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Author: Jeffrey Hickey

Publisher: CreateSpace

ISBN-10: 1470152614

ISBN-13: 978-1470152611

Veering right away from the subject of pro football on which Jeffrey Hickey’s first adult novel, The Coach’s Son, centered comes this steamer of a novel, which also, however, centers on a young man’s coming of age, although this time on a college campus that is literally swarming with gays. It is, after all, situated in one of the most homophilic of all cities―San Francisco at the height of the gay rights movement, in the late 1970’s to mid-1980’s. In the preface to this novel Hickey prepares the reader for the range of formats that follow, claiming that it is “abridged from the journals, notebooks, and cassettes of Dave Morehead, a straight young man living in a gay old city.” In this way, Hickey prepares us for a somewhat unusual juxtaposition of a range of scenarios that are written very much tongue in cheek―from its very title, Morehead, one is made aware of that fact.

In Morehead, the main protagonist reveals the inner workings of his mind and psyche as he has to become increasingly assertive and sure of his own heterosexuality while being challenged as to the authenticity of his true self. Starting out at San Francisco State University as a young adult, having just come into his majority, with an urgent need to seduce women, he finds himself in conflict with the prevailing ethos of the day. What lies ahead is a journey of self-discovery that has him striving not only to come to a deeper understanding of his own motives and intentions, but also growing in empathy and intellectual grasp of those around him, who are threatened by such devastating problems as the AIDS crisis. There are lighter moments, though, such as his experiences with bouts of temporary work that interlace the other segments of the novel.

The entire text is overlain with a continuous thread of sexual innuendo, which acts as a gel, binding the different parts of the text together. After finishing this book, I must say that I continued to see double entendre in everything that I read for a couple of days. Clearly, this book is neither intended for any public library collection, nor fit for any maiden aunt’s private collection (though with the latter, you never do know…). One regret that I do have about this work is that its different components are so loosely bound together that some overall coherence is lost. However, it does make for an interesting, slightly perverted, read, especially for those of slightly jaundiced mind.

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