The central character is Stephen Spear, a sometime actor who has plenty of disposable time and money. Early in the novel, Spear faces the indignity – or outright humiliation – of being dumped by his boyfriend, Blake, for the man next door. Spear, accused of being deceptive and dishonest, seems incensed that Blake has left him for a bloke with a notoriously large appendage. The appropriately named Spear seeks sexual encounters online and in various inner-city bars and sex clubs. These virtual assignations are characterised by Spear’s penchant for ‘making up characters’. He allows himself to be mistaken for a hunky vet named Jayson in order to have some erotic fun with a stranger. Later, Spear travels to a bar in Newtown where he poses as a closeted country boy named Trevor.

Throughout The Indignities, Aitken skilfully blends explicit sexual detail with fine observational humour. I particularly enjoyed Spear’s recollection of his brief stint on a (fictitious) Australian soap opera entitled Sunnyside Street. He recalls how this role began in ‘heady’ fashion, with ‘promotional appearances at suburban shopping malls’ and a trip to the United Kingdom (where the show enjoyed an enthusiastic following). Spear goes on to recall being killed off by producers, and dismissed by TV Week as a ‘disposable character’.

The tone of Aitken’s novel is lightweight and breezy, but there are dark undercurrents. Spear concedes that he finds sex a ‘substitute for applause’. His adoption of different personae, while amusing, suggests that he has insecurities about his personal and sexual worth. Yet Spear is not simply a victim; he can also be highly obsessive. Spear follows his drunken ex-boyfriend out of a nightclub, and hacks into Blake’s email account in order to keep an eye on him.

This intrusion points to another key theme in The Indignities: the important and complex role that technology plays in our intimate lives. Spear is ‘dumped by text message’. He joins the dating website Gaydar, and (in one hilarious interlude) indulges in an orgy with various men he meets online. These men are referred to by their online profile names, for example, ‘Butch-Bitch’ and ‘GymHotJock’. At another point, Spear describes a fruitless attempt to contact Blake following their split:

… I sent a text apologising. When that went unanswered, I sent an e-mail, apologising at much greater length and making my excuses … After waiting two hours, I sent him another text, alerting him to the e-mail in case he hadn’t been online.

Aitken is not suggesting that gay men are hopelessly transfixed by newfangled gadgets. He is acknowledging a broader tendency to choose MSN or email over more direct forms of communication. On the opening page, Spear describes his anxiety at turning thirty:

If you’re gay, turning thirty heralds the unsavoury fact that your days of classifying yourself as ‘a boy’ are numbered. The harsh reality is you’re ‘a man’, that word you always associated with your father, your teachers, or that sexy, shirtless butch lingering in the shadows at Manacle … How can you possibly be a man when you’ve had all your chest hair permanently removed by laser?

This seems like an ideal segue into an exploration of ageism among gay men. Disappointingly, Aitken does not really pursue this theme. There are only a few further references to ageing. For example, Spear wonders whether ‘gay men over a certain age were invisible’ to him. Our protagonist appears to be more concerned with his penis size than with lines appearing on his face.

While older gay men may be largely ‘invisible’ to Spear, this is not the case with younger non-Anglo men. Witness the character ‘Alejandro’, who is represented as a queer Latin stud with huge biceps, heightened libido, and broken English. My contention here is not that Spear is ‘racist’. Rather, I am suggesting that the kind of sexual/racial stereotyping we see in Alejandro’s characterisation raises some troubling questions about race relations and notions of exoticism in contemporary gay Australia.

Another concern with The Indignities is its historical setting. The events of the book unfold in 2004. By choosing this year, Aitken can avoid the lofty task of describing the extensive changes that Spear would have undergone between 1998 (when Vanity Fierce was published) and 2010. Yet some of the cultural references in this recent novel are understandably a bit dated. One character cites the 2004 reality television show Playing it Straight. But how many readers actually remember that short-lived program? Spear mentions Gaydar on multiple occasions. How would he utilise Facebookand Twitter (both of which have grown in popularity since the mid-2000s)? Perhaps Aitken will answer this question in another sequel.

Despite its flaws, The Indignities is a welcome contribution to the field of Australian queer fiction. Aitken’s wit is wicked in every sense of that word, while his ability to address confronting issues in a deceptively sunny manner is admirable. I hope to read about further adventures in the life of Stephen Spear.