Gordie

I was going to write a blurb about a book entitled The Urban Villagers, by the preeminent sociologist Herbert Gans. But I then started to think of the person who gave me the book, who gave the gift of this book and so many others, and most of all, of himself, to his classes. And I thought, well, there should be a book about him. Until then..

Let's call the book that will one day be...Gordie (aka Gordon Fellman). For as such he has been known to his students since 1964, when he first came to Brandeis. Born in Nebraska, he attended Bard College, then received his Ph.D from Harvard.

He introduces you to class disparities right under your nose/eyes, as in the way two different stores appeal to completely different people, and how they treat customers. He participated in efforts to stave off the destruction of a neighborhood, but you only learn that as an extra bit of knowledge thrown in when he is talking about what happened to that particular neighborhood, and then, how, armed with foreknowledge, the residents and those who cared about them, were able to stop another effort to eradicate a similar neighborhood not far away.

The stores:  Woolworth's and Marimekko. The neighborhoods:  West End (now a seat of high rises) and the North End, still easily the most vibrant and interesting neighborhood in Boston.

Then, if you are lucky enough, you get a front row seat with two of your friends to attend the team taught class given by Gordie and George, as in George Ross. They discuss Freud and Marx. You watch in awe as they find occasional common ground but more differences between the two. Difficult to meld the psycho-personal and the revolutionary political. It fascinates all the more when they argue, without self-consciousness.

The one thing that stands out about Gordie in whatever class you see and hear him is his passion.  It helps, somehow, that he still cares about the injustices which continue to rage all over our planet. It helps that he actually did go to the Middle East and talk with Palestinians and Israelis who believe in peaceful relations with each other.

It helps that he still cares.

Sour Cream: The Book

Another book that really should be written....

Sour Cream

Discusses the invention of sour cream (many Eastern Europeans use it, and they may have "invented" it. It seems to have traveled to the USA with Russian Jews (like my great grandparents). Eventually spread over Europe in many variants (creme fraiche in France, yogurt in many places, kefir in Turkey and the Balkans, different cheeses in Italy and Yugoslavia).

Mentions many uses for sour cream (food and a few other interesting things..)

And then, provides recipes for many many dishes.Standouts:  sour cream over ice cream.  Sour cream apple cake. Chocolate sour cream frosting.  Radishes and cucumbers with sour cream. Sour cream onion dip. Sour cream chipotle dip. Tiramisu with mascarpone sour cream filling.

Anything that contains ice cream or whipped cream in any form may also be eaten with sour cream. (If this were a class, I would make this a question and would add, "Discuss." )

Flying While Fat

Another book that needs to be written:  Flying While Fat


Chrissea Abarvem decides to fly around the world. She is a proud, feisty, spunky fat woman with a few tattoos and an attitude. She wants to experience the excitement of flying to places about which she has only read and dreamed.  She has previously read that certain countries don't appreciate fat people, but while she does take this into account while planning her schedule and itinerary, she also eschews easy classifications and categorizations in favor of seeing what she wants to see and being where she wants to be.

First stop:  Greenland. She finds it dark at times, icy in most places and absolutely compelling as she visits two areas and stands by different seas/bodies of water. She finds that most Greenlanders don't seem to care that much about body size. She eats some dynamite seafood. She hears someone whispering outside her door at 4 am, figures they are drunk and goes back to sleep.

Second stop:  Scotland. Chrissea visits Aberdeen in honor of Byron, who adored fat women, especially strong ones. She goes to a pub, joins in singing, gets asked to perform a striptease by a drunk man with a kilt. Scots wa hae!


There are twenty six stops on the tour, some in familiar places, some way off the beaten path. The common denominator: Chrissea is up for anything and everything!

Paradise Lost in 21st Century Prose (story)

Vikram Seth wrote at least a couple of books in verse, and they were pretty good.

Conversely it would be fun to have John Milton do Paradise Lost in prose/fiction - not instead of poetry. It is inspiring and daunting as it is. Just in addition. (Well, he has been dead now for a while, but perhaps he could pen something posthumously.)


Imagine:

Satan and his gang are seated in hell. Since they have never had actual bodily shapes before, there is some exploration taking place. One male fallen angel says to Satan, "Hey, man, what the hell is this?" He holds something in his hand.

"Oh for goodness' sake," Satan says contemptuously, "that's your male member."
"My what?"
"It's what you use when you feel like wanking off or making the object of your affections very happy."
"I don't know what you mean," the confused male angel says.
"Gog," Satan says to one of his squad leaders, "show Anneus here what one does with it."
Obligingly Gog takes out his member and starts to push it with his thumb, then rub it from the base.
"You try," Satan tells Anneus.
Anneus pushes his organ with his thumb, then starts to rub it from the base. "Wow," he says. "This is cool. But why is it growing and why do I feel as if hot needles are pushing through me? Is it because we're in this Hell place?"

"You can't do this in Heaven," Annie Gog, one of the female fallen angels, says. "Shall I rub it for you?"
"Please."
Annie rubs Anneus's member up and down. Anneus looks in surprise and then gasps. "I don't understand why- " He stops as his stream flies up, then onto the floor. "Why did it do that?"
"How do you feel?" Annie asks.
"Good," he says.
"Would you like to touch mine?"
"You have one, too?"
"Not exactly," Annie says. "But I have something else." She places Anneus's hand on her vulva, then puts his finger on her clit.
"This feels weird," Anneus says. "Kind of slippery."
"It is," Annie agrees. "But it feels good if you touch it."
"Really," Anneus says, pushing Annie's clit and making her moan.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," Satan says as he walks back to where many of the angels have now discovered their organs of pleasure and what they can do. "This is meeting time, not play time. How are we ever going to revenge ourselves on God, who has sent us here by tossing us out of heaven?"
"You meet and plan revenge." the fallen angels tell him. "It's fun having a shape and being able to do weird things. Maybe God wasn't so unfair as we first thought."

"Wanks and slackers," Satan fumes. "I get thrown out of Heaven with a tough strong bunch, and what do they do? They start screwing. This must be God's revenge on me."

He walks off to explore the limits of the realm of hell. But he is to have a no privacy. A female fallen angel runs after him and says, "Satan, baby, I want you." She points to her newly acquired place of pleasure.

"Oh, what the hell," Satan grumbles and proceeds to take out his own member, which is five feet long and covered with spikes. He pushes the former female angel down on the ground and starts to rub her new breasts and bite them.

"Ohhh..ohh," she moans.

"Make me sweat," he whispers to her, and brandishes his new, fearsome member.

"You have great thorns," she whispers back as she takes his long thing in her hands and rubs it against her vulva.

"Yeah," he says sarcastically. "That's me - Satan with the great thorns." He sighs. Then he pushes into her gently. "Ohhhh!" she yells.

"Nothing like a long prick in hell," he says, and proceeds to push harder. The female fallen angel screams in pleasure.


Up in heaven, God looks down and sees the fallen angels going at it with each other. "Heavens, they're strange," God says to her lieutenant angels. "I can't believe I made them."

"You didn't make them," an angel says.
"How could anyone else make them?" God asks, annoyed.

"They didn't," the angel replies. "That's what they turned into when they acquired bodies."

"So my thought made them into that?"

"Sort of. It's like putting something in the freezer when it's soft. It becomes hard."

"Don't go all 20th Century on me," God says. "I can't believe my thought made that whole thing."

"Maybe you should stop thinking for a while," the angel says.

"God forbid," God says. "Then all the heavens would collapse."

"Don't stop them," the angel says. "Just give them a vacation."


So God stops thinking the heavens. But She gets a headache and has to lie down. Angels fan her.

When the headache stops, she goes to the heavenly bathroom. When she comes out, the planets are spinning in their orbits.

"You  forgot to wipe," the angel says.

"No, I didn't," she says. "But I did have to pass a lot of gas."

The Art and Craft of Intelligent Seduction

Sometimes it's fun to write blurbs for books that you wish existed.

The Art and Craft of Intelligent Seduction

Ronette has had a crush on her close gay male friend, Arn, ever since she was younger than she can even remember. Or, as she realizes, there is something about him that she needs, that is happy in his presence. However, lately she finds herself wanting to make love to him as a gay man would. She asks herself if she would like to become a gay man. Part of her says that she would. Part says that she would not. The compromise she can live with is that she dresses like a gay man and disguises herself as one.

She reads some books by gay men and watches some gay porn. They accord with what she feels Arn would like.

She starts to frequent the places he shops, hoping that he won't see her enough to recognize her. Finally, one autumn night, she picks him up. Her name is Ron, of course.

When she and Arn get inside his apartment, she bites his lip very hard as she kisses him. Then she unveils a whip and orders Arn to strip and get down on his knees. She flicks the whip across his back, but not very hard. Then she kneels and bites the places she whipped, then kisses them, then bites them, then whips them again. She then dresses and leaves.

She picks him up again in the same place. A repetition ensues, with a few slightly different moves on her part. As before, she dresses, then leaves. Does not say anything about another meeting.

The third time she picks him up, she pushes Arn down on the ground, invades him with a vibrator and scratches her name across his back (Ron,that is).

Then she leaves. She does not return to the store.

The next week Arn calls her and tells her about the man who broke his heart.  "I understand," she tells him. "I guess that's how you've broken hearts up to now."

"I guess it is," he agrees. Then, of a sudden, he says, "Would you like me to break yours?"

"Yes," she whispers.



Read the book to find out what happens :)

Blurb for Fat Poets Speak (1): Voices of the Fat Poets' Society (in a strangely biblical register)

Fat Poets Speak (1):  Voices of the Fat Poets' Society


So it came about that in 2006, in a suburb of Boston, NAAFA did meet at its annual Convention. And many NAAFAns attended, and it was good. And they gathered further for the purpose of writing poetry about themselves, about fat people, about fat women, but poetry that was not of hatred for themselves, but of appreciation and celebration.

And it came to pass that after the completion of the workshop, Mary Ray of Worley saw fit to have those who had attended sign a sheet which would list their names and emails. Verily, it did occur that most of the poets present signed, and it fell out that they did start writing and used the group name assigned to them by Mary Ray of Worley. And they wrote many poems of many kinds. They did gather to themselves a number of them to write and comment and change and work further on them.

And thus it came about that the book Fat Poets Speak: Voices of the Fat Poets' Society was born, and that the doughty and wise Peggy of Elam saw fit, after much work and thought on her part and on the part of the writers and editor, one Frannie of Zellman, to publish this fair book and take it to those of the people who would read and appreciate poems by fat poets.

And some among them vowed among themselves that one day there would come a second volume, as well.

(I don't know what got into me here...maybe a lot of holidays?  Passover, Easter, Patriots' Day, Earth Day, 4/20..)

Bubbe Meisehs by Shayneh Maidelehs: An Anthology of Poetry by Jewish Grandaughters About Our Grandmothers - compiled by Leslea Newman

Love. Overwhelming, intense, sometimes complicated love. I don't know how there can be more love expressed in one volume of poems than in this one.

Something about Jewish women and their grandmas. The relationship is often extremely close, loving, nurturing, caring. Many of us had grandmas who babysat or were with us for long periods of our lives, if we were lucky. Some of us were also lucky enough to have grandmas who shielded us from sadness and bad times that our parents were experiencing. Somehow nothing ever seemed quite as bad when we were at grandma's house or apartment.

Many of us also were lucky enough to have grandmas who acted on their convictions and organized marches and picketed and chaired committees to stop landlords from evicting tenants who had lost their jobs. Many of us have our grandmas to thank for thinking globally and acting locally long before this was a popular slogan.

And many of those same grandmas made the best Jewish food this country and world will ever know. And they saved the best pieces for us.

Even if you aren't Jewish, you will probably find your grandma here. And you'll cry and smile along with the rest of us.

Historical and Literary Blurb for Caravans, by James Michener

If you can, visit the James Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, the town in which James Michener grew up. Not only does it feature some wonderful art exhibits, but it also features a compact but amazingly informative and well-placed exhibit on James Michener himself.

You will see, among other things, all the novels and articles he wrote, gathered on shelves and under glass. Hawaii and The Source were two of his most ambitious efforts. Then there were the books about American States and their origins, and his earlier autobiographical works. There was Tales of the South Pacific, which inspired the show of almost the same name. There were books about other areas of the world.

And then there was Caravans (1963). A bestseller at the time, it garners little attention today. And yet, it was perhaps one of his most prescient -and for me, likable- works. He pontificated the least. Somehow it came across to me as having been written more from the heart, although I am sure he himself would have said that all his books were written from the heart. He did serve in the area of South Asia (and also Southeast Asia) and stayed there for a few years.

The new kid on the block, Mark Miller, an American of German Jewish origins on the staff of the American embassy in Afghanstan, has been told to find a young American woman, married to an Afghani engineer, who disappeared. This is 1946, when Afghanistan is just coming out of the stone age and its cities are also just starting to become somewhat cosmopolitan. There is a stark rift between the educated upper class and the strongly religious, less educated class of the villages. (Interestingly, though, there are mullahs -holy men of Islam- in both camps.)

It turns out that Ellen Jasper, a young woman bored with insular, middle class values of the small American town in which she grew up, also left her Afghani husband, not because she had problems with being his second wife -she loved and respected his first wife- but because she felt he was too bourgeois, too middle class. She seemed to yearn for something she could not name, according to the accounts of those who knew her.

Michener seemed to have predicted the rise of  anti-establishment, hippie women and feminists as well, for women like Ellen Jasper would flood campuses and become the spokeswomen for the Women's Movement, as well as its writers, speakers and artists.

Not that Michener is always kind to her - he suggests that she is promiscuous and selfish, perhaps narcissistic. But she is beautiful, intelligent and powerful in her wants and articulate in their defense.

The characters who come in contact with each other and with her are memorable and powerful in their own right, as well:  Mark himself; Dr. Stiglitz, the German doctor who fled Germany with war crimes on his conscience for which he is still trying to atone; Moheb Khan, the urbane, intelligent, ruthless son of Shah Khan, leading warlord of the area; Ellen Jasper's former Afghani husband, Nazrullah; Mira, the nomad girl who falls in love with Mark, and others. Besides populating his book with vivid characters, Michener provides a magnificent travelogue of the main settlements and towns of Afghanistan, and horrifically accurate historical accounts of their origins and the battles fought for them. The customs and traditions of Afghanistian, religious and cultural, are present as well, inseparable from the plot and story, and grounding it in sober realism and believability.

And the scenery drawn in each chapter becomes so much more than a backdrop - almost a character, a presence in its fierce and foreboding way.

Somehow Caravans hits home for me more than Michener's other novels; he is less preachy, definitely more understanding and tolerant of Afghanistan than he seems to be of other countries about which he writes. And he has drawn a powerful, confident female protagonist in Ellen Jasper, one whose vision both infuriates and fascinates.

And if you couldn't tell, I fell in love with Moheb Khan...

Fat Poets Speak 2: Living and Loving Fatly (blurb)

Hehe...this one is fun.

Fat Poets Speak 2:  Living and Loving Fatly


The idea that fat poets -or even fat people- should be able to love anyone, or be loved by anyone, let alone fatly, would have been revolutionary about thirty years ago. In some ways, it still is. Some people do not wish to grant fat people, let alone fat poets, the right to love. Or often, to live.

Fine. They can go back to their caves.

In this volume, ten poets, including the editor, write about what it is like to live their days negotiating minefields of "Fat Country," where one has to feel one's way carefully, lest one be harassed or assaulted. They write about what it is like to want and need safe spaces that remain elusive for many fat people. They write about the exhilaration of finding ways to rebel against the fat hating world, about marching for their rights, and about accepting and even celebrating their size - all in the context that fat is a descriptor, no more, no less. It is a shape. It is not a curse. It is not a prize. It is simply what one is.

The celebration comes when one realizes one has gotten through another day and not allowed the haters to get the upper hand.

What the fat poets have to say will at times amuse you, anger you and excite you. You owe it to yourself to read and listen.

Beverly Gray Books - Historical and Descriptive Blurb

Series books started to be all the rage in the 1930's, and not only for girls (The Hardy Boys Series targeted young boys, and there were already a few British series appealing to this audience). But in the USA, girls' series exploded in popularity which continues to this day. Most popular: Nancy Drew books. However, series which appeal to both boys and girls command a much larger share of the market now (specifically Harry Potter. Other fantasy series).

But there was something peculiarly cozy about having series for girls. They emphasized emotional bonds and conflicts, not shooting and sports. Most of them centered around mysteries/mystery solving, like Nancy Drew, like the Dana Girls, like Cherry Ames, and although incidents that were violent sometimes drove the plots, they were all explained and solved in the end, with the ability of the heroine/female protagonist key.

However...there was one series that drew me like no other. I speak of the Beverly Gray books, bequeathed to me by my mom, bought for her at a stationery and book stores about three blocks away from where she lived in the Pelham Parkway section of the Bronx, during the 1930's, running into the first year or so of the 1940's.

Beverly Gray and her friends met in their first year of college. That drew me, to begin with - I wanted to go to college. Their college was in a suburb of Boston, and they all seemed to live in New York or in its suburbs. All common ground, since I lived in a suburb of NY (Long Island at the time) and liked the idea of going to college in the Boston area. I liked the way they talked, although people who knew more assured me that college girls never talked like that.

But what drew me even more than the setting were the situations in which they found themselves and the places they visited. They went on a world cruise on a yacht with some of their man friends.. They visited Europe and Asia and even the South Pacific. And Beverly herself met one of the most interesting villains I have ever read about - the evil, suave, Count Alexis de Franchiny. Whose brother, it turns out, was a pirate - a tall, tanned, dark haired but also verbally adept pirate. And I was at the age where such interesting villainous men were meat and drink to me. (I still appreciate them, although my taste in villains has changed slightly. Just slightly.) They were both after a map left to the yachters by a dying man in a Limehouse, London tavern. See?  So much more sophisticated than your average series for 8-12 year old girls!

I got through all my mom's books in the series, but by the time I was ready for more, I had also outgrown the Beverly Gray books and had moved onto adult novels, not to mention Lord of the Rings, which I read in Social Studies Class by hiding it in the inside of one of the 1920's desks ubiquitous in my Junior High built during the 1920's.

Girls' series books did a wonderful job of presenting worlds in which girls could lose themselves when pre-adolescent and early adolescent anguish occurred. The Beverly Gray books went one step further; they helped girls to dream of other places, other countries, other worlds, not only to lose themselves, but place and people that danced on the edge of realizable future journeys.

And some wonderful villains.

Breadgivers

Descriptive Blurb for Breadgivers, by Anzia Yezierska

Anzia Yezierska was very possibly the first woman to write about American Jewish immigrant life in authentic Yiddish/English dialect. And no, I don't mean those cutesy Yenglish words like "shmutz" and "chutzpah." Interestingly, Yezierska doesn't use these words in her novels. Instead she uses English words written in Yiddish idiomatic form. "He should rot in the gutter with a pumpkin for a head."

The result is that the reader is transplanted to the early 1900's on the Lower East Side more completely than in any other literary venue she will ever be privileged to visit.

The actual story of Breadgivers is one that echoed to some extent in the overwhelming number of apartments -"tenements"- on the Lower East Side during this time:  intelligent young woman feels trapped by her parents, and especially her father, who wishes to study Torah as he did in the Old Country but does not wish to educate his daughters. Some, however, do not move out, but obey their parents and make marriages which render them unhappy and trapped once more. Sarah, however -Anzia's alterego- moves out and experiences hardship, poverty and near-starvation. She meets someone who is not of the ghetto - Thomas Dewey's alterego (Anzia's romantic involvement)- but who treats her as a subject for his sociological study, not as an actual person. Eventually after heartbreak and determination to become a teacher even though she is laughed at and discriminated against at an Ivy League College, she does make headway, becomes a teacher and finally forgives her father.

The uniqueness of Breadgivers lies not in the story line or plot, but in the accuracy of the representation of its characters' emotions amid pitch perfect, letter perfect dialect. Rigorous realism, which was then belittled as "obsolete" after Yezierska wrote more books and some short stories as well.

Funny how Mark Twain's dialectal stories and books was never ridiculed as obsolete. Then again, he was not a woman and was not Jewish.

My great grandfather, a Torah scholar and tutor in the Old Country, made sure that his four daughters (and his three sons) were all able to read Russian, know Russian history, and know enough Hebrew to pray, although they spoke Yiddish in their home (until they came to the USA). However, he would only pay for college for the sons. This remained a sore point with the four daughters, one of whom was my grandmother. She eventually forgave him. I cannot be one hundred percent sure, but I  think the others did, as well.

Valley of the Dolls

Strictly speaking, a blurb is a summary, not a review. But there are other kinds of blogs, as well:  descriptive. Historical. Literary.

So if I were to write a blurb on, say, the novel, Valley of the Dolls, I would probably be tempted to veer into some kind of descriptive or historical territory.

First of all, Valley of the Dolls is a roman a clef - thinly veiled fiction inspired by real life. For years, the three main female characters, and the barely subordinate fourth, were generally recognized as imitating real actresses with whom Jacqueline Susann worked. Just as important, the hothouse/almost incestuous connection between publicity departments and Hollywood is portrayed in a thoroughly detailed manner.

The three female protagonists share an apartment and parts of their lives. Anne Welles, the icy New England beauty, falls for a public relations man who ends up sleeping with another previous inhabitant, Neely O'Hara (Judy Garland echo). Neely O'Hara employs manipulation of any kind to get what and whom she wants, as does Helen Lawson (Ethel Merman echo). She is fiercely bi-polar, but that is at least partly because her managers and directors keep putting her on drugs so she can lose weight. Even Jennifer North, the most photogenic of the three lovelies (Marilyn Monroe echo, with a bit of Carol Landis thrown in), is pushed to lose weight and take drugs (which may have partly been responsible for her breast cancer, which then causes her to commit suicide because she sees that men only value her for her body, not her mind or individuality).

Dolls. Pills. Dolls - the semi-obedient women who have little choice but to let others manipulate their bodies and minds if they want to get ahead in Hollywood. Dolls - beautiful images of porcelain that break easily when someone tries to bend them past resistance.

Jacqueline Susann was involved in all phases of Hollywood production and writing, as well as publicity. She does an honest, if soap-operaish, job of demonstrating its falsity and illusions and woman-hatred. In the late 1960's, few had spoken with such frankness about the hard, nasty work of being an actress or TV star, and the contempt of male directors and managers for these "dolls" they regarded as bodies to manipulate to meet the illusory images Hollywood, a male province at the time if ever there was one, demanded.

At the time, Valley of the Dolls was considered sensational and garish. But no one said it was dishonest. It stands today as a crypto-feminist critique of the way Hollywood regarded, publicized and then smashed the talent, hopes and dreams of its actresses.

Blurb for The Bible

Great books deserve to be blurbed, too!

1. The Bible
   
   A powerful and sometimes angry God. Two people alone together in the middle of a a vast wilderness. A mysterious tree. A recipe for love and danger..
   
   Adam lived with Eve before he lusted for her. Eve had words with a snake. They looked at each other naked. Things were never the same afterward.
   
   "I cried." Donner Blitzen
   
   'I laughed." Blitzen Donner
   
   "I like McIntosh." Alvie Summor
   
   "I liked the fig leaf. Sounds quite fashionable." Lorella Vodo
   
   "Great read. Can't wait for the next books to come out." Eunice Goodshoes
   
   "I want the T shirt." Willy Williams

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2. 

   
   

Half A Wish

Here is another blurb for an imaginary book. One day soon I will get back to real books.

Half A Wish is a book whose female protagonist Fara is born with three nipples. At first her parents are advised to seek out surgery for her "condition," but along the way she becomes fond of her third nipple. Some boys in high school try to rip off her top to view it, so in response, she takes an instagram photo of it -and only it- and posts it, saying that her third nipple is more intelligent than they are.

Since it is the last month of her last year of high school, she doesn't care much how they respond. But one psycho  near the state university she attends is intent on "outing" her. In response, she forms a club called "The Third Nipple," after which he tries to find her. But in solidarity, all the members of her club and all her dorm mates paste third nipples onto their skin.

He is temporarily worsted, but comes back with a new threat which Fara must surmount by herself, with all the courage she can muster.

Fun by any other name

According to wiki:   "A blurb on a book or a film can be any combination of quotes from the work, the author, the publisher, reviewers or fans, a summary of the plot, a biography of the author or simply claims about the importance of the work. Many humorous books and films parody blurbs that deliver exaggerated praise by unlikely people and insults disguised as praise."


Now it is a terrible thing, but the blurbs that are often the most fun to write are  a) Parodies b) blurbs of one's own books c) blurbs of imaginary books.

When we write the blurbs of imaginary books, we then get into the territory of Jorge Luis Borges, the surrealist writer from Argentina, one of my great favorites. 

I have written many blurbs about actual books. They are featured on my Facebook page, also entitled Blurbin' Legends. 

So for fun..let's see..


Women in the Mirror is a novel about a man, Edwin, who has twenty imaginary fiances. He is friends with a few of them, knows of the others through friends and invents the rest. At night he looks into the mirror and sees one fiance floating beside him for hours at a time. 

One night he has a nightmare in which several of them visit him and try to kill the others. He then realizes that he is going to have to end his imaginary life or somehow transition to reality.

He tells his best friend, Aaron, who happens to be gay, about his problem. Aaron suggests that he accompany him to a gay bar. As Edwin and Aaron step into the bar, Edwin feels for the first time in a long time that he is at home and starts to realize that he may be gay.

When Edwin gets back to his apartment, he starts to see men in the mirror. But these men seem to have something else in mind besides marriage.

It takes Edwin a little while longer to figure out what this might be. When he does, he goes back to the gay bar alone and meets Cicero, who takes him on a journey that shows him what his body wanted.

His mind, however, keeps floating back to the female brides. He knows  now that he will have to figure out what he wants and why he wants it and what he is and is not.


Someone should write it if I can blurb it :)