DRAG QUEEN OF ELFLAND: SHORT STORIES

Many gay writers have had an affinity for the supernatural and fanciful–think of James M. Barrie’s Peter Pan or Oscar Wilde’s fairy tales–and why not? In societies that persecute homosexuals, what could be more comforting than alternative worlds that transcend the harshness of reality? In its 17 stories The Drag Queen of Elfland creates not so much other independent worlds, but shows us the hidden reality beneath our all too expected material lives. In “Take Back the Night,” a lesbian bookstore owner meets one of the women who runs with the (were) wolves, and in “Hemo Homo,” a gay vampire discovers the drawbacks of going to the gym (too many mirrors, is the least of it). Lawrence Schimel is always funny, politically on-target, and unafraid to push his subject to new, and often startling, places.