A REVIEW OF
LOVING SANDER BY JOSEPH GERACI

A love story that captures a slice of short-lived Dutch tolerance
by Olius Belombre, 22 November 2023

Loving Sander is a novella and the debut work of fiction by American author Joseph Geraci. Published by the Gay Men’s Press (which catered to more than just gay men) in 1997 and set in the early nineteen-nineties, it tracks the relationship between young American photography scholar Will, who works on a monograph in Amsterdam, and his Dutch friend Sander, who is ten at the start of the story and twelve at the end. Although Will initially gets along well with Sander’s parents, with whom he collaborates professionally, friction arises in particular with Sander’s mother Marijke over the nature of her son’s friendship with Will.

Eloping to America to live as Indians

What’s more, Marijke and her husband Niek are on the brink of a divorce, a cause of distress to the lovable (and loving) but wayward Sander. The boy’s mood swings seem in large part to be provoked by the fact that his parents are on a war footing with each other. Meanwhile, Will agonises over the choice between returning to San Francisco, where he has an apartment and a job, and staying in the Netherlands, where he has both Sander and an offer from Niek to take over the photography gallery the latter is running. Sander is increasingly upset at the prospect of Will leaving, and dreams up plans for the two of them to elope to America together and live as Indians.

Will has made friends and acquaintances at a discussion and support group for boy lovers that convenes regularly at its own canalside café. One of these acquaintances, the irascible Dutchman Toon, is due to appear in court: a social worker has reported his relationship with Ashok, a boy from a socially vulnerable immigrant family, to the police. In order to support Toon, Will has pledged to give expert testimony on the nature of a number of photographs Toon has foolishly taken of Ashok. The legal problems faced by Toon add to the reader’s fears for Will and his own risky relationship with Sander.

Support groups for man-boy couples

The novella paints a detailed picture, through American eyes, of the social atmosphere and conventions of the Netherlands in the nineties, and the liberal city of Amsterdam in particular. In one of Will’s friends, the wise, elderly Dr Erich Born, may be seen a literary avatar of Frits Bernard (1920-2006), the Dutch psychologist and researcher on intergenerational relationships. The story captures the latter days of a fairly short and comparatively tolerant era: the Netherlands from the seventies into the early nineties. What’s more, Loving Sander was published a year after the arrest of Belgian serial killer Marc Dutroux, with whom ‘paedophilia’ became indelibly linked in the public imagination. His case palpably changed things for the worse overnight, even if this was just the excuse the changing times – influenced by extreme attitudes from Will’s home country – had been waiting for. The consequences of the Americanisation of Europe were felt by real-life Wills such as the American pastor, photographer and boy-love scholar Don Mader (1948-2022), who exiled himself from the US and went to the Netherlands along with his loved boy in a plea bargain in 1986 and subsequently experienced persecution in the supposed haven of toleration.

The story is set some years before the Dutroux bombshell, however, and the hope and optimism still felt at the time express themselves in it, imbuing the narrative with a retrospective sadness. Even so, dark clouds are on the horizon in the novella, too, with one of Will’s acquaintances remarking that Dutch vice cops are latterly being trained in the United States. (This had been the case for the late Jaap Hoek, a police captain in 1990s Amsterdam for whom hunting paeds had become a personal crusade and who was consequently referred to as Captain Hook.) The strictly legal and above-board support groups such as the one Will attends, which existed in several Dutch cities and which some man-boy couples even attended together, closed down one by one between the mid-nineties and the start of the twenty-first century.

Loving Sander is a short, accessible story written in a simple and straightforward style. The protagonist’s position as an outsider in Dutch society spurs him on to make amusing and mildly sardonic comments, as when he characterises the Dutch as a people who like to chat endlessly while taking either coffee or beer. The relationship between Sander and Will is effectively and touchingly portrayed, with the former growing sulkier as adolescent hormones set in and as he faces losing his friend to an international move, and the latter torn over his future while trying increasingly desperately to keep Sander’s parents on his side. Even if the plot is not hugely ingenious, there is enough inherent tension and danger to keep the reader involved. In addition, Loving Sander paints an accurate picture of a unique time and place, with all of its cultural idiosyncrasies and all the melancholy of an era that has disappeared utterly.

Fragment

December 10th.

I have been telling Sander a thousand times that I love him, not to mention how many times I try to find out if he loves me. He makes fun of me when I go on like that, and it also annoys him. A few days ago – I suppose I had even been going on even more than usual – he handed me a sheet of lined school paper on which he had written laboriously five hundred times, ‘I love you, I love you…’ So I wouldn’t keep asking him and going on about it, he said. I imagined him spending the time at the desk in his room writing away, time after time, chuckling a little to himself. It pleased me very much. He made me pin it up on the wall of my study above my computer. His handwriting is neat and formal, the lines straight.

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