Introduction
Gathered in this collection are the gay-themed stories I had written in the last 30 years. It looks like a slim collection, but I had taken out the stories that no longer worked for me. Either the story’s movement is too fixed, like an arrow unerringly hitting its destination; or the characters are too wooden, alive only because they are mouthpieces of some cause or other.
In short, I collected the stories that still amused me, or made me smile, or made me want to turn the page to relearn what happened to the characters: desire, doom, or damnation?
I rarely reread the stories I have written and published. After they have been published, they are no longer mine, but now belong to the reader, in the public realm. It all reminds me of the Latin word “publicare,” which I learned in my graduate studies in Publishing a thousand years ago, at the magical University of Stirling, located in the ancient and royal capital of Scotland.
Some of the stories here deal with a gay childhood, with its sense of wonder and pain that one is different from the rest. But I’ve tired to steer clear of the melodrama that was the stuff of the movies I saw when I was growing up in the 1970s. The cardboard characters had excessive emotions, as if everything was a set-piece for an over-the-top dramatic scene. I’ve also tried to steer clear of situations where all the old people are tyrants and tormentors. This was the way some rite-of-passage stories were written, with the young character on full-victim mode and just sniveling in silence, in a corner of the bedroom.
Among these stories are “American Aid,” “Do You Know How to Fly A Kite?” and “Love.”
I also included the stories that were wry and I hope witty, as well, written with tongue in cheek: satire and sarcasm as armors against the closeted and conservative environments of the young characters. “My Name is Jon,” “The Initiation,” and “Rimbaud’s Season in Hell” are included in this category.
The body electric burns in stories of the characters beginning to feel desire and longing. How to deal with the “love that dares to speak its name”? The ending of “The Freaks” is about the young character hearing about oral sex for the first time. While listening to his classmate in Practical Arts class, he muses: “I turned away and thought: to blow? Won’t it tickle you so? The mouth turning into wind? Into the shape of the letter O?”
The second part of the collection deals with the gay characters moving on into young adulthood. “Fourteen” finds our main character going through the rites and rigors of high-school life. He falls in love for the first time, the feeling brushing against his skin like a butterfly’s wing. “Galloping Gonads,” “The Bronzed Hunk,” and “Red Leaves” also deal with the bewildering days of high-school life, when one forms friendships and feelings of intimacy begin to well up.
“England Calling,” “The Meatballs of Angus,” and “Guinness Beer” find our character firmly set in university life. The hell week of school, cramming for exams and research papers, drinking alcohol to celebrate academic milestones are the found in these stories.
“Dear Papa Jack,” Parts 1 and 2, sound like true confessions given to a radio deejay. These are intimate stories told to a stranger on air, with the whole archipelago tuned in and listening. It’s as if the anonymous gay character wants the world to know about his secret life and love, but is shielded by the anonymity of it all. “The Apartment” also deals with absence, the loneliness of the long-distance character cooped up in a studio in the city – a tiny box of urban alienation and anomie.
“The Land of Milk and Honey,” “LDR” and “Green Roses” find our character living overseas, delighted with the opportunities offered by a new life in another land. Here, we have gay groups in universities, friends who accompany each other in going to gay bars, and lovers who meet each other in the light and shadow of a dance floor or on a cobblestoned street, the settings like chessboards.
The book ends on a happy note, with “Love and All those Words” and “Lucky Gay” closing the collection, in the trope and tradition of a book of romance.
Some of the stories are made up of flash fiction, vignettes, and character sketches. Others sound like talk stories, true confessions, and traditional short stories with endings that you could knot and tie neatly like a ribbon. I’ve gone to several graduate schools and attended a thousand writing workshops. I have read many craft books and learned the foundations of traditional short-story writing.
But in this collection, I tried to loosen up the tight structure of the traditional story. I opened windows and a bit of the heavy baroque door, to let the air and the sunlight in. I am writing about characters who are confined to closets, as if they are living inside a coffin. That is why I tweaked the shape of the stories, their movement and flow, and let pools of sunlight warm the floor boards and the furniture of my fiction.
During the revision process, I listen to the sound of the sentences, to the glide of words. I read the stories aloud several times. If my jaw finds it difficult to read a phrase or a sentence, then I revise it accordingly. My ear is like my eye; my nose sniffs out false notes and words that lack elegance. And my fingers, they make sure that the stories can be read easily; the fingers should turn the page quickly.
Here, then, are some of the gay stories that I have written in a lifetime of writing. As my favorite Katherine Anne Porter said of her first collection of stories:: “Go then, my little book.”
Thank you.
Danton Remoto
1st of June 2025
Singapore
Gathered in this collection are the gay-themed stories I had written in the last 30 years. It looks like a slim collection, but I had taken out the stories that no longer worked for me. Either the story’s movement is too fixed, like an arrow unerringly hitting its destination; or the characters are too wooden, alive only because they are mouthpieces of some cause or other.
In short, I collected the stories that still amused me, or made me smile, or made me want to turn the page to relearn what happened to the characters: desire, doom, or damnation?
I rarely reread the stories I have written and published. After they have been published, they are no longer mine, but now belong to the reader, in the public realm. It all reminds me of the Latin word “publicare,” which I learned in my graduate studies in Publishing a thousand years ago, at the magical University of Stirling, located in the ancient and royal capital of Scotland.
Some of the stories here deal with a gay childhood, with its sense of wonder and pain that one is different from the rest. But I’ve tired to steer clear of the melodrama that was the stuff of the movies I saw when I was growing up in the 1970s. The cardboard characters had excessive emotions, as if everything was a set-piece for an over-the-top dramatic scene. I’ve also tried to steer clear of situations where all the old people are tyrants and tormentors. This was the way some rite-of-passage stories were written, with the young character on full-victim mode and just sniveling in silence, in a corner of the bedroom.
Among these stories are “American Aid,” “Do You Know How to Fly A Kite?” and “Love.”
I also included the stories that were wry and I hope witty, as well, written with tongue in cheek: satire and sarcasm as armors against the closeted and conservative environments of the young characters. “My Name is Jon,” “The Initiation,” and “Rimbaud’s Season in Hell” are included in this category.
The body electric burns in stories of the characters beginning to feel desire and longing. How to deal with the “love that dares to speak its name”? The ending of “The Freaks” is about the young character hearing about oral sex for the first time. While listening to his classmate in Practical Arts class, he muses: “I turned away and thought: to blow? Won’t it tickle you so? The mouth turning into wind? Into the shape of the letter O?”
The second part of the collection deals with the gay characters moving on into young adulthood. “Fourteen” finds our main character going through the rites and rigors of high-school life. He falls in love for the first time, the feeling brushing against his skin like a butterfly’s wing. “Galloping Gonads,” “The Bronzed Hunk,” and “Red Leaves” also deal with the bewildering days of high-school life, when one forms friendships and feelings of intimacy begin to well up.
“England Calling,” “The Meatballs of Angus,” and “Guinness Beer” find our character firmly set in university life. The hell week of school, cramming for exams and research papers, drinking alcohol to celebrate academic milestones are the found in these stories.
“Dear Papa Jack,” Parts 1 and 2, sound like true confessions given to a radio deejay. These are intimate stories told to a stranger on air, with the whole archipelago tuned in and listening. It’s as if the anonymous gay character wants the world to know about his secret life and love, but is shielded by the anonymity of it all. “The Apartment” also deals with absence, the loneliness of the long-distance character cooped up in a studio in the city – a tiny box of urban alienation and anomie.
“The Land of Milk and Honey,” “LDR” and “Green Roses” find our character living overseas, delighted with the opportunities offered by a new life in another land. Here, we have gay groups in universities, friends who accompany each other in going to gay bars, and lovers who meet each other in the light and shadow of a dance floor or on a cobblestoned street, the settings like chessboards.
The book ends on a happy note, with “Love and All those Words” and “Lucky Gay” closing the collection, in the trope and tradition of a book of romance.
Some of the stories are made up of flash fiction, vignettes, and character sketches. Others sound like talk stories, true confessions, and traditional short stories with endings that you could knot and tie neatly like a ribbon. I’ve gone to several graduate schools and attended a thousand writing workshops. I have read many craft books and learned the foundations of traditional short-story writing.
But in this collection, I tried to loosen up the tight structure of the traditional story. I opened windows and a bit of the heavy baroque door, to let the air and the sunlight in. I am writing about characters who are confined to closets, as if they are living inside a coffin. That is why I tweaked the shape of the stories, their movement and flow, and let pools of sunlight warm the floor boards and the furniture of my fiction.
During the revision process, I listen to the sound of the sentences, to the glide of words. I read the stories aloud several times. If my jaw finds it difficult to read a phrase or a sentence, then I revise it accordingly. My ear is like my eye; my nose sniffs out false notes and words that lack elegance. And my fingers, they make sure that the stories can be read easily; the fingers should turn the page quickly.
Here, then, are some of the gay stories that I have written in a lifetime of writing. As my favorite Katherine Anne Porter said of her first collection of stories:: “Go then, my little book.”
Thank you.
Danton Remoto
1st of June 2025
Singapore
Introduction to ‘Green Roses: Gay Stories’ by Danton Remoto