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Picture Me Perfect by Stormy Glenn
Jun. 11th, 2010 11:19 am
Picture Me Perfect is the prequel of Sammy Dane but it was released after so if you, like me, read Sammy’s story before, now you already know what is the conclusion of Troy and Nicky’s one, but in any case, this is a pure romance, and like that, it delivers what you are expecting.There is a trend in Stormy Glenn’s stories, macho men lookalike but with a big tender heart who fall in love for little elflike men, who despite the diminishing look, are able to wrap the bigger men around their pinkies. In this story Nicky is the younger brother of Jamie, whose partner as policer officer is Trey; he is a small man, with a gentle soul; I think he had also some hidden conflict with the relationship with his father, maybe not in the open, but he was evidently nearer to their mother. The oddity is that, both Jamie than Nicky are gay, and they are brother, but they are at the opposite of the spectrum, Jamie so self-assured, always thinking to have the right answer, even a bit conservative in his idea of how a man has to be. Nicky doesn’t correspond to that idea, and so for Jamie, Nicky is not much of a man, and for that reason he needs to be protected. But where Jamie’s protection borders on captivity, the relationship Nicky finds with Troy is of cherish and love. Troy protects Nicky, but he let him free to be who he wants to be; Troy doesn’t try to change Nicky to make him more similar to his idea of perfect partner: when he first sees Nicky, he clearly thinks that Nicky is not his usual type, but never once, after that, he tries to conforms Nicky to that type.
Picture Me Perfect has an high dose of sugar, it’s all about cuddling on a couch and smooching in front of television. Nicky sometime is almost childish (again something it made me think that his relationship with his own parents wasn’t so smooth and ordinary), he bounces, whimpers and blushes… someone different from Troy would have probably a lot of problem to deal with him, but Troy is like a mattress, he absorbs the hits, and returns only tenderness.
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Reading List:
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Picture Me Perfect is the prequel of Sammy Dane but it was released after so if you, like me, read Sammy’s story before, now you already know what is the conclusion of Troy and Nicky’s one, but in any case, this is a pure romance, and like that, it delivers what you are expecting.
1) Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, by Paul Monette, 1992. Harper Collins. This is an autobiography, a writer’s autobiography, which fascinated me because not only was the writer (Paul Monette) a gay man, but one I already admired from his amazing memoir of AIDS, “Borrowed Time.” I remember looking for some hint in these pages of how I should live my own life, what experiences I should have as a gay man in Los Angeles, how I should think about them, how I should write about them. As much as a kind of blueprint for an existence as a window into someone else’s remarkable life, as gay men have had so few role models. It’s hard not to fall in love with the spirit of this beautiful but very human and flawed man, which infuses each and every page. 
2) Brokeback Mountain, by Annie Proulx, (short story) October 13, 1997. The New Yorker. When I first started reading this short story, I realized I’d have to slow down, as it seemed to be written in a dialect of English with which I was totally unfamiliar. Unfamiliar territory, indeed, and so authentically wrought western talk. I think the story sneaks up on you. Like so many Americans I probably have a fascination with the West, its promises as well as its dangers. In my case, it’s also my native yet adopted part of the country, though California could be put in another category entirely. I believe the rural parts of my state and Wyoming have more in common than California’s coastal cities have with its interior. Here was a genuine rendering of love between two men, which is so rare in art that when it finally appears it’s really quite astounding and in this particular case, broke my heart. 
Benediction by Jim Arnold
1) Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story, by Paul Monette, 1992. Harper Collins. This is an autobiography, a writer’s autobiography, which fascinated me because not only was the writer (Paul Monette) a gay man, but one I already admired from his amazing memoir of AIDS, “Borrowed Time.” I remember looking for some hint in these pages of how I should live my own life, what experiences I should have as a gay man in Los Angeles, how I should think about them, how I should write about them. As much as a kind of blueprint for an existence as a window into someone else’s remarkable life, as gay men have had so few role models. It’s hard not to fall in love with the spirit of this beautiful but very human and flawed man, which infuses each and every page. 
2) Brokeback Mountain, by Annie Proulx, (short story) October 13, 1997. The New Yorker. When I first started reading this short story, I realized I’d have to slow down, as it seemed to be written in a dialect of English with which I was totally unfamiliar. Unfamiliar territory, indeed, and so authentically wrought western talk. I think the story sneaks up on you. Like so many Americans I probably have a fascination with the West, its promises as well as its dangers. In my case, it’s also my native yet adopted part of the country, though California could be put in another category entirely. I believe the rural parts of my state and Wyoming have more in common than California’s coastal cities have with its interior. Here was a genuine rendering of love between two men, which is so rare in art that when it finally appears it’s really quite astounding and in this particular case, broke my heart. 
Benediction by Jim Arnold