It Rises and Will Be Gone

“This is about me, because that is all I know.” So begins It Rises and Will Be Gone. The story of a man who feels nothing like a man at all. The story of a boy really, a boy struggling to separate love from sex, garner some sort of tranquillity from frantic desire. Along with him are his two—and only—friends. There is Duwayne, a morally ambiguous shadow who gives life to the boy’s adolescent fantasies, and Shelly, the naive beauty who has been ruined and revived by the promises of many little boys masquerading as men. It is in her that the boy believes he can be saved from the fear and guilt that rule him, but none of them can be saved from the unavoidable changes that come with age.