Massage by Henry Flesh

Massage

Henry Flesh

Disturbing post-AIDS story whose central character loses all sense of hope and almost embraces that which he most fears. They don't come much bleaker, or explicit.

Extract
He remembered how he had felt whilst posing for Graham, when, for a few seconds he'd sensed that he had become someone else. The sensation he'd had then frightened him now, particularly the pleasurable emptiness he'd experienced just before taking in that other identity. It was almost as if he were dead. Graham's rejection of him afterward only reinforced this feeling: naked, he had felt like a carcass. And, although Graham's subsequent actions upset and humiliated him, he had, underneath it all, liked the fact that he was getting what he was sure he deserved.
Parallels
  • City of Night by John Rechy
  • Dancer from the Dance by Andrew Holleran
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Violence
Explicit sexual content