"Dex in Blue"

"Dex in Blue" by Amy Lane

Insightful, amazing character study

Very Highly Recommended

Just when Dex Williams finally, finally took David Worral by the hand and the heart and they crossed the line from boyhood friends to lovers, something as random as a deer jumping in front of their truck changed David’s future.

Recovering from the wreck and the loss of Dex, David changes his plans and runs to California, becoming Dex, one of the stars of Johnnie’s, a gay-for-pay porn site. Always a follower, David becomes Dex, and takes care of not only the business, but the boys who model for the site.

And one of those boys is Kane. Carlos Ramirez, really, but he’s Kane to everyone now. Forced to move out of his house, he asks Dex for a favor. To move in for a while, so his sister can get on her feet away from her abusive husband and care for her sick baby girl.

What’s a guy to do? Of course Dex lets Kane move in. The guy may be a certifiable, looney-tune, muscle-bound meathead, but he’s a friend, and at heart a sweet guy, Dex figures. But what he doesn’t figure on is that the friends with benefits arrangement could lead to something more. Something he had run from since the real Dex’s death.

Will Kane get past the walls that David built to protect himself when the real Dex died and left him alone? Can he recapture the big-hearted boy he was? Or will he lose everything? How much will he be willing to give up to have everything?

This quietly beautiful character study by Amy Lane takes a simple premise—who is a man, really—and follows it from the point one person’s life takes a sudden left turn and is lost, until he finds his way home. And along the way, I found such scenes of joy and heartache, beauty and ugliness, and pleasure and pain as make up a man’s existence. David’s life changed that one fateful day—moment—and the choices he made and the man he chose to become make for a wholly remarkable tale.

I was truly, deeply and wholeheartedly moved by not only the journey I took with David and Carlos, but by the humbling way Ms. Lane took me there. Her prose was restrained, the descriptions so soul-achingly beautiful I had to go back and re-read them so I could hold them close and savor them, like new/old friends.

David’s grief at Dex’s gravesite.

“He remembered the person who had helped him fly with the wind instead of being beaten down by it, and he cried quietly into his knees, finally knowing how big the sky could be to make a person feel as alone as a heartbeat in space.”

His wonder at how Kane could get to him, and his realization of what it took to deserve a man’s love.

“Maybe before you got someone who would fight to have you, you had to be ready to kill or die for them first.”

And silent epiphanies.

“How many perfect things did God give you in a lifetime?”

This is a different Amy Lane, but yet the same. She’s shown she can move me with devastation, fear, anger, hurt, love, grief. Now she’s shown me, reminded me, there are quiet joys in life again too.

Thank you.

Tom