The Backlot Gay Book Forum discussion

Q*pid
By Xavier Mayne
Published by Dreamspinner Press, 2018
Four stars

This book deserves the four stars I gave it. It deserves more reviews, so I’ll add one. It is beautifully crafted, carefully thought out, and filled with characters that force you to love them. As a romance it is a slow burn, and in this case the payoff is worth the wait. I will note that I read Dreamspinner’s French translation of this book, and enjoyed that aspect of it greatly.

Veera is a smart, ambitious programmer for an online dating site called “Q*pid.” The difference between Q*pid and other such sites is that Veera takes the research aspects of online dating seriously. She sees herself as advancing the scientific research on the nature of love itself. Her brainchild is “Archer,” an artificial intelligence program that studies the online activity (ALL the online activity) of consenting users and discovers who and what it is that will make them truly happy. OK, this is one sci-fi fantasy that one has to accept to embrace this book.

Fox Kincaid is a 29-year-old, hugely successful marketing executive. A privileged golden boy, Fox is nonetheless lonely and, so far, unsuccessful, in his search for love. He has spent years dating women and calculating on a spreadsheet the “numbers” that compare their compatibility ratings after each date. He has a system. His belief is that when he hits the highest number, he’ll find the woman to marry. Problem is, all his friends are married, and he’s still at zero. He’s handsome, he’s rich, and he’s truly a nice guy. So what’s wrong?

Drew Larsen is a 28-year-old PhD candidate, writing his dissertation on the history of money markets in the Middle Ages. He is a nerd, and poor, acting as super for a modest apartment building in one of the city’s less charming neighborhoods to pay his rent. He, too, is lonely, and has been using Q*pid to meet women, also to no avail. He’s not just a sweet boy, but good-looking and smart.

Accidentally, but on purpose, Veera’s program, Archer, spends a weekend making his calculations while disregarding the gender search chosen by Q*pid’s users. He pairs up Fox and Drew with a 99.5% compatibility rate – much to their shared chagrin. The bulk of this longish book follows these two young men as this “mistake” plays out.

Fox’s best friend, Chad, is married and happy, but sees his bestie’s loneliness. Chad cares about his lifelong chum and desperately wants to help him. Drew, on the other hand, has his upstairs neighbor, the elderly Mrs. Schwartzmann, who survived the Holocaust and tells him outrageous stories about her past life. She, too, sees that this young man who is so good and kind to her is unhappy in his life – and it’s not about his poverty or his academic worries.

Mayne fleshes out his characters, primary and secondary, so that we see beyond the surface. He digs into the idea that we are the product of our upbringing and our experience, and we build up self-conceptions about ourselves that are not only hard to break, but sometimes prevent us from understanding who we really are. This is both the strongest aspect of the author’s narrative, and also – at least for me – its weakest link.

The foundational premise of the plot is that somehow these two handsome, virile young men have made it into their late twenties without ever having the tiniest clue that they might not be 100% straight. Archer’s actions turn their worlds upside down in an instant. They never thought to look beyond their presumed heterosexuality because it never occurred to them.

This veers very dangerously into the “gay for you” trope embraced by many female m/m romance writers. As an aging gay man who came out in the 1970s and survived the 1980s, I’ve never encountered a single gay man in my lifetime who had no clue that maybe he wasn’t 100% straight – some of them after decades of marriage and children. So, I had to choke back irritation at what I react to emotionally as a fraudulent romantic premise that minimizes the actual experience of gay and bisexual men. I had to keep reading, because Mayne’s Drew and Chat and Fox and Mrs. Schwartzmann and Veera were so appealing. The idea that a computer program could overcome society’s cultural programming was just appealing enough to keep me committed.

And, as I said, it paid off. This is a very talky book, but not at all in a bad way. Chad and Fox talk. Drew and Mrs. Schwartzmann talk. Veera and her colleagues (and Archer) talk. They take the reader to the finish line, and beyond. I had tears in my eyes by the end. In spite of my prejudices, I was won over.

I’ll read more of Mayne’s books because he’s a very good writer. Let’s see where that will take me.