Bücher veröffentlicht von Beautiful Dreamer Press

Bold, funny, and shockingly honest, Ambidextrous is like no other memoir of 1950s urban childhood. Picano appears to his parents and siblings to be a happy, cheerful eleven-year-old, possessed of the remarkable talent of being able to draw beautifully and write fluently with either hand. But then he runs into the mindless bigotry of a middle school teacher who insists that left-handedness is "wrong," and his idyllic world falls apart. He uncovers the insatiable appetites of a trio of neighboring sisters, falls for another boy with a glue-sniffing habit, and discovers the hidden world of adult desire and hypocrisy. Picano exits his boyhood sooner than most, but with this sense of self intact and armed with a fuller understanding of the world he is about to enter.

The stories, poems, and essays in this collection have a single common element uniting their wide range of literary styles and genres: they all spring directly from photographs of go-go boys. The ideal go-go boy is the perfect erotic object. We imagine him as lost or broken so that we might rescue him, or as potent and aggressive so that we might be the focus of his desire. But the images captured here suggest deeper, more complex realities. These dancers are whimsical, haunting, satiric, playful, ominous. They are not objects, not icons, but stories waiting to be told. Not Just Another Pretty Face plays with the interface of projections: what these young men project in their poses and expressions, and what we project on them in return. It explores assumptions, prejudices, fantasies, and revelations. It looks beyond the archetype, beneath the skin.

Victor Regina should be perfectly happy in New York. His novels are best sellers, he has a kick-ass agent, and the upcoming Black Party at the exclusive club Flamingo promises to be a cornucopia of gay desire. But New York is hard. The city is gripped by a winter that won't quit, and although he has plenty of dishy friends, there is no lover in the picture. When his agent calls with an offer from Hollywood to adapt his latest novel, Justify My Sins, for a famous director, he jumps at the chance.In ';El Lay,' the sun is warm, the food is fantastic, the men are plentiful and eager. It's all so easy. So easy, in fact, that Victor begins to suspect there's nothing quite real about itnot the quick affairs, not the luxurious cars and ostentatious architecture, and certainly not the film script or scenario or treatment or whatever the hell it is everyone wants him to write. He begins to long for NYC, hard but real.Noted names and events of the 1970s, '80s, and '90s intermingle with public triumphs and private tragedies in this hilarious roman clef with a heart. Felice Picano exposes the clash between celebrity and integrity, the rivalry between love and lust, while showcasing the grittiness of Manhattan and the voluptuousness of Hollywood. Through disastrous production meetings, steamy sex clubs, and encounters with friends who grow old, or strange, or both, Victor tries not once, not twice, but three times to find authenticity and contentment in a life that, while perhaps never fully justified, is fully lived.