Nerds Heart YA – Charlie Vs. Dylan

Renay ( of YA Fabulous! fame) and I took on the monumental task of rockin’ the boytime in YA fiction in the latest round of judging in the Nerds Heart YA Tournament.  Now, what you need to know is this….we did a big ol’ co-review on these two awesome novels and since we’re total page hit whores we split the dang thing up so that you have to go to both our blogs.  Renay has part one and down below the two lovely pictures we have part two.  So got YA Fabulous! and read the first half and then scamper right back and read the rest.

*whispers* including finding out who is the winner!

Two boys, two stories, and all the vagaries of family, friends, and love interests.

Dylan: a creative kid from New York, artistically inclined and hopelessly in love with his best friend, playing it safe in all quarters while in the background his parents marriage has exploded and his brother is on the fast track to becoming a drug dealer–Dylan feels more disconnected from all of his family members than ever. And what does he do about the girl, anyway?

Charlie: tall and awkward, geek to the core, he can’t seem to fit in anywhere: not at school with his peers nor at home with his parents. Finding a boyfriend seems impossible in his small town and his best friend has moved on to a steady girlfriend, leaving him behind and lonely. Maybe the new boy at school will change things up, and Charlie will feel like he belongs to someone for the first time ever…but belonging comes with its own issues.

Nerds Heart YA Round Three, Match Two, Part Two: Michelle and Renay throwdown on which dude takes the prize and moves on to compete against My Most Excellent Year.

Continued from Part One which we suggest you read first!

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Michelle: LOL! I’ll gladly let my freak flag fly on this one! I actually adored the brotherly love part of this story as well. In fact I think it was really the main focus of the whole shebang. Sure there was the mother all leaving her family high and dry to jaunt off to parts unknown with her presumed lover but like you I found that element to be more of a push for other aspects of the story than a story in itself. I actually thought Dylan going to see her was a bit random. Again, get why it was there (to push story forward) but yea….kinda just there and blah and I wanted to rip it off like a band-aid to get it over with so we could get back to the good stuff.

Anyway back to Dylan and Randy. I found the whole polar opposites thing to be an interesting catalyst to the continued development and progression of their relationship. I got the impression that Dylan wanted to be more like Randy and in some small ways Randy more like Dylan. Sure there was a healthy dose of sibling rivalry brewing between them as it related to their father but not so much that it broke anything between them. If anything I think that only served to strengthen their bond. Like you I would have enjoyed that relationship being explored a bit more. Particularly in the “we got screwed because mom left” category. Randy was so close mouthed about it the whole time it would have been good to see that interaction. I know, I know it’s Dylan’s story but still we could have gotten more there from his eyes and how it related to him blah blah blah.

So now that I’ve totally gone off track with the original purpose of this question/discussion I’ll tie it all back to sex. **sings** let’s talk about sex baby…. Ahem, er…yea….anyway do I think more explicit sex in Dylan would have “ruined” the story? Yea I do. It would have shifted the focus to something entirely different. That difference, in my eyes, would have been unnecessary and ill fitting.

Renay: How far apart were Charlie and Dylan in age? Dylan was fifteen, so two years? Three years? If Dylan had been older and more touch-starved and gay, I imagine his story could have been more like Charlie’s. Because Dylan thinks about the same things, but the way it was handled was more subtle because a straight white dude in New York isn’t going to have that many problems. I flipped through the book to read all the scenes with Dylan in his room and just had to laugh to myself. Oh, Dylan! Subtle, but not to me!

Also, this might be unpopular and it’s not a fully formed theory yet so I might express myself horribly, but let me give it a shot. Dylan’s story was about a romance, a get-the-girl scenario that was partially about very innocent sexy times but was also about personal connection, partnership, and love in the context of just enjoying the company of the other person. Dylan and Angie were equals, friends first, and just had to find their way. It was honest and simple because heterosexual relationships are privileged. They can be simple.

Charlie’s, on the other hand, seemed to be about the difficulties in finding a partner, the fact that he couldn’t get any action but with himself because homosexual relationships are not privileged. The romance was kind of pasted on, because—and here we go again—heterosexism strikes! Remember Charlie talking about homecoming? He talks about fagging out and the repercussions of doing so. Would Dylan and Angie have faced the same thing—the backlash, like Charlie did? I don’t think so, unless they did have sex eventually and people started clutching their metaphorical pearls and reaching for their smelling salts.

I did like the scene with Charlie and Rob—honest and true—until the end (I laughed, I laughed, I owe Charlie flowers for laughing because oh my gosh the poor boy). However, it couldn’t convince me it was a good thing; the entire relationship was volatile and not equal at all. Weird power dynamics are not one of my kinks, so all I can say is that the relationship is probably true to life. I can’t sit here and judge that fairly because I spend most of my time writing male/male fiction where the participants are equals and there’s no overt power imbalance so I don’t squick myself right out of writing—which is a roundabout way of saying Charlie’s sexual encounters did sometimes squick the hell out of me. Awesome! I’m not the gay teenage boy that might gobble this up, though.

My half-assed theory becomes: heterosexual relationships in stories can be simple or complex or whatever they want to be because of their privilege. Homosexual relationships have a harder time being anything but complicated, because if you try, people start talking about realism and the plight of gay people everywhere and whhhhhy is is not represented, author! Realism is that in places that are not liberal, being gay is hard, and for teenage boys who might be gay, it’s even harder, because the experimentation boys and girls can get up to doesn’t apply to them. They have to be careful, and being careful means orgasms aren’t gifts from other boys—just themselves. This is the decision I came to about Charlie’s constant jabbering about it: he was a teenage boy, but he was a teenage boy in a place where risk-taking with sex wasn’t easy like it’s become for his heterosexual peers. It’s why I connected with him more than Dylan, I think, even when he used moronic gender slurs against people he was angry/annoyed at. Add his own complications to Rob’s and that’s a recipe for something explosive.

Michelle: Also a very good point, you’re absolutely right homosexuality is taboo in many places and in many ways and that certainly informs progression of the story. The author did a great job of demonstrating just how difficult the situation is especially for a teenage boy who knows and owns his sexuality. there was no struggle to come out of the closet it was just Charlie being Charlie and saying that he’s gay so get over it and deal.

In looking at the sexual situations from the perspective you’ve noted above I agree it’s not like Charlie had a plethora of opportunities for sexual partners early on so self gratification had to be the way of the world. But I don’t know that I agree his life was completely devoid of the opportunity for exploration especially after Rob arrived. I don’t think Charlie’s attempts to comfort himself with being in a real relationship and real sexual situations was all that different than what hetrosexuals experience. It was a constant back and forth of should I or shouldn’t I? But once he started being more involved in the relationship physically his comfort level increased and he was finally able to get to that culmination with Rob and have sex.

Renay: You’re kind of right. I mean, he could’ve gotten his license earlier; nothing was stopping him except himself. Can’t go exploring, Charlie, if you hold yourself back. XD

Michelle: Was Charlie really justified in his apparent dislike of First? This was actually where I thought the book was most honest. Charlie was a typical teenager who didn’t like his domineering and overly expectant father. In fact I don’t know that he was particularly fond of his mother either. Tolerant might be a better word.

Renay: My perception of First was colored by Charlie. Charlie didn’t like him and every time they interacted I wanted to cackle. It reminded me so much of how I communicated with my father. Perhaps it is a teenager thing, combined with an overbearing parent, that makes dynamics of their relationship really work.

Charlie seemed to consider his parents burdens to be weathered, which was a nice touch of realism, that when things are comfortable and can take them or leave them (mostly leave) but when things get tough—well, the scenes toward the end of the story, which I will resist spoiling all over the place, allow us to see inside Charlie’s shell a little bit to how much he relies on his parents and how much he needs them even when he doesn’t realize it. I thought the author was awesome here, honestly. It was totally graceful.

Michelle: Agreed, that part of the story really made the whole thing for me. But, I’m admittedly a sucker for the whole emotional/angst/family drama thing so…. Anywhooo, I wish we’d seen a bit further into that side of Charlie earlier on. Sure we saw glimpses here and there with his mom but I would have liked more. The author did do a fabulous job showing some emotion and redemption (for lack of a better word so help me out here will ya R?) with First in the end. It seemed to me that he became more understanding of Charlie – or at the very least more accepting. I think that also helped Charlie become more accepting of himself….to the point that he was able to move his life in a more healthy direction with his romantic relationship(s).

Renay: Redemption works well to describe it for both of them! I was pleased that First got to be a fully realized character with flaws that Charlie grows to see as the story progress and I think it says a lot that Charlie (and the reader) get to see him take an active interest in Charlie’s life as the story progresses. I liked First way, way more than I liked Dylan’s father. My feelings toward Dylan’s father start somewhere around “disgusted” and bottom out when you reach “almost wish I had never read this book”.

I guess I will talk about that a little! Dylan’s father makes a decision—and I leave it up to others to find out what the decision is—and I think it was a horrible, horrible thing. The book’s main thrust wouldn’t exist without it, but I am pretty annoyed that the resolution to it was contained in a few paragraphs, that Dylan seemed to let it go immediately, that there were no real consequences. On the other hand, he was meant to fill the roll of the absent father and he does it in grand, swooshy fashion. He tries, but the decision he makes, the way he frames his failures as the failure of someone else, never sat well with me after I learned them. I went back through the book at all the places he could have redeemed himself as person and he never managed to bother. He does okay on the Father Dedemption Scale, but as far as I’m concerned I wouldn’t want to know him. Dylan = awesome. Father = jerk. I really hope Dylan grows up and takes after his mother.

Michelle: See I saw this just a bit differently. I totally agree that the absent father thing was wrong the man has children, they are his responsibility so he should have sucked it up and been a more stable presence in their lives. I also think that the one secret he kept (that I won’t name here because I don’t want to spoil it for the readers) was a super bad no no. Definitely not a good thing!

BUT I will also say that Dylan’s father was also an individual in his own right and as such how he coped with the changes of his life seemed pretty realistic to me. He’d been dumped by his wife and he took to the only thing that gave him some perceived stability and that was throwing himself into work. I’d keep myself super busy too, trying to fill up every open moment of time so I didn’t have to think of that loss or even see it in every second at home. As it relates to his big lie/secret so what? He was a spiteful prick. I think given the situation he’d earned it. We’ve all been in those situations, we get deeply hurt make the wrong decisions and then have to make up for it when we face the consequences. Did Dylan and Randy let him off the hook too easily? Yea, maybe but what was the alternative? The man is still their father and frankly the only one interested in even remotely taking care of them. I’d say that gives him somewhat of a pass.

Renay: It is okay to have flaws, yes. He has them, that’s fine! The problem is he doesn’t doesn’t deal with them in the text. There are no consequences for him doing what he does, the text makes it sound like he doesn’t have to live with his children judging him, or his wife judging him, it just…gets tossed to the side. Dylan shrugs it off (making me like him a little less, har).

I don’t give many free passes. It’s another reason I didn’t like this book as much: the author never explains why she characterizes the mother in such an awful way. I don’t accept the premise! The mother in this story went harring off to Paris without explaining herself to her kids, but returns heartfelt and sympathetic and her entire role in this novel felt like the author just didn’t give a crap because she was the bad guy. The author leaves it there with no other explanation besides butthurt whining (oh wow, where’ve I seen women characterized like THIS before), whereas she explains the father’s slide into douchebaggery as hurt feelings and frames him as the sympathetic partner when it’s actually the exact opposite. Who doesn’t love a good double standard! Gosh!

However, I could sit here and write you a 4,000 word essay on this and there’s no time for that so ho ho, next question!

Michelle: What do we think the significance of Rob’s nickname (pup) for Charlie really was?

Renay: Oooh, I like this question! I could never decide. I would need to read the book again (I might, too!) to really know if I was pulling this out of my butt, but during emotionally intimate moments, Rob called Charlie by his name, and in physically intimate moments, he called him pup. I’m not sure if this was some kind of protection for him, to never use Charlie’s name during sex, but to use it when he was angry, or sad, or just talking. Also, a line Charlie uses later in the book, where he reminds a teammate that hey, don’t girls find puppies and kittens and other small things cute—besides the sexist stereotype I want to stomp—made me think: does Charlie even realize? He seems to like the nickname because it seems he thinks Rob thinks he’s cute, whereas to me it seems that it’s another way to make Charlie submissive to him during sex, and really, I can’t decide whether that’s positive or negative. Bottom, top; does it matter if Charlie is happy? For Rob, it always seemed like a way to have control over someone else inside a life that was, as we see through Charlie’s eyes, spinning out of control. What do you think?

Michelle: Which brings me to a question/thought I had throughout. I kind of got a Rob is going through a phase of experimentation vibe. Kinda like I wasn’t really sure that Rob was totally down with his gayness. Bi-sexual I could totally see but yea not full speed on the gay-train you know what I’m sayin’?

At any rate I can see what you’re saying here. I hadn’t really noticed (when he was calling Charlie Pup) in the way you had but I did get the feeling it gave Rob the ability to disconnect from the relationship. Now that you mention it I do also see where it gave him an element of control as well. Now I’m left wondering if he really needed it to have control. Charlie was so love starved (and let’s face it sex starved) that he would have likely been as submissive as Rob wanted him to be out of the gate don’t you think?

Renay: Huh! I am pretty surprised because the vibe I got from Rob was a general bemusement/annoyance that the town wasn’t as open-minded, instead of him not being gay. I wonder what other people who read the book thought. I have to admit to my experiences coloring my judgment, though. It’s rare that we see being gay treated as such a non-issue by a character so I kind of embraced Rob and ran with it. That could have been my mistake, though, and I missed something because of it.

The sad part is, I can’t decide if he was distancing himself with the nickname because it’s how he handles sexual intimacy, or if it was because Charlie was so obviously, as you put it, attention starved. You’re making me want to read the book all over so I can decide and there’s no time! Sob.

Speaking of time, we’ve probably made enough people wade through all our (okay, MY) words to find out which book we’re sending on to Chris and Nymeth. Go ahead and do the honors and put them all out of their misery (if they haven’t already guessed).

Michelle: So in case you all were wondering….or if you hadn’t gotten a clue from our ramblings we thought The Screwed Up Life of Charlie the Second was the badass that won out on this fabulous boy on boy grudge match. Dylan and his latent powers put up a good fight but in the end he was just a not strong enough to overcome Charlie and all his dorky goodness. Who knew he had it in him? So go forth young Charlie….go forth and conquer My Most Excellent Year.