JESUS AND JOHN
by Adam McOmber
Lethe Press. 224 pages, $15.
ADAM MCOMBER’S second novel, Jesus and John, is as readable, poetic, and thought-provoking as his first, The White Forest, along with his two well-regarded short story collections, This New and Poisonous Air and My House Gathers Desires. Once again he melds fairy tale and metaphysics in a story of imaginative depth, set in a faraway place and time—in this instance, ancient Rome and the biblical landscapes of Jerusalem and the Sea of Galilee, where McOmber introduces us to the quirks and conflicts of the soon-to-be-disciples as they come upon a strange character nearing collapse along the shoreline, ostensibly just back from his forty days in the desert. We meet the headstrong alpha male Peter, the shifty Judas, the ever-questioning Thomas, and “the one that Jesus loved,” John, famous for both his gospel and his favored place at Jesus’ side at the Last Supper and, later, at the foot of the cross and as the first disciple to enter the tomb.
There has, of course, been continual speculation as to whether or not John and Jesus had an erotic relationship, even as early as the 16th century, when Christopher Marlowe was tried for blasphemy, having claimed that “St. John the Evangelist was bedfellow to Christ and leaned always in his bosom, that he used him as the sinners of Sodoma.” McOmber concurs with this assessment. On page one, John reminisces about Yeshua (he refers to Jesus in the Hebrew throughout) and “how His flesh felt against mine. The groove of the breastbone. The sinew of the arm. As if His body had been fashioned to answer some prayer I’d been repeating ever since I was a boy.”
McOmber’s language is similarly poetic throughout and subtly alludes to the journey that’s at the heart of the story from the minute Yeshua departs his tomb, where “the many graves stood like small white ships, and the sky above was a darkening sea.” Later, John describes Calvary with its numerous crosses looking like the “masts of ships.” For soon the two have wandered about Jerusalem and beyond, eventually coming to the shore, where Yeshua—who, though risen, remains in an oddly catatonic state—boards a ship, and John, finding his protests ignored, follows him aboard. Soon, they’ve set sail for what turns out to be Rome, where they will wander some more, Yeshua remaining in his mystic somnolent state, until they come to the door of the mysterious Gray Palace, which is where most of the ensuing story takes place.
Here the plot and setting present similarities to McOmber’s previous novel, The White Forest, as the Gray Palace—like the underground Temple of the Lamb, presided over by the ignominious Aleister Crowley-like Ariston Day—is said to be the domain of a mysterious Gray Lady. Her story is related by the labyrinthine structure’s caretakers and hosts, the brother and sister Jax and Sapia, who claim to have been summoned by her. They offer little else by way of explanation, as Yeshua and John proceed to become lost in the Borges-like splendor and speculation that McOmber weaves around the disoriented lovers as he builds his artful metaphysical landscape, which flowers into something completely and disturbingly different from its Greek and Biblical sources. In the end, John no longer needs to follow Jesus, as now they walk together, their “shoulders nearly touching.”
Another fine addition to Lethe Press’s publication of queer speculative fiction, Jesus and John is a story not only of love, devotion, and longing, but also a finely written and refreshingly liberating “queering” of the Jesus myth that has been so misused and misunderstood in relation to LGBT lives.
Trebor Healey’s latest book of short stories is titled Falling (Wisconsin, 2019)
