First Time for Everything: Henry Fry's comedy of manners in the grand gay tradition

jun 20 2022.

by Drew Rowsome - photos supplied by Penguin Canada

Henry Fry's comedy of manners First Time for Everything is prefaced by two quotes. One from the activist Alexander Leon: 

Queer people don’t grow up as ourselves, we grow up playing a version of ourselves that sacrifices authenticity to minimize humiliation and prejudice. The massive task of our adult lives is to unpick which parts of ourselves are truly us and which parts we’ve created to protect us.

The second, a flippant quote from Bridget Jones's Diary, another post-Austen comedy of manners that First Time for Everything gleefully cribs from. Always good to acknowledge one's inspirations, especially for a novel that is concerned with trying on personas in order to find one's self. But the quote that matters, and which crops up a few times throughout the novel, is from our protagonist's chosen guardian angel, Dolly Parton:

If you want a rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain.

As any gay man will testify, WWDD is a very good question to ask when facing crucial life decisions. Danny Scudd may idolize Dolly but he has yet to learn to emulate her. We first meet him in a hilarious set piece as he is checked out by a no-nonsense nurse because of a "boggy ball." Turns out it might be chlamydia, despite Danny being virtually virginal and in what he considers a loving monogamous relationship. Turns out that this is not the only thing that Danny is deceiving himself about. 

Fry uses breezy gay speak to zip the story along and very quickly we have a portrait of Danny's life and some good clues as to why it is such a mess. His self-deprecation is at first off-putting - a long list of his physical, career and psychological faults ends with "If you saw me in a lineup, you probably wouldn’t remember me if you had to identify me later. Not that I’d ever get arrested for anything. Except maybe lurking in plant shops" - but upon the entrance of his best friend, the cringe comedy works better with a foil. Jacob is a non-binary artist and has been since high school. He is also fabulous. In contrast to Danny's pasty, pudgy and blandly dressed self-description, Jacob struts onto the pages as a

Naomi Campbell–thin body sheathed in a silver mini-mac with giant lapels and ten meters of bronzed, glossy leg sticking out the bottom—no evident clothing beneath—long black braids, threaded with silver, falling from two bunches perched on either side of their head. “Alien stripper realness,” as they’ve previously described the look.

The pair refer to themselves as 'Big Edie' and 'Lil' Edie' from Grey Gardens, and the gay pop culture references only explode from there. As do Jacob's fashion choices. The STI is only the beginning of Danny's problems as his other high school BFF is evicting him. Laura is pregnant and they need the extra room. Danny is forced to move into a 'commune' of artists revolving around Jacob. Danny hates his job working for a trendy but shallow arts and entertainment website. And, worst of all, his parents who run a fish and chips shop at the seaside are determined he come home for Christmas. All of these situations evoked memories - good and bad - of my, and every gay male's, careening and uproarious odyssey into adulthood and gay pride.

Danny's journey to a shaky self-discovery, trying on roles in the hopes one will fit, provides Fry with ample opportunity to satirize just about everything that our modern life consists of. Particularly gay life. Most of the gibes are gentle (and very funny) but fashions and politics move so quickly that what is contemporarily satirical is tomorrow's, today's, standard. It will be fascinating to read First Time for Everything in a decade or two to unpack one interpretation of the mores, fashions, artistic practices and gender role attitudes of the early 2020s. 

As gay men do (though most do much earlier, Danny is 27) our anti-hero goes into therapy and sleeps around in order to solve his crisises. He also has a few big-screen-worthy makeovers courtesy of the kooky denizens of the house he lives in. Jacob is of course a fairy godmother but there is more to that relationship for Danny to discover and respect. Should he return to the man who gave him chlamydia? Should he pursue his nemesis the posh and handsome Zain Porowski? Should he try for the out-of-his-league hairy-chested handsome activist Raj? Or the muscle-bound dim bulb boy toy at his office? 

Fry spins so many ideas and riffs that it is small wonder that Danny melts down. The process of rebuilding bogs down slightly with a dollop too much psychological self-help (even if some of it comes from Dolly). Fortunately an interlude with the parents (a brilliant portrait with humour and heart) and adventures in multi-media break up the slog. There is one extraordinary moment when Danny realizes that his crippling anxiety can be reprocessed and manifest as gay rage. Of course that is only a stage in Danny's development but it is a crucial (and admirable) one. Fry cycles around so that Danny quotes Leon and snaps the novel into focus. We all have a backlog of messy problems to deal with in a hostile homophobic world that has created most of them. But, in that grand gay tradition, Fry has taken that journey and made us laugh, laugh ruefully, laugh in recognition and laugh in embarrassment. A comedy of manners. "If you want a rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain."