Now Read This: Bury Your Gays (2024)

“Bury Your Gays” is a celebration of queer love and resilience, full of hope and beauty, that still delivers in spades for horror fans.

Chuck Tingle’s Bury Your Gays celebrates queer strength as it follows a trio (gay, bisexual, and asexual) as they battle real and metaphorical aliens, ghosts, and monsters and take a sledgehammer to rainbow capitalism, generative artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in the process.

On a long enough timeline, endings are inevitable. Tragedy is inevitable. Fortunately, so is joy.

Do you know when content comes across your path at a specific moment? Like, it wasn’t just a coincidence? I was meant to digest Bury Your Gays at the precise moment I did.

A close, fellow horror-loving friend texted me and said she needed me to read or listen to this book so we could talk about it. When I saw the title and read the synopsis, I also appreciated she likely wanted me to read it because she’s been side-by-side with me through my journey of exploring and embracing my sexual orientation and gender identity later in life (realized through multiple failed romantic relationships, including a marriage).

“Coming out” has not been easy for me.

To help offer a bit on my positionality coming to this book, I am a nonbinary individual who wishes I was brave enough to use they/them pronouns and hopscotches between demisexuality and asexuality. I consider myself “quietly queer,” much like Misha’s character.

I may never show my whole authentic self to the world without slathering it in a mask of artistic expression.

I have absolutely no idea what came over me the day I digested Bury Your Gays, but I inhaled this book in a straight shot listen.

Yeah, you heard me right. I have never listened to an audiobook in my life. I struggle to make it through podcasts my friends recommend—cheers to auditory processing issues related to my brand of neurospiciness. But for whatever reason, my brain convinced me to do this. And do this, I most definitely did.

Was it the quality of the content? The narration? A perfect day for a novel (ha, both definitions of this word apply!) offering to hyper-fixate on? Some blend of these factors? Who cares. The stars aligned for me to engage with this awesomeness and talk to you about it.

So, let’s get into it.

Our protagonist is Misha Byrne: an out-in-Los-Angeles-but-not-in-his-Montana-hometown queerio and horror screenwriter who has just been nominated for an Oscar for a live-action short, Mouse Den (a total play on Ratatouille, however with a tiny florist instead of a tiny chef).

We learn in the opening sequences that Misha’s long-term and current project is writing a TV series, Travellers (which has a very Twin Peaks/X-Files vibe). He spent the past few seasons building up romantic tension between the two female-presenting leads with the intention of having them ultimately realize and explore their attraction and connection.

However, Misha attends an in-person meeting where the TV executive he’s been reporting to relays a message from The Board that he cannot pursue this plot arc.

Instead, he must decide: Agent Lexa (*cough* Lexa in The 100) and Agent Naomi (*cough* Naomi in Skins or Band of Gold) can be straight and live… or be gay and die. Hence the book title.

Misha has to decide if he will succumb to the corporate pressure, perpetuate the trope, and ‘bury his gays’.

And goodness, do we go on quite the reality-bending, occasionally adrenaline-inducing, intimate, and heartfelt journey as Misha wrestles with this decision.

There are so many layers to this book — fellow neurospicy readers, rejoice!

First, we are offered context about Misha’s character through his profession as a queer horror screenwriter. We learn a lot about his horror offerings, which include fictional titles like Wedding Night, which has a character called The Bride (a la Kill Bill).

Black Lamb includes a parasite in sheep’s clothing—a blend of Black Sheep and Slither? Travellers is a tale featuring an investigative duo—Agent Lexa and Agent Naomi—that echoes X-Files. It also has an alien, Mrs. Why, who incapacitates people with a single touch.

Death Blooms centres on a ghost with a penchant for eerie Ghostface-like phone calls and who perpetuates a living curse reminiscent of The Ring.

There are so many other self-aware and -referential references, too—Tingle is clearly a fan of the Scream franchise, validated here. It’s a blast trying to place them all, from Chainsaw Hillbilly (Leatherface) to Chuckie the Woodchuck (it feels like Wile E. Coyote meets Hundreds of Beavers).

You’ll find references to countless classic and modern horror titles, including Halloween, Scream 2, Child’s Play, The Collector, etc.—and so many more.

Special mention? There’s an airplane sequence where Misha is so scared and desperate to escape the current circumstances that he longs for a creature that could land on the wing of the airplane and tear its engine apart. This crew knows he’s referring to this memorable 1983 Twilight Zone: The Movie moment.

The nods to genre-lovers are plentiful and well-placed.

If you’re going to borrow this heavily from your influences and mentors, I find it works best to properly acknowledge the references. This can be hard to do well, as you still need to demonstrate your own originality, which Tingle has absolutely no trouble accomplishing.

In my opinion, this layer blends with the next to create a beautiful bridge between queer and non-queer readers.

I want your journey to be spoiler-free, so I will simply say the next layer is around appreciating Misha’s journey with his sexuality.

There are three critically important ‘Inspiration’ chapters that are both tender and heart-wrenching.

These vignettes remind us that horror is not always impersonal, gory, and physically violent. Sometimes, it is intimate, emotional, and psychologically painful.

I would argue we are gifted the following parallels in these Inspiration chapters:

• Alien – Mrs. Why / how Misha is feeling in his own mind
• Ghost – The Smoker / Richie (*cough* Richie Tozier in IT)
• Monster – Lamb / Uncle Keith

The third layer is a seething commentary on the discriminatory realities that exist as a result of “bad actors” misusing or abusing power within the entertainment industry. Tingle takes a sledgehammer to capitalism (generally), rainbow capitalism (specifically), the “desire to monetize peoples’ trauma,” and the lack of regulations to curb the unethical use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.

I recently finished a certificate course on AI for business. The day before, I attended a conference that focused significantly on applying artificial intelligence (AI) within my profession.

If you don’t already have a baseline understanding of how generative AI works, I would recommend a little homework before diving in. It will help you appreciate some of Tingle’s creative twists. You could get enough of a vibe by watching this and reading this because, as the video mentions, AI has weaknesses—one of those biases (which matters in this queer context).

I enjoyed how Tingle offered vivid examples of what happens when AI is wielded as a weapon by evil and good entities.

I assert that out of all of the baddies you’ll meet in this story, the scariest is The Board. I’d love to hear you challenge me on this.

You may think I’m just an evil suit. But I’m also your friend. You’re not listening. Everyone has a boss and I just learned who mine is.

Beyond the plot layers, I must commend Tingle on the supporting characters. Misha is flanked by two lovely characters, his boyfriend Zeke and his best friend Tara. We are being graced with a lot of new content that celebrates love in healthy and diverse forms.

As I procrastinated on this review, I binged Nobody Wants This and the third season of Heartstopper. (Yeah, that’s right, I see you fellow horror AND rom-com lovers.) “Wait, Kris, what in the world does a horror novel have to do with these relational entries?” Love, Friends. Love.

BURY YOUR GAYS is also a beautiful love story.

Misha and Zeke’s romantic relationship is so gloriously supportive and healthy. Misha and Tara’s platonic relationship feels as strong as Misha and Zeke’s (which is critically important as we continue getting more Ace representation).

Quick Tara/Ace side note: I am still wrestling with Tara’s portrayal. She is packaged in a way that feels like a stereotypical autistic Ace—an IT/tech wiz. I do love how Tingle acknowledges the underrepresentation and lack of appreciation of this identity and lets her wield this to her unique advantage. However, it still feels like we’re an amorphous blob. But maybe it’s not terribly inaccurate.

Note to self: Don’t let the self-hate sneak in here. Would Tingle want you going down this unproductive rabbit hole? No, no, he wouldn’t.

This brings me back to gushing about the choices overall.

Is this our future?

Are we really breaking the cycle of protagonists drawn to toxic infatuation and manipulative attention seeking and shifting to telling stories rooted in clearly communicating needs and desires and actively honoring our partners’ and friends’ truths? Are we being offered representation that sincerely encourages us to explore and embrace our identities and trust that our lovers and friends will love our authentic selves, too?

Fuck, I hope the answer to that is a resounding YES. Give me ALL of this affirming content.

Wrapping up, does Bury Your Gays attempt to cover a lot of ground? You betcha. Does it offer plenty of scary shit for horror lovers? Absolutely. The Smoker and Mrs. Why sequences linger in creepy, haunting ways.

Does it all work, and are all loose ends wrapped up neatly? No, but the vast majority does.

There were a couple of plodding twists around the three-quarter mark that I will graciously forgive because of the strength of the whole, which is solidified by the intelligent and gentle strength of the closing act.

Bottom line: If you’re on a healing journey to find love (romantic and/or platonic) in a terrifying and devastating capitalistic reality, Bury Your Gays offers a strange yet wildly effective helping of hope.

I’m the protagonist. I can be the hero.