not all of them positive. When I turned my attention to that period in time, I was surprised to discover that so much of it, in particular the publishing revolution of the era, of which I had certainly been a part, was so poorly documented. Not that there had been nothing published on the subject. Indeed, there were some very fine books and articles available. But everything of consequence that had been written had been written by East Coast writers for East Coast publishers, and critiqued by East Coast critics—when in fact that publishing explosion had been primarily a West Coast phenomenon. I found nothing of consequence that did not share that bias; which is to say, nothing that told the whole story.
It began to seem to me that perhaps I ought to share my experiences with those others who were interested in the era. And quite frankly I realized that if I were going to do so, it needed to be sooner rather than later. Already names and dates were fading from my never-very-perfect memory.
I sat myself down before the word processor and began to type, with reluctance at first but with more enthusiasm as the pages went by. Not that I was any less concerned about my step-ins; but it was an exciting time that I was describing and reliving it turned out to be more fun than I had imagined. What began as a chore became in short order a labor of love.
When my friends at Bolerium Books of San Francisco, Mike Pincus and John Durham, originally asked me to do this for them, it was meant to be something in the nature of a pamphlet to be distributed through their mailing list and on their web site. It soon became evident that there would certainly be more than a pamphlet. Well, I couldn’t have written all that stuff if I hadn’t been wordy, could I? Anyway, I am particularly grateful for their generosity in letting me develop their idea for someone else.
I have written this more or less as it occurred to me, without strict allegiance to time sequences or any sort of logical structure—more as if I were sitting chatting with the reader. You may find it helpful to read it in a corresponding manner. So far as that goes you don’t have to read it at all. That’s the nice thing about freedom, it works both ways.
For the most part I have tried to tell the story of the revolution of the sixties and seventies, though for the sake of historical perspective I have written as well about the earlier years; the early sixties, the fifties and, to a lesser degree, the forties.
The story I have told, however, is a personal one; the era as I experienced it. Which is to say, it is not the history of the sexual revolution that occurred then, which it seems to me yet remains to be written, nor of the companion revolution in publishing. But it is a small bit of that history and I can only hope it will provide a glimpse or two of what happened and what changed in those ten or fifteen years.
I hope too that you will find it interesting. I certainly did, both living it and reliving it. Although I said at the beginning that this was not the story of my life, I could hardly write about my experiences without sometimes talking about myself and how I came to be who and what I was, so, yes, some of my life pops up here and there; but you expected that all along, didn’t you?
It is, as I have indicated, a discursive work, and some of the subjects I touch upon will no doubt seem arbitrary and certainly peripheral to the main theme. Since I wrote at length, for instance, on my success in teaching other writers, it seemed to me that I should give some idea of how or what it was that I taught them. And since I wrote what I can now see was a rather large if uneven chapter in the history of gay fiction, I felt qualified to offer my opinions on the subsequent state of gay fiction. And after that I thought, “What the hell?”—and threw in some sleazy gossip and a few diet tips because, let’s face it, those things sell better than history.
Soon enough, however, I began to worry that I might have left myself open to charges of venality, so to be safe I added my thoughts on religion and the soul. Hmmm. Better, surely. No one could accuse me now of prostituting my art.
But then I got to thinking about those diet tips. Anyone who sees me on Oprah will know at a glance that diet tips are not my strong suit. So to offset that, because I didn’t want to come across hypocritical, I added some recipes, good fattening ones that would be more in keeping with my image. Or at least more in keeping with my figure.
And after that…but the point is, you can see that things get away from me. Which really is the story of my life, although I realize I promised at the beginning that this wasn’t going to be that.
I have made free with my opinions on all of these matters but they are only my opinions. I have also been cavalier in ignoring, where I chose, the thoughts or positions of others on the same subjects. You may object all you want. This is a personal expression. If your objections are particularly vehement or you think your diet tips are better than mine, you can always write your own book and leave my coattails alone—or as an old friend used to say, “Get off the runway, Rose, it’s my turn.”
This is a work of nonfiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is probably unavoidable.
* * * *
I have written, in addition to verse, short stories and articles, well over one hundred books. The best estimate I can make is somewhere around one hundred and forty. This, however, was far and away the most difficult writing I have ever done, for the very reason that it was so personal.
The only easy part was a phrase that I ran across in a book collector’s catalog, describing the condition of a particular book offered for sale; “Spine intact, some creases.”
“Little book,” I thought, “I know just how you feel.”
And dog-eared, too.
CHAPTER ONE
SEARCHING, SEARCHING…
I fell in love with Carol on my first day of school. She was a vision all in pink (for all I can actually remember, she might have been wearing green and yellow, but in my memory I see pink and pink it shall remain).
I can’t tell you what exactly I was wearing except that there would have been new shoes—in my large, poverty beset family, we mostly went barefoot in the summer. And whatever else I wore, I’m certain it was stained when I arrived home from that first day. I was much too shy to hold up my hand and say I needed to go to the bathroom. Anyway we didn’t have a bathroom at home, we had four rooms and a path. Probably the teacher wouldn’t have known what I was talking about if I had said I needed to use the path. Stains were simpler.
We lived then in what we called “The Burnt Place,” a house in the country that belonged to a friend of our parents and which had indeed burned sometime in the past and had never been rebuilt. I was number ten of eleven children and I have no doubt that today they would arrest our parents for moving a brood like that into what nowadays would be considered a deathtrap.
Truth to tell, I suppose it was a deathtrap. There were stairs that ended in landings and nothing but space beyond, rooms with no roofs, some with no walls and even one with no floor. No amount of cleaning or airing ever quite got rid of the scent of charred wood. Outside, and there was lots of outside, there was a creek, a barnyard complete with nasty bull, and a nest of bees buzzing under one of the derelict staircases.
We loved it. We had moved there from “The Streetcar,” which was exactly that, an old streetcar that had been parked on an empty lot and made more or less habitable. Mostly less. When you crowd parents and a gaggle of children into a streetcar, with a sort of kitchen and some accommodations for sleeping, there is not much room left for anything or anyone.
Now we were in the country and there was plenty of room for everyone and no end of places to explore. I very soon discovered that the bees under the stairs, in their infinite wisdom, did not sting me. After
