The Lord Won't Mind, But Grandma Does

Reading Challenge 2017: book about an interesting woman. The Lord Won't Mind by Gordon Merrick  is also a reread from yesteryear as I read it when it came out in the early 70's.  I had thought it was published later, but discovered that Avon Publishing distributed the paper back in 1971. I used a picture from the original cover, as that was what drew me into the novel originally.  I could see that it was a novel about two men, which was something of a rarity in that time.  I imagine I would have read it in high school, having purchased it at B. Dalton's (a now defunct bookstore) or possibly at Waldenbooks (another defunct bookstore) based on the cover art by Victor Gadino.  His art would intrigue me to collecting the other novels by Merrick largely due to how he portrayed the main characters.


 My perspective now makes gives me the feeling of reading a Fitzgerald novel with erotic scenes, as if he had written Harlequin romance novels. Charlie Mills meets Peter Marshall through his grandmother C.B. who almost forces them to be together, even though she does not approve of it. It is a boy meets boy, boy leaves boy and gets married to a psychopathic theater girl, boy becomes rent boy, and then they end up together in a twisted turn of fate which involves a bandage around a delicate appendage. There is a surprising twist involving C.B.'s real father (it has to do with a plantation) that makes the lovable woman almost as much as a lunatic as Charlie's wife Hattie. I guess this is a book about two interesting women, from a psychological viewpoint. One thing that bothered me was where did all the money come from that everyone seemed to manifest out of thin air. C.B. was rich. Hattie's parents were rich. Even Walter, an art collector who literally wanted to own Peter simply tossed $50K away like it was nothing. All this pre-World War II. This is book one of a trilogy that I plan to read this year. Three decades after the initial reading, I found it quaint but out of place today.

The title refers to a minor character telling the boys that as long as it is love, the Lord won't mind.  Interestingly, Sapphire, the former servant of C.B. (a foreshadowing of the secret twist) would become a famous singer, something unheard of in the 30's for a black woman.  This would contrast with the judgmental vision of C.B., Hattie, and other white characters who thought themselves above black people.

This novel was pretty daring for its time, as I do not recall many other gay romance novels in the 70's, especially ones sitting in plain view in the fiction section of a mainstream bookstore.  Now you would find reprints (with horrible cover art) in the gay section, almost hidden away so that only people who know where to look would find them.  I was one of those people.

It reminded me of my own romance during college that ended traumatically for me as I could not be with someone I thought I loved as much as Peter loved Charlie.  He also would leave me for a woman (hiding behind her raucous laughter and hyperbolic personality) until he came to his senses and found another man to call his own.  I was ready to leave everything behind and start over (not once but twice) until I came to my senses and realized I could never be with someone as flighty and superficial (or as tall) as he.