By Stanley Bennett Clay

I wrestled mightily with D. Fostalove’s debut effort. Intrigued by the set-up—a handsome, liberal, free-thinking, articulate, agnostic black man, mostly principled and bling-free, meets an openly gay brother of integrity and heart—I dived in with great enthusiasm, only to be frustrated by a literary tentativeness as cloaking as the obvious nom de plume and a despicability as cloying as a Thanksgiving dinner with your least favorite relatives. 

 

Now make no mistake. Unraveled is mostly well written, but the author peoples his/her world with enough cowardly bitch-and-moan whiners, homophobes, liars and ‘holier-than thy-ers’ to build another West Angeles Church Babylonious shrine. 

Unraveled: Sealed Lips, Clenched Fists
By D. Fostalove
(iUniverse 291 pps)

Chauncey, a struggling journalist, and Destiny, an unmotivated welfare recipient, have been in a toxic live-in relationship for four years. Chauncey, while at a concert with his low-life, alcoholic cousin Frazier, meets Thai, a decent and proud gay man. Though Thai has unhidden romantic feelings for Chauncey, their friendship is noble and platonic, but because Destiny is the girlfriend-from-hell (“We fight good and we sex good,” she proudly tells Chauncey in her twisted idea of a come on), Chauncey spends a great deal of time in Thai’s company crying on his shoulder. 

Nothing much else happens in this story of any considerable consequence except domestic argument after domestic argument. Chauncey is too much of a milquetoast to leave Destiny, Thai is too unrealistically patient to send Chauncey packing, and cousin Frazier is too much of an asshole to illicit any sympathy when tragedy comes calling. 

I very much like Chauncey’s mother and found the chapter devoted to his returning home to her most compelling, but even here we are faced with a woman who is subtly condescending and antediluvian. 

Arguably the two greatest narcissistic, cry-baby, racists, bitch-glorious heroines in modern literary history are Margaret Mitchell’s Scarlet O’Hara (“Gone With The Wind”) and Tennessee Willams’ Blanche Dubois (“A Streetcar Named Desire”) but those authors walked that literary tightrope with such impeccably inventive and daring-do dexterity that we have been forever endeared to the very nasty qualities these characters imbued. But Fostalove’s Destiny is one of the most unlikable bitches ever committed to paper. 

The author also shoots him/herself in the foot with an over dependency on dialogue and precious little narrative, and the characters’ responses to anything are overly physical and emotionally anemic—cracking necks and knuckles, rolling eyes, staring up at the ceiling. 

Watching the lives of people unravel and fall apart is easy fodder for empathy and sympathy, but the characters here are so cold, unfeeling, and angry, that, after finishing this book, I felt mostly the same way. 

Urban Scholar Learning Academy presents 2 benefit performances of Stanley Bennett Clay's "Armstrong's Kid" Saturday, August 8, 2009. 6 pm and 8 pm. Lucy Florence Village Theatre 3351 W. 43rd St. L.A. 90008. 323.293.1356 or 323.707.7732