Because hate is important. It's the most important thing. We live in a society where hate is incredibly underrated. Hate brings you to life. It's everything. Real hate — like Spinoza said, hate is where it's at.

And Garcia lets his characters act petty, malicious, and hurtful to one another. By the mid-'90s when a different generation of queer men are making the party scene and the dangerous thrill of bug chasing and barebacking has entered the discussion, the Internet is also this new thing. And William, with some old photos and the single-minded focus of the castoff, hurts Doumé in a way that only somebody who has shared a life with him can. It's brutal, and it's entirely believable.

This empathy is what makes Hate so impressive. Born in 1981, Garcia was a child during the decade he re-creates with such a vivid understanding. But his talent for re-creating this period culturally and intellectually and imagining characters, their histories and personalities, and their unsavory weaknesses and impulses, turns his fictional world into something recognizably flesh and blood. —Bret McCabe

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