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MassageBy Henry Flesh Fiction | Trade paperback Winner of the Lambda Literary Award for Best Title from a Small Press in 1999! "Funny, tightly plotted, and just two shades darker than burnt coffee. Henry Flesh has crafted a fine and disturbing novel." -David Sedaris, author of Naked Stop the press! Massage has been nominated for a Lambda Literary Award in the category of best title from a Small Press. As Henry Flesh's brilliant first novel begins, it is the mid-'90s, a time when the "sweetness" of AIDS lies across Manhattan like "a nebulous gloom...a deep distress." Randy, an erotic masseur, becomes involved with a client, Graham Mason, a famous, dying writer. Their sadomasochistic trysts soon become much more than business: Graham searches for his long-dead lover in the angelic face of Randy, and for the lost pleasure-world of the '60s and '70s--while Randy discovers in Graham the powerful image of the Midwestern businessman who seduced him as a child. Although it has been hailed as a masterpiece by writers as disparate as David Sedaris and Kaylie Jones, Massage will no doubt be assailed as politically incorrect because of its chilling view of a New York ravaged by AIDS, anger, homophobia, and addiction. The action takes place in grungy East Village clubs such as The Scrotum, where "safe sex" is an oxymoron. Randy inhabits a gay underworld of lower Manhattan, peopled with such characters as his amoral pimp, Jake; feuding drag queens Fay Ray and Stella Dallas; prowling literary figures Dakota Montaya and Denise Lamour ("My friends may be avaricious, backbiting cunts," says Graham, "but they do know how to work a room"); and wasted hustlers like Haircut, the coke-addled prostitute with a plastic septum who finds "the answer" in AA. Massage succeeds precisely because it lies close to unexplored terrain. As John Wynne, author of The Other World,writes: "We step through a savage looking glass to confront a world so real and honestly depicted that we have no choice but to confront ourselves." Beyond the brutality and savage humor, Massage is really the story of Randy, a beautiful man/child trying to find out who he is before he dies. The poignancy of his life only adds to the beauty of Massage, an important and startling novel from "a major new literary voice" (Christopher Street), whose talents rival those of Mary Gaitskill, Paul Bowles, and Hubert Selby, Jr. Henry Flesh dropped out of Yale in the sixties and moved to Manhattan, where he became immersed in speed and in the vibrant downtown culture. Since then, among other things, he has performed in theater troupes off-off-Broadway, while cavorting at such fabled venues as Max's Kansas City. He spent a great deal of time abroad, including sojourns in London during the height of the glam rock era in the seventies, and in Morocco and Crete. Mr. Flesh currently lives in New York City's East Village, and works as a book and magazine editor. He has just completed a novel about the end of the world. Click here for information about Henry Flesh's illustrated novel, Michael. Henry Flesh reads on MP3 |
