Serendipity is a marvelous thing! I was looking for an ancient address book to find out the date of my step-son’s birth (for my third memoir GAY GEISHA), and to my surprise ran across a CD from about 15 years ago labeled “Files from old computer.” And what did I miraculously find on it but a file of the text of my first novel DIVINE DEBAUCH! I’d figured that to revise it I’d have to type the whole thing all over again (as I’d had to do for BAT IN A WHIRLWIND). But the universe gave me a splendid gift. I only found that old address book weeks later by total accident—when I no longer needed it.

With the old text in hand, all I had to do was edit it (one of my favorite activities—you can guess at others), and right away I jumped on the fun, playing steadily for about ten days in my viral solitude. Now I can cancel the book I published online in 2003 and today in 2021 offer you the immensely better revised edition of DIVINE DEBAUCH for free download. Go for it!

Told in many voices, including his own and those of friends and lovers, this is the picaresque, semi-fictional, semi-epistolary tale of Tommy Youngblood, a college boy who frequents the disreputable Latin and Greek sailor dives on the Wild Side waterfront of the Quarter. A dervish in the Holy Carouse, Tommy dances his gay way through love affairs and amorous adventures, celebrating his brief sweet youth in a Dionysian debauch.

As a teaser, here’s a passage from a letter of Tommy’s scandalous antics with hunky Mark:

“          Showtime! The evening’s concert was packed with crowd-pleasers. First, the renowned maestro Sir Roger Wrighte-Rowndleigh led the Bump-Bacon Brass Band in his own rousing, rollicking composition, the Hide-the-Sausage Suite. Whereupon, in response to audience demand, I blew a fanciful fuguing tune on the bonnie laddie’s bagpipe con brio. Then, recalling the golden opportunity once missed, the lecherous Sir Roger insisted on an encore of his first number under the same contract conditions, only this time allegro furioso. And the night’s featured work was Mark’s debut performance of the poignantly sensuous Sodom Sonata (scored for skin flute and double bum drum), quite artistically executed for an amateur flautist. His lengthy cadenza was nothing short of inspired, and the final movement was absolutely maestoso. Then we slept.”

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