How's Your Romance?

The Buddies Cycle #5

by Ethan Mordden

For a generation, Ethan Mordden's tales about a tightly knit circle of friends who live within the shifting confines of gay Manhattan have entertained tens of thousands of readers and devoted fans. Now Mordden returns to his best-loved characters - the ultimate hunk Carlo; the best friend Dennis Savage; J. (who was once Little Kiwi); Cosgrove the maturing elf-child; and narrator and ultimate observer Bud - in this eagerly awaited new volume in the cycle.

How's Your Romance? brings the series and the characters full circle - from the early days just post-Stonewall to the vicissitudes, delights, and challenges of the early twenty-first century. Blending the comic, the sexy, the tragic, and the at once realistic and idealistic, these stories are Mordden at his very best.

Genres: Fiction, LGBT, Gay, Historical Fiction, Gay Fiction

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

Reviews

[Dennis Holland · Rating 4 out of 5]

How’s your romance? .. mine was super gay as 1990s Chelsea boys begin to invade the lives and love lives of the beloved buddies of this social history rich series.

[Armand · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is primarily about how gays, out of a sense of banishment or in a bid for self-realization, create intimate communities of their own. They focus on friends instead of family, on attending to people they genuinely like instead of those whom they are forced to tolerate. Many aim to free themselves from the dictates of a society that mandates conformity - from the grip of any form of authority, of the father foremost.

These boys get in the juiciest scrapes and affairs, and there seems to be so much fun to be had if you'll just fully commit to your desires and pursue them without any reservations. But beyond a celebratory sense of sexual freedom and satiation, there's still this undertone of intense longing, of a hankering for an ideal that could never be met.

There's some interesting, intelligent, and deep characters here, but because their predilections and preoccupations seem so facile, the fascination never lasts, and it just becomes an exhausting parade of lust and discontent. The objects of love/worship the book peddles can be morally repugnant, like the guy who violently bashed a madwoman out of frustration. I also find it strange that a guy whose family moved to America when he was six often publicly spouts all these German phrases, although maybe that's meant to make him colorful? I admire the author for his honesty regarding his cast, but in the back of my mind, I ask if this is really all there is to this - people as vibrant and fuzzy and thrilling, as easy to consume and thence forget, as downed champagne cocktails.

While they have grown older - discarded dead-end relationships, refashioned their opinions, outlook, or even their entire personalities - it seems like they haven't really matured in any significant sense. It's all vanity and posturing, an endless I stretching over ultimately tiresome trivialities, which with the author's wit might make for some captivating read, but which in the end seems awfully empty.

The penultimate chapter featured a "porn" story that was anything but. It's a highly risqué, absurdist romp set in the Wild West that was meant to elicit chuckles more than hard-ons. That this is the part that I enjoyed the most out of the whole book might not reflect well on the base narrative, but it is what it is.

5.5/10; 3 stars.

[Stacy Helton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had been selfishly saving Ethan Mordden’s conclusion to the “Buddies” cycle of books until the end of the summer. The 2005 entry, How’s Your Romance?, concludes the post-Stonewall adventures of Bud, his friend Dennis Savage, and supporting players Carlos, Cosgrove, Little Kiwi, and the gang. Mordden has always acknowledged popular culture in a fleeting way, but in this final addition there are later 1990’s nods, including the emerging internet culture, the musical Titanic, and Ally McBeal, while introducing a new group of Chelsea Boys, led by Bud’s cousin Ken and replete with sexually-interchangeable members like Tom-Tom and Davey-Boy. These people referred to as the “rock people” (as in “valley of”), men whom Mordden bends over backward to praise their beauty. In the previous four books, Mordden has often (is there a better word than often, maybe “constantly”) became hung up on beauty and uniformity of gay life. Of course, I am reading this as a gay outsider, who lives in a place Tom-Tom would dismiss with his hand. Into the mix are two confused muscular straight guys, Vince and Red, whose intellect is ridiculed while their bodies are celebrated. Mordden even calls a chapter “Will All the Straight Guys Please Get Out of My Book.” Perhaps my disappointment in this final tome masks the disappointment I feel that they are over (and unlike Updike’s rabbity short story “Nelson,” I think Mordden has closed the book – it’s been fifteen years as of this writing). There is, however, a remarkable chapter called “We’ve Been Waiting for You for Long Time,” where the gang goes to rural Pennsylvania to visit with Bud’s grade-school crush and experience the ways of gay life in rural America. This chapter, chock full of humor, sex, and pathos, almost takes Mordden to the place I was waiting for – for him to acknowledge that the life led in New York City serves more opportunities for gay men, but less individuality. The world beyond Chelsea Boys, Fire Island timeshares, and opening nights exists for gay individuals, and Mordden slowly walks towards this conclusion, but in the end, is distracted by beauty (with the acknowledgment that he and friend Dennis are now past those stages). A preposterous orgy ends the book in a tangled, discomforting mess. All of this being said, however, I recommend the series: I think there are so many historical and social insights, and Mordden’s style does not overlap with any of his peers in post-WWII storytelling (I’m looking at Maupin, Kramer, Halloran, White, and Bram). And yes, as much as I am disappointed, I selfishly want another book. Little Kiwi’s trajectory from standing-room-only theatergoer to straight-man’s boy wife needs its own narrative.

[Daniel Krolik · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am in deep love this series. I wish it was as widely recognized as Maupin, although it's much more caustic and not nearly as lovable. This final volume, while offering a beautiful final chapter, might have fizzled a bit for me. Too much time is spent on the Chelsea Boys instead of with members of the family, and I wish their stories were told with a little less open hearted sincerity and a little more bemusement. And there's a disappointing lack of Little Kiwi. Still, there are any number of funny, gorgeous, outrageous passages, some very hot sex, and some surprising character combinations. Considering what came before, a lot can be forgiven.

[Adele · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Bud character was always the observer in these stories, but frequently also the sage imparting wisdom to those less experienced in the New York gay life he was living. Now it seems Bud feels a little lost in what his own life has become. All these Chelsea boys and they come to him for advice, but frankly he is out of his depth.

Also there is some overt misogyny in this one that is a problem for me.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I personally think the series peaked with the fourth book and this was an unnecessary indulgence. I didn't like Bud's cousin and his gang. I still enjoyed spending more time with Bud's "gang" though, especially Cosgrove, who I think is one of my favourite characters in all of literature. It has enough redeeming features for me to enjoy it but I still think it was superfluous.

[Brian · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh. People were either pretentious, really messed up, or both. Loved the beginning of the cycle and then it sort of went downhill.

[Jack · Rating 4 out of 5]

Alas, was waiting to savor this final installment and was not the relish I had hoped for.

[Ethan Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

At its best, the Mordden’s “Buddies” cycle has the ability to both devastate and engender pensive giggles at its sheer sense of insight. I always dug Bud-the-narrator's consistent tone and dedication to portraying happiness as ambiguous at best. However, while reading the previous book in the series, Some Men Are Lookers, I first took note of Bud's aging and I questioned his awareness of it. His sharp sense of wit suddenly became littered with Garrison Keilloresque bits, and his cultured references to opera and the classics started to have a whiff of mustiness. He's far from an old fogy in this, the conclusion of the five-book procession, but the gap between his friend group and "the gays of today" is on full display. In particular, the way he reacts to promiscuity positions him as a maiden aunt. When he declares "There's too much porn in our lives already," I had to shake myself to remember that this was the same voice as the Stonewall-revering queer revolutionary who'd experienced the pre-AIDS disco bacchanalia.

The sugar to book 5's bitter reality would be the veiled tinges of regret not present in book 4. Does he feel as though he's missed out by casting himself as the "listener" in all of his stories? At the end of 1000+ cumulative pages, how much do we really know about Bud apart from the superficial? Even though he's the narrator, he feels like a solidly secondary character. The wist that's been present in every character finally infects the narrator in a blatant way, and it feels like an appropriate way to wrap it all up.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

After reading all the books in this series, I was very disappointed in this last entry. The friendship the characters have is the best aspect of the book - supportive & non-judgmental. However, the characters have not grown or changed since the 1st book - but I have. These were characters I felt I knew, but now I feel these are people I don't want to know - shallow & self-absorbed.

[Vivencio · Rating 2 out of 5]

after four books, ethan mordden ends this series not with a bang but with a whimper :( made me realize i got started on this series only because the first one,'i've a feeling we're not in kansas anymore', had a clever, zingy title

[Shawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

A real disappointment after the earlier volumes, all of which I liked very much.

[Robert Velasco · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was cute. Steretypical view of gay guys in NYC.