[I] didn't set out to write about homosexuality [in The Man Without a Face]. I started this book with only the idea of a fatherless boy who experiences with a man some of the forms of companionship and love that have been nonexistent in his life. Because the other side of Charles' dilemma or emotional history arises from his feeling of being both suffocated and rejected by the predominant female influence in his home—his four-times married mother and his older sister. His stepfathers have come and gone too fast for him to do anything but dislike them. Emotionally, Charles has lived his life as an armed camp, hanging onto a shadowy memory of his own father. Hence the revolutionary impact that Justin has on him.

I think I might diverge here and say something that has always interested me about the eternally fascinating subject of love: Into...