Boy Culture

Years back, one of the first gay-themed novels I ever read was Peculiar Chris. Certainly wouldn't come as a surprise to anyone my age since it recounts the coming-out tale of a Singaporean boy during national service. What's surprising is that my mother was the one who purchased it particularly for me at a book sale, thinking that I'd be able to identify with the homosexual protagonist's angst and self doubt. Prophetic knowledge, don't you think?

Of course I moved on from there, continually in search of my identity, clutching on any blind items that pinged my nascent gaydar even the slightest - and one of the books I found was Boy Culture by Matthew Rettenmund. Don't bother looking it up in your local bookstores since it's pretty hard to find - and even if you did, it must have come in by fluke since our rigidly conservative customs checkpoint certainly frowns on overtly gay novels.

And what could be more overt than a neon blue-green cover with a half-naked go-go boy on it? :)

Not claiming that the book changed my life but it certainly made me smile on the rainy days when love seemed so hard to find - and when I heard that it'd made the long-awaited jump from page to screen, I waited for it with bated breath.

I'd dump me the second someone better came along.

Just that caustic, self-deprecating confession tells you how the mind of a certain high-priced callboy works. Barely in his mid-twenties and already flush with a bulging bank account, one would think that the main protagonist called X would start walking away from the world's oldest profession. However despite his bitter, cynical attitude, X revels in his seeming conquests sardonically referring to his dedicated clients as his dependable disciples, drolly assigning amusing glib nicknames to each.


Hallway meetings
Otherwise avoiding non-monetary relationships like a case of the crabs ( no sex with non-paying folks for this otherwise puritanical whore ), our commitment-phobic X nevertheless finds himself attracted to his sexy jock roommate Andrew, a relative newbie coming to terms with his sexuality - while his other roommate, an outrageous drama twink named Joey practically worships the ground X moves on and tries every dirty trick in a gay man's book to bring him to ground. Doesn't stop Joey the self-proclaimed slut from sleeping with everything in pants though.

A pity we'll never see this film over here since Boy Culture could be one of the best gay-themed movies I've seen this year. Certainly not a melodramatic paean to forbidden love like Brokeback Mountain nor a tortured hidden love affair the likes of Asian weepflicks such as Happy Together and Bishonen - the boys here are wildly out and proud. Talky enough though with its many witty one-liners and glib commentaries so I'm sure more than a few twinks would find it deeply soporific.

No doubt my Lord of Perpetual Yawn, Charming Calvin would start nodding off halfway through the show :) But I'm sure he'd keep awake for scenes of the deliciously buff Derek Magyar who plays X.