  Slubberdegullionby Jay Mandal Published by BeWrite Books 2005 ISBN: 1-905202-00-8 Life isn’t always a bitch The title of Slubberdegullion, Jay Mandal’s latest book, could lead you to believe that this is a lost work by Tolkien, something along the lines of The Silmarillion. This is forgivable since “Slubberdegullion” is an old English (rather than a Middle Earth) word meaning a “worthless ruffian”. However, any thoughts that Slubberdegullion is a saga are soon dispelled by a glance at the cover, a picture of a brooding James Dean/Montgomery Cliff type of figure. In fact, the book is a collection of short stories, taking its title from one of them. Regular readers of The Independent Gay Writer will be familiar with Jay Mandal’s approach to life. It is an approach that faces the harsher realities unflinchingly yet never without the saving grace of humour, a humour that makes even the unbearable tolerable. In Slubberdegullion humour is very much to the fore. There are twenty short stories in this collection and none of them fails in holding the reader’s attention. Although humour is to the fore, there are some more serious, not to say poignant, stories among them. Crying for the Moon is a serious look at the eternal triangle; the man in the middle is married with a son but in love with another man. He loves his wife and son too. How is he going to make this work? Without the understanding of both his wife and lover he never will yet, incredibly, they are prepared to co-operate in this delicate balancing act. This is a difficult subject to handle but in a few pages Jay Mandal limns the tale with great sensitivity. Love from Mum is another poignant story but with less angst and a more satisfying conclusion; one does not fear for the protagonists’ future! Graham and David are a couple but David has concealed Graham’s existence from his mother. Christmas is upon them and they are separating to join their respective biological families. Graham’s plea that they themselves constitute a family falls on deaf ears. Then a Christmas card arrives “To my son and his partner. Love from Mum”. David has inadvertently sent her a picture of the two of them with his holiday photographs and she has seized the opportunity to let him know that she knows. She is, it turns out, far more understanding than David has credited her with being. Graham suggests that they invite her to their home for Christmas for a proper family get-together. Not everyone, it seems, is as censorious as we fear. This is just one example of what Jay Mandal is very good at, exploring the tendency to build dungeons in the air, to invent worst-case scenarios unnecessarily. In I Know Where You Live, Jonathan thinks he is being stalked by a skinhead who has sprayed a graffito saying “Robbo is Gay” on a railway arch. The young man proudly claims authorship of the legend and lets Jonathan know, as the title suggests, that he knows where he lives. Their paths continue to cross and Jonathan sees all sorts of hidden menace in the boy’s apparently innocuous remarks – “Might see you later then,” “You got a girlfriend?” “Maybe I’ll come round one day.” Jonathan, a hairdresser, feels that all this is building up to some sort of climax until one day the boy comes into his salon and addresses the woman Jonathan is dealing with as “mum”. Jonathan thinks this is going too far; the boy is taunting him in front of his own mother now. As they are leaving she says, “Come on, Robbo”. Realisation dawns. The boy is not stalking him or anyone else. The graffito referred to himself. He’s a gentle soul despite the skinhead regalia and is only looking for a friend. Leaping to conclusions is the theme of several of these stories. It is something gay people are apt to do. Functioning in straight society where none of the rules is relevant and one’s responses are unconventional is doubly difficult when another’s sexuality or intentions are in doubt. Many of the stories explore the misunderstandings into which we’re all apt to blunder. In The Waiter Timothy orders a coffee from a fellow diner in a restaurant who happens to be wearing a dinner suit. It is only later that Timothy discovers that the man, who brings him a coffee, is not a member of the restaurant’s staff and is consumed with embarrassment. Fortunately they meet up again by chance and, after further misunderstanding, embark on a relationship. In The Restaurant (clearly, eating out is a great source of incident) Matthew drenches his trousers with water from an over-exuberant tap in the lavatory and makes the situation worse by apologising and excusing himself, protesting to another man there that he doesn’t usually pick men up in toilets. Too late he realises that he has left himself open to being asked where he does usually pick them up. He has obviously never been advised that, when in a hole, it is better to stop digging. This tale of an initially less than encouraging start also has a happy outcome. The observant among you will have noticed that I have not mentioned the eponymous story, Slubberdegullion. (“Well spotted, that man!”) This is one of the more amusing stories in the collection. I leave it to you to discover the context. Each tale has its own particular flavour and none, although some are very slight, is without point or purpose. Where one is not being made to smile with amusement one is nodding in recognition of some of life’s ironies. All in all this is an accomplished and quirky collection of short stories which can be taken up and put down many times and read with unalloyed pleasure – a lucky dip of a book! |
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Order of the Poison OakBy Brent Hartinger Published by HarperTempest ISBN: 0-06-056730-9 As an alien, I read American high school stories with baffled fascination. They describe a very strange world. What is a homecoming queen and whence is she coming home? Why is the Commencement at the end? What are ‘smores? Why is the English national anthem, Elgar’s “Land of Hope and Glory”, played at graduation ceremonies? Is it compulsory to toast marshmallows? Why are cheerleaders? Do all sensitive boys lust after the school coach? Why is drinking beer regarded as the eighth deadly sin? Clearly, these and many more questions are not going to be answered at the end of next week’s episode of “Soap” so I will cut to the chase, asking only that the reader indulges my cultural dislocation, coming as I do from a land where school seems not to be as all-embracing. Brent Hartinger’s The Order of the Poison Oak throws up another question a few pages in. Our hero, Russel Middlebrook (Middlebrook, incidentally, is a stream in my home town) goes to a summer camp that has a “marching field and flagpole”. What are they, neo-Nazis or a sub-division of Hitler Youth? We are not vouchsafed an answer, so I will draw a veil over the implications of these military appurtenances and start by saying straight away that this is a very enjoyable book. Mr. Hartinger’s previous book, The Geography Club, was an amusing account of a Russel Middlebrook’s struggle to come to terms with being gay in a hostile environment, the environment being his high school. In The Order of the Poison Oak Russel elects to go to a summer camp, Camp Serenity, with his two best friends, Gunnar and Min, to work as a counsellor. Gunnar is a socially inept, intelligent young man (He knows all about aspergillus flavus. I know all about aspergillus fumigatus. Maybe we could meet?) Min is a Chinese-American. Russel thinks her descent is irrelevant but feels it necessary to remind us of it; he is obviously conscious of it. At the camp they are informed that the first cohort of campers will be badly scarred children towards whom they must be particularly sensitive. Whilst being inducted, Russel is immediately smitten by one Web Bastian, who is drop-dead gorgeous. Unfortunately, as counsellors are being paired off, Min leaps in and claims Web, leaving Russel with Otto Digmore who is himself badly scarred. Russel is furious at her muscling in. Confronted by his first group of campers, Russel finds that he is hopeless at controlling them. They take full advantage of his inexperience and inability to see beyond their injuries. Eventually he wins them over by telling them a parable, the story of the Rainbow Crow, a bird whose beauty is not readily apparent because it has been hidden by God to protect him it the hostile world. His beauty is discernable only to those who are privileged enough to be granted a glimpse of the reality behind the appearance. The children immediately grasp what Russel is telling them. He in turn realises they just want to be treated like other children, not like pieces of rare china, and their relationship becomes more manageable. Meanwhile, as the story unfolds, Russel discovers that Web is a pansexual “bad boy” who plays not only the field but several adjoining counties. He makes a move on anything that is warm, including Russel and Min and half the camp. Russel tries to pair Gunnar off with a girl, Em, whom he thinks is ideal for him but Gunnar has foresworn the opposite sex, feeling that he always makes a fool of himself in that department. Meanwhile, Russel has forfeited the trust of the children by failing to defend them when they are jeered at for their appearance on a shopping trip. He invents the Order of the Poison Oak as a way of regaining their trust and in so doing “comes out” to the more perceptive among them including Otto who, it turns out, is also gay. Otto blurts out that he is attracted to Russel and soon his feelings are reciprocated. Gunnar rescues Em in a forest fire whilst Russel is rescuing a boy and becomes her hero, giving her the opportunity to get to know him she has wanted all the time. By the end of the book Russel and Otto are an “item”, as are Gunnar and Em. Min is sadder but slightly wiser and ruefully unattached and Web is ostracised for sexual harassment. Such are the bones of the story. Mr. Hartinger skilfully weaves his tale, told in the first person by Russel, in a way to hold our interest throughout. Russel’s good intentions frequently backfire, estranging him from his friends. At one point, alienated from his charges and from Gunnar and Em, he wonders if going to Camp Serenity to get away was such a good idea after all. Fortunately, helped by circumstances, he retrieves the situation and the book ends on an upbeat. The Order of the Poison Oak sensitively captures what it is like to be a gay adolescent, feeling like a traveller in a strange land, ignorant of society’s rules and without a compass yet trying to find a way forward and growing in the process. Mr. Hartinger captures this with great humour and has written a highly recommendable story that is as amusing as it is instructive. |