[mild spoilers ahead]

There are books going by the title “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” or “Pounded In The Butt By My Handsome Sentient Library Card Who Seems Otherworldly But In Reality Is Just A Natural Part Of The Priceless Resources Our Library System Provides” (yes). These certainly deserve to exist but do not really tickle my fancy. The author goes by the name Chuck Tingle, a pseudonym who likes to attend conventions with a pink sack on his head to preserve anonymity.

Chuck Tingle first entered my bubble many years ago when Gamergate was a thing (more than a decade ago, huh) and some blue bird adorned a thriving social media platform. Gamergate became history and Chuck Tingle faded away from my bubble.

“You should read ‘Camp Damascus’”, my favorite dealer said. “It’s by Chuck Tingle.”

Okay.

I trust the 99 percent page-turner success rate of my dealer, even if I expected hastily written paragraphs and lame butt jokes.

By all the space raptors out there, were my expectations wrong.

“Camp Damascus” (2023) tells the story of Rose, who grows up in a religious cult that is known for its gay conversion therapy. Its camp boasts an even higher conversion success rate than my book dealer. After Rose observes a friend of hers with new-to-her eyes, strange things start happening that will alter her place in the cult forever.

In the first ten pages, Tingle sets the scene in a cinematographic sweep. On a hot summer day, Rose and her friends take a plunge from some cliffs, and through her perspective, we learn all about her place in the social fabric of this small Montana town. It is “show, don’t tell” at its finest; I texted my dealer my first narrative high, even if Chuck Tingle was just getting started. There followed even more highs, but two narrative tropes stuck out in particular.

One is the conversion trope: Camp Damascus turns queer people into innocent straight believers; yet at the same time, the novel is also the story of Rose’s own conversion in several ways, which culminates in a glorious path of revenge full of raging fires (also, revenge story? I’m sold). The other trope is horror: Camp Damascus is clearly a horror novel, but specifically queer horror. A horror story with queer protagonists; it’s also about the horror of discovering one’s own queerness, the deep-seated, horrific realization that one will never be part of society’s perceived standards.

I blazed through the book in a weekend.

Being a good addict, I was soon back at my dearest dealer.

“You should read ‘Bury Your Gays’”, they said.

Another weekend later, the person who occupied the “Space Raptor Butt author” label in my brain turned into the “That’s why I studied English Literature” author.

“Bury Your Gays” (2024) is again a queer horror story: Misha is an experienced Hollywood writer and is finally on his way to an Oscar. The path would be clear, if there was not the pressure to kill off the gay characters in his long-standing series “for the algorithm” in the upcoming season finale. This would bury the gays as we know it, and as Misha refuses, strange things start happening.

Again, it’s queer horror and the horror of being queer, it’s about writing for Hollywood’s machinery and being its queer contributor - and is as meta as Chuck Tingle can get.

Two days later I knew I had to write this blog post. It took a little longer, but(t) here we are: I was successfully converted into a dedicated Chunk Tingle reader.

Image source: “a white caucasian girl sits at kitchen table, eats breakfast, wide-angle view, spewing flies from her mouth, horror movie style”, Nightcafe/Dall-E

Last modified on 2024-08-03