Book Review : Warren Wagner - The Only Safe Place Left Is The Dark (2023)
Hypochondria runs in my family. Lelievres are extremely anxious people by nature, so it's only normal that we believe we're going to die all the time. That also makes us more empathic than average, even if it's for silly reasons. So because I had one unprotected relationship in my life and became ridiculously afraid I had HIV for three years after that even if I tested negative twice (it was twenty years ago), I became sensitive to the plight of HIV-positive folks. Like I said, my reasons are silly, but my heart is pure.
Although it takes place in an alternate pandemic present, Warren Wagner's The Only Safe Place Left Is The Dark brought me back to old anxieties in the best possible way.
The Only Safe Place Left Is The Dark tells the story of Quinton Booker, an HIV positive man who’s been living on his own in a cabin since the death of his lover Frankie. His existence is relatively free of the ongoing place that has been decimating humanity for twenty-six years until the day unruly looters come across his home and destroy his medicine reserve. If he wants to go on, Quinton will have to head out and confront what he’s been successfully avoiding all this time: the end of the fucking world.
The World is A Dangerous Place (for Queer People)
Full disclosure, I interviewed Warren Wagner and Eric LaRocca about the emergence of queer horror, six weeks ago. Wagner said something in there that I kept thinking about when I read The Only Safe Place Left Is The Dark : "Of course queer people are good at writing horror. We have a lot to be afraid about," he said. I thought I understood then, but I only did when I read the book. The Only Safe Place Left Is The Dark is not just another apocalypse story, because the apocalypse is accessory here.
For example, the Afflicted (Wagner's name for his "zombies") aren't soulless ghouls. They're still conscious, but they cannot control their impulses. So, they constantly apologize and beg for death while they're hurling themselves at fresh meat. Not only it's creepy as shit to witness people throw themselves into murder and mayhem against their own will, but it mirrors a cognitive dissonance present in most people nowadays. We hurl ourselves at our demise even if we know better.
The apocalypse in The Only Safe Place Left Is The Dark is triggered by a misalignment of cognition and emotions. I don’t know about you, but this scared the shit out of me.
My point of view is obviously white-cis-hetero, but I've also read this detail as white-cis-hetero people claiming to be allies but acting different? In the case of the HIV-positive protagonist Quintin, it’s a world where he's theoretically allowed to survive through medication, but has to fight for it every step of the way. It reminded me of things that really happened like Martin Shkreli gouging the price of Daraprim in 2015. The apocalypse written by Warren Wagner is both real and metaphorical.
The Discreet Charms of Quinton Booker
Another extremely charming quirk of The Only Safe Place Left Is The Dark is the romantic life of its protagonist Quinton who seems condemned to short-lived romances. It’s particularly heartbreaking because Quinton is not volatile or sex-crazed. The few lovers he's had in his life DIE soon after he's met them. I’m not a big flashback guy in fiction usually, but the scenes where he's keeping company to Frankie on his deathbed were charged with such emotional intensity, it's hard not to feel for the guy.
Living with a Damocles sword over his head, Quinton is forced to trade stability for intensity in his relationships, which is against his character and hurts him. but he takes it anyway because as an HIV-positive man in an apocalyptic world, opportunities for moments of meaningful connection are few and far between. The world keeps short-changing Quinton, but he finds ways to survive both physically and emotionally while everything and everyone keeps dying around him. He’s my kind of dude.
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Although I’m self-admittedly burned out on post-apocalyptic narratives, I was genuinely moved by The Only Safe Place Left Is The Dark. It’s barely 100 pages-long, but its sheer emotional intensity and immediacy pulled me under. This is very much a queer story, but it's one that fosters connection over difference and that provides emotional and logistical context to a reality that isn’t mine in order for me to better understand. It is both an entertaining, enlightening and emotional journey.
