Sh*t My Kids Say, Part II
One of the great things about Facebook is the ability to reread posts made in the spur of the moment and quickly forgotten. I tend to forget some of the funny things our kids say, and it’s great to have the ability to look back and remember. As two white gay dads raising two amazing African American boys, our house is always hopping. Here are quotes from our 13-year-old, Mason, and our 10-year-old , Marcus, in another edition of Sh*t My Kids Say.
Me: “Marcus, it is 6AM. What are you doing up, trying to get in to that ice cream?!?”
Marcus: “I need energy.”
Marcus: “Do babies have balls when they’re born?”
Me: “Well, boy babies do.”
Marcus: “Yeah, I know… Girls have cracks.”
Me: “I sure hope I’m there to see you when you find someone you love and maybe have kids.”
Marcus: “But if you’re not, I’ll do the funeral and dig and put you in there.”
Mason: “You know that woman with the voice? On The Nanny?… It’s an old time show.”
Me: “The thing Mason feels most passionately about is football.”
Marcus: “And sagging his jeans.”
Marcus: “My hair has lots of great qualities. It is soft, and curly, and, uh…” Deep sigh. “Maybe that’s it.”
Chaperoning a field trip to Disneyland, on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, going through the bayou swamp…
Me: “I can’t imagine any place I would like to live less than a swamp.”
Mason: “I’d even live in New York.”
Marcus, accompanying me on a run: “Keep going, Daddy! Don’t give up! If you don’t stop running, you’ll get a big kissy from me when we get home!” #BestCoachEver
Mason: “Girls have smellier farts than guys.”
Me: “What makes you think so?”
Mason: “Cuz they hold ‘em in for the longest time…”
Me, weeks before Christmas: “Guess what I just did? Wrapped presents for you two. They’re under the tree.”
Marcus: “If it was a puppy, it would die, right?”
Mason: “Are you Santa?”
Me: “What makes you ask?”
Mason: “I just want to know.”
Me: “Santa has many helpers.”
Mason: “I always thought Santa was African-American.”
Me: “Why do you say that?”
Mason: “He’s so jolly, with the big belly and all. Maybe I can be him next Halloween.”
Me: “All I know is, people who believe in Santa get presents. The rest don’t.”
Mason: “So can you get me an iPad?”
Me: “You smell like chocolate.”
Marcus: “That’s cuz I’m brown.”
Note from Mason:
“Dear Dad, Thank you for showing me that life isn’t boring and being my dad. I wish there was no such thing as dying so you could be with me forever. You are a very nice dad and I love you. Thank you for encouraging me in doing big things. You are a cool dad. I wish you could make Marcus the same as you. Love you, Mason. P.S. Don’t show this to Marcus”
Marcus: “I had a very sad dream last night. Want to hear it?”
Me: “Sure.”
Marcus: “We were Ninjas, well–good Ninjas, fighting the bad Ninjas. And we had penguins. But they wandered away from us, and me and Mason couldn’t find them, so we were sad.”
Marcus, to a friend: “Yeah, our vacation this year is at a place with a really short name: P-town. Get it? Pee-town???”
Me: “Mason, I want to ask you something–”
Mason: “No, Dad! NOT ‘the talk’. Not again…”
Marcus, watching the Darren Criss/Matthew Bomer duet on Glee of “Somebody That I Used to Know”: “They probably fart, right–in real life?”
Me: “Do you know what a syllable is?”
Marcus: “Yes… Butt” (clap) “Hole!” (clap)
And, lastly, my favorite:
“So tonight, for Russ‘ birthday dinner, Marcus made a sign which he put on the table, directing ‘Praisetents here!’ My first reaction was to correct him, but the more I thought about it, with the emphasis on ‘praise,’ the more I liked it. From now on, whenever I give a gift, I’m really giving a praisetent.”
Cross-posted on Huffington Post and LGBTQ Nation. Photographs by Sara + Ryan Photography.
How I Survived a Plague
I survived a plague.
It once seemed unfathomable I’d ever write such words, let alone experience just such a cataclysmic event. Growing up in a bland but largely protected Southern California suburb in the 60s and 70s, I had no clue what lie ahead. Acquaintances, friends, co-workers, and lover, dead. A myriad of others infected. Who could have foreseen the years of public apathy, private sorrow? Emerging decades later into a world where few seem to acknowledge the experience occurred, let alone the toll taken. Somehow, though, I stand here today having survived the AIDS epidemic, and I still marvel at how.
In 1981, when what would eventually become known as AIDS peripherally entered our national consciousness, I was 16 years old. I’d known I was attracted to other boys as far back as I could remember. Hitting sixteen, I was able to put my driver’s license to good use, beginning weekly sojourns to a bookstore in neighboring Long Beach, CA, where I’d spend my allowance on LGBT fiction, The Advocate, and gay porn. This avid need to read and learn would serve me well, as I distinctly recall that moment when I first saw a headline about a gay cancer, attacking the New York community. 
In July 1982, at virtually the same moment the disease was being renamed, from GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency) to the more accurate AIDS (Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome), I was experiencing my first sexual encounter, on a family vacation to Maui. Lying on a hill overlooking a beautiful, deserted beach cove, I finally gave myself over to the stirrings I’d long felt. Even as this older stranger initiated me into the ways of gay sex, I was cognizant of the disease attacking gay men, fully aware of the wolf at the door. Moments after finishing, I pulled on my bathing suit, quickly hurrying around the corner of the cove, only to bump into my sister, on her way to find me. The realization that mere seconds separated me from discovery introduced a gnawing element of fear to the moment. But that factor of fear may very well be the reason I’m still here.
With the release of David France’s Oscar-nominated documentary How to Survive a Plague, now on DVD, I was immediately reminded of those many years and how, for me, sex and fear became — for better or worse — inextricably intertwined. The film skillfully communicates the era’s panic and anger, as well as the resolute determination of the LGBT community to combat the virus. As I watched it, long-forgotten voices and faces materialized, transporting me to a time in which I often felt as if engaged in a secret war.
I was reminded of James, so closeted that even a meal in public was conducted in whispers. I remembered hushed conversations about who had “it;” the line between the “have” and “have not’s” never more apparent. I thought of those awkward dinners where my date would reveal his sero-status, and I would attempt to finish the meal pleasantly, as if that news hadn’t really mattered. And I remembered the first man I personally knew to die, always-smiling Jon, who went so quietly, few even registered that he was gone.
As a youth, growing up, sex had been labeled both a sin and something to treasure, and these warring contradictions, added to the lessons learned from my dysfunctional family makeup, bore in me a sense of prudery. Mix that prudishness with a lurking transmittable disease, and my sexual awakening proved not the spree of abandon I’d long imagined, but instead a series of battles, each encounter fraught with the fear that HIV could enter my body at any time, at the slightest provocation. This led me to study everything I could about the virus, to fortify myself. This quest for knowledge, however, proved difficult, as each news account seemed to give varying and often conflicting instructions. It can be spread through saliva. No, it can’t. They’ve discovered a drug. But it doesn’t work. It can’t be spread through oral sex. No, wait–it can! No, it can’t! A cure is coming. No cure to be found.
Each sex act became a scientific experiment. If one condom was effective, would two be even better? Am I using the right lubricant? What is nonoxynol-9? Is microwavable plastic wrap the preferred barrier for rimming, or non-microwavable? Such questions made it difficult to lose myself in the moment, but they also allowed passion a momentary respite, providing a window in which to turn my hyper-vigilance into action.
Desperate at seeing my community under attack, I found myself at AIDS Project Los Angeles, first as volunteer and later as staff, where my efforts centered on HIV prevention. It was my goal to keep other gay men HIV negative, but even that was fraught with uncertainty. We acted as if shamans, sprinkling our mystical educational nuggets across the landscape, but we were more used car salesmen than anything, selling the masses education we didn’t really believe in, with few of us actually practicing what we preached. We advocated using dental dams or plastic wrap for rimming. Finger cots or latex gloves for ass play. We preached using condoms for oral sex, and pretended that the flavored lubricants we hawked actually enhanced the act, as if everyone wanted to taste synthetic strawberry instead of cock.
We made every effort to keep our messages “sex positive,” to ensure we didn’t add to the years of shame gay men had suffered, being made to feel less-than. While fear had proven an effective deterrent for me, “scare tactics” were frowned upon. Marketing campaigns depicting those ill or dying was forbidden, so as not to offend those with HIV, or to imply that death was a foregone conclusion. Instead, we repeatedly insisted that not only was safer sex hot, but it could be even hotter than sex without condoms. As if anyone believed it.
To sell this vision, we created workshops around enhancing intimacy and building self-esteem, the theory being that by feeling better about oneself, more care would be taken around sexual health. If you care about yourself, you’ll use condoms. But that message was faulty, as the reverse would also be true: If you aren’t using condoms, you’re an unfeeling asshole who doesn’t about anyone, especially yourself. Which led men to again feel shame. Guilt trips are rarely effective.
As months became years, what began as a quiet war eventually grew to a loud roar. Nights in West Hollywood were an endless cycle: handing out condoms at bars, engaging in street protests, attending meetings for QueerNation or ACT UP, and leading courses in safer sex. We screamed until hoarse and marched until we couldn’t stand, then went out dancing all night and had as much sex as possible. I recall seminars such as Marianne Williamson’s A Course in Miracles and Louise Hay’s Hay Rides; more than once wondering why I was there. Many of those attending were HIV-positive, searching for healing. I was there because… what? Was I seeking community? A sense of belonging? To cruise hot guys? Or was I searching for a cure for what ached in my soul?
Ultimately, however, why I was there wasn’t important. The important thing is that I was there.
Shane Sawick was HIV-positive when we met, with a t-cell count of less than 200, which technically meant that he had AIDS. As we began dating, technical became actual very quickly, and within two years, he was dead.
When I’d first heard through a friend that Shane was interested in me, I was flattered, but didn’t give it much thought. He was HIV-positive, after all, and while I acted like it didn’t matter, it did. There was little hope back then, and I knew what the road ahead held. I had no desire to go down that path; I was afraid. Not for my physical health, as by then I was as knowledgeable as most doctors, but I feared what such loss could do to my soul. How can one begin to indulge in loving fully, knowing there is an expiration date? Why experience what you know will be fleeting? And how can you ever move forward again, having loved and lost?
The idea of a relationship with Shane scared the shit out of me, but I knew I had to face that fear, however messy. I’d beaten my fear of infection through education, and thought I might beat my emotional fears by confronting them. I chose love, in all its complexity, and found myself rewarded. Connecting to another, giving fully, putting his needs ahead of my own — these molded me into the man I am today. Experiencing horrific pain and sadness through his death and that of my friends created shadings within, deep pockets of understanding, ultimately making me a better human being, partner, and father.
Throughout the crisis, I met countless number doing everything possible to educate, empower, and eradicate a deadly disease, while a much larger number of people did nothing. Those of us engaged in the fight might not have done everything we should have, or could have, but the mere act of doing is what kept me sane, and maintaining a healthy respect for the disease kept me HIV-negative.
Love, mixed with more than a little bit of fear, is how I survived the plague.
Kergan Edwards-Stout’s debut novel about one man’s battle with AIDS, Songs for the New Depression, was winner of the 2012 Next Generation Indie Book Award in the LGBTQ category, shortlisted for the Independent Literary Awards and named one of the Top Books of 2012 by Out in Print and others.
Photography: Kergan Edwards-Stout as a child and in Hawaii (provided by author); Paul Staley (How to Survive a Plague); Kergan Edwards-Stout in a condom ad (Today Condoms) and performing in an AIDS Project Los Angeles safer sex education campaign as Biff Boffum, to Lawrence Jurado’s LaToya Latex (Ed Freeman); Shane Sawick (Ed Freeman); the author today with his family, Russ Noe, Mason and Marcus Edwards-Stout (Sara+Ryan Photography)
Cross-posted on Huffington Post and LGBTQ Nation.
Move Over, “Dear Abby.” “Ask Dr. Darcy” is Straight Talk for the Gay Community
Have you ever had a question on which you needed straight-shooting, professional advice? Dr. Darcy Sterling, a licensed clinical social worker based in the SoHo section of New York City, dishes up just that on a regular basis through her blog, YouTube channel, and her work with her wife, Stephanie Sterling, at Alternatives Counseling.
As a writer for Psychology Today and as a columnist for GO Magazine (which profiled Darcy and Stephanie’s wedding in 2009), Dr. Darcy has increasingly been tapped by media for commentary, such as for E! Entertainment’s When Women Kill. While certainly media-savvy, Darcy also has the credentials to back up her observations, having received a Master’s Degree in Social Work from Columbia University in 1996, and a Ph.D. from New York University in 2006.
Her style is direct and focused, both with media and clients alike, and Dr. Darcy graciously recently took time to chat with me about her tell-it-like-it-is “straight talk” and issues she sees within the LGBT community.
Kergan Edwards-Stout: I’m so glad we’re finally able to talk! I’ve been looking forward to this.
Dr. Darcy: Me too!
Kergan: I’m really curious about you and your approach to therapy. First, though, tell me a bit about yourself.
Darcy: I’m a Jersey girl! (laughing) I’m from Roseland, New Jersey, which is about 45 minutes from New York. When you grow up just outside the city, you tend to think that you’re a New Yorker. But once you’re here, living the life, you realize just how “off” you were! When I was younger, I didn’t have to strap my day’s belongings to me, and take subways and cabs, through all kinds of weather… It is a very different world than what I’d thought!
Kergan: What made you decide to make the move into the city?
Darcy: Both my graduate and post-graduate work was here, and I knew it was where I’d end up. Before I moved to New York, I was married–to a man. We were together over 13 years, but eventually we parted ways, and afterward, I knew I’d never date a man again. I’d always known I was bicurious, but hadn’t explored it until my 30s. So I moved to New York and started dating Steph. Moving to New York was empowering in many ways.
Kergan: How did you meet Stephanie?
Congratulations, Trebor Healey!
A big “congrats” to Trebor Healey, who was awarded his SECOND Publishing Triangle’s Ferro-Grumley award for gay fiction for A Horse Named Sorrow. I had the pleasure of meeting Trebor at Palm Springs Pride last year and enjoyed chatting with him. I went on to name his book my favorite of the year for Band of Thebes author survey, and also interviewed Trebor for Huffington Post and LGBTQ Nation.
Much deserved win.
Courtesy of Band of Thebes, here are all the winners:
Lots of repeat winners last night as Trebor Healey took his second Ferro-Grumley Award and former lifetime achievement winners Bechdel (2012) and Bram (2003) both won their nonfiction categories.
Lifetime achievement: John D’Emilio, author/co-author of Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America, Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities
, Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin
, The World Turned: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and Culture
, and Making Trouble: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and the University.
The Ferro-Grumley Award for LGBT Fiction: A Horse Named Sorrow by Trebor Healey
Debut Fiction: Monstress: Stories by Lysley Tenorio
Lesbian Nonfiction: Are You My Mother?
by Alison Bechdel
Gay Nonfiction: Eminent Outlaws by Christopher Bram
Lesbian Poetry: Song and Spectacle
by Rachel Rose
Gay Poetry: Looking for the Gulf Motel
by Richard Blanco
Listen to Ramble Redhead on “Songs for the New Depression”!
I had the wonderful opportunity to be interviewed by Tom on Ramble Redhead. Tom’s podcast hit over 500 episodes, which is a huge accomplishment, and I’m honored to be joining the long list of folks he’s interviewed. We chatted about my novel, Songs for the New Depression, as well as a whole host of other topics, and I hope you’ll give it a listen here!
Ramble Redhead can also be followed on Twitter and Facebook!
Provincetown Magazine Features Excerpt from “Songs for the New Depression”
I’m so grateful that a reader emailed me, noting they’d first discovered my novel by reading an excerpt in Provincetown Magazine. As I hadn’t seen the excerpt in print, this was a very pleasant surprise. I’ve always loved the time I’ve spent in P-town. It has given me both a sense of peace and community, and my vacations there have provided many memories. In fact, one of my new short stories, The Cape, which is in my forthcoming collection, Gifts Not Yet Given, takes place in Provincetown.
This past summer, Russ and I were fortunate enough to be able to take our kids to the Cape, and that wonderful week in P-town was the highlight. Thank you, Provincetown Magazine, and thanks to the wonderful reader who alerted me!
Excerpt from “Songs for the New Depression”
New Review says “Songs for the New Depression” Shines!
Very grateful for a new review in Arts & Understanding, a magazine devoted to HIV/AIDS, on Songs for the New Depression. The review (found on page 48) notes “the laughs make the book deceptively breezy. SONGS shines with psychological truth and historical accuracy.” Love it when folks “get it!”
Groundbreaking Gay Mystery Series Finally Comes to E-Book
In 1986, the United States looked very different than it does today. Ronald Reagan was president. It was the year of the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster and the blockbuster film Top Gun. LGBT people were largely marginalized. Latinos hadn’t yet become a surging political force. And while AIDS had begun claiming countless in the gay community, it was only in 1985 that the larger public became more fully aware, due to the sensationalized death of star Rock Hudson.
It was in this era of the so-called “Moral Majority”, a largely white, conservative, Christian view of America, that author Michael Nava crafted one of the most unlikely of literary heroes: Henry Rios, a gay, Latino criminal attorney with a passion for justice. Himself an outsider, Rios acted on behalf of those without a voice, often wrongly accused of crimes. While introduced in The Little Death, Rios would go on to solve mysteries in a series of seven books, culminating with Rag and Bone in 2001.
The Rios series would win five Lambda Literary Awards, and Nava was honored by The Publishing Triangle with the Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award for Gay and Lesbian literature.
As the revolutionary Henry Rios series finally comes to e-book, Michael Nava took time to share more with me about the development of the character, his thoughts on bringing an end to the Rios series, and his forthcoming novel, The City of Palaces.
Kergan Edwards-Stout: You first gained literary acclaim for your Henry Rios mystery series. How did the tales originate?
Michael Nava: I started writing the first novel almost as a lark in my last year at law school. I was working from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. at the Palo Alto jail, where I interviewed men who had been arrested to determine if they were eligible for immediate release on their own recognizance or would have to post bail the next day. Palo Alto didn’t have that much crime so I spent many nights just waiting around or trying to study. At some point, I started writing what became The Little Death; indeed the very first scene has Rios walking into a jail which was the Palo Alto jail.
Edwards-Stout: Your lead character, a gay Latino criminal attorney involved in solving mysteries, broke many barriers. Were you conscious of how groundbreaking he might be? (more…)
“Songs for the New Depression” lands on another Top Books of 2012 list!
My sincere thanks to Butterfly-O-Meter Books for including Songs for the New Depression on their Top 10 Books of 2012 list. I’m overwhelmed with the response to my novel, and truly appreciate the mention! Also, thanks to Out in Print, Alfred Lives Here, and QueerMeUp for inclusion on their lists as well. It has been a wonderful year, and I appreciate all of the notes from readers about how the novel has touched you.
The holidays encapsulate all of the bittersweet, subtle emotion I hoped to convey in the book. At times joyous, others sad, and still others sexy and raucous… Life is a wonderful mix, and I am grateful every day that I’m alive and able to experience and be moved by it.
I hope that you each have a wonderful holiday season!
Kergan
“Songs for the New Depression” named one of the “Top 5 Books of 2012″
I’m so grateful to having “Alfred Lives Here” name Songs for the New Depression as one of their Top 5 Books of 2012! What a thrill to be recognized. Here’s what it said:
Songs for the New DepressionA realistic touching beautiful story of a man battling AIDS, his life and friends and loves. The story goes from clever and funny to really hard to read because it is so sad and so real. I wrote a post about this one here. If you haven’t read it yet, read it now.
Add this to the wonderful inclusion on Out in Print’s Best Books of 2012 list, and I can easily say that I’ll always remember 2012. How wonderful to have had my book resonate with so many. I appreciate your emails, notes, and support, and look forward to introducing you to a new book in 2013!
Happy holidays,
Kergan
2012 Holiday Gift Guide recommends “Songs for the New Depression”!
What a thrill to have Songs for the New Depression land on Queer Me Up’s 2012 Holiday Gift Guide! 
Come to think of it, a red ribbon around this book might be just the ticket!
Happy holidays!
Legendary Author Michael Nava praises “Songs for the New Depression”
Coming out in the 1980′s, I eagerly devoured every LGBT book I could lay my hands on. Novels from such authors as Armistead Maupin, Larry Kramer, and Patricia Nell Warren filled my crate shelves. But given my even-earlier leanings toward the mysteries of such stalwarts as the Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, and Agatha Christie, the books of Michael Nava held particular appeal. An attorney, Nava created one of the most indelible and groundbreaking of characters in Henry Rios, a gay Latino criminal defense attorney, and his books were more than mere mysteries. He has been honored with five Lambda Literary Awards, and was also awarded the Publishing Triangle’s Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement Award for Gay and Lesbian literature.
I recently met Nava at Palm Springs Pride, where we were both signing our books, and was absolutely floored when he bought mine. (I was such a fan, I would’ve given it to him for free!) Still, even knowing he had it, I never expected him to read it, let alone contact me. Color me shocked when I received a lovely note from him on the novel. After a brief exchange, he sent me the following quote, which I’m so happy to share with all of you!
“Songs for the New Depression is an affecting novel, written with great literary flair. I particularly enjoyed its portrait of Los Angeles in the 80′s and 90′s, as well as the author’s brave willingness to write about the AIDS epidemic at a time when so many of us seem to want to forget that terrifying era. At times laugh aloud funny, and at other times intensely moving, it is the first of what I hope will be many books to come from Kergan Edwards-Stout. I recommend it.”
Such moments as this make all of the challenges of writing well worth it!
An Acclaimed Gay Author Surprises with Two New Novels
I first met fellow writer Trebor Healey at Palm Springs Pride, where we were both signing copies of our novels at the Authors’ Village. Given that the title of my first novel includes the word “depression” and his recent title contains the word “sorrow,” we quickly bonded over a shared lament of others trying to convince us to change our titles into something “more happy.” Feeling that our work embodies both joy and heartache, we each chose to stick with our original vision, and I’m happy to say that Healey’s new work, A Horse Named Sorrow, is as wonderful and nuanced as its title.
Healey’s debut novel, Through It Came Bright Colors, was awarded both the Violet Quill Award and the Publishing Triangle’s Ferro-Grumley Award for Fiction, making his new work highly anticipated. Entirely by happenstance, Healey found himself with his next two works both released on the same day. While A Horse Named Sorrow is a meditative tale set in San Francisco, Faun focuses on an adolescent boy discovering that his body is quickly morphing, but not into the expected stage of puberty.
Having just named A Horse Named Sorrow as my favorite LGBT read of 2012, I was pleased that Healey was able to take some time with me to discuss his work and inspirations.
Trebor, when we first met, we talked about the use of “sad” words in our novel titles. Why did you feel so strongly about your title for A Horse Named Sorrow?
Well, first of all, it’s a line from a Nick Cave song, and it’s a song I really love—the Carny Song—and it’s very much evocative of what San Francisco was to me at that time…a carnival, a circus, but a macabre one haunted by an enormous overarching sorrow. And when you think of how a horse plods along when it’s tired, it’s just such a perfect metaphor for the weight we feel when we carry sorrow. And we carry it. Grief is a profound experience, it’s one of the cardinal experiences if you will. But my book is not really a sad book; in many ways, it’s very comic and full of youthful enthusiasm, but it’s about something real, and one of the things the characters have to do—that we all have to do—is carry the sorrow of life with us until we are able to set it down or transform it into something else. I also think sorrow is a beautiful word—the symmetry of it, with the two r’s and two o’s, and the sound of it is wonderful. There is a lot to every word and we can experience it fully, and I think words in titles of artworks are important that way. They have a lot of work to do and they need to be good, full words.
In A Horse Named Sorrow, you vividly recreate San Francisco in the late 80’s and early 90’s. What is your impression/recollection of that period?
It was a very intense time—terrifying and urgent and enormously alive as only a place under siege can be. I came out into the AIDS crisis and the city was on fire in a million ways. There was anger and activism, art, conflict, love and sex, and the feeling that you were at the center of history on some level. Maybe we all feel that way when we are 21, but there was a vitality during that time that I’ve never experienced anywhere or anytime since. It was a time that demanded things of people. My brother was fighting cancer, I was working at an AIDS hospice and active in ACT UP and Queer Nation, I was meeting my first boyfriends, reading my first poems out loud to strangers in smoky cafes. It was a time of birth for me, I suppose, in all the pain and blood and wonder that birth entails. It was exciting, and yet that overarching sorrow was there, like the fog rolling in every night.
How did that then lead to this novel?
Well, the things that make you feel, in all the rawness of feeling, are what you write about, I suppose. I worked on this book for 15 years. I knew it was a book I had to write. And I had to get it right. And oddly, or maybe not, it wasn’t until I was in a place where I felt that intensely again—in Argentina where I lived for a year—that I was able to finally get it right.
One of the key images in the book is a bicycle, wrapped in different strings. How did that come to you?
I actually rode a bicycle across the country in the summer of 1986. It was an amazing way to travel, and felt to me like traveling by horse, which is how the whole horse/bike/sorrow metaphor first came together. The speed, the human scale, the way you had to maintain your vehicle and plot your trip. It’s very meditative and seemed a perfect style of journey for a person in need of retreat and reflection. As for the strings, I think that came from how kids used to tie strings around each other’s ankles and wrists, and the idea was that you’d make a wish, and when the string came off, the wish you’d made would come true. There is a lot about wishing in the book, both the good and the bad of it.
You have a very diverse body of work, having written everything from poetry, to erotica, to fantasy, to both non-fiction and fiction… As a writer, do you follow your muse, or do certain influences impact your decision of what to write next?
Out in Print names “Songs for the New Depression” one of their “Best Books of 2012″
I’m so grateful for Out in Print Reviews including Songs for the New Depression in their wrap up of the top books of the year; it is a career highlight for me. Not only does it affirm my instinct to write, but it also means that others may eventually discover my tale, and hopefully it will inspire and resonate.
Out in Print wrote, in part: “Brilliantly conceived and masterfully written… You’ll read this once for its emotional impact and again to see how the author achieves it. But no matter how many times you dive in, you’ll be impressed.”
My Christmas gift came early this year!
Band of Thebes’ Best LGBT Books of 2012
With LGBT bookstores shuttering and the consolidation of gay media resulting in reduced promotional opportunities for publishers and authors, few venues remain for discovering literature reflecting the gay experience. Happily, Stephen Bottum continues to provide one of the best sources for LGBT publishing news on his blog, Band of Thebes, which he began five years ago.
His site has garnered a devoted following of authors, publishers, and readers, with Band of Thebes providing a wonderful mix of book reviews, posts on LGBT authors, and the latest in literary news.
In 2009, he began asking authors to share their favorite LGBT reads of the year, in all genres — fiction, non-fiction, poetry, comics — leading to the creation of an annual author survey of the Best LGBT Books of the Year. His eagerly-awaited list for 2012 has just been released, and Stephen graciously took time to share with me more about his inspiration for starting the website, his love for literature, and his annual list of the year’s best.
Stephen, Sacred Band of Thebes refers to an army of 300 men in ancient Greece, which was comprised of 150 male couples. The theory was that by fighting alongside one’s partner, the desire to succeed would be stronger. What was it about that story which inspired you to select it as the name for your website?
As far as I can remember, the first men I understood to be gay were of an old school, Paul Lynde-ilk, who at the time frightened me with their snideness. My coming out was prolonged in part by not wanting to join the bitchfest. So the idea of gay warriors fighting for each other was very appealing, minus the mayhem and slaughter. My aim was to create a site to highlight queer writers and filmmakers and artists, and enrich an eager audience who might miss them in the mainstream media.
Where did your love for literature begin?
I terrorized my parents by giving up on books around nine or ten and refusing to read anything other than movie ads and TV listings. Then, at fourteen, I quit tennis, my friends started pursuing girls, and suddenly I discovered those gray blocks surrounding the cartoons in The New Yorker held words. After a few stories by Ann Beattie and Peter Cameron, I was hooked.
What prompted you to start your blog? Was there a void you saw that you wanted to fill?
Much as I’d like to take credit for reversing the mainstream’s shortfall of gay coverage, I’m sure it was my partner’s idea. Desperate for a way to shut me up, he kept saying, “Hey, you have all these opinions about books and movies, you should blog.”
You’ve been compiling your “Best Books” lists for a few years now. When you begin the process, do you have a strategy? A certain mix of authors to approach?
Maligned as she is, Tina Brown is absolutely right that a great magazine should be like a really good party, and the survey is the same: poets rubbing against porn stars, with the added challenge of balancing the L, G, B, and T, and fair representation of ethnicities. Beginning each spring, I keep a wish list of authors to approach, and I was very, very thrilled this year to have about 24 new participants, including Lisa Cohen, Ellis Avery, Rick Whitaker, Tendai Huchu, Ivan Coyote, Farzana Doctor, the cartoonist Justin Hall, Nick Krieger, whose memoir deserved all the attention Chaz Bono’s received, and young Scottish novelist Kerry Hudson, who is going to be the next Jeanette Winterson.
How do you feel about the mix of the contributing authors?
(more…)
The Best LGBT Books of 2012
One of my favorite websites, Stephen Bottum’s Band of Thebes, just released its list of authors’ top picks for the best in 2012 gay and lesbian literature. I was honored to have been asked to submit my favorite, and was thrilled to see two of my friends, Arthur Wooten and David G. Hallman, on the list. Congratulations, guys!
If you’re looking for interesting reads, check out this list!
The Rainbow Hour: An Interview with Kergan Edwards-Stout
I’m so thankful to GSHRadio’s Rainbow Hour for including me on yesterday’s show, in honor of World AIDS Day. What fun, to follow the hysterical “America’s #1 Tupperware salesgal” Dixie Longate! The hosts, Victor, Otto, Gregory, Steve, and I chat about HIV/AIDS, my novel, as well as my piece on Huffington Post, “Please Defriend Me,” which has had almost 130,000 facebook likes.
My section starts at 48:28! 
Thank you all!
It’s World AIDS Day. Does Anyone Care?
On March 5, 1995, the day I turned 30, I admitted my then-partner Shane Sawick into the hospital. He would not come out alive, dying just two weeks later, on March 22. While AIDS was the war he battled, he was ultimately done in by a skirmish with PML (Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy), a rare but usually fatal disease, which quickly took away Shane’s ability to speak, move, or even blink at will, though his brain continued to think, and process, and feel. It was devastating to watch a loved one undergo such a debilitating experience, and yet that act, of being both lover and caregiver, thoroughly transformed me as a human being. Indeed, I would not be the husband, father, writer, or person that I am were it not for that period of crisis during which my partner and friends died. As we head towards World AIDS Day, I find it perplexing that few seem willing to embrace, or even mention, the epidemic which so greatly impacted and altered the LGBT community. What is it about that era that frightens us so?
The easy answer might be that disease and death make people uncomfortable, which, to some degree, is understandable. Prior to Shane’s death, my best friend of eight years and I were inseparable (I’ll call him Pete.) At the time, I couldn’t have imagined a better friend. Pete made me laugh, kept me company, and ushered me through my West Hollywood “coming out.” Once Shane got sick, however, Pete disappeared. He never called, or came to visit us in the hospital, despite knowing that I was there 24/7. Whenever queried by friends as to his absence, Pete would say, “Oh, you know–me and hospitals. I just don’t like the idea of sickness.”
It wasn’t until the day of Shane’s memorial that I next saw Pete. He came up, noting “Great service!,” before the next words came out of his mouth: “Wanna hit Happy Hour later?” Needless to say, I chose to end that friendship, as well as others in which people could not grasp the emotional magnitude of what had happened to me, and others like me. The depth of my experiences caused a change within, which required a new support system willing and able to tackle the “hard stuff,” no matter how unpleasant.
For some, the era of losing friends and loved ones has been difficult to revisit, due to the emotional toll taken. Many have gone to great lengths to separate themselves from the pain, moving from the most-hit urban centers to smaller, more rural towns. Others have gone into emotional hiding, losing themselves in drug or drink, or in simply shutting down, so as not to feel the ache of such loss. And some have, by necessity, focused on rebuilding their broken circle of friends.
New causes, such as marriage equality, have replaced AIDS as our community’s priority, and it is hard to argue that rallying for wedding cake isn’t more fun that protesting for HIV drugs. Still, we should not have to choose between the two.
These days, activism for many means little more than clicking “like” on a Facebook post. While thousands stepped into the streets in the aftermath of Prop 8, we’ve not seen anything on that scale for HIV/AIDS in years. At what point did we become complacent? Is having a drug that makes the disease “manageable” really all we want? What happened to a cure–or a vaccine?
Today, people still die from AIDS. While drug advancements have substantially decreased that number, it has also created the false-belief that contracting the disease is essentially meaningless. To some, taking one pill a day is an easy trade-off to having to wear condoms.
Most disturbing, however, is the sheer number to whom AIDS just doesn’t matter, having relegated it to a page in history. When I mention having lost a partner or friends, I’m most often met with a blank stare or a cursory nod, with no real emotional acknowledgement of what that time meant, and continues to mean.
During the AIDS crisis, the LGBT community rose to the occasion, stepping in to take care of our own when the government, pharmaceutical companies, and other organizations couldn’t–or wouldn’t. LGBT people exhibited incredible bravery, tackling huge monoliths with acts of daring creativity and passion. Were it not for our take-no-prisoners approach, we would not have the HIV drugs we do today.
The crisis temporarily brought together both genders, as women stepped into vacant leadership roles and helped those stricken by acting as caregivers. Today, that gender divide has returned, with little reciprocity from gay men for the causes dear to lesbians, such as breast or cervical cancer. In many ways, we’ve gone back to being strangers, with a debt left unpaid.
Other communities, devastated by tragedy, have managed to turn such markers into rallying cries, and the LGBT community must find a way to do the same with AIDS. Just as the Jewish people dealt with the Holocaust, and the African American community responded to slavery and the civil rights struggle, so too must our community find a way to embrace that era, fully honoring both those we lost and what we gained.
For we did gain much. We learned that, far from being the weak and passive individuals many of us had been stereotyped, we actually had strength, passion, and guts, and we fully demonstrated that to the world. We took on “the powers that be” and created real, tangible change. We literally bloodied ourselves for the cause, and yet today, speaking of AIDS feels almost taboo.
Does that have anything to do with the disease being sexually transmitted? Having worked so hard to combat the myth that being gay is to be “sick,” did the emergence of a sexually transmitted disease take us back to a place of shame? Does that shame still linger?
To be clear, I am not remotely nostalgic for the days of the AIDS crisis. I lost too many, and it hurt too much. But at the same time, I’m thankful that I was able to play a part in helping to educate others about HIV, through my work at AIDS Project Los Angeles. I’m grateful to my dear friends who allowed me to be with them during their final days. I’m profoundly changed, for the better, for having ushered my partner Shane to his death. And I’m forever in awe of the efforts our community took to respond to the crisis in unimaginably creative and lasting, impactful ways.
I just wished others cared as well.
Kergan Edwards-Stout’s debut novel, Songs for the New Depression, was loosely inspired by his partner, Shane Sawick, and his experiences during the AIDS crisis. It won the 2012 Next Generation Indie Book Award in the LGBTQ category, and was shortlisted for the Independent Literary Awards in the same category.
Cross-Posted on Huffington Post and LGBTQ Nation.
Thank You to My Readers!
I wanted to express my sincere gratitude to all who’ve taken the time to read either my articles on Huffington Post, LGBTQ Nation, and Bilerico Project, or my novel, Songs for the New Depression. Since the book’s release just over a year ago, I’ve met many wonderful people, including one terrific man who’s read my novel four times and came to the West Hollywood Book Fair, just so we could meet. I’m humbled that anything I’ve written could so impact another, and cherish the inherent responsibility which accompanies it.
From beginning to end, my novel took 12 years to write and publish, and it is gratifying to have people discover it. Conversely, my “Please De-Friend Me” article was written early one morning, in less than an hour, when I couldn’t sleep, and at this writing has over 124,000 facebook likes! The power of social media is simply staggering…
In the past months, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting readers at the West Hollywood Book Fair, Homo-Centric, and Palm Springs Pride, and these interactions have touched me deeply. I value “connection”, and believe that our common humanity has the power to enlighten us and lift up our souls.
I’ve been working on a new book, a collection of short stories called Gifts Not Yet Given, which will be published next year, and as we head toward the holiday season, I can’t think of any better gift for an author than the responses of readers. Your feedback and support mean more than you’ll ever know, so please keep it coming!
Thank you,
Kergan
A U.S. President’s Great-Great-Grandson’s Big Gay Vampire Novel
While it may come as a surprise to learn that Ulysses S. Grant’s great-great-grandson, Ulysses Grant Dietz, serves as Chief Curator for New Jersey’s Newark Museum, it might come as a bigger surprise that he is also an author, with two gay vampire titles under his belt. Dietz is one of the few people I know who has managed to incorporate his many disparate passions into unified whole: he is a father, with two teenage children; he has a job he loves, overseeing the museum’s impressive decorative arts collection; he reads voraciously, reviewing most everything he reads; he is the author of two novels and five non-fiction titles; and he is an out gay man, proudly advocating on behalf of the LGBT community.
In 1998, Alyson Books released his first book, Desmond: A Novel About Love and the Modern Vampire, which went on to be nominated for a Lambda Literary award in the Science Fiction/Fantasy category. Now, after a 14-year wait, his fans finally have their hands on his much-anticipated sequel, Vampire in Suburbia, which has finally hit the stores.
Thank you so much for sharing some of your time, Ulysses. The obvious first question is, why so long between novels?
In a word: children. I was polishing up Desmond during the kids’ naps while on parental leave back in 1997, and once it was published, the rest of my life distracted me from writing fiction. I’ve been thinking about it for a long, long time.
What inspired your first novel, Desmond?
In part, every vampire novel I’d read, from Dracula (which I read in middle school, the first time) to Anne Rice’s novels. Specifically, when I wrote the first draft of Desmond back in 1988, Rice’s Queen of the Damned had just appeared. Desmond as a character is my direct response to Rice’s Louis, as well as Lestat. In fact, as my book opens, Desmond has just finished reading Queen of the Damned.
What was it about this character, Desmond Beckwith, that compelled you to continue his story?
In the first book, Desmond is surprised by love. He has resigned himself to a life alone over the course of two centuries. Yet he lives in the world. He has secrets he has to keep from the world. It’s a delicate balance he maintains; and then the carefully constructed life he’s made for himself is shattered by the appearance of Tony Chapman. Desmond is a romantic; although he’s a vampire, he loves life. In the second book, Desmond gradually realizes that he doesn’t really like living in isolation, without friends. It’s this quest for connection that drives him. At the end of the first book his story was, in a sense, only beginning. I had to write the second book to bring Desmond’s personal search to some sort of closure.
In the blurb for Vampire in Suburbia, it notes that Desmond is handsome, rich, gay, a vampire, and he’s looking for a house in Jersey. So, I gotta ask, is he related to Snooki?
Actually, I confess that, after a martini with a friend, I’ve joked about a third book called Vampire Down the Shore; but I haven’t figured out how I might work Snooki into the plot.
But seriously, the setting for the second book is something I’d thought about for years. It literally takes place where I live, in suburban Essex County, including within the museum where I have been a curator for thirty-two years. Desmond ends up in New Jersey in the wake of 9/11. His New York office is near Ground Zero, and Desmond, quite simply, is afraid. So he moves his company to Newark, to one of the many office towers near Newark’s great art deco Penn Station – just ten miles from Manhattan. I’ve set the book in 2009, just after he regenerates (as my vampires do) back to the age he was created: twenty one. He realizes that, this time around, he doesn’t want to start all over again and simply leave behind the people who became his friends over the past 44 years. He also finds himself yearning for two things he gave up in the eighteenth century: land, and a family. It’s not your usual vampire story, but I’m as much a romantic as Desmond is.
Given your lineage, did you ever have any pushback? You know, a descendant of one of our nation’s presidents, publishing a novel about gay vampires?
Not yet. I’m on the board of the Ulysses S. Grant Presidential Library, but I don’t think any other board members have read it, or are likely to. I’m a little more anxious about my professional world, because the book has a whole curator theme going and my colleagues in the field are buying it to be supportive. I’ve talked it up on my Facebook page and people are intrigued. I keep telling them that it’s not really for them – but what can I do? They’ll figure it out. I’m imaging lots of embarrassed silence. I don’t think the Civil War buffs are going to even notice it exists.
Do you ever feel any added pressure that comes from your heritage? A responsibility to be a role model?
Oh, sure. But being a role model, living up to my name, is the whole reason behind my determination to live my life out and proud. It’s the reason I’ve refused to use a pseudonym on these books, as if I have something to hide in writing them. I’ve had to instill that pride in my kids, and that pride includes being gay as much as it includes being a great-great-grandson of a president. Living my life with integrity – as Ulysses S. Grant did – without regard to what people say, is my way of being a role model.
How did your decision to speak out on marriage equality come about? You wrote a piece for one of the New Jersey papers about same gender marriage…
I’d forgotten I actually wrote that! I’m remembering it as an interview. It was for the Newark Star-Ledger back in 2009, and I was actually photographed in the Ballantine House – my main gallery space in the Museum, which is featured in Vampire in Suburbia. I can’t remember who contacted me or why – but marriage equality was and is a big issue here, and the fight for marriage, not just civil union, is something I’ve been interested in for years. My partner Gary and I have been involved in gay politics in New Jersey for thirty years. We know a lot of people.
You and Gary have been together for 37 years now. How did you first meet?
We met at Yale, specifically at the Gay Alliance at Yale. I remember the day vividly. I was a junior, and Gary had just graduated and was working for the Yale Computer Center. He’s a software engineer. It was October 1975 and I had just turned twenty. He was my first date ever.
That is amazing! Long before my partner and I adopted, you and Gary became parents. That must have been trailblazing… What was that experience like?
I guess we were pioneers. We had lesbian friends who had started families; and our brothers each had children who were very much in our lives; so we were primed for a while before it dawned on us that we could have our own children. Surrogacy was not legally possible in New Jersey then, so we decided to go with adoption. We tried domestic adoptions, but after one particularly heartbreaking failure, we decided to look into international adoptions. At that time international adoptions were possible for gay couples – but one of the two partners had to essentially disappear, and the other one had to adopt as a single person.
That must have been challenging…
I kept a detailed journal for four years once this process started. It reads like a Tolstoy tragedy. It was a very rough four years. Several failures, including a disastrous venture in Russia where Gary spent a month in Siberia with our baby – only to have the child taken away from him and the adoption canceled by someone somewhere in the bureaucracy who felt that no man could have a good reason to want to raise a child alone.
But eventually we succeeded – and succeeded on two separate adoptions within a month of each other. So our son, Alex, and our daughter, Grace, arrived and changed our lives in 1996. I adopted them through a second-parent adoption a year or so later. We didn’t even have a domestic partnership, but we were legally bound together by our children – our names are on their US birth certificates. It was amazing. And once you have your children, all the bad memories fade away.
I know reading is one of your main passions. Have you read anything recently that you couldn’t put down?
Reading is an addiction with me. I always have my Kindle with me. I love young adult novels, written for teenagers, that have gay themes. I just finished Benjamin Alire Saenz’s beautiful book Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe. It’s about a Mexican-American teenager in El Paso who finds a best friend one summer. The friendship between the boys is beautiful; but what I loved most was the importance of the parents. Many young adult novels marginalize the parental figures – as teenagers themselves try to do. But Saenz makes the parents important, and makes their love for their sons crucial in the narrative. It’s a wonderful book.
With your unique worldview, as an out gay dad, partner, author, reader, curator, etc., what do you see as the biggest issues facing the LGBT community?
What I see as the biggest issue facing our community is our complacence in the face of the upwelling of right-wing religiosity in this country, in the secular world and especially in politics. I came out in the 1970s, before AIDS, and things have improved so much since then it’s hard to believe. But, for all the acceptance my family and I have experienced in our little bubble of diversity in Maplewood, New Jersey, there is a significant anti-gay world out there trying to figure out how to undo all the progress we’ve made. I’m a devout Episcopalian, by the way, and church is important to me; but I feel somewhat like an assimilated Jew in Germany in the early 1930s, who felt that they were safe and beyond harm. There are young gay folk who talk about the world being “post-gay,” and it’s just not true. Not yet.
Hopefully, that day will come soon. Lastly, you are so entrenched in arts and culture. What impact do you think those have on us as people, and as a society?
That’s a loaded question. Look, I’ve given my life to the Newark Museum. I believe in art and the power of art to transform lives. My entire career has been dedicated to connecting people with objects; to telling stories that help people see the world in a slightly different way. I help people fall in love with the things I love. My non-fiction books have been part of my curatorial life; my novels are just another aspect of that story-telling instinct.
The books of Ulysses Grant Dietz can be found on Amazon, with more information on his publisher’s website.
Author photo courtesy of the Newark Museum.
Cross-posted on Huffington Post and LGBTQ Nation.
Please De-Friend Me
PLEASE DE-FRIEND ME.
If you plan to vote for Mitt Romney, you are putting a nail into my civil rights coffin, and I’d rather not have friends who think I deserve anything less than equal treatment under the law. Romney supports DOMA (which directly and negatively impacts me, restricting my partner Russ, our kids, and my federal protections and tax benefits under the law), and has noted his support for an anti-marriage equality amendment as well. While you may see your vote for him as one about the economy (and we can debate who’d be better for that until the cows come home), what you INTEND by your vote really doesn’t matter. Your vote means that you are supporting someone who not only thinks I’m not equal to you, but who works vigorously to ensure my “less-than” legal status. Your vote for him means that you are totally fine with me being treated with disrespect.
Now, you may see this as an indication that I am being too “single minded”, and I’ll admit that when you’re denied even the simplest of human considerations, it makes it difficult to look beyond that. But this is about much more than my treatment under the law. Who I am and what I believe passionately in are also things which Romney discounts. I believe in full and fair treatment of ALL people, but Romney believes that women should not receive equal pay for equal work. I believe we need to take care of our earth, even if it means tightening our belts, but Romney favors further deregulation over environmental concerns. I think it is our duty to support things like art and culture (I view them as essential), but Romney disparages the role these play in enriching our lives; he sees them as extraneous and will cut public funding. I believe, just as education is a right, healthcare is as well, but Romney wants to abolish the Affordable Care Act. I care about those less fortunate and the elderly, and think it is our collective responsibility to ensure their well-being, but in Romney’s eyes, these people are victims and moochers. In short, who I am isn’t just who I love, it is the things I feel passionately about. And Romney stands against almost all of them.
BOTTOM LINE: I don’t care who you are–whether you are my relation by blood or a longtime acquaintance, I don’t want “friends” who don’t think I’m as good as they are. I want friends who value me, who see my worth as a human being, and who fully support my equal protections under the law. So, if you’re voting for Romney, whether you follow me on twitter or facebook, please de-friend me. You won’t hurt my feelings. I won’t cause a big stink. In fact, you’ll be creating space in my life for others to come in who do feel that my being here on the planet matters.
I’M NOT INTERESTED IN DEBATING THIS. PLEASE RESPECT MY WISHES.
- Kergan
Cross-posted on Bilerico Project and Huffington Post. Photography by Sara + Ryan.
The Making of an Anti-Equality Politician: Elizabeth Emken
The vision stays with me, even after all these years. I’m in junior high, and I’ve just looked into the eyes of an overweight girl, having just delivered a devastatingly cruel blow. Her bright blue eyes, haunted and broken, serve as lingering reminders of how destructive words can be, and I’ve often wished I could take that moment back. Little did I know that girl, Elizabeth Emken, would years later run for public office, in an attempt to unseat California Senator Dianne Feinstein. Today, she campaigns on an anti-gay platform, forcing me to wonder if my cutting remarks played any role in influencing the person she would become, and how she could come to take such a stance, given the many gay friends she once had.
Despite our rocky start, once we arrived at Los Alamitos High School, Elizabeth and I would go on to become friends, and she introduced me to what I called the “choir gang.” This rag-tag band would never be the popular folks, but instead was united by both talent and outsider status. As Cheryl Bhence, now a married mother of two, notes, “We were all misfits, so we all kind of fit together like a puzzle.” While all members of the group were equals, Emken, in many ways, was the wheel’s center spoke.
“I remember that Elizabeth was kind and had the capacity to be vulnerable, a quality I still admire in people,” says Neil Fischer, who now lives in the Bay Area. “There was also something steely and resourceful about her. She laughed easily and seemed utterly accepting of who I was, at the time.”
While Fischer wasn’t yet out to himself, in the years following high school, almost all of the male members of this group would come out as gay, myself included. This long list included Emken’s best friend, David Alexander Diaz, making Emken’s current anti-marriage equality views more than a bit puzzling. David and Elizabeth attended proms and winter formals together, and were so close that Elizabeth even named her son Alex, in his honor.
Diaz first met Elizabeth as a freshman, when he auditioned for the school play, on which she was the student director. “We very quickly connected and bonded, becoming best friends,” Diaz recalls. At that time, Diaz had not yet come out as gay. “While I was aware that I had feelings towards men, I couldn’t imagine that being gay was even an option for me.”
When Emken introduced Diaz to this group of choir folks, he felt immediately welcomed. He wasn’t yet aware that most of the men in the group were gay, but “I knew they were like me on some level. These were guys who loved theater and music, and didn’t much care for sports. We were aware of our commonalities, but our sexuality was never acknowledged.”
“I remember all their smiles,” notes Fisher. “All those guys had such easy, generous smiles.”
There were times when the group’s outsider status led to name-calling. Cheryl Bhence recalls that the men in the group were often teased about being gay. “At the time, none of them had yet come out, so I remember spending effort to defend their sexuality, which I had assumed was hetero. Knowing they were gay wouldn’t have changed my perspective of any of them; I just wouldn’t have had to stand up for them to the hecklers.”
For most of the men, sexuality was not yet on their radar. “I was not entirely aware of what it meant to have a gay identity, nor that such an identity was developing in me,” says Fischer. “At the time, I had no idea how to explore whatever gay stirrings I allowed to come to the surface of my consciousness. In high school, I had crushes on other boys that did not involve sexual fantasies, because I wouldn’t let my mind go there.”
“I was still pretty innocent back then,” Diaz recalls. “Most of the guys were dating the girls, escorting them to prom and other functions, and I guess I pretty much took things at face value. They were dating girls, so must have been straight, right?”
Part of what allowed such assumptions to continue was that, by and large, the group was both close-knit and wholesome. “I have so many wonderful memories,” says Bhence. “I remember the volleyball-a-thon: we played for 24 hours straight to raise money to pay for our choir tour up the California coast. But probably the weekend nights were the best, when we would hang out at one of our houses, eat M&Ms and chips with onion dip, and play silly kid games like Hide & Seek and Red Rover.”
This was not a party or gossip crowd, where the absence of actual sexual activity might have been noticed, which made it a safe place for the gay men still finding their way. “While other kids might have been out on weekends, getting drunk, we were all at someone’s house, playing Risk all night,” Diaz remembers. “All of our activities were silly, fun-filled, and wholesome.”
“We shared the ability to have fun without substances, like alcohol or drugs,” Bhence notes, going on to elaborate that she “had a terrible crush on [one of the boys], but I never told him in high school, as he always seemed interested in other girls; he took various girls to each of the formal dances.”
This focus on friendship and innocent fun helped give cover to the men, struggling to understand their sexuality, while their attendance with the women at events allowed the women to believe that the men were indeed straight.
“I hoped and wanted to be straight, and just assumed that, at some point, it would happen,” Diaz relates. “I had an ideal woman in my mind, and just felt that I’d meet her and everything would fall into place.”
While that may have been his goal, Diaz found himself confused when Emken expressed her love for him, thinking that the two should be a couple. He elaborates that when he told Emken that he didn’t feel the same, they found their friendship challenged. “Elizabeth is an aggressive and assertive woman, and she was then as well. She couldn’t understand how we could have such a strong bond, and yet me not feel the same desires she did.”
Even with this new challenge, Emken and Diaz didn’t sever ties. Caught between friendship and the question of something deeper, the two pushed through an intense season of figuring out who they were – talking constantly, writing letters, and sharing hopes and dreams.
“I cared deeply for her and would have liked to be what she saw me as,” Diaz said. “But there was a part of me that I compartmentalized, which was the experience of attraction to men.”
Prior to her friendship with Diaz, Emken had a similarly intense friendship with Tim Radi, a fellow member of the group, not realizing that he too would later come out as gay. “It was the same pattern as with me,” Diaz states. “She had intense feelings for him, but he didn’t want to date her. It was as if history were repeating itself.”
While some of their issues were about the degrees of friendship each desired, other obstacles for Emken and Diaz’ friendship included her mother. “Elizabeth’s parents were divorced,” he notes, “and her mother was very difficult. To be perfectly blunt, she was prejudiced, and the fact that I am of Cuban heritage was looked down on in her family. That was the first time in my life I was discriminated against for being Hispanic.”
At the time, Emken was furious with her mother’s treatment of Diaz, and he notes the irony that today Emken herself views him, politically, as a second-class citizen. “She’s become a lot more like her mother than even she’d admit.”
Not only were Emken’s two high school sweethearts unable to return her love, but one of them later died, with Radi’s death from AIDS being the first such death many in the group had experienced. “A bunch of us had a personal memorial for him at his graveside,” Bhence remembers. “At the time, his family didn’t seem ready to accept his diagnosis, so we didn’t pressure them to explain things to us.”
Still, Emken was always supportive of Diaz’s sexual journey. After high school, Diaz began to “act out” sexually through anonymous encounters, leaving Diaz frightened, ashamed and confused, and he sought Emken’s advice. She seemed to believe, as many do, that being gay was something Diaz could control. “She wasn’t judgmental,” Diaz said. “She just saw my actions as something I could simply stop, if I really tried.”
The next year, Diaz came out to Emken, acknowledging his orientation in full. “She was very loving and accepting, which makes her stance today hurt all the more,” Diaz said.
Years later, when he became HIV-positive at age 30, Diaz again confided in Emken. Her support never wavered, but their friendship began to wane.
“During that brief window in the Prop 8 battle when gay marriages in California were legal, my partner and I got married. Elizabeth was entirely supportive, treating us as equals.”
Prior to her political debut, Emken was mainly a stay-at-home mom, who both worked with an autism agency, because her son Alex is autistic, and sold Tupperware. “The drive you see in Elizabeth today has always been there. In typical Elizabeth-fashion, she became one of the state’s best Tupperware salespeople. And we ended up having a big gay Tupperware party at our house, including Elizabeth’s college roommate, who is lesbian, and her wife, with Elizabeth presiding over the entire event.”
Given their close relationship and the many life moments they experienced together, it came as a shock to Diaz when he learned of Emken’s candidacy platform. “I got a very timid email from Elizabeth, where she shared, almost apologetically, that she was running for public office. While I normally would have been thrilled, I was thoroughly confused when I went to her website and saw where she stood on the issues. Among her many policy points, she noted that marriage should only be between a man and a woman. I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach.”
While Diaz had long known of her conservative roots, Emken’s public stance confused him. “I’d always known that she was a Republican,” he acknowledges. “I knew of her mother’s more staunch views, and that Elizabeth was fiscally conservative, but somehow I’d allowed myself to believe that Elizabeth would be a different kind of Republican.”
“I kept thinking, ‘but we’re friends, Elizabeth,’” Diaz recalls. “I couldn’t rationalize how she could have taken that position.”
Diaz reached out, via email, in an attempt to understand her actual belief, only to be met with silence. “I told her I was thrilled for her, seeking a political office, as I’d always known she was meant for great things. Still, I also told her how hurt I was, as part of her platform was designed to deny me my basic rights, and asked her to explain how she’d come to this anti-gay stance. Realizing that she may not want to put such thoughts in writing, I asked her to call me, so we could talk it over, but that phone call never came.”
Given her friendship with those in the group, Diaz was not the only one upset by her viewpoint. “It’s sad to me that she has decided to side with those who want to deny gays the right to legally marry,” says Fischer. “There is the usual cynical assumption: she has taken this position for political expediency; she believes she cannot represent the Republican base of her party without touting one of its most visible platforms; she cannot win the November election unless she shows herself to be as contrary to Feinstein as possible.”
“The list of people she betrayed with this stance is a long one. It includes me, her best friend, as well as every guy in our high school group, and her college roommate. It makes no sense,” Diaz notes. “Still, there was a part of me that held out hope; that I’d misunderstood her, and that there was a more subtle, nuanced approach to her belief that hadn’t been properly expressed.”
“I lost such sleep over this,” he confides. “I cried, late at night, feeling so betrayed.”
It would be over a year until Diaz received a response. “I got an email, with a link to an article titled something like ‘Republicans Finally Coming Around to Gay Marriage,’ with a very short note that said ‘Look–there is progress being made!’”
While Diaz appreciated her support, he wasn’t interested in how other Republicans viewed same-gender marriage; it was her view which mattered, and he again reached out for clarification.
It was only then that Diaz got a more lengthy response. Emken sent an email, saying that she couldn’t understand how her policy points had become an issue between them. “’No matter what your political beliefs,’ she said, ‘I will always be your friend,’” Diaz remembers. “But as I replied to her, ‘Imagine, for a moment, if I were a black person, and you were running on a racist platform. Can you see how that might be an issue?’ No matter what our relationship had been, there are certain things in life that are deal-breakers. As I wrote to her, ‘If you are using a wedge issue like this simply to gain power, I can’t support that. I have more self-esteem than that.’ And that was the end of our communication.”
When asked to describe Emken, as she was when they first met, Diaz uses words such as driven and ambitious. “Her running for office today is not a surprise to me.” In fact, Diaz recounts the moment he first introduced Emken to his mother. “I distinctly recall my mom saying, ‘That girl could be President, if she wants to be.’”
Despite similar upbringings and experiences the “choir gang” has grown into adulthood with varying worldviews and splintered friendships. As one of the women noted, who wishes to remain anonymous, “I think it has a whole lot less to do with being middle class and one’s religious affiliation, as it has to do with early influences, models, experiences and inclinations. In my case, I was raised in a Catholic home by parents who were passionate and active in issues having to do with social justice, and had an embracing attitude towards learning about and welcoming all walks of life. It’s carried me throughout my life.”
Despite the contrary teachings of her faith, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Bhence says she supports marriage equality. “I’m a member of a church that does not support marriage equality, and yet I still love my church. I think about myself being divorced and remarried, and I’m allowed to do that, but my friend, Bill, who has been with his partner since we graduated high school, isn’t. His relationship is a better tribute to marriage than I am.”
Following the passage of California’s anti-marriage equality measure, Prop 8, Bhence shares, “I remember being in church the Sunday after it passed. I was so discouraged, but I was trying to understand. In my church, we sing a hymn prior to partaking of the Sacrament that represents Christ’s body and blood. On this particular Sunday, the hymn’s scripture was Hebrews 13:4. It says ‘Marriage is honorable in all, and the bed undefiled: but whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.’ The message I got from this is that now may not be the time, but take courage, continue the fight, it will happen.”
“A lesbian couple living together devotedly for the 40 years cannot legally marry, though two drunken straight people can meet in Vegas and hours later walk off with a legitimate marriage license,” Fischer notes. “This kind of absurdity appalls me still.”
In Diaz’ view, Emken should understand the importance marriage holds, given the battle Emken herself fought with her mother when it came time for her own nuptials. “When Elizabeth got married, she actually wanted me to be her ‘best man,’ rather than have a maid of honor, as I was her best friend. But her mother refused, saying it would be ridiculous for a man to be part of the bride’s wedding party,” he recalls. “She had to fight her family to get me into her wedding party, where, as a compromise, I ended up on the groom’s side. Instead of me as her ‘best man,’ Elizabeth had a cousin she wasn’t as close to stand in as maid of honor.”
The girl I first met in junior high is very different from the woman that now stands on California’s political stage. Then she was the victim to my thoughtless taunts because of her weight. She was victim to abandonment from her father and to romantic rejection from gay men. She was resilient and a loving friend, supportive of her gay friend’s journey through life and sexuality. But now, she stands publicly against his right to a legitimate marriage with the man he loves.
While Emken won’t comment on how she became the woman she is today, her friends, although angry and confused, still hold kind thoughts of her.
“I don’t demonize her. Mostly, I feel sad for her,” Fischer said. “I’d like to know what happened to that competent, compassionate thinker that I knew. She must still hold within her that high school self, the one that befriended so many gay men.”
Group photo and photo of David Diaz and Elizabeth Emken (1981 Senior Prom) provided by David Diaz. Group photo, top row: Elizabeth Emken, Maria Simeone, David Diaz, Cheryl Bhence, Diana Gregory, Scott Maher. Bottom row: Felicia Weisbrot Berschauer, Bill Boyson, Craig Swartz (now Emken’s husband), Kathy Pierce.
Senate candidacy photo from Elizabeth Emken’s website.
Cross-posted on Huffington Post and Bilerico Project.
Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Photographing LGBT Families, But Were Afraid to Ask
Accompanying a recent Huffington Post article I wrote was a photo of my family, taken by Sara + Ryan Photography. That one photo resulted in so many terrific comments and queries from readers about the duo’s work, which is primarily focused on LGBT families, that I thought it would be fun to learn more about them and their journey to their photographic specialty. Both were happy to share how they became straight allies for LGBT equality and to specialize in photographing our unique community.
Given that you are both straight, how did you come to specialize in photographing LGBT families?
Sara: My sister is gay, as well as my best friend, and both have long term partners, but we didn’t necessarily intend to specialize in LGBT families and couples, though we always knew we would be open to it. With both of these couples, however, we found that neither had ever had professional photos taken, until our sessions with them, as they felt it might be awkward to get pictures taken at a portrait studio.
So they felt more comfortable, given your relationship?
Sara: Yes, because they knew that we were completely comfortable with them being themselves. After that, we started getting a lot of referrals. Of course, we still photograph straight families as well, but most of our clientele is now in the LGBT community.
Ryan: We talked to a lot of same-sex couples who’d had previous experiences, where photographers had assured that they had experience photographing same-sex couples, only to feel that the photographer was a bit uneasy during the shoot, whether being uncomfortable personally, or in attempting to pose the couple as a traditional straight couple might be. (more…)
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