The best LGBTQ+ books that are sexy and subversive

I was a freshman in college and still closeted about my homosexuality when I found Numbers in an LGBTQ+ bookstore. The description on the dust jacket got my blood racing: in an effort to reclaim his youth, a handsome gay man strikes out to see how many sexual conquests he can rack up during a ten-day stay in L.A. I bought the book and read it in my dorm room when my roommate wasn’t around.

I got more than I bargained for. Along with descriptions of sexual encounters, the novel opened my eyes to the ramifications of internalized homophobia and explored the value of sex among an oppressed people who are persecuted for their carnal desires. This novel written in 1967 spoke to me across the decades. It still can.

Known primarily for her poems and essays, Audre Lorde’s long-form works didn’t attract my attention until I was nearly 30. Zami intrigued me because Lorde called the book a “biomythography”—a mix of biography, history, and myth. The result is a hypnotic mosaic about the lives of women, many of them Black and/or lesbians, who face down hostile political realities, yet often create space to love and support one another.

There is an intimacy to Lorde’s writing, and it doesn’t hesitate to turn sensual. While reading Zami, I realized how underexposed I was to sapphic love stories. I considered myself an ally to my queer sisters, but truth be told, I didn’t read many books that emersed me into their perspectives. Zami led me to expand my reading horizons.

Faggots pissed off a lot of people in the LGBTQ+ community when it was published in 1978, and Larry Kramer was accused of vilifying gay men for indulging in anonymous sex and recreational drugs. Unfortunately, the subsequent AIDS crisis, linked to unprotected sex and intravenous drug use, made the novel look like a prescient warning.

But the initial uproar and the retroactive clairvoyance attached to Faggots had no bearing on me when I read the novel in the 2000s. To me, there was a doomed innocence to these gay men. I didn’t begrudge them the joys of hot sex and exhilarating drugs. They didn’t know what was coming; they didn’t deserve what was coming. Books can take on new meaning across generations, and Faggots became a time capsule I cherish.

Follow this daisy chain of literary and movie connections: The Price of Salt, published in 1952, was adapted into the 2015 film Carol, but I discovered the novel after seeing the 1999 movie adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley, which was based on another Patricia Highsmith book. I tore through the Ripley series, and I was hooked on Highsmith.

I read The Price of Salt fully aware of its tortured history: Highsmith used the pseudonym “Claire Morgan” and for nearly 40 years didn’t publicly acknowledge authorship; the novel fell out of print in the 1970s. Mark those troubles up to The Price of Salt being ahead of its time. The inner lives and sexual yearning of Carol and Therese were too complex and steamy for their day. Now they are contemporary. 

I’m a gay Black man, and I’ve worked as a television writer (The Chi, Bel-Air) for more than a decade, so I know from experience the burdens of representation. There is tremendous pressure to make sure we craft Black and/or gay characters that remain relatable or sympathetic. Otherwise, we risk losing the general audience.

That’s why it brought revolutionary joy to my heart when I read 100 Boyfriends in 2021. With this story collection, Brontez Purnell lays our collective burdens down and gives us Black queer men with messy lives. The result is characters that can be infuriating, endearing, disturbing, and hilarious. The book challenges readers to recognize the facets of humanity—commendable, questionable, and despicable—in Black queer men. It feels like the dawn of a new age.