Vanishing Rooms

Not since James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room has a novel so deftly explored the complexities of violence and homosexuality. This compelling work tells the chilling story of a murder victim and the three people inextricably caught up in his sexual assault and stabbing. Jesse Durand is a gay black man with two passions in his life: dance and his white boyfriend, Metro. But soon after their move to Greenwich Village, Metro begins to seek rougher sexual thrills, experimenting with drugs and becoming increasingly obsessed with Jesse’s blackness. It is Metro’s murder that pushes Jesse into an emotional darkness from which he may not escape.
In a work of great artistry, race and sex become Melvin Dixon’s arenas, as he exposes the truth of our needs and our convictions about love.