Don Bapst’s experimental novel uses a wide range of forms (plays, lists, narratives, letters, computer scripts, translations, stories, charts, medical protocols, and more) to evoke the confusion that shapes modern gay experience in the post(?)-HIV era. Written in the early 1990s and available as an interactive, online novel on the author’s site since the early 2000s, the work is an uncompromising indictment of the political, religious, and social institutions that have targeted queer people for centuries.
Excerpts from the work have been performed at A Different Light in San Francisco, at the Trumpet Fiction reading series in New York, and at Grinder in Chicago. Passages have appeared in Holy Tit Clamps, Gay Travels in the Muslim World, Sensual Travels, and Sortir de l’ombre, as well as on Conspire, Hand Tooth Nail, and Swell.
To start reading the novel, click on the image above, then use the buttons at the bottom of each page to advance to the next page or return to the previous one. Create your own structure for the novel by going directly to any of its passages using this electronic table of contents:
Dedication & Acknowledgements
WARNING
Preface
Book One: The Paris Journals
ACTing UP
Club Dream & Cleews’ Funeral
At Home with Dan & Mike: a One Act Play
First Timeline
Downers Grove & Brooklyn
Second Timeline
House Dream
People Line
Paul Line
Protocol
Book Two: The Body Count
Darren
Boyfriend Line
Thomas
Sexclub Line
Michel
Derek
Letters
Boyfriend Dreams
Sleep Line
Sensory Line
Book Three: The Archives
Letter to Dad
Research
Gay Alsace
Another Play (Saint N’importe Qui)
Getting Married
Aran Islands
Kiltimagh
Limerick City
Dublin
A Tropical Paradise
Book Four: The Crusades
Sex Education
The Seminary
Return to the Seminary
Suicide Poem
Doctor Line
Coming Out Scene
The Templars
The Pope
Sitges
Cairo