More fact than fiction. Flying High, Diving Deep provides a three-decade memoir of the gay portion of a male bisexual's awakening to, nearly unfettered enjoyment of, and sometimes bittersweet reflections on the active gay lifestyle on the international scene in the latter third of the twentieth century. The author was a male model and film actor who turned to international intelligence service during the Vietnam War era, a career that started off in the stratosphere as an SR71 photo-reconnaissance jet pilot and moved on to more earth-hugging intelligence and diplomatic service in Asia and the Middle East.
Although coming late in his late twenties to the gay scene, the author's sexual encounters and experience blossomed quickly in the exotic, sexually free, risk taking, and pre-AIDS environment of Bangkok, Thailand. Flying High, Diving Deep covers the high points of the author's gay sexual experiences in twenty-five short stories that are chronologically laid out. These stories take the reader from the author's male-male initiation in Bangkok in the mid 70s through sexual encounters during stints in Japan and the Middle East to the concluding years of the last decade of the twentieth century as he thought his gay life activity was waning, only to be joyfully reawakened.
The author provides a no-holds-barred, insightful, never shirking from bittersweet remembrances series of snapshots that move from the free, sensual, “anything goes” international gay scene through the realities of the horror of AIDS to appreciation for the deep, lasting relationships that arise from the world of men loving men.
“This well-written memoir of illicit bliss will arouse and titillate you. It is rather like reading just the sexy bits of a historical novel. You can read this book as erotica (it’s hot!) or you can read it as history (it’s thought provoking, to say the least). The poignancy of the young man in the beginning of the book contrasts with the power of the older man at the end, and leaves the reader both thoughtful and enlightened.” —Carole, Rainbow Reviews
This is the expanded relaunch of the eXcessica anthology, Flying High.
habu, a bisexual former supersonic spy jet pilot, intelligence agent, academic, mainstream book editor, and diplomat, is a published mainstream novelist, short story writer, and essayist under other names and in another dimension of his life. He has lived extensively in East and Southeast Asia, the Middle East, and Europe as an embassy-based intelligence agent, which influences the settings and plots of many of his stories. He now lives in a picturesque and historical Midatlantic/Upper South state university town, with an accommodating spouse, where he writes, edits, teaches, and indulges himself.
Under the habu name he writes a full spectrum—and heat level—of M/M and bisexual works for the publishing houses of Excessica and BarbarianSpy. He also writes M/M historicals under the pen name Dirk Hessian, and M/M romance with coauthor Sabb under the pen name Shabbu.
For a loosely constructed travel through habu's professional life, read his Flying High