Wrong
Wrong is a short story collection published in 1992.
This collection includes:
- A Herd - a burnout/loser/druggie clique of high school boys live on after one of their number is molested and murdered by a serial killer. The laconic, deadpan prose describes the fecklessness of Jay's friends, the social script ruined by unspeakable tragedy to Jay's emotionally estranged parents, and Jay's friend Bruce's uncommunicated desire for him.
- Container - the narrator vacations in Amsterdam, where he explores a rack of pornographic magazines that would be illegal Stateside and contemplates the connection of paraphilia to a mysterious and possibly deceased "Phillip".
- Introducing Horror Hospital - Trevor tries to balance being the front man of an upstart rock band, with a rebound romance polygon involving Devon, Tim, and Chuck. Fetch the smelling salts, for a reader must swoon: this is queernorm.
- He Cried - Craig collects newspaper clippings of reports about murdered boys and young men, and has erotic dreams about them.
- Wrong - Mike murders Keith, José, Steve, Will, and then himself. George, a tourist in New York, writes a postcard to Dennis before hooking up with Dan and then Frank, the latter of whom brutally murders George. In the afterlife, George wanders around haunting Dan and spouting cryptic philosophical soundbytes.
- Dinner - anal fisting, mutual ejaculations.
- Square One - The narrator begins with more of an essay about the enduring power of pornography for its honesty, by which pornography transcends any excuses for its existence, and becomes what those lesser art forms imitate. This becomes a documentation of the narrator's sexual escapades with a "George M", who then lays more opinion and perspective on the page than the narrating first person whose story this essay is supposed to belong to. The execution remains ambiguous about whether the narrator objectifies George so thoroughly that the reader is led to think George is now more of a subject than the narrator, or if George M is the one objectifying the narrator.
- Dear Secret Diary - an 11-year-old boy named Kenny walks into a bar and orders an alcoholic drink. The barkeep tells Kenny that, as he's underage, he can only have that drink after Kenny sexually services all the bar patrons. Kenny is taken in by a particularly wealthy patron who has Kenny live with him and then gets bored and invites his friends to take sexual advantage of Kenny. Kenny quickly loses muscle mass, catches a cold that doesn't go away, and is hospitalized and dies (likely of AIDS). This is all told from the point of view of Pierre, who keeps the narrator's diary, so when "the narrator" claims to be too in love with Pierre to write the diary himself or that he invented Kenny entirely that Pierre owns an action figure? paper weight? statue of...That all remains ambiguous how true any of this content is in-world.
- Safe ( Missing Men / My Mark / Bad Thoughts ) - a lot happens here
- Epilogue - the narrator and Joe physically explore a haunted house and the narrator philosophically explores the futility of human connection.
Wrong contains the following literary devices: