"Novel excerpts bump up against short stories; science fiction jostles beside literary fiction, punk sensibility elbows its way next to high camp and classically constructed stories. The end of the 20th century has been about the breaking down of fixed categories--of art forms, of culture, of gender, of sexual orientation-the blurring of borders to allow an infinite variety of options for identity and expression. What this anthology aims to do is introduce you to-or remind you about-a selection of writers whose intelligence, style, and heart may ease our passage into the next millennium." -From the foreword, by Terry Wolverton. Includes writing by Bernard Cooper, Scott Heim, David Leavitt, William J. Mann, Jameson Currier, Jaime Manrique, Andy Quan, and Keith Ridgway. The companion volume to Circa 2000: Lesbian Fiction at the Millennium. From the editors of His2: Brilliant New Fiction by Gay Writers, this companion volume to Circa 2000: Lesbian Fiction at the Millennium lives up to its promise. It paints the array of gay experience as it canvasses both new and familiar voices in gay literature that will be heard during the first years of the next millennium. Gay bashing, internalized and politicized homophobia, ethnic gay lifeDthese and other themes are juxtaposed in what may well be an inadvertent attempt to show, once and for all, that gay people are indeed everywhere. Stylistically, the book has considerable range. It goes from Eitan Alexander's "Beneath the Planet of the Compulsives" (which has the wild-eyed point of view of Eudora Welty's "Why I Live at the PO") to David Leavitt's clever demolition of fictive form in diarylike fiction (or is it a fictionalized diary?) in "The Term Paper Artist." The stories do not hedge, nor do they sentimentalize. They have an edge to them, a sharpness that is unapologetic and authoritative. Though the 21 tales are mostly urban and ghetto in setting, a couple reach deep into rural America. Well recommended for inclusion in general and gay literature collections.DRoger Durbin, Univ. of Akron, OH Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. Terry Wolverton is the author of the novel Bailey's Beads and two collections of poetry, Black Slip and Mystery Bruise. She is the founder of Writers At Work, where she teaches workshops in creative writing. Robert Drake has worked as a literary agent since 1986. His pop-culture novel The Man rapidly developed a cult following after its release in 1995. The two editors have also worked together on the acclaimed His and Hers anthologies, and have garnered seven Lambda Literary Award nominations between them. The Rose City David Ebershoff Roland Dott-who for years had been thinking about changing his name to Roland Montague or Rolando du Brul-drove to the Pasadena Athletic Club on an October morning. He had first joined the club before it moved into its new building on Walnut, when he still went by the name of Rol, sounds like a roll of mints. There was a boy, Charlie Emily, in his class at John Muir High who used to call him that. Watcha doing after the game, Rol? Emily would ask, tugging on his ear. Oh, you know, Charlie, Roland would answer. This and that. He was always too embarrassed to call Charlie Emily "Emily" even though that's what the whole school, even the football coach, called him. Emily. With his oily dark blond hair and his sneakers squeaking against the linoleum tiles in Western Civ and his habit of picking at the tunnel of his ear. Emily, whom every girl at John Muir wanted to date, or, to be more precise, screw; whom many girls-as Roland overheard through the aluminum air vent that connected the boys' room to the girls'-already had. At the club, in the men's locker room, Roland took off his clothes and stood in front of the mirror. He kept his locker down a side aisle, where traffic was light; this allowed him to stand in front of the mirror for a long time. Once he was plucking the hairs from his nose when two men, sweaty from the squash courts, came upon him, his left nostril turned inside out. "Dig deep," one man said. The other laughed. And inside Roland, who by then had given up on the name Rol, smoldered a vicious little anger. But instead of saying anything, he fled to the steam room, hiding his face in the puff of wet heat. But today was a Friday, mid-morning, meaning the type of men who sweat abundantly on the squash court were at the office, moistening beneath their stay-stiff collars and inside their khakis. Roland stood in front of his mirror, plucking the silver-white lining of his nostril. There was also the patch of hairs, like curbgrass, between his brow. And the strays that sprouted outside the neat little tuft that grew prettily between his breasts. Pluck, pluck, pluck. Already he looked better, Roland knew. He smiled, then thought about Graham because today was Friday and they'd fallen into the habit of having lunch on Fridays. "Roland, is it you?" Graham had said when Roland literally bump