Left Bank on the Bayou - Start Reading Here
Episode List and other helpful pointers for readers
Left Bank on the Bayou: A Queer Houston Story of the 1930s is a novella originally published on Substack in 26 parts, from May to November, 2024. It is a sequel to the previous novella, Song of the Amorous Frogs: A Paris Story of the 1920s - also published as a Substack serial, in 2023/24.
The main character of both is Narrator, a young man who is discovering his queerness and learning to live as a confident, comfortable queer man in a world that does not make that an easy path. Both novellas are fiction based on history, intended to give modern readers a view into an earlier time, when being queer could be risky, but also thrilling as a new queer world emerged, in an avant-garde world capital such as Paris, and also in the smaller southern city, Houston, then on the verge of a transition into a major world city.
In Left Bank, after a youth in Paris, and a decade of maturing in New York, Narrator has returned home to Houston, and the challenge of constructing a life for himself in a place full of history and memories, and also possibilities.
Episode List:
The Prequel - Song of the Amorous Frogs: A Paris Story of the 1920s
2.Tea and Memory With Mrs. Cherry
4.Dance
8.Alone
20.Not an End, A New Beginning
22.Chicago, Chicago That Bauhaus Town
25.Of Postmarks and Smiling Spiders
26.Farewell Party at the Stage Canteen
To be continued … ?
(Note: The continuation has begun, with An Old Man and His Memories: Part 1 - In the Lobby of the Hawthorne)