The Dreaming

These stories have the virtue of taking the everyday lives of gay Trinidadian men utterly for granted in their searches for adventure, pleasure, self-realisation, loving contact and sex. Written with a sharpness of perception and in a variety of engaging personal voices, these narratives find room for humour, tragic haircuts, and a connection between tattoos and terrible poetry. But they also acknowledge very real fears in a society where there is still prejudice, discrimination and homophobic violence. The narrator of several of these pieces is a writer who wants to focus on the pleasures and inner dramas of these lives as the truth about gay experience. But there are also the stories of brutal murders reported with coy innuendo in the press. If he is tempted to see his lovers as characters in a witty fiction of manners, is this the novel that can be written in Trinidad? And since this is Trinidad, could the conflicted, self-hating Dorian really be a serial killer? But then when one of Bagoo’s writer narrators unwittingly alarms his writing buddies by the freedom of his gothic imagination, who knows what might be true. Not for nothing does the author include the singer Kate Bush with her Wuthering Heights in his acknowledgements. Bagoo’s stories offer a witty and incisive portrait of contemporary Trinidad in all its intersections of race, class and gender politics. Not least, they have a strong sense of place – Bagoo’s gay Woodbrook offers a fine sequel to V.S. Naipaul’s Woodbrook in his classic Miguel Street.

At one level, Andre Bagoo’s stories have the very real virtue of taking the everyday lives of his gay Trinidadian characters utterly for granted in their searches for sex, adventure, pleasure, self-realisation and all the enrichments of loving contact. There’s a neat balance between a highly enjoyable sharpness of perception and a relaxed and engaging personal voice, and room for humour in several of these stories. How is the poet ever going to disabuse his lover that his writing has any merit – especially when desire leads him to have a line of his lover’s dire poetry immortalised in a tattoo? Where is a style-conscious journalist going to find a barbershop that can do justice to his hair? But the stories also record moments of self-denial, self-deception and fear that point to the fact that this is still a society where gay men experience prejudice, discrimination, and homophobic violence. The narrator of several of these stories is a writer who wants to focus on the personal satisfactions and inner dramas of these lives as the truth about gay experience. But at the back of his mind are the stories of the brutal murders of gay men reported with coy innuendo in the press. If he is tempted to see his lovers as characters in a witty novel of manners, is this a novel that can only take place somewhere other than in Trinidad? But since this is Trinidad, could the conflicted, self-hating Dorian really be a serial killer? Bagoo’s stories offer a witty and acutely drawn portrait of contemporary Trinidad in all its intersections of race, class and gender politics. Not least, they share a strong sense of place – Bagoo’s gay Woodbrook offers a fine sequel to V.S. Naipaul’s Woodbrook stories in his classic Miguel Street.