Mark Simpson, who gave us Anti-Gay and Male Impersonators, is someone whose provocative and uncompromisingly un-PC views on the horrors of what has been done in the name of gay "liberation" have blasted a much-needed rude healthy space in the consumerist homogenised gay body politic. Up to now, I've appreciated what he's done in a somewhat dispassionate manner, suspicious of the cynical jaded critic who so successfully manages to remove himself from his writing, or at least the part of himself that would appear to be soft and vulnerable (in my book, that means having something like a heart). Clear and sharp, he has a jagged edge to his writing style, the wit of a broken champagne bottle pressed close to your neck.

In his latest book, The Queen Is Dead, he publishes his correspondence over three years with Steven Zeeland, a writer/photographer from the American West Coast, who has published a series of books containing interviews with military men, about their attitudes to, and experiences of, sex with men. Both writers have eroticised - and are addicted to - the military man, hunting him wherever they can find him, like boars snuffling for truffles in the mud, cruising parks and cottages in military towns, tuning their antennae to his particular distinctive haircut, attitude and, no doubt, pheremones, reaching peaks of sexual ecstasy if they are treated with the casual cameraderie of an army "buddy", while having hot sex, secure in the knowledge that this "man's man" will only engage with them on the understanding that anything remotely resembling love or commitment or wallowing in the sentimental shallow waters of the gay lifestyle is completely out of the question.

What marks this book out as something more special than the diaries of two sex addicts is that both men are able to laugh at themselves, are well versed in irony and post-irony, and are only too keen to deconstruct and analyse their motives - their honesty shines through.

"Sex, because it makes fools of us all, is something best shared with people you'll never see again", writes Simpson, in the first few pages of the book, like a big cute toddler proudly showing you his grazed knee. It's a clever line, and this book is full of clever lines. But cleverness alone doesn't do it for me. What makes The Queen Is Dead different and moving is the graceful arc it makes as the two men become friends and confidants, ending with both men offering their own paean to love (albeit unrequited} in their last letters.

Right from the start, it is obvious that there is a lot of affection between the two writers. One of the most underrated things about gay men is our capacity to form loving friendships - our frustrated desires for constant erotic transformation can cause us to forget that, or take them for granted.

There is a wonderful dynamic tension between the two thirty-something men, or at least the letters have been well edited to simulate it; and as I reached the end of the book, I did feel that having been aroused, and titillated, there was indeed relief at hand in the form of a "happy" ending, loath though Simpson would be to admit it, preferring to interpret the book's theme, the "self-hating" pursuit of the impossible "unhealthy" masculine ideal, as something driven by a death instinct.

He leads Zeeland in forging a brave path of self-disclosure, freely admitting to depression and misanthropy, testing the new friendship, asking that his self-loathing and his tortuous relationship with a sergeant in the Royal Marines be accepted and understood by a fellow lover of "real" men. With both of them in love with Marines who do not return their affections, Zeeland reveals himself to be a kind, insightful, and generous "straight man" to Simpson's relentlessly driven comic, as their letters cover their sexual and romantic exploits, their cats, their lives as writers, and their love of Morrissey.

Bizarrely, Andrew Cunanan, Versace's assassin, features as Zeeland's rival in love for his Marine, giving the book a peculiarly satisfying perverse flavour. Simpson even joins the Territorial Army, the part-time force, for a stint; and, to his surprise, is not remotely aroused by the lads he trains with, and instead ends up very fond of them indeed, and they, apparently, of him. As any gay man who takes the time to get to know "real" heterosexual men outside of a sexual milieu, (and, sadly, very few do) they will discover, if they open their eyes, some wonderfully kind and sensitive men.

"The problem with straight men is that they're repressed, the problem with gay men is that they're not" says Simpson smugly - and his and Zeeland's discourse is loosely framed by this glib tenet, buying into the belief that a life not enslaved to desire is, ipso facto, repression - and as sex is more important to men then anything else, or so we are to believe, then the only truly exciting and erotic seam of masculinity to be mined is that which has somehow escaped the deadening trap of idealogy, or the cowardly suffocating "retreat" into commitment. The paradox, not lost on the authors, is that soldiers both carry the archetypal charismatic essence of masculine warrior strength, but often have grave, almost pathological reasons for joining a force where their own independent will is broken down in training to ensure complete obedience to someone else's command.

Sigmund Freud takes a bow here and there throughout Simpson's theoretical framework and writing, which pleases me because at least Freud is readable, and is good on sex. But I'm suspicious of any cult, and like all cults, Freudians tend to believe that things really don't change, that, for example, we are forever doomed to be victims to our ever-erupting and constantly threatening nature. Our original Oedipal choice, Mother or Father, stays with us for ever, and we are fated to pay the price.

I'm not so sure that it's as clear cut as that - I'm sure it worked for little Sigmund, but there's no reason why it should work for anyone else. "Men desire what they do not love, and love what they do not desire" paraphrases Simpson of the dead doctor - but passion's ebb and flow is not only confined to men, as any new parents can affirm. It's part of being human, of being grown up, and Simpson and Zeeland enjoy their perverse youthful search for Daddy too much to dare tolerate the ordinariness of life and develop an appreciation of its richness.

Love and desire are, perhaps, at opposite ends of a see-saw - but I do not believe that a relationship has to move from desire to a passionless love and stay there - for the art of making love begins with what Simpson is most keen to avoid, when two people trust each other and like each other enough to make fools of themselves in front of each other, to love themselves enough to laugh at themselves.

"As homosexuals and writers we are doubly Undead", I read with delight, as my struggle to write this column without offending my nearest and dearest failed dismally recently. "Attention-seeking inverts" who cheer everyone else up with stories of their miserable love lives are, of course, really writing giant personal ads, hoping against hope that our honesty will not only bring fame and fortune and everything that goes with it, but a mythical life-long passionate encounter with a warrior king who looks a bit like Daddy and has a thing for sensitive arty types. Simpson acidly comments about someone he met: "he wasn't my type, he was literate."

So much of sex and desire relates to a need for contact with something primeval, instinctive, raw and earthy - whether it's the musk of a sweaty fresh-faced soldier or the smell of the air in a frosty forest of cypress. At this moment, writing as I do from the beautiful Tuscan countryside, one gives me peace, and the other seems like trouble. I've had enough trouble in my life. I hope Zeeland and Simpson have too. Little boys with scabby knees get to grow up too, lose their emotional cowardice, get past the stage where it's admirable to admit to being scared. They learn that they have to leave the fruitless search for Daddy behind them, to become men who give love instead of boys who seek it.

But they've started already, with each other, in this book. It's a treat.