Mike Baker is a writer; a damn good one.
Lazy Boy is a collection of his stories, chronicling his sexual coming-of-age, but without descending to the level of mere pornography. His formative experiences, especially the awkward and ill-fated ones, are described with such passionate detail that it is impossible not to be drawn in.
Take this reaction to his rape by a boy called Bill:
I was cruel to never give him what he wanted, to tease him. That was wrong but I still hope he's dead and that he died of AIDS or that he was shot in the stomach.
There is anger, regret, self-doubt and self-righteousness in those two short sentences. That rawness and complexity of emotion is characteristic of Lazy Boy. The subject matter ranges from the bitterness of regret to the joy of youthful experimentation, but it's rarely one or the other. Mike is a complicated man, but he knows how to make sense of it on a page.
One thing that remains constant throughout the zine, is that it is hot:
… [T]here is nothing compared to seeing a regular man's naked body. It has a fullness to it. I mean to say, it is something I can have and it looks like me. I think very pretty people are their own species. Fucking them would be like fucking a dog or and [sic] bear or cousin. It would be wrong. And so these men undressed and red skinned from the hot shower's water and scrubbing themselves with their cocks only just getting thick and their balls hanging and warm were everything I wanted.
Lazy Boy is a blur of reminiscence and fantasy and self-analysis, and manages to get the balance right. There is more here than a blow-by-blow of a man's early sexual conquests — it asks the hows and whys, too, and that's why I'm sure every reader will relate to Mike's stories and learn from them.
Mike Baker, Lazy Boy, 1/4 size, 40 pages.
Available from PXS, Gimme Brains, Stranger Danger and the author.
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