The College Fix

Story focuses on ‘the particularities of love and desire’ between a man and a young teenager

A new novel written by a professor at the University of Montana focuses in part on a sexual relationship between an older man and an underage boy, an arrangement the author calls a “true love story” he hopes will encourage people to “consider who is entitled to tap into the joys of love.”

The book, written by English professor Casey Charles, uses as its backdrop “a witch hunt for gay men in Boise” in the 1950s, Charles said in a recent interview with The Missoulian.

Charles sought to make the “discomfort” of an “intergenerational” relationship “central to the story,” saying of the fictional affair between a teenager and an adult man: “[T]he law — historically and statutorily — fails to take into account the nuance of age and development and the particularities of love and desire, which often find their totems in taboos.”

“I do want us to consider who is entitled to tap into the joys of love — what parameters the heteronormative adult world has put around that privilege,” Charles said.

Charles, who said he has participated in “a queer curriculum and work on GLBTQ civil rights” at the university, called the sexual relationship between a 16-year-old and his high school football coach “a true love story.”

“We don’t want teenagers to vote. We don’t want them to drink. We don’t want them to have sex,” Charles said in the interview. “We want to put them in a little cage and treat them like innocent pets. And they aren’t. They’re smart and articulate and manipulative human beings in ways we don’t allow teenagers to be. Society needs to wake up to that, I think.”

“Think of the Parkland teens who have told it like it is on gun control and demonstrated a maturity that puts adults to shame,” Charles added.

Read the whole interview here.

MORE: Website encourages parents to let children engage in ‘sexual play’

IMAGE: Dean Drobot / Shutterstock.com

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