Reviewed by Noah Quinn
In a media landscape that frequently infantilizes and de-sexes transmasc characters, it is refreshing to read about trans men who fuck.
The trans men in Crawl are young, but they are men, with adult problems and drinking habits and complicated sex lives. They suck cock in seedy gay bath-houses, finger their girlfriends late at night, and get awkwardly fucked from behind by a Tinder hook-up while his roommate makes dinner downstairs. Each short story in the collection introduces a new protagonist and new supporting characters, but their lives and problems almost seem to bleed together, different stages in their transition, different names and friends and jobs, but the same anxieties, the same feelings, the same cycle of casual sex.
Max Delsohn writes sexuality in a fascinating way. Sex is messy, scary, sometimes uncomfortable; it requires the deciphering of a complicated web of codes and signals, which his characters, new to gay male subcultures—his protagonists are, with few exceptions, former lesbians who have developed an attraction to men after starting testosterone—often find difficult to navigate. I often laughed at Delsohn’s descriptions of sexual acts, sometimes humorously, sometimes uncomfortably, but always feeling that the author had intended for me to react in such a way. Crawl’s sexuality is rarely erotic, and it is never aspirational, but it is authentic and profoundly human. Delsohn’s characters struggle with how to express and defend their identities and often struggle to find both friends and sexual partners who respect them. As an exploration of the complicated nature of trans sexual identity, the collection succeeds admirably.
There are, of course, other elements at play in Crawl, but sexuality is so at the forefront of its stories that it would have felt disingenuous not to lead there. Transphobia rears its head outside the bedroom as well, in well-meaning bosses who promise to cover your bottom surgery under the company plan before telling you about their “niece” who is “trans-identifying”, in catty best friends who make a bet on how long the “trans thing” will go on for, and even in trans men who vindictively misgender their former partners. Delsohn’s protagonists must grapple not only with external transphobia but with their perceptions of themselves and the kind of men they are becoming. Transitioning to a new gender involves transitioning to a new social role, one which they may find themselves unprepared to inhabit. All stages of transition are represented. The unnamed protagonist of “All Time Low” desperately clings to girlhood and their identity as a lesbian despite the envy they feel towards their ex’s new trans boyfriend; Ray from “The Geeks”, is confident that he identifies as a man but doesn’t quite know what that means for him yet, how to perform masculinity, how not to introduce himself instinctively by his deadname, how to tell his best friend that he loves him (but in a manly way); in the collection’s title track, Jack is comfortable as a man but not so comfortable as a gay man, feeling just as lost in a web of confusing social cues and expectations as he does in Seattle’s network of gay bars, clubs, and lone bathhouse.
That bathhouse reoccurs, as do many elements set up on “Side A” of Delsohn’s work. Music and scene culture permeate his stories, and extend their influence into the structure of the collection itself; the first half and last half of the collection, equal in length, are labeled Sides A and B, respectively. While the five stories on Side A at first appear disconnected from each other, Side B brings up settings and characters once mentioned only off-handedly—not frequently, but enough to tie the two halves together. Through the shared universe occupied by the ten stories (or “tracks”, as I began to think of them), we explore 2010s Seattle through similar eyes but in different settings: parks, dive bars, music festivals, college campuses, apartments filled with acquaintances whom you hate. It’s not always pretty. For a city sometimes billed as a radically accepting, queer utopia, there’s a lot of violence, and not all of it comes from outside the community. But there are moments of levity, love, and genuine connection, too. That’s life.
Crawl was an interesting book to read. It’s at once a quick read and a challenging one, simultaneously dark and laugh-out-loud funny, and provides an authentic and honest perspective on trans identity and sexuality I have not encountered in many other works. Overall, an excellent debut by an author with a lot of talent and an interesting perspective to share.
