A gonzo Confederacy of Dunces mixed with Sarah, Choir Boy combines off-kilter humor and its own brand of modern day magic in a rollicking, bittersweet story about growing up different. Twelve year old Berry wants nothing more than to remain a choir boy. Choral music and the prospect of divinity thrill him. His fellow humans-from his feuding parents to the teenage transsexual prostitute who befriends him-always let him down. So in an effort to prevent his approaching puberty and exile from the choir, Berry injures himself, then convinces a clinic to give him testosterone inhibiting drugs. But there's a catch-the drugs come with a hefty dose of female hormones. Suddenly Berry finds himself with a set of B-cups and a lot of explaining to do. In the resulting uproar that overtakes the church and town, Berry faces what is both monstrous and silly about humanity and falls in love in the process. Choir Boy is both a journey across genders and a wildly inventive romp alongside an outcast who refuses to grow up gracefully. Abounding with bewitching religious symbolism, self-mutilation, bizarre suburban torture, drugs, class-based violence and hidden meanings, Choir Boy unmasks the very adult world most children live in. A fantastical coming of age fable in the tradition of Geek Love, Charlie Anders's first novel reminds us just how much power and horror there is in following one's true heart.

Charlie Anders was a choirboy and sang in men-and-boys choirs at three different cathedrals. She is the author of The Lazy Crossdresser (Greenery Press, May 2004), a guide for anyone—especially those born male—who feels inadequate in women’s clothing. Her writing has been published in the anthologies Pills Chills Thrills & Heartache, Pinned Down By Pronouns, Five Minute Erotica and The Anti-Capitalism Reader. She also contributed to Best Bisexual Erotica 1 and 2 and Best Transgender Erotica. Charlie Anders is the Publisher of Other Magazine and the former editor of Anything That Moves, the now-defunct magazine for bisexuals. Her work has been published in Salon, San Francisco Bay Guardian, ZYZZYVA and Punk Planet. Her satirical web site www.godhatesfigs.com was the London Sunday Times’ site of the week, and a Yahoo.com cool site. Charlie Anders long-running bi-coastal spoken word event "Writers with Drinks" was named Best of Boston by the Improper Bostonian and Best of the Bay in the San Francisco Bay Guardian readers’ poll. She has lived in Chapel Hill, NC and Boston, MA. Charlie currently lives in San Francisco, CA.

From Chapter 1:
Berry wept the day he became a choirboy.
It was his earliest memory. His atheist parents abandoned him on the steps of St. Luke's Episcopal Cathedral and raced back to their car. Marco, Berry's dad, yanked his car door shut as if the church was chasing him. Then Marco had to wait for Berry's mom to air-kiss and arrange herself. Marco swatted the steering wheel, his mustache torqued with annoyance. His stockbroker blazer fit too tight over his football sweatshirt. Berry's mom, Judy, fussed with the seatbelt over her magnolia bosom. Red hair fell from her head-scarf over her eyes as she smiled at Berry. Then Judy closed her door and Marco tore the Toyota away.
The five-year-old Berry waited on the steps of St. Luke's for someone to collect him. He stared up at the granite spires and stained glass, which looked black on the outside. He'd begged his parents to spare him this. But Judy wanted Berry to learn music. Most music classes charged money, but St. Luke's paid choirboys a stipend. Marco, meanwhile, remembered pranks and transcendence from his choirboy days.
Nobody from the choir came for Berry. Instead, he perched on the church steps for half an hour or so, watching cars pass through teary distortions. The cathedral's ridges and crags made Berry think of a stegosaurus, his favorite dinosaur. Eventually, he tried the cathedral's front door, but couldn't open it. Boredom beat out Berry's fear. He hopped down the leg-high stone steps one by one, then walked around the cathedral to the small alley that separated it from its office building. At the alley's end, he heard sounds.
It didn't sound like human music. It confused Berry's ears. He walked down that alley to a back door in the cathedral, where the vibration thrummed the most. The voice of an alien invader who felt guilty joy over the terror its face inspired, it drew Berry. He opened the hole in the cathedral's shell. Inside, a hallway led to a curtained doorway, and beyond that was the area behind the altar. Berry glimpsed gritty stonework lit by rainbow threads of light. He'd never been inside a church before.
The hallway had doors to Berry's left and his right. The left door led to a dirty crawlspace and a spiral staircase that rose forever into a funnel of stone. The right door led to the alien chorus.
When Berry pushed the right door open, he found people instead of the monster he'd half expected. Up close, the choir almost deafened Berry, who couldn't separate voices or identify the notes each person sang. Harmonies clung and wrapped Berry as he walked into the center of the swell. He almost ran away.
The long room was half church, half gym: the outer wall glistened with stained glass windows set in stone, but the inner wall had concrete and lockers filled with Playstation games and sneakers. A corner of the room had pasteboard walls forming an office, with a small desk and swivel chair inside. A few dozen chairs clustered in rows around a grand piano. In front of each chair stood the source of a voice, his face warped with what looked like rage. The biggest singers mostly had beards, and furious mouths a mile above Berry's head. The closer Berry got to the piano, the smaller the people became, but even the smallest dwarfed Berry. Many of them wore blue blazers like Marco's.
About the time Berry reached the piano at the center of the semicircle, the music stopped. Someone spoke to him. Berry turned to face a wild man at the piano. His first impression was of a porcupine beard and eyebrows, then he noticed the round glasses that magnified the man's eyes to the size of Berry's hands. The caveman wore a shirt and tie, but his hairy hands jerked like a demon's. The creature asked Berry's name, and he gave it. Somebody handed Berry his own blue blazer, with a patch that showed the stone dinosaur. It hung to Berry's knees and swallowed his hands, but it was the smallest jacket they had.
Berry found a chair just as the music started again. The others pretended to include him, but it was a long time before he tried to add his voice. By the time the notes made sense to Berry, they had already claimed him on a level beneath reading and counting. He'd grasped the difference between a dotted quarter note (three quick leaps) and a triplet (three beats in two). He learned a thousand anthems by heart, but more than that, he understood something about the patterns of music. You could count on music to change but return to its starting point, which made it more dependable than people.