My Mother Keeps Buying Me Homoerotic Novels

How my family shares books as a way to connect and communicate

The novel has the power to connect and heal in a way that other languages fail. It doesn’t merely contain language, it is a language in itself. Two people can read a book and never speak of it, yet they will both forever inhabit the same world. With each story, our collective minds, hearts, and worlds expand. Such is the novel’s power.

About five years ago, my mother started gifting me books by Australian author Christos Tsiolkas. She had read an article in the newspaper about how he wrote Barracuda, a gay coming-of-age story. So I received a copy of the book in the mail along with the article.

Invariably, I will get a clipping or link to any article or interview involving Christos Tsiolkas. It’s as if he is a long-lost uncle. There’s something about him that my mother connects with, and then wants to share with me.

At first, I thought receiving a novel with gay themes from my mother was cute. It only recently dawned on me how vital this sharing is to our relationship.

All this started with my father. I never felt like I connected with him while growing up. It always seemed like Dad bonded more with my brother, as they shared interests in football, cricket, and horseracing; none of which were my thing.

I was jealous of boys who had a close relationship with their fathers. I wanted to be able to sit with mine and share freely what was on my mind. I wanted to open up, but there was a barrier.

When I was twenty-three, I invited my father on a holiday for just him and me. I thought, if we spent some good quality time together then maybe we’d be able to connect.

So we planned a ten-day road trip around Tasmania. I was nervous as this was going to be the most amount of time I would spend alone with my dad in my life.

We met at the airport in Launceston and picked up a car. Neither of us brought any music, so at the first road stop, we bought a copy of Santana’s latest album on cassette tape. We would have listened to that thing fifty-eleven times.

In my mind, I had a whole list of topics I wanted to ask him about. But as we drove around Tasmania with our Santana soundtrack, none of those topics came up. I didn’t even know how to start the conversation.

We just drove, mostly in silence. We talked only about what we saw in nature, but never about him or us.

When we departed on the tenth day, I was disappointed. I wondered, Would I ever have a close relationship with my dad?

But something did shift. Now we shared an experience — just him and me and no one else. And although we never spoke of it, we knew we had that.

I can’t remember the year I felt my Dad and I connected, but I do remember the book. It was Anam Cara by Irish mystic John O’Donohue.

It turns out that while I don’t have a fine appreciation for football, we both share a love for books. And especially books about either spirituality or Australia. When both combine, that’s the stuff of magic.

My Dad felt compelled to share Anam Cara with me. We never spoke about it aside from a brief “thank you.” My more notable reply was return-gifting a book I recently read — Ishmael by Daniel Quinn. Again, we never spoke of it.

Since then, Dad and I have exchanged countless books. When my mother calls to chat, often my father pipes in, “What are you reading?”

Herein lies the nature of my connection with my father. We speak in books.

My mother must have noticed this somewhere along the way. She and I have always been close, so I never felt like we needed books in order to communicate. We were fine chatting over the phone.

But in truth, there were some topics that we never discuss. Amongst those topics are love and sex. The avoidance of these subjects is not limited to me. My straight siblings also don’t talk about these topics with our parents.

I came out years ago and my parents have met a couple of my boyfriends. But aside from that, my love life is largely locked up. I allow few people in and will probably die before feeling comfortable talking with my parents about sex.

This arrangement has suited me fine. I am happy sharing every other aspect of my life with my family — career changes, health challenges, existential dilemmas. But I do not need to talk about sex.

I imagine the avoidance of these topics is common for other queer folks and their parents.

Same-sex marriage was palatable for straight people, as they could relate to it. And so long as they could picture a wedding, it meant they didn’t have to visual what men do sexually.

We gay people know how straight sex works — it’s all over movies and popular culture. Some of us have even tried it. But acting on the sexual passion between two men still carries an element of taboo.

I always wondered about those friends who do have the kinds of relationships with their parents where they could open up about sex. I was more puzzled than jealous though. There was nothing in those relationships that I wanted. I was fine with my double life.

Even when we disavow the dominion of that language — wish to resist it, to rebirth it, even to shatter it — we are too often trapped in that puritanical fear of the body. Terrified of the erotic, resisting its allure, we fortify ourselves against it by mocking it; or condemning its wildness, demanding it to be tamed. — Christos Tsiolkas, 7½

Then there is the matter of my mother gifting me books by Christos Tsiolkas. He is an author and out gay man. But his novels defy genre and transcend narrow themes. He writes about power, culture, society, morality, and more.

Labeling his novels as gay literature or even strictly homoerotic would be inaccurate and limiting. But therein lies the catch. It is also not possible to write fiction without revealing yourself. All of his novels include gay characters, and sometimes, highly descriptive sex scenes.

Mum gifts most books with a request, “I’ll read that after you.” This means I will need to give her the book knowing its contents. Conveniently, I’ve loaned most to gay friends “forgetting” my mother asked to read the book.

The latest I am reading is his new novel, 7½. Some of the scenes and language in it are the most sexually evocative of any of his novels. And this time my father also chimed in. Dad wants to read it too.

I already know I won’t be able to dodge this one. I will share it with Mum and Dad for the simple reason that it is brilliant. It is as fine as any novel in any genre. It is about Tsiolkas’ quest to write about beauty — a mission at which he succeeds impeccably.

Now, ahead of me, is a great threshold in my relationship with my parents. By sharing this book, I am inviting them into my world. They will see the same world that my passions and lust live in. They will know what men do. They will know what I do.

But I realize that this is exactly how it needs to be. In the same way that, as a gay man, I grew up in a straight-dominant world where every sexual reference was heterosexual, they too must enter my world to know me.

Otherwise, it would mean continuing our lives living in separate worlds and never fully knowing each other.

I need the novel to do this for us. I need it to create a shared reality. I need our family’s world to get bigger. For them to know the world I live in, and through that, to know me.