An Okie From Aspen

About the Book

An Okie from Aspen is a lighthearted look at gay life in one of the world’s most famous and glamorous resorts by someone who actually lived there full-time for twenty-six years then left.  It is also the story of the frustrations and foibles of a failed artist turned wanna-be-writer looking for meaning and love in his lonely life.

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“There was, at least, one other problem with his life: he lived in Aspen, Colorado.  Most people would not think that a problem, or perhaps a poor-little-rich-kid kind of problem.  But the thing was, he wasn’t rich.  Had never been rich. He just managed to live there, for over twenty-five years and living in Aspen is a hard thing to do.

The town was notorious for the expensive housing, and food, and clothing, and gasoline or just about any other necessity in life, for one thing.  The climate could kill you, for another.

Justin had a beat-up old four-wheel-drive pickup he sometimes drove downvalley to shop, especially if he just had to get out that town before he went crazy, but finding affordable housing was the principal obstacle to the good life in Aspen.

He often had to share houses or condominiums with roommates.  Oh, that dreaded word!  When Justin was young he could handle roommates, but ever since he had gotten older, he hated them.  The was nothing like learning about human nature by living with roommates.  The selfishness!  The egoism!  The greed!  And that was just what he discovered about himself.

Roommates never saw anything wrong about themselves.  The blindness was always so surprising.  For Justin, a roommate’s company might sometimes be rewarding, if he ignored the dirty kitchen, but it was always ruined when their out-of-town friends and relatives came to visit.  And come they always did.  No one could pass up a free visit to Aspen in those years.  The visitors usually paid back the hospitality by taking Justin’s roommate out to dinner.

Of course, Justin could have found a significant other to help pay the outrageous rents for the little apartments around town, but it never happened.  Or at least he had never allowed it to happen.  He knew from earliest childhood that he was bound for a solitary existence.  He needed no one!

He desired many, of course, but those that wanted him, he did not want.  And those he wanted had just left on the Saturday morning commuter flight out of town, their week long vacation at an end with the fond memory of screwing a local.”

About the Author

D.A. Russell was born in Frederick, Oklahoma in 1949, and grew up on a farm and ranch nearby. He graduated from Frederick High School in 1968 during the height of the Vietnam War, which he managed to avoid by attending Oklahoma State University where he majored in architecture, but never practiced it. After getting a lucky break in the first draft lottery he dropped out of school and moved to Aspen, Colorado where he lived, more or less, until 1996, not accomplishing much of anything, but he had a real good time nonetheless. He has since moved back to Frederick (where?) and learned how to use a computer. He is currently working on two new novels.