And To Think That He Kissed Him on Lorimer Street
by Richard Grayson
Dumbo Books
Short Stories; 289 pp.
A few months ago I got an email from Richard Grayson asking if I would be interested in reading his new collection. He warned me that it would be a waste of my time and that the book might make for a better doorstop than reading material. Well, if a book has the potential to keep the cool breeze flowing through my room, I can't turn it down, probably would even read it before putting it to use. And I did. Read it. And man did I enjoy it. Grayson is nothing short of a master storyteller, a man willing to take chances, to mix the straightforward narrative with avant-garde twists. Letters to the editor, mysterious front-page ads in the New York Times, a very young Anderson Cooper, and references to YouTube and Myspace, all make for an interesting collage, a blend of nostalgia with the very contemporary. . .
Highlights for me include the numerous recollections of the evolutions of theaters in Brooklyn and Broward County, the hilarious tale of a man forced to go to a lesser college by his zealous father and who ends up rooming with a monkey which he plots to kill after the monkey pees on his stuff, and the first line from the story "G--d Is My Fuckbuddy": "Significant others come and go but fuckbuddies can be forever." One can only speculate as to why a publisher didn't give this collection a shot, but luckily for us, Grayson did all the work himself. He's even made the book available as a free download, but save your eyes and give the man a few bucks. You'll be glad you did.
*****
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