Jeremy Atherton Lin Books

An intimate trip through queer history, this work explores the gay bar as a vital space of solidarity and sexual expression. With urban centers witnessing the closure of these venues, the author reflects on their significance in shaping identity and community. He embarks on a transatlantic journey through the clubs, pubs, and dives that have marked his life, revealing each location as a palimpsest of queer history. The prose is vibrant and exhilarating, transporting readers from Hollywood nights in the 1970s to cruising tunnels in 18th-century London, and from post-AIDS bars to today’s fluid queer spaces. The narrative captures moments of police raids, riots, and transformative encounters, weaving a stylish inquiry into the relationship between place and identity. This exploration goes beyond the simplified Stonewall narrative, delving into lesser-known struggles for queer territory. Elegiac and infused with humor, the work serves as a serious critical examination, a love story, and a memorable night out, inviting readers to reflect on the cultural significance of these spaces in the ongoing journey for liberation.

It's 1996, and Jeremy, a young American, has met the British boy of his dreams -- just as, amid a media frenzy, US Congress prepares the Defense of Marriage Act, denying same-sex couples rights including immigration. The pair snatch time in forests and deserts, London fashion shows, and East Village hotel rooms; eventually, finding no other way to stay together, they shack up illicitly among unlikely allies in San Francisco. What emerges is an unexpected romantic comedy haunted by centuries of gay ghosts. Deep House moves through the couple's various domiciles while unlocking doors to a lineage of outsiders who came before them: hapless criminals, sexpot bartenders, friars, pirates, government workers who subvert the system and activists who go all the way to the Supreme Court to fight for their freedoms. Combining cultural history with radically intimate memoir, Deep House is at once a romp through the queer archives and the innermost tale of two boyfriends who made a home in the shadows of a turbulent civil rights battle.