Interview with Javi Cuho

SPANISH GAY FICTION: Where does this project come from? Is it usual a short-story collection structure in the comic world?

JAVI CUHO: Las horas perdidas comes from the idea of recovering different short stories that were already written and just waiting for an opportunity in a drawer. I do not know whether a structure like this can be regarded as usual in the comic world, but other examples come to my mind, such as Osamu Tezuka’s Under the Air (“Kuuki no Soko”).[1]

SGF: Why did you choose this title?

JC: There is a certain irony behind it. When I was writing the stories I was thinking that they would never ever see daylight and, therefore, I was losing my time—though things did not turn out this way, eventually.

SGF: Regarding you are a writer, not an illustrator, why are your texts always published in no other literary formats than comic books?

JC: I am a fan of comics as well as an inveterate supporter of this wonderful means of storytelling. I just love it and cannot think of any better way of explaining my stories.

SGF: If there is any common denominator amongst the four stories, it is (in my viewpoint) the impossibility that the lovers face to reach complete happiness in their couple relationships, for different reasons each. Would you say that this is your personal belief? Is this idea constant in the rest of your work?

JC: This is an interesting reflection. I believe in couple relationships, and human relationships in general; they are recurring topics in my work. No matter if the story is set in our times or a fantastic world, this is an issue that I am crazy about and always return to, one way or another. In all my stories there is a certain melancholic, somehow bittersweet air which has to do with my personality; looking to the future optimistically, but inclined to turn my head so as to remember my past.

SGF: From the first story to the last one, there is a journey from a tragic story to more hopeful ones. Was there any intention to leave a good impression on the reader with this order?

JC: No, there was not. The story order came up quite naturally. Although they are not chronologically ordered, “La solución final” was the last story that I wrote and always conceived as the last one.

SGF: What was so alluring in the Nazi Germany pictured in “Balada para mi muerte” so that you decided to set a homosexual love story in a period like that?

JC: It all came from the figure of Marlene Dietrich and the story behind the song “Lili Marleen.” The rest, such as the characters and events in “Balada para mi muerte,” were evoked by the story of this topic.

SGF: Geert represents absolute unconditional love, though a kind of starry-eyed. However, Colton shows that he is not worthy of, frightened by social and political reasons. According to you, is Geert the model of the proper lover, or is he rather blind?

JC: I see Geert entailing a fascinating duality: on the one hand, he embodies the idealization of unreal love but, at the same time, the most realistic vision of the heartbreak that you feel when the one that you deeply love just does not merit it.

SGF: At first sight, “Dos+1” seems the most lighthearted story of the comic book. Curiously enough, it may be the most appealing one to discuss. Here, a somehow bored homosexual couple decides to change their sexual routine by having a threesome. What is your opinion about such a controversial topic?

JC: Who am I to judge a thing like this? Jove forbid! [Laughs.] The important thing is that everybody should pursue their own happiness. Thus, if a couple is happy in an open relationship or having a threesome, as long as the one does not hurt or cheat on the other, so be it! However it may be, I am not intending to defend anything with this story.

SGF: It is Óscar the one proposing the threesome idea since it was a tip that he learnt from television. To what extent do you think that we are determined by advertising messages nowadays?

JC: I think that we all are conditioned by our environment and its pressure on us. In the case of César and Óscar, the television message is just a thinly veiled excuse to try something that they both are attracted to and did not dare to confess.

SGF: In “La promesa,” my favorite story, you focus your attention on a topic that—if I am not wrong—is rarely mentioned in homosexual comics: the gay elderly. Regarding that you were a writer in your twenties back then, what led you to this issue? May the reader suspect the beginning of a love story between Jaime and his nurse Héctor in the last panel?

JC: Thanks, it is one of my favorite stories too. I felt a special, once-in-a-lifetime magic when I was writing it. The elderly issue has always concerned me, especially in the LGBT context. I have always wanted to return to it in a future project. The story ending is open to the reader’s interpretation. Who knows what this pair is doing now! [Laughs.]

SGF: Do you think that Jaime and Ígor could be friends if the latter found out that his father Esteban had cheated on his mother with Jaime? Or, do you think that the son does suppose that Jaime and his father had had a love affair?

JC: It is an intriguing point. . .But I am afraid that we will never know the answer. [Laughs.]

SGF: In “La solución final” you deal with fears, insecurities and personal frustrations pushed to the limit. Have you ever suffered from insecurity, or even rejection from others, due to your physique, and, like the four friends of this story, considered suicide to put an end to your suffering?

JC: Of course, I have felt insecure because of my physique or other facets concerning me. We do not get out of bed keenly each and every day, so this is not an issue that I am, or have been, immune to. Despite everything, I have never considered suicide as a solution to any of the problems that I have ever had.

SGF: How important is friendship for you?

JC: Friendship is everything to me; besides, you can find it in everyone, including your partner and relatives. I would be nothing without my friends’ love.

SGF: If in “Balada para mi muerte” and “La promesa,” homosexual relationships happen to be troublesome because of social reasons, in “Dos+1” and “La solución final” the affairs of the heart have much more to do with personal, sexual, or psychological issues. Now that the LGBT community is enjoying more freedom and equality of rights with regard to the rest of the population, why do you think that we still make things so complicated?

JC: If you are asking why homosexual people are so complicated to ourselves, I think that the answer is quite easy: we all, homosexual and non-homosexual, are human beings, and human beings are REALLY complicated. [Laughs.]

SGF: Are not gay men made for a monogamous behavior? Or, is fickleness a feature inherent in human nature, regardless sexual orientation?

JC: I believe that emotional monogamy, whatever the relationship may be, is not natural or healthy. Mind the fact that I am talking about emotional monogamy, not only sexual.

SGF: There is a couple pattern repeated in the four stories: the one is taller, stronger (physically) and more protective than the other. With the exception of “Balada para mi muerte,” also the other three couples are interracial, o at least the one’s skin is darker than the other’s. Whose was the idea: the illustrator Andrea Jen’s, or yours?

JC: Andrea and I worked hand in hand on the character design, but this was not something preconceived or agreed in advance. As I do in all my projects, I always inform the illustrator who works with me the way I imagine the characters, but it is the illustrator who always adds the finishing touches and makes them their own in the end.

SGF: How do you like Andrea Jen’s illustrations?

JC: It was a pleasure to work with Andrea. Although we have no plans for a new collaboration, let’s see what the future brings. I would love it myself.

SGF: What are you working on now? Can you tell me about your next projects?

JC: I am working on the sequels of my comics Lost Kingdom and Sandstorm, as well as a new project that I hope it will be taking shape little by little.

---

[1] A collection of short stories by the “God of Manga” (1928 - 1989) drawn between 1968 and 1970. Supernatural, hard-boiled, mystery, romance, science-fiction and sex (in some of its weirdest ways)—all mixed-up in this rare cocktail. Curiously enough, the protagonist of the first story, “The Execution Ended at Three,” is a SS officer, just like in Las horas perdidas. In my opinion, a flawless work of art.

Love Socially

On Javi Cuho & Andrea Jen’s Las horas perdidas (“The Lost Hours”)

Let’s get back a literary genre that here in spanishgayfiction.blogspot.com we just have a weakness for: the comic book. Here you have a yaoi-style collection (published in 2010) of four delightful stories—the index calls them hours—around one of our favorite topics. . .Do you feel it in your fingers?, do you feel it in your toes? Yes! It is L-O-V-E. [Sigh.]

After a short fragment from Federico García Lorca’s downbeat, evocative poem “Meditación bajo la lluvia” (“Meditation in the Rain”) we dive into “Balada para mi muerte” (“Ballad for My Death”), which is the perturbing name of the first story—Hour I. Here, we find ourselves in Germany in the early 1940s. Colton, a rough alcoholic SS officer wearing an eyepatch, is smitten with Geert, a captivating cross-dressed singer in a shitty clandestine cabaret. Colton has wife and children, but Geert falls on deaf ears: he is always willing to share his bed with this horny specimen—

Trouble in paradise: François, a member of the cabaret staff, is also in love with Geert. Like Taylor Swift in “Blank Space,” François gets drunk in jealousy, though his method to get rid of his rival is far away from the Pennsylvanian blonde’s swanky style. One night that Colton is sleeping with Geert in the cabaret, François reports the local to the authorities. The damaging devotee warns Geert and tries to persuade him to leave Colton and run away with him. Nonetheless, Geert stays with his stud when the police enter the stage on cue. What the ambiguous artist might have probably not expected was Colton’s response in this Catch 22 situation: the alpha male hands his wimpy victim over to the police. C’est la vie!

Geert gets sentenced to death because of his unnatural demeanor and, ironically enough, it will be Colton the officer to lead the firing squad. Geert says goodbye to the world by singing “Lili Marleen.”[1] This catchy, lovelorn tune was the song of the moment, and their song too. After the shooting, Colton is getting more monomaniacal by the minute, drinking alcohol while the song is unstoppably echoing in his mind. . .

Miracles happen when you believe—or rather when you are smashed—, and Geert appears in the shape of the perfect angel. His comeback from the beyond aims to declare the obvious thing: he was so passionately attached to Colton, morally superior to him (and the others), that leaves the one-eyed Aryan in the most wretched state in this vale of tears.

Geert was freedom in its purest form. Alas, he finally had to pay dearly for it in an envious, intolerant world. At the end of the story, Colton’s pathetic pursuit to his vanishing lover and his cruel dead end in a rain of feathers entail the icing on this pitiful cake.

Please, do not let this tale snow you over. The next story—Hour II: “Dos+1” (“Two+1”)—is a funny one. Meet Óscar and César in a placid Saturday night in today’s Barcelona. This hot couple is wearing their sexiest thongs in their apartment while waiting for their date. Yes, you have read it right! Following the advice that they heard on TV, a threesome may be a suggestive way to spice up their sexual life, and the chosen third one is a guy that they met on a dating website whose only picture is showing—his cute butt!

It must be said that they start off on the wrong foot: Óscar looks a bit hesitant at first. However, when César tries to phone the anonymous guest to cancel the date, Óscar flatly opposes. Then, César sets out a role-playing game in order to relax and get aroused in the meantime. It lies in imagining a situation in which Óscar is working in the office and welcomes an unexpected provocative visitor played by his frisky partner. His identity? César suggests Dani, the new boy in Óscar’s office that he is talking about lately. All of a sudden, his companion loses his temper: this boy has recently become a pain in Óscar’s ass. (He also does not seem to approve Dani’s drug abuse). Wrong choice, indeed. A quick change of strategy leads César to pull a big black dildo out of the couch cushion. Yet again, Óscar is not excited at all, and he is about to throw in the towel when the doorbell rings. . .

In the wink of an eye, Óscar hides in the bathroom while César opens the door. In César’s view, the website boy happens to be a delicious blond guy in scarce tight clothes. For Óscar, he turns to be the most unpredicted dread. When César goes for Óscar into his hiding place, the latter confesses that the guy is the so called Dani!! What can they do? Óscar does not want to have sex with a coworker, but Dani is sooooo sexy tonight. Once again, César has an idea: he persuades Dani to get his eyes blindfolded as a game. This way, Dani cannot recognize Óscar—though his voice sounds familiar to him—and the three of them can therefore have a great time smoothly.

Dani starts the party by displaying his XL dick. Bad move: Óscar and César argue about who is going to be the first one to ride it. Dani is getting bored. He stands up. . .and falls abruptly on the table. What happens?, ask Óscar and César in their most petrified mode. A doctor from the emergency room will give them the answer: Dani has had an overdose (too many exciting pills for one night), but he is out of danger now. And this visit to the hospital brings an end to the sassy experiment.

You might be thinking that César and Óscar have already learnt the lesson, but right this moment Óscar recalls another tip from TV: fetishism. And the charming bearded doctor is in a stunningly white medical uniform. . .  

We leave all this vaudeville behind and get into Hour III. “La promesa” (“The Promise”) is probably the most beautiful story of the collection. Barcelona, December 25, 1970. At dawn, two long-haired gorgeous men have to say goodbye after spending all night long making love in a room of the inn “Flor de Loto” (“Lotus Flower”). The blond one is sorry about the nuisance of waiting for next year to meet his better half again. But a promise is a promise. . .

Time flies and we are now in 2010. In a retirement home the old folks are enjoying a Christmas Eve party while the new nurse, Héctor, is anxiously checking his cell phone every so often. His boss Gloria tells him off, but there is an explanation for this behavior: Héctor’s inflexible boyfriend Luis is giving him an ultimatum.

By the end of the night almost all the presents have been given. There is still one waiting under the tree, and the label reads: “Jaime.” Who is this Jaime? The young blond man that we met in that hotel room forty years ago, who has turned into a sulky, lonely resident. It will not be long before Héctor and Jaime become friends. Jaime tells him about the dark-haired, blue-eyed enigmatic man, Esteban, and how they became lovers when they were young and met every summer holidays. . .until they grew up.

Some time later they come across on one Christmas Eve. They are adults now, but the feeling is still the same. They promise to meet every Christmas Eve, and they will for the next 30 years. The first scene that we have mentioned above was the last time they met; in 1971 Esteban did not swing by the inn. No explanation. Due to the fact that they had to be cautious (Esteban had wife and children, and Spain in the early 1970s was not the most suitable place to come out—Well, I guess no place was good in those days), Jaime had no data about Esteban: no address, no phone number. But Jaime’s unyielding will compelled him to book in the inn every Christmas Eve and wait for Esteban in the same old room. It was useless; Esteban dropped in never.

Tonight Jaime is particularly uneasy. This will be the first time that he does not make his appearance in the inn: the doctor does not allow him to leave the institution. Never mind. Héctor, touched by his words, will help Jaime leave the place secretly and go to his yearned locus amoenus.

When they arrive, things are definitely different. “La Flor de Loto” closed down months ago and there is a show girls club instead. A helpless Jaime, angry with himself, is resolved to surrender and drops in the snow the only picture of Esteban that he has been keeping all these years. And this is the key moment when Fate lends one of Its mighty hands. Just when Jaime and Héctor are about to leave the place, an odd bearded cross-dressed prostitute who picked up the wrinkled picture identifies Esteban as the man who was there not long ago. The prostitute also tells them that he suggested him the train station inn to spend the night.

As quirky as it sounds, Jaime recovers his young years’ strength and runs like the devil towards the station. Héctor can’t hardly follow him! There, Jaime looks everywhere and yells Esteban ceaselessly. Of course, such behavior attracts the security guards’ attention, and when they are taking him out, a man calls Jaime. Our desperate friend instantly recognizes him as Esteban. However, the guy looks too young to be his missing lover. So weird—There is an explanation after all: this is not Esteban but his son Ígor. He promised his father before he died to find Jaime and give him a letter. OK, but why was Esteban absent since 1971? Sadly, he suffered an accident which left him disabled. My goodness!

Now that Jaime has solved all the mysteries around his soulmate, he has nothing to do in Barcelona and that gloomy institution. He is determined to buy a little house on the beach and live there for the rest of his life. This was their dream. Jaime talks Héctor into becoming his personal nurse. Héctor’s continuation in the nursing home is rather unlikely regarding his demeanor tonight, and Luis has just broken up by text, so. . .what would you do if you were in Héctor’s shoes? A bright Christmas sunrise seems to smile at the two of them.

Now the clock strikes Hour IV, and we reach the last story: “La solución final” (“The Final Solution”). Four friends (Miguel, Julián, Pablo and Rafa) are spending an evening on the beach. It seems a joyful event at first glance. Actually, they have met to commit suicide. Why? According to their speeches, they are not particularly happy with their own lives. The four of them have different physical imperfections which have made them socially rejected anyhow. They feel so bitter that even call one another by the cruel nicknames that people use for them. The plan is to drink all at once a poisonous potion provided by Rafa, who is a chemist, at the end of the day. However, Miguel is so itchy and disgusted that swallows it all of a sudden. Then, his friends are compelled to drink after him. As this is their last night alive, they are determined to have fun drinking vodka and swimming naked in the sea.

At daybreak we find the four bodies lying on the sand beach. All dead? Not yet, as they start to wake up. . .Not all of them: Julián does not open his eyes. Miguel starts panicking, and when Julián finally wakes up Miguel inevitably confesses his caring love for his friend. Besides, Pablo receives a phone call announcing that he has got a part. At last! Pablo was working as an accountant, but his real dream was becoming a professional actor. Still, he had always been turned down because of his obesity.

Things run smoothly this new morning. Does anyone remember the potion? The four pass out and fall on the sand right away. This is the end? No way! A little playful boy with angel wings wakes Julián up with the help of his water gun. Confused, Julián wonders whether he is in heaven now.

Rafa stands alone by the seashore. Julián asks him for an explanation. At the last minute Rafa saw things clearly, and the potion that he handed them was not poison. Rafa understood that they had one another after all, and their friendship was too important so as to kill themselves. Life is hard, but not so much with the love of your friends. And they happily hug one another and get into the sea on this shiny brand-new day: their new birthday.

We find a leitmotif in Las horas perdidas: Society plays an influential role in the four stories. Colton relied heavily on a political regime in which he took part and, after realizing it is making him unhappy, finally wanted to escape; Óscar and César decide to improve their sexual life by following a trend; Jaime and Esteban had to live their love story apart from society, and others’ opinions have conditioned the four friends so much that they have lived miserably so far. If there is a key message that the author Javi Cuho (Barcelona, 1981) seems to teach us, it is that the only way to Happyland is by releasing yourself from social impositions and trying to follow your own drives, beliefs and feelings. Look at that!

As this is a comic book, the touchy, sentimental texts by Cuho are wonderfully illustrated by Andrea Jen. Her sensibility, sense of humor and attention to detail are really praiseworthy. We would like to highlight her character design in some examples:

o   The sweet delicacy of Geert

o   César with his saucy leather belt necklace

o   The (extremely) romantic charm of Esteban, and

o   Jaime as an old-but-still-sexy man

Also her polished style gets Super Deformed sometimes, providing a really wisecracking atmosphere that reaches its peak in “Dos+1,” when depicting César and Óscar’s never-ending, almost schizophrenic changes of mind. Doubtlessly, Jen’s contribution to this comic makes the read a priceless experience.

---

[1] One of the most famous songs of the 20^th century, and a total hymn for the World War II soldiers. Lale Andersen was the first lady to record it, but a huge amount of varied singers has made their versions since then (Connie Francis, Amanda Lear, Spanish singer Marta Sánchez, and a long et cetera), though we can firmly state that the most mesmerizing one was superb Marlene Dietrich’s.

A Sentimental Journal of the Approval Year

On Sebas Martín's Aún estoy en ello (I'm Still on It)

The main situations gay writer/illustrator Sebas Martín's comic book is about happen the year prior to the legalization of same-sex marriage in Spain (June 30, 2005). It therefore may be logically inferred that this is not a randomly-chosen year. However, the fact that Martín honors this major event in his work does not mean the reader is going to be a pleased visitor in a kind of Idyllicland, as a spectator for a series of delightful panels praising a supposed total tolerance. As a matter of fact, the story begins a few days before the Spanish Congress vote, when a huge protest against gay marriage took the streets. Martín displays all his talent picturing ferocious though funny portraits of the protesters.

But let's leave all these political issues aside for the moment. This comic deals mainly with the story of Salva, a teacher/illustrator in his forties, and also about his boyfriend, close friends, family, acquaintances…

At the beginning, Salva is smitten with Xicu, a younger man of Ibiza he met on holidays. Xicu is quite an attractive, easy-going, sexually-vivid guy. His unexpected, unilateral decision of living with Salva in Barcelona both stuns and excites his submissive flatmate. It will not take long before Salva feels sorry. Xicu brazenly shows himself as a messy, cheating, immature, promiscuous man. So---why does Salva turn a blind eye to it all? Can sex neediness and lonesomeness exert such a strong influence over one's will? In Salva's case, we can positively say, or even exclaim, HELL YES! Being a witness of Salva's slow though unstoppable descensus ad inferos is one of the most interesting points of the whole book. Before hitting bottom, Salva will experience a series of weird, funny, humiliating episodes.

1^st. After two weeks living together, Xicu acts sexually disinterested in Salva. When Salva complains, Xicu suggests him to have sex with other men (as Xicu seems clearly open to follow his own advice).

2^nd. Salva forgives Xicu for having sex with another guy thanks to his attentive justification: Xicu has got two flight tickets to Naples to spend a long weekend together. There they will visit a Caravaggio exhibition Salva has been eager to see long since. By the way, that other guy was a travel agency clerk and Xicu (who was jobless at the moment) got the tickets for free, so---tutti contenti!

3^rd. When Salva finds himself unjustly dismissed from his teaching post, Xicu not only shows no sensibility about his situation, but also asks Salva to leave his apartment. Xicu’s parents are coming to Barcelona for Christmas to visit their dear sonny, and their dear sonny has not told them yet he is gay. Salva must vanish so that Xicu’s parents do not suspect, and also because Xicu has told them life is treating him so good he can afford an apartment for his own. Xicu sweetens his story to make his parents proud in spiritual terms and generous in financial ones, and this way he could finally buy a super fast moped---Once to this point, if the reader still has any liking for Xicu, wait and read on…

4^th. Xicu is almost missing on Christmas holidays. The only moment Salva can meet him privately, Xicu announces his parents’ decision to extend their stay in Barcelona (remember, in Salva’s place). Furthermore, Xicu is still repeatedly unfaithful to Salva in saunas, despite Salva’s purposely lost opportunities of having sex with other sexy young guys…so far, as Salva was feeling so needy and horny and furious that he reluctantly decides to enjoy the carnal pleasures of a sauna.

5^th. Two days later, a low-spirited version of Salva asks Xicu to let him get in his own apartment as he needs some stuff. He secretly finds a present box with an expensive watch inside. All of a sudden he gets happy again, as he thinks Xicu tries to make up for his sacrifices. All that joy, as the reader can easily guess, will not last forever. On New Year’s Eve, Xicu will text Salva too late that they are not starting the year together since he will not attend his friends’ party. On Three Kings Day, not long after Xicu’s parents have left the apartment (at last!), Salva finds out the watch was not the present Xicu had planned for him. Some days later, he will discover Xicu kissing another man who is---Guess what? Wearing the watch!

Don’t panic! This will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and, after a loudly dispute, Xicu and Salva finally break up. When Xicu goes back to Salva’s apartment for his belongings, he even tries to make up with him. However, Salva kicks him out the moment he realizes Xicu has been cheeky enough to come with the watch guy… And that puts an end to their (love?) story. But fortunately for Salva, his world is not so limited as to focus strictly on Xicu.

Rita is the helping friend who brings Salva home with her while Xicu’s family is squatting his apartment. She just seems happy enough to spend Christmas Eve drinking hot chocolate, sitting on the couch while involved in a cozy blanket, watching on DVD Vincente Minnelli’s Meet Me in St. Louis and hearing one-of-a-kind Judy Garland singing marvelously “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” together with Salva. Anyhow, do not think of Rita as the perfect spinster. She is a mature, heterosexual woman and, though she complains about how difficult is to hook up for a woman of her age, hot men usually put their eyes on her (for instance, a bodybuilder in a hair removal center waiting area). However, she soon gets tired of them. What’s wrong with her? Carmen, Salva’s sister, opens her eyes abruptly at the New Year’s Eve party: she makes Rita realize she is in love with Salva since her teens…, hurting herself for so long…, believing he will change some day… But do not worry about Rita: she is strong enough to rise easily from the ashes.

Rafa, another friend of Salva’s, is another middle-aged, love skeptic, promiscuous man. His philosophy of life turns round when he meets an attractive man at the New Year’s Eve party (hope the next New Year’s Eve party I’m invited to will be as enjoyable as this!). Rafa gets stuck on him. But when they are about to have sex at the other man’s place, Rafa finds out by chance the man is seropositive and flees away. Rafa soon regrets his childish, apprehensive behavior, so when he comes across the man again he asks for a second chance. This time the guy speaks openly about his current health, but now Rafa is okay. Things between Rafa and the seropositive guy will go so well that, during the brand-new same-sex marriage law celebration day, the couple gets engaged.

This engagement news will astonish Salva and Oriol, another member of this circle of friends. Oriol is used to an easy-going, uncomplicated life. For him, the only interesting point in getting married is to find a wealthy husband. He is really fussy, and makes a risky scene at the shopping plaza when an old man calls him fag. He also hosts the crowded, cheerful, gaudy, madly-gay New Year’s Eve party along with his beloved, indulgent mommy in mink coat. The father, surprisingly, does not know (maybe he does not want to know) his son is gay, so he is far away from the party.

At this party, by the way, Salva will meet Wili and Rico. Sebas Martín pictures a facetious caricature of a gay couple too self-confident of their ultra-modern style. They two find everything slapdash and in bad taste, but when Salva and Oriol are invited to their apartment, they find the place all shabby, messy and even dirty. Their landlord, Román, an old-aged homosexual, tells Salva the bleak, moving story of his younger days under Franco’s regime, when gay men could not develop their sexuality freely and a fearful Román let go the opportunity to start a better life abroad with, who knows, the love of his life.

I find Román’s and Lucas’s stories the most enthralling of the whole comic book. The latter, Lucas, is a disabled young gay boy in a wheelchair who needs assistance to go out. Rafa usually works as a volunteer worker but this time he cannot carry out his tasks, so he asks Salva to take his place. Salva gets shocked the time he realizes Lucas wants a ride to a male brothel. After Lucas has spent more than an hour with Sandro, a big black muscled prostitute, and Salva is driving Lucas back home, he can hardly hold back and tells Lucas he is too young to resort to prostitutes. Lucas pours cold water on his driver when he acidly replies nobody wants to have sex with an ugly disabled guy in a wheelchair for free---Oh, come on! Don’t sob your hearts out yet! Martín has saved for Lucas a bright, happy ending in the shape of a hot, muscular, affectionate boyfriend. Note the contrast between Román’s and Lucas’s outlooks towards life: Lucas is up to experience sex though he sourly knows he has to pay for it, whereas the young, frightened Román decided to repress his sexuality in the past, dark times of abuse of police authority. Avoiding the question of different periods of time, the opposite attitudes considering sexual life are clear.

Salva and his sister Carmen go home on Christmas Day. Mother is a hypercritical woman who does not want to know a thing about Salva’s homosexuality, whereas she is eager to get Carmen married to the perfect husband. She thinks her daughter can find her match in one of the two nice new neighbors, so she invites them home as well. These guys are in fact a gay couple (who, by the way, have experienced hard situations in the past due to their families opposition to their sexual orientation) willing to get married the moment same-sex marriage is finally declared legal. But nobody told Mother… Poor thing!

Time goes by and springtime finally comes. Salva and his friends discuss imminent gay marriage rights approval. There is a general feeling of repulsion towards the Church’s fierce opposition. They joke about a supposed ecclesiastic fear of priests marrying seminarists en masse; but, talking seriously, they agree to say same-sex marriage in Spain will attract more gay tourists and residents, resulting in employment increase (up to this point, it is interesting to note gay marriage was approved a couple of years before the global economic crisis). A drunken man insults Rafa and his boyfriend when they are kissing outside. But this disgusting affair will not tarnish their happiness, since everybody takes the streets to celebrate exultantly their newly acquired social equality rights.