My 10 Queer Books Everyone Should Read.

A friend the other day posted this list on Facebook and it struck me as a little highbrow and obscure but maybe just because I was surprised by how few of them I had read and I like to think of myself as 1) more erudite than average, and 2) pretty well-versed in gay culture. I mean, really, Resident Alien instead of The Naked Civil Servant? That’s just silly.

As you’ve probably guessed, I have my own list.

In 2000, when Jay Byrd and I sold everything we owned, moved into a camper, and set out for a 2-year adventure in music, polyamory, heartbreak, and self-realization, we unloaded hundreds of books, sold them cheap in a big yard sale along with our furniture, clothes, dishes, everything, and took what didn't sell to Goodwill. I don’t miss many of them. But there are a couple dozen books -- my queer books -- that I miss terribly.

Some of them are out of print and irreplaceable. A few were possible to replace, and I have. But all of them were invaluable to me because they were either given to me or I bought them myself with the explicit intention of learning more about my people and myself and my place in history and culture. They were marked with my yearning. They were pieces of me, and I think about them very frequently.

1. Word Is Out

When I was a senior in high school -- in spite of my agonizing over how and when to come out -- apparently it was not news to my friends and family that I was homosexual. One of my closest friends, Laura Deer, gave me for my birthday a copy of Word is Out, the book based on the revolutionary documentary film. The film, which was re-released a couple years ago, never made it to Greencastle, Indiana, but I pored over that book, stared at the pictures till I felt like I was in them.

I was always a reader, and I worked in a library in high school, so by 17 I knew I wasn’t alone. Not alone, but also not happy. Word Is Out was the antidote to the Kinsey Report, the antidote to Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask). Word Is Out gave me my first inkling that possibly everything was going to be okay.

2. A Boy’s Own Story (Edmund White)

My first encounter -- the book came out in 1982 and I’m a little shocked that it was so late (I was 21) but I have to keep reminding myself how much times have changed in the last 30 years -- my first encounter with a gay character in literary fiction, and, at that, a story about a teenage boy’s sexual coming of age. All that pubescent desire (feelings that I recalled from my own puberty with deep shame) cast in beautiful lyrical prose. I read it several times. I learned what cornholing was.

3. Christopher and His Kind

My dear friend and roommate Joan’s best friend Matthew was an Isherwood fan. Matthew was an artist. He moved to Berlin in the early 80s. Joan followed him there. Matthew died of AIDS a few years later, but Joan stayed and made Berlin a second home for many years. Joan gave me a copy of Berlin Stories and soon I was obsessed, too. I love all his books, and I’ve begun replacing them on my shelves. But I only list this one because it is my favorite of his post-coming out books. Christopher and His Kind sets the record straight, adding back the homosexuality to his previous memoir-ish books in which he’d censored it. Knowing that there was a thriving community of deviants and outcasts long before Stonewall expanded the world for me. It was a model for the kind of community I wanted to be a part of.

4. City of Night (John Rechy)

The protagonist is a gay hustler with an insatiable need to be desired. Boy, could I relate. Parts of it, in fact much of it, out of context reads like porn. It’s not.

City of Night was my introduction to what I’ve posited before as a vast realm of male sexual compulsion that always exists everywhere just under the paper-thin surface of social control and pops out at the flimsiest suggestion of privacy. This is the realm -- bus stations, parks, alleys, beaches, anywhere that’s dark or shielded, abandoned or avoided by respectable traffic -- the realm that gay culture doomsayers predict will disappear once we’re all allowed to marry and bring up our brats in the suburbs. I say, relax. In a death match between horniness and respectability, my money is on the sex.

5. Our Lady of the Flowers (Genet)

Okay, now I’m in art school in New York, can you tell? Transgressive sex, ecstatic violence. No turning back now. The deepest, darkest, stuff in the pit of your soul can be beautiful, can be art.

6. Maurice (E.M. Forster)

But it’s not all about fetishizing our marginality, worshipping our deviance, there’s also love pure and true and innocent. The perfect book to bridge my love of everything queer with my love for big romantic novels. I read Maurice and Our Lady of the Flowers around the same time. We have never, ever been able to decide if we’re radical outsiders or just like you. I’m still keeping my options open.

7. Macho Sluts (Patrick Califia nee Pat Califia)

In which I learned that porn can change your mind and still get you off. Or I should say that it can change the way you think because it gets you off. Also, gender fluidity is incredibly hot. This book planted the seed of my hypothesis that gay issues are not only necessarily allied with trans issues but that “gay” is a trans identity.

8. Urban Aboriginals

Seminal book of essays on what we used to call leather culture. I was very drawn to this stuff for a while in my late 20s but eventually realized it was too much of a commitment, like having a really expensive, time-consuming hobby with lots of rules to memorize. The clubbiness of it was a turnoff. But, this is a fascinating and surprisingly moving book -- what stuck with me most is a lengthy, somewhat scientific explanation of why getting fisted feels so good. Useful information.

9. Modern Primitives (RE/search Publications)

Essays, interviews, photos, all about tattooing, piercing, scarification, corsetry, pain rituals, etc., grounding these practices in history and culture. It came out in 1989. I bought it at St. Mark’s Books when it used to actually be on St. Mark’s. I think the story is that there was a bit of buzz about body modification starting to gurgle up but this book kicked it into high gear. So you can thank this book for the fact that every other suburban college kid has a bad fake tribal tattoo.

I got my first tattoo in 1989 and I had 10 holes in my ears and one in my nipple. An Austin firefighter took out the nipple ring when I was unconscious on the pavement after plowing into an SUV on my bike 5 years ago, and I took out the earrings because they were always getting infected. But I still have the tattoos.

10. The Motion of Light in Water (Samuel R. Delany)

The great science fiction writer’s memoir of the early 60s in the East Village. If you don’t read any of the books on my list, read this one. It's incredibly candid, which is I think why it's such a page-turner and so moving, but it crackles with insight into sex and love, blackness and maleness, poverty, art-making, memory, writing, the passage of time. I’d put it on my top 5 list of books of any kind. There’s nothing like it.

Dreading 2016.

I can't help but wonder what's in Hillary Clinton's head as she ramps up her campaign against the backdrop of Iraq falling apart. It's no surprise, what's happening in Iraq right now, but I imagine Clinton hopes it would have waited till after 2016.

“Obviously, if we knew then what we know now, there wouldn't have been a vote. And I certainly wouldn't have voted that way."

Yeah? Sometimes I feel like everyone has forgotten that there were millions of people all over the world passionately against that invasion. We knew the WMD story was dubious and probably trumped up. We knew that an invasion would probably result in the death of thousands and political chaos. We knew. That's why were were marching and shouting in the streets.

And Hillary Clinton knew. When nearly every Democratic Senator supported Bush's war, it struck me as so craven, so cynical, so beyond the pale, that I vowed never again to vote for any of them. They had crossed a line. I'm not stupid, I know politicians have to make compromises, have to make unpleasant calculations in order to get anything done. But voting for a candidate who made a political calculation she knew would result in massive death and destruction and then lied about it repeatedly for years and continues to lie, just makes me a sucker.

I remember the protest march in New York. The crowd was huge. There was a feeling in the air of optimism, of power, of being heard. I marched with a group of friends I can only assume are not the same friends who are gushing now about Clinton's upcoming campaign.

As much as anyone, I'd love to see a woman as president. But not this one. She will say anything if it will make her come out looking like the good guy. There's no end to it. She'll tell you the Bible is her favorite book.

I guess every election comes down to finding some balance between, on one hand, making a choice between two evils, and, on the other hand, deciding which candidate might represent my values. And then making a calculation regarding whether voting my conscience (or not voting) will actually turn out to be a vote for the Republican. Even though the Democratic candidates in presidential elections seldom represent my values in any meaningful way, I usually end up voting for them because they might do less damage. This time I just can't.

Doh!

Remember a few years ago when the GOP nominated a Mormon and a Bible-thumping compulsive liar for president and lots of so-called sane Republicans started hinting that things had gone too far with catering to the glossolaling yahoos, and the GOP lost the election, and then youtube videos of conservative politicians tearfully professing their support of same-sex marriage began to appear in a trickle and then a stream and it was all so heartwarming, and then, oh my god, the attorneys fighting Prop 8 in California turned out to be Republicans big-as-life telling us that marriage is the civil rights issue of our time, and we were all like, "Yay!" and we were certain it was only a matter of time until we'd see a huge political realignment in which the GOP shed their lunatic Evangelicals, splitting the party in two, and then liberals win every election!

Well.
 
It looks like we'll get our realignment. But it won't be the realignment we dreamed of -- in fact, it looks more like our worst nightmare.

No longer will it be a liability for Republicans to pander to Evangelicals. They can drop their homophobic dog-whistling. "Family values" will no longer mean "We hate fags." And all the conservative white middle- and upper-class gays and lesbians will no longer feel compelled to vote for Democrats whose agenda, besides the gay stuff, they probably never really supported anyway.

When queer people can safely return to the churches that rejected them, there's no reason -- well, except maybe a conscience -- they can't safely return to all the other causes dear to that crowd: guns, wars, subjugation of women and the poor, union-busting, EPA-bashing, slut-shaming, what have you.

Or, to put it more simply: more queer Republicans = more Republicans. Doh!

Progressive struggles are all connected. Unfortunately, gay rights is soon to be no longer a progressive struggle. We might want to be a little more careful next time we're considering turning our whole movement over to an agenda articulated by Andrew Sullivan.

I'm not one to say I told you so, but ...

Further Glory.

Portland Center Stage's production of LIZZIE opened last Friday. The Oregonian, Portland's major daily paper, gave it a rave the next day, and that made us all feel pretty good, as you might imagine.

A little later in the day, Broadway World (a fan site) weighed in with, well, not a rave. More like a grumble, or a grouse. This guy seriously hated the show. So of course we broadcast the Oregonian review to the four corners of the earth and bury the other one in that special place in the pit of our souls where we keep all the other voices that say "You suck, you're ugly, everybody hates you."

I felt weird ignoring it. The older I get the more ruthlessly honest I try to be. I don't have room in my brain for secrets, and self-mortification can be soothing in a strange way. Still, you don't necessarily want to call attention to bad reviews when you're trying to sell tickets. So ... I was very glad this morning to see the first comment to the Broadway World review:

I think you missed so much of what this show was about - caught in an old paradigm. I saw this show on preview and worried that the older audience would have difficulty adjusting its expectations. I don't know your age, but your opinions smack of someone stuck in yesterday. This was the most glorious and strenuous and artfully crafted sample of women's rage I have ever seen- in music or otherwise. I hope folks can see its beauty and promote it to further glory.

Not only does this neat (and, I should say, coherent) take-down put the negative review in context, it places it within the conversation about audiences that every theater institution in the U.S. is having now: old/new, old/young, fans of pop-rock/fans of whatever that other thing is, etc.

To further glory.

The Eighties.

There used to be a twenty-something guy in my office who listened to a college radio station -- the guy still works there, I just don’t work in the same room with him any more, so I don’t know what he listens to now -- a college radio station out of I think Olympia, Washington, and I would play a game in my head which I called “Eighties Band or Just Sounds Like Eighties Band.” It seems like everything I hear these days either sounds like the Cocteau Twins or is the Cocteau Twins. I’m glad I like the Cocteau Twins.

Everyone is obsessed with the 80s now, especially New York in the 80s, and most especially the East Village in the 80s. It’s hard not to get caught up in it: as I say and say and say, that was my 80s, my New York, the East Village 80s, and it was that cool and we knew it at the time. Nearly everything I do and believe and think about now is deeply rooted in that era. My politics certainly, my experience of the art world, my notions about what New York is and means, how I dress and cut my hair, the theater and music I love. I used to even say back then, probably like to my parents, and I blush to remember, but it was true that what I loved about living where I lived was that we were “at the vanguard of culture.” It was true of art, of music, of fashion, of theater, of urbanity itself.

I think, because of how communication/media/technology has changed in the last 30 years becoming so quick and ubiquitous, that that time and place may be the last time and place about which you could really say that. The vanguard no longer has location.

It was a very different time as far as documentation. The artifacts are few and precious. I wonder how this era will look to us in 30 years, the relentless constant self-surveillance, every gesture documented and uploaded. Back then, it was a big fucking deal just to get a crappy videotape of a show and usually you just didn’t. What few reminders we have on VHS are rotting quicker than we can convert them to digital files. So the moments we did manage to preserve are like holy relics, inspiring worship and sweet tears.

I found an old poster I’d saved from a CBGB’s gig. In my early 20s, I was in a band called The Woods with my boyfriend at the time and a lesbian couple from Baltimore who had just moved to New York. One of them, Linda Smith, made a name for herself in the indie cassette scene that thrived at that time. She released a handful of gorgeous albums of her songs, all recorded by herself on a 4-track Portastudio and released on cassette. I was very influenced by her ideas about music and art being things made by hand at home. (They lived in Greenpoint, in 1985. Let that sink in. It was a horrible neighborhood -- in a completely different way from the way in which it’s horrible now.)

The Woods played probably a total of 15 gigs, including a few live radio spots, over the course of about 3 years, put out a 7” single and recorded a bunch of other songs that we never released. That night at CBGB’s we were on a bill with Hugo Largo. Great band. We listened to their record “Drum” a lot.

I posted the poster on Facebook this week, tagged my old friends and bandmates, which inspired a flurry of nostalgia and spurred Linda to dig out our old recordings and send them to us as mp3s, rough mixes of some of that stuff we recorded and never released.

And this is a quick little movie I made with a handful of photos of us coming and going to various gigs. The song is I think maybe the second or third I ever wrote. I love listening to this old stuff. I hear the seeds of everything I’m doing now.

Neighbors.

The people who lived below us moved out a couple months ago, our landlord renovated the apartment, and last week new tenants moved in. There are only four apartments in our building, one of which the owner lives in, and one of C’s dearest long-time friends lives across the hall, so the situation is more neighborly than your typical New York building, but still it was surprising when a little over a week ago a small orange envelope slid under our front door with a yellow card inside that read, “Hello neighbor! Just a quick note of introduction and to let you know that we will be moving in this Monday. Apologies in advance for any move-in noise you might endure this week whilst we get settled. Thank you and we look forward to being your neighbor.”

Do you suddenly miss your childhood and a simpler time that may or may not have been simpler but that at least contained birthday cards from your grandmother with brand new five dollar bills in them? My mother, when someone moved in next door to us on Lesley Street on the northeast side of Indianapolis, would take them something, a cake? a casserole? I don’t remember, but something. Why would you not do that when you know full well their pots and pans are not unpacked yet, and they are likely full of apprehension in an unfamiliar place, and the smallest gesture might be all they need to feel welcome?

Last Saturday night, I said to C, “I’m going to make peanut butter cookies tomorrow night and take a plate down to them on Monday. We’ll keep half for ourselves.”

C had come home from work on Friday sick as a dog, with a fever and achey joints. I was sure he had the flu despite the flu shot he got and I didn’t. Our plan for Sunday afternoon was to go out to Jackson Heights in Queens, to scope it out, look at a few apartments, see if it might be a neighborhood we could live in. Apartments listed there looked to be very similar to the ones here in Inwood but quite a bit less expensive. C was still feeling poorly but it was a sunny day so he rallied.

I loved the neighborhood, C did not. I was seduced by lunch at an Indian buffet restaurant which I’m pretty sure is the best Indian food I’ve had in New York, but I’m always saying this or that is the best this or that, so would you trust me? At any rate, it was very good. We have a few good restaurants in our neighborhood but not much variety and no Indian food at all. Jackson Heights is the New York neighborhood for Asian food and that’s a strong draw for me. But I do agree with C that it felt cramped, landlocked, remote. We’re spoiled up here, so close to the great Hudson River and our little patch of primeval forest.

I do love Inwood and I do hate the idea of moving so far from from our dear friends here, to a neighborhood where we don’t know anyone. Anyway, we won’t be ready to seriously think about buying a place for several months, so we have time to mull over staying or going.

When we got home that afternoon, I told C that since we were tired and he was still sick I wasn’t going to make cookies after all, I’d wait and make them later in the week. He looked stricken. “No!” Once you have your heart set on peanut butter cookies …

So I made them. I put about a dozen on a plate and covered it with plastic wrap, the rest in a container for us. Monday night, we’d forgotten that we had tickets to see the preview of Hedwig and the Angry Inch on Broadway, so we couldn’t take the cookies down to our new neighbors that night. Tuesday we went down and they weren’t there. Or nobody answered the door. Wednesday I had a writing session downtown and was gone all evening. I wasn’t going to give our new neighbors four-day-old cookies, so C and I finished them ourselves. We’d already gone through ours.

Yesterday, Saturday, we had T and his 15-year-old godson up for dinner and games. T’s godson’s birthday was last week, and he’d gotten a new game called Pandemic. It's one of those very complicated strategic games that many people seem to enjoy very much and I can't for the life of me figure out why. I like this game, though, because it's played cooperatively, not competitively, so nobody gets irritated when it's my turn and I say, "Just tell me what I should do."

Since we had evening plans, I wanted to spend the day writing and not cooking. (I’m so close to a first draft of my play -- which is actually the fourth or fifth draft, being a complete overhaul of a play I began writing a couple years ago based on a screenplay I wrote about ten years ago based on a story I wrote about a dozen years ago, but who’s counting. It’s been a complicated story to get down, and the last couple weeks it's all falling together, so I wanted to spend the afternoon with it.) I made a Szechuan beef dish that requires only a bit of prep and then several hours in the slow-cooker.

C decided to make chocolate cookies from the one-bowl baking book I got him for Xmas. They’re super-chocolatey, delicious, and very rich. We'd have them for dessert and then take the rest down to our neighbors, finally. You didn’t ask, but here’s some advice for you. Don’t put a plate of cookies in front of a teenage boy and expect to have leftovers.

I don’t know where the expression, “It’s the thought that counts,” came from. Obviously it’s not. I’ve been thinking about cookies practically non-stop for over two weeks, and our new neighbors are still probably cowering in their cold, stark apartment, far away from everything familiar and reassuring, surrounded by unpacked boxes, wondering why their new neighbors are so unfriendly.

A Puzzlement.

Articles like this seem to appear every month or so. This one is focused on the “guy problem” -- Broadway audiences are mostly women and gay men -- but others lament the lack of young people, all of them coming from a general anxiety about the shrinking "Broadway audience." How do we get young people, “guys,” and just more people to come to Broadway?

I’m puzzled by these articles, mystified by this conversation.

On one hand, the Broadway industry (theater professionals, media, etc.) are always fretting about shrinking audiences and the particular demographics we seem unable to attract.

On the other hand, we constantly talk about what is or is not a “Broadway show,” which is to say, “What does or does not appeal to the Broadway audience?” This speculation is usually in the context of trying to get a handle on which shows or types of show are risky or not, in business terms, to produce in Broadway houses.

So, how can we be so concerned with what will appeal to the Broadway audience and at the same time be obsessed with the fact that that audience needs to be something other than what it is now in order for Broadway shows to be successful and for the industry to thrive, that is, in order for producers and the rest of us to make money (and make more shows)?

In case it’s not obvious, my interest in these questions, my puzzlement regarding them, is not academic. It comes from the fact that I happen to know of a show that does appeal to young people, that does appeal to straight men (and older people and gay men and women!), a show that is not expensive to produce and would look amazing in a Broadway house, but we keep hearing from person after person in the industry that it’s “not really a Broadway show.”

How is it we’re so certain, and simultaneously so uncertain, what a Broadway show is? Why are we scrambling to find shows that will appeal to the Broadway audience while at the same time we’re obsessed with changing that audience?

I recognize that these questions are ultimately about large sums of money and the livelihoods of many well-meaning people. I’m not (at least not just) trying to glibly make a point here. I really do wonder.