Lawnboy

“The sexual awakening of a gay teenager leads to a peculiar, short-ranged rebellion in Paul Lisicky’s moody, thoughtful first novel….
Lawnboy
recalls standouts of the genre.”—
SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE

“
Lawnboy
is, quite simply, the real thing, a novel of mystery and great beauty. The appearance of a writer like Paul Lisicky—a writer who deeply respects the complexities of love and desire, who can find tragedy and transcendence almost everywhere he looks—is a rare event. I read this book increasingly slowly, dreading the moment when I would have no more of it to read. Now that I’ve finished, all I can say is that I hope Paul Lisicky is hard at work on another one.”—MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM

“This novel is to young gay men growing up in the 1980s and 1990s what Edmund White’s
A Boy’s Own Story
was for gay men who grew up in the 1950s and 60s. It’s the best gay coming-of-age novel I’ve read in a decade, written with a wonderfully crisp prose. This story concerns a young man trying to find a family anywhere he can; he drifts from situation to situation in South Florida until he finally makes peace with himself. This writer could be the next David Leavitt or Michael Cunningham.”—
BOOKSENSE 76 NEWSLETTER

“Nobody writes about hilarious longing the way Paul Lisicky does. Some writers manage to be funny and sad in turn; in
Lawnboy,
Lisicky manages to be both at the same time. His characters are lovable and fallible; his prose is gorgeous.
Lawnboy
is a tribute to the endless series of life’s first loves: your parents, your siblings, your best friends, your childhood fears. It’s beautifully written, it’s beautiful.”—ELIZABETH McCRACKEN

“Savvy enough to recognize the importance of buzz cuts and sleeveless shirts in gay identity formation, Lisicky is also smart enough not to rely on hackneyed consumer-culture signifiers, resulting in a lushly emotional, romantic and tragic pursuit.”—
PAPER

“Lisicky’s prose shines, at times hilarious, at others entrenched in sorrow and longing, but always gorgeous to read…. The reconciliations between the characters are moving and earned, graced with compassion and vitality.”—BRET ANTHONY JOHNSON,
BOOK

“What distinguishes
[Lawnboy]
is the depth of humanity that flows into Lisicky’s cascade of crisp, fresh sentences…. Lisicky never ceases to be funny, ironic, and surprising….
Lawnboy
scythes a remarkably touching journey.”—
LAMBDA BOOK REPORT

“This adventure-of-the-heart takes place in as evocative a landscape as any you’ll find in fiction, its Floridian decay and lushness the perfect setting for a story dense with eroticism, disillusionment, and the surprising grace notes of renewal.”—BERNARD COOPER

“
Lawnboy
re-landscapes the front yard of American fiction.”—CAROL MUSKE DUKES

“The power of this book is its ability to touch you on so many different levels.”—
HOUSTON VOICE

“Lisicky charts Evan’s conflicting emotions deftly…. Humorous and moving … hitting musical notes of insight and wit.”—
AUSTIN CHRONICLE

“Reading this often brilliant novel makes a critic want to apply the cliché ‘promising,’ which doesn’t do justice to this accomplished and highly readable excursion into human emotions and the choices that we make, or have made for us.”—SUITE 101.COM

We stared up into the dark, flamboyant branches, waiting for the wind to pick up. All it took was the slightest push, and there it was: crimson blossoms swaying above us like bells. We stood beneath its heavy canopy, gazing up its trunk, quiet, motionless. The air thickened with its fragrance. And then, as if in gratitude, the tree released itself, little red pieces falling now, coating us, sticking in our hair like blessings.

We walked further into the park. Peter grasped my hand, reading aloud the names on the signs. Soursop. Gumbo-limbo. Frangipani. Sugar apple. He spoke these words precisely, with the slightest thrill, as if they tasted dangerous. Could we be any happier? Our parents, to our surprise, had encouraged us to come here by ourselves, and it was that dry October morning when the heat finally breaks, when people tired of humidity and air-conditioning finally throw open their windows.

I pointed to a flower. It faltered between a lamppost and a ditch, nameless, forlorn. “Look,” I said.

Peter smiled, crouching down beside it. “Pretty.”

I knelt next to him. I pulled in a breath: he’d always be older. I was five then, an age I’d resisted, while he was thirteen. How I wanted to grow like that, to go through three different shoe sizes within a year.

I drew closer to the flower. I touched its leaves—crenellated, yellow—its dusky muscular stem. I squeezed shut my eyes. I saw it growing somewhere else, someplace better, in silence and beauty, craning its face toward the light.

I picked it. I twirled its stem between my fingers, listening. Do it. Don’t do it. Do it. Don’t. No. Then stuffed the whole thing, root and all, in my mouth.

Peter’s face tightened. He jerked me up by the arm. “Evan—”

“What?”

“Spit it out!”

“But—”

“You heard me.”

I turned my head away, holding my flower inside. The petals tickled the back of my throat; my tongue contracted. The earth blurred, warped. Grapefruit, I thought. My flower tastes like grapefruit. I swallowed, smiled, looked up at my brother through hot, hot tears.

“What if it’s poison?” He nodded, once, twice, tensing his bottom lip. “Think about poison.”

I curled tighter into myself. The woods smelled cold. My forehead burned. Skull and crossbones: would that be me? Bottle of iodine? Alive, I was alive.

There were things nobody knew about me. They didn’t know about my old train set in my bedroom, complete with Cape Cods, hotels, signal crossings, and papier-mâché palms, a set that I tinkered with until the ninth grade, then smashed—to my uttermost sorrow—after a fight with my father. They didn’t know I could recite a handful of psalms—the 13th, the 23rd, the 42nd, and the 53rd—completely by heart. They didn’t know about my deep interest in Greek myth, my faith in the shifting weather, my fascination with Saturn and the outer planets. They didn’t know that I spent hours at a time inside a concrete pipe, a cool, cramped cylinder in the middle of a field, whenever I needed to get away. They didn’t know about the morning in my thirteenth year when out of sheer boredom, I stitched my fingertips together with needle and thread, making an intricate basket of my hand and giving myself a tremendous infection. They all thought I was good-natured, upright and responsible, generous, affectionate, and kind, and of course I could be those things, but there was much more to me than that, a side that unnerved even myself, and this side included William.

William. William the pigeon-toed, William the conqueror. His name, though banal, still conjures up an otherworldly thing, not a being of flesh and blood. For a while I kept him hidden from everyone—my mother, my father, Peter. It even took me months to tell my best friend Jane about him, though she thought she knew me. Well, she didn’t.

I liked to keep him that way: my secret path, my own private joy.

I was mowing my parents’ lawn. He was standing in our yard between the joewood and the carambola, mopping his tanned forehead with a blue rag. He was watching me, hard, and I made an effort not to notice. He’d been around forever; he had to be almost as old as my parents: forty, forty-two. I’d never even given him a thought. I only knew that he worked the camera for Channel 7 News, had a gentle greeting for my folks whenever he walked his Dobermans, and had the most profound and beautiful travelers tree I’d ever seen (like me, he loved plants). That was it. He meant absolutely nothing to me, until he stepped forward, then I started noticing: jaw, eyes, hair, smell, hands, feet, mouth. There was a kind of buzz about him, a field of hissing electricity that jerked with my ions and electrons. I felt myself getting hard. I thought: now you’ve really gotten yourself into trouble.

“Lawnboy,” he said, mocking me. “Lawnboy, Lawnboy.”

I pulled back on the lever. The motor silenced. “Is there a problem?” I said, with some irritation.

The hush overwhelmed. Above, dry palm fronds clattered in the heat.

“Can I help you?”

He nodded, shyly. He tucked in his shirt, a striped Haitian thing patterned with yellow parrots. “My lawn mower’s broken. My place is a mess. Would you be interested in cutting my lawn?”

My expression dulled. I reacted as if he’d been asking to tap my spine.

“I’ll give you twenty bucks. Twenty bucks, an hour a week. No weeding or mulching.”