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GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE September 7, 2007

GAY, LESBIAN, BI, TRANS?

JEWISH?

CHEVREI TIKVA CHAVURAH

Of Anshe Chesed Fairmount Temple

Center of the Jewish GLBT Community in NE Ohio

שס

ANSHE CHESED

FAIRMOUNT TEMPLE

23737 Fairmount Blvd. Beachwood, OH 216-464-1330

✡

Now in its 24th year celebrating Shabbat every first & third Friday each month plus a variety of social events. HIGH HOLIDAYS

BEGINNING SEPTEMBER 12th

For more information contact Cathy Lipton at clipton@fairmounttemple.org

Before

the lesbian, gay, community Ohio,

packs their bags to visit

02

A fun little romp by the shore of Provincetown

by Anthony Glassman

You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead— your next stop, Provincetown!

That's a melodramatic introduction, but when a novel's main character is a charlatan who uses his ersatz astrological skills to get handsome young men to drop trou so he can "balance their chakras"which looks like kneading their butt cheeks-perhaps it's best to take a page out of Joel Eisenberg's manual. Eisenberg is the nebbishy main character of Jaffe Cohen's Tush (Carroll & Graff, $14.95, trade paperback), a complete zero who, while providing spurious psychic readings himself, also fervently believes in one given to him, telling him to head north to find his true love.

With a young hunk

into whose pants he would like to travel in tow, Joel heads to Provincetown, where he meets Dennis Fairchild, a talented, popular artist who has managed to sleep his way through most of the town's visitors.

What draws Joel to Dennis the most, however, can be pretty easily sussed out

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from the title of the novel-his tush. Joel is, you see, an "ass man," not really caring about sex per se as much as grabbing a handful of buttock and rubbing, massaging, and otherwise manhandling it.

Dennis, however, views Joel as he would his toaster, something that can be used when necessary and stashed away in a cabinet when it's not needed.

Dennis' handyman, Bill Doyle, has other things in mind for Joel, who is a dead ringer for his dead lover, Mitchell Savitt. Mitchell and Joel crossed paths at summer camp decades before; when everyone asked Joel if he and the counselor were siblings.

Jajje Cohen

Things spin out of control, as things do in comic novels, and the ultimate question ends up being: Can the man with a thing for asses get his head out of his own ass in time to find love?

Cohen is a talented writer, and an extremely funny one at that. A founding member of the comedy troupe Funny Gay Males (which he plugs in the novel), he also wrote the screenplay for the amusing little indie film Hit and Runway.

In this milieu, however, he is at his peak. Without the constraints of film, able to give voice to his characters' innermost thoughts and display the most outlandish creatures without needing to find actors to play them, he creates a phantasmagoria of outrageous queens, sissies, sluts and muscle boys, all pirouetting around each other like cokedup dervishes.

Add in a mental soundtrack of music from the old Keystone Kops films, and it is a fair indication of how funny Cohen can be. The book is a trifle in every sense of the word, and like the dessert, it's sweet and fluffy, and doesn't last nearly long enough. One can spoon it in at breakneck pace, and the only regret that lingers afterwards is that the enjoyment is over.

Betsy Warner Agent

GayPeoples Chronicle.com

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