---ooo---
Goddamn Maggie can't keep it in her pants for five minutes. So as the curtain rises on the final act, we see her once again off to the Language Arts building to jump Anthony's bones. Once again we run into Leo Getty, who once again is having a nervous breakdown and talking like a nervous wreck. This guys about to drop a ton of bricks in his pants every time he sees Maggie, and she's not at all suspicious of it? And another thing, remember that he was the one who had the scoop that Carl was thrown out of his old private school? How did he even know that in the first place? Nobody else brought it up. What, was he Carl's confidant? And he seems to have a particularly flimsy alibi to boot. So you think this would be a guy who you'd really want to call for further questioning, right? But the Mag's off the clock, and as we all know, she doesn't do responsibility.
So the two meet up and start making out before they can even say hello. Maggie, being the champion charmer that she is, recites "Wild Nights" by Emily Dickinson. Again Maggie, even if Emily Dickinson was a lesbian, it doesn't take a history major to know she wasn't a prolific sexual dynamo. You might want to work on your pick-up poems.
"Oh Kathryn, I want..." I began passionately, but then came t my senses. I said in a reasonable voice, "I'd love to roll around on the floor with you right at this very moment, driven by desperate desire..."
Yeah babe, you make me feel all desperate. I take back my previous statement-the more Maggie talks, the more Emily Dickinson looks like a smooth operator.
So Maggie and Anthony go out to order Mexican food (because nothing says romantic night on the town like bean burritos), as we encounter the first real shocking twist of the entire book-the restaurant owners are completely straight. Of course, the book doesn't want to step too far out of its comfort zone, so the Spanish-speaking owners oggle at how Maggie managed to get a drop-dead gorgeous girlfriend. Which at this point of the book I find to be a surprisingly reasonable reaction
"Go ahead Kathryn, nothing you can say will chase me away," I reassured her. But that was a lie. After all, I knew very little about her ad there were things that could make a difference.
This is why you shouldn't rush dating so soon after sex, Maggie! Things get awkward if you do it before you're ready!
One would hope that this talk produces some degree of realistic tension or conflict that the two get to work out. But as every good author knows, realistic relationships get in the way of the lesbian sex. Turns out that a year ago, Anthony went to the exact same restaurant on a business trip from California, and while there was lamenting her solo life. Because just as no hetero woman can truly be happy unless she's in a relationship with a man, no femme lesbian can possibly be happy unless she's in a relationship with another chick. Anyway, what are goshdarn odds, it was the exact same day that Maggie came in to celebrate her gay couple friends Farrel and Jesse's anniversary, and of course, Anthony falls instantly in love, and continues to dream of Maggie even when she goes back home, knowing nothing of her personality, preference, or even her name. So meeting Maggie again has been nothing short of a dream come true for her.
Wow. Wow. This just. Wow.
She stopped and started again. "Last night was wonderful, really wonderful, but if sex now and then is all you're looking for, well, I can't...I need...
Sex 24/7! Now hurry up and top me, betch!
Maggie agrees, because showing reluctance or needing to inquire further would be equated to those pesky "character faults" that would get in the way of her godliness, and again, the lesbian sex. So she proceeds to tell how she beat up Druckenmacher like a frat-boy jock trying to show off, and of course Anthony giggles and rubs her muscles and other girl things like that.
Afterwards, Maggie Gale get's a call from the elderly house sitter who tells her that one of the bulbs broke (and manages to squeeze in another comment about Anthony's attractiveness, whoopie), so Maggie Gale volunteers to go take care of it. Oh, hey guys, I know this one! How many lesbians does it take to screw in a light bulb?
...uh, anyway. So they go to Farrel and Jesse's house, Maggie fixes the bulb, and the day is saved! Maggie decides to celebrate her victory in a way any rational human house watching for their friends would. Have sex loudly in their hot tub in the backyard.
Okay, I live in central New York, and I know that in the middle of the night in December, you have to fight to keep yourself from freezing your ass off. Doing so much as letting the dog out for thirty seconds is an ordeal. If I'm out at night in the dead of winter, what runs through my head tends not to be "man I so want to get naked and romp through the snow into a scalding hot tub to pound someone I've only known for two days". To think otherwise is either sexual frustration verging on insanity or the onset of early hypothermia.
But uh oh, in a classic comedic twist, Farrel and Jesse are home from their vacation early! And Maggie and Anthony are in their birthday suits in the backyard right in the middle of getting their jollies on. Finally the book has the decency to admit that there are consequences for just going at it wherever and whenever you please. Yeah, you give them a piece of your mind Farrel! Get out here, and read Maggie the riot act. Oooh, I need a little cathartic release from riding shotgun in Maggie's head. So can't wait for this.
Farrel turned and noticed our piles of clothing on the chairs. She walked over to them, then turned to look out the French doors at the tub. "I think we just caught two lovely young mermaids in our courtyard lagoon," said Farrel with amusement.
I
BEG
YOUR
PARDON?!
Are you out of your mind? Lame and completely inappropriate line aside, how can you be amused by that? Amused is coming home to find your dog's sleeping on the couch. Not when you've just come home from a vacation early in the middle of the night, and you've found your best friend you asked to shovel your driveway is making the beast with two backs with some skank she picked loud enough to wake up the neighbors in your hot tub. This isn't a "you crazy kids" situation, this is grounds for arrest! Farrel should at the very least yank them both out of the water by the scruffs of their neck, drag them to the house through a few snowbanks,
and demand an explanation before or after they null their friendship and apply for a restraining order.
But no. Get this. Not only does Farrel and Jesse offer to give them a few more hours alone, they show both Maggie and Anthony prime hospitality and even offer dessert for them, and then Jesse apologizes to Maggie for walking in on them, while Maggie doesn't apologize at all. Huh. I don't think that twitch over my right eye was there before.
So after confirming Anthony's "politics" and "how out" she was, they decide they absolutely adore her, and want to take her out antiquing for a proper dating interview. Again, they seem totally nonchalant about her having sex in their tub less than an hour earlier. I can't believe this never comes up again. Even if I had saintlike patience and could forgive them, I'd at the very least never let it die. And then we're given the second half of our title: apparently, Carl liked Angel Food as much as he liked Devil Dogs, so Farrel and Jesse serve it to the two little horndogs as a special treat. Man, of all the elements of this story to pick, Bradbury picked the one least plot relevant that sounded the trashiest to make her title. More evidence that this book is purposefully satirical. God I hope.
So after all of this, it's back to Maggie's place, where Maggie proceeds to show off how butch and awesome she is. I love how in an earlier passage, she complained that she hated exercising and only did it because she has to, and yet she can bench press 150. Yeah, that's totally reasonable. Anthony does more giggling and squeeing, as Maggie continues to do maneuvers akin to Olympic gymnastics, which in case you're wondering, take years to perfect and not just one hour of jumping on the treadmill every day. But we've already established that this book is not on speaking terms with reality.
"Kathryn, if we wrestle physically, I will always win...unless I want you to, and I'm sure I will sometimes."
I can think of at least ten ways to phrase that to not sound like a total dick.
We talked about everything. Our families, our lives, our work. How we felt about pets, where we chose to live, whether either of us wanted kids. We covered politics, religion, marriage, and a dozen other subjects. No conflicts, no attitudes that were diametrically opposed.
So the two managed to accomplish what most couples can take years to sort out in one night. How do you even pull that off? A check list? I could go on about how near impossible it is for them to agree on absolutely everything coming from such phenomenally different backgrounds and careers, but I'm more amused by the fact that since there is no difference in the two at all, there's no chance that they'd need to view opinions that are different from their own and develop into better, more open human beings. Joy.
However, Anthony manages to have one obligatory character flaw-insomnia! That's...really not a character flaw, but sure! And then the two do bad things with a paintbrush. However, the phone rings, and in her first real moment of redeemable character, Maggie turns her back on sex for thirty whole seconds (!) to answer it. And good thing she did, because, dun dun dun, Rowlina, our favorite offensive German stereotype, has been shot! Not fatally, but enough to ruin her giant coat made of murdered animals and the countries she ran her tanks over.
She was shot at in the Language Arts building, the same building that Anthony worked at. Apparently, it was late at night, and she had a deep and personal problem that she wanted to talk to someone about. So she happened to see the light in the office Anthony left on (probably too distracted swapping saliva with the Mag to turn it off earlier), and decided it would be a good idea to talk to her. Apparently, she was having troubles with government officials in regards to her marriage to the man on the west coast. Government officials were jumping her, because they suspect she married him to get him citizenship. Rowlina shows a rare moment of being wounded and genuinely frightened, so of course, Maggie seizes the opportunity to squash what little likabili...redeema...what little ounce of character you could almost sort of tolerate.
Probably, over the years, many lesbian coeds had gazed with desire at Kathryn's late night office lights. Had Rowlina hoped for a midnight tryst with Kathryn? I'll admit to a certain smugness in knowing that Kathryn was resting her beautiful head in my lap, while Rowlina prowled the night looking for her.
Okay, so let me get this straight. Here's a woman who's been shot in the middle of the night, being dogged by government officials, has no idea what's going on or what exactly happened, and the least childish and presumptuous thing Maggie can inner monologue about is shoving her thumbs in her ear and waving her hands going "nya nya, I got the girl and you didn't?" Rowlina even asks if Anthony is okay, and all Maggie can think of is making out with her. So Maggie is the bigger jerk than the over-the-top German stereotype. That's really not something to brag about.
So Maggie goes home, and acts like a creeper by drawing Anthony while she's asleep. From different angles. Anthony seems to think that the safety of her colleague can wait until after a couple more hot rounds of sex. Then after talking about it for like five minutes, they get to talk about stupid things like dreams. Maggie says that her dreams can be prophetic, and upon reading that, I groan in dread knowing there's no way that's not going to come up later on.
So Maggie and Anthony drift off to sleep, and when Anthony wakes up to go to the flea market, Maggie sleepily whispers to her an "I love you", then a few minutes later wakes up in shock, wondering what the hell she's just done. Now, to a normal couple, the first "I love you" is a big, fat, hairy deal. I mean, we're talking about talking two hours before and after about it minimum. So of course, Maggie will not discuss it with Anthony, nor will it ever come up in the storyline again.
And now we get to Carl's memorial service, which is second only to the books ending in the most ham fisted "being gay is awesome and homophobia is naughty and bad" message in the whole book. Okay, there's a bit before where Jimmy Harmon acts really suspicious and Maggie nearly gets run down by a piano, which I'd normally get behind, but man. This service. Is just a riot.
Carl's song, I Can See, had both the lines I am a blind man and I am a gay man, in it. I was glad Carl's true self was being celebrated on this day that had been set-aside just for him.
And before you ask, yeah, that funky comma after "gay man" and "set-aside" really were in there. It wasn't just my abysmal typos again. And yes, Carl's true self is nothing but his sexuality and his disability. Nothing about his musical talent or his friendly nature, nor was it the fact that he actually went back and completed his education in the face of adversity, or started up a symphony to help the next generation, or anything of the sort. But his gayness and blindness, that's what you should really be proud of. Because nobody else in the world is gay and blind.
I wondered if this 100-year-old Chapel had ever had dozens of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgeder people singing a gay hymn in honor of a gay man, with such fervor.
Wow, that would be a powerful line if it wasn't hypocritical up the ass. Oh yes, here we are celebrating the LGBT framework, but how many real characters have we seen in the story that are actually GBT? I haven't seen bisexuals or transgendered people at all, and the only really prominent gay man in the story is dead. And even though we're harping on how stinking gay he is, we've never seen him in a relationship over the course of the story. We don't see any male gay couples, but we somehow have room for two lesbian couples and two lesbian lawyers.
There have always been gay people in the world, it's just that now, we no longer buy into pretending we're the same as the majority, just so the majority won't feel uncomfortable.
Yeah, because we're gay, and we're different. We're above your mortal laws! We have our culture and our land, and you can just keep yours. We don't need to live in your reality anymore! We're not just out, we're out of this world! Oh yeah, and the straight community doesn't affect you at all, miss masculine-butch-lesbian dating miss feminine-lipstick-lesbian. I mean, there's writing for a target audience, and then there's supremacy literature.
And of course, the cherry on top is that as the crowd exits the church, a cloud passes by, and out of nowhere, a giant rainbow stretches across the sky, casting it's divine blessing on this great gay-but-not-dating-a-guy-because-that's-icky man. And this is about the time you start feeling the kink in your neck again.
Somewhere along the lines, Maggie gets to talk to Farrel about the antiquing trip, and Farrel, of course, heartily approves. So she tries to paint Anthony as actually having some semblance of a consistent personality, of course adding that Anthony is both hot and hot for her. Thank goodness she does, because then we get a line that's the closest this book gets to being self-aware.
"What did she say that made you think...I mean that's she's...you know, hot?" I reddened a little.Farrel snickered, "You don't need me to explain that."
It's at the end of the ceremony that two significant clues pretty much walk up to Maggie, drop their pants, and wave their butts in her face. The first was that Connie ran up to Maggie saying that she remembered Shel Druckenmacher harassing another woman at the party that Daria Webster was murdered, at about the same time as Leo Getty's family was screaming at him that he's a complete asshole. So if you in the audience have any semblance of neuron function, you can probably figure out who killed who at this point, but Maggie doesn't, so let's go off to do more gay things.
Maggie goes back to give her report to the president, who after having one person murdered and another one shot at is reasonably at the end of his wits. He presses Maggie for any sort of theory or idea she has, and of course, Maggie has nothing. Are you really a detective Maggie, or just a professional sexer of grad professors? The inquest is coming soon, and Max begs Maggie to think of something.
"Max, it's all coming together, but I can't promise I'll figure it out by Tuesday. It's less than two days away!""I know, I know, but...try, OK?" Max rumbled sincerely.
'Try, OK?' Really? Really? You're paying this sleeze out of your pocket under the table by the day and she's spending all her free time boinking one of your professors. 'Try, OK?' is not the correct term. 'Listen up assclown. You're not getting another dime until you get your face out of Dr. Anthony for five minutes and give me something about this case. This isn't a vacation Gale! If you want to get laid, do it on your own time. But I'm paying you through the nose to help me, and if you won't, you're ass is on the curb. You understand?' is much better.
So Maggie heads off to the after party at Farrel and Jesse's place where only the gayest of the gay are allowed to go. When she gets there, Anthony is working in the kitchen and wearing an apron, and in the most blatantly stupid-high-school maneuvers, walks right over to Maggie in front of the crowd and jams her tongue down her throat. The crowd, of course, rejoices at this perfect couple, instead of rolling their eyes at a couple of women in their late thirties acting like a couple of teenagers.
And here's another thing I need to get on a soapbox about. How sexist would Anthony's character be if Maggie was a guy? Think about it, she was introduced as nothing but a future love interest, she falls in love at first sight with Maggie, and still holds onto it after one bloody year when she knows absolutely nothing else about her. Everything about her, is based either on her looks, her sexuality, or her relationship with Maggie. She has a family and a job, but that's thrown to the side so she can be Maggie's sex toy, her personality changes depending on what would be best to get the two in a relationship, and Rowlina was the only person to give her any sort of respect of acknowledgement outside of being in a relationship with Maggie. Seriously, everyone else is commenting either on how hot she is or "hey heard you got a girlfriend".
Also, everything about her over the course of the book is sexualized. Maggie never notes her intelligence or personality or talents or aspirations, but she can't shut up about her auburn hair or her pretty cheek bones or her alabaster skin. Even when Anthony eats pie at the party, she moans in pleasure. And Maggie seems to never go out of the way to intellectually or emotionally stimulate her. Having sex and making out is pretty much the only way they say hello and goodbye. And that's not even counting how they met by means of creepy sexual coercion and glamorizing how what eventually changed Anthony's mind about having sex with Maggie was simply that she got turned on enough. If Maggie was a dude, we'd be screaming sexist before Anthony could get her bra off. But this all feels like a moot point considering we've already established how badly men are treated in this story. So the moral of the story is, everyone in the world is Maggie Gale's bitch. Makes total sense.
So the party is predictably boring, and Maggie and Anthony go back to Maggie's place. Anthony shows off the awesome gay paraphernalia that she picked up from the flea market. Because I find homoerotic stuff every time I go antique shopping with my grandmother. Then Anthony gets into her tragic past which (what a surprise) has to deal with her love life. Apparently, Anthony's partner of five years didn't care whether or not they were committed to each other, which enrages Maggie. I could call hypocrisy with all of the mindless sexual flings Maggie brags about, but as we all know, Maggie is a champion virgin.
So Anthony says the ultimate flaw to her doomed relationship was that it had no "passion", whatever ill-defined thing that is. I think she means sex, because as we all know, sex is the linchpin of any loving relationship. Anthony then asks about Maggie's sexual history, and like any noble girlfriend would do, Maggie completely blows her off. Nice. Anthony figures she needs to go, because in another rare moment of intelligence, she asserts that Maggie will never actually, you know, do the job she's getting paid for if she's getting it on all night long. Being the positive female role model she is, she promises to reward Maggie with "erotic adventures" once she solves the case, and proceeds to suggestively make out with a seashell.
This finally clues Maggie in that the murderer of Daria Webster was not Mickey, but Shel Druckenmacher. What are the goshdarn odds. So Maggie comes in with the lawyers, and states that Shel killed Daria, then cleaned up the crime scene's evidence with a gardening hose, and when Mickey came in to see what was going on, Mickey got sprayed with it, panicked, and fled, and the shock wiped his memories of the event. How the fact that a hose being dragged into the house managed to escape a crime scene investigation aside, what motive did Shel have to kill Daria? Well...come on, he's Shel! He's a total asshole, so why not? Okay, so what's weaker here, the petty romance or the mystery of this story? Pretty damn tough call.
So since Maggie is a special girl who managed to figure it out, her reward is shower sex. Because that's our Maggie Gale, the sexosexual.
Druckenmacher had used a stream of water to scare Mickey and wash away evidence after a horrible murder. We'd used a stream of water to make love. Everything can seem so sordid if you let it. Or, you can celebrate the simplicity of joy by firmly separating it from cruelty. After all, what's more life-affirming than the intimate sharing of sexual love?
Glad you asked Maggie! Talking to your girlfriend about the whole "I love you" thing, first off. And you know, doing your job and saving lives like you'd vow you'd do. Actually learning about new people and cultures outside of your tiny little lesbian circle, the rest of the LGBT to start. Doing actual hobbies other than sexing up your girlfriend would also be nice. Doing fun things with Anthony other than wine, dinner, and sex would also be pretty life-affirming, I would think. Giving back to the community and being a proper humanitarian like you claim you are and how Carl was? Hey, you could even do things together with Anthony! Cooking your own meals. Reading a good book that makes you think. Write a caustic blog. Stuff's out there!
Since Maggie has the common sense of a sack of driveway gravel, it takes one of those "prophetic dreams" to figure out what Carl's Macaroni Can is and thus solve the mystery. It is as unbearably stupid as it sounds, and I would try to describe it, but I can't think of a good children's program written by a famous person who's criminally insane. So the next day, Maggie gathers up all the suspects in classic mystery style to bring out the BIG REVEAL. But first, more Bart abuse! Remember Carl's memorial service? Maggie happened to pass by Bart, one of the staff members that attended. And, I kid you not, she actually wanted to punch him in the face because he nodded hello to her. And that's downright charming compared to this.
He said, "I'm, ah, not really here," and then giggled. I took that to mean that he was still officially out on leave. He held his bandaged hand in the air in the most conspicuous way possible. In fact, he kept bumping his head into it, as though he had no idea it was there. Maybe now would be a good time to grab him around the neck and squeeze until he told me what happened right after the bomb went off. I decided to do that after the meeting, unless I had a better idea.
You're a doll Maggie. You really are.
And here's what irritates the English Major in me. This book is written in the first person, and I assure you that being at ground zero of Maggie's brain is a delight in itself. but there's a moment when Anthony sends an e-mail to the group saying that she think's Maggie Gale can't solve mysteries for crap (again, another rare moment of the book's self-awareness). So Maggie actually narrates that she's furious and angry and she can't believe Anthony would do such a thing. Like, seriously, she tells the audience she was angry. And the instant the true murderer is revealed, she says "oh yeah, I was totally faking it and didn't feel that way at all."
No.
Just. No.
That is not how the first person perspective works. The whole point of the first person narration is to, yes, narrate the story from a character's perspective, but the character is not, I repeat, is not aware that there's an audience that's being spoken to. So a character can't deceive the audience because the character doesn't know that there is an audience to deceive. You can't do that. It breaks the narration and betrays the trust we put into the character's story, not that it's easy to trust this clump of entrails of a human being to begin with. And frankly even if you could deceive the audience it really doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the whole thing was an act for it's massive betrayal of your already SHALLOW, STUPID, HEDONISTIC, POISONOUS, RECKLESS, BULLYING, IRRESPONSIBLE, HYPOCRITICAL, HOLIER-THAN-THOU, CRUEL, SEX-CENTERED, SELF-CENTERED, THUGGISH, OBTUSE, UNFUNNY, UNAPPEALING, UNATTRACTIVE, BLAND AND MOISTENED CARDBOARD PERSONALITY.
So it really isn't something you should be doing. It's a very easy mistake for first time authors, but it still looks very unprofessional.
So it turns out that Carl's Macaroni Can was Carl's Micro Scan, and it was set so that the note would come up automatically on a voice command, and that it came from an outside source and thus, not from Carl itself. So it was proven to be murder, and Jimmy Harmon has a breakdown. Maggie thinks she had the killer, and shakes him down for the story. Jimmy tells her she has the wrong man, saying that he's actually relieved, because he thought he killed Carl by saying his work was no good and driving him to suicide. Apparently, Jimmy handed some of his songs to a publishing company to look over his work, and of course they thought it was the best thing since sliced bread. Jimmy got jealous, told Carl he sucked, and he thought it was enough to make him knock himself off.
So that means the only person left on the roster is, uh oh, generic straight man number two, Leo Getty! So...basically he tries to kill Anthony, but Maggie bitch slaps him and Anthony decks him with one of lesbian statues (it's symbolic!), and the day is saved. So what why did Leo want to kill her, or Carl for that matter?
Easy! He hated gay people!
Yep!
He hates him some gays!
Gays are bad!
Total homophobe!
Yeah...
Well, okay, his son was the dude Carl made out with, which got him thrown out of school. And he also wanted to kill Anthony because he was one of the professors she tattled on for falsifying research (so the college does no background checks at all I guess) and Carl knew about the fraud. But Carl, being the saint he was, wanted to help Leo and give him a clean slate, and even suggested patching up things between him, Leo, and Leo's son. But homophobia is tragically incurable, and helping one sick with it is a fatal mistake. Leo shot at Rowlina because he mistook her fox-fur hat for Anthony's red hair (somehow), and he killed Skylar because Skylar teased him about smelling like a bottle bomb.
So at the end of the day, Maggie and Anthony go home, and in the first genuinely heartwarming moment of the entire book, Maggie tucks an exhausted Anthony into bed without making out with her. Aaaaw. And we get one last, beautiful, self-aware line:
I tucked her in and kissed her forehead. She was already asleep. The whole thing would have been pretty adorable, if the preceding event hadn't been so terrifying.
Yes Maggie, this entire scene would be very endearing if the rest of the book didn't happen before it.
And now...the epilogue.
Connie Robinson got a raise.
Yay!
Miranda Juarez was rid of Shel.
Yay!
Nancy dumped Bart Edgar, who continued to work for the college.
Ya-buhwah? What was that for? So they were dating and Nancy did break up with him? How...but...why? How? What? So basically nothing's gotten better for this poor man? The book wanted to flip him off for one last time? Yeah rob the last bit of happiness from a man with an undiagnosed mental disorder. Real progressive, book!
To the books credit, Georgia was eventually released from the hospital and renewed her vows with her husband, and the book cryptically comments "which everyone hoped would last". Rowlina dumps her husband, and Maggie cackles that she's still "in the closet". In her style, Rowlina flips her off with a cigarette in her mouth, toting her fur coat and fox hat and walking off into the sunset. God be with you Rowlina. God be with you.
Even from the great beyond, Carl's awesomeness shines down on the college, as the Rainbow Youth Symphony (ran by Leo Getty's gay son), flourishes, and people like JLo and Elton John want to sing them (Elton John, what are the goshdarn odds), and the royalties pour in! And funds and scholarships are booming all thanks to Carl's magnificent death.
But just in case you didn't get that homophobia is naughty and bad, Leo Getty not only can't find a lawyer to defend on trial, but he has two minor heart attacks before, and one major one that kills him before he can appear in court. So not only is Anthony the murderer, she has a Death Note.
I think what actually killed Leo, was the realization that he couldn't find a lawyer who agreed that his revenge against gays was justified.
Yeah, because there are absolutely no lawyers in the entire country these days who are willing to take up the case of anyone who committed a hate crime, especially anyone who would dare lay a finger on the gays.
And so for Christmas, everyone has a sex gay party and exchange really gay gifts. Sara makes one last appearance, to make one last creepy attempt at a threesome. Farrel and Jesse give the two a UHAUL gift card (DUR HUR) and the girls give each other erotic Japanese paintings and sissy girl pins. Max has once again forgiven Maggie for completely assholing around, and has not only given her a tremendous bonus for her hard work, but gave her a piano that she put in her apartment for Anthony to play. Because every good female love interest needs to sing and play a romantic musical instrument.
Then comes the beautiful conclusion, where Maggie tells Anthony to give up her life, career, and home, and move in with her after going for a vacation down in Florida. Kathryn answers with one last out-of-context Emily Dickinson poem, and AT LONG LAST the story ends.
It's easy to get depressed when reading this story. It's a hard fact to swallow that anyone would bother to write this book, let alone be spiteful enough to try to get it published. It's elitist, reactionary, and overly-idealized to the point of being insulting. But I take nothing short of a prolific egalitarian method. Just as the straight community, the gay community has awful, awful literature. Surely ever minority group does to. So if we could all just bring the worst of our worst, swap it around, and have a good, hearty laugh, then truly we are one step closer to being an accepting and tolerant society. And this is yet another reason why Angel Food and Devil Dogs deserves to be known to the world.
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