The Boys Across The Street [Hardcover]

Rick Sandford (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 15, 2000

The riveting and often moving story of one man's obsession with a group of Yeshiva boys.

A work of fiction that manages to be both sexually frank and laugh-out-loud funny, The Boys Across the Street is the story of an ex-porn star named Rick, who lives across the street from a Chasidic boys' school, and his budding relationship with the students and their families. Rick pursues his interest in the boys by adopting Chasidic dress and dares to confront the codes in Leviticus proscribing homosexual behavior; to Rick, these codes are responsible for the bigotry that batters his life.

As his relationship with the boys deepens from obsession to friendship, Rick finds himself confronting areas of prejudice within himself. Despite being an avowed atheist, he finds himself drawn to the religious fervor of the Chasidic men as are they to his passionate embrace of their most contemptible of sins. The collision of their different worlds-combined with their increasing closeness-results in interactions that are intense, funny, and full of longing, often all at the same time.

As smart as it is comic, The Boys Across the Street is a powerful blend of eroticism and religion-a novel filled with unforgettable characters, and one that is certain to stir up discussion about sex and repression.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Sandford's first and only novel (he died in 1995) is set on and around Hollywood's Alta Vista Boulevard, in 1991, with narrator/protagonist Rick Sandford, 40, presenting the superficially outrageous dynamic that is the book's foundation. A gay former porn star, Rick now works sporadically as a film and TV stand-in, and lives across the street from a Hasidic boys' school. His first encounter with two preteen students (Isaac and Moshe) from the yeshiva begins the narrative with an off-hand metaphysical exchange, quickly turning to a frankly sexual discussion in which Rick describes gay sex, shows the boys a porn mag starring himself and reveals his erotic fascination with Jewish men. Between eyeing the boys and shocking them with his lusty talk, Rick becomes curious about orthodox Judaism. Most days, Rick props himself on a canvas chair in front of his apartment building, and with dictionary and binoculars in hand, conspicuously (usually shirtlessly) observes the boys. Rick is not Jewish; he's an atheist, and his obsession is unabashedly pedophilic. He also hopes to be a writer, so he transcribes all the encounters with the Hasidic boys into stories and eventually a novel that he calls, unsurprisingly, The Boys Across the Street. Rick's "study of Judaism," leads him to buy and wear a yarmulke, "tsitzis," and formal hat, ostensibly making a statement about Orthodox edicts against homosexuality, but these gestures are more self-aggrandizing than enlightening, and Rick seems confused about what exactly he's trying to prove about religion and sexuality. While Sandford's premise--interrogating religion and presenting the conflicting perspectives of two historically hated groups--is interesting, the book never delivers what it promises. (Feb.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A strange, pointless, highly offensive debut novel about a homosexual porn star who fantasizes about seducing the boys who study at the yeshiva across the street from him. Narrator Rick lives alone in a somewhat tumbledown section of Los Angeles. Once a successful actor in the Valley Boy demimonde of gay pornography, he is now reduced to occasional work as an extra in Hollywood. He spends most of his days reading Isherwood, Emerson, or Joyce and has vague ideas about trying his own hand at writing a blasphemous, homoerotic gospel in the style of the 1611 King James Version of the Bible, yet theres a big distraction nearby: a boys school for Hasidic Jews. Rick is fascinated not only by their youth, obviously, but also by his awareness that they consider himas both a gentile and a homosexuala lost soul. He becomes friendly with a few of them, gives them pornography, offers them blow jobs, and even begins to wear Hasidic garb. This quite understandably angers them; they insult him to his face and shoot him in the neck with a BB gun when his back is turned. Rick is a case study in personality disorder: An atheist, he detests Judaism as a murderous superstition, although he finds himself more and more strongly drawn to it as a means of possessing the schoolboys he is more and more obsessed with every day: I wanted to hold Avi in my arms, and I wanted him to tell me he loved me, and I wanted him to come in my mouth, and I wanted him to see his Godin me. Eventually his desire is consummated not in reality but in the manuscript of a novel he writes about the boys across the street. There is an ugly subgenre of gay fiction that appeals mainly to pedophiles, and Sandfords workprurient, vulgar, misogynistic, blasphemous, tasteless, pompous, and subliteratefalls deep within its bowels. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Faber & Faber; 1st edition (February 15, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0571199607
• ISBN-13: 978-0571199600
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,528,181 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Did you miss the point?, August 9, 2002

By 

Richard Harrold (Chicago, IL) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Boys Across The Street (Hardcover)

This novel, written by a now dead gay porn star about a gay porn star, might initially strike one as being puerile, but I found it to be a rather well-written character sketch with chauvinism as its theme: hedonistic chauvinism on the one hand as portrayed through the protagonist Rick, and religious chauvinism as portrayed by the Hassidic Jewish boys Rick is so enamoured by.

Rick is intrigued by the adolescent boys attending a Hassidic-run school across the street from his apartment. His initial interest is purely juvenile and tied to his fantasy of bedding one of the boys. But the story is carried by the conflict portrayed by two opposing hegemonies that are separated by a city street.

One the one side is the world as portrayed by Rick, a gay porn actor whose insatiable appetite for reading is contrasted by his profligate and pecuniary lifestyle. His personal perspective on life is that it is utterly meaningless and devoid of any real sense of right and wrong: everything is relative in Rick's world, nothing is sacred.

Across the street is the world of Hassidic Jews whose world is guided by a belief in a divine order that holds only the Jews can claim divine guidance and protection and that ultimately the course of events will lead to the Jews being rescued by their god.

What ensues is Rick's butting philosophical heads with the school boys with each being just as intransigent in their position as the other: a sort of literary meeting of two immoveable forces. Rick tries to show the boys how meaningless their beliefs are, yet the boys refuse to budge. And the boys try to impress upon Rick how his dressing up like them is offensive and his reading of their holy texts belittles their belief, but he is so caught up in proving that he is right and they are wrong that he is bewildered when he experiences retaliation.

There are moments when he and some of the boys genuinely connect, even bond. But the connection is precarious because of the overriding belief of one makes no room for the other's belief.

Did Sandford intentionally create a characterization of how today the Religious Right and Gay community appear incapable of communicating meaningfully because each holds on to its own selfish hegemony? Whether he did is unimportant. But as an allegory of this conflict, Sandford's story is quite good.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nothing Sacred, May 11, 2000

By 

Bennett Yellin "harrydunne" (West Hollywood, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Boys Across The Street (Hardcover)

This extraordinary book--more autobiography than fiction--is an original blending of the sacred and profane. Rick Sandford's only novel, published posthumously, reminds us that original voices in literature are far and few between nowadays. Some may find it grotesque and sacreligious, others deeply devout, but no one who risks reading it will come away unaffected.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A CLASH OF CULTURES--TENSE AND EDUCATIONAL!, May 8, 2000

By 

Christian "Writer/Human" (Colorado) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Boys Across The Street (Hardcover)

Rick Sanford (aka Ben Barker, a 1970's gay adult film star), tells the somewhat autobiographical tale of a man in his early 40's who questions the confusing moral judgments of the world around him. The story's narrator, Rick, is an out of work actor, living from unemployment check to unemployment check, and seemingly morally bankrupt, at least in the eyes of the people around him. An avowed homosexual, atheist, and non-Jewish, Rick becomes fascinated with the boys whom attend the Hassidic school across from where he lives. His fascination turns to fixation when he begins to dress like the boys in their traditional Jewish garb. His reasons for doing such are suspect, as he changes his response nearly every time he's asked. His behaviour, though, attracts the attention of the boys in the school and a few of the instructors as well. They aren't sure if they're being ridiculed by a foolish man or complimented by Rick's devotion to learning all there is to learn about the Hassidic Jews. The boys in turn become fascinated with Rick and his immoral lifestyle, for which he refuses to apologize...in fact, he revels in it before them, claiming to have slept with at least 2,000 men in his lifetime. He shares pictures of naked men with the boys, and other facets of his life...and one is never quite sure if he is seducing the boys, or merely without inhibitions about who he is. The sexual tension and seemingly inevitable seduction which lurks on the near horizon provides the drama around which the story unfolds. No issue is left unchallenged, and a dividing line the width of the street between the school and Rick's front steps seems to be the battle line drawn in the lives of these characters.

Told in a very simplistic manner, Sanford is able to convey the growing tension in these relationships meaningfully and satisfactorily. When the heat is turned up and violence boils over, causing an even deeper chasm to divide the factions, you are pulled ever deeper into the morals of each side and wonder which will win out, religious belief or the moral decay which Rick seems to signify. A taut little story, as informative as it is entertaining.