Best opening lines

[rec]

"When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog called Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonora, California, drinking the heart right out of a fine spring afternoon."

 

That opening line, widely called the best in crime fiction, came from The Last Good Kiss and took James Crumley eight years to write, along with the rest of the book, both of which influenced Dennis Lehane, Michael Connelly and George Pelecanos for starts. Crumley died this week, and this quote was in his obituary.

 

So, I'd like to see what you people think are the best opening lines in gay fiction.

 

My first offering:

 

"OK, Saturday night and Mike is showering up and shaving off two weeks of beard -- as I am about to find out. He wants to go out to a bar he knows over by Doniphan, across the river. Reminds him of a place in Dallas, when he was just out of the service. Even the name's the same -- the Wood Shed. The barbecue is Texas-style, he swears, and they've got Lone Star by the bottle, a real treat from the sound of it that will also grow hair on my chest (since nothing else does)."

From Two Men in a Pickup by Rock Lane Cooper

[sat8997]

Arizona. Ari-fri-kin-zona. Do you know how hot it is in Arizona? In the summer? Well, if you don

[Cynical Romantic]

I'm going to cheat and answer this question with opening lines from published fiction as opposed to online stories. Here are some of the ones that have stood out in my mind.

 

"The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation."

From The Secret History by Donna Tartt

 

After that line, how could you not want to read on?

 

Here are some more:

 

"I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974."

From Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides.

 

"It's still difficult for me to venture into public. You would think, in a country that famously has 'no sense of history', as Europeans claim, that I might cash in on America's famous amnesia. No such luck. No one in this 'community' shows any signs of forgetting, after a year and eight months - to the day."

From We Need To Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver.

[myself_i_must_remake]

i'm going to follow romantic's lead and just use anything.

 

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

 

-Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

[PlugInMatty]

"When I look back on my childhood I wonder how I survived at all. It was, of course, a miserable childhood: the happy childhood is hardly worth your while. Worse than the ordinary miserable childhood is the miserable Irish childhood, and worse yet is the miserable Irish Catholic childhood." Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes.

[jovian_w2002]

One of the best opening lines for me would be from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice Spot the irony in the opening line :

 

" It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

 

There are basically two propositions in this sentence that Jane Austen and her favourite character, Elizabeth Bennet, beg to differ.

[rec]

Back on the gay-stories theme:

 

"At least I had my guitar back.

 

I'd brought it into Mike's Guitar Shop the previous Tuesday and expected it back by Friday. Mike was supposed to do a proper setup and fix a niggling problem I'd always had at the 13th fret, where the third string always made a kinda 'dink' sound. I'd saved a long time to come up with the 79 bucks he wanted to put things right."

 

From Falling off a Log, by Driver Nine

[ashessnow]

My favorite line:

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin."

-The Metamorphosis

Soo perfect.

[JamesSavik]

Is that a roll of quarter in your pocket or were you just glad to see me...

[rec]

Referring to the opening lines of Falling Off a Log, I think it useful to outline why it is a good opening.

 

First, the "At least I had my guitar back" signals that there was a parallel setback.

 

Second, the second paragraph makes it clear two things: a) that the owner of the guitar was an knew his instrument and was probably an accomplished musician: there was a problem with the 13th fret and a "dink" sound in the third string. the owner of the guitar did not have much money because he had to save up to pay for the repair--he was either a kid or a poor older person.

 

So, in a couple of paragraphs a whole number of threads are set in motion--threads that the rest of the fine story expands upon.

[Krista]

My favorite line:

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin."

-The Metamorphosis

Soo perfect.

 

 

This has to be the best opening line. I was going to add it myself, but you beat me to it. lol.

[Procyon]

My favorite line:

"As Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a monstrous vermin."

-The Metamorphosis

Soo perfect.

 

 

This has to be the best opening line. I was going to add it myself, but you beat me to it. lol.

 

Great one, though the one from The Trial is even better. The most foreboding and creepy opening line ever, yet it totally sucks you in.

 

Hmm I can't find it in English but the original is something like 'Jemand musste Josef K verleumdet haben, denn ohne dass er etwas b

[ashessnow]

Great one, though the one from The Trial is even better. The most foreboding and creepy opening line ever, yet it totally sucks you in.

 

Hmm I can't find it in English but the original is something like 'Jemand musste Josef K verleumdet haben, denn ohne dass er etwas b

[colinian]

My favorite opening lines are from Bart Yates' Leave Myself Behind:

 

I've never wanted a different mother. I just want my mother to be different.

Get in line, right?

 

 

Colin

[Procyon]

"Someone must have slandered Joseph K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested."

 

The best I could do.

 

Good translation.

[ashessnow]

Good translation.

Thanks! I try.

 

More favorite lines:

"Mother died today."

- Albert Camus, The Stranger

 

"124 was spiteful."

-Toni Morrison, Beloved

 

"It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen."

-George Orwell, 1984

Edited October 5, 2008 by Nerotorb