Now Batting For Boston: More Stories By J. G. Hayes

To thine own self be true—no matter what it costs

Acclaimed author J. G. Hayes returns to the gritty streets of South Boston for the much-anticipated sequel to his critically heralded debut, This Thing Called Courage. Now Batting for Boston: More Stories by J.G. Hayes goes home to the bars, housing projects and D Street bedrooms of Southie, where you can feel like a stranger in your own skin, just trying to survive growing up gay among working-class Irish-Catholics who don't want to hear the hard truths about their sons.

Unlike my father, it wasn't only Life I hoped to jump into during my long light-gazing vigils on the roof. In particular, it was a particular bar in a particular part of town, a bar whose blacked-out windows were lit up like Christmas every day of the year. It was a bar for people like me. For although I may have looked like my father, and loved baseball like my father, I was not heterosexual, like my father. And all the prayers to St. Anthony in the world hadn't changed that.

You find them anywhere in Southie—from Castle Island to Carson Beach, from Sunday mass at St. Anthony's to the Tuesday night hack league at the HockeyTown rink. Men, young and not so young, struggle with their sexuality, outsiders in their own homes searching for someplace to belong. Now Batting for Boston is a moving collection of stories, intense and gripping, with no guarantees of a happy ending. Just like life in South Boston.

With Terry, it was like, Jesus; it was like the whole world went away. When our lips met for the first time. It was like ... it was like you could stay that way forever. It was like you fell into a different planet, you fell through a hole in the ground and came to the center of the earth and you were still falling, wondering but not really caring when you were gonna land. Electricity. Like someone put one of them joke handshake-buzzer things up against your mouth and clicked it on.

Booklist said of Joe Hayes's first collection of short stories, This Thing Called Courage: "We impatiently await (his) next effort!" The wait is over. Now Batting for Boston is a worthy successor to Hayes's stunning debut, packed with the same brutal honesty, the same muscular passion, and the same tough-but-tender prose that made his first book an essential read.

From the author: "Tragically, South Boston was the scene of the deaths of over three hundred young men several years ago, due to drug overdose, alcohol-related accidents, violence, and suicide. During an especially painful six-month period, in a community that has known more than its share of pain, seven young men killed themselves. While obviously not all of these young men were gay-we don't even know if any of them were-the National Institutes of Health have said that two-thirds of all teen and youth suicides are committed by gay and lesbian youth. So perhaps it's simply a matter of doing the math.

"South Boston was also the scene of some very ugly anti-gay demonstrations and vociferations during the controversial Irish-American Gay Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston's participation in the annual St. Patrick's Day Parade a decade ago. Some residents opposed this participation because they saw the group as yet another outside force trying to impose its will on a community that traditionally likes to be let alone. But many people viewed the entire affair as a virulent and especially bigoted example of the homophobia that can and does lead to bewilderment, estrangement, and even suicide among gay and lesbian youth. But certainly South Boston has not cornered the market on homophobia, and in that respect my stories could be set almost anywhere. There are many gay men and women from South Boston who have received unwavering support and love from their families, if not from the community at large."