A high school track athlete with a perverse hobby. A college heartthrob with a secret life. A gay coming-of-age thriller that will stop at nothing until everyone gets exposed.
Hunter seems to have it all: brains, biceps, and a bright future beyond the halls of his oppressive high school. He also has a private obsession that he knows is wrong: secretly recording his older brother, Nash, with a spy cam. It starts as a thrill and morphs into a power trip. But one day, the video footage reveals something so disturbing that it cracks Hunter’s life straight down the middle.
Now he’s trapped in a nightmare where desire leaves fingerprints, loyalty pulls triggers, and the brother he thought he knew might be the most dangerous person in the room. To survive what he’s uncovered, Hunter turns to his best friend, Oscar, who may also be the man Hunter never knew he needed.
When the family you’re born into puts you at risk, the family you choose may be the only thing that keeps you alive.
"Hunter’s Hidden Camera" is an emotionally charged LGBTQ+ thriller about hunger, shame, and the brutal cost of exposure.
A high school track athlete with a perverse hobby. A college heartthrob with a secret life. A gay coming-of-age thriller that will stop at nothing until everyone gets exposed.
Hunter seems to have it all: brains, biceps, and a bright future beyond the halls of his oppressive high school. He also has a private obsession that he knows is wrong: secretly recording his older brother, Nash, with a spy cam. It starts as a thrill and morphs into a power trip. But one day, the video footage reveals something so disturbing that it cracks Hunter’s life straight down the middle.
Now he’s trapped in a nightmare where desire leaves fingerprints, loyalty pulls triggers, and the brother he thought he knew might be the most dangerous person in the room. To survive what he’s uncovered, Hunter turns to his best friend, Oscar, who may also be the man Hunter never knew he needed.
When the family you’re born into puts you at risk, the family you choose may be the only thing that keeps you alive.
"Hunter’s Hidden Camera" is an emotionally charged LGBTQ+ thriller about hunger, shame, and the brutal cost of exposure.
My brother has Big Dick Energy. He walks tall, as if he's purposefully stretching out his body, a real-life Mr. Fantastic, his head held high but kind of cocked to the side, like he's sizing up the world and impressed with what he sees. His arms swing almost carelessly, taking up more space around him than he needs. He's got very visible swagger, his right foot landing on the ground a bit wider than his left one, landing a little crooked, as a way to make room for the almost always noticeable bulge in his pants.
But despite all this, despite the way he carries himself, he doesn't come across as arrogant. His confidence is quiet. You can see it when you catch a glimpse of him alone, like when he's cooking salmon and vegetables for himself for lunch or when he's shooting baskets in the backyard. You can also see it in the way he interacts with others: the ease with which he talks to people, familiar and strange, and the friendliness he brings to almost every encounter.
I mean, I guess if you have a dick that big, life is all sunshine and blue skies and you want to be friendly to everybody. God, I hate him.
It's not that I have a micro-penis or anything. I think I'm proportional, or at least average, or at least almost average, but it's hard to tell because most of the dicks I see are in porn and that's not the real world. I'm eighteen, my brother's twenty-one, and I have now resigned myself to the fact that I'll never catch up.
I'm thinking all this while digging in one of my brother's dresser drawers, the one with all his underwear in it. He rotates between boxer briefs, trunks, and briefs, all different colors, some with patterns. He's got designer brands like Calvin Klein and Diesel, but he's also got some targeted at the youth market, from stores like Abercrombie & Fitch and Hollister. There are also a few very basic Fruit of the Loom and Hanes thrown in there, probably left over from his high school days.
Sometimes I wonder if his underwear works the same way a costume works for a superhero. Peter Parker is just Peter Parker, but when he puts on his Spider-Man outfit he is a man transformed. He is more confident, feels more powerful. Same goes for Iron Man, Ant-Man, most of them. Is my brother just a normal person, brimming with insecurities and worries, whose BDE only turns on when tighty-whities are wrapped around him?
My brother (his name is Nash) is away at college, currently a senior majoring in business, and my parents are on vacation in Las Vegas, so I have the house to myself this morning.
I grab one of Nash's white Calvin Klein trunks. I'm jealous that he can rock these like a model. He wouldn't look out of place next to Noah Centineo and Shawn Mendes, who broke the internet when their hot underwear ads were released.
Again, it's not that I'm out of shape or some kind of freak of nature. I'm actually pretty fit, pretty athletic, and pretty much the best track athlete at my school. It's just that compared to Nash I feel like nothing.
I wonder if most younger siblings feel this way, particularly the ones with brothers and sisters who are superstars. I mean, dick and underwear envy aside, he's also quite popular among his peers, fun to be around, "the kind of person that every girl wants to date and every guy wants to be." He is also smart, and has always done well in school, always turning out to be every teacher's favorite. (Some of the teachers I have still ask about him: "How's Nash doing?" and "What's new with your brother?" and so on.)
On top of that, he has the perfect relationship with Alessandra, his sexy longtime girlfriend (five years and counting), who he's been dating since high school. (She's also a college senior now, same school, majoring in art history.)
Me? I have my fair share of friends and people seem to like me, but I'll never be prom king or anything. I'm a good student, but I'll never charm teachers the way my brother does. And although I've had a girlfriend since junior year of high school (I'm a senior now), we're far from perfect for each other.
The fact is, I am as queer as a rainbow flag, but nobody knows. People would be surprised that I like guys and only guys. They may even be shocked, because I've kept this secret very well-hidden, lying to people's faces my entire life.
I've tried to "pray the gay away," forced myself to look at naked women and try to like it, started dating girls in the hope that it would change me. None of it has worked, not even a little bit.
Honestly, if I were to come out as gay, I don't think my parents would disown me. (Okay, well, maybe at first.) And I don't believe my friends would hate me. (Okay, well, maybe a little.) And Emma, my girlfriend, is such a kind and understanding person that I think, after some initial disappointment, she would be supportive of me and we could probably end up being good friends. (Okay, well, maybe not.) Best case scenario with everybody in my life: lots of initial awkwardness giving way to a new normal. Not bad, considering how bad it could get.
But no matter how optimistic I spin the outcome, I can't bring myself to come out. Somehow, I still equate being gay as being "less than," as not "normal."
I mean, the city that I live in, Point Liberty, a small suburb of Los Angeles, is pretty conservative. Effeminate guys and butch girls walking down the street get judgmental side glances from most of the population here, and bullying at school is a common thing, no matter how many "RESPECT EACH OTHER" signs the administration puts up around campus.
But even more insidious than the lack of tolerance in this town, I'm part of a big Irish Catholic family, where milestones in life are marked by things like traditional weddings and births. So, from a very young age, I've always felt out of place. I think there are several gay people in my extended family, but nobody ever talks about them.
For example, my uncle Martin always shows up to weddings alone and has dance moves that make me wonder. And my cousin Patricia comes to funerals with her "roommate" Jo, whose hair is cropped a bit too short for comfort. And there are a few aunts we never see who are whispered about in private conversations.
Will I turn out like one of them one day? Will I sway all by myself on dance floors at wedding receptions? Will I introduce people to a "roommate" with a wink and a nudge? Or will I mostly be forgotten, reduced to a mysterious anecdote or cautionary tale for kids who are still growing up?
If I ever develop the courage to come out, it probably has to be far away from this city, far away from my family. But that's not something I'm going to worry about right now.
My thoughts wander back to the present. I feel the fabric of Nash's underwear with my fingers. Soft, smooth. I lift his briefs up to my nose and inhale. The smell of laundry detergent is strong, but I can still catch a whiff of my brother. He has a pleasant natural scent about him, musky and manly.
I would feel like a pervert, being here, doing this, but I've done this so often, exploring my brother's clothes, burying my face in them, that it's second nature, just something I do. I'm not going to feel bad about it because I've never been caught. If I ever am, it might be a whole different story, my feelings.
If a tree falls in a forest and nobody's around to hear it, does it make a sound? If a queer boy sniffs his brother's underwear and he doesn't get caught, does he feel shame?
I take off my pajama pants and slide off my American Eagle boxer briefs. I put on my brother's Calvins. In terms of our physical build, we're about the same size, so the underwear fits properly, but for me there seems to be some extra room in the crotch area, as if it's been stretched out by my brother, as if his package demanded more space and pushed the fabric outward.
I take the underwear off, as well as my tank top, and lie on my back on my brother's bed, naked. I place his underwear between my teeth and close my eyes. I move my hand down, down, down.
I'm not going to tell you what I think about as I stroke it. All you need to know is that I'm probably going to hell.
Thanks Reedsy and Anthony for trusting me again with your sophomore work. Anthony is proving himself to be a prolific writer in the gay erotic thriller space and this second outing is evident that his voice and craft are just improving with time. I certainly enjoyed every page of this exhilarating, incredible novel.
To start, Hunter’s Hidden Camera proves to be an even better follow-up to an already strong debut with The Teacher Inside Me. Both feature a closeted young protagonist in his exploration of his sexuality who unwittingly falls into circumstances beyond his control. What Anthony explored in The Teacher Inside Me, he builds on it here with the thrilling aspects increased up multiple antes - so much so that it makes the suspenseful elements in the story so tantalising to read. Though it may seem like I took a longer time to read this, in truth, every time I pick up this novel, I just cannot put it down! The difference this time as compared to the last is that I’m reading this while juggling my work while I read his previous work while on holiday.
Even though the novel contains unexpected turns with elements like drug kingpins and porn empires, I was never taken out of it because of how tightly and brilliantly Anthony plots these in his story. And every time we are introduced to these wild elements, Anthony walks the reader through from point A to point B, which is why it is such an easy read. With a title like Hunter’s Hidden Camera, you are going into the story with some suspension of disbelief, so the expectation is that when the story goes wild (and it does in the most delightful of ways), you are not taken aback and instead encouraged to enjoy the ride with no judgment. With this novel, you get exactly what you’re promised in the blurb - a great story that is both fun and thrilling!
I don’t know if I have any criticisms of this novel. I think the reveals are predictable yet delightful. I figured that a certain character was not dead the entire time but the fact that he could keep me guessing and question myself is an incredible feat. I also anticipated that the bad guy was not going to actually kill one of our characters, but it is exciting to be kept on my toes about his fate.
The greatest strength in Anthony’s writing is how he crafts his characters, like they are all delightfully grey in their morality and intentions. Just like in real life, it makes their motivations believable and helps to make characters like Hunter empathetic through his flaws. I guess the only small criticism is the twist at the end when our two characters got together, especially when the character has been portrayed as a hyper masculine, heterosexual type the entire story, but again, some suspension of disbelief is expected, and in the context of the story, it is not all that wild considering we have all met the hyper straight man who would kiss a boy after three drinks.
I cannot recommend this enough. I hope we get more stories from Anthony in the future. Whatever that is in whatever form, I know that it will be a wild ride and I will be reserving my next read from him at the beach, drink in hand, ready to take it all in one sitting.