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For our book club this week we read Gaywyck, the First Trad Pubbed Gay Gothic Novel [1980] [Avon books] [here is the original and IMO never-equalled cover], an experience that was like .... okay imagine a book that's like you took Jane Eyre, Flowers in the Attic, and Mercedes Lackey's The Fire Rose and threw them all in a blender, and then carefully crossed out the name of whatever Gothic love interest you got from this blender situation and gleefully wrote in GAYLORD over the top of it. That's Gaywyck.

All right, so the plot. It's the year 1899 and young Robbie Whyte, a beautiful blonde sensitive seventeen-year-old waif who's been homeschooled in near total isolation by his Strict and Repressed Father and Mentally Ill Mother, has defiantly rejected his father's intention of sending him to Harvard and as a result found himself with no future .... until he is fortunately yet inexplicably offered a POSITION as PERSONAL LIBRARIAN to the WEALTHY and MYSTERIOUS DONOUGH GAYLORD in the beautiful remote SOUTHERN GOTHIC LONG ISLAND MANOR of GAYWYCK.

(Why is there a Southern Gothic manor in Long Island? something something Southern Belle grandmother something something Civil War backstory yikes something something grandfather revenge murder but do not worry about the grandfather; in 1867, aged seventy-seven, after being thrown from a wasp-stung horse while examining his potato crop for parasites, he died. None of this will be relevant again except for loving descriptions of THE HOUSE.)

Current inhabitants of Gaywyck:

- ROBBIE, whose job is to decoratively putter around with the books, occasionally encountering a murder attempt, a dark family secret, or a woman living in the walls who looks startlingly like his mad mother, and going "wow! bizarre! well, anyway"
- TWO WEIRD OLD MEN who used to be tutors to the Gaylord family and now apparently do nothing at all except occasionally utter ominous warnings or threats. One of them [regular tutor] lost two fingers in a mysterious and tragic tutor accident and the other [music tutor] plays dramatic piano all day and is intermittently possessed by the delusion that he himself is Beethoven. ABSOLUTELY impossible to ask them to do anything about organizing the books, we MUST hire a beautiful young twink for this job
- BRIAN, the beautiful mute genius kitchen boy who also suffered a tragic past accident of which we do not speak; as it turns out, not actually mute, perfectly happy to speak to Robbie, which is meant I think as an indication of how special and beautiful Robbie is but in fact is perfectly well explained by the notion that Brian has no interest in interacting with the Weird Old Men and has come up with a reason not to do it
- CAEL, the cat, who normally only loves Donough Gaylord but sees Robbie and clearly immediately is like "this child does not have the sense God gave a grasshopper" and appoints himself his personal guardian. Victim of multiple murder attempts but don't worry, we are not killing the cat today.
- A WOMAN LIVING IN THE WALLS who looks STARTLINGLY LIKE ROBBIE'S MAD MOTHER
- AN UNKNOWN PERSON WHO KEEPS STALKING ROBBIE AND LEAVING THREATENING MAYBE-GIFTS AND ATTEMPTING TO MURDER THE CAT
- a full, totally normal 19th century household staff that Robbie is surprised 1/3 of the way through the book to learn exist because he's too busy being distracted by beautiful Brian, the weird old men, the woman living in the walls, etc. etc.

Anyway. As indicated, Robbie's time at Gaywyck is haunted by various ominous signs, portents, indications of dark family secrets, etc. Robbie, one of the most incurious protagonists of Gothic literature, does nothing about any of this except Experience it intermittently between stints of book-pottering, art-admiring, and also transformative sexual awakenings (probably not actual sex yet) (discovery of pornography mysteriously scratched into a cave, etc, plus sexual fantasies about Donough Gaylord) (unless they're not fantasies! who could say!). Every so often Donough Gaylord swoops into the mansion or invites Robbie back to Manhattan to shower him with gifts, new suits, trips to the opera, and delightful social events with his best friends, a charming interracial gay lawyer couple who fortunately have no problems being a charming interracial gay lawyer couple even though the year is 1899.

Facts about Donough Gaylord: he ALSO had a Mentally Ill Mother! he also had an IDENTICAL TWIN who was VIOLENT and did MYSTERIOUS HARMS to VARIOUS FAMILY MEMBERS and when they were children no one could tell them apart! but don't worry, the evil twin is tragically dead now, as are all the other Gaylords, and Donough now moves sadly through the Gilded Age in a haunted cloud using his vast fortune to support unions and orphans and the opera and Impressionist art, and now, also, Robbie.

To be clear, Donough is not the kind of Gothic protagonist who goes into violent rages. Donough shows no signs that he would fly into a fury if Robbie brought up the various weird things that he has experienced at Gaywyck or perhaps posed a question about the woman living in the walls who looks startlingly like his mad mother, or maybe warned Donough that someone was apparently trying to murder his cat. Robbie simply does not wish to upset the status quo: despite or perhaps because of the fact that he's constantly whiplashing between perfect romantic wish-fulfillment and ominous Gothic portents, he is happy as a clam and his only real concern is wondering why Donough hasn't actually fallen into bed with him yet despite the fact that he's constantly buying him romantic gifts and his charming gay friends think they would make a perfect couple.

Alas! then Incidents occur to upset the peace of Gaywyck! specifically, Donough in his endless urge to rescue orphans sends a streetwise fourteen-year-old urchin who has been Living Rough since he was But Five Years Old out to recover in the beautiful Southern Gothic Long Island air. Robbie hates this urchin on sight but Gaywyck's two weird old men both immediately become obsessed with him and the street urchin decides that playing them sexually against each other is his best chance to make a profit on this weird situation; Robbie, seventeen, stupid, and not a mandated reporter, watches this increasingly tortured dynamic play out like >:((( when are things gonna get back to NORMAL around here >:(((

Anyway, the disruptive energy of the street urchin sets off a chain of events that gradually brings all the dark secrets of Gaywyck to light!

- the old man who thinks he's Beethoven murders the fourteen-year-old out of jealousy, which finally makes Robbie realize that possibly he should have given the fourteen-year-old some kind of support in his situation instead of sulking in his room going >:((( about it
- almost EVERYONE at Gaywyck was involved in some kind of sexual child abuse of the Gaylord twins
- including their father and his private secretary/long-term live-in boyfriend, who abused Connor the Evil Twin but not Donough the Good Twin, which is ALSO a wound in Donough the Good Twin's soul because was there something wrong with him??
- Donough has also been impotent since he was thirteen when the twins attempted to imitate their father by having sex with each other, which is why he hasn't had sex with Robbie
- so every time Robbie THOUGHT he was having sex with Donough, he was actually having sex with CONNOR THE TROUBLED EVIL TWIN
- who unknown to Donough is ALIVE and WELL and being SUPPORTED by their OLD NANNY
- [the old nanny is a sweet and perhaps too nonjudgmental nanny who replaced their previous extremely abusive nanny. this book can fit SO much child abuse in it]
- the whole Connor fake death situation was set up as an elaborate plot by the other old man, the non-Beethoven one, who's been lying to both twins about it
- because Connor the Troubled Evil Twin cut off his fingers for molesting Donough
- Connor the Troubled Evil Twin also attacked sweet not-actually-mute Brian in a fit of rage when they were teens because Brian wouldn't sleep with him and half cut off his dick, but don't worry, Brian has not only recovered but in fact grown into the book's only straight or at least bisexual man and gets happily het married by the end of the book
- and one of these old men has been drugging Robbie the entire time he's been in the house, I frankly can't remember which one, but anyway this does explain some of Robbie's otherwise inexplicable behavior
- anyway! the woman living in the walls is the Gaylord mother; their father faked her death for crazy reasons
- the reason she looks identical to Robbie's mother is that they're SECRETLY COUSINS
- which the guy who contacted Donough about Robbie's employment knew, which is why he wrote to him like 'hey your cousin needs a job,' but Donough did NOT actually know they were cousins, so he was just like "uhhhh you got a spare twink who needs a job? I guess?? someone needs to organize my books and the molesting tutors I'm still responsible for for some reason are not gonna do it"
- so Robbie/Donough is I guess technically cousincest but honestly we're in a Gothic and it's so much more normal compared to everything else that's going on that who cares
- by the end of the book, Robbie has defied the wiles of sexy troubled Connor the Evil Twin and defiantly declared that he wants to LIVE for love but not DIE for it, Connor is dead for real, both evil old men are also dead, the house has caught on fire multiple times, both mad mothers are on their way to a healthy recovery, and true love has cured Donough's impotence
- and the cat is fine

Now as you can see I have written this post with Some Humor and that is because the book is absolutely and intentionally camp, but I want to be clear that it isn't parody: the writing style is in full and sincere 19th-century Gothic earnest, and the heart of the book in and amongst all the nonsense and wish fulfillment and Extremely Dramatical Plot Events is about a young gay man joyously discovering himself and being frankly thrilled to be who he is and excited to be alive about it. The fact that this is happening amidst a background of so much incest, child abuse, etc kind of just feels like an extra defiant middle finger thrown out at a world that [especially in 1980] largely associated queerness with this particular flavor of villainy: so what if the backstory of your Gothic mansion is filled with all this shit? Is this going to stop you from being delighted to discover that gay sex is real and lifetime gay partnerships are real and you absolutely get to have them if you want to? No! It will not!! So shout outs to Robbie and his overall joie de vivre, despite occasional bouts of weeping maidenly tears; the book has absolutely earned its reputation as a classic.

ETA: one of my fellow book clubbers has also now left an incredible and extremely accurate book club review although you may have to be logged in to see it

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larryhammer

I'm kind of in awe.

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