Selfish & Perverse

Bob Smith is a seriously funny man. I've watched him do his standup routine on Logo and laughed until I had tears in my eyes. But I wasn't sure that a standup comedian could pull off writing a full-length novel.

Bob Smith is a seriously funny writer. Reading his first attempt at fiction, I laughed until I had tears in my eyes.

Let's face it. Anyone, gay or straight, who can write eloquently enough about Alaska to make an urban-dwelling gay man whose idea of roughing it while camping is having to stay in a two-star hotel think seriously about moving there is a seriously good writer.

Now before any Alaskans get upset, may I digress slightly to say that I have visited Alaska and yes, I loved visiting there. Hell, my husband drove tour buses there for a summer earning money for college. It is truly, one of the most beautiful and bucolic places on earth; serene, majestic, wild, exciting, cold, wet, isolated. Did I mention wet? Bucolic or not, it is not the first place that I or any of my gay friends consider a must-move-there destination. But when Bob Smith describes the landscape around Coffee Point, Alaska, he gives his readers a rare view of a place that transcends the ordinary and makes you want the life that his characters have.

As good as Smith is at using good prose to give his readers a sense of place, he is equally as good at character development. As the novel progresses, you get a definite feeling you know these guys, their foibles and their motivation.

A quick synopsis of the plot: Nelson Kunker, the main character, is a gay man who seriously has doubts about his talent as a writer. He is stuck in a dead-end job as a television script coordinator in LA until he's fired for smoking hooch with a hunky, handsome and sexy guest star (Dylan Fabizak) appearing in Aftertaste, the television show that Kunker writes for. At the same time, he's met Roy Briggs, a hunky, handsome and sexy Alaskan fisherman who's visiting the set of Aftertaste to see his cousin who is one of the regulars on the show. After a quick courtship and being unemployed at that point, Nelson goes to Alaska to be with Roy, his new boyfriend and hopefully to finish his unfinished novel. Complicating Nelson's search for love and inspiration is the appearance of Dylan, who insinuates himself into Nelson and Roy's life in the guise of character development for a film he'll be starring in as an Alaskan fisherman. The rest of the novel deals with Nelson's hilarious ambiguity about love, attraction, self-worth and talent. To find out who Nelson finally realizes is his true love, you'll have to read the novel. Let me just say that Bob Smith keeps you guessing until the final chapter. I had to resist an almost irresistable urge to read the last page to see how the novel ended. But I'm glad I did and I urge you to hold off. Don't succomb to the temptation no matter how much you want to know. You'll love the ending.