Played

Last night I finished Ahmet Altan's Son oyun (Endgame in Alexander Dawe's English translation). It had a solid noir ending, but it shouldn't have taken so long to get there. About a third of the way in, I realised the chapters fell in three categories:

The first consist of the novelist protagonist looking back and lamenting how fate made him a murderer. These are the worst. Altan introduces a God-as-novelist analogy which is precious from the start and then doesn't develop it. He just belabours it with a lot of pseudophilosophising about fate and sin. I started skimming these first.

Then there are the chapters consisting almost entirely of his sexy talk with the main love interest. These are pretty self-indulgent and boring but feel sort of necessary to give weight to the central romance. I quickly started skimming them, too. You could have reduced them by maybe half and still kept the same impact.

Finally, we have the actual plot, which is that of an escalating battle for control between competing factions in a small coastal town. It takes a while to get going and is nothing groundbreaking but, as I said, it has a good payoff. I'm not sure why several reviews laud the unreliable narration because I don't recall coming across anything that made me seriously doubt his account. I mean, he wildly oversells his sexual prowess (in a Mary-Sueish way to boot), but that's pretty typical for middle-aged straight male writers.

Then again, as mentioned above, I wasn't exactly giving the work a close reading. I'm kind of puzzled by the plaudits its received. The style and diction isn't bad, but the setting invites comparisons to Bachtyar Ali's I stared at the night of the city which makes Altan look like James Patterson.

More about Sad Cub

My first meeting with Sad Cub back in January was unpromising. As I wrote at the time:

The boy toy was cute but had minimal social skills. He could answer direct questions with full sentences but had no conversation and spent much of his time playing Pokémon Go. The roommate was even less interactive, but I'm not interested in nailing his roommate so whatever. (I'm only mildly interested in the boy toy, so there's only a slight chance you'll be hearing of him again.)

I was seated across from the roommate (who I've known for years and feel very neutral towards) so I could easily ignore him, but next to Sad Cub, so I did what I could to draw him out. His behaviour was at least partly attributable to not having taken his anti-anxiety meds that day.

He was new in town (like just-moved-two-months-ago new) and mentioned he wanted to explore Chicago so I was generous with recommendations. I'd been talking with Acting Pixy about planning a visit to a restaurant in Pilsen with many vegetarian options so I invited him along. He joined us, but it was boisterous and we weren't sitting near each other so I didn't really get to talk with him.

We chatted a bit more at a Bear dance in February and I learned a bit about his sitch. He'd moved to be close to a "sir" who I'd actually met at the initial incarnation of that event the previous fall but who never accepted by FB request. They'd been living together but the guy wanted him to move out and he was working on finding a place by the end of the month.

This activated my empathy glands (I would have been devastated at that age if that had happened to me) and I became a little more solicitous. I started checking in with him on Facebook periodically. When I found out his new place was near me, I began inviting him to my cocktails nights.

I found out a few things about him, like the fact that he's a cinephile. While most of the bear crowd can only talk about blockbusters, he was making an effort to see all the nominees for Best Foreign Film in advance of the Oscars and posting cogent comments about them on his Wall. He likes whiskey, so I had fun giving him new things to try when he stopped by at the beginning of March.

I still didn't really understand his relationship and the picture only became more muddied when he referred to some guy that I'd made out with briefly at a bar as his "ex". Yesterday I tried following up on that and quickly came to the conclusion it would be something better discussed in person. "I only call him my ex because its less complicated" he explained. All of this makes me reluctant to get involved with him. We cuddle a bit when we see each other, but there's been no talk at all of becoming sexual.

It was my neighbour who finally forced me to articulate my reservations. Breloom wasn't the only one to remark on his behaviour at my cocktail party. The next day, I told a story about inviting another little cublet, one I'd met around the same time as Breloom, over for a cooking lesson. "Was this Sad Cub?" she asked. And when I explained it wasn't, she followed up with "Do you want to mentor him or sleep with him or what?"

I had to confess that I don't know. If there wasn't some sort of sexual interest, these boys and I would never have crossed paths. But I'm very new to the role of daddy and very conflicted about the implications. As I explained on the porch, I know very well what the expectations are in a friendship based on equality and reciprocity, like what I have with them (or Pasillero or Breloom or anyone I've slept with lately).

But this would be something different and, frankly, I'm not sure I'm ready for the responsibility. On the one hand, I feel a certain responsibility, as someone well-established both in the local "Bear community" (such as it is) and in life in general to nurture the baby bears. On the other hand, the thought of man-child latching onto me for care and guidance is repulsive, and using them for sex would feel exploitative.

I suppose I have a good model for how to proceed from my summer as a houseboy back in my college days. Yes, I wouldn't have gotten the job if one (or both) of the older couple whose apartment it was hadn't wanted to shtup me. But while I was working for them, their attitude was flirty but hands-off. Initiating something was up to me--and maybe if we'd had more time (the one who'd hired me died while I was in Germany) I would have.

So now I'm left with the question Is this what I want to do and why? And I'm still working that part out.