I recently returned from a Mystery writers’ conference where I had a wonderful time. As someone who has battled against a popular conception that I am primarily a horror writer, and who has fought less pugnaciously against being dismissed as a “mere” comedy writer, I’m always delighted to be included amongst the ranks of Thriller and Mystery writers.  (Off the record, I’ve always thought of Bite Club, my best known novel, as a thriller – in spite of half the characters being vampires, werewolves, and other supernatural critters.)

	I love caper-based thrillers. I really, really do. My new Browne & Brownie series of books are all comic capers. My intent with these books was to take some of the better known (and oft over-used) mystery and noir tropes, turn them inside out and upside down, and add a healthy dollop of lavender to the story. The first book, for example, toys with the standard noir femme fatale character in what I hope is a unique way. Rather than a voluptuous vamp betraying the gumshoe with a proverbial thrust of her stiletto heel through his heart, in my version the femme fatale is, of course, an homme fatal. And though the hero actually triumphs in the romance department, he discovers that although he got what he thought he wanted, the reality of having it is something else entirely. If/when the danged things come out (come out on the market, not out of the closet!),we’ll find out if my readers think I was successful or not.

	Being an openly gay author, whose work is almost exclusively culturally “gay” in tone, isn’t an easy challenge to surmount in any genre, with the two main exceptions of Romance, where there is a distinct, separate sub-genre called M/M (for male/male), or GoG (for guy-on-guy), and in those books which are often overly optimistically referred to Literary Fiction. The common obstacles I’ve faced have not been, as one might assume, because I’m fond of writing about intimate body parts being thrust into dark and squishy places, but rather because some editors balk at the degree to which my work is infused with gay culture. 

	They’re not entirely off-base about that. For most of my life, I’ve made my home is the second largest gay ghetto in the country. I also spent much of my youth working in gay politics, and as a gay civil rights advocate. And of course I earned my living in a creative industry famed (or notorious, depending on your point of view) for being not just gay inclusive, but for being saturated by homosexual men. I have always existed in a veritable Wonderland of homosexuality and homosexual culture, populated for the most part by other gay men. 

	In a very core way, gay culture is the only culture I truly know, and certainly the only culture I feel comfortable operating in. As a good friend of mine who was struggling with coming to terms with his own sexuality once expressed envy that I never really had to come out. “The challenge for you,” he said, “would be if you ever had to stay in the closet!” 

	He was more accurate than he realized. Not that I’m a screaming queen, but I’ve never been comfortable navigating in a heterosexual environment. My mother (who will almost certainly be the subject of a great many blog posts once she’s gone) used to tell me, doubtless because she thought it profound, “There’s nothing wrong with being a gay professional. But do you have to be a professional gay?” My response was an unhesitating: “What’s wrong with being a professional gay?”

	So editors and publishers don’t balk at my work because they’re afraid of the raunchy back-room scenes, the detailed descriptions of gay sex, or the mercenary gay political content. My books don’t contain such things. When some of them tell me, “It’s a little too ‘gay’. Can you tone it down?” what they actually mean is that is that my work exists in an environment that is alien to them. They feel a nebulous discomfort that they wouldn’t experience if they could easily identify their unease as emanating from, say, an graphic anal sex scene or a spare-no-details description of a blow job.

	In today’s LGBTQ-alphabet soup environment, the idea of a specifically gay culture has, sadly, become something to be ignored, disregarded, or in the worst cases, denied entirely. Gay men, especially young gay men, are being indoctrinated into the idea that there should be a kind of All-For-One-And-One-For-All approach to equality and civil rights, irrespective of the fact that male homosexuals have consistently and inevitably been considered the proverbial red-headed step children by other minorities, and shunted to the back burner in the scheme of the broader, more general civil rights context. 

	However, that issue, and my feelings about it, are far too complex to include as a mere digression here, and deserves a separate discussion of its own. Nor will this post deal with issues of cultural appropriation, exploitation, and lack of what I call “cultural authenticity” in and by artists who are not members of the targeted group. That, too, is a subject that is rich enough to stand independently. My aim here is to attempt to clarify some of the things that I believe constitute a unique cultural “gayness”, both practically and ideologically, as it relates to gay men in particular.

	Obviously, the primary fundamental difference between gay men and the established norm lies in the kind of sex we have, and with whom. This is not to imply in any way that gay sex, or gay men for that matter, are in any way abnormal, but merely that we deviate from the majority’s traditional status quo of sexual behavior. Straight people can, of course, engage in identical intimate practices, and many of them do. However the fact that two men are involved seems to me to be the thing that most quintessentially defines us as gay. By the same token, the scope of that definition is almost oppressively limited, and provides only a soupçon of whatever it is that makes us “gay” in the larger, cultural sense. Yet, even so, it is the foundation of what makes someone gay and, as such, it cannot be ignored.

	Perhaps the most well-known aspect of gay culture, and the easiest for members of other cultures to digest, is camp. Camp, for those who may be unfamiliar with the term, is a particular type of self-deprecating yet empowering humor. It is inevitably slightly naughty, if not outright salacious or even bawdy, and can be equally obvious or suggestive. It is a witty, comic cleverness that is uniquely capable of slavish adoration while simultaneously engaged in the most outrageous lampooning. While it is certainly true to note that gay mens’ attitudes towards sex invariably play a substantial role in camp humor, the bulk of camp derives from the perception that we are “different” in a way that society has only recently begun to accept, and from the internalized shame that results from the subliminal messages that gay men experience from a very young age, to wit, that we are abnormal in the sense of being perverted, and thus deserving of being social outcasts. 

	In recent years, I’ve had a great many arguments with straight people, and several with the new generation of gay youth, who insist that this is not so. Yet, as children, virtually every television commercial, magazine advertisement, billboard feature heterosexual couples. Even the primers that are used to teach fundamental life skills like reading are, for most of us, hetero-centric. Nowadays, Dick and Jane may have a more ethnically diverse group of friends and neighbors, however contrived and tokenistic those ethnicities may be. But they are still presented to children as members of a traditional nuclear family with a mommy and a daddy, and a dog named Spot. 

	Even worse, the modern drive on the part of companies and institutions to demonstrate inclusion/acceptance of gay people often includes an element of what is sometimes called Virtue Bragging. As a practical matter, the way in which so many advertisers and the entertainment media go so obviously and showily out of their way to point out that they are, in fact, “inclusive” operates to negate their good intentions. It highlights, albeit subliminally, that the very inclusiveness they pride themselves on is something unusual, and not “normal”. Many of these efforts to demonstrate the belief that “gay people are normal” inadvertently single themselves out as being abnormal merely because they’re presented in a way that intentionally draws an unusual amount of attention to them. The subliminal message inevitably reinforces the fact that gay people are still “different” in society’s eyes. It is sadly, only a short stretch from that message to the conclusion that those differences are something to be ashamed of, or embarrassed about, or that they should be hidden. 

	Part of the problem is that the United States is a culturally and socially prudish country overall. When it comes to attitudes about gay men, there is no question that there is a focus on our sexual practices and the mechanics involved, not to mention the Gay man’s cultural attitudes towards sex and the sex act. However, I’m not talking about that. I’m speaking more to the rich history, and the cultural mores that we, as gay men have inherited from those who came before us. I’m talking about a history and culture that goes back literally thousands of years.

	Gay men are not merely little pink versions of straight people, nor should we be. This is precisely, to my mind at least, the problem with the modern LGBTQ political movement. It is a forced assimilation (coupled with a brainwashing of Gay male youth – but, again, that’s a big enough subject on its own for a later post) of our culture into the cultures of other minority groups merely because all of these groups share the similarity of a non-traditional sexual orientation, or because we approach gender roles in a way that differs from longstanding societal norms. The people who insist that LGBTQ is a “thing” would be appalled if someone grouped Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Columbians, Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Panamanians into one homogenous group merely because they all speak a version of Spanish. Yet theses same people fail to see any problem with putting gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transsexuals into a single category, and justifying the improbable melange of cultures, attitudes, and histories by slapping an “inclusive” name on it. 

	In my work, I have always tried to celebrate Gay culture. Whenever possible, I take a humorous approach as I feel that you can more effectively deliver a “message” by making someone laugh than you can by beating them over the head with it. Bite Club, for all its outrageousness, and in spite of its comedic moments, is at the core a serious novel which deals with serious issues. But there are times, particularly when dealing with AIDS and its effects, that humor may seem out of place. In those instances, I reach for a deeper, more emotional impact, which you will find in some of my shorter fiction like “A Rift in Reflection”, “The Baker of Millepois” and “Lavender and Cedar.” 

	In any case, this post has become much longer than I intended it to be. Even so, I have a great deal more to say on these and related subjects. But in the interests of avoiding turning a blog post into a novel on its own, all of that will need to wait for a later time.