In Best Gay Romance 2009, editor Richard Labonté has assembled the foremost of contemporary short stories on the subject. Jack Fritscher's “The Calamus Emotion: Love Among the Ruins” tenderly tracks a romance in letters set against the dramatic backdrop of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. S. J. Frost's “Semper Fi” finds a despondent young Marine looking for love in a Chicago bar after the death of the beloved Saudi Arabian translator who saved his life in Iraq. In Neil Plakcy's “The Baker,” more than yeast rises when an overworked French baker meets a customer searching for the perfect pain au chocolat. Emphasizing emotions over erotics, these vivid tales of love sought, lost, and found show that however romance happens, however long it lasts — one night or a lifetime — love between men is a wondrous thing.
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