Gays are outsiders. We live in a heterosexual (some would say heterosexist) society, where the implicit and explicit assumptions of the majority are that you will pair up with someone of the opposite sex, get married and have children. Songs, films, TV, stories, laws and popular culture all accept and promote heterosexuality. It is assumed, unless we make it plain, that we are straight. If it is discovered that we are not, the responses range from discomfort and embarrassment, through disdain and distaste to revulsion. The disabled are also outsiders, despite lip service paid to their integration. With disabled men and women, there might be less revulsion (though many people react with barely concealed disgust to someone with cerebral palsy, for example) but there is certainly embarrassment and often distaste. It's sadly true that mankind often struggle to understand those who are not like us, or to empathise with those whose experiences differ substantially from our own.

You might expect that gays, like other outsiders, would find it easier to gain an insight into what it feels like to be disabled, and how disability constrains and limits the lives of disabled people. Because we are outsiders, we and they, we know at the least what being an outsider feels like. The happy members of the football team, or the nicely heterosexual academic star at school and uni will never know that feeling. In fact, though, most gay authors seldom have disabled characters, gay or straight (Patrick Gale is an honourable exception), perhaps because the obsession is with perfect men, handsome, buff and beautiful. And of course, this is exactly what makes it hard for disabled gay men to find love and companionship. One of this novella's best points is the author's deep insight into the problems of the disabled. There is no false sympathy, just a brisk matter-of-fact acceptance, but equally there is no pretence that life for disabled men, let alone disabled gay men, is easy.

Vince is a drifter, looking for a job. He has a degree in acting, but hasn't made it as an actor, except to act in a couple of skin flicks. His life is pretty much on hold. He's given up waiting for Mr Right as he moves from one casual job to the next, and from one cheap bedsit to another (sometimes without paying the rent arrears due.) While auditioning for a job as a stripper at a gay 'theatre', he sees an ad for a live-in caretaker for a middle-aged man, specifically asking for a gay male. The man is Jonathan, a paraplegic as a result of a accident. On impulse he phones. He's had four years experience as an orderly in the rehab wing of the local hospital, though he's not a trained nurse, and he realises that he'd be glad to get back to caring for someone. He'd been good at it.

Mr Viz deftly builds the relationship between the two men. Vince doesn't want to be just a trick for Jonathan—he wants to be a live-in aide not an on-call escort. He's afraid that if he lets Jonathan know he's gay, their relationship would be compromised, and in the end his new job would be lost. Yet the attraction between the two men is immediate, and as they get to know each other better, it deepens. Both men need sex. Jonathan gets it by hiring someone from an 'escort agency'. Vince to his surprise becomes celibate. He's strongly attracted to Jonathan, but doesn't want to spoil the developing friendship between them by acting on his desires. One of the other dancers at the theatre, Alec, is interested in him. But Vince is too attracted to and too fond of Jonathan to respond. Meanwhile, Jonathan trusts Vince more and more as a person and an aide and comes to rely on him, against his own better judgement.

It's often struck me that romance depends on sublimated sexual desire. If you desire someone, and you like them, but consummating your relationship is impossible, then your feelings deepen to love. It's perhaps a deeper love than the kind which develops after sex. Vince and Jonathan become best friends, and Vince grows to love his job and his employer. But still nothing sexual occurs between them.

The tension grows steadily. The reader can see Vince and Jonathan would be good together, but every day that Vince conceals his gayness, his stripping, and his previous career as a minor porn star from Jonathan makes it harder to bridge the gap between them. When Vince's two lives—his job with Jonathan and his former stripping career—unexpectedly and disastrously collide, we hold our breaths hoping that these two hurt and likable blokes will somehow get past this obstacle to the life together they so clearly deserve.

This is a compelling story about themes gay authors don't often address: older men, the disabled, the negative effects of the cum-and-go culture. As you would expect from the author (a regular contributor to Wilde Oats) the writing is polished and accomplished, the characterisation capably executed, and the dialogue real and convincing. The few sex scenes are strongly erotic and profoundly humane. This is Mr Viz's first published novella, but it clearly won't be his last.

[Anel Viz's Wilde Oats page can be found here]