Toby Johnson: Toby Johnson is the editor of White Crane: A Journal of Gay Men's Sprirituality. This review was originally published in White Crane Journal (#45). It is reprinted with permission from www.whitecranejournal.com online.
Perry Brass's new book, “Angel Lust,” is a surprising blend of gay pornography and spiritual mythology. The conceit of the story is that there are angels living among as incarnate human beings (but not miracle-workers or social servants for God like TV's Touched by an Angel). These beings are down-to-earth human beings, but they are actively engaged in the battle between good and evil and they are conscious of living outside normal time. Indeed, in the course of the story, the main character, transparently named Tommy De Angelo, periodically jumps across time. (The book is subtitled: An erotic novel of time travel.)
De Angelo's crossing the Time Bridge happens in the expanded consciousness of sexual arousal. He moves between two lifetimes: one in England in the early Middle Ages, the other in modern day New York City. He is able to make these jumps because the karmic patterns of the two time periods reflect one another; the characters in the present are reincarnations of those in the past.
And the same crisis is occurring in both times: a selfish and evil man is trying to gain influence and power. In the past he is the nasty Norman Baron Odred who is being fought by a Robin Hood-like band of forest men (followers of the Old Religion and devotees of homosexual sex as wilderness worship). In the present, he is the politically powerful, narcissistic real estate baron, Alan Hubris, who is being foiled in his plans to buy up and clean up NYC's gay bars (in the interests of assimilationism and self-aggrandizement) by a band of gay radical activists with a small, up-start community newspaper. In both time periods the angels are on the side of freedom and truth and unbridled sexual ecstasy.
The novel is especially interesting for its postmodern touches: a cameo appearance, for instance, by the erotic writer Smoky George, Perry Brass's porn nom de plume.
In Angel Lust, Brass offers a much more liberated vision of angels than we're used to. And by pushing the metaphor to the logical limit, he champions the spiritual side of sexuality. On the other hand, the sex scenes tend to dominate the plot and they are awfully raunchy. I guess this reviewer imagines gay angels having pretty “vanilla” sex. Brass's angels are more into deep, dark devil's food. But, of course, it is precisely the clash with conventional presentations of spiritual realities that Perry Brass revels in.
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