Product Description
Does gender really matter? Kel and Toni are two damaged people, both trying to find answers. But, where Kel’s hopes for the future lie mainly with outreach programs and a new life with his lover, Toni’s looking for absolution in a bottle of Mexican hormone pills.
Blurb:
Kel loves Toni obsessively and—though he supports both of them on the money he gleans from turning tricks and indulging less-than-salubrious clients—he struggles with the reality of Toni’s burgeoning transition, and her motives for doing it.
While Kel grapples with his worries, and the attentions of regular client Michael, otherwise known as The Sherbet Pervert, Toni has different problems to face. Is there really a correct way to read women’s magazines? What about the manifold uses of maxi pads? And just what is this gender thing, anyway?
For all their attempts to build a life together, both Kel and Toni know their survival is precarious. What neither of them realize is just how easily their harsh, isolated little world can be turned upside down and, when chance events push them into unknown territory, both must confront some difficult truths.
Excerpt:
The day they met was summer grit and warm, stale air, just like this. The year has gone by really fast, though some days it feels like it’s been a lifetime.
The outreach center closed a few months back: the economy’s not great for charity at the moment. It stood a block or so from where the free clinic is now, just one of the squat, ugly buildings on the way to the bus station. There used to be a needle exchange on the ground floor, and upstairs a meeting room with bright-painted walls and hard, plastic chairs. When Kel started going, he didn’t think he’d stick with it, but they turned out to be nice people. They weren’t preachy, they handed out free coffee and sometimes sandwiches along with the condoms, and he made a couple of friends there. You’d sit around, drink the coffee, swap the license plate numbers of johns who ought to be avoided, find people to watch your back when you were working, and that was useful. No smoking in the building, though, and that was how he met Toni.
This one time, Kel slipped out onto the fire escape—old wrought iron scaled with rust and overlooking acres of brown brick and concrete—and he almost trod on this guy, sitting folded in on himself and looking down at the street below. When Kel apologized, the guy glanced up, and Kel just saw this perfect crocus of a human being. Slim, with a face that belonged in an art museum, all soft shadows and cheekbones, nose like a marble statue’s and a mouth made for…well, the kind of mouth a man could go blind just thinking about it. The most beautiful brown eyes, deep-set and shaded with apprehension. Tight-furled, like a flower in bud. His clothes hung off him, baggy and faded, almost as if they belonged to someone else, and his wavy black hair could have done with a wash.
Blurb:
Kel loves Toni obsessively and—though he supports both of them on the money he gleans from turning tricks and indulging less-than-salubrious clients—he struggles with the reality of Toni’s burgeoning transition, and her motives for doing it.
While Kel grapples with his worries, and the attentions of regular client Michael, otherwise known as The Sherbet Pervert, Toni has different problems to face. Is there really a correct way to read women’s magazines? What about the manifold uses of maxi pads? And just what is this gender thing, anyway?
For all their attempts to build a life together, both Kel and Toni know their survival is precarious. What neither of them realize is just how easily their harsh, isolated little world can be turned upside down and, when chance events push them into unknown territory, both must confront some difficult truths.
Excerpt:
The day they met was summer grit and warm, stale air, just like this. The year has gone by really fast, though some days it feels like it’s been a lifetime.
The outreach center closed a few months back: the economy’s not great for charity at the moment. It stood a block or so from where the free clinic is now, just one of the squat, ugly buildings on the way to the bus station. There used to be a needle exchange on the ground floor, and upstairs a meeting room with bright-painted walls and hard, plastic chairs. When Kel started going, he didn’t think he’d stick with it, but they turned out to be nice people. They weren’t preachy, they handed out free coffee and sometimes sandwiches along with the condoms, and he made a couple of friends there. You’d sit around, drink the coffee, swap the license plate numbers of johns who ought to be avoided, find people to watch your back when you were working, and that was useful. No smoking in the building, though, and that was how he met Toni.
This one time, Kel slipped out onto the fire escape—old wrought iron scaled with rust and overlooking acres of brown brick and concrete—and he almost trod on this guy, sitting folded in on himself and looking down at the street below. When Kel apologized, the guy glanced up, and Kel just saw this perfect crocus of a human being. Slim, with a face that belonged in an art museum, all soft shadows and cheekbones, nose like a marble statue’s and a mouth made for…well, the kind of mouth a man could go blind just thinking about it. The most beautiful brown eyes, deep-set and shaded with apprehension. Tight-furled, like a flower in bud. His clothes hung off him, baggy and faded, almost as if they belonged to someone else, and his wavy black hair could have done with a wash.
