swooning like a schoolgirl watching a chick flick and you know what? That's just what I needed right now.