derien | cheated by Gore Vidal (Reply)

I'm on about the 7th story in this anthology, "Gay Short Fiction." I only read the first couple of pages of William S. Burroughs contribution before I got bored and moved on to the next story, by Gore Vidal. I was interested, because I'm a philistine and have never read any Gore Vidal, and it seems people thought he was quite cool. (Although lots of people like William S. Burroughs, too, and I think he's usually quite amazingly dull. All description; no characters, no plot. In short, he needed a co-author to give him some direction.) Anyway, back to Gore Vidal. The story started out promisingly, seeming to be about a guy who thinks he's straight but is coming to realize he's attracted to men. I was very interested to see how he dealt with it because I'm trying to do a similar thing in a story I'm writing, now. But then suddenly his story veered off track - the reader finds out the guy actually had a sexual thing going with a male friend between the time they were both 12 to when they were 17 and somehow when his friend was killed (in the Marines) he just 'forgot' the whole thing. Then the story jumps to 5 years later and the main character is a flaming queen.

I just don't buy it. Vidal needed a beta who (as