reviews_and_ramblings | Rock Paper Scissors by Bobby Michaels

The last by Bobby Michaels sounds somewhat more romantic and tender than ever.

I'm used to the fact that Bobby Michaels' novels are romantic, he obviously believes in love forever, but his former novels are also very erotic, with a strong accent on the physical aspect of love. His characters fall in love at first sight and then inflame their love with sparkling sex for all over the book.

Rock Paper Scissors has some elements in common with the former novels: Thomas is a very rich man. He knows since his teen years to be gay but he has never fallen in love. He has spent all the year through the boarding school and college living a life without responsability and commitment. He was not a bad guy, he was even a good student, but he has never spent much of his forces in nothing. Then one morning he wake up in bed with a woman (one of the only three time in his life) and he neither remembered why he was with a woman and not with a man (alcohol and drugs helped). And when that woman two months later claimed to be pregnant of his child he thought to get rid of her and the child in the easy way: abortion and money. But Thomas' father saw it as the only chance for him to have an heir and for his son to finaly grow up, and so paid off the girl and dropped the baby in the lap of his son. And from that moment on Thomas felt in love: Tiger, his son, became all the world for him.

Now years later, Thomas lives in San Francisco, trying to build a life for his son and himself far from his estranged father and thinks he needs nothing more than his son in his life. But when Brian enters his office asking to help him getting divorces (cause he has finally admitted he is gay and can't no more live a lie), Thomas knows from the first moment that he has fallen in love for the second time in his life: first for his son and now for the man he wants to share his life forever.

Since Thomas' son, Tiger, is far from against the idea to have a second dad in his life, the path from being lovers to being life partners is very short and now Thomas is on his way to build not only a life at three, but also a new whole family around him: and the first add to this family will be Brian's brother, Matt. Brian has long ago lost contact with his brother, a priest, but they now live in the same city, and even if Thomas is not in very friendly relationship with Church's hierarchy, he knows that Brian needs to reconnect with his brother.

As I said, like in the former novel, love is the engine of all the story: before moving on sex, Brian and Thomas fall in love and their first date together is a very tender scene, where all you read is about kisses under the stars... Not worries, the usually enthusiastic sex scenes (with the characterist Bobby smell's fixation) are plently through the novel, but I like very much that this time the beginning is a little more romance and little less erotic.

Another element that you will find in this novel and that without doubt makes it a Bobby's trademark, is that Bobby Michaels has not problem to unveil a lot of taboo within the common thought of society: in this novel he speaks against religion, but not against God ("Religion is what’s left after God has left the building"), he speaks of a characters, Matt, that is maybe his dreams of a "real" priest, he speaks of same sex marriage, he speaks of gay love when your are not more a young man and maybe when you have a son, he speaks of the don't ask don't tell Marine's rule, he speaks of the problems that gay men have if they want to remain within the Catholic church, he speaks of the chance that you seven years old son could be grown up and being gay (is it because you are gay, or he is gay cause he is born gay?), he speaks of adoption for gay couple... I think he speaks of himself and of the world he dreams of: a lot of things in this novel will never happen, at least not in the next years, or maybe happen if you have enough money to change the law for you, but a man can dream, can't he?

http://www.loose-id.net/prod-Rock__Paper__Scissors-613.aspx

Amazon Kindle: Rock Paper Scissors
Publisher: Loose Id LLC (January 1, 2008)

Reading List: http://www.librarything.com/catalog_bottom.php?tag=reading+list&view=elisa.rolle