Customer Reviews

Bridge Across the Ocean

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This is a beautiful, meaningful story, so sensitively handled and honestly revealed, that portrays the life-giving strength of love that can cross diverse gaps: black and white, old and young, straight and gay, physically "pure" and HIV "adulterated".

Recently testing positive for HIV, 26-year-old artist Derek Mayfield, a gay black man, takes a vacation in Cancun to give himself time to reassess his commitment to his life and its purpose. While there, he encounters and falls in love with Rob Velarde, a beautiful 16-year-old white "god" who was also vacationing there with his younger brother, Skeeter, and his divorced mother, Roberta. Rob was the embodiment of all that Derek had spent a lifetime desiring and wanting to create undying love with--yet here ten years his junior and still an under-age child under the control of his parents. Instead of just keeping his distance and obsessively observing this "Tadzio" from afar, Derek steps right into Rob's life and the life of his family, creating a multi-layered relationship of friendship and love that would mutually affect and benefit all of them for the rest of their lives.

Author Randy Boyd with his perfect writing does not flinch in his honesty about the definite sexual appeal of a youth like Rob, and the turmoil of desire versus responsibility that a man like Derek can undergo. But in genuinely taking Rob into his heart, Derek is also nurturing in this incubator his own precious, surviving Self, and in his presentation of the reality and example of his generous and decent character to the two relentlessly curious and open boys, and, ultimately, to their mother, he is also, himself, becoming aware of his own infinite value. It is not only Derek's ability to enjoy and absorb the youthful vibrancy of Rob and Skeeter, but also in his willingness to give of himself to their benefit that he has achieved what he wanted to find in Cancun.

The story also deals with the extreme hunger of loneliness and separation that exists in even the most golden of lives, and how what is the true perversion that comes from the combination of youth with adult is not the danger that an adult's sexual attraction could distort the psyche of the youth, but that the genuine love that youthful innocence craves is blocked by other adults who have already been distorted by their fears. This novel sets to right again the reaching and arcing path of love that links what otherwise would be separated by a turbulent and ferocious ocean.

I highly recommend this book to anyone with an open heart and I am eager to read it again so that once more I can fully experience the beauty, compassion, and great fun that was Cancun with Derek, Rob, and Skeeter.

While on vacation in Cancun, Derek, a gay black man with HIV, befriends two teenaged straight white boys. The story centers on the building of the friendship between them, with Derek's coming out to them as gay and as HIV+ and with Derek's intense attraction to one of the two boys. Boyd eloquently portrays the struggles of Derek coming to terms with his unrequited desire for the oldest boy, and the sometimes wavering effects of time and distance on a friendship. He does succumb to gooey sentimentality towards the end, but it doesn't take away from the grace of the novel.

I found that this book address issues dealing with inter racial dating and under age relationship very well. It was written very well.

Wasn't sure what I was getting myself into, but damn, I was rewarded. Didn't know if they were gonna sleep together until the very end, but that was almost besides the point. Definitely felt like I was there in Cancun with the Boys Club, rubbing sun tan lotion on each other and dancing in the sweaty night.

I found that this book address issues dealing with inter racial dating and under age relationship very well. It was written very well.