Escaping Camp Roosevelt
Bryan T. Clark
M+M Romance
A homeless encampment. Two homeless lads doing what they can to survive.
Dancer is an auburn haired beyond handsome street smart runaway who escaped his sexually abusive stepfather and sells his body to make a living. How he avoids AIDS is another matter.
Tucker and his little sister Mattie are homeless because their Meth-head mother ploughs their livelihood into her habit. Tucker can't trust the 6-yr-old out of his sight for even 5 minutes or she'll get in trouble here.
All this adds up to a story that is better than the sum of its parts.
As Tom in then movie Endgame relates Sex, for a rent boy, is a transaction that is imposed upon your body but in which you neither emotionally or mentally participate. It's as if you weren't even present.
The feelings Tucker awakens in Dancer threaten to break down those barriers and expose him to emotional involvements he has buried deep inside him. Sex is something done to him, not something he indulges for pleasure.
And just when they come close to getting it on Tucker's mother shows up on the scene.
Both these boys are victims of dysfunctional families.
Tucker's mother is a taker, her habit a black hole that absorbs their living, everything good in their lives.
Dancer's Mother was too absorbed in her career to pay any attention to the abuse occurring right under her nose. Ironic that this book written 5 years ago has a real life Canadian equivalent presently in the news.
