Not Just Another Pretty Face

The stories, poems, and essays in this collection have a single element in common that unites their wide range of literary styles and genres: they all spring directly from photographs of go-go boys.

An ideal go-go boy is the perfect erotic object: slick, vacant, tantalizing, charged. We may imagine him as lost or broken so that we might rescue him, or as potent and agressive so that we might be the focus of his desire. But the images captured here suggest deeper, more complex realities. These dancers are whimsical, haunting, satiric, playful, ominous. They are not objects, not icons, but stories waiting to be told.

Not Just Another Pretty Face plays with the interface of projections: what these young men are projecting in their poses and expressions, and what we are projecting on them in return. It explores assumptions, prejudices, fantasies, and revelations. It looks beyond the archetype, beneath the skin.

This color edition shows the photographs in all their rich detail as the authors saw them when picking the images for their inspiration.