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Saxual Healing
How does friendship become obsession?
Why need any romantic love be forbidden?
Does there exist a sound more seductive than the reedy bray of a saxophone solo?
All these questions and more are posed by the diaries, emails and notebook scraps of Billy Medicine, finally made available by an object of Billy's obsessions: Leo X. Robertson. The seedy, hysterical and unforgettable account presented herein tells of a lonely young man whose typical teen angst snowballed from mischievous trickery into the saxophone-related murders of two innocent men, and Billy's disappearance. And yet, Billy's efforts ultimately culminated in the production of the world's most beautiful and unknowable artistic expression of homosexual love.
The creation of this stranger-than-fiction narrative was as much Leo's personal journey to discover what it was about him that had so unbalanced a disturbed soul, how much of the fallout he was personally accountable for, and how it was that Billy's unwanted persecution led Leo straight into the arms of his soulmate.
Now, for the first time ever, read Billy's side of the story.
Why need any romantic love be forbidden?
Does there exist a sound more seductive than the reedy bray of a saxophone solo?
All these questions and more are posed by the diaries, emails and notebook scraps of Billy Medicine, finally made available by an object of Billy's obsessions: Leo X. Robertson. The seedy, hysterical and unforgettable account presented herein tells of a lonely young man whose typical teen angst snowballed from mischievous trickery into the saxophone-related murders of two innocent men, and Billy's disappearance. And yet, Billy's efforts ultimately culminated in the production of the world's most beautiful and unknowable artistic expression of homosexual love.
The creation of this stranger-than-fiction narrative was as much Leo's personal journey to discover what it was about him that had so unbalanced a disturbed soul, how much of the fallout he was personally accountable for, and how it was that Billy's unwanted persecution led Leo straight into the arms of his soulmate.
Now, for the first time ever, read Billy's side of the story.
244 pages, Paperback
First published May 28, 2015
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June 5, 2015GIVEAWAY HERE!
Thank you for having a look at this book!
I would like to reach as wide an audience as possible, and you can help me spread the word: if you are currently a Goodreads friend of mine and promise to write a review (however brief), message me for a free copy in your ebook format of choice (EPUB, MOBI, PDF.) Reviews are invaluable to me. I appreciate it so much!!
Over the next few days I’ll contact those of you that I think would be interested in this project, but please feel free to message me first so I don’t miss you out :)
You can find the ebook of this and all my other books on Lulu.com
*sigh* Okay guys. I know my last two books were satirical (I guess), that there’s been a lot of humour in my writing of late, but we’re going to a dark place with this one, my first foray into non-fiction.
I can’t say why anyone else started writing, but for me, the reason is Billy. Billy was a kid I went to school with back in our home city of Sadwhitepeopledrinking (of course that’s not the real name. His name wasn’t really Billy, but I didn’t want our friends from Sadwhitepeopledrinking to identify him, you know?) He became a little obsessed with me, did some strange and vengeful things as a result then supposedly murdered two people on two separate occasions- both involving saxophonical murder weapons- and disappeared.
You know, when you form a brief friendship with a desperate person who quickly becomes dependent on you and acts out as a result, while I know you’re not supposed to blame yourself, residual guilt is unavoidable. If I’m really not to blame, does that mean I am free from guilt about his disappearance? Am I truly not a killer by proxy? Oh, how I wish I could believe it… oh, Billy! BILLY!!
Well, eventually, the idea for a story came to me: the story of Billy’s life. Notes and ideas flooded my heart, and I jotted them down on post-its of all different colours that quickly covered the walls of my bedroom. But when my fingertips touched my keyboard, I suffered months upon years of false starts, of trite ideas, of mine and Billy’s infinite and infinitely intertwined anguish converted to nothing but paltry sentences I’d seen thousands of times before. What was to be done?
After years of self-punishment, self-defeat and humiliation, here is my answer: the collected journal entries, emails and notebook scraps from the mind of Billy himself. For a tale such as this, stranger than fiction, I have come to accept that even the slightest intrusion of my imagination would betray it. Yes, in my attempt to transcribe our spiritual woes to a masterpiece of fiction I may be a failure, but in this princely little volume, as true as it is true, Billy and I stand side by side as kings!!
Well, I hope this book brings you some peace too. Your Billy is not my Billy, but all our pasts are littered with Billies. As tempting as it might be to snub them, for once let’s hear it from them; for once, let it be us who allows them to set the record gay.
Love and light, everybody, Russell Brand, peace out.
Thank you for having a look at this book!
I would like to reach as wide an audience as possible, and you can help me spread the word: if you are currently a Goodreads friend of mine and promise to write a review (however brief), message me for a free copy in your ebook format of choice (EPUB, MOBI, PDF.) Reviews are invaluable to me. I appreciate it so much!!
Over the next few days I’ll contact those of you that I think would be interested in this project, but please feel free to message me first so I don’t miss you out :)
You can find the ebook of this and all my other books on Lulu.com
*sigh* Okay guys. I know my last two books were satirical (I guess), that there’s been a lot of humour in my writing of late, but we’re going to a dark place with this one, my first foray into non-fiction.
I can’t say why anyone else started writing, but for me, the reason is Billy. Billy was a kid I went to school with back in our home city of Sadwhitepeopledrinking (of course that’s not the real name. His name wasn’t really Billy, but I didn’t want our friends from Sadwhitepeopledrinking to identify him, you know?) He became a little obsessed with me, did some strange and vengeful things as a result then supposedly murdered two people on two separate occasions- both involving saxophonical murder weapons- and disappeared.
You know, when you form a brief friendship with a desperate person who quickly becomes dependent on you and acts out as a result, while I know you’re not supposed to blame yourself, residual guilt is unavoidable. If I’m really not to blame, does that mean I am free from guilt about his disappearance? Am I truly not a killer by proxy? Oh, how I wish I could believe it… oh, Billy! BILLY!!
Well, eventually, the idea for a story came to me: the story of Billy’s life. Notes and ideas flooded my heart, and I jotted them down on post-its of all different colours that quickly covered the walls of my bedroom. But when my fingertips touched my keyboard, I suffered months upon years of false starts, of trite ideas, of mine and Billy’s infinite and infinitely intertwined anguish converted to nothing but paltry sentences I’d seen thousands of times before. What was to be done?
After years of self-punishment, self-defeat and humiliation, here is my answer: the collected journal entries, emails and notebook scraps from the mind of Billy himself. For a tale such as this, stranger than fiction, I have come to accept that even the slightest intrusion of my imagination would betray it. Yes, in my attempt to transcribe our spiritual woes to a masterpiece of fiction I may be a failure, but in this princely little volume, as true as it is true, Billy and I stand side by side as kings!!
Well, I hope this book brings you some peace too. Your Billy is not my Billy, but all our pasts are littered with Billies. As tempting as it might be to snub them, for once let’s hear it from them; for once, let it be us who allows them to set the record gay.
Love and light, everybody, Russell Brand, peace out.
July 31, 2018
I have no idea what I have just read, it's some kind of mesmerising monster of a book. It is both beautiful and disgusting. Billy Medicine is a teenager, coming to terms with being in love. He is a gross, vindictive and troubled young man. If you read this book be prepared to enter the mind of a teenage boy, once in you'll have trouble getting out. I tried to escape and it broke my kindle so consider yourself warned.
This book has been cleverly written, there are diary entries, emails, msn conversations and lots of little notes from the editor. One of the most gripping books I've read this year... looking forward to what else Billy can produce.
Blog post is here: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2018...
This book has been cleverly written, there are diary entries, emails, msn conversations and lots of little notes from the editor. One of the most gripping books I've read this year... looking forward to what else Billy can produce.
Blog post is here: https://felcherman.wordpress.com/2018...
July 5, 2015
If this book was featured on The Culture Show, no doubt we would have some heterosexual boffin talking about, and trying to relate to, “gay” “issues”, who would discuss Saxual Healing contextually with Oedipus, Oscar Wilde, Julian Clary and Russell T Davies. They’d argue it would be wrong to assign an LGBT genre tag to the book because it would be like listing an Anthony Burgess book as such. They’d say that whilst this story addresses many issues facing newly pubescent homosexual teenagers, it’s also irrelevant because the book deals with an array of subjects and purposes such as obsession, paranoia and self-reflection, despite them having started off with ‘the gay thing’.
Luckily I don’t work for The Culture Show, so I won’t begin my review with any such nonsense.
Shit.
I mean, I wouldn’t begin a review with, “The protagonist is heterosexual. He thinks he always knew he was heterosexual, but it wasn’t until…”? But in all seriousness, why do I bring it up then? Well, because Saxual Healing really is a clever post-Cucumber sort of book and its homosexual themes mostly arise out of society’s and ‘straight’ characters’ insistence that ‘gay is a thing’. Like it or not, if you’re gay you have to deal with society’s reaction to that-whether it’s good or bad, it’s still a reaction being had in the first place.
And as the author writes, “Gay people are just as culpable as anyone… especially the ones for whom "gay" means a set of behavioural patterns in addition to sexual preference.”
Also: “- ‘When did you know you were gay?’ The more interesting question is ‘How’, but we start with ‘When’: the benchmark for knowing is non-existent and there’s no need to stick to one’s decision. ‘How’ was better: if they could find no similarities in the method to any of their own experiences, they could rest assured they were not gay. Is their logic.”
The author’s fucked off with such things. Good.
I particularly liked: “But why would you wanna put your dick in some cunt’s arse when shit comes out? A dick cannot occupy the genderless rectum while said rectum is occupied by shit. Why put your dick in a mouth when vomit comes out of there? Why put a dick in your mouth when piss comes out of there? Why put your dick in a vagina when blood piss and children come out of there? The law of disgust versus desire: no act is spared from these twin forces.”
Anyway, my review would be much more like this:
This darkly hilarious book is about vanity, validity and vileness; where obsession and perception collide in bloody and youthful orgasmic gloops.
It sticks disgustingly witty descriptions up every orifice of thought and pushes every schoolboy’s jokes about sex into elaborate, almost Burroughsesue, scenes that will sometimes arouse you, usually entertain you and often disturb you.
When I sit down to read a book that I know in advance I want to review (as I did with this), I can’t help but think of it in terms of star rating as I go. I don’t like this, but it would seem I’m stuck with it. All the way through, I was simultaneously loving it but at the same time feeling like there somehow needed to be more to it, and after reading the brilliant Rude Vile Pigs, I guess I felt slightly let down in parts; thinking- hm, it’s a 4 star (rather than 5) affair really. Then the march towards the finale came and it suddenly changed my opinion of every nag I’d had thus far. Wow! That’s some ending!
Billy Medicine is a clever guy. This is a clever (almost Brett Easton Ellis type) book. If you like your humour to be darkly and intelligently funny, you should most certainly read Saxual Healing.
Some more quotes I liked:
“What the fuck kind of a name is Kenneth anyway? Starts off strong, kind of forgets its a word in the middle of itself and ends in a fucking lisp.”
“I wanted to ram my dick in his ear so he could hear the sound of the semen.”
“It’s fun to waste young time. Youth isn’t wasted on the young; youth was made to be wasted.”
(Censored version of the review to be posted on Amazon soon).
Luckily I don’t work for The Culture Show, so I won’t begin my review with any such nonsense.
Shit.
I mean, I wouldn’t begin a review with, “The protagonist is heterosexual. He thinks he always knew he was heterosexual, but it wasn’t until…”? But in all seriousness, why do I bring it up then? Well, because Saxual Healing really is a clever post-Cucumber sort of book and its homosexual themes mostly arise out of society’s and ‘straight’ characters’ insistence that ‘gay is a thing’. Like it or not, if you’re gay you have to deal with society’s reaction to that-whether it’s good or bad, it’s still a reaction being had in the first place.
And as the author writes, “Gay people are just as culpable as anyone… especially the ones for whom "gay" means a set of behavioural patterns in addition to sexual preference.”
Also: “- ‘When did you know you were gay?’ The more interesting question is ‘How’, but we start with ‘When’: the benchmark for knowing is non-existent and there’s no need to stick to one’s decision. ‘How’ was better: if they could find no similarities in the method to any of their own experiences, they could rest assured they were not gay. Is their logic.”
The author’s fucked off with such things. Good.
I particularly liked: “But why would you wanna put your dick in some cunt’s arse when shit comes out? A dick cannot occupy the genderless rectum while said rectum is occupied by shit. Why put your dick in a mouth when vomit comes out of there? Why put a dick in your mouth when piss comes out of there? Why put your dick in a vagina when blood piss and children come out of there? The law of disgust versus desire: no act is spared from these twin forces.”
Anyway, my review would be much more like this:
This darkly hilarious book is about vanity, validity and vileness; where obsession and perception collide in bloody and youthful orgasmic gloops.
It sticks disgustingly witty descriptions up every orifice of thought and pushes every schoolboy’s jokes about sex into elaborate, almost Burroughsesue, scenes that will sometimes arouse you, usually entertain you and often disturb you.
When I sit down to read a book that I know in advance I want to review (as I did with this), I can’t help but think of it in terms of star rating as I go. I don’t like this, but it would seem I’m stuck with it. All the way through, I was simultaneously loving it but at the same time feeling like there somehow needed to be more to it, and after reading the brilliant Rude Vile Pigs, I guess I felt slightly let down in parts; thinking- hm, it’s a 4 star (rather than 5) affair really. Then the march towards the finale came and it suddenly changed my opinion of every nag I’d had thus far. Wow! That’s some ending!
Billy Medicine is a clever guy. This is a clever (almost Brett Easton Ellis type) book. If you like your humour to be darkly and intelligently funny, you should most certainly read Saxual Healing.
Some more quotes I liked:
“What the fuck kind of a name is Kenneth anyway? Starts off strong, kind of forgets its a word in the middle of itself and ends in a fucking lisp.”
“I wanted to ram my dick in his ear so he could hear the sound of the semen.”
“It’s fun to waste young time. Youth isn’t wasted on the young; youth was made to be wasted.”
(Censored version of the review to be posted on Amazon soon).
June 2, 2015
This book, which I confess a personal connection to, is supposedly a melding of truth and fiction, but isn't all writing, regardless of its intent. My personal connection in no way is good enough to help me sort out the truth from the the imaginative bits. Take that for what its worth. Forget the metafiction frame.
This story is in no way boring. If you have ever had a relationship that has caused you discomfort, you will relate. (I have had such relationships, some long, some short--some involving jail).
But on to this story, and the spectacularly strange Billy Medicine, who drives this tale . Do you want a Billy in your life? Well, on one hand, it takes the attention of someone like Billy to validate your own notion that you are, in fact, special. Aw, he makes you feel special, in the way the singer in Radiohead's "Creep" makes you feel so fuckin' special. Should you be scared? Of Course. He's a creep, a weirdo. But quite seductive in his weirdness--i refuse to even give details of his hourly onanistic tendencies.
They involve you..only you..even the most vile parts. Of you.
and your skills...your looks..your movements...your clothing choices...your other relationships.
Everything, in fact, that makes up you. You. Are so very special.
This story is in no way boring. If you have ever had a relationship that has caused you discomfort, you will relate. (I have had such relationships, some long, some short--some involving jail).
But on to this story, and the spectacularly strange Billy Medicine, who drives this tale . Do you want a Billy in your life? Well, on one hand, it takes the attention of someone like Billy to validate your own notion that you are, in fact, special. Aw, he makes you feel special, in the way the singer in Radiohead's "Creep" makes you feel so fuckin' special. Should you be scared? Of Course. He's a creep, a weirdo. But quite seductive in his weirdness--i refuse to even give details of his hourly onanistic tendencies.
They involve you..only you..even the most vile parts. Of you.
and your skills...your looks..your movements...your clothing choices...your other relationships.
Everything, in fact, that makes up you. You. Are so very special.
September 30, 2015
I've been third-party to a Billy situation; an almost neurotic infatuation with a person which is rooted in the school years - a time when many of us grow up confused about ourselves (hence the Private School of Genderfuck Fagsploration). The Billy in my world wasn't quite as messed up as the Billy in Leo's world, but a lot of the goings on were similar. So I really got a lot out of reading this book on a personal level and will be recommending it to the person who played the role of Leo; it helped to fill in some of the blanks with my own experiences which have left me scratching my head so thanks for the insight.
This must've been a difficult book to write. It's very personal and at times utterly disgusting while at other times it was outright funny. I have no idea how much of this story was fiction - even though it's presented as being based on a true story; surely it wasn't quite so messy? Maybe it was. It doesn't really matter, though; it was an entertaining read and had what I'm now seeing as Leo's own creative genius at play. He likes to build stories in inventive ways such as using documents to provide us with a certain angle on what's happening.
A great book and I look forward to reading more by this talented, young fella.
This must've been a difficult book to write. It's very personal and at times utterly disgusting while at other times it was outright funny. I have no idea how much of this story was fiction - even though it's presented as being based on a true story; surely it wasn't quite so messy? Maybe it was. It doesn't really matter, though; it was an entertaining read and had what I'm now seeing as Leo's own creative genius at play. He likes to build stories in inventive ways such as using documents to provide us with a certain angle on what's happening.
A great book and I look forward to reading more by this talented, young fella.
June 2, 2015
So this book follows Billy Medicine, an industrious young man coming to terms with love and sex and getting the whole thing a little bit wrong. Perhaps more wrong than you or I did, but understandable. Those rawest of years - adolescence - haunt everyone to a lesser or greater degree and Billy’s predicaments are a ramped up representation of that time. Who didn’t want to tear down the world at some point because it wasn’t made in their image? If you had a teenage diary, as I did for some of those years, it may have contained these words on some order: “I hate the f---ing world”. Pretty standard. Eric Harris opened his jounal with these words. Most of us find a way through without becoming Dzhokhar Tsarnaev but how much of that is luck I don’t know.
Billy becomes infatuated and overwhelmed by a love unrequited, and responds to his situation in a very proactive way. This is where grudging admiration comes in. Billy is such a trier. The type of boy boring adults comment about wistfully and say, “If only he could’ve put all that energy to good use. Just imagine!”. Billy is also the most repulsive aspects of teenage boyhood all condensed into one walking oily menace. I recognise many traits and recall with a shudder reflections of this beast in the people around me and in my own personality whilst growing up. All through that turbulence, that rampant physical and egoist transformative time there is an undeniable liberation amidst the disaffection that is difficult to capture. The character of Billy does this will great aplomb. He may be misguided but his lust for life is a lesson for us all - a scary lesson. Billy also shows us an alternative way to deal with unrequited love, the extent of which shows us how insane love can make us and how there are no easy answers to such powerful feelings. I read recently that unrequited love, though it is treated as a transient state to be pitied, is actually a perpetual state of being; that whether in or out of a relationship our natural tendency is to be unsatisfied, look elsewhere, as no one person can ever fulfill our needs completely. In this way Billy is certainly living his life to the fullest and embracing all it is to be human.
The saxophone. A magical instrument that has grown to represent the soundtrack to naff love. The kind of love your parents had in the 70’s and 80’s. The term “sexophone” is what is applied to that saxy motif that accompanies any object of desire as they enter the room. The earlier equivalent to “schwing” from Wayne’s World or whatever. Billy’s transference of desire and incorporation of the saxophone into his fantasy world is truly heartbreaking to witness. But one many have fallen prey to (nakedsax.tumblr.com). I particularly like this poignant sculpture:
http://nakedsax.tumblr.com/post/60023...
We will never hear his plaintive song.
In many ways Billy lucked out with Leo’s instrument of choice. If only Leo was a theremin enthusiast - how different things could’ve been. The saxophone truly is The Devil’s Honey. Here is a clip from classic vampires run riot in a seaside town in the 80s film The Lost Boys that I like, just because I really wanted Conan the Barbarian to play in the town where I grew up that was like this but he never turned up. I’m convinced there were some dodgy vampires though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lpuwc...
I must confess complete bias when it comes to this novel. The author is a GR buddy and reading this was somewhat of an out of body experience. Of what I have read of his output this is my favourite. So with that in mind, I can say that this is a completely enjoyable, funny and grotesquely absurd venture into the teenage mindset, with all its potential for maximizing the trivial, the obsession with different hierarchies and the exhilaration of preparing for adulthood. Long Live Billy Medicine!
Billy becomes infatuated and overwhelmed by a love unrequited, and responds to his situation in a very proactive way. This is where grudging admiration comes in. Billy is such a trier. The type of boy boring adults comment about wistfully and say, “If only he could’ve put all that energy to good use. Just imagine!”. Billy is also the most repulsive aspects of teenage boyhood all condensed into one walking oily menace. I recognise many traits and recall with a shudder reflections of this beast in the people around me and in my own personality whilst growing up. All through that turbulence, that rampant physical and egoist transformative time there is an undeniable liberation amidst the disaffection that is difficult to capture. The character of Billy does this will great aplomb. He may be misguided but his lust for life is a lesson for us all - a scary lesson. Billy also shows us an alternative way to deal with unrequited love, the extent of which shows us how insane love can make us and how there are no easy answers to such powerful feelings. I read recently that unrequited love, though it is treated as a transient state to be pitied, is actually a perpetual state of being; that whether in or out of a relationship our natural tendency is to be unsatisfied, look elsewhere, as no one person can ever fulfill our needs completely. In this way Billy is certainly living his life to the fullest and embracing all it is to be human.
The saxophone. A magical instrument that has grown to represent the soundtrack to naff love. The kind of love your parents had in the 70’s and 80’s. The term “sexophone” is what is applied to that saxy motif that accompanies any object of desire as they enter the room. The earlier equivalent to “schwing” from Wayne’s World or whatever. Billy’s transference of desire and incorporation of the saxophone into his fantasy world is truly heartbreaking to witness. But one many have fallen prey to (nakedsax.tumblr.com). I particularly like this poignant sculpture:
http://nakedsax.tumblr.com/post/60023...
We will never hear his plaintive song.
In many ways Billy lucked out with Leo’s instrument of choice. If only Leo was a theremin enthusiast - how different things could’ve been. The saxophone truly is The Devil’s Honey. Here is a clip from classic vampires run riot in a seaside town in the 80s film The Lost Boys that I like, just because I really wanted Conan the Barbarian to play in the town where I grew up that was like this but he never turned up. I’m convinced there were some dodgy vampires though:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lpuwc...
I must confess complete bias when it comes to this novel. The author is a GR buddy and reading this was somewhat of an out of body experience. Of what I have read of his output this is my favourite. So with that in mind, I can say that this is a completely enjoyable, funny and grotesquely absurd venture into the teenage mindset, with all its potential for maximizing the trivial, the obsession with different hierarchies and the exhilaration of preparing for adulthood. Long Live Billy Medicine!
August 27, 2015
I went into this Scottish-set novel not knowing what to expect and the first few chapters hit me square in the face like a Glaswegian headbutt. Billy Medicine is an obnoxious, solipsistic, sordid disgustoid who had me alternately squinting with repulsion then laughing against my will at his carefully honed cynicism. He aims to shock and horrify with his first-person narrative, and succeeds. As we get to know him better, though, it becomes apparent that his obscene words, foul deeds and troublemaking schemes are mostly attention-seeking, and this need for affirmation from others is ultimately his great weakness.
The object of Billy's adolescent carnal obsessions is a fellow classmate named Leo Robertson (! - as the author makes clear, this tale is inspired by real events), who made the well-intentioned but misguided error of befriending this loner in the playground when he first arrived at the school. When he subsequently realises his mistake and has to shake him off, he not so much rejects Billy outright - this would have perhaps satisfied his craving for a reaction - as calmly ignores him. To the narcissist Billy, trying every means he can devise to stir up trouble, this is the red rag to the bull. In reality, it was probably the kindest thing to do. Through a series of increasingly desperate attempts to prove to both himself and Leo that he doesn't care, Billy ironically mellows and improves as a person, almost eliciting sympathy in the reader at times as he tries to out-do Leo in building a life for himself after they leave school. Without the driving force of somebody who was resolute enough to rise above his melodramas, this may never have happened. Far from seeing it this way, however, the terrible bitterness and pent-up resentment towards Leo never completely leave him. Leo is blamed for all of the perceived shortcomings and failures in his life. When (mis)fortune causes their paths to cross again the story escalates into disturbing new territory, which is brutally and graphically described. They are adults at this point, and Billy's teenage shenanigans pale alongside what he is now capable of ...
I'm glad I read this work in the same way I'm glad I read American Psycho. It transported me to dark recesses of the mind that otherwise may have remained undisturbed forever. It is a finely written book, made by a great ending; just remember to psyche yourself before picking it up!
The object of Billy's adolescent carnal obsessions is a fellow classmate named Leo Robertson (! - as the author makes clear, this tale is inspired by real events), who made the well-intentioned but misguided error of befriending this loner in the playground when he first arrived at the school. When he subsequently realises his mistake and has to shake him off, he not so much rejects Billy outright - this would have perhaps satisfied his craving for a reaction - as calmly ignores him. To the narcissist Billy, trying every means he can devise to stir up trouble, this is the red rag to the bull. In reality, it was probably the kindest thing to do. Through a series of increasingly desperate attempts to prove to both himself and Leo that he doesn't care, Billy ironically mellows and improves as a person, almost eliciting sympathy in the reader at times as he tries to out-do Leo in building a life for himself after they leave school. Without the driving force of somebody who was resolute enough to rise above his melodramas, this may never have happened. Far from seeing it this way, however, the terrible bitterness and pent-up resentment towards Leo never completely leave him. Leo is blamed for all of the perceived shortcomings and failures in his life. When (mis)fortune causes their paths to cross again the story escalates into disturbing new territory, which is brutally and graphically described. They are adults at this point, and Billy's teenage shenanigans pale alongside what he is now capable of ...
I'm glad I read this work in the same way I'm glad I read American Psycho. It transported me to dark recesses of the mind that otherwise may have remained undisturbed forever. It is a finely written book, made by a great ending; just remember to psyche yourself before picking it up!
January 16, 2016
The author of this tale does not hold your hand and gently ushering you into the heart of it. No. He is always a few steps ahead and he more likely drags you and pushes you from page to page. He also turns to slap you around, pretty frequently, just in case. To keep you on your toes. And on your toes you are.
That is to say that-according to the cliche- this is not a book for the faint hearted who would feel at ease with a likeable hero. Billy far from aiming for the reader's sympathy he wants to confuse and shock them. Basically Billy says: I'm excluded, I'm wounded, I'm damaged, I've turned to be a monster but Reader you can stuff your pity. Billy is a mess but he is most definitely proud.
This is a story about identity and his agony is to establish his idea of who he is. Like another Arthur Rimbaud he plays with the notion J'est un autre. Me versus the Other, me despite of the Other, me as the Other and finally me is the Other in a cannibalistic obsession.
Yes, Billy is a mess indeed but in his delirium he's got a few things dead right. For example, as a homosexual teenager he exposes the farcical liberalism of his environment acting being unfazed by his sexual preferences, yet asking stupid questions like 'don't get me wrong but how can you...'. Or expecting colourful behaviours out of him. Or expressing tolerance -a horrid word that clearly implies that you are doing something wrong but I'm big enough person to allow you, but heterosexuals never begged for tolerance, did they?
Wrapping it up, this is a truly great book, oozing intelligence and elemental emotion, rich thematically and stylistically and the man Billy is not someone that you are likely ever to forget.
June 7, 2015
Let x=sexual identity, and y=the drama of high school, and z=obsessive behavior. Heat these variables over an improvised saxophone solo. Use a centrifuge to isolate the denser substrate. Close your left eye and examine the results under a microscope with a funhouse-mirror lens attachment. Or, better yet, just read this book.
August 15, 2015
This given by the author for an honest review
This novel. I'm worried about your mind, Mr. Writer. Just kidding. I don't have much to say, I feel because this was just so frighteningly odd. Not odd, as in surrealism, but it's blunt in its portrayal in violence and mental dysfunction. What popped out the most in this novel was the writing style for sure. It brought back memories of the first Kindle book I've ever read on my Kindle, a book called Winterwood by Patrick McCabe. McCabe is most famous for his novels, Breakfast on Pluto and The Butcher Boy. Winterwood has very mixed reviews, I did not like it. It was written in a stream of consciousness, non-linear format that just sounded like the narrator was just blabbing away about the past and the present with little warning of change in tense. By the time you get used to the book it gets stale and then you feel like you're reading the same thing over and over again, but that could've been because I didn't know how to work a Kindle and I kept going back by accident. But he really did repeat the same thing over again, the same scenario with a bit of difference as if recollecting and correcting the past to his satisfaction.
So why am I talking about this McCabe novel? Saxual Healing is one of those twisted individual stories. A meta-fiction journal written by a guy named Billy who is a super horny teenager that gets fixated on a guy named Leo. This is supposed to be one of those non-fiction books that aren't actually fiction, Leo, the editor, once in awhile pops up to censor or fix something Billy says, because Billy isn't right in the head. Unlike the narrator of Winterwood I don't think Billy has ever gone through anything traumatic except the fact that people ignore him because he's creepy. It's half anti-coming of age and half satire. Surreal in a sense where the main character is so unbelievably inhumane in the way he treats others, including his own parents. But I guess that's where the satire comes in, because it's almost like a slapstick humor, except, I don't know, I don't really understand satire, but yet I do read a lot of black humor.
You can't feel sorry for Billy, you really can't. Even when he does show a tad bit of humanity for his one true boyfriend, that he doesn't obsess over as much as Leo, but still seems to love. He's still repulsive as hell, and the ending. That ending was just... a bizarro novel, has Leo read any books in that genre? Because this book was so absurd and repulsive it was much like a bizarro novel, a very light one because bizarro usually brings in a magical realist approach. To the point where it was actually kind of hilarious. (I really hope this review doesn't sound negative, it's not negative.)
What made the surrealist feel in the novel, was the narrator's ramblings of jazz music. The music is his turn on, his euphemism for anything that a kid his age would be scolded for thinking about. Sax music became the new innuedo. Although, his parents already knew already. In a sense he does live a traumatic life because they barely pay attention to him and when they do, he rejects them. I can say that Billy is very misunderstood, yet it's hard to sympathesize with him, due to his arrogance and self-entitlement to the bodies of others. He's a strange guy that is desperate for affection to the point of forcing to vomit it out for him.
I was honestly thinking he was going to control the world with his saxophone and make people do his bidding, instead it took a dark turn and I will never see saxophones the same again. Just kidding. This book was filled with sax and some bloody violence with a twisted mind reminiscent of McCabe's work. At least to me, the vibe I got. So if you're into metafiction weirdness and having your mind split in half with deviance. Then this is the place to go.
Rating: 4.5/5
Originally posted here: http://wordsnotesandfiction.blogspot....
This novel. I'm worried about your mind, Mr. Writer. Just kidding. I don't have much to say, I feel because this was just so frighteningly odd. Not odd, as in surrealism, but it's blunt in its portrayal in violence and mental dysfunction. What popped out the most in this novel was the writing style for sure. It brought back memories of the first Kindle book I've ever read on my Kindle, a book called Winterwood by Patrick McCabe. McCabe is most famous for his novels, Breakfast on Pluto and The Butcher Boy. Winterwood has very mixed reviews, I did not like it. It was written in a stream of consciousness, non-linear format that just sounded like the narrator was just blabbing away about the past and the present with little warning of change in tense. By the time you get used to the book it gets stale and then you feel like you're reading the same thing over and over again, but that could've been because I didn't know how to work a Kindle and I kept going back by accident. But he really did repeat the same thing over again, the same scenario with a bit of difference as if recollecting and correcting the past to his satisfaction.
So why am I talking about this McCabe novel? Saxual Healing is one of those twisted individual stories. A meta-fiction journal written by a guy named Billy who is a super horny teenager that gets fixated on a guy named Leo. This is supposed to be one of those non-fiction books that aren't actually fiction, Leo, the editor, once in awhile pops up to censor or fix something Billy says, because Billy isn't right in the head. Unlike the narrator of Winterwood I don't think Billy has ever gone through anything traumatic except the fact that people ignore him because he's creepy. It's half anti-coming of age and half satire. Surreal in a sense where the main character is so unbelievably inhumane in the way he treats others, including his own parents. But I guess that's where the satire comes in, because it's almost like a slapstick humor, except, I don't know, I don't really understand satire, but yet I do read a lot of black humor.
You can't feel sorry for Billy, you really can't. Even when he does show a tad bit of humanity for his one true boyfriend, that he doesn't obsess over as much as Leo, but still seems to love. He's still repulsive as hell, and the ending. That ending was just... a bizarro novel, has Leo read any books in that genre? Because this book was so absurd and repulsive it was much like a bizarro novel, a very light one because bizarro usually brings in a magical realist approach. To the point where it was actually kind of hilarious. (I really hope this review doesn't sound negative, it's not negative.)
What made the surrealist feel in the novel, was the narrator's ramblings of jazz music. The music is his turn on, his euphemism for anything that a kid his age would be scolded for thinking about. Sax music became the new innuedo. Although, his parents already knew already. In a sense he does live a traumatic life because they barely pay attention to him and when they do, he rejects them. I can say that Billy is very misunderstood, yet it's hard to sympathesize with him, due to his arrogance and self-entitlement to the bodies of others. He's a strange guy that is desperate for affection to the point of forcing to vomit it out for him.
I was honestly thinking he was going to control the world with his saxophone and make people do his bidding, instead it took a dark turn and I will never see saxophones the same again. Just kidding. This book was filled with sax and some bloody violence with a twisted mind reminiscent of McCabe's work. At least to me, the vibe I got. So if you're into metafiction weirdness and having your mind split in half with deviance. Then this is the place to go.
Rating: 4.5/5
Originally posted here: http://wordsnotesandfiction.blogspot....
February 4, 2016
(Reprinted from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography [cclapcenter.com]. I am the original author of this essay, as well as the owner of CCLaP; it is not being reprinted illegally.)
It's hard to decide just how to critically sum up a book like the unfortunately titled novel Saxual Healing, because author Leo X. Robertson tries to have it both ways here: it starts with a long and interesting introduction in which Robertson lays out the fictional premise of the supposedly nonfiction book, in which an acquaintance of his in high school turned out later in life to be transgressively queer and a bit of a dick to everyone about it, penning a series of Kathy-Ackeresque absurdist journal entries about such subjects as the crushes he developed when younger and his sexual exploits as an adult, never meant for public consumption but now "published" exactly for that purpose, all of which was really fascinating and held my rapt attention; but then the 200 pages after that introduction are the actual absurdist transgressive queer journal entries in question, which are exactly as tedious and difficult to get through as you would imagine such writing to be. And there's the problem in a nutshell -- the premise is riveting, but Robertson clearly means for that to just be a framing device for the stream-of-consciousness nonsense that comes after, while the stream-of-consciousness nonsense that he means to be the main focus of the book is hardly worth one's time (except for those of you who already like bizarro literature, that is, who will find it not great but at least tolerable). So I guess I will give this a middle-of-the-road score in order to even things out, but with the warning that the number itself in this case means little. Not a terrible disaster, but certainly meant for just a limited audience of true believers, you'd do well to keep all of this in mind before picking up a copy yourself.
Out of 10: 7.5
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