IMAGINARY BOYFRIENDS

Igrejas offers a collection of stories about gay men chasing connection amid fantasy, grief, and mischief.

The book opens with “Hassan and Sylvia,” set in New Jersey in the year 2000,in which a man with a deceased partner stumbles into the orbit of the titular couple: Hassan, a self-styled Moroccan party impresario, and Sylvia, his elegant, ambiguous companion. Their champagne-soaked world offers a temporary refuge from grief. The remaining stories trace similar figures—men suspended between loneliness and libido—who mistake charm for intimacy and performance for love. In “Tiago, My Love (Cavalinho Na Chuva),” Joe Ianuzzi, a New Jersey salesman on vacation in Lisbon imagines romance with his hotel driver, convincing himself that politeness is passion as they seemingly grow closer (“In the distance, the sea and sky melted together into a slate-blue horizon that suggested infinity and that there just might be a God and a heaven”). Elsewhere, the humor turns brittle, the settings blur, and the repetition of seductions and letdowns begins to feel formulaic. Igrejas, a longtime publicist for Blue Man Group, writes these self-aware tales with a keen ear for rhythm and conversation; his characters converse the way actors breathe, with every line a tiny bid for attention. This theatrical instinct can dazzle in short bursts, but it often has the effect of obscuring the emotion beneath the surface; moments that should wound instead wink. The sex scenes are frank yet oddly detached, and the feeling of nostalgia for lost glamor in some stories feels borrowed rather than lived. There are appealing glimpses of tenderness throughout—a hesitant confession, a shared laugh that softens into regret. However, such moments often vanish before they can deepen. Overall, the stories aim to blend irony and pain, but they rarely find the right balance, leaving readers admiring their style while searching for feeling.

A polished, theatrical performance of heartbreak, but one that never quite earns its encore.