I just added some new things to the GENTLY GAY page. A couple of them are vintage book covers. It does occur to me, given the current situation everyone is in, that it might be the time to re-introduce THE BOOKS! Reading helps pass the time when you have nothing else to do (and training is done, obviously).
The first three books are a chronicle loosely based on our own adventures in acrobatics (and in finding gay love), semi-autobiographical and woven into a text which develops into adventure and multi-mishaps. Number 4 (Let The Future Find Me) is a kind of road trip undertaken by a lonely orphaned native American boy in search of love and a life. All of them delve a little into the mystical world as characters receive advice and encouragement from ancestors or (in the No 4 case) from a mischievous shape-shifting spirit guardian.
NONE of them are now available from their original publishers and, if you get them through Amazon and the like, even as e-books, I get nothing in return since the first publisher went bust and their debtors get any income.
ALL remain available directly, post-free to anywhere in the world, from my UK agent, provided that the UK postal service and the one in your country keeps operating. So maybe give it a whirl? Just drop an e-mail to me at gymacrobat@gmail.com and I will organise it all for you.
Here’s a reminder of what is in store.
“God, I love him so much…
I love him more than anything and anyone else in the whole world…
I love him because he always offers a shoulder to cry on…
I love him because he is so tender and caring…
I love him so much that it hurts…
I love him so much…
I love him…
I love…
Him…”
“The boy, shirtless and barefoot, sat motionless under the tree, oblivious to the shadows lengthening around him and the chill developing in the air as evening began its slow transformation into night. Since lunchtime he had been there, moving only once to relieve himself against the same tree trunk.
His face displayed no emotion, no indication of the turmoil which had occupied his brain for the previous twenty-four hours. Indeed, his face seemed almost serene, calm. And, indeed, he was calm, now. He was close to reaching the decision which would immeasurably change his life forever. A decision he had never imagined he would have to make, but which was now unavoidable after the events of the previous afternoon – a catastrophic chain of events for which, he now admitted to himself, he had been entirely responsible. And, yet… was he? This was one of the several debates which had raged in his mind. What had occurred had seemed to him entirely natural. So why should it have resulted in such a dramatic reaction from the elders in his community? But, inside himself, he knew the answer to that perfectly well.
I call him a ‘boy’, partly on account of his youthful appearance and partly because, in my world, we use the term rather generously to describe young men well into their twenties and, as we become older, we tend to carry the term forward to mean anyone of our own age or younger. But this was, indeed, a man of just over nineteen mature years. Naturally dark of complexion, his shirtless habit in all except the very coldest weather had added a deep and even tan. His dark-brown eyes, seemingly unseeing and looking into the distance, yet noting even the slightest stirring in the grass, conveyed no emotion either… indeed, they conveyed an impression of serenity which totally concealed his true feelings. His hair, jet black, was both full and long. Very long, in fact, with much of it collected into a ‘pony tail’ tied with a leather lace: the tail, and the end of the lace, extended down to the small of his back. If you were asked to guess his age, you would probably have put it at no more than sixteen.
His feet and lower legs matched his upper body in colour, for he was also accustomed to spending much of his time barefoot, his soles toughened through growing up largely in the open air such that treading stony paths or climbing trees or rocks without shoes came quite naturally to him. His only garment was a pair of well-worn three-quarter length jeans, with the legs rolled up a little so that they reached to just above his knees. The jeans were held in place with an ornate leather belt, decorated with some of the symbols of his heritage. Beneath them, he wore no undergarment. His habit of keeping himself scrupulously clean was also a part of that heritage and, since a young boy, he had shunned the white man’s affection for fancy underwear.
For this was no ‘white man’, nor ‘black man’ either. This boy was a ‘red man’ – a ‘Red Indian’ – a Native American. An ‘Etowah’. And it was the heritage, traditions and beliefs of his people – his tribe – which in large measure had led to his present situation. Together with a prejudice which they shared with many other groups of people in the wider world…”