A great voice goes silent but the music lives on.

Dance Me To The End of Loveavishai-cohen-montreal-1189

Support Luke!

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“We did it! We did it!” screamed Luke as he rejoined dozens of his friends shortly after being released from a two-year stint at Washington State Prison this Monday morning.  From prison, he and a busload of us headed to a park in his childhood neighborhood to be reunited with his family, run a 5K (you’ll notice Luke’s first-place medal in the photo) and eat a ton of food.

Luke had only two days to spend in Atlanta, but when we said goodbye this time it was without the frustration of walking away from his structured visitations, and without the tears we remember with such bitterness from two years ago.

An enormous weight has been lifted, and our friend is back in our arms. We did it. With Luke’s strength as our example, we did it.

Now Luke, still banished from his home-state, is headed toward a new life, sure…

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Support Luke!

On July 25th at 9 am Luke O’Donovan will walk out of Washington State Prison after serving two years there.  We are thrilled to see our friend free from behind prison walls. He is in high spirits and very excited to be released. As many of you who have been in touch with him know, he has occupied his time with a rigorous workout routine, lots of reading, and correspondence with all those who took the time to communicate with him.

Unfortunately he will not be allowed to return to his home and life in Atlanta. Due to the judge adding a banishment condition to his probation, Luke will have to move all the way to the West Coast for the next eight years, or until the conditions of his probation are changed. Moving forward, here are some ways to continue to support Luke as he starts life on strict…

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Help save The Emergency Shelter in Warsaw Poland, the only LGBTQ center in Eastern Europe

NYC Anarchist Black Cross

WHAT: Political Prisoner Letter-Writing Dinner
WHEN: 7pm (sharp), Tuesday, October 14th, 2014
WHERE: CAGE83A Hester Street (UPSTAIRS) New York, New York 10002 (directions below)
COST: Free
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Have you ever been squarely punched in the nose? If so, you know how disorienting it is. Of course there’s the pain, but with the punch comes a lot of blood and a shockwave through your skull. Your head gets rocked back and the violence is all too palpable. The language and imagery of violence is again (still?) in vogue, popularized by folks who have likely never meted out or received much of it. It’s difficult for us in NYC ABC not to feel disgusted when we see this trend followed in radical communities, knowing the kind of violence our friends and comrades regularly endure.

It is with violence and a radical defense against it in mind that…

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Book Description of Atom Heart John Beloved

Pink Floyd. John, the disciple whom Jesus loved. A stud narrator with a heart of gold who quietly whispers to his best friend one night in bed, “Do me.” Atom Heart John Beloved sets the scene and develops characters in the first third of the book then becomes an erotic masterpiece for the final two-thirds. Above all, however, this novel is a breathtaking love story and an intense coming of age story that resembles no other book. John’s narrative voice is one of the most unique in gay literature. Atom Heart John Beloved is literate, passionate, intimate, and delightful, delivering unexpected moments of grace.

Atom Heart John Beloved

Atom Heart John Beloved by Luke Hartwell

Atom Heart john Beloved” by Luke Hartwell is a complex tale that touches on the joys and pitfalls of young, but not at all typical, love. It also unflinchingly details some of the darkest places of the human soul, and how one can grow strong and loving despite the darkness one has seen and the darkness within. The difficult themes of molestation, rape and incest are handled honestly and with clarity, as it’s fierce depiction of the worst hypocrisies of literal interpretations of the bible and christianity. This is a brilliant, funny and disturbingly honest look at teen sexuality and sensibilities and fantasies..

Author’s Book Description for Man*hattan: a fairy tale
It’s just another New York story of boy meets boy, boy breaks up with boy, boy gets depressed, works in the basement of a funeral home, drinks too much, wakes up in a strange bed, dates a crazy person, and still makes it to brunch in time to tell the tale.

Man*hattan: a fairy tale by Philip Higgins is not your typical m/m romance. Though the story abounds with the Manhattanite stock bitchy gay characters, they are not there just to fill out the life of  Michael, the nervous, emotionally uncertain narrator. They are at once surface-familiar and yet at odds with expectations. It is the narrator’s sense of awareness and detail, and gutsy sense of humor that brings this story to life. His emotional vicissitudes steer the story away from the normal romantic paths toward something much more interesting. Anywhere a lesser writer would have inserted a romantic/sexual interlude, Mr. Higgins strikes out in a different direction, especially in the ‘romantic’ interludes. Mr. Higgins attention to detail does not bog down the story, rather is used to give insight and emotional heft to the narrators state of mind, and to lift the story above being just another slice of gay urban life rom-com. Man*hattan: a fairy tale is a well-written book by a new writer with a bold and interesting point of view.

OK, we’re running a bit behind. We opened the site before we were ready, just to publish a review of a book we all thought was brilliant. Since then, Straight Boy’s gf arrived to spend several weeks, during which she went from gf to fiancée, and he’s been useless since. Sports Boy is off following a baseball team for work (and a player for fun). Arts Boy is in the throes of creativity, and gets thrown food occasionally. I have absolutely no excuses. So as promised, the reviews will be haphazard at best, but we will improve.

The Author’s Description 

Murder touched Stephen Dobbins when he was a young boy and left him living in a void of aching loneliness. A chance meeting with a young American chased away the fear that he would always be alone and brought him the prospect of a new existence. Dustin Earl joined the military and escaped his small town Southern upbringing with the hope that he could give his mentally challenged brother a better life. But Dustin had never known real love, an honest hug, or a simple kiss. He considered his sexuality a weakness; a threat that had been used against those he cared about. For eight months their relationship blossomed until Dustin suddenly returned home. He cherished Stephen, but felt his responsibilities to his brother outweighed his own chance at happiness. Shattered, unable to function and unwilling to accept Dustin’s departure, Stephen flew three thousand miles to get Dustin back and rekindle what they had. But what he would learn when he got there… he could never have imagined.

The Review:

In  Listening  to Dust,  Brandon Shire‘s first work since his stunning debut with The Value of Rain, the author once again drives with poetic abandon through the landscape of the heart, ruthlessly plowing through the intersection of love and pain, in this engaging and haunting new work.  In London, Stephen Dobbins, whose parents were murdered for mysterious political reasons, meets Dustin Earl, a drunk American soldier with a troubled past and an uncertain future. Dustin’s tour of duty has just finished and Stephen takes him home. Their night together engages Stephen’s emotions but Dustin explodes with anger the next morning and disappears. He returns eventually and begins a tenuous relationship with Stephen that grows deeply over the course of eight months. From the outset Dustin makes it clear that he will, for family reasons, return to his home and eventually does leaving Stephen bereft and lonely. Stephen hides out in France for a year before finally deciding to go to America to bring Dustin back to him. He is unprepared for what he finds in America where an awful irony accentuates the paths that love and pain travel together, where love can not save anyone from death, but death cannot destroy love.

Listening to Dust is well worth reading many times. There are no wasted words, no comforting platitudes, no perfect romances just life told by a master story teller with a razored and haunting insight into heart and soul. 

—review by Wayne Bentley

“There are dead people in my head.” From the opening line to last, The Value of Rain by Brandon Shire seizes your heart and does not let go, even long after the book is closed. The story of a family that fuses love to hatred and life to death and rolls those two fusions together, so that it is impossible to ever separate them. Though only a few scenes take place in New Orleans, The Value of Rain echoes the southern gothic tradition, entangled and hidden bloodlines and all. Indeed Flannery O’Connor and Eudora Welty would be comfortable in this world, and would be envious of the writer. The characters are strong in their weaknesses, and their strengths always betray them. A first act of physical love propels a young boy from his already precarious existence into the living hell of a psychiatric hospital for a hideous ‘cure’ for his gayness. Charles’s non-chronological narrative of his journey through that hell, and all that follows, is told with an unerring eye for detail, both physical and emotional. The Value of Rain also shows the strong emotionally warping effect of revenge; given the chance to escape, to just be loved for himself, Charles finds he can not let go of the emotional and deadly pas de deux with his mother Charlotte. This is a lyrically beautiful book, masterfully woven with intense emotion, insightful and frightening in its clarity.

note: originally published August 26,2011 on And the world spins madly on

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