Hideaway (a short story)

    The door is locked, bolted, boarded up.  They won’t think of looking for me here if I keep to myself.  In this dark room, I sit alone in the corner, quiet, silent as possible.  I barely want to breathe.

    I hear them out there, beyond the door.  Moving, always moving.  Sometimes with purpose, but sometimes they just can’t stop.  If not physically, then verbally.  Always the unbearable noise.  They can’t shut up or stay still, unlike me.  

    I can stay perfectly still, as far away from the door as I can get.  As far away from them.  They taught me to be afraid of them.  In little ways at first, but then I learned how truly damaging they can be.  This is why I must lock myself away from the pain and agony that is…

…other people. 

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2026, John L. Harmon 

Freak Out, 
JLH

P.S.  click a pic for another short story…

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A totally biased list of books and a couple of short stories you should read in 2026…
📚 

ONE LOVE vs. TOPS, BOTTOMS AND SIDEPOCKETS

My literary habit of late is reading two books at the same time.  Typically, this involves two very different books, such as one from an indie author and one of the generally tepid and often hetero-centric New York Times bestsellers from the lunchtime book group.  However, in this hot month of July, fate sandwiched me between two queer books.  

The interesting thing is the two books were published 60 years apart.  What are the differences?  Are there similarities?  Let’s find out…

ONE LOVE by Matt Cain(2025) 

Danny and Guy have been best friends since meeting at uni.  Now, a couple of decades later, these two men, who have drifted in and out of each other’s lives over the years, have reunited for the Manchester Pride celebration, but Danny has a mission.  He wants to confess his decades long love for Guy and hopefully transform their friendship into a deeper emotional and physical connection.  Will these friends become lovers or will the past bubbling up around them tear the two apart? 

Author Matt Cain cuts & pastes Danny and Guy’s story together by bouncing the reader back and forth through their present and past.  This plot device started out interesting, but I struggled to finish ONE LOVE.  I found it difficult to embrace the characters and the plot became rather repetitive.  Then the ultimate message of loving yourself is bashed into our brains again and again and again.  By the end, it just made me want to scream, “Ok, I f***ing get it already !” 

TOPS, BOTTOMS AND SIDEPOCKETS by Robin Versage and Leland Garner(1965) 

This is an allegedly true account of one gay man’s life from mid-teens to early thirties.  Robin learns at a young age that he might be homosexual, struggling and exploring this possibility in his final years of high school.  As soon as he graduates, Robin skips college and leaves Portland for Los Angeles.  There he meets a $5 hooker named Sandy.  She and Robin form a curious bond.  Sandy pimps Robin out to men at first, but then, after Robin finds more socially acceptable work, they get married.  All the while, Robin is searching for the man of his dreams.  Sandy is fully aware, but perhaps wishes she could be enough for him.  Eventually, Robin’s growing success as an art dealer allows Sandy to give up her sex work and this unconventional duo can finally live comfortably in a classy neighborhood.  In this top shelf suburbia, Robin meets Joseph, a married psychologist.  Has Robin found the man of his dreams?  Will Sandy’s past and Robin’s sexuality destroy their fancy tea party life?  Are Robin & Sandy the Will & Grace of the ‘60’s? 

I guess that explains sidepockets.

I’ve read enough Vintage Gay Pulp Fiction to question whether or not this is a true story.  Robin’s life contains all the scandalous elements to cause a reader to devour each sordid page.  However, it does have an unapologetic attitude by the end.  Robin looks back on his life up to that point without making excuses or having regrets.  He also points out his life doesn’t represent every gay man’s experience and even touches upon how homosexuals are just as emotionally and physically diverse as heterosexuals.  So, maybe TOPS, BOTTOMS AND SIDEPOCKETS is a true story or at least the author is queer or an open-minded ally. 

While these two books have differences, I was struck by their similarities.  For starters, they both explore a functionally dysfunctional relationship over the course of many years, whether it be Danny and Guy or Robin and Sandy.  Another thing I found fascinating is that each book has at least one character worried that if they admit to being homosexual, they will transform into a swishy stereotype.  For better or for worse, there is a lot of focus on physical appearance in both stories.  Finally, and this may be the most amazing similarity, the shared moral is one of self-acceptance and bravely being yourself, no matter what the world thinks.  Such a concept is beyond progressive for 1965 and is thankfully pretty common in 2025. 

In conclusion…
I obviously enjoyed TOPS, BOTTOMS AND SIDEPOCKETS way more than ONE LOVE.  The former moves along at a brisk pace with vivid characters and wild situations, while the latter drags with unlikable characters and repetitive situations.  Perhaps I get such an electric, non-p.c. thrill in taking a peek behind the lavender curtain at pre-Stonewall queer life that some modern day queer fiction bores me.  Either that, or I just love trashy novels! 

Freak Out, 
JLH 

P.S.  click the pic ⤵️ to pray for my literary salvation! 🙏 

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While not as lurid as Jacqueline Susann or Vintage Gay Pulp Fiction, DARK EXCURSIONS skirts the trashy edges of sordid craziness with its soap opera twists and turns! 

2015

A Short Story (a short story, of sorts)

    I stare, glare at the black screen through two pieces of plastic glass.  The white too bright to reflect, refract, magnify my muddled words.  Feeling the syllables crawling, scrawling beneath this growing older by the millisecond skin.  Verbal seeds screeching, reaching for the blinding sight of others to inhale, devour, clatter in their respective collective mindscape.  Fading away fingerprints scrolling through digital pages or tips bleeding from flipping sharp paper edges in a frenzy to discover meaning in nonsense and senselessness in moments.  Watering eyes, tears or sweat blurring lines of fictitious reality and really fiction until the happy or not end is reached, achieved.  My voice spent, digits numb from popping letters into place, trying to place the seen from my head onto the dark screen floating in depth, closer than appears but so far from the soul suffocating inside.  Circling the circles surrounding sighing eyes, unable to see what others claim to see inside out.  Inside me within the lines of a short story that may never come to be.

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2024, John L. Harmon 

Thank you for reading or listening to my half-blind words. 

Freak Out, 
JLH 

P.S.  Escape reality through my books available from an Amazon near you…

RIVERSIDE

    It was all fun and games until it wasn’t.  They had gathered around a campfire on the man-made beach to relive their college days, not that those were so long ago.  Two years had passed since they became productive members of society. 

    Lev sat nursing a bottle of beer as the general catching up conversation landed on him.  The six others were shocked he and Adam were still together.  “Adam was always such a loner.  Never came to parties or anything,” Stacie commented as she moved closer to the drenched Derek.  

    Derek had jumped in the river first thing, now he sat half-naked, glistening in the evening light.  “Why didn’t he come with you this time, Lev?” he inquired between handfuls of pork rinds. 

    “Adam doesn’t like the water,” Lev answered with a shrug, hoping his display of nonchalance would change the subject.  

    Maybe it was the atmosphere of the fire in the fading sunlight or maybe the group was realizing they didn’t have much in common without college, but Beth pushed up her glasses and suggested telling ghost stories.  Brad groaned as Beth mentioned the Peach Lady.  They all had heard the legend.  A ghostly woman wearing a peach dress would visit the graves of those she murdered in life and if you saw her, you’d be her next victim.  “Sorry, but that’s a buncha bullshit!  An apparition can’t manifest in such a physical sense,” Brad demonstratively voiced, nearly spilling his beer on Beth.  They had been a couple back in the day, nerds in love as Derek used to call them, but the look on Beth’s face said those days were over. 

    “Ricky Jones wasn’t bullshit,” Derek muttered just loud enough for everyone to hear. 

    “What?  Did the Peach Lady get him?” Brad asked in a fit of laughter which made Beth move closer to Marnie and Alice. 

    “No,” Marnie answered, firmly silencing the laughter.  “Ricky Jones disappeared during a paranormal investigation on campus.  We heard him scream, but we couldn’t find him.  Even the police turned up nothing.  He was just gone.”

    “I don’t remember him,” Alice spoke up, feeling ashamed.  Marnie took her hand and gave it a sympathetic squeeze. 

    “Most people forgot about him.”  Derek shook his head and glanced at Lev before finishing the bag of pork rinds.   

    Lev remembered Ricky Jones and the night he disappeared.  They had known each other threw off-campus meetings, but the main reason he remembered was Derek.  It had been late when he returned to their dorm room and shook Lev awake.  The typically handsome young man was a mess of fear and tears as he tried to explain the unexplainable disappearance of Ricky Jones.  Lev didn’t know what to think or say, so he pulled Derek into his bed, allowing his distraught friend to safely sob away the trauma until they both fell asleep entwined in a comforting embrace.  They never talked about that night, but Lev felt like this wasn’t the time to bring it up. 

    Stacie was about to say something, but she moved away in annoyance and disgust when Derek started coughing.  Alice moved closer, worried he was choking.  Her nurse training kicked in as Derek collapsed and began violently convulsing in the sand, but her aid seemed pointless as his body suddenly went limp.  The others stood up as Alice incredulously pronounced Derek dead, except he wasn’t quite. 

    Derek sat up and lunged at Alice.  She screamed and Marnie, usually so jumpy, raced to help, but stopped.  None of them could process the sight of Derek tearing off a chunk of flesh from Alice’s face with his teeth and then swallowing the pulpy mess.  Stacie ran screaming.  Brad vomited and passed out.  Beth tried to stop Derek as he continued feasting on Alice but his attack on her was just as bloody and brutal. 

    Within the horrifying seconds of eternity, Lev locked eyes with Marnie across the campfire.  He had once drunkenly told her Adam’s story, told her what Adam said to do if anything strange happened.  Stay calm.  Stay focused, and run.  Run to me.  Marnie’s curly hair blew back and Lev’s hazel eyes focused ahead as they ran through the night, as they ran for their lives. 

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2024, John L. Harmon 

Click the pics ⤵️ to read stories which may share threads with RIVERSIDE…

Thank you for reading or listening to my half-blind words.

Freak Out, 
JLH  

P.S.  Take a holiday in the small town tranquility of Sturgeons…just don’t expect to survive… 

The Emptiness (a short story, of sorts)

Feeling as cold as the dark, icy landscape, the bundled figure trudges alone.  How long has it been since the last encounter with another?  Too long ago and for too brief of time.  Death in this frigid atmosphere is inevitable. 

The ending began with a dimming of their star.  Theories turned to conversations.  Conversations turned to disagreements.  Disagreements turned to arguments.  Arguments turned to war.  War over their perceived differences illuminated by the dimming. 

The bundled figure comes to a halt amidst the frozen desolation with final, futile understanding.  All of the warfare is what collapsed their civilization.  Their dying star only decimated the remnants of their planet, which now drifts lifelessly through the immeasurable void.
____________
2024, John L. Harmon 

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SIDE NOTE: 
In a moment of freaky fate or creative coincidence, I stumbled upon a piece of new music, right after I finished writing the above short story, and I feel it would make the perfect soundtrack. 

Click the pic ⤵️ to listen to “Emptiness in Static” from the minds of Blue Sun Chasing x Armageddon Speaking…

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Thank you for reading or listening to my half-blind words. 

Oh, and Happy New Year or something. 

Freak Out, 
JLH 

P.S.  click the pic ⤵️ for a different story about a different planet…

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Something to read in 2024… 
📗
https://mybook.to/Sturgeons 

booking freakboy: DESIRE IN THE SHADOWS by Joe Leon Houston

I had never heard of the sub-genre “Vintage Gay Pulp Fiction” until looking for books by Ed Wood, Jr.  A quick eBay search revealed amusing and potentially offensive titles such as Senator Swish and Villa of Queens.  Then I noticed DESIRE IN THE SHADOWS and was immediately intrigued by the lurid soap opera title and how the cover showed two men standing together, yet apart.  However, the three-digit price had an opposite effect.  I mean, I wanted to read it, but not that much!  Thankfully, I found a copy on Amazon for around $8. 

I’ve found out you can’t tell a queer by his looks.

DESIRE IN THE SHADOWS is about Carl, a young man living in a small Texas town in the 1960’s.  Carl didn’t realize he was gay until, while hitchhiking, he was raped by a truck driver and, um, enjoyed it.  Yeah, nothing problematic there.  Anyhoo, after this life-altering experience, Carl had one foot out of the closet, at least on weekends when he ventured to a nearby big city.  

One Sunday at Mabel’s, a woman who flaunted the laws prohibiting Holy Day alcohol and homosexuality by holding tea dances in her home, Carl met Charles, aka Chuck.  It was lust at first sight, which is interesting since the two men resembled each other.  Is Carl his own type?  Anyhoo, lust turned to love and things were going well until Chuck visited Carl’s small hometown.  The family priest saw the two men making out in a car and told not only Carl’s parents, but the town gossip, as well.  This vicious old busybody, who would give Ms. Floridia Minch of Sturgeons a run for her money, spread the scandalous news around town and even tried to get Carl fired from his supermarket job. 

Chuck decided to leave Carl and go away, even though he claimed it wasn’t because of all the drama.  Carl doesn’t handle this split very well at all, heading to Mabel’s for a blackout bender.  The next morning becomes as life-altering as hitchhiking when Carl wakes up in a strange bed and soon meets its female owner.  Janis had found Carl drunk out of his mind at Mabel’s and brought him home.  This awkward introduction turns to friendship and eventually marriage.  Yes, marriage and things seem to be going well.  Carl is sexually satisfying Janis, while eventually satisfying himself with a door-to-door insurance salesman, but then Carl learns Chuck has returned.  

What’s a hetero-married homosexual to do?  Carl could stay with Janis, run off with Chuck or start his life anew alone.  Well…(SPOILER ALERT)…Carl has the decision made for him when he walks in on Chuck and Janis chatting while doing the mattress mambo.  It seems Janis had been looking for Chuck at Mabel’s when she found Carl and initially thought he was Chuck in the dim light.  Meanwhile, Chuck had took off after the small town drama to decide if he should go all the way gay to be with Carl or straighten himself out to be with Janis.  Apparently being bisexual wasn’t an option in 1960’s Texas. 

I experienced three things when I closed DESIRE IN THE SHADOWS.  First, my heart broke for Carl.  He deserved better.  Second, I realized this must be one of the most entertaining books I’ve ever read.  It was dramatic, funny and absolutely crazy.  Third, I felt high, like I was walking in a dream.  Even with the folds of time between us, I stumbled across this book published in 1966 and pulled it into 2022.  DESIRE IN THE SHADOWS seemed so perfectly suited for my taste that I once again imagined a freak like me stumbling across a copy of DARK EXCURSIONS in the distant future, falling in love with my emotionally damaged characters and feeling as though they discovered a secret treasure they want to share with anyone who will listen.  Hey, it could happen, obviously!  

Despite its sometimes trashy pulp fiction vibe, DESIRE IN THE SHADOWS (originally published in 1965 as “The Gay Flesh”) is a piece of literary queer history.  Author Joe Leon Houston swings open the closet door to reveal what life might have been like for some in the LGBTQ+ community before Stonewall.  The “shadows” in the title seems to be an accurate description of that time and a reminder of how we can’t allow others to force us back into the silent darkness. 

The time flew and we drank in the lust of our sex.

In conclusion, 

Maybe it’s the subject matter or the soap opera twists.  Perhaps it’s the characters or how I share the same initials with the author.  Whatever the reason, I feel a strong connection with this book.  In other words, DESIRE IN THE SHADOWS isn’t for everyone, but it’s definitely for me.  I’m just sad it appears this is Joe Leon Houston’s only book, but at least there’s more Vintage Gay Pulp Fiction to discover.  Oh please, you know if I ever find a reasonably priced copy, I’m so gonna read SENATOR SWISH! 😉 

Thank you for reading or listening to my half-blind words…and have a Happy New Year! 

Freak Out, 

JLH 

P.S.  Click the pic ⤵️ in case you don’t know how this half-blind freakboy can read a physical book…

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A massive thanks to those of you in the world who took a chance on this indie author, blogger or something in 2022…or any year, for that matter.

Extra thanks to those who dared to go haunting in Sturgeons with me.  It really is my best piece of fiction, so far, but 2023 is right around the corner. 🤓

DARK EXCURSIONS (my dream cast)

Gill of Realweegiemidget Reviews is getting ready to read my modern take on gothic romance, which is exciting and a bit nerve-wracking for me.  That’s how I always get when someone announces they are reading one of my books.  Anyhoo, she asked which actors I would cast if DARK EXCURSIONS became a film or TV series.  This wasn’t the easiest question to answer, but I thought I would give it a shot.

So, for better or for worse, meet my dream cast of DARK EXCURSIONS… 

(NOTE - age of actors may not completely fit with characters) 

Anapola Van Der Van - Nicole Kidman 

(I had her in mind as the manipulative matriarch while writing the book)

Crop Hoppins- Colin Farrell 

(He would exude the former stable boy’s roguish charm and sizzling sensuality)   

Cheryl Van Der Van - Lili Reinhart 

(This RIVERDALE actor would perfectly circumnavigate Cheryl’s emotional growth as she confronts the past)

Dinkel - Josh Hutcherson  

(I think this HUNGER GAMES actor would easily express the one-armed gardener’s strength and vulnerability)

Xylem Smith - Timothy Olyphant 

(For some reason, his role in SANTA CLARITA DIET made me imagine him as the busy businessman)  

Luchia Diego-Smith - Salma Hayek 

(She would expertly bring out the fierceness and loneliness of this rich housewife)

Ivan Kramnik - Alexander Skarsgård 

(He would be brazen, intimidating and sexy as the Russian tennis instructor) 

Dr. Jannette Parker - Gal Gadot 

(Intelligent, statuesque and mysterious…this WONDER WOMAN actor would be perfect as the psychiatrist harboring a life-altering secret)

Father John Francis - Tobey Maguire 

(Well, if I can’t play the less than faithful priest, then the SPIDER-MAN actor will do nicely) 

Sister Beatrice Cross - Naomi Watts 

(I pictured her as this sweet, but determined nun when writing the book)

Peter Obelisk - Ross Lynch 

(This CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA actor looks the part of Xylem’s chauffeur, at least in my mind)

Sheriff Mick Webb - Sam Rockwell 

(He would bring sympathy to this sad, down on his luck lawman) 

Well, that’s my dream cast.  Hope you found it interesting.  There are a few more characters, but I’ll let Gill and other readers cast them.  

For more about Gill and her extremely entertaining entertainment blog, click the pic ⤵️ to experience an eye-opening interview… 👁 

For more info or to order a copy of DARK EXCURSIONS, click the pic…⤵️ 

Thank you for reading or listening to my half-blind words! 

And a huge THANK YOU to Gill!!!

Freak Out, 

JLH 

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Don’t forget to check out my recent blog serial…⤵️