The Closet Professor

Last week, I reviewed Frat House Troopers by Xavier Mayne and I couldn’t wait to read Wrestling Demons, the second book in the Brandt and Donnelly Capers by Xavier Mayne. Last night, I finished Wrestling Demons, and though I expected a great and thought provoking read as I had with Frat House Troopers, I was surprised at how Wrestling Demons was even better. The wrestlers, Jonah and Casey, are more the stars of this book than Brandt and Donnelly, but it isn’t long before you are as smitten with the 18 year old high school wrestlers as you are for Brandt and Donnelly

In Wrestling Demons, Jonah Fischer’s high school wrestling career has been stellar, but now he’s the unwilling star of a series of videos that have hit the web. The whole world may have seen the evidence that his best friend turns him on. Jonah’s conservative family wants him cured, and his conventional town and school want him normal. The only person who still wants him just the way he is is Casey Melville, the same best friend who turned him on for all the world to see. Meanwhile, Casey begins to wonder if there’s more to his feelings for Jonah than he thought.

Officers Brandt and Donnelly—lovers as well as partners on the job—have been assigned to find the culprit who posted the video. While investigating the case, they also help Jonah and Casey find their way through their feelings, and steer them toward refuge when Jonah’s family turns against him. But the mystery remains: who wants to hurt Jonah badly enough to post those videos, and why? Thank goodness Jonah and Casey have found friends—they’re going to need all the help and support they can get.

Xavier Mayne is well-versed in academic theories of sexual identity, and is passionate about writing stories in which men experience a love that pushes them beyond the boundaries they thought defined their sexuality. He believes that romance can be hot, funny, and sweet in equal measure. Once again, he proves this in Wrestling Demons. Mayne writes sex scenes they way they should be written in a book: organic so the sex play easily into the story and plays an integral part in the plot but not so overly done that the book becomes erotic fiction. To me, the sex scenes written by Mayne are more erotic and sexually charged than any book I’ve ever read, and they don’t come across as silly hyperboles.

As my readers know, I am a religious person, and so in many ways this book hit home on so many levels because of the religious questions that are brought up. I don’t want to give away too much of what happens in the book, but one of the characters attends a church that is very welcoming to everyone and is vastly different from the ultra-conservative church of his youth. Instead of the character turning his back on religion, he sees what religion can truly be, a welcoming and accepting journey. The struggles the character faces between the damning church of his youth and the welcoming church he finds, is a dichotomy that truly warmed my heart. Instead of a maybe doing as many gay authors do and wrote how the character rejected religion, it instead showed not only how wrong these hate filled churches are but also shows what is right when Christians show compassion and acceptance.

One of the reason I have so enjoyed reading Xavier Mayne’s books is that not only is ere a great story, but also but their are deeper meaning and lessons contained within. Thank you Xavier Mayne for such a delightful read. I look forward to more capers from Brandt and Donnelly’s case files.

I just finished Frat House Troopers by Xavier Mayne, which might sound like a silly name for a book, but considering that State trooper Ethan Brandt’s new assignment is to infiltrate a sex-cam operation that puts him in a very uncomfortable position, especially since he’ll have to perform naked on camera for his audition. Fortunately his partner and best friend, Donnelly, has his back—whether that means helping Brandt shop gay boutiques for sexy underwear or offering Jäger and encouragement while he researches porn.

Despite his mortification, Brandt gives the audition his best “shot”—and becomes an overnight sensation. But to meet the man behind the operation, he’ll have to give a repeat performance, this time live on webcam opposite the highest bidder. Donnelly makes sure to win that auction for his partner’s sake, but their plan has a flaw: faking it is not an option.

In the aftermath, Brandt is a humiliated mess trying desperately to come to terms with what he’s had to do for the job and his own mixed feelings. But Donnelly has been on a journey of discovery of his own. Suddenly everything the two men thought they knew about themselves and each other gets turned inside out. Meanwhile, they still have a case to solve… but it may not be the case they thought it was.

The “frat house” mentioned in the books title, seems to be based on fratmen.com’s web-cam house Fratpad. As Fratpad describes itself on its website, “There’s nothing quite like the FRATPAD. It’s the liveliest, sexiest, frattiest cam house in Cyberspace. No fake frat rituals here. Just a house full of college age guys walking around, working out and chatting on webcams, mostly naked, all day long. They create 24 hours of new content every day and there are 36 stationary cams all around the house so you can spy on them when they think you’re not looking.” This seems to be a pretty good description of the “frat house” in the book, as well.

But that’s not all the book is about. Officers Brandt and Donnelly are on a journey of discovery about themselves. Are they the firmly heterosexual men they’ve always believed themselves to be, or is there more to it? Can a man be straight one day and gay the next? Or do some gay men grow up like I did believing that there was no other choice until that day when our sexual awakening begins? In today’s day and age, young men have seen homosexuality more and more in the mainstream. The Internet is a great way to research things and feeling you don’t understand. I think for many young gay men, the option of following your desires are more acceptable. I think this book has a fresh perspective to show on this subject of sexuality. Though you might not be able to tell it from the title, there is something deeper than the superficiality of a very sexy story.

Furthermore, the descriptions of sex are quite fantastic. Mayne certainly has a way with words and knows how to describe sexual tension in a masterful and thoughtful way. Mayne is also able to write sex scenes in a way that doesn’t come across as pornographic, but the scenes are not chaste either. There is some incredibly hot sex scenes in this book, but this book by no means would be one that I would classify as gay erotica. They story and the emotional tensions contained within, far outweighs the amount of eroticism. It’s an almost perfect balance for a book that is just plain fun to read.

Xavier Mayne is the pen name of a professor of English who works at a university in the Midwest United States. Versed in academic theories of sexual identity, he is passionate about writing stories in which men experience a love that pushes them beyond the boundaries they thought defined their sexuality. He believes that romance can be hot, funny, and sweet in equal measure. The name Xavier Mayne is a tribute to the pioneering gay author Edward Prime-Stevenson, who also used it as a pen name. He wrote the first openly gay novel by an American, 1906’s Imre: A Memorandum, which depicts two masculine men falling in love despite social pressures that attempt to keep them apart.

I hope that you will read Frat House Troopers and hopefully you will become so hooked that you will do as I am currently doing, and read the sequel Wrestling Demons.