The Trouble Boy

My friend Jeff gave me a book last year for my birthday. He claimed to have read it and said "it made me think of you", but the volume was delivered in one of those cheap Target gift bags surrounded by wads of tissue paper—the sort of wrapping that just screams, "I picked this randomly from the shelf at Left Bank before rushing here to meet you for dinner. Happy birthday, bitch."

"What, exactly, about this book reminded you of me?" I asked, flipping through the pages. "I'm sure it was the photo of the devastatingly cute author on the rear flap, no?" With the exception of Instant Messages from prospective short-term suitors, Jeff doesn't read much. As Mama Rose said, she reads book jackets and thinks they're books.

"No," he said, unfurling his napkin and stealing one of my eggrolls. "It's very New York, very downtown, very—"

And here the conversation ceased for about five minutes while Jeff flirted with the waiter and twice made a point of mentioning my birthday. When the terrified boy finally fled the table to fetch our soup and wontons, Jeff said, "I get your complimentary dessert. You're dieting."

"The book?" I prodded.

"What? Oh, yes. I don't know. I enjoyed the hell out of it and I thought you might too. All those stories you've told me about clubbing in Manhattan back in your youth. Your far, far, far away youth."

That much was true. I'd only last week recounted to Jeff and The Giant Queen the story of how I, an unassuming lad from Missouri, had become the toast of New York—for a weekend at least—and how I'd impressed the pants off some L.A. fellow (literally!) by talking us into the tony VIP room at a new club in the meatpacking district some 15 years before.

"Anyway, enjoy it," Jeff continued. "It's kind of like a gay Bright Lights, Big City."

My suspicions that Jeff was bluffing continued. It said that much in the blurb on the book jacket.

I politely thanked him for the book and we finished dinner. (Jeff got my flan and the waiter's digits. I ate his stale fortune cookie. "Very soon and in good company," it said. Even adding "in bed" to that sentence fragment didn't make it seem very portentous.

I have to say I'm dubious of any book, movie, play or interpretive dance described to me as a "gay [blank]". You have to feel a bit sorry for Jay McInerney that his seminal (if a tad insufferable) novel of 80s NYC culture has become a bit of reductive shorthand.

On the other hand, I feel a little sorry for Tom Dolby, the aforementioned cute guy author of The Trouble Boy, the book Jeff bagged for my birthday. I mean, you've got to wonder how many "Blinded Me With Science" jokes he has to suffer through at parties.

I did read the book (although Jeff never asked about it again and seemed confused when I brought it up in conversation) and I did enjoy it, although I suspect that if Jeff did read it and was moved to think of me, he had the hapless Jamie in mind more than the lead character Toby. On the other hand, I might have been Loft Boy. I have been known to use the "massage" bit before.

For The Trouble Boy, I offer the highest praise I can summon these days for a novel in the gay lit demiworld: I didn't forget the plot five minutes after I turned the final page. That may seem faint lauding but trust me, that puts Tom Dolby's debut novel ten notches above 99.9 percent of the genre on the shelf.

My friends know I've been writing a novel for the past, oh, 18 years or so. Every once in a while I take it out and decide it's nowhere near ready for prime time. After reading what passes for gay popular literature these days, I've nearly decided to abandon my quest to write well and simply turn in a novel that sucks. That seems to be what's selling.

The Trouble Boy, on the other hand, does not suck. It's an admirably smart first novel, a ripping read and a warmly optimistic story about finding your way in the world and, more importantly, finding your place in the city that never sleeps, never drinks less than premium and never—well, seldom—gives you a second chance. I look forward to Dolby's second effort.

(I'm pleased to be a participant in Tom Dolby's Virtual Book Tour for The Trouble Boy, now available in softcover, but still featuring a fetching photo of the author. Get one today.)