BOOKS

Some things are not meant to be kept

Kept Boy

by Robert Rodi

Dutton, $23.95 hardcover

Reviewed by Bob Boone

When Dennis Racine was only fifteen, Chicago theater director Farleigh Nock swept him away from his rural home, his hickish family, and his check-out counter job. Twenty-two years later, Farleigh's infatuation has long since been replaced with his disgust for the unambitious, unemployed, uninteresting creature into which Farleigh himself has molded Dennis. The latest novel of author Robert Rodi, Kept Boy chronicles the reactions and the schemes that ensue when Dennis learns he may be traded in for the pool boy.

The characters that Rodi crafts are realistic enough to support the improbable plot that unfolds, but their reality is necessarily dull and two-dimensional. As if ridiculous situations alleviate the necessity for actual humor, the volleys of attempted banter, particularly between Dennis and Christos (Farleigh's manservant and former kept boy), fall achingly flat.

A typical attempt is evidenced upon Dennis's return to the house after having fled during a fight with Farleigh. Dennis asks Christos where Farleigh has now gone and Christos's stab at a witty response dribbles out, "I imagine he found someplace. Anywhere to be away from you, Lady Macbeth Thing."

The inanity of the entire plot is disturbing only because it is infused with never-refuted links of Farleigh's age to his unattractiveness, with his only desirability consistently

spelled out to be his wealth. When Dennis introduces Farleigh to two twenty-something female friends, "The girls' smiles froze on their faces. 'Pleased to meet you,' they said, their tones suddenly hushed and reverential. They were obviously taken aback by Farleigh's age and apparent infirmity."

In the gay male community, where aging is all too often synonymous with uselessness, this attitude toward Farleigh helps to erase any frivolity that the book may have enjoyed.

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In another egregious failure of taste, Tracey, a friend that Dennis makes during a desperate trip to Greece, is at one point nearly raped by a young man from Mykonos, and shortly thereafter wistfully fantasizing what would have happened if she had only not resisted.

When her friend Roseanne forcefully reminds her that the man had tried to rape her, Tracey replies, "Well...I did sort of lead him on, you know? We ditched you and Evagoras and ran off alone and everything. I mean, what did I expect him to think? It's really kind of my fault, too, when you think about it," and concludes that "he was kind of cute."

While Kept Boy has the premise to be a light-hearted, clever book, the novel instead proves annoying and dull. Kept Boy is best kept on the shelf to be overlooked for a reading of the vastly more enjoyable A Boy Named Phyllis by Frank DeCaro, or a rereading of the truly witty Barrel Fever by David Sedaris (the last chapter of which, "The Santaland Diaries" has recently been transformed into a well-received off-Broadway play). These two books achieve the keen humor that Kept Boy barely even dreams to reach.

December 6, 1996 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

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