Final Audit and Other Stories
Dexter Giles, who has lived a secret life as a gay man, circumnavigates the years surrounding retirement from Imperial Petroleum by conducting a personal accounting. In the process of attempting to reconcile the polarities of his existence, he succeeds in ways both comic and touching in escaping his button-down existence and in coming to terms with his own mortality.
Search in google:
Dexter Giles has lived a double life, balancing a straight-jacketed career in the homophobic towers of corporate culture with his secret life as a gay man. He is of a generation still haunted by pre-Stonewall sensibilities. In The Final Audit and other stories, Ronald Alexander's compelling new work of fiction, Dexter circumnavigates the years surrounding his retirement from Imperial Petroleum by conducting a personal accounting: he brings at times an infuriatingly mathematical logic to settling personal debts, recomputing profit/loss statements, and closing the books on completed transactions. His struggle is informed by both world-weariness and naivete, resentment and compassion, cynicism and romanticism. In the process of attempting to reconcile the polarities of his existence, Dexter, in fits and starts, succeeds in ways both comic and touching in escaping his buttoned-down existence and in coming to terms with his own mortality. About The Author:RONALD ALEXANDER's work has appeared in publications including Chicago Tribune, New Mexico Humanities Review, The James White Review, Columbia, The Chattahoochee Review, and Confrontation. He lives in Venice, California.Jeffrey JasperThis is a collection of well-worded and beautifully thought-out reflections that leave the reader wanting more.—Lambda Book Report
The Final Audit and Other Stories\ \ From Beautiful Carpets\ \ Not until he was on the boat, making the crossing from Algeciras to Tangier, did Dexter Giles have second thoughts about Morocco. He had arisen early, in time to make the morning hovercraft, and the air was still cool; the sun was only now rising behind Gibraltar. He sniffed aloud. The rock had all the charm of a strip mall. Without the monkeys the place would be totally lacking in appeal. And the food. One would think living so close to Portugal and Morocco that the English might have learned something about spices, but the food was as dreadful as in Leeds or Manchester.\ \ Jean Paul had invited him, writing about the bargains to be found in Tangier and it was purely coincidence that Dexter needed a carpet, a runner for his hallway. Of course Jean Paul had written about the Moroccan boys too, not bothering to hide his contempt for Dexter's feigned ignorance regarding the availability of them. Dexter knew all about the young boys. Indeed. How clean they were, how beautiful, how well-endowed, how available, how cheap. Anyone who had read Burroughs knew about them. But he didn't need any young boy. He needed a carpet. That was all.
\ Alice McCrackenDexter Giles is drawn sensitively, with impeccable and often subtle detail. \ California Seniors\ \ \ \ \ Balford HenryHis writing is liquid and attractive. \ The Sunday Gleaner\ \ \ Hillary JohnsonAlexander is an accomplished writer with a deft hand for characterization, and his work is a joy to read. \ LA Weekly\ \ \ \ \ Jeffrey JasperThis is a collection of well-worded and beautifully thought-out reflections that leave the reader wanting more.Lambda Book Report\ \ \ \ \ Jeffrey JasperThis is a collection of well-worded and beautifully thought-out reflections that leave the reader wanting more. I, for one, would be happy to read more from this author. \ —Lambda Book Report\ \ \ \ \ La Voz NewspaperDexter Giles emerges as one of the most compelling and complex characters to be found in contemporary American fiction today.\ \
