Michael

By: Luke Hartwell

Narrated by: Colby Lyons

Length: 31 mins

Publisher's summary

Ben cannot keep his mind off the handsome young wrestler sitting at the back of his world literature class. He fantasizes and fantasizes, and then he acts. A sexy, wickedly funny, and radically unusual tale by the acclaimed author of Love Underneath and Atom Heart John Beloved.

©2014 Luke Hartwell (P)2019 Luke Hartwell

Every gay college man’s fantasy

There is no deep plot or story line in “Michael.”
Hartwell usually writes about the evolution of the sexual lives of men or boys over a period of years. The characters are generally deep and introspective as they feel their ways through being or realizing they are gay. Some of his pieces are tortuous first-person stories in which you can feel the agony of men trying to find long-term happiness which seems to elude them at every turn. Others take us through a boy’s experience flirting with his own sexuality.
Michael is nothing so deep or thought provoking. It’s a gay high school or college student’s fantasy about watching another boy in class and falling for him. In it the hero tells us he has been watching this really cute boy, Michael, in a literature class and has built a fantasy about him. The fantasy becomes reality (we hope) and the two bond with expectations of a HEA. It’s a sweet and very graphic relationship. It’s a story you want to hear repeatedly to convince yourself that fantasies can come true.
If you are not familiar with Luke Hartwell you should remedy that shortcoming post haste. He’s an acquired taste, though, so don’t just read one of his works to decide if you like him. It’s his body of work that causes respect so indulge in a good sample to fully appreciate his writing. Many of his pieces are available on Audible, thankfully.

Honest

This story is wonderful. Its achievement as a wonderful bit of writing rests on several considerations that I would like to quickly go into.

First it is a short story, a very short story. This means that the author is able to focus on a very specific time and set of actions between two people.

Second, the writing is a very honest portrayal of the sexual and emotional obsessions of a young gay man. Here I'm using the word obsession not in a clinical sense, but as a casual way to describe an emotional focus.

Third, this is a gay man writing about the emotionality, desire for sex, and desire for love found in other gay men. This is important since most genre gay fiction is written by women for a female audience.

In this short story, gay male sexuality and emotionality is not a minstrel show created for the titillation of a female audience. That alone makes a heck of a difference in the way the story is told.

I purchased a story a bit on a dare since I had already read a longer book written by the same author. In that previous encounter, I was dissatisfied by the author's inability to focus on the type of story he wanted to tell.

I was also a bit concerned about the way interpersonal violence was casually introduced into the story. I thought the writing lacked maturity. Nonetheless, I was a fan of the way the author realistically portrayed physical intimacy between two young adults.

Maybe shorter works of fiction play to Luke Hartwell's strengths and sidesteps his weaknesses as an author. I do hope that someday this author is able to put together 300 pages of fiction that are as tightly wound, realistic, and compelling as this short story.

This 31 minute story costs just under $3. It is well worth the money.