I was skeptical. A 40 page novella written from the point of view of a deformed beggar named Jun. Jun lives in the Phillippines and lives off the remenants of the burgeoning street boy sex scene of the early 1990s. I say the remnants because Jun never actually gets to have sex with any of the pedophile foriegners cruising the streets. Disgusted by his deformities, they ignore Jun and selects his young friends to take to their hotels for nights of perverse lust. But, as Sharpe accurately, methodically and successfuly shows us, Jun does not consider himself lucky. He wants to go to hotels and have sex with the foriegners. After all, that’s what all his friends do. Instead he’s reduced to sniffing glue, drinking cough syrup and waiting for the drunk foriegners to drop a few pesos his way as they head back to the hotel, Jun’s buddies in tow. Sharpe’s portrayal of Jun’s psychology is extremely convincing. The book, which I first thought would be a burden to read — fraught with moralizing — is a straight-forward third person narrative written more like an enthographic study than a fiction. The language is plain, the descriptions and motivations clear, and the story less heart-wrenching and more interesting than you would suspect. Sharpe has command of his narrative; like Jun, the story doesn’t dwell, or vacillate. It is what it is. The book ends as it begins, with Jun living an almost contented, completely horrible life. An engrossing read.
chapbook, 40 pages / publisher: Kalayaan Publications / main creator: Robin Sharpe (author) / $? / #302-1450 Chestnut St., Vancouver, BC V6J 3K3