High-risk homosexual A memoir

In this crackling debut, Gomez recounts his coming-of-age as a queer man, passionately exploring what it means to celebrate one's identities and to make space for joy in the most unlikely places. "In a world desperate to erase us, queer Latinx men must find ways to hold on to pride for survival," he writes, "but excessive male pride is often what we are battling, both in ourselves and in others." In essays packed with dry wit and searing cultural insight, Gomez blows open this paradox as he contends with the difficulties and traumas of compulsory heterosexuality that were forced upon him growing up in his Nicaraguan family. He brings readers on an exhilarating trip through his teens in Central America, where bloody cockfights at his uncle's bar pulsated with machismo; reflects on meeting a group of encouraging trans sex workers, whose simple freedom both terrified and enticed him as a young gay person; recounts his awkward attempts to navigate hookup culture in his early 20s in Florida; and reflects on how taking PrEP instantly labeled him medically as a "high-risk homosexual." The result transcends a simple coming-out story to instead offer a brilliant and provocative interrogation of sex, gender, race, and love. Agent: Danielle Bukowski, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Jan.)

A Florida-born writer's account of how he learned to embrace and celebrate his identity as a gay Latinx man. As an adolescent growing up in Orlando, Gomez fantasized he could live in a "rom-com" world like the one that Jennifer Lopez, his idol and beautiful Latina "damsel in distress," often inhabited on screen. But an "artsy asexual" facade hid the queerness that his machista Latinx culture denigrated. In high school, a gay friend took him to clubs to revel in drag queen culture, and college brought with it the opportunity to move out and further define his sexuality on his own terms. However, Gomez quickly found himself forced into a binary existence. "It was obvious," he writes, "that I could experiment with my appearance or I could have sex, but I couldn't have both." At the same time, the author also discovered a desire to engage in anonymous, multipartner gay club sex, and he joined a gay burlesque troop, where he learned, gradually, to be comfortable in his own skin. Leaving Orlando for graduate school after the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre gave rise to other important personal revelations. "I don't have sympathy for the man who murdered forty-nine people I used to dance with. I promise you I don't," writes the author. "But I do for the child he'd been, despite knowing how this story ends, because he reminds me so much of myself." Contending with the pervasive fear of contracting HIV, the author slowly began to learn to cautiously explore his desires while also continuing to "play the game. The game is hope." Poignant, vivid, and often hilarious, this coming-of-age memoir fearlessly explores intersectional identity and shows what it means to live and love authentically as a gay man today. An engagingly candid memoir from a promising young writer. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.