Having corresponded with Kevin Killian through a number of emails before reading Impossible Princess, his latest collection of stories, I was struck by how much of his personality is captured in his writing. When I read Impossible Princess it was almost as though it were written directly to me. This feeling of familiarity, however, was soon stopped abruptly by the appearance of an overwhelming darkness and longing that pervades these stories. And that’s the trick. Each of these stories (excluding “Young Hank Williams,” which serves as an introductory piece) sets a trap, a trap that entices the unsuspecting reader with a sheen of exquisitely written erotica and humor. The sex is reminiscent of what sex must have been like in 70s San Francisco before the AIDS plague struck and yet the reader, familiar with the modern dangers of sex, is confronted with his or her own reservations regarding the taboos of uninhibited promiscuity.  As soon as one begins to get comfortable, Killian plunges them into something deeper, his real purpose.  This isn’t just about getting your rocks off or being entertained for a moment or two. Those kind of stories would fade away almost immediately after turning the page. The stories in Impossible Princess stick.

Every tale here emits a sensation of nostalgia or loss: in particular, nostalgia for lost love. And, yet, Impossible Princess is never depressing. It has the feel of Kevin Killian sitting next to you and telling you stories from his past. This feeling is deepened ever further by the fact that, in several stories, “Kevin” himself is the narrator. But the tricky thing for any reader confronted with a fictional text that reads like a confession is deciding whether or not you can believe the author.  Is this really Kevin talking? Perhaps I don’t know him well enough. Doubtless, there is very little autobiography to be found in stories such as “White Rose”. But even when the autobiography element is absent, the author’s personality continues to pervade the story.

“White Rose”, for instance, can be read as a charming reexamination of Flannery O’Connor’s story, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.” Instead of beguiling a family to their death on a country road, here a could-be O’Connor villain (a la The Misfit) meets the narrator in a waiting room and takes him to an isolated location for a bout of rather rough sex (which is also reminiscent of Samuel Delany’s Hogg). By the time the reader has reached this story, they are comfortable with Killian’s combination of charm and dark humor. And, for some reason this reader isn’t at all surprised to find that Killian is a fan of O’Connor. Perhaps this is the reason that he, like she, is capable of skillfully combining dark undertones with an almost surreal sense of humor. In fact, I would go as far as to say that “White Rose” is the epitome of this text (although it was republished from Killian’s earlier, now out of print collection, I Cry Like A Baby) because it shows Killian’s literary roots, his ancestors. The more I think about it, the more Killian’s work reminds me of O’Connor’s collection A Good Man is Hard to Find.

Now for the salacious part. Are these stories sexy? Absolutely. But the sex scenes (and there is one in almost every story), while erotic, read like deliberate parodies of gay pornography. This is not a flaw. These sex scenes are often a huge part of the humor (read “Ricky’s Romance” to see my point) and are more meaningful than your average Best Gay Erotica sex scene. Take the bondage scene in “Spurt,” for example. The poor guy begging to be tied to the shower curtain rod and cut (carefully, mind you) gets exactly what he wants and more. Not to mention that Kevin ties him up using a rope a friend of his used previously to hang himself. However, the sex described in “Hot Lights” is potent in an entirely different way. Killian uses images of stretched assholes and cum-stained cocks to evoke a feeling of the almost Sadeian mechanics of the porn industry. Killian has immense talent when it comes to writing a sex scene beyond being merely “erotic”.