At Certain Points We Touch

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A phenomenal eulogy to, presumably, a fictional gay lover from a trans woman in what appears to be the early oughts almost coming-of-age story nested in the (again, fictional, I presume) London queer scene of the time.

I found the character of Thomas James to be very far from my personal taste and I can't tell you why, but I couldn't understand why the main character kept coming back to him. And I think I must be getting old, or I’ve read that story too often, because my patience for it is not so much worn thin as entirely dissolved. Their ensuing affair, with its violent, animal intensity and its intoxicating and toxic power play will initiate a dance of repulsion and attraction that will cross years, span continents, drag in countless victims - and culminate in terrible betrayal. However, upon reaching the 30 percent mark I began to lose interest in what the author was presenting; I simply did not care.Bambi Lake, Penny Arcade, Maggie Nelson, Kathy Acker, Burroughs and also establishment darlings Joan Didion and Ocean Vuong all make appearances and exist as anchors for a subcultural scene that knows from whence it comes.

But these aren’t things that are most pronounced when you are in love, they are truths, which reveal themselves over time, like the bones of a skeleton as the flesh rots away. The writing is gloriously unabashed, skimming effortlessly from the esoteric to the ribald, from the poetic to the pragmatic, though you kind of have also accept it’s as extra as fuck. Her prose is tender and lyrical, yet also raw and unflinching as it jumps between love and pain, living and grieving, memory and the fleeting nature of time.His relationship to his queerness and his fundamental homophobia and conservative values are unearthed, begging the question of who he might have become. Every single page is heavy with meaning and though the language is admittedly pretentious at times, it is in the best possible way. To that end I need to emphasize that this book achieves in that special way that only rare books can: it changed me.