Chaos Magic

Chaos Magic
Jay Lygon
Torquere Press
ISBN: 1-60370-014-5
Fiction, Erotic Romance
Reviewed by Jean Roberta

The title of this gay-male BDSM romance or parable of sexual magic in the City of Angels is misleading. It is more about patterns than about chaos. The adorable young bottom who tells the tale has a plan for his life, and the minor deities that he has willed into being (the Goddess of Traffic, the Goddess of Negotiation and the God of Computers) have their own plans. The author's plan is the best of all.
Sam, who appears to be a SAM (Smart Ass Masochist), opens a psychic door to something new by literally praying for a new Daddy to appear in his life. This request is unusual for him, as he explains:
"See, to the Gods, most prayer was like the buzz of a hungry mosquito in a dark room late at night . . . Knowing that, I worshipped my Gods, but rarely prayed for anything. When I knelt before their altars and offered sacrifices, selfless adoration flowed off my soul much the same as when I gave my body to a Master. It was an incredible high to bow that low.
"Boundless faith, bottomless misery, and sheer desperation -- the holy trinity of prayer."
Sam reluctantly goes to the bar with his concerned friends, who want to help him get over his last relationship with a man who is very bad news. Unfortunately, Marcus the ex-Master is stalking Sam, and often appears in places where Sam has gone to escape from him.
Sam bolts out of the bar and into the arms of Hector, a mature and reputable dominant as well as a successful salesman of oil-rig equipment. Hector has no interest in tricks of any kind. Despite his frequent out-of-town trips, he wants to get to know Sam step by step, in an old-fashioned courtship that suggests the traditions of his Mexican ancestors. Hector even lives in the house of his dead grandmother, who appears as a ghost to Sam and his family of protective spirits.
On their first date, Sam expresses surprise that the oil-drilling business provides Hector with a good living in Los Angeles. Sam was raised in an eccentric family of pagan farmers in Oklahoma, and he is not familiar with all aspects of his adopted city. Hector explains it to him:
"Los Angeles is like sedimentary rock -- layers applied over each other and compressed together. One layer is entertainment industry, another is agriculture, oil, aerospace, fashion, meat packaging -- name the industry and it's here somewhere you've driven past a million times and never noticed."
This description of the local setting suggests the complexity of a plot that combines romance, hot BDSM, psychological realism and the paranormal. L.A. (or El Lay, as it has been called) is described as a place where anything can happen.
When showing his altar to Hector, Sam explains his religion:
"Gods aren't immortal. They don't live much longer than humans do. Every time a god spirit is reborn in the cycle, the Dewey Clan [Sam's family] stands ready to worship the new deity. That doesn't mean we have to though, except that Mom would scalp me if I didn't worship the family Gods. So I have altars for the God of Agriculture, the God of Weather, and of course, Mama Fertility, even though I don't farm."
Sam goes on:
"The minor deities share [an altar]. I'm never sure if those nameless ones are old gods clinging to life or new gods without much of a power base: the God of Exact Change, the Goddess of Please Let My Period Start . . . Think of how many prayers rise from human lips in the average day. People don't mind asking for help, but then they refuse to believe in their own Gods. It's sad. A lot of minor deities end up in therapy. No amount of hand patting and 'it's them, not you' can give a God the strength to go on. Only worship, faith and the occasional bottle of Stoli can do that."
Thus the reader learns how closely Sam's spirituality is connected to his sexuality. As his guardian god-spirits tell him, his faith is strong enough to keep them alive and healthy, and therefore any favors they do for him are part of a power exchange, not one-sided acts of charity as he believes. Their hardest job is to get him to believe in himself.
Sam at first appears vain, restless and eager to connect with dominant men on a strictly physical basis. As his story unfolds, the reader learns how dangerous Marcus is and how much Sam is in denial about the harm that has been done to him and about his own paralyzing fear. As Sam has reason to know, hell hath no fury like a Master scorned.
At first, Hector looks like the anti-Marcus. He offers Sam a chance to reconnect with the soil by growing a garden while living in Hector's house. Hector points out several times that he could easily support Sam, whose writing job on the fringes of the movie business barely pays his bills. Hector appears protective, concerned and generous. Is he the ideal Daddy or a control freak? Sam wants to be loved, like all other human beings, but no one living in L.A. could be unaware that exchanging sex and other domestic services for material things is a business. As Sam explains to Hector, a real relationship between them can't be about money.
When Sam's protective deities magically create houses in Hector's neighborhood so they can live nearby and watch out for their boy, none of the local residents seem to notice anything unusual. Even with supernatural guardians, Sam can't always be safe in a city where everyone seems to ignore all the "layers" or dimensions of reality outside their own.
Hector's demon seems to be a fear of disloyalty. He has been wounded more than he will admit by two previous boys whom he loved but lost when he caught each of them with other lovers. Hector is determined not to let such a thing happen again. Unfortunately, Sam's first reaction to fear is to run away first and explain himself later, if at all. And Marcus knows the weaknesses of both Sam and Hector. His plan is to convince Hector that Sam is too fickle to trust and to convince Sam that there is no alternative to a life of submission based on fear.
For awhile, Sam's relationship with Hector seems headed for disaster as surely as the plot of a Greek tragedy. Even when Sam realizes that Marcus is the God of Fear, it is hard for him to turn off the negative energy that has enabled the bully to grow larger than life.