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Pacific Rimming
Lambda Literary finalist Tom Cardamone’s novella, Pacific Rimming, is a dazzling narrative of obsession.
Set in New York City in the late 1990s, a young gay man wanders from bed to bed, creating a life of drug use and sexual conquest to avoid emotional intimacy, his desire focused exclusively on Asian men.
Set in New York City in the late 1990s, a young gay man wanders from bed to bed, creating a life of drug use and sexual conquest to avoid emotional intimacy, his desire focused exclusively on Asian men.
Kindle Edition
First published March 25, 2013
About the author
Tom Cardamone
41 books40 followersTom Cardamone’s speculative short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Spectrum award. His work has appeared in various magazines and anthologies like So Fey: Queer Fairy Fiction, Best Gay Fiction, Best Gay Erotica, Best Gay Romance, and Madder Love: Queer Men and the Precincts of Surrealism. He is the author of the erotic fantasy novel, The Werewolves of Central Park and editor of The Lost Library: Gay Fiction Rediscovered.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 30, 2015
The things you learn: Sticky rice are Asians who are into Asians; potato queens are Asians who like white guys; won ton Chinese guys; sushi Japanese; kim chi Korean.
Our nameless narrator is a dissolute rice queen who yearns for meaning in an endless spiral of drugs and anonymous encounters. He stakes out his nightly turf in an array of gay clubs in New York like a predator prowling around a water hole, waiting for pliable game.
Eventually he falls for Shinobu – though perhaps ‘fall’ is the wrong word. What the week-long encounter with Shinobu achieves is no less than open the narrator up to himself. Which is a view of darkness and mirrors that threatens to tumble the reader into Nietzsche’s abyss.
(One of the most erotic scenes in this novella, which is as slim as the hips of the Asians our eponymous narrator likes to fuck, is when he asks Shinobu to write on him...)
Tom Cardamone is an incredibly gifted writer, from Green Thumb to The Lost Library. He finds his stride in Pacific Rimming, a tour de force of a young man’s descent into ennui and dissolution.
This is much more than a cautionary tale about obsession, though. Cardamone subtly weaves in ideas about cultural assimilation and expropriation, against a background of polymorphous desire and perversity.
The writing is as sharp as a razor blade used to cut lines of cocaine in the men’s toilet of the Next Bardo. Cardamone’s particular achievement here is to make the reader empathise with a pretty unlikeable character, and to share some of his pain and his awakening. Splendid, repellent, erotic.
Our nameless narrator is a dissolute rice queen who yearns for meaning in an endless spiral of drugs and anonymous encounters. He stakes out his nightly turf in an array of gay clubs in New York like a predator prowling around a water hole, waiting for pliable game.
Eventually he falls for Shinobu – though perhaps ‘fall’ is the wrong word. What the week-long encounter with Shinobu achieves is no less than open the narrator up to himself. Which is a view of darkness and mirrors that threatens to tumble the reader into Nietzsche’s abyss.
(One of the most erotic scenes in this novella, which is as slim as the hips of the Asians our eponymous narrator likes to fuck, is when he asks Shinobu to write on him...)
Tom Cardamone is an incredibly gifted writer, from Green Thumb to The Lost Library. He finds his stride in Pacific Rimming, a tour de force of a young man’s descent into ennui and dissolution.
This is much more than a cautionary tale about obsession, though. Cardamone subtly weaves in ideas about cultural assimilation and expropriation, against a background of polymorphous desire and perversity.
The writing is as sharp as a razor blade used to cut lines of cocaine in the men’s toilet of the Next Bardo. Cardamone’s particular achievement here is to make the reader empathise with a pretty unlikeable character, and to share some of his pain and his awakening. Splendid, repellent, erotic.
June 7, 2013
Tom Cardamone's writing is addictive.
I was first introduced to his work last year when I had the pleasure of reviewing the Lambda Literary Award winning Green Thumb. Since then I've sought out his other work and recently crossed paths with the filthy, gorgeous Pacific Rimming.
Pacific Rimming chronicles the sexual adventures of a nameless narrator who loses himself in drugs, the Manhattan gay club scene and his obsession with Asian men. He forms no attachments, preferring to move from one night stand to one night stand, attending only the bars and clubs where he knows he can indulge his paticular fetish.
This novella is worlds away from the speculative cataclysm of Green Thumb. Cardamone keeps this tale firmly rooted in 1990s New York City. And there is a grittiness and immediacy to his writing here that envelops the reader; you can feel the tingle of the drugs, smell the smoke and sex.
Pacific Rimming is yet another example of an artist who writes with a sure hand, comfortably at home in any genre he chooses to write in and navigating with ease the language that each tale needs to be told in. I'm very thankful to Chelsea Station Editions for bringing this book back into print, since it is not to be missed. If your looking for an unapologetic, graphic slice of the sexual underground and enjoy writing that will place you firmly in the story, then Pacific Rimming is the book for you and Tom Cardamone is the man that will bring it to you.
I was first introduced to his work last year when I had the pleasure of reviewing the Lambda Literary Award winning Green Thumb. Since then I've sought out his other work and recently crossed paths with the filthy, gorgeous Pacific Rimming.
Pacific Rimming chronicles the sexual adventures of a nameless narrator who loses himself in drugs, the Manhattan gay club scene and his obsession with Asian men. He forms no attachments, preferring to move from one night stand to one night stand, attending only the bars and clubs where he knows he can indulge his paticular fetish.
This novella is worlds away from the speculative cataclysm of Green Thumb. Cardamone keeps this tale firmly rooted in 1990s New York City. And there is a grittiness and immediacy to his writing here that envelops the reader; you can feel the tingle of the drugs, smell the smoke and sex.
Pacific Rimming is yet another example of an artist who writes with a sure hand, comfortably at home in any genre he chooses to write in and navigating with ease the language that each tale needs to be told in. I'm very thankful to Chelsea Station Editions for bringing this book back into print, since it is not to be missed. If your looking for an unapologetic, graphic slice of the sexual underground and enjoy writing that will place you firmly in the story, then Pacific Rimming is the book for you and Tom Cardamone is the man that will bring it to you.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews