Kamikaze Boys - James Bell
by Raphie Klarfeld, MD
This is a young adult novel about two guys who are outcasts in a middle America high school. They fall in love and run the school social gauntlet. I won't spoil the end by telling whether they survive it or not. It is also a study in how opposites attract.
David is a shy, introverted, gay junior who is doing his best daily to avoid the bullying by his nemesis, Chuck, whose primary daily goal is to make life for David as miserable as possible. Connor is a senior who is a brawn over brains kind of guy, who also has a reputation for having been in "juvie" and a scar on his neck about which rumors abound. Most of the gossip has to do with some sort of brawling knife fight. For initially unknown reasons, Connor chooses to protect David from Chuck by intimidating Chuck and giving David rides home from school daily. David begins to live his life trying to stay close to Connor to avoid getting beat up.
As the story evolves, it comes out that Connor is gay and has a crush on David. David has been smitten from the beginning by Connor's rugged good looks and awesome physical, alpha male social status at the school. David can not believe his good fortune that Connor is gay and is sweet on him, nor can anyone else at school for that matter. That has benefits for both. It smashes one stereotype as one by one characters in the story realize that he is.
So on the one hand, we have the stereotypical, slightly effeminate, gay kid, David, who is shy and introverted with a nerdy home-schooled best friend. He is bullied throughout his childhood. On the other hand, there is Connor, the macho, relatively extroverted, self-confident, gang member type kid from the other side of the tracks. There are other characteristics that would seem to make them uncommon bedfellows. David's father is a "Type A personality" who pushes David constantly to keep his grades up to go to college. David is intelligent and maintains an A average but is very put off by his Dad's badgering often threatening to not go to college which of course results in more badgering. David's mother fell in love with another man and left David's Dad because of these rigid ways. Connor, on the other hand, has mediocre grades, works at a McDonald's slinging burgers after school in an effort to save for the deposit on an apartment to escape life at home with a drug abusing father on disability who sits in his chair watching television all day. He also has a younger brother, Tommy, who he also takes up for and protects. His mother is loving, and he does have her care and comfort for support but still, of course, wants to be his own man.
The novel is, therefore, a study in how two very different types, virtually opposites fall in love and take on an antagonistic world. James Bell does a masterful job at showing how the rocks in the head of one fit the holes in the head of the other. He also does a masterful job at developing all of the characters, but primarily David and Connor. He is able to demonstrate that they can emotionally develop to fill the cerebral holes and turn some of the rocks to cranial gemstones as they grow in this novel. That is the most beautiful part of the story.
I loved the book. I would recommend it to anyone, gay or straight. I would recommend it strongly to gay young adults. The sexual content is pretty steamy and is probably more than most young adults are exposed to, but that has an educational benefit as well.
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