A conversation with Larry Duplechan

kaos talks exclusively to Lambda Literary Award winning Blackbird legend Larry Duplechan, about the movie they made out of his book, interracial love, the AIDS crisis, the death of gay bookstores, and more....

WORDS BY ZEON KANE

||| Hello Larry, thanks for joining us today from sunny California! Congratulations on the movie adaptation of your 1986 novel "Blackbird". How was it for you?

Not so much to tell, really. Patrik-Ian Polk had been talking about doing an adaptation of Blackbird since the early 1990s. And he'd pop up every few years and say, "I'm gonna make the Blackbird movie", and then he'd do something else. And about a year ago, he said it again, but this time he had a little contract for me to sign, which I did. About a year later, somebody posted a blurb on Facebook about Mo'Nique starring in Patrick Polk's adaptation of Larry Duplechan's novel, Blackbird; which is how I found he'd actually made the film.

||| Always the last one to know, huh? Have you seen the movie?

I saw the film at its L.A. première in February, and I liked it. It wasn't my book - in fact, he made some big changes to my story - but it's a good little film.

||| I'm hearing a "but" in there...

Unfortunately, I had to get lawyers involved to get the producers to pay me my (very low) fee for my film rights. That experience has soured me to the whole thing, so I'm distancing myself from the film. I'm glad I saw the film first, before having to go to the mat with the producers. But still, I can't say I like them very much.

||| That's a real shame. "Blackbird" is a much-loved gay literary classic, and a rarity in that we are able to follow our hero, Johnnie Ray Rousseau, through several stages in his life in the sequels. It's been a while since 2008's "Got Til It's Gone" - is there another chapter to come in Johnnie's story?

I don't think so. I left Johnnie in a really good place at the end of Got Til It's Gone: in love, about to get married, his demons pretty well slain. I think I'll just leave him there.

||| How much of you is in Johnnie? Is there an element of autobiography in there?

An element?!? Yeah, I'd say so. Johnnie is basically me. Not everything that happens to him happened to me, and some books are more directly autobiographical than others; but Johnnie is pretty much Larry, monologuing. His favorite movies and music, his sense of humor. My friends all tell me that reading my books is like listening to me talk. For better and for worse, I imagine.

||| So everyone can get a little piece of you! That's good to know. Now, one of things that really changed in the "Blackbird" movie was the race of certain characters, from white to black. Despite supposedly being in a post-racial era, race is still a red hot issue in America, and particularly in the gay community. There's a lot of talk right now about prominent black gay men (Derrick Gordon, Michael Sam) having white boyfriends - what are your thoughts on that?

Oh my gosh, that is so not a short-answer question. Okay... I'm married to a white man for 38 years; so clearly, I'm all for people loving who they love.

But on the other hand, I do understand Black gay men who long to see prominent Black gay men hand-in-hand with other Black gay men. All minorities crave representation - we want to see ourselves reflected, in positive ways, in the media. But reading Michael Sam to filth because he's got a hot little white swimmer under his arm, just isn't productive.

It saddens me to see how quickly and how violently we can turn on and devour our own. I hope that's enough. You're more than entitled to follow-up questions, because this is a very, very important issue.

||| It seems to be a very American issue, much more so than in, say, the UK, where interracial love is almost the norm! America, gay and straight, just isn't comfortable with interracial love, is it?

Well, as I'm forever explaining to my non-American-born friends, we in the U.S. of A. have still not gotten over slavery. The fact of it, the repercussions of it, the legacy of it. And I don't just mean fawning over 12 Years a Slave like no one had ever told that story before. The American construct of race is a creation of the Antebellum South; and we can't seem to escape it. Whatever other racial/ethnic groups have had to endure in America (and in no way am I trivializing the near-genocide of Native Americans), African-Americans are the only group that was ever legally non-human. Chattel. Property.

And the mental hoops White people had to jump through in order to live with the fact that they owned people, was the source of all the horrific myths that Black Americans are still fighting against: the myth of our animalistic nature, the myth of our sexual wildness, the myth of our mental inferiority, and on and on.

And one of the things that nobody seems to be addressing in all the hoopla regarding gay Black people and their Caucasian spouses/lovers/dates, is the fact that the White person is still viewed as some sort of prize. Why is nobody assuming that the Black partner is the trophy?

God, I'm going to get in trouble for this ...

||| What was it like for you and your partner in the '70s? Was the prejudice worse then? Are Americans more tolerant now, or less so?

Are we talking about tolerance regarding race, or gayness or both?

||| As an interracial couple.

Greg and Larry at Long Beach Pride, 1994.

Well, Greg and I met in college. So we started out "adult life" as a couple. We didn't have the "my Black friends" vs. "his White friends" problem, because we made friends together. We surrounded ourselves with supportive people; and people who had an issue with us, steered clear. This was particularly important, because our respective parents turned their backs on us (at least initially), so creating a family of friends was essential.

We didn't go out into "The Gay Community" very much; since "The Gay Community" is largely loose affiliation of entities dedicated to getting White gay dudes laid, and mostly we were home, trying to make a marriage. And when we did venture out dancing or something, I don't remember overhearing any name-calling as we walked down Santa Monica Boulevard together, or anything like that. Of course, we were in Southern California, not Southern Mississippi.

And, modesty aside, we were beautiful young guys; and one of us was a beautiful White guy; so I was spared a lot of the things I heard other Black gay men talk about at that time - being denied entrance to gay bars, or being hassled or whatever. Because I wasn't with a group of Black men; I was one Black guy with this handsome white guy. So I wasn't perceived as a threat. Mostly, I remember people saying things like, "I'll take one of each - chocolate and vanilla."

||| 38 years - seems like all that "trying to make a marriage" paid off! Some people might say what you've achieved is rare for gay men.

Well, we were lucky. We worked at it, but also we were lucky. We didn't get HIV, which was just luck of the draw, because in 1976, we had no idea. And looking back, it seemed like when one of us was acting stupid, the other one wasn't. So, while we nearly broke up a few times, we never actually did.

I just saw something today on Facebook: "A perfect relationship is two imperfect people not giving up on each other." That's Greg and me.

||| There's a lot of work being produced now about the AIDS crisis - incredible films like "How To Survive A Plague" - and the forthcoming "The Normal Heart". As someone who lived through that time, how does it feel when you see these works?

It's tough. We lost dear, dear friends to HIV/AIDS, starting in 1989 with our best friend, William Edward "WEF" Fleischman, who was (if memory serves) 32-years-old. So, I tend to cry a lot during those films. But I do try to see them, because (and I think it's true of a lot of gay men of my generation) I have a very "Never Forget" attitude about the subject. Some gay people, young and old, would rather we didn't talk about that time; but I think if we do that, we spit on the graves of all those men we loved.

||| It's insane that many of us don't want to talk or think about it. "How To Survive A Plague" should be mandatory viewing in all schools, alongside education about the Holocaust and slavery...

I just watched "Common Threads"... Do I remember right, and you said once Vito Russo was a friend of yours?

Vito Russo.

Yes. Not lifelong bosom friends, but friends. I had been a huge fan of Vito's since college - I'd seen one of his first Celluloid Closet lectures at UCLA in the late 1970s and devoured the book. Being a gay film buff, he was like my patron saint.

As it turned out, he did a blurb for the cover of the first edition of Blackbird; so I begged my senior editor at St. Martin's (Michael Denneny, an unsung hero of gay literature) to introduce us, which he did. This was about 1986-7. My husband and I had a wonderful lunch with Vito, gabbed and gabbed.

Then around 1990, Vito happened to be doing Closet (probably among the last times) on a gay cruise we were on. And he let us hang out with him pretty much the whole time. I literally sat at his feet and listened to his stories.

He was a wonderful, wonderful man. I could go on ...

||| The AIDS crisis is now over, apparently. Condoms are rapidly disappearing from gay porn, and there's even a gay hook-up site for men seeking bareback sex. Again, as someone who lived through the height of the epidemic, how do you see these developments?

I'm not going to pretend I don't know fucking feels better without condoms. I know that. And I understand that what straight people get to call making love, we have come to refer to as "bare-backing", making our way of intimacy seem inherently unhealthy and dangerous. But the fact remains that there is still no cure and no vaccine for HIV/AIDS - please correct me if I'm wrong. And as to the popular the argument that it's now "a manageable disease, like diabetes" - well, I don't want diabetes, either.

But each man has to decide his own acceptable level of risk. Far be it from me to tell you, or that guy over there, or that guy over there, what to do with your respective dicks and butt-holes. That's your business and not mine. Condoms or bareback, morning-after pill or night-of pill - it's each man's life and each man's choice. I try not to judge. Out loud, anyway. Because we know for sure that "use a condom every time" works about as well as "just say no". It's just not that simple. I wish it were.

||| Larry, the first time I saw your name was for the blurb on the jacket of another author's book, "Skin Deep" by John R. Gordon. It was in a gay bookstore and I was 17. I was lucky enough that a good friend introduced me to your work not long after that, lending me out-of-print copies of your early work. That kind of experience - a young gay kid discovering things in a bookstore - isn't likely to happen these days, is it? What do you think about the loss of gay bookstores, and the current state of gay literary publishing?

Picture by Davide Laffe Imaging.

Joni Mitchell sang, "Everything comes and goes, marked by lovers and styles of clothes." I tend to be rather sanguine about change, because it's one of the few inevitables of life.

I miss gay bookstores, of course. When Blackbird was published, we had a book signing/reading at A Different Light Bookstore in the Silverlake area of Los Angeles (left). We brought in bottles of champagne and had a party. I invited everybody I knew. It was an event. And that store is long gone.

The last reading I did for Got Til It's Gone was at the Different Light in West Hollywood in 2008. By that point, my husband and I had a running joke about going into A Different Light and "visiting the book", because there were so few actual books in the store - it was mostly magazines and porn. And my reading was one of the last events held at that store before it, too, closed.

So yeah, it's a different world. I can't have a book signing party on Amazon. But the good news is, you can buy my out-of-print novels on Amazon, sometimes for the price of shipping.

As to "the current state of gay literary publishing", I wouldn't have a clue.

Back in the 1980s, when I started writing, I could read every "legit" gay novel that came out in any given year. Each one was an event. Now, I don't read many "gay books", unless I'm judging the Lambda Literary Awards, which I have done a few times since I won the Lammy (in 2009 for Got Til It's Gone). From that experience, I think there is still some very good "gay novels" being written; and a good deal of dreck. The downside of the legitimization of self-publishing is that the market is glutted.

The good news is, if you're a gay writer and you write something, you can get it out there. Whether you can get anybody other than your Facebook friends to know your book exists is another matter; but you can get it out there. You can have your say. Back in the olden days, you had to get some stranger to think your book was worth publishing. Now, only you have to think it is. Whether or not that's a good thing, probably depends on what side of the equation you're on.

||| Larry, you have an impressive physique for a man just shy of 40. What's your secret?

I'm not sure if "just shy of 40" was a typo or a joke. I'm 57, or "just a shout away from 60". Either way, thank you.

I have always taken good care of my body. I started working out with weights in my 20s and I've never stopped. From what I have observed, it's much tougher to "get back in shape" once you've let yourself go, so... don't let yourself go.

||| Larry, thank you for talking to kaos today. Come back again soon!

Anytime. Just ask me.

Skin Deep the Series

kaos talks exclusively to Skin Deep the Series creator David Summers.

||| Let's kick off with "Skin Deep the Series" - what's it all about?

In a nut shell, the shows about six gay men, three black, three white who struggle with their experiences and understanding of race culture and sexuality while living in Atlanta, the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement. Since Atlanta's gay population is primarily from the Black and White communities, and since that is where the majority of racial tension have been historically, we begin there. The other cultures which are very important will be introduced as the show progresses.

||| What was the inspiration for the show?

This has been a process of steps and experiences over the past fifteen years of living in ATL, and my personal experiences of the last twenty-five years or so. But if you want something specific, I can say it was due to an observation when we travelled. "We," meaning my husband Chuck and I. It became apparent we would see more interracial gay couples as we travelled to other cities than we see living here. So I wondered, with a city the size of ATL and the large gay population of black and white guys, why were there so few. So I pondered the thought. I discussed it with others, and the more I talked the more thoughts and feelings began to flow. I found there was a lot of emotion about the subject that everyone seemed to be afraid to discuss on record. So I wanted to find a way to generate an open discussion on why the gay community is so segregated, but especially here in the ATL.

A book was too limiting, a movie didn't allow for proper and lengthy character development, a documentary was out of the question because people didn't want to express their personal feelings on film, and I was not going to create another reality show were people just behave badlyand make fools of themselves. So I thought a scripted TV series was probably the best route to go. I had conversation with some friends in the business who confirmed my thoughts. I then began a development process for ideas, characters, storyline etc. I decided to started with focus groups. My feeling was that I must get the absolute truth from the people who attended, therefore it must be in a comfortable environment. So I decided to hold three separate groups. One with black and white guys who were comfortable with dating outside their race, one with only black guys and one with only white guys. I did not attend the all black group, being a white guy I would have been an obstacle to the truth.

And so it began. I received fantastic information that helped format the show. characters and story line. I continued to interview anyone who wished to be interviewed. My total is now about 150 or so.

||| That's incredible. So your series really is "about something" - a contrast to the sort of gay scripted series we've seen in the past. Is Atlanta really that polarised, compared to other major US cities?

Yes this is really about something. And I will be recreating major events that occurred here in the city that will be very controversial, but true.

And yes the city really is that polarized. I am not saying that this doesn't exist in other cities, I am not that misinformed or naive. But in comparison, yes. Especially for the size of the city.

And I have interviewed men who moved here or visit often from other cities and they can't believe it, the energy or consciousness of the city. "You can just feel it", they say. This is from guys who have attractions for men outside their own race.

||| That's intriguing. The view from the UK is that interracial relationships in the US are really frowned upon, and there's a very vocal section of the black gay community that's actively opposed to them - something that's really apparent online, with the dialogue on sites like BGCLive and Rod 2.0. What are your thoughts on that?

I would agree. I have seen and heard comments and felt the energy from the black and white community. But the show is not about picking sides, far from it. This is merely showing the lives of six men who have different interpretations of attractions and how they live those attractions out. We are then lead down a path of challenges, successes, and failures in love and acceptance of others.

I hope to generate conversation between members of our community to open doors of understanding. There are so many untruths out there, and I hope to clear them up.

I on the other side of that, I will be showing that even though there are men who may frown upon interracial dating/sex/relationships. There are a good number of men who do it in secret.

I have been the "experiment" of a few black guys myself. Things like, "I've never been with a white guy before, wanna check it out" or "Oh and by the way, don't tell anybody we messed around". Those sort of comments. I never took offense to them. It sort of turned me on to be some guys first. But I also know there are a good proportion of white guys who fantasize or secretly play with guys outside their race.

There are fears of friends turning on them, or being pigeon holed into thinking that if you date one guy outside your race then that means you don't like guys who are within your race. To me, and hot man is a hot man is a hot man! Using skin tone to determine who you speak to or play with or date is a question I plan to propose in the show. And that goes for black guys who only date with other black guys who are light skin as an example.

||| That's a great point -  there's one particular celebrity in the black gay community who's had some success with his screen work, where he only depicts black-on-black relationships. But he also dates white men, "on the down low..." That's the kind of hypocrisy that's mind-boggling - the racial separatists who condemn interracial relationships, whilst putting light-skin and mixed race peeps on a pedestal. One of the refreshing things in the "SDTS" trailer - the way you flipped the convention of the white guy experimenting with being with a black guy.

What sort of reaction have you had to the trailer so far?

Very very very positive. 97% of the comments are great. People really are hungry for a gay drama. and this is ground breaking in so many ways. Casting is balanced, story's are real, men are masculine, breaking stereotypes. However some stereotypes are hard to avoid if you want to keepthe show real.

||| It's been a long time coming. Were you a fan of shows like "Queer As Folk" and "Noah's Arc"?

I watched them, but I recognized that there was much more that could be done. The shows had their purpose and were successful, in addition paved the way for others. So I must give them props for that. Now to be clear when I say that SDTS is a culmination of Noah's Arc, and Queer as Folk, I refer to that for casting only. Not for style or story line. The movie Crash obviously is the portrayal of the race and culture element and also the fact that none of the characters know one another, just like in SDTS. The characters live different lives in different universes.

I wanted to get away from the same formula of four, five or six friends who all hang together, eat together, call each other all the damn time, and sometimes sleep together. Each main character has their own core of relationships but they are all supporting roles.

And they will come and go throughout the series.

||| In other words, just like real life, rather than an artificial bubble world.

Getting back to reaction, there was a pretty unpleasant article about "SDTS" on The 360 Experiment. How did you feel about that?

It was a copycat post. The blogger just cut and pasted from another gossip blogger whose purpose was to bring down one of the actors. Nothing in the article was correct. It was gossip only. I asked the blogger from 360 to do a legitimate interview with me but of course I never heard from him. I guess that would have been too much work, its so much easier to cut and paste falsehoods. That's why I appreciate you so much. Thank you for the proper interview.

||| Ah, the joys of internet trolls, huh?

What's it going to take to get "SDTS" into production?

I am currently beginning negotiations with a company in Hollywood, as well as one in NY who has interest to to take it on. This is great news, but still a long way to go.

||| That's fantastic. Tell us a little about the man behind "SDTS"?

Me? Little ol me?

||| But of course!

I'm 55, so there is a lot to tell. I can tell you that Skin Deep The Series just didn't come out of thin air. I have twenty-five years experience in theatre and had my own company for seventeen years, wrote ten other productions and had audience totals close to if not over one million people during that seventeen years. But ask me some questions, I hate talking about myself.

||| Okay, tell us about your previous work.

Company was also called ARCH Productions (Artists Raising the consciousness of Humanity). But I organized as a Not for Profit. I was primarily working with youth who needed extra attention. Very very talented kids who were misguided or hurt in life and were acting out, badly in some cases. So I took those kids and put them through a very powerful self observation, acting, rehearsal process that compelled them to look at themselves and take responsibility for their actions. Kids did not come out the same as when they started.

One of the most powerful steps to the program was it was kids teaching kids about behavior, and the kids on stage, the actors were the ones who usually were the perpetrators. I know that I worked kids who killed. They never admitted it, but I just knew. I saw their power, brilliance, talent and potential and turned it into something healing and transformational.

In 1994, ARCH received recognition from the Presidents Council on the Humanities as one of the top 100 companies in the country. This was under Bill Clinton.

||| That's amazing, truly inspirational - and a real life story worthy of adaptation itself! What happened to ARCH?

Well. I got burnt out. After seventeen years, I needed to find something that was going to pay better, less hours, and not as much stress. As much as I loved it, it was time to move on. So I sold it to another organization who wanted to carry on the work, but they failed and were out of biz in a year.

It pointed out to me and, gave me pride to know that not many people could do what it took to keep ARCH afloat. I was honored to have had the opportunity to serve the community in which I lived, and to have been touched by the lives of some many young people.

||| David to finish off, would you like to tell us a little about you and your husband, who you mentioned earlier?

I am in love with this man. I don't want to sound co dependent, but I couldn't do anything without him. We spend twenty-two hours a day together. Not many people can do that, and we've been together for going on thirteen years. Married in Montreal five years ago, just had our anniversary. He is bright, humble, loving, accepting, supportive, sexy, gorgeous, and other attributes you will have to use your imagination on.

||| That's beautiful, and a great foundation to build "SDTS" on!

He also was crucial in my writing process. I would write a scene and he would critic it, spell check it etc. He was/is a very big part of my life and of this show. He just doesn't like to do interviews. He will be part of the production team when its picked up.

||| David, thank you so much for talking to kaos today. I for one can't wait for a full series of a "Skin Deep the Series".

Thank you so much for the opportunity.

||| Skin Deep the Series - Official Site.

||| Visit Skin Deep the Series on Facebook.

||| Watch the trailer:

Faggamuffin

THE KAOS THEORY talks exclusively to Noah's Arc writer John R. Gordon about his new novel, Faggamuffin.

So what's Faggamuffin all about then?

It’s the story of Cutty, a gay Jamaican who flees the country after a violent homophobic attack. He comes to the UK and stays with an acquaintance, Buju, a petty drug-dealer on the rough West London White City estate, and his resentful girlfriend Cynthia, who quickly gets sick of this ‘wasteman’ crashing on her couch. Cutty starts to fall for Buju, and starts to believe his feelings might be reciprocated – and they are, in the course of a house-burglary. Cutty and Buju start a deeply down-low relationship, but it’s when Cynthia catches them having sex that Cutty’s troubles really begin… So it’s a pacey, action-packed tale, but on another level it’s about the down low, and the particular risk of it: that it can cripple the spirit and make love impossible. Cutty and Buju have to fight to make a life they can live, and in that sense it’s about finding the heroic in the midst of the tragic.

Faggamuffin gets pretty steamy. Were you ever worried readers wouldn't be able to read it on, say, the Tube?

I did think about how graphic I wanted the book to be, as I know straight folks can get a bit upset reading gay sex – and my mum loyally reads all my books too. But I didn’t want to self-censor, and I think it goes to character: what sort of sex do these repressed and self-consciously intensely masculine guys have? It’s not more graphic than, say, Alan Hollinghurst. I hope people do find it sexy.

You're not a native Jamaican - was it hard to get Cutty's dialogue right?

It’s intentionally ‘patois lite’ anyway, as I wanted non-Jamaicans to follow it easily. I hope I’ve caught some of the rhythms and phrasings: black British chums of Jamaican descent who read it seemed to feel I had, and helped me with spots where I’d gone wayward here and there. I had Damian Marley playing a lot of the time I was writing the book, and have some Blue Mountain theatre tapes that helped me find the register and structures. But I’ve loved patois ever since seeing The Harder They Come when I was a student, and I was listening to a lot of reggae back then.

Faggamuffinwas adapted for the stage, wasn't it? I caught the performance - (black gay singer) David McAlmont was in the audience! Tell us about that.

Yes, by me for [the] Louder Than Words theatre event. Nathan Clough, who played Cutty, and is himself black British of Jamaican descent, actually said the language was somewhat of his father’s generation, and that modern patois is much more infused with African-American slang. I’d registered that from listening to music, but tended to play that aspect down for fear of creating the impression that I was writing an inaccurate mish-mash of Jamaican & black American registers.

I stupidly thought that as I had the plot and characters, turning the book (which is full of events) into a play would be quick and easy. It was in fact painfully slow and total torture, and on the day of the performance, I cut five pages near the end – and suddenly the structure snapped together, and it was really very successful. I had a great cast, which helps. It was a diverse audience, and it was interesting what moments sparked a very different response across racial lines. For instance in the play there’s a moment where Cutty punches Cynthia in the face, knocking her down. She at once jumps back up and carries on dishing him. This would make black people (mostly) laugh; whereas white people seemed more just shocked. Not because black people don’t care about violence: they just instantly liked Cynthia’s moxy & refusal to be a victim.

I ended the play with a ritual declaration of the power of love, and during rehearsals I wasn’t sure it would work, but as the actors were declaiming someone in the audience called out, ‘Amen!’

It was lovely that McAlmont came to see it, and took the trouble afterwards to say he’d enjoyed it. I’m a big fan of his music, in all its varied manifestations, from indie-rock to jazz.

With the election of the seemingly pro-gay equality Portia Simpson Miller, Jamaica's in the (gay) news at the moment, isn't it?

Yes, and how wonderfully encouraging it is: she made these very clear statements, and she won by a landslide! What’s great is that progressive-minded straight black folks here, in the Caribbean and in Africa, are starting to assert themselves; to say, simply, that reactionary religious zealots or malignant dictators like Mugabe don’t speak for them. It was great to hear, for instance, Wole Soyinka speaking up on behalf of tolerance when the situation in Nigeria is so bad right now, and when he so easily could have said nothing – or Desmond Tutu, who again could have ducked the issue, but has spoken out courageously and repeatedly in favour of equality.

It made me worry that I might be making Jamaica look bad in Faggamuffin, but I was representing things that were – and are, for all the signs are encouraging for the future - really happening there today; and of course the emergence of a strong liberal voice doesn’t alter the broad way gay and lesbian people are perceived. As someone astutely said, victory would be a hate crimes bill that included LGBTIQ people. As far as my book goes, I’m writing as best I can towards a black audience, so there’s no intention to, as it were, offer up Caribbean dirty laundry to a bien-pensant white middle-class audience for them to scold Jamaicans over. In any case, my intention is to have readers relate to people – a refugee; a petty criminal – they might normally not think about, or not think of as having complex inner lives. Or, if they are those people, to see their lives for once placed centre-stage in a tale, and taken seriously.

Black gay representation has always been all about America. Why do you think there's so few black gay books and films from the UK and Europe?

One thing is sheer numbers. A tiny percentage of any group become writers (or film-makers). There are, I think, about 30,000,000 African-Americans; by contrast there are about a million and a half black people in Britain. Black Americans developed a substantial middle-class out of segregation; black people in Britain are mostly working-class, and writing fiction is generally fairly much a formally-educated activity – though of course there are always exceptions. There was a whole black film industry in America in segregation times too. And then, thinking of here, the world of publishing has its establishmentarian gate-keepers who are unwelcoming to newcomers, and not interested in voices who want to speak to audiences in their own communities. Interestingly in the late 80s and early to mid 90s black gay playwrights emerged in some numbers – perhaps in part because you can scrub some money together and put on a play with relatively little permission from the establishment. Paul Boakye, for instance, and Oscar Watson, whose play Battyman Blues starred a pre-Wire Idris Elba in a gay part.

Mind you, black gay American writing seems to have settled into somewhat of a middle-brow rut, very much in the mould of E. Lynn Harris or the (straight) women’s writer Eric Jerome Dickey, somewhat conservative and written with half an eye on a female readership. Nothing wrong with that (the largest numerical audience for Noah’s Arc was straight black women) but there does seem to me a lack of more serious and demanding work. Though African-Americans have the same challenge as the rest of us over getting work published and out there.

Faggamuffin is your first novel since 1998's Warriors & Outlaws - where have you been?

My publisher GMP went under just after that, followed by a whole lot of other small presses, so I lost that outlet, though I kept on writing novels. I had a grim moment turning 40 when all my options seemed to have shrivelled up. But just after that – literally within six months - Noah’s Arc came along. I edited on the first series, wrote episodes on the second, and co-wrote the feature-film, and in between that I wrote the Bobby Blake autobiography, so I was keeping busy. I wrote a novel, Colour Scheme, which we’re going to bring out next year with Team Angelica, and then Faggamuffin, which we decided to bring out first as it’s timely and provocative and should help the imprint make an impact.

You were pretty instrumental in the writing of Noah's Arc. Why do you think it ended so abruptly? Is there any hope for the future?

Money was a big thing. Logo (the cable channel) was always only modestly funded (by Viacom), and original drama is always the most expensive sort of thing to make. Noah’s Arc was a ground-breaking show that helped put the network on the map and give it credibility, but they wanted to make other narrative shows too, understandably, including lesbian shows, and they could only afford one show at a time. Also, due to if nothing else that passive racism that takes no interest in those different from itself, they didn’t manage to sell the show abroad (unlike their other big success, RuPaul’s Drag Race). Having said that it always sold ‘surprisingly’ well on dvd in the States, hence we got to make more episodes. If you’re wondering how the good sales could always be a surprise you’re right, it didn’t make much sense.

Series two looked more expensive but was cheaper because it was filmed in Canada, not LA, (bar I think Patrik was allowed two days to shoot exteriors in LA). We ended it on a huge cliffhanger (the car-crash) to try and make the network give us a third series, but behind the scenes money was getting tighter. So a third series was off the table. But once again good dvd sales perked up Logo’s interest, and they came to Patrik with the idea that as they could only afford half a season’s worth of episodes, why not make a 90-minute feature-film instead? Patrik started off in features (debuting with Punks, starring Rockmund Dunbar and Seth Gilliam [Oz, The Wire], which he wrote, directed and co-produced), and liked the idea.

A storyline was agreed on (by Patrik, me and Q. Alan Brocka). Patrik took a long time to deliver a script, and was then told that what was needed was a much cheaper, single-location story. He couldn’t face going back to the drawing-board and at the eleventh hour I was asked to come up with a totally new script, which I did, writing very fast. That got the production back on track, and with Patrik cutting, trimming and interpolating various scenes, the film was shot about six weeks later. It turned out well, and he promoted it with great adroitness, and it got noticed, and both cinema and dvd sales were once again ‘surprisingly’ good. It won a GLAAD award and the script got a NAACP Image Award nomination, of which I’m extremely proud.

Logo then floated the idea of a spin-off show, one that would see some of the core characters in a heterosexual world, which would fit in with their rebranding themselves as not a gay but a ‘gay sensibility’ network. This had the potential for a nice fish-out-of-water comedy-drama project, but unfortunately during the lengthy development process the entire Western banking system collapsed, and that was the end of that.

Since then Patrik’s been promoting various projects, (including singing in the band Fol Chen), and has gone back to his indie roots with a new feature-film, The Skinny, which he’s completing at the moment, and in which Darryl ‘Noah’ Stephens has a cameo, but that’s not a project in which I’ve had any involvement.

Some of your work has been taught in American universities, hasn't it? Tell us about that.

Yes, I’ve been taught in courses in race and sexuality in literature at the University of Santa Barbara, California, and Bodean College in Massachussetts. My work is teachable. Skin Deep stands out because it’s one of the few modern gay novels really exploring interracial relationships; and Warriors & Outlaws because it’s unusually concerned with the intersection of sexual and racial and revolutionary politics. I’ve been sent some of the students’ essays, and they’re quite fascinating, and sometimes suggest a brilliance in me I wish I could take credit for! For instance, on the first page of Warriors & Outlaws there’s a brief description of a child’s bedroom wallpaper – pink mice and blue elephants – which ‘foreshadows the debate on gender roles’ between the two protagonists (one macho, the other a flame queen). I was delighted with my own subtlety...

Tell us about your literary influences?

The writer who first made me see writing as a moral vocation, and whose work spoke to me so intensely it was almost physically painful, was James Baldwin. I loved his fieriness, his political engagement, and his fusion of the social and analytical with a near-mystical belief in the redeeming power of love. His writing just had this burning power, and I had a sense of nearness to subtle, intangible yet visceral things reading it: yes, writing could do this. The other writer who moved me in his intensity of language and vision was William Faulkner, the tragedian of whiteness, and I retain a love for the Southern Gothic. I’m also very influenced by the social realism of Richard Wright and the earlier novels of Chester Himes (who as a person I completely love): they had that fusion of harsh social commentary with the grip of a thriller that I very much wanted to get in Faggamuffin – though in Faggamuffin I also needed a Baldwinian uplift and affirmation of humanity. Himes’ later Harlem thrillers are brilliant too.

In poetry, Essex Hemphill above all.

I also feel a peculiar kindredness with Amiri Baraka and William Burroughs, though not really stylistically: they both speak to me somehow as people, as writers, as does Raymond Chandler. Before I found my subject or began to really understand myself and my particular vocation I found a great youthful pleasure and stimulation in the horror fantasy of H.P. Lovecraft and Mervyn Peake, both of whom made me want to put down words to create some sort of effect, and in Tolkien, who I still love for the sweep and strength of his story-telling.

How do you feel about e-books?

I think they’re the future, or a big part of it, but I can’t get past the feeling that they don’t really count. I don’t think I’d feel I’d published a book if it never had any physical existence and was just a file on the internet like any other file of words. Also Amazon’s deal for Kindle isn’t very good. But they’re certainly here as a substantial adjunct to the physical book, and already academic journals, for instance, have become largely on-line affairs. Perhaps we’ll end up with a similar scene to what we have now for vinyl records: afficianados will buy physical books while most of us just get the download.

What are you working on now?

A novel called Souljah, about a gay African former child soldier who is persecuted by local youths who just see him as an effeminate victim. He bashes back and begins a complex relationship with one of the youths. It’s also a strong look at religion and the damage faith can do, and the search for meaning and transitions on the road to manhood in our alienated society.

And I’m working on a new festival of new plays, to be given staged readings in (currently I think it’s) March and June at the Theatre Royal, Stratford East. We dramaturge and develop them with the writers.

What do you hope readers will take away from reading Faggamuffin?

That they’ve had an exciting read, and that at the end of it the reader realises he or she has thought about things more deeply than they realised they were doing at the time; that they entered into a world most likely unfamiliar to them and saw the humanity of the people living there; or, if they are closer to that world, that they saw something hopeful there that they could use. That embracing our diversity makes us free.

John R. Gordon was speaking exclusively with THE KAOS THEORY. Faggamuffin is available now, from Amazon and all good book stores.

MOON CHILD

ka-os|theory talks exclusively to singer and dancer Moonchild, who is performing live on stage at tomorrow's London Pride 2009.

"I'M READING THIS really interesting book on the law of desire," Moonchild tells me as we dodge traffic crossing Charing Cross Road on our way to Soho.

It's one of the hottest days of the year and I've arranged to meet 24-year-old singer and dancer Michael Anthony Moonchild for a chat ahead of his performance at Saturday's London Pride festival. I meet him in Borders, and find him sitting in a window reading intently by himself. He looks younger than his pictures suggest - it's all in the eyes - and he radiates serenity.

I later neglect to ask him about his choice of reading material, and can only imagine that he's trying to discover why mere mortals might want to ravish him.

Moonchild exudes a slightly disconcerting mixture of innocence and worldliness. Combined with his unusual looks (his father is Nigerian and his mother Cuban) he had already seemed somewhat unearthly before I had even met him. Although he's dressed plainly today - dark jeans, a dark green wife-beater and cap - I wonder if he gets a lot of attention.

"It's quite embarrassing. If I'm walking down the street, especially if I'm dressed in bright colours, people always stare at me. I used to find it extremely irritating, I still do sometimes. Some people look at me like I'm crazy. Some people send me messages saying I'm a freak, how I'm weird. I had someone say to me 'why are you trying to be white, why are you trying to be a white boy, your music sounds white'."

It doesn't surprise me. Moonchild is truly unique, a genuine individual, and that threatens people.

"I get more positive responses from people than bad," he adds.

In Soho we pass three identical muscle Marys. "Gay people annoy me," he says wearily. "They're all 'Look at me! Look at me!' It gets on my nerves."

It's an interesting comment. Despite being strikingly good-looking, an impressive 6'2", and possessing the physique of a... er... dancer, Moonchild completely lacks conceit. That's refreshing in a beautiful London boy, and unheard of in Soho, where one can't move for boys checking their reflections in any reflective surface they can find.

I ask Moonchild to talk about Indigo children, a concept he's professed an affinity for. "How do you know about that?" he exclaims.

He had mentioned it in an email some time ago. "You told me," I remind him.

"Oh yeah..." he smiles bashfully, before becoming deadly serious. "Indigo children are basically people with very strong spiritual... not powers, but awareness. They're very connected to the moon and the stars and the colour indigo as well, and they're really creative and sensitive, quite mysterious people. I don't call myself an Indigo child but I feel like I have a connection to them 'cos I feel like I'm kinda similar to them."

I wondered what had led Moonchild to see a connection with Indigo children. "I've got a friend that's an Indigo child, and she sees things. She's amazing actually."

Moonchild's eyes are wide. The notion of an otherness clearly chimes with him.

Listen to Moonchild's music and you'll get a strong sense of that otherness. He studied dance in college and later performing arts in university, but the strict regime they entailed was unsuited to his quest for the Moonchild style. "School, college, university - actually, I dropped out of all of them. I never ever finished any of the courses."

He's unapologetic, and justifiably so. Moonchild is charting his own course.

"I've been dancing since I was young. Dance and music to me is one thing. I've performed with Chris Brown, I've performed with Jamelia, Sugababes, Keisha White..."

Moonchild's goals might sound like those of any muso, but there's also a charming sense of altruism in his dreams, "My ultimate ambition is to be a touring artist, I wanna travel the world and perform shows and go on tour and just make albums that people like. I think my ultimate achievement would be if I inspired someone through my music. If someone's going through something, like a bad relationship, if my music could touch them, help them... for me that would be so good."

So just what is the Moonchild sound?

"I would describe my music as funky, a bit edgy... I've kind of used like old school classic pop with modern electro. Tracks like Traffic, 'cos when I was young I grew up listening to quality, not to sound bigheaded, but quality pop tracks like that that have substance you know? And kind of given it a little bit of a modern feel but still kept it quite... not old school, but just timeless in a way. And Candy Raindrops is very modern and things like Love 2 Love which is very much my own style, it's just me, I can't really put a... I dunno, I'd just say it's Moonchild."

With the music industry in turmoil (when was the last time you bought a CD, or paid for a download?) I ask Moonchild what his thoughts on the subject are...

"I feel the music industry is going through probably the hardest time it's ever gone through, because of the whole downloading thing and the recession. Artists ain't selling as much albums as they used to sell, but it hasn't really affected me because I'm not signed yet. I'm an unsigned artist, I'm okay. But what's out there now... not much artists are doing it for me. It is what it is I suppose."

Seems to me Moonchild's hit the nail on the head - what's out there is homogeneous (how many more "kooky" girl singers do we really need?) and uninspiring. Moonchild says that labels have told him they just wouldn't know how to market him. I wonder if he's a child out of his time. His inspirations are Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Prince, James Brown, Gloria Estefan, Simply Red... "They're my main influences - that made me wanna dance, especially watching Michael and Janet."

It's a relief not to hear the names Beyonce or Mariah.

"I'd love for everyone to hear my music. But at the same time I am enjoying - I know it sounds weird - but I am enjoying where I am now because I know I'm going to be a successful musician, I just know that. And I'm just kinda living the place where I am now in my life, going through the struggles, and really appreciating all the steps that I'm taking to be where I wanna be."

Those steps include recording an album - Love 2 Love - and assembling a band. For now, Moonchild is enjoying his creative freedom, "I haven't got any labels telling me what to do and what to wear and stuff."

Would he consider adapting his persona to fit the mould the men in suits use to cast recording artists?

"No. I'd rather be unsigned. I'm never ever gonna change myself. No, I mean I will compromise on certain things 'cos obviously the label has to make money and that's just the way it is. But I'm gonna always going be Moonchild and that's just me."

What does he think about the TV reality shows that appear to have so much influence over the music industry? Would he ever consider using them to widen his exposure?

"I have thought about it, but I just don't think I'd fit in to that. Because I'd be going on TV trying to be someone I'm not. All the songs they sing, it's not me. The way they perform, it's not me. It's too toned down, number one. Everyone's watered down completely and I can't do that. I can only be myself and I just don't think I could fit into a reality TV show. Unless they were willing to accept all the things that came with me as a performer."

Have shows like The X Factor choked the creativity of artists?

"I think for music in the UK, yeah, definitely, because the things that they put out there people listen to it and kinda think that's what music's meant to be like, they're not really giving artists like myself space to introduce something new and fresh into the UK. The mainstream music in the UK is manufactured music, watered down, and I don't like it."

So what does the future hold for him?

"I'm going to be in the studio next week and I'm going to do a song called Feels So Good, it's quite ballady and airy and it's Moonchild. They'll be up soon."

Moonchild will also be performing at tomorrow's London Pride. He'll be on the Urban Stage on Carlisle Street with his dancers at 5.45pm.

"I'm going to perform two of my tracks, Candy Raindrops and Electric Eyes and I'm also going to do a Michael Jackson track as well."

Any last words Moonchild?

"I think music's a gift and you're there to share it with the world. Just because I can sing music or record music or I'm a musician, doesn't give me an ego at all. I like to share it with everyone I'm close with. It's my lover, but it's everyone's lover..."

MOONCHILD ACCORDING TO MOONCHILD: A TRACK BY TRACK GUIDE

ELECTRIC EYES
"That track is about seeing someone out somewhere. As soon as you kinda see them they have that connection, and it's all in the eyes. I'm attracted to eyes. It's basically about seeing someone that has eyes that really capture you, and draw you in."

UNFAITHFUL
"That is about being in a relationship with someone and them cheating on you. You know, if you meet someone, and you think wow, this is amazing, this person's really really different. And then you slowly start to see the hidden agenda, people's characters, and the monster that's there..."

LOVE 2 LOVE
"Do you know what, that is super super super personal because if you listen to the production, it's got quite an eerie feel to it, like sinister... It's not your typical love song in terms of production. Like the cords, and the instruments are not very very nice, they're not sweet, it's got a slightly dark feel to it. I hope that it takes listeners somewhere else. I want people to listen to it and think a little bit more. That whole track is a journey."

CANDY RAINDROPS
"That song's sexual. If you listen to the lyrics..." Moonchild breaks off and smiles bashfully. "You're going to make me embarrassed now!" he protests. "It's basically saying... It's sex. I can give it to you good and I can be the best person to give it to you. You know what I mean!"

TRAFFIC
"That track is about being in a relationship where you feel trapped. Where you have feelings for a person but at the same time you know that person's not good for you and you need to get out of the relationship. Just being stuck in traffic, waiting for the green light to signal, 'Okay, I'm gone!'"

ELSEWHERE - Michael Anthony/Moonchild (Official MySpace)

Moonchild was lensed by Urban Shotz Photography and presquevu photo