Queer Terror

A review of David Demchuk’s Red X

By Derek Newman-Stille

Red X taps into the collective nightmare of Toronto’s Queer community, dredging up fears from decades of violence. It circles the disappearances in Toronto’s gay village, where real life serial killer Bruce McArthur stalked the gay community for years without any substantive police investigation. McArthur proved that disappearing gay men wouldn’t even be a blip on Toronto’s radar and showed that even though we are hyper visible for most homophobes, we are invisible to most of the community and Queer disappearances didn’t disrupt the normal passage of Toronto life. 

David Demchuk’s novel is a virtual ouija board, calling up the ghosts of Toronto’s homophobia, telling the story of a haunting of the gay community and a weirding of the gay village as a place. Even though Demchuk tells a story about gay disappearances in Toronto, his story is more about the collective fear of the community and the way that fear lingers and taints. 

Red X has the power to unsettle the settled, to weird the normal, and to question the relationship between gay men and a space that is supposed to be safe for them. The sharp edge of terror lies just past every turn, seeping into the physical space.

Demchuk uses the figure of the monster to highlight the very real monsters who stalk and harm gay men.

I will never look at the gay village the same way again.

Reviewed by Derek Newman-Stille, PhD