We leave work and walk the long blocks from Madison to Sixth Avenue. We hurry down the stairs into the station, where we mindlessly extract our card from our wallet and slide it through the reader. In the distance we can sense the deep, subterranean rumble of what is surely an empty uptown D-train approaching the station. Our heart quickens. "God," we pray as the electronic reader makes us "swipe again" at the turnstile before allowing us to pass through, "let us make this train. Let us this one time have good D-train karma and not have to wait twenty minutes on the brown-tiled subway platform as rows and rows of tired, angry souls heading to uptown Manhattan and the Bronx pile up around us, so that we will not be forced onto a crowded train on which there will be pushing and shoving and the dispensing of what we have learned is the lowest insult in the world (or at least in this world), which is to call someone a cock-sucking faggot." We can now hear the train as it roars into the station. Still praying, we start to run down the awkwardly inclined ramp, ever deeper into the bowels of the ungainly monster that is the 34th Street subway station (or for those who like malls: "Herald Square"). We approach the final set of stairs and our spirits sink; already there are one or two people at the top, which means that the train will have already opened its doors, and we are not in reach. But we press on and maneuver through a group of lumbering tourists in order to reach the top of the steps. At last we see the actual train, which like a winded animal is apparently (blissfully) resting for a few glorious seconds, its doors open and willing to receive us. Giddy at the prospect of deliverance, we fly down the stairs, only to be confronted with a straggling, oblivious passenger from an F-train, who causes us to alter our path just slightly to avoid running him down. Though minor, it is a costly deviation: we arrive at the train just in time to hear the annoying, double-toned "ding-dong" and the clamp of the shutting doors. We caress the smooth metal shell of the train as it lurches into motion; we note the screech of turning wheels and the empty expanse of the platform in front of us. But if our fate is never to catch an empty D-train and to always ride the crowded one, we now accept this with less impatience than resignation; once again, it seems, God has betrayed us and we feel relieved to refute His Existence.
« On Candy Apple Grey | Main | The Suffocation of the Gay Voice in American Literature »
11/02/2007
The comments to this entry are closed.
ORDER HERE
A RADICAL NEW MYTH ABOUT SEX, FAITH, AND THOSE OF US WHO WILL NEVER DIE
A young boy wanders into the woods of Harlem and witnesses the abduction of his sister by a glowing creature. Forty years later, now working as a New York City homicide detective, Gus is assigned to a case in which he unexpectedly succumbs to a vision that Helen is still alive. To find her, he embarks on an uorthodox investigation that leads to an ancient civilization of gods and the people determined to bring them back.
In this colossal new novel from the author of The Metropolis Case, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice collides with a new religion founded by three corporate office workers, creating something beautiful, illogical, and overwhelming. Part sex manifesto, part religious text, part Manhattan noir—with a dose of deadly serious, internet inspired satire—#gods is a sprawling inquest into the nature of faith and resistance in the modern world. With each turn of the page, #gods will leave you increasingly reborn.
Praise for #gods
“#gods is a mystery, an excavation of myths, an index of modern life, a gay coming-of-age story, an office satire, a lyrical fever dream, a conspiracy. One of the most ambitious novels in recent memory—and a wild, possibly transformative addition to the canon of gay literature—it contains multitudes, and seethes with brilliance.” —Mark Doten, author of The Infernal
“Matthew Gallaway’s #gods is a novel so brilliant, so funny, so full of strange and marvelous things, I couldn’t stop writing OMG WTF I <3 THIS SO MUCH in its margins. It’s rare to find a novel that so dazzlingly reinvigorates age-old meditations on faith and f&!*ing, art and eros. Luminous, enterprising, and sublimely cheeky, #gods tells the story, the myth, the dream of the human soul in all its glorious complexity.” —Suzanne Morrison, author of Yoga Bitch
“Matthew Gallaway’s storytelling manages to be both dreamy and serious; lean and luxurious. His words carry an incantatory power of mythic storytelling where beauty and savagery wrap around each other like bright threads in a gorgeous tapestry.” —Natasha Vargas-Cooper, author of Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America
“If the ancient gods were just like us, only more so, then the same could be said for this strange, wonderful book, in which the mundane sorrows and small triumphs of very ordinary lives glow ever so slightly around the edges, sometimes quite literally. At once an oddly romantic send-up of dead-end office culture and an offbeat supernatural procedural, #gods is terrifically weird, melancholy, sexy, and charming.” —Jacob Bacharach, author of The Bend of the World
'It’s to the credit of Matthew Gallaway’s enchanting, often funny first novel that it doesn’t require a corresponding degree of obsession from readers, but may leave them similarly transported: the book is so well written — there’s hardly a lazy sentence here — and filled with such memorable lead and supporting players that it quickly absorbs you into its worlds.'
-- The New York Times
Music: Death Culture at Sea and Saturnine
Listen or download songs and records from my indie-rock past with Saturnine here and Death Culture at Sea here.
Music Video: Remembrance of Things Past
Watch the rock opera Remembrance of Things Past written and performed by Saturnine and Frances Gibson, starring Bennett Madison and Sheila McClear.
Video: The Chaos Detective
The Chaos Detective is a series about a man searching for 'identity' as he completes assignments from a mysterious organization. Watch the first episode (five parts) on YouTube.
Comments