Opening the Door

Hmmm .... I could care less but for those interested this is not really a romance per se and there is no HEA.

This is a blink and you miss it story. That's not only an assessment of the brevity of the story but of the what and how it tells it.

It's like an anecdote a stranger would tell you in a bar during the wee hours and after one too many drinks about once-upon-a-time when he was young. The story takes place in 1983 NYC. A thirty something Episcopalian priest meets a young man through a friend and strikes up a friendship that culminates in more.

So much was going on in the gay community at the time that it seems like a perfect opportunity to explore these issues, but besides a perfunctory mention of AIDS (which I'm not sure was yet named as such) everything else is barely touched on. And by everything else I mean what did Jim, the priest, feel being attracted to and being with a man for the first time. Micah, the young man, feels more alive even though we only see him through Jim's eyes. Jim tells the story in an almost detached manner, as if this were something that happened to somebody else or had very little impact on his life. It felt like one of those thin summer curtains that graze your skin when a soft breeze blows on them.

If I were feeling peevish and critical, which I am, I'd say that Jim is the classic unreliable narrator. Lying or minimizing the impact of that experience in his life perhaps because he subsequently proceeded to live an emotionally poorer and diminished life in order to fit a societal mode. The woman he ends up married to is barely mentioned, much less described or named, whereas Micah is described lovingly from the moment Jim first sets eyes on him. So in spite of my complaints the rating reflects how much the story made me think and want for there to be more. Dammit!