Johnny Ray Returns in Larry Duplechan's Novel "Got Til It's Gone"

When readers (including me) first met him back in 1986 in Larry Duplechan's first novel Blackbird, Johnny Ray Rousseau was a seventeen-year-old growing up in the Inland Empire (San Bernardino County, east of LA), slender, black, aware that he was gay and aware that he could not be out at school or at home. His parents grew up in rural Louisiana and had a exorcism performed on him to drive out demons making him think he was homosexual. In three subsequent novels Johnny Ray met and defacto wed a gay white man while having a less than stellar career as a singer. (He was named for the Johhny Ray who sang "Cry" and was a teenage idol of his mother.)

If I recall, the lover died of AIDS-related complications before Captain Swing, a novel set around a funeral "back" in Louisiana. that was 1995, and nothing had been heard from Duplechan until last summer, when Got 'Til It's Goneupdated us on a more racial-politically-correct Johnny, looking ahead with trepidation toward turning 50. He's heard that "50 is the new 40," but isn't convinced. 50 is "midlife," he thinks, only for those who live to be a hundred, which few black men do.

There is no shortage of sexy black men who want to bed or wed Johnny Ray. (Though not as enthusiastic about a series of sexual partners as Ricky in the tv series "Noah's Arc," indeed almost as romantic as Noah, Johnny Ray has as little difficulty finding partners as Ricky...)

Johnny Ray's mother is facing death (an inoperable brain tumor) and has some things to tell Johnny Ray about his background. She has married a younger black physician and more or less accepted that her son is gay.

Johnny Ray's straight best friend also has some Revelations, that are also not entirely predictable, but not as that surprising to me as they are to the narrator.

Blackbird was ground-breaking. Gone is not. Indeed, the sequels to Blackbird were not, and I felt that Duplechan was straining toward political correctness in Capt. Swing (and that perhaps that explained his lapsing into silence). Since Blackbird came out, there's been the black/gay-affirmative romances (soap operas) of James Earl Hardy's b-boy series (which I also thought got tireder from volume to volume) and "Noah's Arc" (with its wedding-centered movie sequel, "Jumping the Broom"), "Brother to Brother," etc.

Gone does not stand out in a more crowded field. It is pleasant enough, sometimes funny, sometimes poignant, and way too loaded with designer names (this is the black-gay "Sex in the City" much more than "Noah's Arc"!) and pop musical references. I don't find it plausible that Johnny Ray would find an ex-porn star as familiar with lines from "Stage Door" as he is. (I can more readily accept that his best friend's gay friend French-kisses him, though suspecting this is more fantasy.)