Have you ever taken time to reflect over the years and asked yourself, "Where did the time go?" or "How did I get here?" or even "What events have led me to where I am now?" If you have found yourself questioning your life choices and your state of existence, know that you are not alone.

Author James Daniel's newest novel, Careening into Gay Midlife, follows Jim, a man who looks back and finds that his life has been marked by regrets. So he embarks on a literal journey to fulfill his childhood dreams and adult desires.

Throughout the novel, Jim's relationships with family, friends, coworkers, partners, and even hook-ups — and how they impacted him and certain decisions he made — are uncovered through short tales. His difficult childhood was filled with abuse, and as a result, he lacks the proper social and interpersonal skills needed to maintain lasting relationships. His abandonment issues also soon become apparent when he continually becomes rapidly attached to others with grand displays of adoration. This gets tricky during sexual relationships, as when he describes one: "His love of fabricating falsehoods should have warned me never to see him again, but before I could make an escape, Cupid aimed a bazooka at me and hit my heart dead center."

Although Jim struggles with many relationships, he holds the positive ones in high regard, even if they only last a short time. This becomes particularly relatable when he describes his years working at Tower Records, and some good memories with his colleagues. Do you ever look back at your previous jobs and think about the times when you worked with some truly wonderful people? I know I certainly do. If there is anything Jim teaches readers, it is to cherish the good times, because the bad ones can creep up far too quickly.

The events in this book mostly occur from the 1970s through the 1990s. For a Gay man trying to take advantage of his early adult years, that meant navigating the world during the AIDS crisis, with little idea of what the future would hold. As a reader, this allowed me to take a step back for a second and draw parallels to the current pandemic, especially during the spring of 2020, and how we were still uncertain how to combat the virus, and how it was transmitted.

As for the unknown disease going around the Gay community back then, Jim did not seem to pay too much attention to it initially. During his early twenties, he struggled with dating and small talk (let's be real, both can be pretty challenging, especially when combined), but by the time he was in his late twenties, he had gained much more confidence and took advantage of it by having more frequent one-night stands — right around the time when the AIDS epidemic was reaching its peak.

I won't go into much more detail. But like with COVID-19, people end up in a place from which they can't ever return. Some of these are people closest to Jim.

In conjunction with the AIDS epidemic, themes of mental illness also arise: anxiety, self-doubt, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder. Everybody struggles with at least one of these. (I mean, you'd be lying to yourself if you said you haven't struggled with anxiety once during this entire 'rona pandemic.)

That's part of what makes this book so relatable, particularly now. It isn't a requirement to have fought in war or suffered an extreme accident in order to have anxiety, depression, or PTSD. Events such as childhood trauma or just living through a pandemic can be stressors, too.

One important lesson of this book is getting help, especially when things haven't been going well. It's about coming to terms and coping with decisions and memories, and growing into the person you want to be.

I highly recommend you pick up a copy of Careening into Gay Midlife, in which you can travel back in time to San Francisco, Washington DC, and Seattle too. Discover how interpersonal relationships shape the way we act and perceive the world, and how dance and music always heals (oh, you can bet Prince and Donna Summer come up). And most importantly, revisit Gay communities throughout the country during one of the biggest turning points in history.

Rating: 5/5


CAREENING INTO GAY MIDLIFE
JAMES DANIEL
�2021 BookBaby
$14.00
288 pages