Tag: Matt Baume

I Care

How is it only Wednesday? It feels like it should be at least Friday by now, doesn’t it?This has been the longest week, seriously. It’s cold again this morning–in the forties–and the rain has stopped. The bipolarity of winter in New Orleans is something I don’t think I’ll ever get used to, no matter how long I live here. I don’t feel tired this morning, but the cold does make me want to get back in bed again and burrow beneath the covers. I was all kinds of warm and comfortable under my blankets this morning when the alarm went off, and by the second beep Sparky was up, trying to get my attention to get up and feed him. I don’t feel worn out, but I don’t think I’ll make it through the afternoon without my energy flagging. Ah, well.

I even left work early yesterday for my podiatrist appointment, and the good news is the toe has healed perfectly and he was most pleased with not only how quickly it healed but how properly as well. His absolute delight when he looked at was very clear. (Apparently, I am some kind of medical marvel of healing; Paul heals pretty fast, too–how many people are discharged the same day they get a hip replaced?) But that’s a good thing, and there was some callus where he’d cut the nail and the scab had been, so he got rid of that with an exacto knife (it didn’t hurt at all) and then I was done and walking out to head home. I wasn’t even super-tired when I got home, but I worked for a while and that wore me out enough to finally put it all aside and relax for the rest of the evening. I hate that I am not catching up as quickly as I would like to, but that’s life, you know?

I also keep forgetting the Super Bowl is here in February, which will make getting around the city so much easier. Yay. And of course, there’s a massive facelift (or at least temporary patchwork) being done to New Orleans to get ready for it, so you never know what detours lie in your future.

I also watched Matt Baume’s documentary about Lance Loud, the gay son of the first reality TV show, An American Family, from the early 1970s on PBS. we didn’t watch it, but everyone was talking about it, and I remember hearing about the gay oldest son, and how the marriage ended in a divorce. I think my parents thought being filmed for a television show was exploitative and kind of gross? My mother certainly wasn’t one to get into reality shows–she even stopped watching soaps about twenty years ago. I was never really sure why, but Dad has told me over and over again about how deeply conservative she was (trust me, I knew but it still came as a surprise–I always thought it was Dad and she was just trying to make him happy. Ah, the things we are led to believe as children but never really give much thought to…Dad became more conservative because she was so conservative), so I have to assume the soap thing (I used to watch them with her when I was still in school) might have had something to do with that? I know my sister stopped watching them because they encouraged you to root for adulterers. My grandmother also used to watch them when I was a kid (I actually think she was the one who got me and my sister started on Dark Shadows), but also stopped. Anyway, it was an interesting documentary, and I learned a lot more about Lance Loud than I’d ever really known before, other than he was the gay son on that show.

The tale of Robin Hoody keeps getting more and more interesting the more information that comes out about him, and I keep being more and more amused at the way the country has almost completely united (see what I did there?) behind him. That really should tell everyone about the mood of the country, shouldn’t it? I keep being amused at how the story is being reported, and how much resources the NYPD expended on searching for this person while no one is even talking about the immigrant stabbed to death by racists on the same day in the same city, and certainly the NYPD isn’t making that a top priority. I’d love to see the price tag for justice for a health insurance executive, and why the NYPD and the media made this into such an insane priority. Yes, by all means, do tell me about how everyone is equal in the eyes of the law! And of course, the more information that comes out about both shooter and victim, the more noble the shooter sounds and the more awful the victim was. The media was certainly unprepared for the way people reacted, and the fact that the media so completely misread the mood of the country makes you wonder, again, just how shitty they are at their jobs; and the right-wing grifters attempt to frame this as a right-left issue blew up their faces…as some angry Americans slowly began to realize the media they consume manipulates them to make money, and people saw it as more of a class war kind of thing that apparently everyone has just been waiting for to happen.

And that’s what has the elites and their puppet media terrified. They cannot allow the country’s division to heal and anyone who is not an elite must be persuaded to fight a culture war when the real problem is and has always been the class war the billionaires have been waging against everyone else since Ronald Reagan was sworn into office in 1981. I also think a lot of the angry people are recognizing that they voted in the rule of an oligarchy and are not very happy about that, either. For the record, I don’t have any sympathy for those who voted for this and now have regrets. Too little, too late, too bad, so sad. You voted to make people suffer, and sadly, you’re also one of those. I can’t even begin to tell you how horrible those people were before the election, and how they absolutely refused to listen to anything anyone had to say.

And the newspaper coverage and most editorial commentary has shown how deeply out of touch they actually are from everyday citizens, and how they prop up the elites at every possible turn. Imagine if the media hadn’t gotten sucked into the cult of Trump in the 1980s and started turning him into a celebrity for no good reason. Seeing them trying to lead ‘the resistance’ after doing everything they could to reelect him (so much for that “liberal media bias,” right, Richard Nixon?) is not only craven, but disgusting and people are starting to see very clearly what our “news media” actually has become: completely incompetent and not good at their jobs. The news shouldn’t be a for-profit business, just like health care should not be.

And on that note, I am bundling up and heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and here’s hoping the rest of this week flies by.

Screenshot

Summer Breeze

Summers used to be different when I was a kid, or that’s how it seems now when I look back over the decades to those fuzzy and foggy and out of focus memories of my childhood. Of course, my memories are also my impressions, and I am not sure how those were formed. But back when I was a kid, I have this memory of people going away for summer vacations, and sometimes the really lucky ones went away for the entire summer. All that was required for this was a stay-at-home Mom and Dad who had enough money to rent a summer home to send them off to, joining them on his own vacation. Or maybe I am just remembering it from what I read in books during those years, and our own summer excursions to Alabama (I still would be willing to swear my sister and I spent the entire summer down there, even though I know we didn’t). But beach houses and books about teenagers coming of age while spending the summer at a vacation house on an island or near the beach was a popular subject for writers to explore. I can only think of three of them off the top of my head: Summer of ’42, Last Summer, and A Summer Place. I think I read them all over the course of a single summer, and maybe that’s why my brain defaults to thinking that way about summer breaks and vacations.

I don’t remember why I remembered Last Summer recently. It was written by Evan Hunter, and I also read its sequel, Come Winter, and I remembered both books as being rather dark, with a vague memory of their endings. But I wanted to read it again–I also remembered that John-Boy Walton himself, Richard Thomas, played the male lead in the film of Last Summer when he was a young actor, years before being cast on The Waltons. I’d be curious to see the film again, too.

We spent last summer, when I was just sixteen, on an island mistakenly called Greensward, its shores only thinly vegetated with beach grass and plum, its single forest destroyed by fire more than twenty years before. There were perhaps fifty summer homes on the island, most of them gray and clustered safely on the bay side, the remainder strung out along the island’s flanks and on the point jutting insanely into the Atlantic.

It was there the sea was wildest. It was there that we first met Sandy.

She was standing close by the shoreline as David and I came up the beach behind her, spume exploding on her left, pebbles rolling and tossing in a muddy backwash, a tall girl wearing a white bikini, her hair the color of the dunes, a pale gold that fell loose and long about her face. Her head was studiously bent. Hands on hips, lefs wide-spread, she stood tense and silent, studying something in the sand at her feet. It was a very hot day. The sky over the ocean seemed stretched too tight. An invisible sun seared the naked beach, turning everything intensely white, the bursting waves dissolving into foam, the glaring sky, the endless stretch of sand, the girl standing motionless, her pale hair only faintly stirring. We approached on her left, walking between her and the ocean, turning for a look at her face, her small breasts in the scanty bra top, the gentle curve of her hips above the white bikini pants, the long line of her legs.

The thing lying at her feet in the sand was a sea gull.

Last Summer is what would probably be considered y/a fiction today, despite being written by a highly respected author of both crime fiction (as Ed McBain) and literary fiction, as Evan Hunter. It’s also from that strange period of time that followed the end of the second World War, as the American economy boomed and both the working and middle class were better off than they had ever been before. Matt Baume, a delightful queer culture historian (his book about queer representation in film and television, Hi Honey I’m Homo, is currently a Lambda finalist, deservingly), made an excellent point on his video essay on Rebel Without a Cause, which pointed out the rise of teenage consumers–kids with lots of time on their hands due to the shift in the economy because they didn’t have to have jobs like they did before the war (only upper middle class and rich kids didn’t have to before the war) and the rise of home-ownership in addition to educational opportunities and suburban culture. Adults became quite alarmed at what this new breed of teenagers were up to, even more so than the usual tired worrying about the kids that has never gone away. Many of them were disaffected, and what they were allowed to watch and/or read became even more restricted. Many of them discovered the joys of alcohol and marijuana in greater degrees than ever before, which led to even more rebellion and concern. Parents went after comic books and magazines as corrupting influences–rather than recognizing their own failures as parents, which also gave rise to the modern mentality of uncontrollable children who needed to be protected from pernicious influences. There was, for example, a significant difference from “youth” movies like Rebel Without a Cause and Frankie/Annette in Beach Blanket Bingo. Check out his video here!

Last Summer reads very much as being about its time. “Serious” books about teenagers, many with dark themes, were in demand around this time–and they read very differently to modern readers. This book is about three friends spending the summer on an island somewhere off the Eastern seaboard, but few clues are given to its actual location, or the seaside town where the ferry operates from. The two boys, David and Peter (Peter is the first person voice of the story, remembering back to last summer) meet a girl named Sandy at the beach, and the first part of the book, about them nursing the gull back to health and trying to teach it tricks, bonds them more closely together. We don’t get very in depth about either David or Peter, Peter’s voice is calm and nonchalant, which lulls the reader into a sense of complacency. You begin to wonder where it’s going, but the boys are also becoming more and more aware of Sandy–and her body. Their closeness dances very close to crossing lines several times–she takes off her bikini top more than you’d think a teenaged girl in that time period would–but Sandy eventually bores of the gull and grows more and more annoyed by it until she kills it, and once the boys know, they destroy the gull’s body, which is very odd but telling.

And then they meet Rhoda, a shy girl with some issues of her own, and they kind of adopt her into their group the same way they adopted the seagull, and that’s when the creepy tension turns the book from being about bored teens into a horror. What they do to Rhoda is even more horrific now than it was when the book was originally published in the late 1960’s, and that blasé mentality about their assault on Rhoda–in which Sandy participates, making the horror even worse somehow–reveals them to be sociopaths, which makes the rest of the book make so much more sense, and even more chilling than it was originally.

There’s also some casual homophobia in the book–a gay couple on the island are mostly referred to as “the fags”, a horrible reminder of how prevalent that casual use of such slurs were in this country at the time.

I did enjoy the revisit, and it gave me some things to ponder and think about–and it’s still sticks in my head a week or so after finishing, so that’s a testament to Mr. Hunter.

New World Man

I am up earlier than I have been since before the surgery (no, I don’t want a cookie–never been a cookie fan, even as a kid), and feel pretty good this morning. Yesterday was a pretty good day, over all. I didn’t really leave the house at all, but I worked on getting things more under-control around here–the kitchen has been a mess since the ceiling collapse, and the cabinets and drawers need some serious organizing–and also spent most of the day doing other chores around here, while thinking about getting back to work writing. The brace is still awkward to work around, but it feels like I’m getting more used to working with it on–and having a cleared and cleaned off desk surface also helps with that as well. I am going to run some errands this afternoon, but there’s not college football today to distract me or send me to the easy chair for the day, so I have little choice about blowing the day off, methinks, which is not a bad thing. I also did laundry and more dishes yesterday, and I have some other things I need to do here in the kitchen/office today as well. I also spent some time reading the second book in Raquel V. Reyes’ delightful Caribbean kitchen cozy series (Calypso, Cooking and Corpses), which is just as delightful as the first, and then…well, I fell down a Youtube/Twitter wormhole that was eye-opening and shocking before Paul got home from the gym and we watched this week’s Fellow Travelers, which, interestingly enough, kind of tied into the wormhole in some ways; as you may recall, just the other day I was talking about how these stories (Fellow Travelers), while sad and depressing, were necessary to remind people of how awful the past was for queer people not that long ago; we don’t have much of a societal memory for things that happened as recently as twenty years ago. There’s a large gap in our community that was created by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, so the oral traditions within the community of passing along our history was horrifically interrupted and many younger queers–and those that aren’t that young–have no way of connecting to the past, and don’t even know where to start looking.

During the shutdown I spent a lot of time in my easy chair making condom packs for the day job to justify getting paid for being at home–there were other job duties I could do at home, but mostly I made a shit ton of condom packs–and so I spent a lot of time looking through streaming apps on my Apple TV for things to watch while my hands worked. This was how I discovered the endless wormholes of Youtube video essays and documentaries; and of course, algorithms started suggesting other videos and channels of “influencers” similar to the videos I had watched and was finding on my own. Discovering Matt Baume’s delightful channel about queer rep in popular culture was a joy for me; he named sources for his information, was very clear about what was fact, what was unknowable, and what was his opinion–and since most of it was stuff that aired or happened while I was alive, it was a lovely trip down memory lane for me, reminding me of the few things that resonated with me growing up as a lonely queer kid and what shaped my views on what it was like to be a gay man in America. (Also, once I discovered there was such a thing as queer books and queer publishing, spent most of the 1990’s reading mostly queer stuff…and I’ve always been a voracious reader.) Anyway, watching Matt’s videos and subscribing to his channel shifted the algorithms, and I started getting other videos and channels suggested to me….and one of those belonged to a queer video essayist named James Somerton, and one of them–called Evil Queens and having to do with Disney–I don’t remember the actual name of the video, and he has since scrubbed his entire Youtube channel (more on that drama later)–and thought, interesting–a long time ago I read and reviewed a book called Tinker Belles and Evil Queens by Sean Griffin, but you can’t copyright a title and can you talk about queer coding and such in Disney and not use the words “evil queens”? Disney has always fascinated me, since I turned into a Disney queen after The Little Mermaid (I was never a big Disney kid; that waited until my adulthood and coming out, oddly enough), and Griffin’s book was so astonishing and good and insightful that I never forgot it. I watched Somerton’s video, and it all seemed incredibly familiar to me–and I did note he said some things that were wrong; mainly Gay Days/Gay Nights at Disneyworld were never official, Disney-sponsored events…which I know because I lived in Florida and used to go for Gay Day. I also thought it was odd that he left out how the Southern Baptists tried to boycott Disney to stop Gay Days…and were ground completely into the dust by the Mouse. But it didn’t fit the narrative of the video essay–how Disney queer baits us for money then betrays us by not giving us rep in their films1. I also thought it was weird that the book–which so much of the video’s content was dependent on for its facts; the stuff that was wrong I assumed was from Somerton himself–wasn’t credited for anything, or even mentioned as a companion reading piece to the video itself. Periodically, after that, Youtube would suggest other videos to me from him, and I’d watch them, mainly out of curiosity…and began noticing things.

Like how his entire video about queer coding in Hollywood film seemed incredibly familiar–like I’d read it all already in the uncredited The Celluloid Closet by Vito Russo, which had already been made into a documentary in 1996…so much so that I bought an e-book of it to see and yes, it was used almost word for word with no attribution. And some of his other videos…were not only offensive but just bald-faced lies, things he’d made up, or okay, let’s be fair–conclusions he drew were from cherry-picked facts and broad speculations made from those facts; it seemed, in his video on gay body image issues, that he took the old 1990’s term for gym and body culture (the “you have to be a ripped muscle god to have any sexual currency”), which was “body fascism”, and somehow extrapolated from there the bizarre notion that Nazis created body culture and American GI’s brought it back from Europe after the war…and even weirder, somehow we didn’t get it from the Soviets because they were so “bundled up” we couldn’t see their bodies. (Maybe he should have read Michelangelo Signorile’s Life Outside, which explored how body culture morphed into something even bigger after the advent of AIDS because a strong, muscular, defined body was the antithesis of the wasting most people dying from AIDS experienced at the time; fit body= not infected; seriously, dude.) He was also horribly misogynistic at times–he didn’t like lesbians, and he hated straight women, and was also borderline transphobic at times despite trying to champion transpeople? It was all very weird, but I would periodically put on one of his videos that sounded interesting, even as he made claims that didn’t make sense or was simply restating things I’d already read somewhere. I didn’t think much of it, but I was idly curious–the way I often am; periodically I think about influencers and how to write a crime novel around one, and Youtube influencers seemed like the way to go if I were going to do that, and so I always chalked it up to research…and sometimes, the wrong things he said would send me off in search of the actual facts, so it was kind of educational by reminding me of things I’d forgotten about.

Turns out, he plagiarized almost all of his videos, never credited or named sources unless called out for it (he took down the videos about Disney and queer coding and put them back up as “based upon” the books he literally was quoting verbatim); the scandal dropped this week–I only found out yesterday–with two other Youtube influencers making really long videos about the plagiarism and the harmful lies he was spreading, as well as the self-loathing, misogyny, and transphobia. I went down that wormhole yesterday, watching both videos–which were long as the crimes were plentiful–and now his Youtube channel is gone, completely. As I said, I didn’t put a lot of thought into it–but he had a Patreon, and his Youtube channel was monetized, which meant he was profiting from the work of other queer creators that he was plagiarizing and stealing, then playing victim when caught…until he was literally destroyed by these other two Youtubers this week. He was apparently making a shit ton of money–and you know, there’s the plot for an influencer crime novel.

It was very eye-opening.

But it extrapolates further to what I’ve been thinking about since starting to watch Fellow Travelers–dark and sad and depressing as these stories are, they are important because our history is always erased; how are queer kids supposed to feel pride and understand where we’ve come from and what we’ve fought for, if they never hear about it, can’t find it, and are never told? The kids I work with (with an age range from early thirties to early twenties) don’t remember how horrible HIV/AIDS was because they hadn’t been born yet or weren’t old enough to really pay attention before the cocktail and the new meds changed it from a fatal disease to a chronic one (with treatment). There’s SO MUCH bad information out there about sexually transmitted infections, and so little education, that it frightens me on an almost daily basis as I work with my clients.

Obviously, this is what I’ve been wrestling with lately, with myself and my own artistic work (yes, I am starting to think of myself as an artist, which I should have done all along); what responsibility do we have to the younger people who don’t know our history, the history I lived through? It’s part of the reason I started writing “Never Kiss a Stranger”, and set it in 1994; I wanted to show what gay life in New Orleans was like during the time when HIV/AIDS was still a death sentence, and the city was also crumbling and dying itself before the wave of renewal and gentrification that started before Katrina and kicked into high gear; who is going to write that story if I don’t?

And what responsibility do I have to current and future generations of queer people as an artist? Do I have any? Or is my only responsibility as an artist to myself?

Something to think about, at any rate.

And on that somber note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a marvelous Sunday, Constant Reader, and I’ll probably be back later; I can never stay away for long.

  1. Uh, I guess he never saw the Disney documentary about Howard Ashman, who was partly responsible for the Disney animation renaissance and who died of AIDS before the release of the last film he completed, Beauty and the Beast; to date the only animated film to be Oscar nominated for Best Picture, and won three other Oscars, including two for Ashman? ↩︎

Southern Cross

Monday and back to the office.

The time change is always so weird to me, really. I always understood it had something to do with kids and not catching the bus in the dark in the mornings or something like that, but if they’re all walking home after school in the dark, how does that make sense? I always appreciate the extra hour, but always resent giving it back (or having it taken away?) in the spring. I kept finding clocks I hadn’t reset in the apartment (after thinking, wow, time has flown–wait a minute), and I did do some things. I did manage to make it to the West Bank, but it was really a wasted trip; Sundays are clearly not the day to do shopping over there as almost every place was out of almost everything. I got my wagon but couldn’t get the wheels to lock in place (I am so not handy) and I also got the wrong size blinds–so I get to go back. Hurray. But I did get some things for lunch this week, and I made ravioli last night for dinner for something different (I even managed to eat some bread softened with red gravy), which was nice. I watched the end of the Saints game–which they tried very hard to lose–and then another episode of Moonlighting. I found a much later and much more revised version of one of the novellas, “Fireflies”–which needs a lot of work, but is a very good idea and the kernel of a terrific novellas is there, if I can stick the landing–and also was put in mind of Chlorine yet again by coming across Matt Baume’s Tab Hunter1 documentary on Youtube (another great job, Matt!)–and I had a germ of an idea for how a part of the plot would work–another piece fell into place, as it were, and so I scribbled it down in my journal (huzzah for journals!) to wait for the day and time I can get back to work on it and give it my full attention.

I realized yesterday–once again astonishing myself with my own obtuseness–that part of what’s going on with me lately–the moodiness, the surliness, the self-destructive inability to get anything done, and the anxiety that comes with all of the above–has everything to do with my coming surgery. The compartmentalization doesn’t always work, you see, when something is creating a lot of anxiety for me. I have very little idea of what to expect and what it’s going to be like–or how restricted I am going to be as far as movement and so forth or for how long. I know I shouldn’t consult Dr. Google, but in lieu of any other information that I can recall, what else is there to do? And Dr. Google was right when I looked up the information on the injury when it was finally correctly diagnosed, after all. So I can look at about three weeks out of the office on medical leave, and then possibly some limited mobility after that. It sounds like if I am going to be able to type at all it will be one-handed, which is limiting, so I am hoping that if I am not drugged out to the gills I can spend time getting caught up on my reading as well as doing a lot of editing work on my own stuff. I am not going to be able to lift or carry things, which is going to make the whole grocery situation interesting for a couple of weeks, but I guess I can have things delivered. Probably the best way to compartmentalize all of the concern and anxiety about the surgery would be to start planning and preparing so I can be as ready as I can, right? It’s been a year, really. I suppose my end of the year round-up blog post on New Year’s Day will be a bit morose and melancholy.

I think one tends to be a bit more morose and melancholy as one gets older.

I also started watching A Haunting in Venice and while it was shot beautifully and had a great cast–it didn’t really hold my interest. The Agatha Christie novel it’s loosely based on–and I do mean loosely–is not one of the more better known ones; Halloween Party was a perfectly adequate Christie novel but it wasn’t anything spectacular. I do remember it, and I do have a hardcover book club edition of it, too. It probably belonged to my grandmother, or else I picked it up at a second hand store or a flea market or somewhere like that. I took a break about halfway through and then went back…and kind of dozed a bit through the second half. It’s a shame; I watched because I had Venice on the brain after rereading “Festival of the Redeemer” Saturday afternoon, and rethinking how to rewrite and revise and improve it. But it was beautifully shot, and made me wish I could live, even if for a brief month or so, in Venice for a while. I did go back and finish it–but I found it disappointing. Beautifully shot, yes, and Venice is always beautiful on film, but such a waste of so much remarkable talent.

I went to bed early–it was a struggle staying up until ten, which felt like eleven, and slept really well. I feel rested enough to actually face the day and potentially be productive–crazy, I know–but I generally feel well rested on Monday; it’s the rest of the week when my ass starts dragging. I also have to keep pushing forward on some things, too–progress must always be made, even when I don’t feel like making progress on anything. (Watching Tug get used to having his nails trimmed and not being able to use thing to climb–me, in particular–has been rather cute, but then again he is world’s most adorable kitten.) I didn’t read very much this weekend, either, more’s the pity; but I am thinking I’ll be doing a lot of reading once the surgery has taken place and I am no longer living on pain medications–maybe I can even read while on painkillers; I know they are going to give me oxycontin or some version or derivative of it, which makes watching all those movies and documentaries and mini-series based on the crimes of the Sackler family against the American public perhaps not as smart as it seemed at the time; I am terrified of becoming addicted to a pain medication–but that’s also an excellent time to wean myself off the Xanax, too.2

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines for the morning. Have a great Monday, Constant Reader, and I’ll be back to check in on you again later with undoubtedly more blatant self-promotion.

  1. I actually met Tab Hunter, which is something that amazes me to this very day; I actually met him and his husband several times. How cool is my life, really? ↩︎
  2. While I’ve been taking it to control mood swings all these years, it’s really not something you’re supposed to take on a daily basis but rather as needed; now that I know it’s anxiety I can treat it appropriately. Most of my medications are now wrong, and need to be changed. ↩︎

Tension

Wednesday morning and another good night’s sleep down. I didn’t want to wake up this morning–rather, didn’t want to arise from the comfort of my warm soft bed and the pile of blankets that help me sleep better–but of course there’s Big Kitten Energy in the house now, and Tug wanted breakfast. So, at around a quarter to six Big Kitten Energy launched itself at me and started cuddling and purring and wanting petting as well as feeding. He’s currently galloping around downstairs and just having a marvelous time. Yesterday was his first day at home alone with both of us out at the office; so I wasn’t sure what to expect when I got home. What mischief had the bored little kitty gotten up to on his own–what had been knocked over, knocked off counters and/or tables, what had he found to turn into a kitten toy which probably shouldn’t be a kitten toy, and so on. He didn’t come galloping down the stairs either once I got home, either. But by the time the groceries were put away I heard him coming down the stairs, and then we repaired to my easy chair where we just cuddled and I started rereading Jackson Square Jazz instead of doing chores–which I will now have to do tonight when I get home…but who could resist Tug’s insistent little face that he needed a lap to sleep in?

Yes, in case you were wondering, Tug has indeed taken his place as head of the household.

As the salt intrusion continues to make its way up the river to New Orleans, the panic is getting more realistic. I stopped to make groceries on the way home yesterday, and there was plenty of bottled water. I bought another gallon to go with the case of smaller bottles I got last week–doing what was advised, merely getting water every time I shop–so the initial panic-buying of water has at least some to an end. There’s also a cold front on its way down here, supposedly arriving around Friday–but looking at the weather forecast, all it means is it will be colder at night, dipping down into the sixties while hovering in the high seventies/low eighties during the day. That’s livable, of course.

I was tired when I got home last night, so didn’t do much of anything other than cuddling with the kitty and watching Youtube documentaries about long-forgotten Byzantine emperors (it really is amazing how little history of eastern Europe we learn in school) and the new Matt Baume (probably not new) video about Some Like It Hot, which, while now widely regarded as one of the greatest screen comedies of all time, was highly controversial at the time and went through some serious battles with the censors. (If you aren’t watching Matt Baume’s Youtube channel, you really should; he does some amazingly researched videos about queer rep in film and television throughout the history of both media, and his book Hi Honey I’m Homo is essential reading material tracing queer rep in sitcoms.) Now I want to rewatch Some Like It Hot, which I’ve not seen in decades. I don’t think I’m going to run any errands on the way home today–there’s some things coming in the mail, but they can wait for tomorrow’s drive home (or perhaps even Friday, really; nothing important coming other than maybe some copies of books I’m in or have written); Claiborne heading uptown is a mess after you pass the I-10/Highway 90 spaghetti mess, as the far right lane is closed there where it meets Martin Luther King along with an off-ramp from the highway, so everyone is trying to get over to the left lane from the right ones and of course, the far left lane is also closed, so about five lanes are trying to compress into two or three right at the intersection, which makes for aggravating, patience-challenging snarls. I did find myself losing patience while I was driving uptown yesterday and I wasn’t as able to control the rising anxiety as well as I have been doing since learning that’s what’s wrong with the wiring in my brain. I think that was another reason I was so tired when I got home; the emotional rollercoaster triggered by the rise in anxiety on the drive wore me down…and there’s nothing better for peace and calm than a purring kitten sleeping in your lap.

I am so glad we got Tug.

It was also interesting rereading Jackson Square Jazz last night for the first time in years–I rarely reread my own work from start to finish; usually I just look for information inside an old Scotty that I need for the one I am currently working, and this experience of rereading (okay, I just started rereading it last night) this old book of mine–my third novel–has been revelatory. For one thing, I am a very different writer now than I was then, and wow, has Scotty changed both in voice and character over the last twenty years! Scotty has grown up quite a bit–kind of hard for that not to happen, given everything he’s been through since I first created him–and the book is actually kind of time capsule. I remember deciding not to update any of the Chanse books when it was time to put up the ebooks; it would have been a lot of work for not much return in terms of satisfaction; the books are of their time, and changes in technology and the world happen too regularly to waste time revising and updating old books. I did feel that urge a little bit as I read through the manuscript pages (I am reading the uncorrected and unedited final draft I turned in)–Scotty had just gotten his first computer at the beginning of the book, for example, and while he had a cell phone he hated it and called it his “hell phone,” which mirrored how I felt about cell phones at the time. On-line chats and chatrooms were still a thing when I wrote the book; how would one update or revise that? Have the messaging through Grindr, instead of instant messaging? It’s actually a lovely time capsule of a time long past–showing what it was like to be an unrepentant gay slut with a healthy sexual appetite who lived in or near the Quarter in the years before Katrina…which makes it all the more important that I not only make it available again, but I also have to make sure, as I go through it, that it’s consistent with the books that came later–so I am going to have to work on that long-overdue Scotty Bible, and it’s really past time that I get that done; I certainly have a stack of Scottys with post-it notes all over them that have been waiting for me to do something with them. I’ll keep rereading it when my brain is too tired to process something new, and I think I’ll slowly make my way through all of the Scottys, to make sure the consistency is there.

Maybe I should revisit my old work?

And on that note I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely Wednesday, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again tomorrow.

You Make Me Feel Mighty Real

Growing up as a queer kid in the 1960’s and the 1970’s wasn’t the easiest path to trod. First came the realization that my wiring was different from everyone else’s, followed quickly by the shame from being different and of course, the ever-popular feeling among queer kids when they recognize their queerness that I was the only one in the world and no one, under any circumstances, could ever know. I honestly don’t remember the first time I came across a gay character anywhere–it had to be in a novel, though–and I slowly became aware that it wasn’t just me, but there weren’t any others like me anywhere around me. (I do sometimes wonder how differently my life would have turned out had we never left the Chicago suburbs for the empty plains of Kansas; I certainly would have met other gay men much earlier in my life but….being an out gay man in Chicago in the 1980’s might not have boded well for me otherwise in the long term, if you catch my meaning.) I do remember the first gay characters I saw in film and television; I remember being highly entertained and feeling connected, in some way, to celebrities like Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly; but Liberace’s flamboyance repelled me. The few times I’d seen gay characters they were horrific stereotypes, and I can remember being confused, thinking I’m not like that, though. I can remember TV movies like That Certain Summer which was about a gay man coming out to his son and his son having to deal with it; I didn’t watch because I was afraid that watching it, even though it was an ABC Movie-of-the-Week, would tip off my parents and my sister that I was like that–or even just curious about it, which wouldn’t fly.

It was Billy Crystal as Jodie Dallas on SOAP that gave me my first real exposure to a continuing regular series character who was a gay man–and his confusion (which had a lot to do with the writers fighting with the network censors and trying to appease the gay community) about his gender and sexuality in that first season struck me as a bit on the absurd side–but I also understood his thinking well had I been born a woman this would have been all a lot easier.

Of course, now, as an adult gay man with years of living the life behind me as well as writing about it, I see how incredibly absurd on its face was that story-line.

I first found Matt Baume’s Youtube channel during the pandemic, as I was scrambling to find things to watch while i made condom packs and did other make-work at home duties to maintain my paycheck. I may have found him through James Somerton’s channel? But while Somerton is often very dour and doom-and-gloom and “this is how they betray us” (don’t get me wrong, there’s a place for that and it’s needed), Baume is much more cheerful and positive about representation: he presents queer rep in popular culture in the context of the time; what the show/movie creators were trying to do with the rep; why they chose to do the rep in the first place; and the battles and struggles they had to make sure their rep made it to the viewers the way they wanted it to–and how that representation may have helped change hearts and minds when it comes to queer representation in art and culture. So when I found out Baume had written a book about queer representation in network sitcoms–written versions of his Youtube channel most likely–I had to have it.

I’m really glad I read it, too.

The essays contained within are well-written in a light, easy to read and comprehend way, without all the academic language that inevitably drags these kinds of things into the impenetrable territory that gets cited in other academic papers but otherwise never get read. Each chapter, from Bewitched through Modern Family, also contextualizes the queer representation in its time and place within the sociopolitical climate of each show, as well as the queer influences. Bewitched was probably the queerest show to ever air, be a hit and win Emmy Awards before Will and Grace; which makes it all the more memorable is that it was all coding and subtext, with witches standing in for queer people–and the similarities were obvious: they had to hide who they were from mortals for fear of persecution, bigotry, and violence. Sound familiar?

Baume also names and shames all the anti-queer activists of my lifetime, from Anita Bryant to Donald Wildmon (my own personal nemesis) to A Million Moms and so forth; Wildmon himself is probably the worst of them all; much as I loathe Bryant, I think she sincerely believed that queer people were a danger and sinful. I also think Bryant and Phyllis Schlafly were the last true-believer homophobes to lead movements; everything since has been a cynical grift for money and political power. Ronald Reagan and the Republicans saw, in 1980 and with the evangelical turnout in 1976 that carried an actual Christian to the White House (Carter was perhaps the most truly Christian president we’ve ever had; his religious values colored his policy. It’s ironic that Christians hate him as a general rule and always point to him as an example of a failed presidency rather than what his presidency actually proved; a true Christian believer isn’t pragmatic enough to lead a country; because sometimes, as The West Wing noted in an episode title, sometimes you have to kill Yamamoto; things for the greater good that are horrific on a personal level) and noted that “lip-service” to “Christian ideals” was all it took to get “Christians” to vote for you.

And this is a good place to serve as your regular reminder that the “party of family values” elected our only divorced presidents, yet are the same people who tried to remove Bill Clinton from office for lying about a blow job because it was evidence of his poor character and someone with such poor character shouldn’t be president.

I recommend this book, not only because it’s an interesting look at the evolution of queer representation in television comedy series, but because it also is educational by tracing the opposition to queer equality during the same time period.

I also learned by reading the book that Baume was the Communications Director for AFER, an organization that fought for marriage equality. So, buying and reading his book is also an excellent way to say thank you for his advocacy.

Ups

Saturday morning in ye olde Lost Apartment. Yesterday was a productive one, yet I was tired. I slept better Thursday night than I had all week, and yet… tired, emotionally, intellectually, and physically. I got my work done, though, managed to get laundry and dishes taken care of, and finished page proofing. I was watching (listening) to a documentary on MAX about DC Comics (which was essentially a three hour informerical about DC entertainment–comics, movies, games, graphic novels, television shows, etc.), which I kind of enjoyed besides the obvious puff piece approach. They were brutally honest about bad decisions and down-turns in popularity, as well as the insane boom of the early 1990’s with the collectors’ stuff. I had that on while I page-proofed, and it was interesting. I’ve always been a DC guy (who has nothing but respect and admiration for Marvel; I love Spider-Man), so seeing all the previous incarnations of the heroes and the stories as they evolved and changed over the years. They did, in fact, bring up the weird period where Wonder Woman gave up her powers and just became Diana Prince, which was also the same period where Supergirl was poisoned and her powers came and went; were no longer reliable, so they dreamed up some tech to help her out when her powers failed her. I was already planning on writing about DC again, thanks to the breaking news of the casting of the new Superman and because I’ve started watching the animated series My Adventures with Superman, which I am loving. We also finished The Crowded Room (a bit disappointing overall, I think) and watched the new Minx as well as some more Awkwafina is Nora from Queens.

It was extremely hot yesterday and I did not go outside. Even with the air conditioning on, I could tell everything outside was roasting. The air had that weird texture to it still, like it was almost scorched a bit from the heat. Today we have extreme heat advisory from eleven to seven, and I am considering not running my errands today if I can’t get it done this morning. I don’t want to be out in that if I don’t have to be, and if I do, at a time when it isn’t terrible outside. It is definitely the hottest summer I can remember in my life–and I do not just think that ever year and this year is no different. This year is VERY different, so hot it’s almost scary. The water in the Gulf is so hot, how can that be good for aquatic life? For the ecosystems of the shorelines? How hot are the rivers and lakes and creeks and streams? I have to run the cold water tap for quite a while every day before the water actually cools down to merely lukewarm. It’s very easy to get dehydrated, and it’s very easy to get heat exhaustion. Seriously, people, if you have to be out in this today, make sure you stay hydrated and out of the sun as much as possible. I also think it can’t be good for the car to be operating in this heat, either. But people in places like Palm Springs and Arizona drive and go out into the heat when it’s 114 or more outside. Maybe it’s just my natural anxiety, I don’t know. There’s always something to be anxious about.

Today I want to get some writing done. I want to finish revising that short story and I want to try to get that next chapter of the WIP revised as well. I may even try to write a story for a deadline in a few days, but even I am not arrogant as to think I can write a story that can get through an anonymous read in just three days. I also want to read a bit, and I want to work some more on the shelves in the laundry room. There’s just so many books, and I know I need to keep pruning. I need to be brutal and heartless, but so much I want to read and still think, hoping forlornly, that I will get to them…even as I buy more and more and read less and less. My mind is kind of all over the place right now, as it usually is when I don’t have something to focus on fully. Deadlines do impose some a forced focus onto me, but they also bring anxiety with them and I really don’t want to deal with any more anxiety right now, you know? Why invite chaos in, when you know damned well there will be anxiety no matter how much you convince yourself that this time it will be different? (It never is.) This love/hate relationship I have with writing is something I was actually thinking about yesterday as I put clean sheets on the bed. I was thinking that there are definitely parts of this I love–I love the creative aspects, I love working it all out in my brain, I love creating the characters and setting the mood and finding the voice. I enjoy revisions, too, but the element of despair is always added to the process when you are doing the revisions. By the time you’re doing what you hope is a final polish with almost every error excised or string tied up, you are heartily sick of the book, the characters, the story, writing in general and wondering why you ever thought you could do this, and would it really be that horrible a loss if you just walked away from it all? Then you hold your breath and click send, and then the agony of waiting starts, with all its paranoid imposter syndrome spirals and fears that this is the time you wrote something for which there is no editorial hope.

I mean, that happens every time I write a book, whether it’s on a deadline or not. The additional stress of the ticking clock a deadline adds to the entire process is what I’m getting to the point now where I can’t handle it or at least would prefer not to at the moment. I kind of just want to enjoy this moment where there’s no writing pressure and I can just work on stuff without being stressed about it at all, enjoy the process and the writing and creating itself. This is, after all, what I love about doing this. So why not do it under circumstances where I can savor the experience and enjoy myself? I mean, I do love writing, and I think I should be able to enjoy myself doing something I love all the time rather than being stressed out and anxious about it.

And I am enjoying writing again, being creative, feeling like yes I’m an author again, which is nice and frankly, a feeling I’ve missed. And it isn’t that things are so much better now than they were by any means, it’s just that now I don’t have to try to cram things into every day. Our civilization is crumbling around us and the world is on fire, but I don’t have to rush for anything other than being on time for work–and that I can live with. It seems wrong to be so calm and settled while the world is burning and our government is collapsing, but there it is.

I’ve always been selfish.

I slept well last night. I did wake up a couple of times, including the always every night five and six am wakes, which was just as annoying as it always is, but managed to go back to sleep both times and not get up until eight, which was really nice. I feel a lot more rested this morning than I have all week–naturally on a day when I don’t have to go to the office–and I am probably going to go ahead and run those errands today and get them out of the way. If I am making groceries, I don’t necessarily have to get the mail today; I can go to another grocery store rather than all the way uptown, for instance, and I do have to swing through Midcity on Monday to pick up a prescription, so I might as well do the mail that day anyway. I have other prescriptions that will also be ready in Uptown by Monday as well, so might just do a grocery run today and get that out of the way and then stay indoors as much as possible the rest of the day. It’s also kind of hard to believe Bouchercon is looming, as is my birthday. I made a to-do list this week, but I am so out of practice with using one that I never look at it anymore once it’s made and I need to stop doing that.

I am going to start reading Kelly J. Ford’s The Hunt this weekend, and I’d also like to watch some more of My Adventure with Superman. I should probably also finish that blog entry on Superman and his evolution on film/television over the years, and how I will go to my grave a Superman fan. I may also finish Hi Honey I’m Homo by Matt Baume this week, giving me the opportunity to move on to another non-fiction tome, and will also need to post a review of it. And of course there are other entries I need to finish as well. Someday I will be caught up on this blog, you’ll see, Constant Reader!

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines for now. Have a lovely Saturday, Constant Reader, and stay hydrated and be cautious in this heat because I would miss you.

Seekers Who Are Lovers

Sunday morning in the Lost Apartment again, and I am looking forward to a lovely and productive day here. We had a rather marvelous thunderstorm last night–although there was potential street flooding, so hopefully the car is okay–which was nice. It’s been awhile since we’ve had a thorough cleansing rain like that, which is part of why the heat index has been so miserable lately. The temperature has been hot, and the humidity about what it usually is–not humid enough to rain, but so close it’s miserable. I had planned to barbecue last night, despite the heat, but when I was getting ready to start putting everything together was when I realized it was not only raining but pouring. There was also magnificent, long lasting rolling thunder claps that lasted for seconds; the kind where it sounds like the sky is splitting apart. So, I made pizza instead for dinner, and hopefully will be able to cook out this afternoon. The power also went out overnight–I slept well again last night, to wake up to blinking clocks everywhere. It was out for maybe about twenty minutes, based on the emails from Entergy letting me know an outage had occurred (how does one check one’s email without power? A mystery for the ages) and the follow up announcing the restoration of power was sent about twenty minutes later.

I ran my errands yesterday, including making groceries and dropping off boxes of books at the library sale. I cleaned and organized and filed most of the rest of the day, finally getting the office area whipped into some semblance of order that’s not only workable but close enough to being finished that it won’t take long to do so that I can finish it over my coffee this morning and while taking breaks from writing this–although these things generally tend to be fairly stream of consciousness. Today I am going to make a to-do list for the week, update the bills list and make sure everything is current, and I’d like to make some progress on the rugs in the kitchen. The living room looks much more bearable now that those boxes of books are gone, and I think I need to thin out the beads next as well as do some additional book pruning. I cleaned out some drawers yesterday, getting that project under way, and I also need to go through my last few journals to mark the places where I made notes on the things I am thinking about writing now. I’m also trying to decide what the point of whatever it is I want to write next will be. I’d like to write something for the Malice anthology, but the deadline looms and I don’t think I really have anything I can whip into shape in merely one day, which means I am going to need to write a draft and figure this story out as I go–the idea is very amorphous, and I’ve not been feeling terribly creative yesterday, which could prove to be a most frustrating writing experience. There’s another one I’d like to revise and work on–I am feeling connected to it, and to its voice, but again I am trying to figure out what I am trying to say in the story. I need to reread all of these things, of course. I need to reread lots of things so that I can get a grasp of them again so I can find my way into writing them. I actually started two books this past week, can you believe that? Like I don’t already have enough things in progress already that I need to start two more? I wrote the first sentence of each book, and stopped there. I know what I want to say in both of them, and where I want those opening chapters of each to go, but I’m not sure precisely how to say it.

I also got deeper into Megan Abbott’s Beware the Woman, taking it slowly and savoring the experience as the rare treat and pleasure reading anything written by Abbott always winds up being. Each book is different in content, yet variations on a theme; I think future literary scholars will look book on her canon and study it as the incisive social commentary it is, about what it is to be a woman as well as how it is to be one, the strictures and compromises, the struggles between expectations and reality, all wrapped up in a lovely bow of beautifully constructed sentences that are complex in their very simplicity, and razor-sharp observations and insights into the strange tangle of emotions and contradictions that make us all so tenderly and sadly human.

We watched a tragic gay romance movie last night, Firebird, which was based on a true story from the days of the Soviet Union and its homophobia (still a thing in Russia to this very day, never forget). It was very well done, but it was also sad as such stories always are, with the kind of bittersweet ending where the truly conflicted one ends up dead and the one who isn’t moving on with his life stronger for the experience. So, no, not the feel-good gay movie of any year, by any means, so after that a few episodes of Awkwafina is Nora from Queens was just the ticket back from that downer.

Also, when I was dropping off books at the library sale, since I had cash on me (which is a rare thing) I checked the children’s section for series books I collect (I do this periodically, but only when I have cash on me) and I scored today with four books at two dollars apiece, and I had exactly eight dollars on me. I got three yellow-spined revised text (important) Nancy Drews (The Secret of Read Gate Farm, The Sign of the Twisted Candles, The Clue in the Crossword Cipher) which was the style when I started reading them so those are the ones I want. I already had copies, but the ones I already had on hand have been damaged over the years, and these were in excellent condition. I also got a tweed original text Hardy Boys The Mark on the Door, which I’ve never had a copy of (I only ever had the blue spine revised text) and have never actually read. There was no dust jacket, but it’s in really good condition. It’ll be fun to read it; per the fan groups, this was one of the books written during the time the original writer had left and the new ghost writers weren’t as good; and the plots tended to be a bit on the insane side sometimes. I am rather intrigued to read it–since they were all revised to get rid of offensive ethnic and racist stereotypes and language, it could be eye-opening.

I’ve also been reading Matt Baume’s marvelous Hi Honey I’m Homo, and am now up to the chapter on Dinosaurs, which I never watched. It’s really a fun book about how queer representation began and evolved over the years, as well as documenting the pushback against that representation (newsflash shocker: evangelicals have been coming for us every step of the way), and it’s written in an easy and accessible style that flows well. I’ve enjoyed his Youtube content, and I’m delighted to see that the book is in the same vein and just as well done. Highly recommended, and definitely more to come on that when I’ve finished reading the entire thing.

And now to my easy chair, to spend more time with Megan Abbott. Have a great Sunday, Constant Reader, and I will check in on you again tomorrow.

Violaine

Oh, I got my final panel schedule from Bouchercon over the course of the weekend; as expected, I got my Anthony nominee panels only–but there are three of them, he typed modestly.

You can find me at:

Thursday, 2 pm: Best Humorous Mystery panel, moderated by Janet Rudolph, with Catriona McPherson, Jennifer Chow, Raquel Reyes, and Ellen Byron.

Friday, 9 am: Best Anthology panel, moderated by Holly West, with Art Taylor, Josh Pachter, and Mysti Berry.

Friday 1 pm: Best Children’s/ Young Adult Panel, moderated by Alan S. Orloff, with Fleur Bradley and Lee Matthew Goldberg.

Not bad. I have to get up early on Friday morning, but the others are at times when I am usually coherent and functional, which will be incredibly cool. I also am finished with everything by Friday afternoon, so I had all day Saturday free until the Anthony Awards presentation that night. This year, I get to lose three times, as opposed to my two losses at last year’s. There is, however, no disgrace in losing to any of my fellow finalists, as I like and respect them all very much; they all are great people who do phenomenal work and they all deserve much more recognition than even this will give them. And that Best Humorous panel? I think I shall say nothing and simply sit there being entertained by the quick wits of the four comic geniuses I will be on stage with.

Coming home from work last night was just as sad as I thought it would be. I ran errands after work–mail, grocery, gas–and had bags to carry and so forth. I was putting the groceries away when I realized I was listening for Scooter to come downstairs. I shook that off, put everything away, and then went to sit in my easy chair like always to rest for a moment before doing something else productive–I have a sink full of dishes–and as I flipped through Youtube channels I was bored out of my skull…and then realized there wasn’t any need to sit in my chair because Scooter didn’t need or want my lap anymore. That made me tear up, so I watched highlights of the College World Series, but watching Florida lose (almost as much fun as watching LSU win, which makes the College World Series final from this year almost more than I could hope for as a happy place for me) but it didn’t shake off the gloom… and I also realized I was staying in the chair so as not to disturb sleeping Scooter, who wasn’t there. I cried a bit and got up to start doing some more things around the kitchen. Paul came home from the office, and he was sad because Monday was a work-at-home day for him as a general rule, but he spent the morning missing Scooter so he went to the office after his trainer. I’ve been looking at adoptable cats on-line, but of course I want them all. There’s a gorgeous fourteen-year-old ginger that I am sure is going to be hard to adopt, but much as I would love to give his final years a good home losing another one so soon would be too hard on both of us. We need a cat that’s going to give us at least thirteen years!

But then I think do I have another thirteen years? Which I don’t like to do, because it will talk me out of having a cat because I don’t want to die on my cat. Sigh.

Yesterday turned out to be okay at the office, in case you were wondering how that went. There’s no telling, of course, what is to come down that road, so as Mom always said, why borrow trouble worrying about it? I’ll be coming straight home from work tonight; I have tomorrow off for doctor’s appointments so I don’t have to get up early and there’s certainly no need to run any errands since I can run them tomorrow. It’s a bit weird and awkward around there–I think the entire department is a bit in shock–but we’ll see how it all goes. The only constant is change, right?

I started doing some more research for a short story I want to write about an urban legend–it’s for my Sisters’ chapters next anthology–and I realized yesterday that I don’t have to do something Louisiana based, and it’s not like there aren’t plenty of urban legends in Alabama. I got another Alabama history book in the mail yesterday, Hidden History of North Alabama by Jacquelyn Procter Reeves, which is mostly about urban legends and secrets from the past of the north part of the state. Where we’re actually from is more central than north; the foothills of the Appalachians, if you will. There were some horrible atrocities committed on Union sympathizers in that part of Alabama by the Home Guard–I’ve heard and read some truly horrific stuff, seriously–which might be a good urban legend to write about. I’m having the best time looking into both Louisiana and Alabama history; it’s so much easier to write about a place once you know more about it; the more you know the easier it gets, hence research.

I’ve also been reading Matt Baume’s Hi Honey I’m Homo, which is about sitcoms of the 1970’s and their fledgling attempts at gay representation. I already have been enjoying Baume’s Youtube channel for years–queer rep in culture–and I’m also really loving his book. It’s fun revisiting these shows and remembering how closeted gay teenaged me watched the shows for their queer content, eager to see if that was, indeed, who I was as a human being. I’ll talk about that more when I blog about the book–some of the rep was good, some of it was confusing–but it is fun revisiting these shows from a present day point of view and perspective.

And on that note, I am heading into the spice mines. Have a lovely day, Constant Reader, and I’ll check in with you again later.

You’re the Top

One of the most frustrating things about being a queer American is the absence of any kind of history, really. Oh, sure, there’s Stonewall and some other riots/protests in the years leading up to Stonewall; the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis. But since historians have done such a marvelous job of erasing us, trying to find our history isn’t the easiest task. You have to look for clues, coding, and signs.

Because, you know, we’ve always been here. We have also always consistently, despite the muzzling of the overarching culture and society’s constant attempts to erase us from the pages of history, managed to sneak traces of our existence and our sensibilities into the art of the times. Ever wonder why so many statues and paintings decorating cathedrals, cemeteries, and palaces in Europe are depictions of well-muscled, physically beautiful men? Because the artists were gay and the only way they could make art celebrating the beauty of the male body was to do so in a religious setting. (The depictions of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, in particular, are insanely homoerotic; one such painting was used for the cover art of Anne Rice’s Violin, which I think may be her finest novel.)

This entry’s title is also one of those sneaky gay songs passing for straight. Good old Cole Porter, the witty and intelligent composer and songwriter and overall bon vivant. Queer coding is everywhere in old books and movies and television shows and music. (I’m currently reading Matt Baume’s marvelous Hi Honey I’m Homo, which focuses on queer representation on old television series from the 70s and 80s, focusing primarily on comedy shows.)

There have been queer Kings and Queens and Emperors–and two of the greatest military minds of all time were gay Kings: Alexander the Great and Frederick the Great. But our history always gets erased–and homophobic historians will argue till their dying breath that unless there’s definitive proof, those sexualities and identities cannot be named. This is both infuriating and frustrating; take the instance of King James I of England–he of the King James Version of the Bible. He didn’t have female favorites–he had male ones, and he gifted them titles, money, jewels and estates and raised them into high positions of power. But because there’s no diaries where King James admits to taking it up the bum or going down on Robert Carr, there’s no proof. Well, likewise, the only proof the man was straight was because he was married and had children…which was also his duty as King. I know of no women favorites of King James. Likewise, there are no letters or journals written by Frederick the Great where he talks about some soldier having a nice ass or having sex with some hot young ambitious Prussian noble. So, no, there’s no actual proof. There are no photographs, no videos, no nothing. But…while he was married, he had no children; and he would go years without seeing his wife. Women were banned from his court. He also wrote his actually confirmed gay secretary a letter during the course of which he said: “My hemorrhoids affectionately greet your cock.” (The hoops historians will leap through to deny that Frederick the Great was a big ole bottom, and that sentence doesn’t mean what it actually said, are worthy of Ringling Brothers.) There was a lot of gossip, and Frederick’s preference for young men was openly gossiped about at other European courts. And most of his art collection celebrated homoeroticism.

I would love to write a biography of Frederick, seriously.

I also find Louis XIV’s younger brother “Monsieur,” Philippe, duc d’Orléans, fascinating as well–another one who’d be interesting to write about, especially since he is known as the Father of Europe; almost every European monarch from at least 1800 is one of his descendants, despite his sexuality and his predilection for wearing women’s clothes to court.

My story in The Faking of the President addressed this erasure; I chose James Buchanan to write about because he is the only president who never married and he was allegedly in a long-term relationship with Senator Rufus King (Andrew Jackson referred to Buchanan as “Aunt Fancy”). There’s no evidence that Buchanan and King were actually a couple; all of Buchanan’s correspondence was burned, on his instructions, when he died. I wrote my story about a gay historian who firmly believed Buchanan was gay…and after effectively wrecking his academic career, someone contacts him who claims to have the long lost letters to Buchanan from his fiancée when he was a very young man–and the letters will prove his thesis.

Believe me, I get the frustrations he experienced. I don’t think I’d go to the same lengths he did to get that proof, but I empathized.

But this also is an issue in even more recent history. When I was with Mystery Writers of America, at one point I wanted to try to figure out how many queer authors were members…but the impracticality soon became evident. First, you have to start with the question of what precisely counts as queer fiction, and what is a queer book? Is it the sexuality of the author what matters? What if they are openly queer but don’t write queer characters and stories? What about a straight person who writes queer stories and characters? Does that count? Lambda Literary went through hell over this, and there’s literally no way to please everyone. Is it the book, or the author? I’ve always been a firm believer that it’s the book when it comes to awards. Yes, the author gets the award, but it’s for writing the book. So, in my opinion, I would consider Call Me By Your Name a gay novel, despite the author being straight, and my own A Streetcar Named Murder to not be one, despite my being gay. The argument can be made, of course, that being gay gives me a different perspective and point of view that’s more queered than that of straight writers, but I don’t think there’s any “gay sensibility” to Streetcar.

Maybe I’m wrong. I’m not the final word on my books, really.

But this becomes problematic in two regards: one, if someone never officially stated anywhere that they weren’t straight, can it be inferred? Not every man or woman who never married was queer; but marriage itself isn’t proof of heterosexuality because a lot of queer people marry opposite sex spouses and get divorced when they come out later. I was engaged at nineteen; does that serve as proof to future generations that I was straight, despite all of my writings to the contrary? People still don’t feel completely comfortable coming out TODAY, let alone before Stonewall. Take Cornell Woolrich, for example. He never married, lived with his mother for a very long time, and was an alcoholic, pretty much had a miserable, horrible life. He never said he was, but would he have during the time in which he lived? Likewise George Baxt, who wrote a series about an openly gay Black police detective in the 1960’s. Baxt never made any announcements or pronouncements one way or the other; some of his acquaintances have said that he was but Baxt himself never did in any meaningful, definitive way. So, was Baxt or someone else the first gay crime writer? Joseph Hansen was definitely out, and his David Brandstetter series was not only groundbreaking but still remains one of the definitive gay crime series.

Secondly, it also becomes a matter of privacy as well. I know any number of authors who identify as queer but don’t write queer; how do you know how far out of the closet someone actually is in their life? There’s a hugely successful thriller writer who is a gay man, but I won’t say his name here or to anyone else because I don’t know how out he is…and whose business is it, anyway? There’s a hugely successful crime writer that I know for a fact is a lesbian. But if I google her name and lesbian, there are no hits. I generally put myself into their place, really, and ask myself, okay, what if you had somehow managed to start getting published when you were closeted? You wouldn’t have written books or stories about gay men, for one, and for another, I absolutely hated when people speculated about my sexuality–because it never meant anything good for me would come of it.

I’ve never been militant about people’s need to come out, and I also don’t think it’s anyone’s place to out anyone; with the caveat that if you are closeted and actively doing the community harm, you absolutely should be outed. That congressman from Illinois, the über-conservative congressman from Illinois who was outed? Ah yes, Aaron Schock. He deserved it–and while I don’t think he ever repented from his self-loathing brand of conservatism, he certainly has been living the gay high life since it happened. J. Edgar Hoover should have been outed; he was a monster, as was the always disgusting Roy Cohn. But actors and singers? Models? Writers? People who are just navigating their lives and coming to terms with who they are? Everyone should have the time and space to come out when they are ready.

The closet is a horrible place, and it seriously fucks with the people who are living there. I can be empathetic because I know how hard it is, how terrifying it can be. It can twist people (Aaron Schock, for example, clearly felt the need to be über-homophobic just to show he wasn’t one of those people, and yes, that is twisted and sick and sad, and why I am able to feel some empathy–not sympathy–for him as his life must have been hellish, even if it was his choice), and warp them into horrific behavior….but accountability, respect, and atonement are also necessary if the closet turns you into an Aaron Schock. I mean, how much self-loathing had to be there in his mind?

Not everyone has to be a spokesperson. It depends on your level of comfort. And please give people the grace to come out at their own pace and on their own terms. Struggling to accept and love yourself–realizing there’s nothing wrong with you–is a process that isn’t made easier by speculation. I’ve indulged in speculation about actors and singers and other public figures. That kind of speculation usually happens because there are so few queer role models in the public sphere; but I can also understand why people in the public sphere would want their privacy. Being a role model is daunting and full of pressure and potholes and dips and swerves in the road. And it also begs the question–what do we out queers owe to the rest of the community? What is our responsibility? Can we opt out of those things if we aren’t comfortable? I’m certainly not comfortable speaking for the entire community; I always say “in my experience” rather than making my own the community’s.

And we do live in dark times. There is a vast right-wing conspiracy (thank you, Madam Secretary, for that accurate phrase) to wipe queers off the face of the country–and don’t you dare call me an extremist for thinking that. We are being dehumanized and devalued on a daily basis by a bunch of evil people who think they are somehow doing God’s work (that arrogance alone will keep them from Heaven), and if dehumanization isn’t the first step towards eradication, study your Weimar Republic history. This country is at a tipping point–and it wouldn’t take much to tip us over into becoming the 4th Reich, which is terrifying. Oh, Greg, you always look at the worst case scenario!

That may be true, but I’m rarely wrong–and usually the reality is much worse than I imagined.

But I still hold out hope that decent people in this country outnumber the monsters, and that decency will inevitably prevail again. The importance of coming out, because the more of us there are and the more visible we are, cannot be underestimated. This is also where that lack of history bites us in the ass. It’s very easy for haters and bigots to dismiss us as “something new” or “it was better when you were quieter” or the ever-popular “I don’t care just don’t shove it in my face” (which literally has the opposite effect on me–tell me that and I will rub your nose in it) because we’ve been erased from history and a lot of the language around us is new. Language has changed and evolved over the course of my life, as we get more information and learn more, and yes, that means you have to keep up and might actually make a mistake by saying something you didn’t know had become dated or offensive. I am learning all the time, and want to continue to learn because I want to keep growing into the best version of myself that I can be (thank you again, Ted Lasso) and I don’t understand people who don’t want to grow but would rather stagnate and calcify.