“4.75 Stars!...A quiet, funny, erotic, colorful, not–quite memoir of a gay man’s eventful life in New Orleans from the 1950's until today. I wanted to adopt Sebastian as my very own Uncle Queen. I wanted to sit at his feet and listen breathlessly to him as he tells the story of his life...Sebastian’s life makes a story very much worth listening to. This story has another main character, albeit a mute one...it’s the city of New Orleans. If you’re looking for a fulfilling, pleasant and very well-written story, go for this book, you won’t go wrong.”--Feliz, Reviews By Jessewave
“5 HEARTS!...This was an interesting and unique story. It offered a completely different and enlightening point of view on what it was like to be gay in a time and place, where it was not as accepted as it is now. It shows you how far we've come and just how far we still have to go. I was totally engrossed in Sebastian's life and experiences. The book moves smoothly between the past and the present. The author did a wonderful job on the characters. I found Sebastian to be a delightful and audacious character, who draws you into his life through his memories, which are at times humorous, or saddening, or touching. There are also some very steamy and at times detailed M/M situations, between Lane and Matt and also from Sebastian's experience in the story. They are well written and fit in with the story but if this is not something you like in detail then I would not recommend this story, but you would also be missing out on a Sebastian's story which just cries out to be heard.”--Ana, The Romance Studio
...“It was the fifties, lamb chop. One didn’t come out of the closet, one tiptoed out.” Sebastian wiggled two ring-bedecked fingers in the air as if they were walking. “And then one tiptoed right back in.”
Matt adjusted the camera so the old gentleman filled the frame. Matt and his partner Lane rented the small slave quarters behind Sebastian’s Creole cottage in the French Quarter and Matt had finally talked the older man into an interview. Sebastian would be the first of the many gay men Matt planned to film for a documentary about gays living in New Orleans over the last fifty years.
“How young were you when you realized you were gay?” Matt asked. There, he’d gotten the perfect shot of the seventy-something-year-old. Wearing his favorite smoking jacket, the burgundy velvet with black satin lapels, Sebastian lounged in the leather wingback chair in front of a packed bookcase, as dapper a figure as he’d ever been.
“Gay?” Sebastian sniffed. “We weren’t gay back then, my boy. We were queer. Faggots. Perverts and degenerates.” He rolled his eyes. “All I knew was I was wrong.”
“Wrong? What do you mean?” Matt had thought interviewing Sebastian would be easy—get him started and figure out which questions to ask, but now he wasn’t so sure. There were times when Sebastian could be so obtuse.
“Well, I wasn’t right. I didn’t want to look at the magazines the other boys did. I wasn’t interested in cars and girls and sports. I spent most of my time in the antique stores and art galleries on Royal Street.” He leaned forward as if to impart a secret. “I lusted after other boys.”
“But how old were you?” Matt pressed.
“Ten. Twelve.” Sebastian sighed. “Oh, lamb, I suppose I just knew. And attending Catholic boys’ school didn’t help, did it?”
“How do you mean?” Matt had attended Catholic school himself, so he knew what Sebastian spoke about, but he wanted it explained for the people who didn’t know.
“All those boys.” He gave an exaggerated delightful shiver. “Not to mention the priests. Today, it would be a gay boy’s paradise. But back then, there was a thrilling element, overshadowed by fear and terror.” He waved his hand again. “I often envied the other boys who went to public schools with girls. At least you had an excuse for sporting an erection all day.” He winked at Matt. “In an all boys’ school, there’s no one to blame, is there?”
“I suppose not.” Matt laughed. “So, you were having these…”
“Urges.”
“Right. Urges. Tell me about the first time you kissed a boy.”
“The first time? Oh, my. That would be Charles Freiberg.” Later Matt would blank out the name in the edits to protect those not out. “He lived a few streets away with his family, but didn’t study with the brothers. They were Jewish.”
“You were how old?”
“I was…” Sebastian closed his eyes and thought. “Fifteen? It happened the summer I was fifteen. He was Jewish, I was Catholic and it was very taboo.” He smiled and wiggled his eyebrows. “We weren’t in love, mind you. Just curious.”
“What happened?”
“What always happens on a steamy New Orleans afternoon when two gay boys find each other alone in the back of the grocery store?” He chuckled. “We’d been looking at each other for weeks. He’d pass by my house; I’d pass by his. We were all hot, smoldering looks and hard-ons. One day, he followed me to the grocery store. I’d gone to get a pound of hogshead cheese and a bottle of wine for my father.”
“He kissed you in the grocery store?”
“Right in front of the meat counter. No pun intended...”