I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: MONSTER MAGNET-God Says No (2001).

It’s not often I have a disc with the same name as a book.  But lo, here they are.  I’ve no idea if the album inspired Hannaham at all (or if he even knows of it) although the title track song does rather work well with the book, with lines like:

You won’t get caught if you don’t get queer/And you’ll be ready for a new frontier  You try and live And God says no.

I had loved Monster Magnet’s Powertrip quite a lot.  So, I was more than willing to get this follow up.  I’m a little disappointed in the disc overall, but I’m not entirely sure why.  It’s not quite a sharp as Powertrip, but it’s also not quite a trippy as their earlier stoner rock releases.

Having said that, there’s some great tracks here.  It opens very prominently with “Melt” and the phenomenal heavy rocker “Heads Explode” which features delightfully obscure lyrics like “I am a pillar of salt.  You’ll never be worse than me.”  And then comes, “Medicine 2001” another fast, chunky rocker.

There’s also some other way-out (for Monster Magnet) tracks, like the bluesy slide guitar sleaze of “Gravity Well.”

I think it’s the tracks at the end that kind of drag the disc a little bit “Queen of You” is an interesting slow track, but at nearly 7 minutes and coupled with the 7 minute “Cry,” it’s a bit too much all at once.  The final track, “Take It” is a weird, weird (for Monster Magnet) keyboard and drum machine track. It’s very mellow (and sounds like early Depeche Mode), and works as a weird experiment.  The actual final track is a bonus track, “Silver Future” which rocks once again.

I’m pleased that Monster Magnet experiments so much, but it feels like a full disc of MM songs with an extra EP of experiments tacked on.  I’m not sure what they could have done differently, but for some reason the disc falls a little short.

[READ: March 18, 2010] God Says No

This is a very simple tale of an overweight black man struggling with life in the 1990s.  The twist on the story is that he is not struggling because of his race or his size.  He is struggling because he is a good Christian man who is, without question, homosexual.

The book is written in first person and as such it reads like a memoir (although the main character has a different name than the author).  You can’t help but wonder how much of this book is true (although really it doesn’t make any difference), especially when one of  the characters dies.  It feels like tribute to an actual person.

The book opens with Gary Gray living in a dorm at a Christian college.  He is completely obsessed with his roommate, a hunky white guy who walks around in his boxers.  The roommate is clearly not interested in him, in fact he goes so far as to say he is repulsed by Gary (for being fat and black, in addition to anything else he may find flaw with).

Gary prays every day to become straight.  He is a good Christian who loves God and wants to do His bidding (unlike his brother who knocked someone up as a teen and got kicked out of the house).  But, as the title says, God says No.  Gary dates some women (not being attracted to them makes it much easier for him to date without fear of rejection).  Eventually, he meets a woman that he likes (she works in the cafeteria, so she’s got that going for her): they both enjoy food and Disneyworld (the story is set in Florida).  Since they are Christian, there’s no pressure for sex, and Gary can pretend that he’s interested without trying to “get some.”

Gary has been avoiding his roommate for months, which means he has also stopped going to most classes and has been staying out all night.  He is also about to get kicked out of school.  Then one day he runs into his roommate and gets all worked up about him.  But rather than acting on it, he runs to his girlfriend. This is the first she’s seen him turned on, so they go for it.  And, naturally, because how could it be any other way, she gets pregnant.

Gary does the honorable thing and agrees to marry her, to get a job and to become normal.

The rest of the book shows Gary’s struggle with all of this.  He is completely uninterested in his wife sexually.  He even refuses to think of men to get himself turned on for her (because that would be sinful).  So he starts to look for sex outside of the house.  He goes to bathrooms or the park.  But now he is wracked with guilt for being gay AND for cheating on his wife.  Then his work sends him on business trips, to big cities which opens up more possibilities.  Then he starts making promises to himself, like he will only look for sex while on these trips.

But all the while he keeps tying to convince himself that he is not gay (he has never expressed any of the truth to his wife).  And, he feels terribly guilty (all the time: he is filled with guilt from all aspects of his life).

And then, a miracle happens.

Gary is given an opportunity to get the gay life out of his system, freed from the prying eyes of his family.  But I won’t say how, because it’s pretty dramatic and very exciting.  He spends a year or so in guilt-fueled bliss, living like a new man.  But living a lie can’t last, and the last third of the book sees Gary in a “conversion” ministry, trying to pray the gay out of him.

The story is a compelling one.  And as you read along and wish for the best for Gary, who is such a nice guy, you don’t know which outcome to wish for.  Should he return to his gay lifestyle where he is happy?  But what about his family?  He is a husband and a father, and his family deserves to have a husband and father there.  And yet, his wife doesn’t want him to be his true self–she is very Christian and would never understand his true desires.

Hannaham is a good writer.  You really get inside Gary’s head, oftentimes knowing what he’s going to do before he does.  The only thing I had a hard time accepting was that Gary was as naive as he claimed.  There are times when it just seems unreasonable that he wouldn’t know what was going on.  There were other times when Hannaham threw in a weird southern “expression” that seemed to come out of nowhere, as if  he remembered that Gary was a southerner who said folksy phrases. I wouldn’t have wanted more of these, as they would have been way too cutesy, but having just a few made them stand out in a weird way.

And, the book felt a tad long.  It was quite a fast read and yet I felt like some of the sections could have moved a little more swiftly.  It’s not a major criticism, as by the end I couldn’t put the book down, but there were times in the middle when I was  sort of looking over the book’s shoulder to see what was coming next.   But despite that, I was engaged by the story and felt real conflict over what I thought was best for Gary.  Oh, and before I forget, the book is quite funny, too.  Despite all the tribulations, there’s some real laugh out loud moments.

This was Hannaham’s debut novel, and I look forward to more from him.