🟥 Maybe—Tomorrow (1952) Review - 1950s Wattpad Trash | Book Waffle

Maybe—Tomorrow (1952) written by Jay Little

It's that month. Yeah. You know what it is. Love it. Hate it. I don't need to say it. 

So I thought for this June I'd run through some gay-related media in the hopes of finding something good. Because there's an awful lot of garbage out there. Speaking of which...

Maybe—Tomorrow follows the story of Gaylord Le Claire. No, I'm not joking. Gaylord is a high school student who just doesn't fit in. Why? Because he's a pretty gay femboy, of course! Nominative determinism at its finest right there. Thanks Mom and Dad.

Gaylord Le Claire has one particular crush, though. The kid is lusting after a masculine, rugged classmate named Robert Blake. We experience this pining through Gaylord's eyes. His internal and external struggles. His repeated wish to be a girl, and how that would have made his life oh so much simpler.

For a zoomer like me, this is the prehistoric version of gay Wattpad smut. Apparently it's also Dinosaur Day, so it fits. Despite its age, the trademark tropes are all there.

A white noise plot. A hunky athlete love interest that everyone wants. A gawky but "attractive" protagonist that spouts soliloquies about every little thought that crosses his mind.

Hell, the book even starts with shoddy protagonist introspection. Got the Gaylord angsting and talking about crying himself to sleep within the first page. Peak neurotic. Makes me want to slap the dude and shake his shoulders.

"Fucking get a GRIP!"

To its credit, it made me reexamine my own high school years. Did I have straight crushes on a couple of my classmates? Hell yeah I did. What gay or lesbian kid doesn't? As Hannibal Lecter says, "We begin by coveting what we see every day."

But. Like. I couldn't have been as needy and desperate as Gaylord, right? 

RIGHT!?

The book is also a fascinating bit of history. This was a time of great censorship among these kinds of topics, of course. Euphemisms abound. Gaylord's desire to be a girl feels very much like a result of him not being able to articulate his own emotions. That doesn't make the book inherently better, but it does add context.

Apart from that, it's a fairly run-of-the-mill romance story. Pull out your copy of Romancing the Beat because we are hitting all the plot points here. The stock characters. The eye-rolling cliches. The romanticized, saccharine tone. Just take this snippet:

He looked up into Blake's eyes and hugged him tight, clung there voiceless...

"You know, Gay," Blake breathed softly, "you... you really do remind of a... of Venus.

Dude. My eyes are rolling so damn hard they're about ready to pop out of my skull. The above passage would fit perfectly on an internet forum today. Maybe a Tumblr page or two. Perhaps AO3. You've even got the ellipses to really drive home the similar prose style. We're missing the obligatory em dashes, but I guess the title's got that covered. This was clearly someone venting their teenage gay fantasy.

Yet, given its modern descendants, Maybe—Tomorrow was better than I thought it would be! At least Gaylord doesn't have an abusive home life. Hell, every contemporary author abuses their gay protagonist. Mom. Dad. Dog. They're all homophobic in today's stories. It's exhausting.

Maybe—Tomorrow is not good, of course. In fact, it's pretty bad. It's sappy and cliche and bloated. But it will make you roll your eyes in that this-is-so-stupid-but-also-kinda-endearing way. It reminded me of my high school days spent trawling through old forums and message boards for slop like this.

Delightfully inoffensive. Let's call it that.

🟥 Rating: 3/10