Please Don't Stop!

A Review of Slicklight by Matt Dean

First there was Snowcrash, now there's Slicklight. Or, should I say, first there was smack, then snow, then slick. And it's lit the streets of this salty harbor town.

Slick is easy: no snorting, no shooting up, just a drop under the tongue.

It's a mysterious futuristic drug--a psychedelic X, and it's great for sex, if you like to fuck for four thousand years with an 18-foot cast iron pipe. Yikes!

This is not chick-lit, girls, it's dick-lit. Hot and heavy as lead.

Slicklight is the first chapter of a serial e-book for young dudes. The author, Matt Dean, is bringing in a new tide of literary genre, "Young Dude Serial E-rotica," or YDSE.

Dean, an ironic socio-political blogger and Lambda Literary Award finalist, best known for his novel The River in Winter, has switched gears from earnest yearnings to the cutting edge of slippery time. All the women who love the novels of Matt Dean, Armistead Maupin, and Stephen McCauley may be left longing. But young, queer and curious dudes of the 21st may already be reading Slicklight on their iPad and waiting for the next installment or the next train out of town.

The action moves fast; in fact, it gallops, rattles, and rolls. Nael's a frizzy-haired, super-cool chode who says stuff like, "This ain't my first rodeo." And Barnaby's a young, game, skin-head top who likes to use a belt. They're stuck in the brack-waters of some forlorn shipyard, but all is well is Nael's bed.

A quick word search, by the second screen, will bring up "pickup," "clench," "thrust," "fist," and "just large enough for a man to slide through sideways."

But it's not all briny nihilism; a flicker of Dean's romantic side comes out in Barnaby, like when he spies an extra pillow in the mechanic's shed, or finishes Nael's phrases like they're show tunes. They may tackle instead of hug, but it's because they have so much energy!

Like Dean's new readership, the ADD generation. So, we want the next installment already! We're ready. We can't wait. You can't stop writing. Don't fucking stop!