“How long does it take for a boy to become a man?” the writer asks. Gomez finds himself locked in a room with a “girl-woman” where he must lose his virginity and something entirely different. Gomez is aware of all his desires, but as his family conspires, he unwillingly remains with his uncles, who attempt to indoctrinate him into their “machismo” version of manhood.

She has caught her son being a “bad boy” before, mimicking Britney Spears and wearing her dresses. And your tios won’t think so either,” his mother warns. He pleads that he is “just messing around.” His amusement triggers a scornful look from her. Eventually, Gomez lands in California, finds himself in a doctor’s office, in the backseat of a car, and in graduate school, still grappling with his fears.Īs Gomez and his mother ride through the streets of Nicaragua in the backseat of a cab, heading to the airport for his mom’s return home, Gomez reaches into her purse, removes her press-on nails, and playfully applies them to his fingertips. He is greeted with both love and hostility during his exploration of himself. He makes his way to college, moves out of his mom’s house, strips on a stage with drag queens, and meets men at a bathhouse.

The story begins with 13-year-old Gomez and his mother visiting her brothers in Nicaragua, where cockfighting and sex with a woman are supposed to turn Gomez into a man and stop him from being a “malcriado.” He returns to Orlando, still a boy, accepts his gayness, comes out to a few people, meets queer friends, and explores his identity.

Like a night out in Manolos, High-Risk Homosexual brings both pleasure and pain, and readers are lucky to be invited to this coming-of-age ki-ki. ” A place where queer Latinx men need pride for survival, but also where that pride can be toxic. In this debut memoir, the author explores “a world desperate to erase. However, Edgar Gomez’s High-Risk Homosexual sashays and shantays readers through the author’s teenage years and into his early 20s. GROWING UP IN “The City Beautiful” of Orlando, Florida, is not easy for a femme-queer-Latinx boy of Nicaraguan and Puerto Rican heritage who has no safe space to express his beauty.

High risk homosexual book