Tuesday and back to the office this morning with me. It feels right, you know? Yesterday I was kind of bored and low energy. I did some chores, worked on the files some, did some writing, and reading (Horror Movie is terrific; Paul Tremblay is really a spectacular writer), but overall I was feeling pretty low energy by the time the late afternoon rolled around, and I didn’t have a problem with it, really. I got up early, after all, to get used to it, and I’d done a lot over the previous two days; and everything else that needs to be done in here can be broken down into separate small chores, which is far easier to scratch off the list and a lot more satisfying. Paul had to go out for the evening last night to go to a reading, and didn’t get home until after I went to bed. I slept very well, too.
So I am feeling up for going back to work this morning; I feel very rested and relaxed, and I only have to be in the office for three days this week, and three days next, too. I think I am going to take Friday the 5th off, might as well have another four day weekend when it presents itself this way, don’t you think? I thought it would take much longer to get through the filing, in all honesty, and to be sure, it’s not exactly finished either. But I would have never dreamed I could get so much done so quickly, either. I have another drawer to go through, and then everything needs to be alphabetized…but most of the duplicates have been combined, all the files pertaining to a certain book have been also gathered togetherm and now I have to start finishing books, you know? Tonight I have to get the mail and go to the gym before I get home, which will be nice. There are a couple of chores I started and need to finish–laundry and dishes, as always–before I can settle in to write and/or read tonight. (I suspect I’ll be tired and reading is the most likely option. I do want to get Horror Movie finished so I can start another one.) It also rained overnight–more rain later in the week to come–and so I can probably put off washing the car for another weekend.
We’re also running out of Pride Month, and I have a lot of entries left to complete. Heavy sigh. It’s not easy when you don’t really have a plan. The ones that are left will wind up lengthier than the ones I’ve already done, and I don’t think I’m necessarily the best at winging it, you know? There are a couple that I’ve been wanting to finish for several years now–including one about masculinity, one about old Hollywood and physique magazines (which I want to write a book about eventually), and one about The Children’s Bible, because I looked upon those images inside with desire when I was a child. I should also probably do Playgirl magazine as well. So many potential entries, so few days. Heavy heaving sigh.
But I like the uncluttered look the apartment is now getting. I still want to do the drawers and the cabinets, and of course the attic is a big project I may save for Labor Day weekend. It’s so lovely to be making progress again.
It was also kind of nice that I really did take most of the day off yesterday because of the low energy and it seems to have worked its magic, so on this note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Tuesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.
I don’t remember the first time I saw that phrase somewhere, and I don’t know where it originates from, but actually–being gay used to be a crime (and our “supreme court” seems determined to make that so again), so I’ve always wondered if that was where it started from. I do like the phrase, though.
I also don’t remember how Sins of the Black Flamingo came to my attention, but it did. I subscribed so as not to miss an issue, and intended to read it all in one sitting so I could write about it…but never got around to it, like a loser, and as I was looking through the draft entries for the blog the other day, I saw that I’d started an entry after reading the first issue…but never finished reading the book nor, obviously, finished writing the entry.
the book nor, obviously, finished writing the entry.
And since the main character is gay…what better time to finish reading it, and blogging about it, then during Pride Month?
It did make sense to me.
I’ve read comic books for most of my life (in fact, comics are why I bought an iPad in the first place), but I’ve also taken long breaks from them, so am neither an expert nor even a super fan (although I would love to do a crime novel set in and around a comic books store; which could be fun and comical). I remember comics I read as a kid, and have some vague memories of other times when I dipped into the comics world as an adult. My iPad is filled with comics that I’ve never gotten around to reading—but what a lovely long weekend reading them all would make! Or maybe just take the iPad with me on a trip and read comics the whole time?
Anyway, I digress. I do need to do a longer form essay about my comics history while stressing the importance of how little I do know about my beloved comics…maybe for Pride next year, since it would take some serious rereading and research to do properly…and it could tie into one of the books currently in progress…but I am getting away from the purpose of this post: Sins of the Black Flamingo.
I mean, isn’t this art amazing?
Comic books helped shape me and my tastes. The original DC superheroes I followed were still drawn as ideal men of the past, like the 40s and 50s, big with a barrel torso, and muscular but not defined. DC Comics hadn’t really updated its characters from their early days much; but it was during my childhood at the end of the 60s and early 70s that they began modernizing their comic characters, their costumes, and how they looked—which I also noticed. This was also around the time that men’s bodies became more sexualized, and what was hot and sexy for men began to change. The women super-hero’s costumes also became more sexualized, as were their bodies (the Legion of Super-Heroes ALONE had some of the more revealing sexy costumes. Queer super-heroes (although why I never made the connection about Wonder Woman and the Amazons with their island of women only is a mystery to me) were non-existent and wouldn’t start showing up until the late 1980s and early 1990s—and it’s still a few and far-between kind of thing (the Will Peyton Starman run always seemed queer to me, which I’ll need to explore at another time).
So, you can imagine my delight to find this run with a gay burglar as the main character, who wears a costume and is extremely good at his job (I’ve always had a soft spot for burglars in fiction) and that was why I subscribed to the series. (Still shaking my head at how long it took me to finally read them all, and there was an pretty amazing cliff-hanger at the end of #1.)
But when I was a kid, the characters and story interested me more than the artwork, and even with my love of the characters and stories, I never followed either artists I enjoyed or writers, either. Which is probably not the best way to enjoy them, really; it was a friend who was an exceptional artist and comics fan in the 1980s who made me aware I should be paying attention to the artists and the writers…and I did find some extraordinary comics by looking for artists and writers of books from there on. The two I remember the most from that time are Todd McFarlane and John Byrne.
Sins of the Black Flamingo is self-classified as “occult noir,” which is a term I absolutely love and now can recognize that occult noir is something I absolutely love and probably write…and will most likely explore more in my own work going forward, since I now know what to call it, because supernatural never really fit in the same way and I don’t feel like the books I write are actually full-fledged horror, but occult noir? Oh, hell, yes.
Anyway, the Black Flamingo is the alter-ego of our hero, Sebastian Harlow. The Flamingo is probably one of the top cat burglars in the world (as you may know, I love cat burglars and originally made Colin one in Bourbon Street Blues), and Sebastian is this interesting combination of my two series characters, of all things; he looks and is built like Scotty, with the same approach to sex as he did before he met the boys, but has the dark worldview and cynicism of Chanse MacLeod…so naturally, I was going to be drawn to the character. IN the very beginning of Book One, he is hired to steal something from a right-wing museum—basically a museum dedicated to honoring white supremacy. It isn’t until he steals the item they’ve hired him to find that we learn the backstory behind the item…and a golem named Abel is brought to life, and Abel is hunky AF, I might add.
We also meet Sebastian’s close friend and ally, Ofelia, a Black witch—and yes, this is very much occult noir. The art is fantastic, and done by Travis Moore, with Tamra Bonvillain as colorist, Aditya Bidikar, and editor Andy Khouri, and Andrew Wheeler was the writer.I highly recommend this—if for no other reason than it’s a great gay story with an interesting main character, and who would have ever thought they’d see a gay circuit party within the pages of a comic?
I do hope there’s more adventures in store for the Flamingo in the future. Highly recommended.
I firmly believe that writers should be paid for their work.
On the other hand, it ain’t easy making a living from writing.
Good morning, it’s Monday and I have the day off. If the plans hadn’t changed, I’d be driving back this morning and I would be very, very tired. Instead of spending the weekend visiting family, however, I spent the weekend at home getting things done. I worked on the filing some more yesterday, and will probably do so for at least part of today as well. The file drawers still need to be alphabetized, but all the “in process” book files have all been gathered together, duplicate files deleted, and I am in much better shape now with them than I have been in years. Sparky let me sleep until seven this morning, and I decided to stay up rather than going back to sleep after feeding him; since I need to get used to getting up again I thought it was smarter to just stay up. I’m going to read some this morning, and I also plan on writing today. I am going to make shrimp fajitas for dinner tonight, which is ambitious–but could be very tasty. We shall see how it all turns out, won’t we? But my kitchen is clean, the counters are all cleared off, and there’s a load of dishes that need to go into the dishwasher at some point today, too. There’s another load of laundry that also needs to be done, and I think I may just stay inside the house all day.
Last evening we got caught up on House of the Dragon and Interview with the Vampire, and I’ve got to say, Dragon moves at about a glacial pace. Very little has happened this season thus far, which is weird and odd. I mean, isn’t there going to be a dragon war? Why all this delay in getting the story moving again? They’ve all been preparing for war since the last episode of the original season and guess what? They still are. Vampire also moves at a slow pace, but it’s interesting to watch and is following the story of the book pretty closely, even with the differences and changes made to Mrs. Rice’s original works. Next week is the season finale, and I was a little taken aback that we’ve already watched so much of it already. Tonight we’ll get back to Dark Heart, and of course tomorrow it’s back to the office for one Gregalicious. I don’t mind, really, and the staycation I’ve been promising myself for August and my birthday is actually looking not only do-able but something to actually look forward to. I mean, look at all I got done this weekend! Maybe that will give me the motivation to clean and clear out the attic–stranger things have happened.
We’re also in a heat advisory until seven o’clock tonight. Hurray–and now it’s even more likely that I will not go outside today.
The opening of this entry–about writers deserving to be paid for their work–was inspired not only by today’s title, but by a post I saw on some social media by Gabino Iglesias, who is one of my favorite current writers (seriously, you need to check out The Devil Takes You Home, which was an Edgar finalist and won the Stoker for Best Novel; I can’t wait for his next book), and is one of the best authors to follow on social media because he’s all about supporting his fellow authors, giving good advice for those getting started, and basically boosting other authors every opportunity he gets. (There was also a thread from Nick Mamatas on the subject, in which he explained why some genres don’t pay well while others do.) The bottom line they both made was that everyone should get paid for their writing and no one should ever give it away–because accepting that your work has no monetary value is terrible and gives publishers an excuse for either low-balling or not paying anyone they publish. I’d never really thought about it that way, and I have been, throughout my career, guilty of doing work for free like an idiot or not properly placing a value on my work. Doing work for free has never really appealed to me; I certainly don’t give the day job one extra minute that is unpaid, but I often have gifted short stories to anthologies for one reason or another, mostly because the anthologies raise money for charity. Early on in my career, you see, I didn’t have extra money to donate to charity. When I worked for the airline, I did volunteer work for charities because I didn’t have money and that continued through developing my writing career. If I couldn’t donate cash, I’d donate my time or my work if the cause was something I believed in. I’ve also sold work that I was never paid for, either, which isn’t in the least bit acceptable.
Things to ponder.
One of the things I decided over the course of the weekend (I also figured out how to improve “The Sound of Snow Falling”, huzzah!) was that all the extra time I seem to have on my hands now that I no longer volunteer my time anymore can be better utilized than I’ve been doing; I am going to teach myself some things, I think, and I’m going to start working on doing more marketing and promotion, too. I also want to be able to take my time more with my writing; there really is no rush other than the ticking of the clock counting out the grains of sand left in my hourglass. I would like to finish every project that is unfinished at the moment, and of course I am always going to be getting more ideas all the time.
And is there any better way to unwind and relax after a day at the office than reading? I think not, and now that I can stream Spotify through the television, I am going to listen to music while I read and write and clean from now on rather than having something playing for background noise that I inevitably wind up watching rather than getting other things done.
And on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a lovely Monday, Constant Reader, and I will be back with a Pride post again later–I finally finished reading Sins of the Black Flamingo, and it definitely requires an entry of its own. Ta for now!
They were everywhere when I was growing up—movies and television shows—and my father has been a lifelong fan, so whenever there was a Western on TV, our set was tuned to it. Gunsmoke, Bonanza, The Rifleman—you name it, we watched it. Looking back, my dislike of Westerns was rooted in several things: toxic masculinity, racist depictions of indigenous peoples, and how entertainment in this genre was primarily used to create a mythological portrait of the settling (colonizing) of this continent and make it seem as though Europeans were doing the right thing (even using religion) even though they really weren’t. I never saw the natives as villains, and I didn’t like how easily Westerns picked up the trope of heroic white people and savage natives. Even as a child I could see it was all bullshit and I didn’t buy into it. I was about eleven or twelve when indigenous people occupied the massacre site at Wounded Knee, bringing attention to those false narratives and trying to change what was then culturally-accepted racist viewpoints on the indigenous Americans.
Look at the words used for the indigenous people–“savages”, “redskins”, “braves”, etc.; all dehumanizing and differentiating; “they are not like us so have no rights or privileges and we need to kill them all” was pretty much the US government’s policy to the natives.
Many sports teams still perpetuate this—how many teams still used these offensive names until recently? How many still do? And how upset do people get when those names are changed?
Anyway, I also mentioned in passing on another post that I’d like to explore Western tropes and why I’ve never been terribly interested in them as a genre. When I was in Kentucky the last time visiting Dad some movie channel was having a John Wayne film festival, which kind of made my heart sink. I’ve never really been much of a John Wayne fan (although I do love both True Grit and Rooster Cogburn) and generally avoid his films. The first movie was Hondo, with Geraldine Page (of all people; I wonder what she thought of the experience), and you know, I actually enjoyed it…and it made me think maybe I should revisit John Wayne and check out some of his other, better films. But Christa Faust, who is one of my favorite people in this community, commented she’d love to hear my thoughts on Westerns and their tropes.
She also turned me on to this:
If you aren’t aware of Christa Faust and her work by now, you really should be ashamed of yourself.
Redemption is an amazing Western graphic novel she wrote, and I very happily downloaded it as soon as she let me know of its existence. It also made me recognize and understand my own comics-fandom to a degree, too, and I may need to reevaluate that and explore it. I had thought about doing a Pride post about comic books and super-heroes, but it might need to be a longer form personal essay. Anyway, I don’t read enough graphic novels. I’d known that Christa had done scripts for comics before, but it never occurred to me that I should read them as well as be supportive of my friends who create this way. It is just another form of writing, really.
Christa is one of my favorite writers, and Money Shot remains to this day one of my favorite American noir novels. She’s also one of my favorite people; I love just sitting around shooting the shit with her.
And what she does with Redemption is absolute feminist magic.
You see, the thing about Western tropes is they can often be adapted to other genres–including literary (Lonesome Dove is my father’s favorite novel)–and the first Star Wars movie (I will never call it anything other than Star Wars) borrowed heavily from Westerns, as does The Mandalorian. You can see the influence of Westerns on pop culture almost everywhere you look, really (and really, Western tropes are often influenced by medieval tales of lone knights and paladin, which in turn were influenced by Greek mythology), and Redemption isn’t a classic Western set in the 1800’s; this Old West is the result of some kind of apocalyptic happening, with the end result that the town of Redemption has walled itself off from the rest of the world (for their own safety) and is being run by your typical right-wing doom-and-gloom Christian type, who uses God and the Bible for control rather than for inspiration. The town’s doctor, who is not only a Latina woman but a fierce feminist, has been tried and convicted for providing an abortion to a woman whose child died in the womb and was endangering her life.
She has also been sentenced to death.
If you are seeing parallels between this and our modern world, well, I am pretty fucking sure that’s entirely intentional.
The doctor’s daughter’s only hope to save her mother is to find a legendary gunslinger called the Butcher–who had a past with the doctor when they were young. No one is even sure if the Butcher is real, or if she’s merely a legend.
And in the character of the Butcher, Faust sets Westerns on their ear by taking the typical closed-mouth gunslinger (think Clint Eastwood in all those movies about the Man with No Name) and made her a woman, but without stripping any of the gender expectations for men in Westerns. She’s old, she’s tired, and she’s done with bullshit–but she can still outdraw and outshoot any and every man she runs up against.
The art by Mike Deodato is also incredible.
Highly recommended; and again, check out her other work if you’re not familiar with it. You can thank me later.
Saturday morning here in the Lost Apartment and I am feeling rather pleased with myself as I accomplished a great deal. After finishing my work-at-home duties yesterday, Constant Reader, I worked on the filing…and by that, I don’t mean “put files away”–no, I mean I went through the boxes of files in the apartment and cleaned them out. A lot of files are just titles and a quick scribbled note; I got rid of all files for stories/books that didn’t have at least a few paragraphs written; was able to combine duplicate files and pare them down; and I had files of research and ideas for multiple projects spread out over the various file boxes are now all consolidated and together. I still have the filing cabinet to work on, but I still feel like I accomplished quite a bit. Having everything together for the various projects will make working on them that much easier, and it’s exciting to know I went from four and a half boxes of files down to one and a half. GO ME! I also managed to launder all the bed linens, and also a load of dishes. I reorganized my workspace as well, so all in all, a most productive day and one with which I am very pleased. I am going to work on the kitchen cabinets today as well as the file cabinet and workspace. I also have to make a mail and grocery run, need to clean the car, and go to the gym for more arm rehab as well.
Sparky even let me sleep in until nine this morning, wasn’t that kind of the dear boy?
One thing I also noticed yesterday was that I turned on Spotify on the television in the living room while i was organizing the files and it helped me to focus–which reminded me that back in the day, I used to always listen to music while I wrote and it helped me go into the focus zone. Listening to headphones doesn’t quite work for background noise, but the reconnection with music as a tool for focus was wonderful. How could I possibly forget how necessary music was for going into the zone to write, or helped me focus while cleaning? It’s nice to know that I can start remembering methods and tricks that helped me write and zero in on things I was doing with laser-like focus. In some ways, I feel like I am learning how to write all over again, which isn’t a bad thing.
I also realized yesterday that what I have been feeling now for a few weeks is good. It’s been so long since I’ve felt good about anything and have been in a headspace of anything other than just getting through and surviving for so long that I am really not even sure how i managed to write and publish anything between 2016 and now, but oddly enough those books are some of my best work–Bury Me in Shadows, #shedeservedit, A Streetcar Named Murder, Death Drop, Royal Street Reveillon and Mississippi River Mischief, not to mention some of my best short stories. Go figure, right? I also have done some excellent essays during that time, too. Even on auto-pilot, as I dealt with a lot of personal and professional trials for nine years, I still improved as a writer.
Today I am going to work on the book around some more chores and the errands already mentioned, as well as work on the filing cabinet and finish the floors downstairs. There’s a load of dishes to be put away, and more organization in the living room; getting rid of those file boxes opened up space in the living room and I want to work on making the living room look more spacious rather than cramped–and that has a lot to do with paring down the books some more as well…and I haven’t even started on the attic. I also want to spend some time with the Tremblay novel this morning, which I am enjoying but want to get to the next read in my TBR stack–I am going to read two queer novels back to back, I think, and would love to be able to review them by the time Pride Month ends.
And so, on that note, I am going to head into the spice mines. Have a delightful Saturday, Constant Reader, and I’ll most likely be back later.
I was a voracious reader from the moment I learned how to read–all things considered, my favorite waking activity was reading. I loved nothing more than those enormous doorstops of books that used to get published (apparently when the cost of ink and paper was considerably less), and during the Bicentennial madness, James A Michener released a book called Centennial, the history of a small town on the Platte River in Colorado that was renamed Centennial in honor of Colorado becoming a state in 1876–the nation’s centennial year. (I’ve always thought it odd that we trace our nation’s birth back to the Declaration of Independence, rather than the ratification of the Constitution, which created the United States government.) I really loved the book, even the several hundred pages about dinosaurs and how the ancient swamps gave way to the Rocky Mountains and the plateaus. Another thing that was big in the 1970’s was the “mini-series”–although at first they were all adaptations of novels and sometimes were called “books for television.” NBC, I believe, filmed Centennial, and I watched and enjoyed it thoroughly.
But the standout for me was Gregory Harrison, a young new-to-me actor who played the pivotal character of Levi Zendt, who actually founded the town (it was called Zendt’s Farm before the renaming in 1876) and I could not get over how good looking he was. There was also a shirtless scene, and I became a big fan. He was, looking back, absolutely one hundred percent my type; how many characters have I written about a hot lean muscular man with blue eyes and curly dark hair? Okay, his eyes were gray but that’s close enough for atom bombs and hand grenades, is it not? He then was on Trapper John, MD, which I didn’t watch (outside of General Hospital, I’ve never really watched many medical shows, and not sure why that is), and then he made a made for TV movie in which he played an actor who becomes a successful Chippendales-type dancer, For Ladies Only. It wasn’t a great movie, but he danced in thongs and bikinis and quite lustily, I might add, and that was really all I was watching for–but Marc Singer, player an older, mentor type, kind of stole the movie out from under him (more on Marc Singer another time)
I mean, what’s not to like?
For Ladies Only was an attempt to cash in on the Chippendales craze, and they were everywhere in the early to mid 1980’s–Donahue, Oprah, every talk show during daytime you could imagine–the entire concept of women appreciating men as sex objects, the way they’ve always been seen by men historically–and even The Young and the Restless had a regular cast member who was a male stripper (who mentored Nikki when she became a stripper; yes, Nikki had a rather sordid past on that show). It was the time period when what I call “the gay gayze” really kicked into gear.
The movie For Ladies Only wasn’t the greatest movie ever made, but Harrison was one of the few actors at the time who could pull off playing a male stripper and actually not need a body stand-in or anything (neither did Marc Singer–and if you need to know anything else about Singer, google image search “Marc Singer the Beastmaster”; he was also a big crush of mine after I saw this film). It was one of those sad morality plays that always wins big in the end. Harrison’s character was a struggling actor who gets recruited to join a Chippendales type show, his popularity begins to grow but now when he goes on auditions, no one will cast him because he was a stripper (how did that work out for Channing Tatum, you ask? Three smash hit films about Magic Mike, that’s how). I recorded For Ladies Only, and kept that videocassette for many years, finally discarding it in a purge before leaving California.
Thank you again, Mr. Harrison, for helping to define my taste in men–especially fictional one; how many characters have I written with curly dark hair and blue eyes?–as well as realizing for sure just how not straight I was at heart.
Good morning! How is everyone feeling on this day after the holiday? I feel good, actually, and very well-rested this morning and ready to get through my last day in the officer for the week, which feels kind of weird. I did some more thinking about writing yesterday, primarily how to structure the second chapter so we learn more about the main character’s past without getting bored, which is always the worry. I also cleaned up and did chores around here, so tomorrow I won’t be playing catch-up on everything heading into the weekend. I still have Monday off, which is going to be another lovely at-home day–and will shorten the week dramatically, which is nice.
Paul worked at home yesterday but rarely came downstairs; it’s weird how we can both be home all day and not see each other a lot. We need our plumber to come in and do some repair work; the sink upstairs isn’t draining, there’s an issue with the shower, and of course the garbage disposal/dishwasher situation needs resolving as well, which will be great to get all fixed now. Yay! It’s just a matter of when Randy has time to come out and work on it all.
I read for a while yesterday morning; Horror Movie is quite good, and am looking forward to spending some more time with it this weekend. I also should be reading queer writers this month, and it does not speak well of me that it took me this long into the month to realize and recognize that. Bad gay, bad gay! I will resolve that by reading the new John Copenhaver, and I may make July my Queer Reading Month. I also worked on one of my Pride posts yesterday but didn’t finish it. I’ll try to get another one done today–International Male catalogues would be a good one, especially since they are no longer in business; it’s an important part of gay male fashion history, isn’t it? I did spend a good part of the day watching old “what the 1970s were like” videos–pop culture and some news, mostly; but it’s nice to be reminded of things like old commercial jingles, or what fast food work uniforms looked like, and what movies/television shows were being released and were in the zeitgeist.
In other “Louisiana is becoming a Puritan dictatorship” news, our shitbird governor signed a bill requiring the Ten Commandments be displayed in every public school classroom in the state. Never mind that Roy Moore tried this shit in Alabama only to get slapped around for it by SCOTUS, but there’s no doubt in my mind that the Christofascists running that branch of the government would uphold this law. The idiocy of this, not only on a Constitutional level but a Christian one as well; it’s basically apostasy and everything Jesus warned about in the New Testament, but of course all the people who think they are decent human beings only because of a fear of going to hell are also into ostentatious displays of their faith–because it is so hollow no one will know they are Christians from how they behave and how they treat people, which is how you are supposed to bear witness.
Not to mention that they should believe that they have a new covenant with God through Jesus, and the Old Testament’s rules and edicts about behavior are the old covenant; so why would you show your devotion to Christ by displaying relics of the old one? Which Jesus had nothing to do with it? Again, it’s very hard to take Christians seriously when they don’t even understand their own faith, you know?
Not to mention there will be lawsuits–which Governor Landry “can’t wait” to be sued. Um, that’s Louisiana taxpayer money you will be using to defend these unconstitutional laws, and while his Bible-thumping is playing well with the racist cosplay Christians of the state, the ones who’ve never read or studied their Bible but do what their preacher says, I’m going to say his popularity will undoubtedly crest within the next two years and people are going to start turning on him, as they did with Bobby Jindal. Louisiana votes may not be the brightest bulbs in the chandelier, but they eventually see through charlatans who tell them what they want to hear and do nothing for them. Jindal and David Vitter both found that out the hard way.
And hilariously, they don’t even follow the Ten Commandments themselves. What is a cross if not a graven image? How many of them take the Lord’s name in vain (which isn’t saying god damn it or Jesus fucking Christ, but rather false prayer or using the Lord’s name for something false–like claiming to know God’s will)? How many of them bear false witness? How many of them honor their parents? How many of them condone or look the other way from adultery? And on and on it goes; in fact, placing the Ten Commandments in classrooms–indoctrination–is actually taking the Lord’s name in vain.
So many “christians” (like our governor) love to take the Lord’s name in vain and are in for a big shock when they reach the pearly gates and find out they were self-righteous, not righteous in the Lord.
And yes, I speak evangelical.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Thursday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.
Ah, the gay obsession with muscular bodies. It goes way back into the past; the Greeks always showed men in their art to illustrate perfection—gods and heroes—as muscular and lean and physically proportioned. The emergence of gay artists during the Renaissance sparked a revival of an ideal male form since they took most of their inspiration from the classical art of ancient Greece and Rome (which essentially plagiarized almost everything of Greek culture). Leonardo and Michelangelo and other great artists, regardless of sexual orientation, always somehow got away with depicting nudes etc in art by using Biblical or other mythological sources; the influence of queer artists can be seen in every cathedral in Europe—look for the nudes. (I’ve always loved that Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel with hot male nudes depicting Bible scenes.)
And of course, Michelangelo’s David set a standard for male physical beauty for centuries.
I often wonder how much cultural and societal influences impact our own tastes. I’ve often mentioned how I don’t have a type; people always assumed I did, but I never have. I appreciate men I find beautiful, of course, but just because I find aesthetic beauty in someone has never meant I wanted to fuck them. I’ve always been attracted to all different types. My attraction to bears, for example, I know comes from a childhood obsession with professional wrestlers (which will be addressed in another entry, about the evolution of professional wrestlers’ bodies). Anyway, if we are perpetually bombarded images and told this is what is attractive, do we change our tastes?
I’m not going to lie: I have always liked muscles—but they aren’t necessary; no one has to have a perfectly sculpted body with high vascularity for me to find that person attractive. Perfect male physiques have become so ubiquitous now, with OnlyFans and reels and videos and TikToks and so forth; I think it’s great these young men have find a way to make money from their looks, and more power to them…but the more I see those perfect bodies the more humdrum and alike they all start to look, like The Stepford Hunks (which would also make a good title for a satirical story or novel sometime).
And muscles serve mainly as visuals for fucking, anyway.
The year I turned thirty-three was really the pivotal time, a turning point, in my life.
I was thirty-three and still single, and the only gay relationships I’d had at that point weren’t really relationships; they were, actually, borderline abusive and only served to convince me all the more that I was destined to be alone and miserable–that maybe I was actually better off alone. It was time to make changes…the only thing I had control over was myself–I couldn’t make my job better, I couldn’t improve my finances, and if I was weird-looking in the face, I couldn’t do anything about that either. I was losing my hair and I basically thought you’re too old to find a partner now, so you’re just going to be alone for the rest of your life, so make the most of it.
The first thing I looked at was my physical self. I wasn’t in shape and hadn’t been since I stop cheerleading in college. That was something I could change (I also identified several other areas in which I could change–including my attitude, and started working on those), and so I decided I was going to live healthier. I was getting older (laughable now) and I knew the longer I waited, the harder it would be to change my physical self (as I am finding out now for sure). I had joined gyms before but had never stuck with it more than a week or so, paying them for a membership I didn’t use for at least a year before I could quit–which was also a bad financial decision.
So, rather than joining a gym, I decided to be smarter. I got out the Abs of Steel tape I’d bought and never used (it was still shrink-wrapped) and told myself, okay, if you do this workout three times a week and do push-ups with it, and can do that every week until New Year’s, then I will go ahead and invest in joining a gym again. Any exercise was better than none, three times a week was better than two, twice better than once, and once better than none at all. I wrote that in sharpie on a note card and taped it to my bathroom mirror so I had to see it every time I went in there. I changed the way I ate (simplifying my diet to “nothing with three or more grams of fat per serving”, started drinking skim milk, using fat-free everything and eating more salads and vegetables and turkey sandwiches. I had dropped from 210 pounds in August to 170–and the change was not only dramatic (forty pounds is a lot to lose in slightly less than four months) physically but also emotionally.
And so, I joined a gym.
It was a new, gay gym in Tampa at the time, Metroflex, and it was convenient because it was on my way to work. I could take the work uniform with me, workout, shower, change and head to work. It was very convenient, and I worked out three days a week: Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. My trainer, whose name I forget now, was really good and thorough–he explained things, which was something I’d never ever, not even when I was an athlete back in high school, really understood about working out. And…I started getting into the weeds by reading diet and exercise books.
One thing I did notice, though, as I was losing weight was how differently people treated me. I’d never really paid much attention to it before, other than the way guys in bars would avert their eyes when ours met–which I just took to mean as blech gross why are you even here–and it was hard to get a bartender’s attention. I stayed out of bars when I was doing that first diet-and-exercise change that fall, and when I went back I stopped drinking alcohol, sticking to water but eventually going back to Bud Lite, but once I started going again after the weight loss…I never had to wait for a drink because as soon as I walked up to the bar, the bartender was right there. People smiled at me a lot more. I got treated treated better in restaurants and stores by the staff–even passengers at the airport were friendlier and nicer than they used to be.
I found that to be very interesting from a sociological point of view; a little experiment in human behavior, if you will. Other things started happening, too, all of which was very much a boost to my fragile ego.
And thought about writing an essay called Looks Don’t Matter and Other Lies.
I also liked the attention. I liked being flirted with and bought drinks in gay bars. I loved being treated better, but at the same time I had to be careful. I have some obsessive tendencies–part of the faulty brain wiring–and my tendency to judge myself very harshly was a dangerous combination that led to some really unhealthy habits with food and eating–I often will skip eating without a second thought, and often when I travel I forget to eat, and get sick. I also don’t see myself in the mirror the way I actually look; body dysmorphia. I always worried I was overweight, and I also wanted to get bigger–you see how those two positions are diametrically opposed to each other–but it was all a part of the whole parcel of self-examination and evaluation with the intent to make positive change.
But as my life began to change and improve with my new approach to life (I was also writing again), I attributed a lot of it to the changes wrought by my exercise devotion. I was so much happier, had so much more energy, and felt better overall. I also met and fell in love with my life partner…and realized several things: I did not want to work in the heterosexual world anymore nor did I want to spend a lot of time in it; and the best thing for me to do, the thing that made the most sense, was to become a personal trainer to help other people reset their lives and take a holistic approach to working out—mind, body, spirit—that would be more effective, and also I could charge enough per hour being a trainer that I could do it part time and spend the rest of the day writing.
I was a good trainer, too.
So, that’s what I did. I also started writing a fitness column for the local gay paper, and for other national glossies. It wasn’t the kind of writing I wanted to be doing, but getting a clip file was important for writers starting out back then, and I stayed committed to my own workouts, even after I stopped working as a trainer.
I can also happily say that since I left the travel agency here in New Orleans in 1997, I’ve never worked in a hetero business ever again.
Injuries and getting older have messed up my working out since about 2011, but I am hoping that once I get past this rehab of my arm I will be able to do regular, harder workouts again and get back into better shape.
John Copenhaver, one of queer crime’s latest (and brightest) stars recently (you should read his books, frankly; I am looking forward to his latest, Hall of Mirrors) wrote a brilliant essay on the concept of writing complex queer characters, and the artistic need to push beyond ‘gay is good’ messaging and not worrying about the question of role models which you can read by clicking here. I highly recommend it–it’s well thought, reasoned, and stylishly written, and the kind of thing I wish I could write.
But reading this essay made me think about my own work, the pressures I’ve had–either real or imagined–about representation and addressing social issues through the framework of queer people and characters, and made me think about the work I do from not only a creative view (which is how i always view my work) but from a cultural, political, and societal perspective. That’s not something I’ve ever really consciously done (“oh, let’s make this political“) but one thing I’ve never done is worry about how straight people might react to my work…primarily because it isn’t really for them that I write my books in the first place. If my work offends straight people that isn’t my problem, nor is their whining about how queer people see and perceive them…and it’s not like there aren’t millions of books designed as comfort reads for cishet white people. I’ve also never understood taking offense at a book. I’ve read plenty of books whose point of view I’ve neither understood nor care to; and I tend to not read anything that I think is going to either offend me or be antithetical to everything I read–I tend to avoid Westerns, international spy thrillers, and war novels, and mostly for the same reason I tend to avoid most cishet white male authors. Your work isn’t written for me, and I can’t imagine westerns to be not problematic1–likewise, I’m not interested in reading about toxic male he-men that are racist rah-rah-rah books to make white men feel better about themselves (you know who you are) and so I avoid covers that pretty much spell out to me what the contents are going to be–women who exist only to be beautiful sex toys, any gay characters are offensive stereotypes and usually die, and so on and so forth; I love my country in spite of its flaws, and that love is strong enough to bear critiques on our nation and the people who run it, so I don’t need to read fiction designed to make me thump my chest and scream AMERICA LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT at anyone who dares critique the country and its domestic and foreign policies.
If cishet white people enjoy my work, fine. If they don’t, well, as I said it isn’t intended for them in the first place.
first author photo
When I first dreamed of being a writer, it never occurred to me to write about gay characters or themes. I was a child, for one, and for another that child was terrified that anyone might figure out that I wasn’t one of the “normies”, and what I actually was inside was something they’d all view with contempt. When I was a kid I wanted to write a kids’ series, like Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys, and even came up with multiple different ones that I wanted to write, and came up with a rather lengthy list of titles for the books (which I still have, because I’d still like to try this at some point before I die), and gradually moved on to wanting to write other styles of books as I got older and began reading more. My addictions to soaps, both daytime and nighttime, during the late 1970s thru the early 1990’s, had me looking at writing more about towns and large casts of characters, and I always wrote a murder mystery into my ideas for these Peyton Place type novels I wanted to write; I also wanted to write Gothic suspense novels, and Stephen King had me also wanted to write mainstream horror novels…and later on, I moved into wanting to write horror/suspense/crime novels for young people.
It wasn’t until I met Paul, and I found gay bookstores, that I realized I could write gay stories and themes and characters, and I decided I wanted to write gay crime novels, set in New Orleans, and so that’s what I set out to do, starting a novel called The Body in the Bayou, which I had already thought up as a series about a straight Houston private eye–so I made the main character gay and moved it to New Orleans. I threw out the first ten chapters within two weeks of moving here, and started over again.
Promo photo for my old training business
And then I found myself in the conundrum John talks about in his essay so brilliantly; is it okay to have queer characters be the bad guy? Do we have to write all of our stories and novels from a thematic viewpoint that ‘gay is good’? Do we as creators have a responsibility to the community to only present queer people as heroic, or can they be flawed or even bad?
Author photo from 2007
I’ve talked about this before–how the idea for the case in Murder in the Rue Dauphine came to me, and I also worried about how the book would be received because I was explicitly creating a case and a world where not all queer people were good people. It was inspired by a gay man who came to New Orleans, got involved in the non-profit world here, threw a bunch of money around, and then disappeared overnight as his house of cards was about to collapse, stealing a shit ton of money and owing everyone a lot of money. That was when I realized how we always are welcoming to other queer people and we can sometimes overlook red flags and warning signs because you’re working with another queer person. We tend to give other queer people the benefit of the doubt and more chances than we would a straight person…and I wanted to explore that in fiction. Shining heroes without feet of clay also aren’t fun or interesting to write about, either.
Gay isn’t always good.
Most recent author photo, and I definitely need a new one.
And we aren’t doing our readers any services by creating “perfect” characters, either. Neither Chanse nor Scotty is perfect (although Scotty’s definitely an idealized person, I have to admit, but he does have flaws and blind spots) and the main characters in my stand alones are often messy, sloppy people who need to get out of their own way sometimes. Those are the kinds of characters I like to read about–because they are human.
I also find gay criminality enjoyable to read. James Robert Baker’s books were like being slapped in the face; full of gay anger and revenge and bitterness about the homophobic world in which we all exist–but Baker’s messy characters are active; they want revenge on the world and by God they are going to get it. The Ripley books by Patricia Highsmith are magnificent. Christopher Bollen’s A Beautiful Crime was terrific with its messy gay characters perpetrating a fraud.
I think we relate to and enjoy messy criminal queers because they are so relatable to us. There’s no worse feeling than powerlessness, the inability to control your own destiny and life, and always wondering …is it because I’m gay? I’ve gotten angry about this any number of times during my life, and I have always wondered somewhat would this happen to a straight man? and the answer is always no.
But do read John’s article. It’s very well done and thought provoking, and I’m going to let it simmer in my head for a while longer.
Westerns would be a good discussion for another time, actually. ↩︎
Happy Father’s Day to all who celebrate. As for me, I’m meeting Dad in Florida on Friday for a nice weekend in Panama City Beach, although I seriously doubt that I’ll be going outside very much. The older I get, the less I can stand to be in the heat–which is something younger Greg would have laughed at very hard. I no longer care about being tan, either, as yet another fragment of vanity disappears from my head. Today I have to go out into the heat to make groceries, but other than that I am staying happily indoors and trying to get some more work done. We also have Wednesday off, of course, for Juneteenth, which is going to make for an odd work week, methinks, which is also payday.
I am feeling a bit groggy this morning but I haven’t had my first cup of coffee, either. Ah, there’s that first sip, sending warmth and energy through my system. I plan to do some writing today; I had a really good time yesterday unpacking and deconstructing the 20k+ words I already have done for this project, and I do think expanding it out into a novel is a good idea; I think it will make for a very good book if it accomplishes what I am setting out to do with it–and of course, as soon as I have those ambitious thoughts good old Imposter Syndrome rears its ugly head. AH, well, but feeling like I’m back inside my writer’s skin inevitably was going to trigger that, wasn’t it? Sadly, it’s all part and parcel of being a writer, and I just need to shrug it off entirely and focus on the work. So, while I generally despise Imposter Syndrome, I welcome it now because it’s a signpost on the way to getting back to being a full time writer after several years of being swamped and stressed and everything else that went on since 2016, really. It’s been almost a decade since Mom’s first stroke and she started living, essentially, on borrowed time. I think that was the start of the cloud in my brain, and that odd sense that time is running out. It feels lovely to be out of that; I’ve not experienced it for quite some time now, and I think the rest of this year might actually turn out to be incredibly productive for me. Here’s hoping, anyway.
Yesterday was lovely. Sparky got me up before eight, which was fine (he let me sleep until eight this morning), and I got up and started working. I did some cleaning, and I also did some writing, and some planning. Last night I scribbled away merrily in my journal, listing characters and figuring out backstories for them, so that they can be fully realized when I write about them. I do think this one, and the one after, are going to be some of my best work, which feels great, you know? I was also looking over the prologue to The Summer of Lost Boys, and rewrote some of it in my head, which I will need to transcribe at some point today as well. I didn’t really leave the house yesterday, which was great. I spent some time reading the new Paul Tremblay, Horror Movie, which I am really enjoying. (I always enjoy reading Tremblay; he’s one of the best of the new crop of names in the horror community, and not a single book or story of his that I’ve read wasn’t an incredibly enjoyable experience.) We finished getting caught up on The Boys (it cracks me up that the right-wingers are suddenly realizing that the show actually makes fun of them, and the ‘heroes’ they were rooting for were actually the villains. Sucks to be MAGA), and then we dove back into After the Flood, which is absolutely terrific and interesting.
Oh! And House of the Dragon returns tonight. Huzzah!
I slept well again last night, so getting up to Sparky’s determination to get fed was fine with me this morning. The first cup of coffee is currently working its magic in my bloodstream and I am waking up, which is marvelous. I do have some things I need to do this morning–the kitchen is a bit of a wreck this morning, and the floors need to be done–but I am hoping to spend the day, outside of the grocery store, inside working on the book and getting my shit together for the week. Make a to-do list, try to remember all the things I want to submit to, and get organized. I never feel organized, and haven’t in a while, which is part of the off-balance thing that’s been going on since 2016 or so.
And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Sunday/Father’s Day, and I may be back later with some other posts about being gay and Pride and other great moments from my gay life.
Queer and Loathing in America 