End of the affair

End of the affair

I've finished reading The Boyfriend. Thank heavens. It finished off abruptly enough, and I think that's my real grouse against it. Not so much that it ends off in a supremely pseudo-ironic-tragic mode. I've come to expect that of gay novels. Come to expect that gay novels are all about doom and gloom, and people never end up happy together.

Bunkum.

That was the case with Hollinghurst as well. Lovely character, interesting times, and by the end of it, one lover has become old and balding, and the other dies of AIDS. It's like something that all these gay writers try to drill into your head: gay love is unsuccessful. There's no such thing as gay love. It's all about 'wham bam, thank you, man!'

Sigh... and that's when I start to have doubts. About the ex, and whether I shouldn't have stayed with him, because, hell, so what if I felt that I wasn't in love LOVE with him, he always said he was in love with me, and he cares for me, and he would be there with me, and...

It's an awful road. Of being scared and wanting to make compromises. It's a road of a quarter-life crisis, and the only way to deal with it, is to go to sleep, and go out on the town the next day with friends you trust. So I did that, and I'm ok.

It's obvious, R Raj Rao doesn't have many good friends.