#cray--zee--jay--zee

[viscerast]

i was so convinced i was ugly earlier and then i found our old insta (semi recent photos, shit from the beginning of the year) and some of these got me twirlin my hair frr

[butchdykekondraki]

i love you "weird" religions i love you religions that go against modern ideas i love you religions that seem "stupid" i love you religions i love you satanism

[expo63]

Hello! I saw that you've read Alec by William di Canzio and I'm trying to get a feel for the book before I seek it out. Based on what di Canzio said in the youtube interview with Wendy Moffat, it seems like he interprets Alec as strictly gay--did you find this to be true in the text of the book as well?

Hi there! Thank you for your Ask. Yes, I have.

Di Canzio’s replies in last month’s Free Library of Philadelphia online ‘in conversation’ book promo event with Wendy Moffat are all very close to what you’ll find in the novel itself, and his reply on this is no exception: his novel expressly treats Alec as really strictly gay, not bisexual.

[more/slight spoilers below cut]

WDiC makes it totally explicit that all of ‘his’ Alec’s early erotic attractions are to males. His novel therefore has to account for Alec’s flirtation with the maids – DiC explains this away as a parallel to Clive’s flip into ‘straight’ marriage rather than actual bisexual attraction. Girls (of course) like DiC’s Alec, and because DiC’s Alec is able to feel some low-key arousal with girls when they ‘touch him the right way’, until he meets Maurice he assumes/hopes he could marry a woman and go under the radar as ‘straight’.

Significantly, perhaps, WDiC gives Alec his first sexual experience with a man from his home village (Van) who does exactly that. Van gets engaged and married rather fast after the experience with Alec, but is written later in the novel as REALLY SUPER GAY.

In the Q&A, WDiC replied to the question about Alec’s orientation by (i) saying that ‘Alec is gay because I’m gay’ (not a literary or textual justification) and (ii) implying that, because, once WDiC’s Alec catches sight of Maurice, he realises that, no, he couldn’t possibly marry a woman instead, this ‘proves’ Alec is gay rather than bisexual. (Obviously a contentious assumption.)

As this review of Alec by Cathy Corman pinpoints, WDiC’s assumptions about early 20thC women and their level of awareness/sexual expectation in such a fake-straight marriage seem rather improbable, and the resulting sex is (as she says) weirdly written. The ‘characterisation’ of Van’s wife in the scene concerned makes her seem little more than a broodmare: she ‘knows’, but will placidly tolerate anything provided Van’s massive arousal merely from seeing Alec again after the war* gives her a second kid. Eeuurgh.

(*Fully clothed. Alec returns briefly to Osmington with Maurice, who instantly detects that Van+Alec have a history – leading to the absolutely bizarre ‘revelation’ that, 5+ years into Maurice+Alec’s relationship, Alec still thinks that Maurice had a sexual relationship with Clive. :O Surely M+A would have cleared that up on their very first night together ... or at the hotel ... or at the boathouse ... or at some point during their whole 10 months together before the declaration of World War I.)