Love Wanted, Will Travel by Don Schecter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I always enjoy reading Don’s stories. The prose flows fluently and there’s always enough uniqueness to lift his stories out of the ordinary. When Don asked me to beta read them for him once again, I was very happy to oblige. Not that I have to do much. His craft skills are superb. My job is to alert him to the odd typo or missed comma. Even more rarely, content-wise I might spot a section that needs further exploration or elaboration, but that is usually it.

After sending my input back, I was eager to see the final stories in their context. Re-reading them as parts of a whole with a theme in mind. In this case it was travel. Physical travel which enlightens and also the journey through life which broadens the mind.

The anthology starts with an amusing tale that includes (off camera) sex with females. One of the reasons I read Don’s book and use him as my beta reader is that I want to discover the reality of life as a gay man. Not the romantic version found in books. Sure, some have sex scenes and are about love, but just as important for me are the fears, fantasies and physical reactions.

After I read “The Widows” I asked Don whether that would have been physically possible for a gay man. His answer was an emphatic “Yes”. Physical stimulation produces results without the need for emotional connection.

This tale touches a number of taboos in the m/m romance trope but skirted the pitfalls brilliantly. No infidelity, no manipulation a pure win/win situation. Well done.

There is definitely a food theme running through many of the stories and most of these come from other countries, another aspect of broadening your horizons.

I love the way the protagonists in Don’s stories aren’t all hunky twenty year old clichéd gay guys (although they all might have been once!). In “Mama’s Boy”, the hero is sixty five but still young enough to yearn for love. This story is long and deserving of attention although it may not be immediately satisfying. After reading it, my main thoughts were sympathy for Paolo, but in all his thoughts and interests and being so set in his ways was he really ready for another man?

The next story “Seconds” is my favorite. Don did a great job. While it may not be involved with physical travel, there is definitely a journey of discovery for the hero. There’s also a paragraph in it that reflects an attitude that I’ve noticed frequently in books written by gay men but rarely seen in books written by women:

“As I grew up, I emulated my daddy—married my high school sweetheart, had two kids, started my own business—but I guess some part of me always felt that the gender division wasn’t quite fair.
Successful as I was, I never lost that little-boy feeling that I wanted someone to take care of me.”

The current trend in trying to avoid writing gay men as “chicks with dicks” creates protagonists who are very macho figures. Not that men having these feelings need to be outwardly feminine, but it is the absence of this feeling of wanting to be “owned” by their lover that is often neglected. “Seconds” explores this beautifully. It also explores the agony of choice for a man who thought he was in a loving relationship and then discovers he loves another man. What is he to do?

“It seemed to me that in the old days, when homosexuality was a crime, things were easier. You stayed with the wife and went underground with your man. You split yourself in two: frustrated at home and living for the moments of ecstasy in secret. But nowadays, you have choices. I had choices. You can leave the wife and marry the lover. But what do you do when you love your wife? And kids? And home? And the life you’ve been leading? Well, then I guess you have to consider the nature of love.
“I love Laurel and my children. They are my family. I’ve got history with them, and obligations. But I yearn for my lover; every fiber in my body aches and cries for Clay. To hold him, have him hold me. I need him in me, on me, around me. I want to wear him like a second skin.”

Contrary to expectations, it is a sweet HEA for all.

There is a lot of physical motion in the next story, “Reel Life” but this starts out as just running around a track. The character Don draws is typical of his writing skill. You can picture the boy, heck you’ve probably met a few like him yourself. It’s therefore interesting to get inside this boys head. You may not agree with his thoughts and motivations but you can definitely agree that they suit him.
This is more a story about barriers that have to be crossed. One of the most important of these is the concept of commitment. In his words he was...

”floating rudderless on the seas of higher education.

Other barriers abound. Like the fact that the character (like Don) has Jewish heritage. When reading this story, just remember these are a form of memoir for Don. Adapting (not retelling) his life experiences (and work experiences) to tell a story. That alone makes the detailed background interesting.

Next comes “Rudy Redux” which is very much in vein of Don’s older man younger love tales.

It’s interesting reading stories where sex is just another facet of a relationship between two people, but not the make or break cornerstone.

This review is taking on short story status itself, so I won’t go into what’s “In the Bag” which is probably just as well. Finally, “Dress Right” gives a lovely picture of a whole range of characters some we met in the other stories, and fascinating characters they are.

Have Love/Will Travel stands on equal footing with the other three books in this series. All are great reads.

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Out of the Box: Stories for Older Men & Younger Lovers by Don Schecter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This is the second book in Don Schecter's "Stories for Older Men and Younger Lovers". A collection of tales. Yes, there is sex in some of them, but more they are explorations about what it is to be gay and as such should be of immense interest to women who write m/m romances who want to delve behind the stereotypes that are starting to populate the genre.

In some ways the subtitle is a bit of a misnomer as it suggests the stories are only relevant to the young and old. Whereas these stories are really for anyone who is interested in relationships, and who are trying to understand what it's like being a gay male.

The first story, "Doorways" is the tale of a mature age man who comes out of the closet after being married and raising a family. If you check his website, you'll see that the author has a similar background, so it would be fair to say he knows what he's talking about. Although another story carries the book's title "Out of the Box", this first story is all about what happens when a man opens "Pandora's Box" and allows his formerly suppressed feelings to escape. Confusion, excitement, almost childlike innocence as he passes through a doorway into another world. Wanting it all now.

This world is seen in all its variety in other stories. The world of bondage and discipline in "Submission" where the nature of control, lack of it and paradoxically discovering it through submission is told through the eyes of Conny (short for Mr Conlan)

“I want to submit to someone because it’s the ultimate personal abdication. Mindless obedience as a fantasy. I always have to be in control; I get deep satisfaction from controlling things.”
“Yes? Go on.”
“Well, I’m worn out; I want a vacation from my obsession, from all decision-making. My fantasy is to be controlled, totally; an abject slave. Not permitted to have a say about anything, including my bodily functions. In real life, I could never let that happen. It’s impractical as well as unsatisfying. But in my dreams…in my dreams… Tarzan keeps Bruce Wayne captive in the jungle; Superman is helpless, strapped to a nugget of Kryptonite…these childhood fantasies have never varied much since pre-puberty.”

The man he submits to, Kurt, is 5’6”, a head shorter than Conny.

It was his rounded belly, wire-rim glasses that focused bright beady eyes, and snowwhite mustache that gave him the elfin look. Also, he had exceedingly small hands and feet. Conny estimated he wore size six shoes, and their pointed tips made them appear positively dainty. No, that isn’t quite right. I’ve got it! Kurt was a living representation of the Monopoly man—he of the top hat and pin-striped trousers; the man who adorned “Get out of jail free” cards, and “Go directly to jail, Do not pass GO, Do not collect $200.” The man from whom all rewards and punishments flowed in the best selling game yet devised by man.

So the story has all the elements of BDSM but feels different as it seems more real, especially when they go to BDSM parties. Not something often explored in m/m romances where frankly the whole BDSM scene is unbelievably romantic.

In between these stories of timid steps through doorways to the full graphic BDSM there's "His Father's Advice" where a gay man, previously married but now living with his lover is questioned by his son who is worried that he must be gay because he found himself looking with appreciation at his best friend's ass while they were showering. Apart from the wisdom imparted as to how he would know whether he was gay or not, the father worried whether in some ways he should have treated him differently while he was growing up:

Is it something I did or said? Perhaps at seventeen I should be shaking his hand or punching him on the shoulder, rather than hugging and kissing him.

Then later he gives the advice that all parents need to remember:

“Sometimes it takes a long time to figure it out. It took me forty years. But I was working from the premise that you had to be one thing or another. And that’s just not true, Sam.”
Sam looked up; he was all ears. Jerry continued talking while he got Sam a glass of milk and made him a sandwich.
“There are lots of kinds of love: the love you feel for your buddy in a foxhole, or your partner—like you and Pat are to each other during a game—is as valid as the love you feel for Carolyn. So many factors are involved. At your age, you should just let your feelings roll over you and enjoy them; they’re all good. When you sort out what you want in life, you can set priorities, and then you can decide whether or not to take action. When you’re in tune with what you feel inside, you can act on it or suppress it, according to what you want to do with your life.”
“You suppressed your gay feelings when you were with Mom?”
“I only knew one way to live, the way I’d been taught. Vinecovered cottage and kids, with a loving wife. I had no one to talk to about my feelings, and I was convinced that I was the only one in the world out of step. “But nowadays, you have alternatives. Nobody wants to pigeonhole you. You can be married and straight, or gay with kids, and successful in your career all at the same time.

Without going into too much detail, other stories are entertaining while still dealing with serious issues. A Doctor's dilemna in the early days of the discovery of the seriousness of the HIV virus, "What Friends are For" deals with the desire to have children, in "Christmas Help" an onlooker on life is able for a brief moment to reach out to someone else and make a connection, "Eye of the Hunter" and the pictures that story generates of a man who can have sex without really being aware of who he was with.

All styles of people are here, the large, the small, the vain, the dying all star in their own little tale, showing the diversity of men and their encounters. The title story "Out of the Box" deals with homophobia in a long but entertaining polemic about what the world would be like if all the gay people were instantaneously whisked away.

The collection is full and varied and delivers each "lesson" in a manner where you're being enlightened without really being aware you are, but to me the story that resonated the most and made me really appreciate the skill of Don's writing was "Tate's Death". In this, the man who had been Tate's lover describes his life and their relationship. As you follow his tale, two distinct personalities come to life and gradually you become aware of a third personality who has been there all along, begging for release. Understanding would have been a better alternative, but these stories aren't romances, they're real.

I thoroughly recommend searching this book out. Like the first in the series, it is available in print or Kindle from Amazon or direct from the author at http://www.donschecter.com

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Heights of Passion: stories for older men & younger lovers by Don Schecter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

If you equate "passion" with "sex" you will be disappointed when you realize the stories in "Heights of Passion" are about people, situations, relationships not what they get up to in the bedroom or other places where they conjugate, and I'm not talking verbs here.

The secondary title is "stories for older men & younger lovers". As I often do *winks*, I contacted Don Schecter and we had some interesting email chats about why he wrote and self-published these tales. He answered:

I wrote because I had things I wanted to say, and I was annoyed at the gay material out there, most of which I found boring, poorly written, or unintelligible. Sex is part of my story, not the reason for my stories. Stories need to make a point to be satisfying, imho. I was also driven by the fact that I had no one to ask when I was young, and I have found that even with the internet at their disposal, there are still young gays out there who haven't asked the right questions of someone with experience.

I won't give details of every story just a couple of glimpses to give an idea.

Told mainly from the viewpoint of Miles a long term friend, "The Queens Party" tells the tale of an annual party for close gay friends of the mature-aged Augustus, known to his friends as Augie:

Augie’s fixed idea of sex was to masturbate himself in Miles’s living room, fully dressed, with no one touching him. To top it off, Augie didn’t kiss, either.

Augie had reluctantly extended an invitation to four young friends of a friend. I loved this description of their arrival:

The four youths insinuated themselves into different parts of the room and introduced themselves smoothly. Foreign accents and rhythms began to spark the conversations, and relaxed laughter, an unusual sound up to then, was heard. Augie sensed the change but was unable to pinpoint its cause. Miles noticed many calling cards emerge from pockets and exchange hands, many pens taking down numbers. The boys were a success, their full heads of hair riding high like colorful islands on a thinning gray sea.

It is obvious that Don is an observer of people, interested in what makes them tick. Each story is quite different in tone and content, ranging from the amusing to the tragic and at times there is a little of both.

The collection of stories is an interesting contrast to the other one I'm reading by Ken Shakin "Real Men Ride Horses". Both are obviously drawn on characters and experiences the men have experienced. They come at the subject from totally different directions which is to be expected from two men who come from totally different backgrounds.

How's this for another view of things:

"Heights of Passion" tells of a gay editor having to read a story about a heterosexual couple:

As an editor who was gay, he had no trouble with the hetero-sex that filled the pages he read; on the contrary he felt especially qualified for his job because he was gay. He possessed all the male capacities to rape, plunder, and pillage; while at the same time he knew what it was like to be taken by a man, and to succumb to one, as so many fictional heroines were fond of doing. But this story was beyond his ken because he was invited to feel the moisture Derek elicited from Barbara’s sex, and to taste her secretions. When Seymour stopped being able to distance himself from the descriptive passages, nausea overtook him. Such was the power of Hardwick’s skewed prose.

I'd always had my suspicions about "gritty" reality and they were answered in a couple of the stories - not m/m romance fodder *winks*, I fear.

The one that sold the book for me (and if I hadn't given it five stars already I would have bumped it up) was "You Got Male".

The story is a series of emails and MS - not every exchange between the two is included, in fact the ones that aren't spelled out and just referred back to are as intriguing as the ones that are.

It starts off with the interaction between "Youngstud" and "Olderone". This one had me really thinking, and it has the greatest twist. The whole set up is all so believable, and even may be rooted in fact, but even if it wasn't, you can just picture the whole scenario from words that do little to actually tell you what's going on, but give you enough clues to let your mind paint in the rest. Poignant and very well written.

But then comes the second part which tells of the interaction between a psychologist and the same olderman. After some hot graphic sexual postings there's this interesting insight into online sex banter:

As to your professional question about why men fall in love over the internet, I think that transference and counter-transference play a big part in online attraction. The feelings that arise are toward our imaginary visualization of whom the other person is and whom we’d like them to be. Sometimes these images are quite accurate and sometimes not. A lot depends on the ability of the “imaginer” to assess people quickly and accurately, and both must be as honest about themselves as possible.

Which turns out to be quite ironic but I won't spoil the three part story for you. Worth reading.

In fact as a female writing gay romances, I found the book a useful research tool into how real men think and act as opposed to the stereotypes which are creeping in to m/m romance.

If you're tiring of the same old, same old, read "Heights of Passion"; its glimpses of reality are touching.

The book is only available as paperback and Kindle from Amazon but Acrobat reader copies can be obtained direct from the author at http://www.donschecter.com.

To quote the author's site: Each story is designed to intrigue. Enjoy...

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