As so often happens while preparing to leave, there was confusion and disappointment about exactly who was going.
In truth, we almost never take vacations, mostly because we can't bear the thought of leaving the cats missing anything in the garden, such as our magnificent crossvine, which was taunting us with its unprecedented number of flowers.
It was slightly less heart-rending to leave the mushrooms that had suddenly popped up in the bamboo trough.
With the help of our annoyingly smug GPS robot, we made it east across the dreaded Cross-Bronx Expressway and onto the Throgs Neck Bridge, from which point the city looked like a tiny but impressive model of New York City. It was difficult to believe that people made this commute every day. (No doubt they would say the same thing about riding the C-train.)
In Riverhead, we stopped at a large crypt that had been stocked with edible supplies, most of which were for sale. As so often happens in the suburbs, I felt overwhelmed by the promise and the demise of the American dream. On a related note, we debated whether to buy suntan lotion, now that it has been found to cause cancer, and ultimately decided to get some. Old habits, etc.
Some time later, we made it to our "destination." (As per the GPS robot.) Before going to our lodgings, we stopped for a few minutes at the town beach, which in the spirit of democracy is accessible to everyone but in the spirit of fascism does not allow anyone to park within a five-mile radius of this access point without a sticker from the town. The United States is nothing if not a study in contradictions.
On this day, I felt both tendencies, given that we lacked a sticker but were nevertheless close enough to walk to the beach. I was also happy that nobody else was here.
And walking over the dunes, I felt all of my aggravations -- personal, political, practical -- vanish as I took in the ocean; or it would no doubt be more accurate to say that it took me in.
I felt smaller than a grain of sand, but that was more than enough.
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07/25/2014
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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.