The oldest story: an insider pretends to be an outsider and receives praise for his empathy and imagination and intelligence. Maybe some asshole even says bravery. An outsider pretends to be an insider, is exposed as a fraud, a liar, and burned to the ground.

In Ripcord, Lippens continues his meditations on escape and connection, class, sex and intimacy. Stuck in Milwaukee, the narrator cobbles together a living by bartending and catering weddings, enmeshed in a semi-affair with a younger married man. Cruising apps while tallying his youthful romantic failures, he fantasizes about disappearance but finds both solace and frustration in his friendships with Charlie, an aging punk who was prominent in the 1990s Chicago queercore scene, and Greer, a painter who never broke through but continues making work.

“Ripcord is an existential torch song; the always-lost beloved is the world itself that declines to love us back. Lippens is a poèt maudit of ex-cons, junkies, and fuckups—of sizzling class anger and bad choices. He’s beyond gritty, into snarling and flamboyant. Here is the fragmented self and the pain of presenting it as something recognizable, with everything at stake. What a gift to encounter such intelligent homosexuality! Lippens shares the savage and droll improbabilities of queer desire—along with music, books, performance, and art—with a few eloquent friends. If I tell you I’m grateful for his voice in my head, I reveal myself as a loser in the best possible way.” — Robert Glück, author of About Ed