What Comes Around
by Jameson Currier
Chelsea Station Editions. 166 pages, $16.
THIS INTRIGUING and unusual new novel is really a collection of interconnected short stories tied together by an unnamed male narrator who spends much of his life searching for a lifetime lover, each quest ending in disappointment and regret. From an adolescent crush on a swimming instructor to the imagined drowning of a difficult boyfriend, Jameson Currier explores every aspect of relationships—the good, the bad, and the dysfunctional—with intimate detail, leaving nothing unexplored.
Currier further sets What Comes Around apart from other collections with his use of the second person to tell each story.
In his desperate search for love, the narrator makes many poor decisions. For instance, in “What You Pay,” he proceeds to have sex with his best friend’s new boyfriend while the three are visiting Atlantic City on a gambling trip. In “What Counts Most,” he spends a weekend with a rich, handsome, though closeted man in a country resort, returning to his separate, inferior room after a brief, unsatisfying sex session. Most of the time he seems fully aware of his self-destructive behavior, reflecting after the Atlantic City trip, “You are not home free. You are not exempt. You know you will pay a price for your indiscretion. You know the bill will arrive someday soon.”
Currier avoids the clichés of many “gay novels” by focusing on how far a man is willing to go in his quest for love. Mixed with thoughts on aging, sex, the suffering of friends dying from AIDS, and his own fear of the virus, the narrator’s main concern in life is finding true love, and his fate in life seems to be failing to find it despite his many encounters with men. For all of these failures, he keeps on in dogged pursuit of “the one,” ever hoping to discover and hold onto him. Currier captures the fragile nature of human relationships and explores the ways in which they can be broken. Cleverly constructed and not without an original hook, What Comes Around provides a compelling and intimate portrait of one man’s obsession. Readers looking for an unusual narrative voice will find the novel hugely rewarding.
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Charles Green is a writer based in Annapolis, Maryland.
