Tyson Anthony’s ‘About Him’ Is A Book I Didn’t See Coming

I first watched the web series. I was intrigued by the near-X-rated sex scenes, but that was about the only good thing about it. The series is currently in its third season, but by the time I got to the end of season 1, I was done. The acting was bad, very, very bad, and the only reason I even endured all the episodes to the end was because one of the actors is major eye candy. [That’s him below. Gary Lavard. My crush of life! ???? ]

But even his good looks couldn’t entice me to out myself through one more season.

However, my interest was piqued when I learned that the series is based off a book, Tyson Anthony’s About Him. I’m still trying to recall if I’ve ever read an exclusively gay book before I heard of Anthony’s book. [I mean, now I have already read “Call Me By Your Name”, so “About Him” is definitely not my first]. I was intrigued enough to check it out on Amazon, and sure enough, there it was.

So I purchased it and soon, it was delivered to me. And eventually, I got around to reading it.

And the book is BAD!

This legit shocked me.

Don’t get me wrong. The storyline is good, very good in fact. But the writing – oh my God! It read like Tyson Anthony finished typing at his computer and hurried the pages straight to the publisher. It was so apparent that there was no editing done; there were so many wrong spellings, poor sentence constructions, and scenes that could have been penned a lot better to emphasize the drama happening in them. The book read like the writer was just hurtling towards the end – you know, “Let me just get this over with quickly so I can move on to my next project.”

I was very disappointed. It may not have been my first gay read, but it was my first gay erotica. Yes, the book was heavily peppered with sex scenes. And that – plus the storyline – was the only reason I kept on reading to the last page. Otherwise this book is just shit! With the African mentality of one who believes almost only good things come out of America, I was frankly surprised a book like this even made it to a readership let alone all the way to the web series.

Then again, it feels like the bad production of the book just basically translated into the bad production of the series.

Still, it was nice to dig into the lives of gay men in America. There was a familiarity to it, a sense of kinship as I followed the characters through their interactions, as they go through love, sex and relationships.

And in my current state of mind, there was nothing as relatable as when the main character, Damien said to his friend Harris, who had just chickened out of a four-year relationship because the boyfriend wanted to meet his parents. Damien said: “Listen, I’ll be honest, gay dating is a fucking task. When you find somebody good, somebody who makes you happy, you keep them forever.”