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1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Side Stepping with Alex Mar 01, 2009
By Shannon L. Yarbrough
"Shannon L. Yarbrough"
Like many writers, Alex Geana probably keeps a journal. When his Mead black and white notebook isn't at hand, he grabs a cocktail napkin at the bar and borrows a pen from a waiter to record the thoughts forming in his brain. He says so in the introduction of his anthology called Side Step Me. One poem is even labeled "Poem on a Bar Receipt." My favorite surface was always using the back of the cardboard beer advertisement tents on the table. Geana says the collection of poems in Side Step Me spans ten years. You'd think he was in his fifties because he mentions a dead mentor in the first sentence of the introduction, and his writing style is extremely adult and somewhat weathered.
However, just a few sentences later Geana tells you the work is from his early teen years through mid twenties. The picture on the author page confirms he's probably still in his twenties. I mention this because it's no surprise that the author has experienced so much when it comes to drugs and sex and has chosen to write about it. Those sorts of things often influence young writers. A young man of his generation is often experimental. That's nothing new, but that's also assuming that as an author, he's telling the reader the truth. It's okay if he isn't. Poetic license and all. But if he is, prepare for shock and awe when reading this book.
Honestly, the first 15 pages of the book are boring and jaded. Sorry, Alex. The poems are meanderings probably penned on a taco wrapper after a night of fumbling around high, beneath a disco ball with sweaty go go boys. Each poem weaves a play on words or some hint of erotic mystery, but falls short with a nice quipped ending that just leaves the reader hanging there cheaply like a blind date that didn't show up. But, for anyone about to reveal a secret or tell a friend a very personal and sensitive story, there are always those useless words we spew in the beginning while our guard is still up. In a book though, the reader doesn't always want to warm up to you. Geana stands to lose his readers right from the start.
For those who choose to stick around, myself included, you are in for quite a ride throughout the rest of the book. The author prepares you quite abruptly for what is about to come next with a picture on page 13 of a full frontal nude photograph of a man (not the author, by the way), and it is indeed a hard cold slap to the face. Just turn the page. This is followed by a very truthful poem about sharing pics in chat rooms...
that chat
everyone looking
some men with perfect pictures
turn out ugly, face to face
then there are the ones
hiding behind the corner
sometimes a camera
Not until page 16 do we read the first of the author's poems that reveals a soft underbelly of emotions and doesn't get "wrapped up" in the end with a cute little bow. It's about the author coming out to his mother while she buys him clothes and furniture and instructs him not to tell the family.
she bought me clothing
told me I didn't look good in mine
that they were too tight
that no one would like me
without the right clothes
unless she bought them for me
that she could save me
if I did what she said
tied my drawstring pants
the world full of symbols.
Later in a poem called ONLINE, the poet counts the number of people in different chat rooms and laughs at the propositions he keeps getting. He's amazed at the drug use and how boring people have become on them, in comparison to what brilliant writers wrote a long time ago when they were high:
I remember when people
used to pour out
their deep down unheard thoughts, the feelings
that scared them, on ecstasy people could cry
the real tears.
I miss somehow
the writer junkie.
I miss the writer junkie too sometimes, and Alex Geana definitely shows signs of being just as talented as those from yesterday who passed out in the streets of Paris, sloppy naked and high, but somehow sobered up long enough to write about the trips they took. But again, is this author telling us the truth? Or was he, too, high when he wrote this?
Kudos to Alex for a creative cover. It's prescription bottle look and color echoes the content of the book very well, and if you look closely you'll see a sketchiness of city inside the pill bottle, often a setting for story lines and poems involving drug use, sex, dancing, experimentation, and such. It gives the book a very personal and private tone, and I commend Mr. Geana for being sensitive and forthright in such a way both on the inside of his book and out.
There were college days of my own when I jotted down thoughts after a few shots and too many Long Island Iced Teas, but those are just scribblings in a journal or on the back of a bar receipt now. I'm a much better writer clean and with a bit of age and experience. Alex will be too.
Finish your drink, Alex. Your readers are waiting.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
Side Stepping with Alex Feb 27, 2009
By Shannon L. Yarbrough
"Shannon L. Yarbrough"
Like many writers, Alex Geana probably keeps a journal. When his Mead black and white notebook isn't at hand, he grabs a cocktail napkin at the bar and borrows a pen from a waiter to record the thoughts forming in his brain. He says so in the introduction of his anthology called Side Step Me. One poem is even labeled "Poem on a Bar Receipt." My favorite surface was always using the back of the cardboard beer advertisement tents on the table. Geana says the collection of poems in Side Step Me spans ten years. You'd think he was in his fifties because he mentions a dead mentor in the first sentence of the introduction, and his writing style is extremely adult and somewhat weathered.
However, just a few sentences later Geana tells you the work is from his early teen years through mid twenties. The picture on the author page confirms he's probably still in his twenties. I mention this because it's no surprise that the author has experienced so much when it comes to drugs and sex and has chosen to write about it. Those sorts of things often influence young writers. A young man of his generation is often experimental. That's nothing new, but that's also assuming that as an author, he's telling the reader the truth. It's okay if he isn't. Poetic license and all. But if he is, prepare for shock and awe when reading this book.
Honestly, the first 15 pages of the book are boring and jaded. Sorry, Alex. The poems are meanderings probably penned on a taco wrapper after a night of fumbling around high, beneath a disco ball with sweaty go go boys. Each poem weaves a play on words or some hint of erotic mystery, but falls short with a nice quipped ending that just leaves the reader hanging there cheaply like a blind date that didn't show up. But, for anyone about to reveal a secret or tell a friend a very personal and sensitive story, there are always those useless words we spew in the beginning while our guard is still up. In a book though, the reader doesn't always want to warm up to you. Geana stands to lose his readers right from the start.
For those who choose to stick around, myself included, you are in for quite a ride throughout the rest of the book. The author prepares you quite abruptly for what is about to come next with a picture on page 13 of a full frontal nude photograph of a man (not the author, by the way), and it is indeed a hard cold slap to the face. Just turn the page. This is followed by a very truthful poem about sharing pics in chat rooms...
that chat
everyone looking
some men with perfect pictures
turn out ugly, face to face
then there are the ones
hiding behind the corner
sometimes a camera
Not until page 16 do we read the first of the author's poems that reveals a soft underbelly of emotions and doesn't get "wrapped up" in the end with a cute little bow. It's about the author coming out to his mother while she buys him clothes and furniture and instructs him not to tell the family.
she bought me clothing
told me I didn't look good in mine
that they were too tight
that no one would like me
without the right clothes
unless she bought them for me
that she could save me
if I did what she said
tied my drawstring pants
the world full of symbols.
Later in a poem called ONLINE, the poet counts the number of people in different chat rooms and laughs at the propositions he keeps getting. He's amazed at the drug use and how boring people have become on them, in comparison to what brilliant writers wrote a long time ago when they were high:
I remember when people
used to pour out
their deep down unheard thoughts, the feelings
that scared them, on ecstasy people could cry
the real tears.
I miss somehow
the writer junkie.
I miss the writer junkie too sometimes, and Alex Geana definitely shows signs of being just as talented as those from yesterday who passed out in the streets of Paris, sloppy naked and high, but somehow sobered up long enough to write about the trips they took. But again, is this author telling us the truth? Or was he, too, high when he wrote this?
Kudos to Alex for a creative cover. It's prescription bottle look and color echoes the content of the book very well, and if you look closely you'll see a sketchiness of city inside the pill bottle, often a setting for story lines and poems involving drug use, sex, dancing, experimentation, and such. It gives the book a very personal and private tone, and I commend Mr. Geana for being sensitive and forthright in such a way both on the inside of his book and out.
There were college days of my own when I jotted down thoughts after a few shots and too many Long Island Iced Teas, but those are just scribblings in a journal or on the back of a bar receipt now. I'm a much better writer clean and with a bit of age and experience. Alex will be too.
Finish your drink, Alex. Your readers are waiting.
 It's oddly peaceful in a room full of strange boys... May 13, 2011
By Richard Alex Davis
Alex Geana's Side Step Me portrays a young writer caught in the full swing of finding his creative voice and artistic identity. Collected over a period of nearly ten years, the poetry, photography, and short stories in this volume range from angst-ridden laments over lost innocence to haunting meditations on the vacuity of modern culture. Geana writes from the perspective of an outsider, and his ambivalence towards the people he observes is palpable. Abusive dog-sitters, pill-popping housewives, and party-hopping starlets emerge as fascinating inquiries into the nature of self-destruction. Geana's characters are not so much real people as life-style experiments, people defined more by their clothes and predilections than the content of their heart. Their confusion between attention and love manifests in misplaced longings and desperate companionship. While the author's detached perspective belies a fear of entanglement in a vastly superficial culture, it is also clear that Geana is a shameless flirt. His hesitation is perhaps only a momentary reflection before plunging into yet another drug-binge or one-night-stand. Writing poetry on a bar receipt, the gaze of a man sitting across the table interrupts Geana's focus. He contemplates whether to speak to this man--who proceeds to buy him a drink--or to continue writing. Straddling between the pursuit of art and higher pleasures and the thrill of intoxication and easy company, Side Step Me cannot help but recall the terror and excitement of youth. The sketches and stories it contains anticipate choices that could determine an entire artistic career. Appropriately, the reader is left with a promising sense that Geana's next work will be worth the wait, no matter what extremes it may gravitate towards.
A review that relates Apr 09, 2009
By James Jacob Pierri
Nyc is just a floating rock in between the ocean and a powerful river, this location is a crossroads for a panoramic setting of all sorts of characters.
Alex Geana has captured a glimpse in the mind of a small percentage brave enough to think thoughts like the poems found in his book, I say this because being one of few in this select group who actually understands.
Nyc was my back yard and play ground my whole life,visiting or participating in the 'SOCIAL SCENES' portrayed in Alex's writing kept me turning page after page. To find a series of poems transformed from thought into poem and an idea begin with deep speculation and most times end up in biting sarcasm and wit made me feel like I was riding on the 1 train doing the same thing, looking around and wondering who, what where AND always most importantly WHY?
who are these people who surround me living in their personal living I-pod ad?
Are they for real?
yes, they are, well at least in their head, to me they are just extras in the movie called' My Life."
Alex put in writing what some of us only privately digest and contemplate while making our way through this rock.
Its a perfect blend of honesty, personal point of view and fun poking.
isn't that what life is all about?
Alex Geana seems to be an honest guy, just being himself, something many living on 'The Rock' forget to do on a daily basis and he called them out on it, while having fun.
I look forward to reading a sequel or another book from this author since his early experiences and see how his views may have changed.
Side Step Me Mar 15, 2009
By Ian D. MacKintosh
"Ian MacKintosh"
This compilation of short stories and poems by Alex Geana is a must read for all gay men (young and old) as we can relate to most everything he shares with us. Stories written on bar napkins and receipts remind, excite, fascinate and draw us to the next page. This book is also suggested for a flight or pool side / beach summer read with cocktail in hand.
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