Why Are You Wearing My Daughter's Earrings?
The headmaster had written in March that the school wasn’t entirely satisfied with Natalia..
“She’s a lovely girl, of course, and we’re all very fond of her. Moreover, and I say this without the slightest desire to flatter or use hyperbole, she is the most intelligent girl we have in the school at the moment. Indeed, she has the finest mind of any pupil we have ever had in the school.
Nonetheless, for the last few months, it has seemed to my colleagues and I that Natalia is determined to dissipate her great natural gifts. I realise this may be just the rebellious phase that all teenagers worth their salt go through. But I am afraid, precisely because Natalia is so intelligent, that she might take her rebellion further than the average teenager. She might even take it too far, and hurt not only the school but herself. So I would be grateful if, during the Easter break, you could try to have a serious talk with your daughter, and while stressing how much we value her presence, remind her what a waste it would be if she were to squander her talents.”
The letter James Nelligan wrote in June, however, was of a different nature.
“It deeply grieves me to have to write this,” he started. “But I fear we are going to have to ask you to remove Natalia from the school with immediate effect. She has become not merely disruptive, but a positive danger to herself and others. A moral danger, in that she seems determined to spread dissension and discord, plant doubts in the minds of those less equipped than herself to confront them; a physical danger, in that we believe she is distributing drugs to her fellow pupils." <more>
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 This month we are proud to present three fabulous short stories: the stunning, Why Are You Wearing My Daughter's Earrings by Hugh Fleetwood (The Dark Paintings, Brothers, …), the sexy, When In Rome from Anthony McDonald (Adam, Orange Bitter, Orange Sweet) and the laughter inducing Entertainments Officer from Paul Mann (The Seaman’s Mission, The Last Cargo, ...).
Meanwhile, up and coming star David Llewellyn (Eleven, Torchwood: Trace Memory, Everything is Sinister) gives us his fascinating lowdown on the homoerotic aspects of comic strip art. All proof that BIGfib isn't going to shut up about anything soon...
As most readers will know - BIGfib used to be a satire magazine, so it’s no surprise that a few of the people who signed up to our satire site don’t want to receive a gay literature magazine.
What is surprising is the number of near-identical emails I have received justifying the decision to unsubscribe...
In a nutshell, the message I keep receiving is, I have nothing against homosexuals, but now you have equal rights, surely the time has come for you to shut up about your sexuality.
It’s a point of view I seem to be coming across more and more frequently anytime anyone mentions anything “gay”.
The elaborate version goes something like this : Surely gay literature / TV / music / whatever – should be able to stand on its own two feet without having a specific gay niche. <more>
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The Entertainments Officer
I am the Entertainments Officer on board the exclusive cruise liner Queen of the Bay.
Several of the
ship's company have accused me of being a cynic. This I admit but I defy anyone of intelligence to
do my job and not be a cynic. I ask you to disregard the guff about the cynic being a truthful man
and consider the cynic as a person who sneers and pokes fun at convention. And if you do that then
you have got me down to a tee.
 To the passengers I am sweetness and light but away from them it is a different story. I know I am
a phoney. Indeed I relish being a phoney, but how can I like the passengers we carry: The nouveau
riche with their provincial manners and total lack of style, and those retired British Army Officers
who get some kind of anachronistic kick when ordering whisky panis from the lascar crew. And
their wives. Dried up old sticks temporarily escaping permissive Britain with its stentorian pop
music and zombie fornicating youth all high on crack or smack or whatever. <more>
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One of the major issues facing a gay audience be it for film, television, or literature, is one of representation. From the sparse, early days of Hollywood, as depicted in Vito Russo’s excellent book ‘The Celluloid Closet’, through to ‘Brokeback Mountain’ or ‘Mysterious Skin’, it has been meagre pickings for a mainstream gay audience hoping to see themselves up there on screen. It’s been an easier task in literature, of course, but even then, gay protagonists have featured more commonly at either the more literary or salacious ends of the market, with little in between.
One medium which has, in recent years, combined the visual flair of cinema with the more literary, while often transcending its mainstream appeal, is the comic book. Writers and artists such as Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman, and Marjane Satrapi have elevated the comic book from its cultural status as little more than a modern day Penny Dreadful to recognition as an art form in its own right.<more> |
When In Rome
Darkness but not silence. He had been woken by the smash-smash sound of an axe raining violent blows on a piece of furniture – he guessed the chest of drawers – less than two metres from where he lay. He fumbled for a light-switch. He seemed to remember a bedside table-lamp with a switch some way along the cable. The smash-smash of the axe continued. It must surely wake the whole pensione, Dominic thought, his panicked brain clutching at straws just as his panicked fingers made contact with the lamp cable and felt their way along it like someone fumbling with rosary beads. Ave Maria, gratia plena …
His fingers found the switch. He pressed … and there was light. And sudden silence. Dominic looked around him uncomprehendingly. There was the plain little room: the rug on the tiled floor, the old-fashioned wash-basin in the corner, the bare table and the wooden chair, the hanging-cupboard … and the chest of drawers, intact, as he had last seen it a few hours ago, just before turning the light out and going to sleep. The door was shut, the windows closed. Dominic’s heart was pounding, his forehead clammy with sweat. Slowly he got out of bed. Checked the door - firmly locked. The window – latched. With trepidation he opened the hanging-cupboard. No-one hung there. He ran his hand over the surfaces of the chest of drawers. He had expected to see it halfway towards the condition of firewood. But there were no axe-marks, no more scratches than were consistent with normal wear and tear. He stood still, naked, in the middle of the floor, for a full minute. At last his pounding heart began to slow. He found that he badly needed to piss. He still felt too frightened to leave the room to make use of the communal facility along the dark corridor. Instead he took two strides towards the wash-basin, pulled back his foreskin and emptied his bladder down the plughole, chasing the torrent down with a hygienic dispensation of cold water from the tap. Viewed in the mirror above the taps, his cock appeared larger and heavier than it did when seen directly from above, and he felt reassured and curiously comforted by the idea that that was how it must appear to others, and in particular to John, who would be joining him in a little over twenty-four hours. In fact, he thought, the whole of his mirrored top half - the smooth lean chest, the flat stomach, the faintly visible but not ostentatious muscles of his arms – looked pretty good, and that thought gave him succour as he climbed back into bed, still quite frightened, alone on his first night in Rome. He was nearly twenty-one. Nevertheless, he kept the light on while he drifted, none too quickly and with some apprehension, back to sleep. <more>
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