The novel starts out with a brief explanation of just what MENAFTER10 is. Mere paragraphs in, and I could just hear the collective “oh” uttered by every queer man destined to read these pages. The app is an experience so many queer men have, and they will deeply resonate with this story.
The story that follows, however, is one that I haven’t seen told often, especially not in the pages of a book. It is a story of friendship, both superficial and deep. It is a story of Blackness and queerness in America. It is a story of boundary breaking inside of a culture that so often expects certain things of queer, Black men. It is a story of all those things at once.
Through the central characters: Chauncey, Justin, Brontae, and LeMilion, Hamilton explores what life is like for so many queer, Black men, and he carefully weaves their narratives in a way that tracks that experience with thoughtfulness and attention to detail. As we follow them in their journeys of self-acceptance, lust, and heartache, we meet several auxiliary characters who put our central fours’ experiences into perspective. Chief among those auxiliary characters is LeMilion’s father, a complicated person to be sure, however, also one which we can’t help but to dislike.
By the time I reached the novel’s conclusion, I realized that the story was not just about its human characters. Instead, Hamilton has made the MENAFTER10 app a character in and of itself, and by exploring the people who use it, exposes its flaws, and makes them plain for the whole world to see. In the end, we get just a touch of resolution for the characters in this story, and in many ways, that is the perfect way to conclude, because, like life, it keeps going until it doesn’t.
