Pride (In the Name of Love)
Learning How to Be Gay, and Becoming a Better Writer
It’s not really a surprise that my life didn’t really get started until I came out and got comfortable being gay. Those two things didn’t go together, I might add.
I’d been miserable for so long and believed so intensely that it was because I was stifled in the closet that it kind of came as a shock when I came out and voila—all my problems and issues were solved, glitter came raining down from the heavens, and I rode a unicorn across a rainbow into the welcoming arms of my community. No, that didn’t happen, and in fact, while it was an enormous relief not to hide it anymore…really, nothing else changed much. I was still miserable, still didn’t have any friends, and lived in a city I hated working at a job I really wasn’t terribly fond of, either.
The mediocre white man training instilled in me when I was growing up still expected everything to be easy for me, and things to be handed to me without me putting any effort into it.
But coming out was also an impetus to get me back to writing again. I had started a novel, horror, and it wasn’t really going very well for me…until I discovered the young adult mystery/horror category was pretty strong. I started reading some of it (Christopher Pike, R. L. Stine, Caroline Cooney, Lois Duncan, and Jay Bennett, among others) and thought, maybe it would be easier to try writing for teens than 1adults? Part of this horror novel is set in high school—maybe just cut everything else and just write the high school stuff?
That became Sara, and without even rereading it or editing it or anything, I started writing the next one, which was Sorceress. I still wasn’t writing queer characters yet, but there was always a character who I coded queer without actually saying so. Both manuscripts took me about a year to complete, around my job and traveling and reading. I did start a third, Sleeping Angel, but when I had my big epiphany about my life and what was wrong with it, I abandoned it about half-way through…but of the three, it was my favorite.
The epiphany was about my life overall, on many levels, but what I want to primarily focus on here is my writing and the other issues I had that were making me miserable: no friends, I hated where I lived, and I hated my job. I also assumed that since I was still single at thirty-three with no prospects, I was going to be single for the rest of my life, so why not have some fun?
The great irony is that once I decided I didn’t want to be miserable anymore, everything changed. There really is something to that energy thing, I think2; I projected misery and unhappiness, and who wants to be around that? I decided I wanted to move to New Orleans, and started trying to figure out how to make that happen for myself. I still hated my job, but thought if I stuck to the writing thing and made it happen, I might be able to quit—or at least go part-time, which would make the job a lot more bearable. I also decided to travel more and enjoy myself a lot more than I had before.
And you know what? I actually started enjoying myself.
I was writing still—I always carried a journal with me, and the ones from my airline years are filled with scribblings in green ink (we had to use green ink on anything official—mainly because most people never carried green pens with them), and revisiting that last year I was at the airline’s journals, the tenor and tone of the writings is different. I can tell that I am happier—still not completely over my selfish narcissism at that time, but was getting better—and am making plans most of the time. But I wasn’t really working on a novel or anything; the journal was pretty much all I was writing until I met Paul and realized I should write about gay men and stop writing about straight people (whom I’ve never really understood), but I didn’t really know much about actually being gay; so basically a lot of the work—short stories—that I was doing in that time basically was putting gay couples into straight couple situations, so they didn’t read as authentic or as anything other than trite and dull.
I started writing what would become Murder in the Rue Dauphine on our first computer, an ancient Mac that cost an insane amount of money in 1996 (I don’t even want to think about adjusting that cost for inflation), but it was, as I found out, not easy to write about New Orleans without actually being here. When we did move here later that same year, I tossed the eight chapters I’d written and started over. (I also started writing another book about gay life in New Orleans, The World Is Full of Ex-Lovers, about three young gay men in their twenties who live around a courtyard in the Quarter, and the older gay man who owns the property and lives in the main house. While that book was never completed, I used those characters and some of those situations in other short stories I’ve published—or adapted some of them to other short stories.)
It took me several years to get Murder in the Rue Dauphine in good enough shape to send out on submission to agents and publishers; Alyson offered me a contract, and I’ve been publishing novels ever since.
There really is something to be said for being comfortable in your own skin, and having faith in yourself. I’ve struggled with the confidence and faith in myself when it comes to being a writer and a novelist—still, to this day, it’s a struggle—but one thing I realized when I was hospitalized is that I’ve made everything in my career happen by having belief in myself and my work, and the only thing holding me back from achieving greater heights with my work and my career is ME. I’ve been holding me back, and no one, or nothing, else.
No one else has that kind of power over me, do they?
And remembering back? I had kind of become fearless for awhile there after Murder in the Rue Dauphine came out; I believed in myself and I had plans for the future and somehow, somewhere, along the way I kind of lost that feeling and belief…
Which has always been true: the only thing ever holding me back is me, and it’s time to let go of those insecurities and fears once and for all.
That’s the good life lesson I need to remember always.
Just look at the gay slut at Gay Days at Disney!
How many times in my career have I thought writing something differently would be easier? NARRATOR VOICE: It’s never easier.
And it did work. Ironically, I met the love of my life less than a year later (it’ll be thirty years next month), we wound up moving to New Orleans together, and I became a writer. I still have to work a day job for health insurance, but I actually really like my job. The only thing I resent about it is the time, and I don’t really mind that too much, except now that I’m older and no longer have the energy I used to, it does complicate the writing more than it did before.