GLR March-April 2026

sat well with his celebrity subjects. Ginger Rogers “just criti cized me right down to the tiniest detail.” But other actresses were more gracious. After he finished a portrait of Bette Davis, she got up and took a long look before she said: “Yup! That’s the old bag.” To that end, he affirms that “Hollywood loveliness is a lie, and the truth is far more exciting—and far more tragic even than your most tragic Hollywood film.” While he says that he had to learn “to get the same enjoy ment out of drawing men as I did women,” Bachardy has drawn and painted many men, including male nudes—“not just young beauties, a great variety.” He says that back in art school there was a double standard: drawing nudes of men was considered distasteful, while drawing naked women was okay. “But oh, that just fired me up: if I couldn’t get them at school, I was deter mined to get them on my own.” He prides himself on his skill at drawing penises. “They have every bit as much personality as the face!”

He’s also candid about his sexual and emotional entangle ments with other men during his thirty-plus years with Isher wood, who allowed him to “wander.” “I just wanted the freedom to sample! My attitude was, and I said to Chris: ‘You had all that experience when you were my age, and are you going to deny it to me?’ But I told him: ‘I can handle it without breaking up with you,’ and we didn’t break up.” This is a fiercely queer-positive book. Bachardy, who will turn 92 in May, says that it meant “a great deal” to Isherwood for LGBT people “to be who they are and live their lives the way they want.” He taught Bachardy to “be what you are, and make it something to be glad about.” Summing up his extraor dinary life, he tells Schreiber: “Being queer has brought me everything of value, of real value, in my life. Without that, I don’t think I could have enjoyed anything nearly so much , and I don’t think I would have been courageous enough without [Chris] to feel that way.”

Stories of First Steps

I N ERIC C. WAT’S short story collec tion, Daddy Issues , the author reveals hidden responsibilities, roles, and rules that shape the lives of his queer, Asian American protagonists, who have come of age in L.A. and now must contend with adult life. Wat gives his protagonists a back story that reveals the hardships, pressures,

ways had a truism waiting.” While Marie views the precarious relationship as a re lapse trigger, the protagonist thinks it’s enough that he’s sober, having sex without drugs. His expectations of himself are low. He congratulates himself for hanging onto his apartment through his substance use, while people he’d partied with had lost

L ORI O’D EA

DADDY ISSUES: Stories by Eric C. Wat Univ. of Nebraska. 156 pages, $21.95

and compromises that operate on each of them. This history gives the reader space for wobbly first steps out of the closet. We suspend judgment about backward stumbles into problems that have persisted for years. These writers, artists, educators, and social workers lag on the timeline of typical achievements by American adults—if we can posit such a norm. Walter, the perfectionist narrator of “This Business of Death,” expertly handles the funeral luncheon for his deceased aunt, ordering the same eight dishes for every table. Uncredited by his cousins, he watches as plates of pork chops become bones, and leftovers disappear into takeout boxes. No one in the family acknowledges the loving care that Walter gave his aunt. Walter, we learn, is also expert at handling secrets, especially those that might cause others discomfort. Among three genera tions of his family, he’s out to only one, his peers. There’s talk that Walter and his cousin Clark had “explored each other” as kids. Clark, now married to Zara, lets the blame fall on Walter, who after all grew up to be gay. In “Sober (WTF),” the joyless protagonist, who is 39, in re covery from meth use, and working on Narcotics Anonymous’ twelve steps, goes on a “real date” with the engaged man who’s been his monthly hookup. Wandering Little Tokyo with a white man who thinks sushi makes up the totality of Japanese cuisine, the protagonist feels his misery building until the date story erupts into a relapse story. He calls his sponsor, Marie, who “al Lori O’Dea, a fiction writer and critic in Chicago, has appeared in LIBER , The Massachusetts Review , RainTaxi , Bridge , and others. March–April 2026

their homes. When he storms from his date into a Skid Row en campment, instead of triggering relapse, the sight of an orange tent triggers a call to his old camping buddy, whom he’d dropped at step nine, when, we infer, he couldn’t make amends. James, the disgruntled writer in “Duffel Bag,” can’t afford Chicago, so he heads to New York City (cue rude awakening). His life, including his story collection, which has been accepted by a small press, fills a duffel bag the size of a small person. “[M]y duffel bag is not the easiest thing to maneuver in the New York subway,” he says. Nor is his imposter syndrome, with its fluctuating sense of self-worth. While freeloading off his foster sister, who has emerged from a similarly rough child hood, James berates the publishing industry, cringes at the idea of writerly conversation, and simultaneously feels superior to, inferior to, and jealous of an MFA classmate, a Native Ameri can whose debut novel has “glowing” reviews. “The world is not ready for boys who like blowjobs,” James grumbles, some how oblivious to writers such as Garth Greenwell, Alan Hollinghurst, Brandon Taylor, Ocean Vuong, and Edmund White. When James’ sister gets excited about his career, he re sponds with preemptive negativity: “The book might not lead to anything.” In “Natural Law,” we meet Herman and Stella two days after a miscarriage. He says: “We’re in this together.” She says: “Not right now.” He’s a stay-at-home writer who cooks and does laundry. He’s writing a piece about a physicist. “What do you know about physics?” Stella says, sounding mean, though Her man says she didn’t intend to. In the last paragraphs, this story

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