INTO? by North Morgan
Into? opens with wry observations on contemporary gay life in the Instagram.
“We are gays living in big metropolitan areas heavily involved in the scene. We all know each other. We all have big muscles and violent abs and handsome faces and lots of disposable income and innumerable sexual partners, each one hotter than the last. We adopt variations heteronormative looks (some of us are bros, some of us are jocks, some of us are simply worked-out-guys-next-door), which we document incessantly on Facebook, Instagram, and all your other surrounding news feeds and timelines.”
Main character Konrad is devastated when Brett, his boyfriend of four years, dumps him for Frank (who also has a boyfriend) and who Konrad once had a hook-up with!
In a medicated haze, Konrad abandons his life in London and moves to LA where he works loosely for his father’s wealth management company but, in reality, spends most of his time popping pills, going to the gym and finding new guys to date or hook-up with via Facebook, Instagram, Grindr or Snapchat.
Konrad obsesses over the hot straight guys at his new gym. He works out their training schedules so he can turn up at the same time. These “bros” piss at the urinal while eating sunflower seeds and order pizza while doing ab crunches, which makes Konrad fall even more deeply in lust with them.
He does his best to adopt the same bro swagger “going to the gym every day in a backward baseball cap supporting a sports team that I’ve never seen play”.
North Morgan has a sharp satirical eye and knows the world he documents intimately. The sex lives and drug use described sometimes beggars belief but makes for compelling reading. The style is strongly reminiscent of Bret Easton Ellis, but the advent of social media brings a whole new dimension to the narcissism of the characters.
After 200, pages it doesn’t really build to any distinguishable climax – although there are certainly a great abundance of sexual climaxes! A witty and thoroughly compelling exploration of the “musc masc” generation of gay men.