Butchie is a judo target and t-shirt model for the Manly Fireplug’s barbershop, though he’s been guarding its basement now for several months. Just so we’re clear: he’s in the basement. I know he’s in the basement. Yet every time I go down to the basement he scares the crap out of me.

Butchie stoically presided over last night’s frenzied literary reading preparations, as I dusted off the folding chairs, iced the drinks, and searched for that damn corkscrew. An hour later, after the folding-chair-up-the-basement-steps bucket brigade (thank you volunteers and Fireplug!) I ducked outside to try and air out my damp shirt. I sweat a lot before every barbershop reading.

So I expect the sweat. But I didn’t expect the tears. Last night at the podium, in front of the capacity crowd, I got choked up reading a chapter about my father from the end of my book. Last year, at the Queer Arts Festival reading, I got choked up reading a chapter about my mom’s first girlfriend.

Both times took me by surprise, and embarrassed me. I find myself aspiring to a particular writerly image, the dude who reads, say, at the 92nd Street Y in New York, and sells just enough books to stay – with the help of the requisite side jobs – just above poverty.

That dude writes literature, which requires emotional distance from the subject matter. His work isn’t a barely-digested therapy session thrown on the page.

An emotional distance I thought I’d acquired. By now I’ve written nineteen drafts of my book, and have read through each draft at least ten, but more often twenty or thirty times, tweaking the stray word. I must have read the chapter on my mother’s first girlfriend, and the chapter on my father, at least fifty times each.

So the tears felt like the mark of an amateur, or worse, some kind of performance trick I was pulling on the audience. A schtick.

I used to be the kind of kid that others called sensitive. Code word for homo, maybe, but I’ll admit that I was ruled by my feelings.

In recent years I’ve tried to lean a little more often on my thoughts, if only to reach for a bit of balance, and to become a better writer. And in some cases my lack of emotion began to surprise me.

During those dreary few months when the Fireplug and I split up, for example, I seemed to only feel cold disappointment. I never cried.

But then one day I’m driving to work, listening to a Death Cab for Cutie album I’ve just downloaded, and the sad opening piano chords of their song, “Brothers on a Hotel Bed” throws a hook into the depths of me, and reels up tears. Tons of them. I spend the next few weeks driving around the city with that song on repeat, endangering countless San Franciscans with my blurred-vision driving.

Last week, as the Fireplug and I drove down to Palm Springs, listening to my iPod, up pops that song, and up come the tears. Again. Tons of them.

“Oh G-god,” I said. “I’m sorry, I f…forgot it was on this p…playlist!”

After we’d got back together I’d told him all about the song, so he knew what I meant.

“That’s okay,” he said, grabbing my hand.

“I don’t know why it still m-m-makes me cry. It’s st-st-stupid!”

“It’s not stupid,” he said. “We almost lost this.”

He was right, and really, the only stupid thing is to pretend like you’re someone you’re not. To jam yourself inside an image of a writer that doesn’t fit. We can’t all be Butchie.

So yeah, I cry, and maybe the only thing that’s changed since I was a kid is that I let my tears surprise me. I was embarrassed at first, last night, but then I got over it. Time’s wasting. I’ve got two last chapters to get right, and if I’m lucky, a slew of future readings at which I can freely bawl my eyes out.

I spent seven heavenly days crashing at a friend’s house (thanks Fred!) in Palm Springs with the Manly Fireplug. Sort of a combination honeymoon/sabbatical where I worked on my book – writing six hours a day – took a dip in the pool, then an evening with the hubby. World Gym, dinner, then a cigar in the hot tub. In this case sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. At least at first. It was a honeymoon, after all.

And a very hard honeymoon to leave for the real world again. Since then I’ve been back to the three jobs, interviewing for others, and trying to get the last 3% of the book finished so that I can send it off to a few agents.

If you’re in San Francisco and free tomorrow night, I’ll be reading at the Fireplug’s shop as part of Litquake. Decided I’ll share the What-Happened-When-My-Dad-Found-My-Blog chapter (new material in case you’ve heard me read other sections). Hurt feelings, D.C. snipers, a Banana Republic sales boy with a lopsided mullet, and much more…

A Little Off the Top, and Over the Top
Tuesday, October 11th
Doors open at 8:30 pm; show starts at 9:00 pm
free; $5-$10 suggested donation
Joe’s Barbershop
2150 Market St (between Church and Sanchez)

An article I wrote about San Francisco literary events in bars, for BarTAB magazine:

You can trace the marriage of booze and books in San Francisco back to the 1950s, when Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac passed around bottles of cheap red wine during live readings at North Beach bars like The Black Cat, The Cellar, and Vesuvio.

That tradition is alive and well today. Several local series blow the cobwebs off the typical staid literary reading with raucous, unpredictable events where you can always slip away from the rare tedious author for a shot of whiskey at the bar, or a quick smoke out front.

October is by far the greatest month for local book and bar lovers. Litquake, the city’s annual literary festival, runs from October 1–9 and brings together an astonishing array of writers and fans for readings and panels in unusual locations (www.litquake.org).

(You can read the rest of the article on BarTAB’s site.)

My brother and me, fashion-forward Midwestern boys, circa 1980.

So this weird thing happened when I gave that reading the other night. I got choked up. This surprised and embarrassed me – I’d been working on the book for several years and I figured by now that I had enough emotional distance from the material, the distance that making a good book pretty much requires. By getting choked up I felt as though I were letting everyone know that I hadn’t yet achieved that distance. And that the book would be closer to an undigested therapy session than to something like literature.

I guess by most standards I did not have a happy childhood. And the excerpt I read the other night comes from a time of enormous upheaval in the story, just after my parents split up and begin dating people of the same sex, when I was ten and my brother five, about a year after this photo was taken. For several years I’ve steered my way through this book, afraid above all else of falling into self-pity. And I think I steered it too sharply in the other direction, away from the hard feelings.

So with this latest draft I tried to delve a little deeper into each scene, and to just say what was going on in my little head and little heart at the time, and I can already tell it’s a stronger story as a result. Whether I can do so and still keep it from teetering into self-pity, well, time will tell. But those feelings were closer to my surface, I guess, the night of the reading, because of this recent draft. The choked-back tears came early, and I fought them down pretty much the whole time I was reading. At one point I looked up and made eye contact with the Manly Fireplug, but then had to look away. He may look like a tough cookie on the outside, but really he’s a big softie (it’s this combination of bad boy looks and good boy heart that makes me love him), and there’s a scene on a tractor that always makes him cry. The tears in his eyes triggered my own, and I had to look elsewhere the rest of the reading.

Thanks to everyone who showed up, and to those who gave me feedback. It was a good night – it energized me to keep working, and to finally finish (again) this damn thing.

One last reminder for tonight’s reading, 7:30 pm at the Center.

Also, I recently wrote an article for the new BarTAB magazine, which covers the San Francisco nightlife scene. The article is essentially a collection of locals’ memories of their first time at a Pride march, or their first time at a gay bar. Special thanks to editor Jim Provenzano for the assignment.

Virgin Territory

Notable First Pride Tales

by Michael McAllister

Another June, another Pride – another chance to reflect on how far we’ve come. We can measure our progress as a community by examining our own memories. If we’ve been out for a long time, we can forget the early obstacles we faced. BarTAB asked several locals about their first time at a Gay Pride parade, or their first time at a gay bar.

Monica Nolan, author of Bobby Blanchard, Lesbian Gym Teacher, came close to her first Pride in 1984. “I was working in an ice cream shop on North Halsted in Chicago. One night the place was suddenly packed with men. Two guys (I think wearing leather chaps but I may be embroidering my memories) said, ‘Wish us “Happy Gay Pride”.’ ‘Okay. Happy gay pride,’ I said in monotone obedience. I was, after all, only being paid $4 an hour, which wasn’t enough if the customers were going to start writing my dialogue. However, I did genuinely wish them well. In 1988 I marched in the enormous New York Pride Parade, and it seemed impossible that I could ever have been so oblivious and disinterested…”

Read the rest of the article at BarTAB’s site.

Wow, a very very nice write-up and plug from SF Weekly for this coming Friday’s reading:

“Guywriters: Small Town Boys”

By Hiya Swanhuyser

Elements of a good story: juicy details, brutal honesty, painful conflicts, a weird landscape. And at “Guywriters: Small Town Boys — Gay Men Revisit Their Histories and Hometowns,” that’s what it’s all about. The featured writer is K.M. Soehnlein; this much-awarded person wrote the definitive gaydungsroman of the decade, “The World of Normal Boys.” He’s in his idiom here; look for literary backflips and fireworks. We’re currently crushing hard on another writer, Michael McAllister, whose story is mind-expanding in its barest-bones description: His parents both came out of the closet(s) within months of each other when he was in elementary school. He hoped he would grow up to be straight, but he gayed up in college and stayed that way — only his younger brother is straight, the freak. If this bear doesn’t have some funny things to say about small towns, we’ll eat our baseball hats. (We’re hedging our bets, actually — we loved his contribution to 2006’s “From Boys to Men: Gay Men Write About Growing Up,” so we know what McAllister is capable of.)

“My family broke for good on the last day of August, 1981. That day I’d roamed the grounds of the nearby State Fair. During the fair our little suburb grew into the state’s largest city. Neighbors rented out their lawns for five bucks a car, and the tourists swarmed our streets, littering our yards with plastic beer cups and cotton candy sticks. Every year, the Midwest Dairy Association held a pageant for girls from local counties, and the winner was crowned Princess Kay of the Milky Way. On the first day of the fair she sat, wrapped in a ski parka, in a rotating glass cooler for nine hours, where her likeness was carved from a 90-pound block of butter. Afterwards they’d carve the busts of the eleven finalists, one per day, until the display case held an entire shelf of dairy princesses. To me they all looked like the same girl, and I spent more time worrying about the health of Princess Kay, refrigerated for nine hours, than I did admiring her golden smile.”

The above is a little excerpt from my book-in-progress. I’ll be reading from that book at a event next Friday, “Small Town Boys: Gay Men Revisit Their Histories and Hometowns,” which is part of the National Queer Arts Festival. I’ll be reading with a few other writers, including K.M. Soehnlein, who wrote THE WORLD OF NORMAL BOYS. If you’re in San Francisco and free that night, I’d love to see/meet you.

Friday, June 11, 2010
7:30pm – 9:00pm
S.F. LGBT Community Center – Ceremonial Room
1800 Market St.
San Francisco, CA

Tickets are $12 – $20 sliding scale.
Tickets will be available at the door.
For more information or to purchase tickets in advance, visit Queer Cultural Center or Brown Paper Tickets.

Here’s the event on Facebook

I’ll admit to a little selfishness when I finally saw the Fireplug’s new shop after its renovation. Of course I was proud of him, but I immediately pictured putting the space to my own use, namely for the publication party for my first book. Then the Fireplug suggested that I have a reading there with some of my fellow grad school alums who’ve landed out here on the West Coast. Since half of them are already published, with books out, it seemed like a great idea.

And originally I considered the space incidental, merely a nice place I could get for free. But when I talked to my friends, they were most excited by the prospect of reading in a barbershop. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that they were on to something. Most readings are held in bars and coffee shops and bookstores. I’ve never heard of one in a barbershop. So there’s an element of originality, and the kind of hook that could get some press. Which, believe it or not, is already happening.

The barbershop is both irreverent and casual, which I want reflected in the series, and the shop and the series both will play off the idea of community. Plus there won’t be any espresso machines frothing milk during your reading, so it retains a sense of diginity. Or as dignified as we get around here.

I’m going to start it out small, maybe once a month or every other month. But keep the caliber of writers high.

I was pretty excited about this idea, at least for a week or so. But then I had a conversation with a friend at the gym the other day which cast a bleak new light upon my plans. I was on my way in as he was on his way out, and we stopped to chat.

“Where are you off to?” I asked him.

“Boys with Balls,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“It’s a gay men’s bowling night. You should come, it’s a lot of fun. Everyone takes off their shirt, and we drink beer and…”

“You what?”

“We take off our shirts. The bowling alley is closed, it’s a private party, and we all just hang out and drink beer…”

“That is the gayest thing I have ever heard of. Shirtless bowling?”

It’s the kind of thing which will end up on The Simpsons someday. I don’t know what it is about gay men, that we find it necessary to take off our shirts whenever we gather in public. But the Nouveau Muscled are like the Nouveau Riche, displaying all of our wealth with brazen tackiness. I suppose it’s just a matter of time until I end up shirtless bowling, too. You can’t fight these things.

Now that I have to compete with shirtless bowling, the prospects for my Barbershop Reading Series seem unclear. For about two minutes I thought about making the series shirtless as well, but then I couldn’t think of a single writer I’d like to see half-naked. Literature and muscles rarely come together. Sometimes I wonder why I try so hard at both.

I don’t care much for the term “depression,” as by now it’s been thrown around so often and so carelessly that it’s lost all its meaning. And for a long time I preferred Tennessee Williams’ term for that which ailed him, the “blue devils.” But even that term implies a sort of mischievous energy, and at least when I fall prey to it, there’s nothing energetic about it. This state blunts my mental faculties as well, so finding the right phrase may be beyond my reach right now, but it’s more akin to a tar pit, something I fall down into, something that slowly constricts me to the point where every movement becomes labor. And it’s only movement that saves me. But the things that would help me the most, when down in the pit, are also the hardest to do. Writing. Reading. Hitting the gym. Talking with friends. Inside the tar pit my compulsive tendencies escalate, and seize upon activities which don’t feed my spirit or my brain; they merely open a window wide enough through which I can escape for a few hours. Like Playstation 3.

I fall into the pit with frustrating regularity, though with the help of modern medicine, and with more thorough experience with its contours, the times I spend down there grow fewer and farther between. Which is progress. I used to live down there. I spent my whole adolescence and college years, and pretty much all of my twenties, down there. So I have a little gratitude.

Before the Manly Fireplug came into my life I’d been single for over five years. So I’d forgotten how much the tar pit affects not only me but those close to me as well, and it was his frustration, coupled with my own, with my absence, which led me a few days ago to start clawing my way to the surface. To be a tad melodramatic.

So my apologies to you, in case you’d missed me.

Another factor that led me to fight my way back to the surface was the simple desire for self-promotion. A while back I was asked to take part in another public literary reading next Thursday, here in San Francisco. The reading series is called Inside Story Time, and the curators do well at bringing in some great writers, so it could be a good one. This month’s theme is “What to Want, or the Lineaments of Gratified Desire.” The other writers will be Rodes Fishburne, Holly Shumas, Andrea Drugay, and Justin Chin.

Looks like they have a full bar, too, in case you need a little more motivation.

Inside Story Time
Thursday, February 19, 2009
Cafe Royale
800 Post Street (at Leavenworth)
6:30 – 8:30 pm
$3 to $5 cover

For that reading I’m doing Wednesday at the publication launch for the new issue of Fourteen Hills:

“Please join us for the release of Fourteen Hills vol. 15.1, an international literary magazine that publishes innovative poetry, fiction, short plays, and literary nonfiction. Fourteen Hills is San Francisco State University’s literary review, committed to presenting a diversity of experimental and progressive work by emerging and cross-genre writers, as well as award-winning and established writers. Contributers have included Peter Orner, Robert Glück, Pam Houston, Lydia Davis, Mary Gaitskill, Denise Levertov, Robert Creeley, and Ray Bradbury.”

Bollyhood Cafe
3372 19th St (at Mission)
Wed, December 17th, 2008
7 pm