Quote: ”That’s why I’m happy I’m famous for what I’m so famous for. Being gorgeous, I mean. It helps me believe in myself and not worry that I’m just a bunch of blue tubes inside a skin wrapper, which is what everyone actually is. I am gorgeous. That’s not a brag. I can tell. People tell me so. I’m also friendly and sweet and naive except I do tend to talk way too much and I lie all the time. But you have to tell lies when somebody is judging you every minute. You have to cover yourself up with some kind of camouflage, even if that means bullshitting yourself. I do, in any case.


Dennis Cooper had a reputation in the 1980s and early 1990s of being an edgy, existentialist, controversial writer who shined a bright unflinching light on gay subculture issues. His books were passed around between my friends like an illicit drug. I remember reading Frisk, which is the second book in the quintet of novels based around George Miles. I’d always intended to read the Miles series, but somehow the years passed by, and Cooper didn’t come up on my radar as often.

His style reminds me of William S. Burroughs, but also given the lack of engagement of the characters, the boredom, and the reckless behavior they embrace to try and feel...something, I am also reminded of Bret Easton Ellis’s Less Than Zero.

The quote I begin this review was said by a character named David, but he was almost a twin to the equally gorgeous George Miles. There is a passivity tinged with melancholy that defines all of these characters, but George is the most compliant of them all. His friends use him for whatever they want and when they tire of him they toss him aside like a used kleenex. He doesn’t seem to care.

Even when his mother dies he struggles to define his lack of emotion.

”It’s strange I’m not sad about Mom. I guess it took such a long time I felt everything I could feel already. I wish I hadn’t been there, but I’m glad the last person she looked at was me. She really loved me once. Likewise, I guess.”

I had a young man working for me in the bookstore in San Francisco who was exotic and Arabic and very popular with his group of gay friends. We were working the late shift one night. We could hear the Chinese Karaoke across the street every time someone opened the door to enter the bookstore. He talked to me about the fact that he was expected to have sex with any of his friends who wanted him. He was tired of feeling so used, but at the same time he didn’t want to be excommunicated from the group for refusing to provide intimacy. I was taken aback, but realized he was talking to me about a situation I had no basis to judge it by. For me it was easy to say you need to find new friends, but at the same time I knew it was far from being that simple.

Situations that came up in this book reminded me of that conversation that night. It made me wonder if the young man did find a way to break free from what really was a bondage of friendship. I certainly hoped he never reached the level of complacency that the young men in this book reached. Where sex was just something to do to kill an hour. Most of the time they are actually thinking about screwing someone else while they are screwing George. One boy admits to George: ”I hope you understand that I’m a much better artist than I am a person.”

Things really start to spiral out of control when George meets up with some 40 something men who prey on High School age males and have unnatural dangerous appetites to achieve their pleasure. George remains compliant no matter how painful or how weird their requests became. He wanted to feel more alive and his visits to see them were the only thing in this life that he looked forward to.

This story is told from the standpoint of several different young men and also from the perspective of the older males as well. Too much money, too much time, and most alarming a growing despondency that their lives will ever really mean anything definitely left me feeling uneasy. I grew up in the 1980s and the high consumption of money, drugs, and sex was truly a hedonistic time in our history. There was a decided shift in values and an over emphasis in fashion, style, attractiveness, expensive cars, credit cards, and pleasure. The work hard and play hard concept that you see portrayed on the show Mad Man was put on steroids.

Having what we want doesn’t seem to make us better human beings.

Dennis Cooper is unflinching in his expose of the lifestyles being led by this privileged group of young gay males. They don’t know what they are looking for or even what they should be looking for. Their parents are busy and barely pay any attention to them. They are rudderless in a sea of dangerous creatures. Cooper doesn’t discuss AIDS in this book. I will be curious to see if the disease casts a long shadow over other books in the George Miles series. Cooper tells a story that needs to be told and though his books never hit the bestseller list the stark compelling writing gained him a following that went well beyond just the gay community.