Speaker 1: Coming to you from the dining room table at East
Speaker 1: Barbary Lane. Welcome to a special episode of Full Circle
Speaker 1: the Podcast. I am your host, Charles Tyson Jr. And
Speaker 1: today I am so thrilled to have our guest TJ.
Speaker 1: Klune is the number one New York Times in USA today,
Speaker 1: best selling Lambda Literary Award winning author of such works
Speaker 1: as The House and the Cerulean Sea, Under the Whispering Door,
Speaker 1: In the Lives of Puppets, The Green Creek Series for adults,
Speaker 1: The Extraordinary Series for teens, and so many more.
Speaker 2: Today we will.
Speaker 1: Be discussing his newest work, The Bones Beneath My Skin.
Speaker 1: I am so thrilled to have TJ. Clue at the
Speaker 1: Full Circle Table.
Speaker 2: Hi, TJ. How are you? I am good, Charles. Thank
Speaker 2: you so much for having me. I truly appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I have been looking forward to talking to you because,
Speaker 1: let me tell you.
Speaker 2: I love the book. That's good.
Speaker 1: The Bones Beneath My Skin is a fabulous book. And
Speaker 1: you know one thing I am so grateful for. When
Speaker 1: I got the invitation to read the book, I saw
Speaker 1: queer science fiction, and I got a little nervous, only
Speaker 1: because I love the genre of science fiction. But when
Speaker 1: it's a book, authors tend to do one of two things.
Speaker 1: Either they get bogged down in the science or they
Speaker 1: embrace the fiction. And when you do one and not
Speaker 1: the other, it's just not fun. But the same can
Speaker 1: that cannot be said about this book. This book was
Speaker 1: so much fun. In fact, when I wasn't reading it,
Speaker 1: I was thinking about reading it, and I love when
Speaker 1: that happens. So tell me a little bit, tell me
Speaker 1: what the bones beneath my skin is about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So this book follows the character of Nate. When
Speaker 2: the book opens, Nate is probably at the lowest person
Speaker 2: a person can be. He's at the lowest of low's.
Speaker 2: His parents are dead through a horrific act of violence.
Speaker 2: His brother wants nothing to do with him. He's just
Speaker 2: been fired from his job as a journalist in Washington,
Speaker 2: d c. For some unethical practices on his part. So
Speaker 2: we have a very flawed, broken person when the novel opens,
Speaker 2: and what he wants to do is with nothing left,
Speaker 2: he goes to the only thing that he has left,
Speaker 2: which is a cabin in the mountains of Oregon, and
Speaker 2: he wants to go there to refresh and regroup and
Speaker 2: figure out what his next steps are and when he
Speaker 2: gets there, he expects the cabin to be empty. It
Speaker 2: is not. Inside is a man with a gun and
Speaker 2: a little girl who calls herself Artemis darth Vader, who
Speaker 2: is not exactly a normal child, And from there Nate
Speaker 2: learns about them and about their past, and he has
Speaker 2: to make a decision if he wants to let himself
Speaker 2: continue to drown in his anger and his grief, or
Speaker 2: he wants to do something that could change the world.
Speaker 2: And the book follows his journey with these two other characters,
Speaker 2: Artemis and Alex. And what I love about the book
Speaker 2: for the most part is, yes, there's the big sci
Speaker 2: fi adventure that goes on on top of it. There's
Speaker 2: all there's a big cast of characters, but at its heart,
Speaker 2: it is about Nate and art and Alex. They are
Speaker 2: a triangle. Without them, Without any one of the three,
Speaker 2: the picture wouldn't be complete. They are pieces from a puzzle,
Speaker 2: from different puzzles, but when they go together, they still
Speaker 2: somehow fit and still form a picture. And you know
Speaker 2: when you're writing, when you include romance in books and
Speaker 2: stuff like that, that there's a tendency to focus on
Speaker 2: just the two main characters that are as part of
Speaker 2: the romance. But with this art she is ten years
Speaker 2: old and she is on every single page because she
Speaker 2: is just as important as Nate and Alex are, and
Speaker 2: her journey is what sends Nate off into a world
Speaker 2: where he realizes it's not what it seems and he
Speaker 2: has to go and figure out how to do what
Speaker 2: Nate or what Alex and art have started out to
Speaker 2: do trying to get her home.
Speaker 1: That's yes, it's so. It was so much fun to read,
Speaker 1: and the character of Artemis is very charming, it's so charging,
Speaker 1: and the you know, I had suspected what made her
Speaker 1: special a bit beforehand, but I was almost wrong. And
Speaker 1: I love that, and it kind of gave me. The
Speaker 1: dynamic between the three kind of gave me Louis Lastadt
Speaker 1: and Claudia vibes, except not quite as creepy.
Speaker 2: Not quite as creepy. We do not want to go
Speaker 2: to that direction, Yes, and I doubt that art Art
Speaker 2: can be a little creepy sometimes, but she's not a
Speaker 2: child vampire queen, right, So.
Speaker 1: What drew you to the creation of this story?
Speaker 2: So initially, the genesis of this book goes all the
Speaker 2: way back to twenty fifteen. I wanted to do my
Speaker 2: own spin on a specific kind of story you have
Speaker 2: to think of, like Stephen King's It or Et or
Speaker 2: Escape from Which Mountain, which is basically a group of kids,
Speaker 2: a group of young people have to come together to
Speaker 2: face something. I hadn't quite figured out what that something was,
Speaker 2: but I knew I wanted to go in that direction,
Speaker 2: and so the more I started thinking about it, the
Speaker 2: more I thought, Okay, what if we put these young
Speaker 2: teenage boys in an adult novel and have them have
Speaker 2: to surround and protect a girl who moves to their
Speaker 2: town who exhibits some extraordinary abilities. And I hadn't started
Speaker 2: writing anything, which is probably good because the very next year,
Speaker 2: a funny little show called Stranger Things came out and
Speaker 2: completely did everything that I was wanting to do, And
Speaker 2: that happens sometimes. My novel Under the Whispering Door, a
Speaker 2: rumination on grief and what it does to people, was
Speaker 2: initially going to be something very different. It was initially
Speaker 2: going to be I was initially inspired by a very
Speaker 2: specific scene from Beetlejuice where Alex Baldwin and Geena Davis
Speaker 2: first die and they go to the afterlife and they
Speaker 2: sit in the bureaucratic room where everybody has to take
Speaker 2: a number and do that. And I had this idea
Speaker 2: that that's what the afterlife was, and that there would
Speaker 2: be like some kind of system where it assigned morality,
Speaker 2: and then what came out after that the good place,
Speaker 2: and there the exact same thing that I did. Right.
Speaker 2: It happens, though, and you have to roll with the punches.
Speaker 2: So with the bones beneath my skin, I set it
Speaker 2: aside for a little bit and let it cook in
Speaker 2: the back of my head and maybe something would come
Speaker 2: of it, maybe something wouldn't. But then when I was
Speaker 2: randomly doing one of my research spirals where when I
Speaker 2: have I have ADHD, so that means when I find
Speaker 2: something interesting, I hyper fixate on it and it becomes
Speaker 2: a personality, like right, exactly like a kid, it becomes that.
Speaker 2: And I stumbled across something that I had not heard
Speaker 2: about since I was a kid, and that was a
Speaker 2: man named Marshall Applewhite. Now that name might not be
Speaker 2: familiar to younger people, but to people of a certain generation, saying,
Speaker 2: like born in the eighties and nineties like I was,
Speaker 2: you probably remember that name. Marshall Applewhite was a leader
Speaker 2: of a cult called Heaven's Gate in the late nineties.
Speaker 2: He believed this cult believed that the recently discovered comet Hailbop,
Speaker 2: had an alien spacecraft in the tail of the comet.
Speaker 2: And you can go online and look at all of
Speaker 2: Marshall Applewhite's videos. They're still available. He is a very
Speaker 2: striking figure. He's very planned, leathery skin, his ears stick out,
Speaker 2: he has the most inhuman eyes I have ever seen
Speaker 2: on a human being. And he talks about what the
Speaker 2: beliefs of Heaven's Gate are, what they do and the Again,
Speaker 2: these videos are readily available. But what happened. They all
Speaker 2: ended up committing mass suicide and there's some very indelible
Speaker 2: images that came out after this. For the most part,
Speaker 2: when people remember Heaven's Gate, they remember a the comet,
Speaker 2: and b the aftershots of what happened, which were in
Speaker 2: a bunker with bunk beds, people with their tracksuits and
Speaker 2: their white sneakers and sheets applied all over everyone. Then
Speaker 2: they were dead. And to this day, Heavensgate dot Com
Speaker 2: still you can go to the website right now and
Speaker 2: look at it. It looks exactly like it did in
Speaker 2: the nineties and I spoke to the people who run
Speaker 2: Heaven's Gate the website. It's basically it's not an active,
Speaker 2: come join our cult kind of thing. It's more like
Speaker 2: a museum piece and archive of what it was like
Speaker 2: at the time. And from there I just became fascinated
Speaker 2: by the idea of cult leaders like Jim Jones and
Speaker 2: David Koresh and how one person can be so charismatic
Speaker 2: that they can insert their will upon a group of
Speaker 2: people and basically mold them into whatever they can be.
Speaker 2: It is an astonishing and terrifying thing that for some
Speaker 2: people it is so very very easy to give up
Speaker 2: your friends, your job, your family, your money, all of
Speaker 2: that so you can follow something specifically. If you want
Speaker 2: a more recent example, think of QAnon when that happened
Speaker 2: during the first Trump administration. That was all online, but
Speaker 2: that is in essence a cult.
Speaker 1: There's yeah, I was thinking of the arm Cheeto monster.
Speaker 1: I was like, ooh, too real.
Speaker 2: Right, And there's a cult in the news right now
Speaker 2: called the Zizians where they have murdered six different people
Speaker 2: over the past like eight months, and they are a
Speaker 2: It's mostly made up of trans people in this cult
Speaker 2: who worked in the in the technology sector, and their
Speaker 2: beliefs are that AI is going to take over the world.
Speaker 2: So their leader, the cult leader Zizian, who has just
Speaker 2: recently arrested, believed that if they cuddled up to AI,
Speaker 2: that AI would when it eventually took over, would allow
Speaker 2: them to live while destroying the rest of humanity. And
Speaker 2: they've killed people because of this. This happens to this
Speaker 2: day in the year twenty twenty five. There are active
Speaker 2: cults all over the world and they fall under some
Speaker 2: of the most similar patterns where there's one person with
Speaker 2: an idea and an entire movement in their heads, and
Speaker 2: it's like an infection to other people until other people
Speaker 2: come in and start doing things that they would never
Speaker 2: have done before, like taking their own life because they
Speaker 2: believe in alien spaceship is in the Tale of a Comet.
Speaker 2: It's it's fascinating because the psychology behind it is at
Speaker 2: this point really kind of unknown. We don't why do
Speaker 2: people follow Why is like say, Donald Trump, a cult
Speaker 2: leader in a way of shape or form. These are
Speaker 2: people who can do and say whatever they want and
Speaker 2: people will follow them to the ends of the earth.
Speaker 2: It's fascinating, but that is what brought on the new
Speaker 2: way for the bones beneath my skin? Instead of kids surrounding,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to fight some great evil, what if
Speaker 2: we had two men? And I made this almost like
Speaker 2: a sad Dad kind of story, right, which is, you know,
Speaker 2: some kind of trope that happens. And I just I
Speaker 2: loved the dynamic that came out of this between Nate
Speaker 2: and Alex and Artemis, because not only did I get
Speaker 2: to to go on an adventure with them, I got
Speaker 2: to incorporate things like cults in the psychology behind it
Speaker 2: and what that means for for people who who would
Speaker 2: say I would never fall for something like that, but
Speaker 2: then they do and they believe it. I mean, why
Speaker 2: do you think, why do you think people still fall
Speaker 2: for Nigerian fishing scams? Oh, I'm a Nigerian prince. Here's
Speaker 2: two million dollars that I need to have saved and
Speaker 2: you're the only person that can do it. People fall
Speaker 2: for that. Yeah, maybe a lot of them are older,
Speaker 2: but people still fall for stuff like this.
Speaker 1: Well, I feel like there a lot of times there
Speaker 1: is an element of desperation, you know, a yearning to
Speaker 1: cling to something, you know, whatever, or a yearning.
Speaker 2: For community, a yearning for people who think exactly like you. Yeah, right. Look,
Speaker 2: when I when I when I go out on tour
Speaker 2: and I talk to the audiences that I have, I
Speaker 2: have to remind myself. Then in a way, that's like
Speaker 2: an echo chamber, because I'm sure there's people that I
Speaker 2: speak to who are or that are in the audience
Speaker 2: that don't think trans people don't deserve to exist. So
Speaker 2: in a way, I am speaking to an echo chamber
Speaker 2: and getting validated by what I'm saying. And on the
Speaker 2: flip side, there are people who desperately seek that validation
Speaker 2: because they've never been listened to before, right, and they
Speaker 2: want they want, And when someone finally listens to them,
Speaker 2: or when someone finally you know, acknowledges their beliefs and
Speaker 2: maybe even agrees with their beliefs, that's like this fusion
Speaker 2: that happens. Then they're all like, guess what we should
Speaker 2: We should spread our ideas together. You think, like I do,
Speaker 2: Let's come together and talk about more people. See if
Speaker 2: we can get more people into what we're doing.
Speaker 1: Right, and that can be a source of good, and
Speaker 1: that can be a source of great.
Speaker 2: Evil exactly, And it's fascinating how how sometimes the line
Speaker 2: between the two isn't that you know thick that Sometimes
Speaker 2: it's some people who are thinking they are doing great
Speaker 2: good actually cause great evil in effort to get to
Speaker 2: that good. And to me, it's the idea of moral relativism.
Speaker 2: You have your actions have to be honest and good
Speaker 2: if you're trying to achieve a good result. If you
Speaker 2: step on, hurt, or kill people to get your way
Speaker 2: to a good result, is that result good? No, it's
Speaker 2: not because you harmed so many people to get there, right.
Speaker 1: And how often, like in the case of you know,
Speaker 1: this widespread fear against trans people, it's like all you
Speaker 1: need is a little bit of well, in this case,
Speaker 1: a lot of bit of misinformation and just lies, and
Speaker 1: people will grasp onto it just because it clicks with
Speaker 1: that little thing that they think they believe in the
Speaker 1: back of their head. And it's like, oh, I'm not
Speaker 1: the only one.
Speaker 2: You know, it's you know, the fact that this book
Speaker 2: is set in the nineties is a little bit ironic because.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because of the fact that the morality panic that
Speaker 2: is going on right now about trans people is no
Speaker 2: different than the morality panic of the Satanic panic of
Speaker 2: the nineties, where people were saying, all these terrible things
Speaker 2: are happening with the devil and children and nothing was
Speaker 2: actually going on. People just chose to believe because that's
Speaker 2: what they were told, and they thought, oh, well, yeah,
Speaker 2: people would do that stuff like that gay people or
Speaker 2: teachers or whatever. They would believe in their pedophiles and
Speaker 2: all of this, But there was nothing to it. Nothing happened.
Speaker 2: It was just misinformation that had been spread. Could you
Speaker 2: imagine if the Internet had been as ubiquitous then as
Speaker 2: it is now what that would have done for the
Speaker 2: morality panic. Look what it's done for the transphobia that's
Speaker 2: spreading across the North America and the UK. It's because
Speaker 2: all of these people can come together and find people
Speaker 2: who think just like them and create an echo chamber
Speaker 2: to make sure that they are listened to and that
Speaker 2: their beliefs are validated.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing I think of yea E. Tangents,
Speaker 1: I think.
Speaker 2: ADC spiral. Here we go.
Speaker 1: You know, I read a lot about like the KKK
Speaker 1: when I was in college and how there were so
Speaker 1: many white supremacist groups around the country, highly concentrated in
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania believing.
Speaker 2: And Oregon that's the state where I was born and raised.
Speaker 2: I'm actually, it's so funny you brought this up, and
Speaker 2: I'll let you continue in a second, because the book
Speaker 2: I'm currently working on right now talks about the founding
Speaker 2: of the KKK in Oregon and what happened and everything
Speaker 2: that went that, So I am like knee deep in
Speaker 2: that history.
Speaker 1: As interesting well. And also it's like the one of
Speaker 1: the reasons why there are so many different factions and
Speaker 1: subgroups is because nobody can get their shit together enough
Speaker 1: to come together in organized.
Speaker 2: But we're still seeing now. I mean, I have to
Speaker 2: be honest, I after the last selection, I kind of
Speaker 2: disconnected myself from the news. It is a very privileged
Speaker 2: position to be able to take. But I knew that
Speaker 2: the news was going to be just a repeat of
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, that every single headline was going to be
Speaker 2: Trump did this, Trump did this, Trump is this? And
Speaker 2: I remember when he was inaugurated in January. I just
Speaker 2: I happened to look in the news thing and it
Speaker 2: said Trump declares the United States a country of only
Speaker 2: two genders, male and female. And I was like, this,
Speaker 2: this is what we're doing that it works, right, you
Speaker 2: have you have billions, you have millions of people complaining
Speaker 2: that they can't buy eggs. Right, and this this is
Speaker 2: what we're focused on. But then again, this is the
Speaker 2: same country where there are entire states that have that
Speaker 2: have enacted laws to go after one trans kid in
Speaker 2: their states who wants to play sports. Entire states have
Speaker 2: changed laws because of one child in them.
Speaker 1: Sometimes that one child doesn't even want to play sports.
Speaker 1: It's the fact that they might want.
Speaker 2: The child was merely inquiring if they into play sports,
Speaker 2: and that's what we're focused on.
Speaker 1: Or they bought a new pair of sneakers.
Speaker 2: Right, We're not focused on We're not focused on inflation.
Speaker 2: We're not in focused on crime. We're not in focused
Speaker 2: on having necessary conversations about how to help immigration actually
Speaker 2: become something that is feasible for this country. We are
Speaker 2: not trying to help the people who are down and out.
Speaker 2: We are not trying to help poor people. We're not
Speaker 2: trying to solve houselessness or food you know, insecurity, we're
Speaker 2: trying to We're trying to say, here's one person who
Speaker 2: isn't like most other people, so let's make sure that
Speaker 2: they know their place. You are not normal, you are abnormal,
Speaker 2: you are weird, you are strange, and we're going to
Speaker 2: make sure the laws dictate that. And that's what's happened. Look,
Speaker 2: the right to same sex marriage in the United States
Speaker 2: is ten years old this year. Yep, ten years old. YEP.
Speaker 2: Thirty six states in the United States have same sex
Speaker 2: marriage bands on the book. So if oberg fell, the
Speaker 2: right to same sex marriage were to fall, like Roe v. Wade,
Speaker 2: there would be states where queer marriage, same sex marriage
Speaker 2: would be immediately invalidated. So imagine you've been married, you've
Speaker 2: been with your partner for forty years, you've been legally
Speaker 2: married for the last ten. But if a Supreme Court
Speaker 2: justice gets a bug up of their ass like they've
Speaker 2: been hinting that they're going to do, they'll get rid
Speaker 2: of they'll overturn the right for gay marriage and leave
Speaker 2: that to the states. And what's going to happen. Look,
Speaker 2: what's happened with Roe v. Wade. There are people dying, yeah,
Speaker 2: because they can't get the medical, medical care that they need.
Speaker 2: And you know, bringing this back full circle on this
Speaker 2: tangents there trans people are some of the have some
Speaker 2: of the highest suicide rates out of any marginalized group
Speaker 2: in the world, yep. And the response is to punch
Speaker 2: down on them. That is nothing but cruelty. That is
Speaker 2: absolutely nothing but cruelty. And you know, we've heard it
Speaker 2: many many times over the last eight years that cruelty
Speaker 2: is the point. But here's the thing. When you're cruelty
Speaker 2: is on display like that, yes, you may be sending
Speaker 2: signals out to other people who think like you that yeah,
Speaker 2: this is what we're doing now, But at the end
Speaker 2: of the day, history, history, that ever pervasive thing, is
Speaker 2: going to view you like we view people like Annita
Speaker 2: Bryant now, like we view people that, you know, all
Speaker 2: the Chuds in the fifties and sixties, like we view
Speaker 2: Reagan after he let an entire generation of gay men die.
Speaker 2: The history is going to be the ultimate judge of that.
Speaker 2: And it's unfortunate that we can't say, you know, fuck
Speaker 2: you now, get out of the office that we voted
Speaker 2: to put you in. But I just I don't understand
Speaker 2: why certain people fill the need to punch down on
Speaker 2: some of the groups that they do, especially when it
Speaker 2: is never easy to be a transperson in the United States, right,
Speaker 2: It's never easy. It doesn't matter if you're passing or not.
Speaker 2: It's never easy because you're always going to have somebody
Speaker 2: who hates you for who you are, simply for finding
Speaker 2: your true self and finding your identity and finding your
Speaker 2: your your your right to live the way you want.
Speaker 2: Queer people, the best revenge we can get is to
Speaker 2: live happily and successfully. But unfortunately there's so many people
Speaker 2: that don't want.
Speaker 1: Us to do that exactly. And that's you know, getting
Speaker 1: back to getting back.
Speaker 2: To the book, look at that to people we did it.
Speaker 1: Like I like to focus on, especially with the podcast
Speaker 1: now because we're starting to burn around the news, focusing
Speaker 1: on queer joy and queer excellence because you know, like
Speaker 1: you said, the best way to battle this is to
Speaker 1: be let our light shine so bright that you know
Speaker 1: it pushes them back into the shadows where they belong.
Speaker 2: Now, I wanted to burn their eyes out.
Speaker 1: I almost said that, and then I'm back, thank you, No,
Speaker 1: that's your job, than I look.
Speaker 2: Last eight years have taught me something very, very very important.
Speaker 2: It's when Michelle Obama in twenty sixteen started to use
Speaker 2: the phrase when they go low, we go high, and
Speaker 2: I understood it at the time. I understood it now though,
Speaker 2: when they go low, we go lower. We drag their
Speaker 2: faces down into the muddy, We step on the back
Speaker 2: of their necks.
Speaker 1: That's how you sound like my bestie, she said, when
Speaker 1: they go low, you kick him in the face. I mean,
Speaker 1: they're already down there.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, they're already down there. Why not get down there
Speaker 2: with them? What's the worst that could happen. They're going
Speaker 2: to call you a fag, They're going to call you
Speaker 2: they're going to call you some a horrific slur.
Speaker 1: I have no idea that right I have.
Speaker 2: I have heard that from far worse people in the world.
Speaker 2: And if you want to go now, we'll go in
Speaker 2: the mud. We'll go in the mud.
Speaker 1: And that's the interesting thing about setting the book in
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety five, because I was just having this conversation
Speaker 1: last night at our local p flag meeting. I was saying,
Speaker 1: how this is feeling like I came out in ninety two,
Speaker 1: ninety three, and this kind of feels like that, where
Speaker 1: you know, Whereas then my mindset was I'm here, I'm queer,
Speaker 1: and you're going to deal with me. I'm taking up space,
Speaker 1: whether you like it or not. I'm taking that same energy,
Speaker 1: and I'm using it to protect folks now because you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not scared of anyone anymore. But it's crazy like that.
Speaker 1: I remember standing on street corners in broad daylight and
Speaker 1: having a car go by and bottles be thrown at me,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. Like, at that level of
Speaker 1: ignorance and hatred, it's like it's it's coming back, and
Speaker 1: I don't like it.
Speaker 2: Right and so right this book, it is set in
Speaker 2: the nineties, and it is for a very specific reason.
Speaker 2: First and foremost, I posit the idea that the nineties
Speaker 2: were the biggest technological leap for humanity because at the
Speaker 2: beginning of the decade, nobody had cell phone or internet
Speaker 2: in the United States. At least by the end of
Speaker 2: the decade, internet was ubiquitous and most people had cell phones. Yea.
Speaker 2: And what did that allow you to do? Well? It
Speaker 2: allowed you to contact people from other cultures, other parts
Speaker 2: of the world that you may never have gotten to
Speaker 2: have interaction with in your entire life. Yes, And it
Speaker 2: could broaden your horizons, it could open up your mind.
Speaker 2: I was a white kid from rural Oregon who did
Speaker 2: not have any people of color in the tiny little
Speaker 2: town that I knew, white right, right, we were white
Speaker 2: trash that is that I come from. I come from
Speaker 2: that background. And so you know, getting the Internet in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight, I was sixteen years old. Yeah, it
Speaker 2: would have been, Yeah, nineteen ninety eight. It was the
Speaker 2: first time we got and we didn't even have we
Speaker 2: had three channels on our television. The first time that
Speaker 2: I had anything like that was when we got internet,
Speaker 2: dial up internet. Yeah, but internet all the same and so.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, you have to remember this
Speaker 2: was the nineties, and it's weird how we were then
Speaker 2: versus where we are now. In the nineties, we were
Speaker 2: coming off the HIV in the AHS crisis. It was
Speaker 2: still a very big thing. We were also entering the
Speaker 2: Clinton era, which became the era of don't ask, don't tell, which,
Speaker 2: for those who weren't alive in or don't quite remember,
Speaker 2: was basically the military's way in the United States government
Speaker 2: way of saying, hey, gay people exist, but we don't
Speaker 2: want you to talk about it, and you can't talk
Speaker 2: about it either, so say that There was like a
Speaker 2: military bigger closet benefit, a military ball, a military event
Speaker 2: where people were invited. Straight people could bring their partners
Speaker 2: gay people. You could not why because you don't ask
Speaker 2: and you don't tell. Basically, it's none of our business.
Speaker 2: But if you make it our business, we have to
Speaker 2: do something about it. There were people in Don't Ask,
Speaker 2: Don't Tell in the military who were dishonorably discharged because
Speaker 2: of don't ask, don't tell and because of their homosexuality,
Speaker 2: who who in only recent years have gotten that overturn
Speaker 2: to be an honorable discharge, Because think about it, that's
Speaker 2: a shitty way of doing things in the nineties, but
Speaker 2: that's where it was. In the nineties. We had gone
Speaker 2: from HIV and AIDS, a gay cancer that only affected
Speaker 2: gay people, to let's not talk about gay people. Let's
Speaker 2: not talk about them. They exist, but they're over here.
Speaker 2: And I wanted to explore that in this book. I
Speaker 2: wanted to explore that what it felt like to actually
Speaker 2: meet somebody who is like you, who is there. I
Speaker 2: remember the first time I met a gay person who
Speaker 2: wasn't me, and I was like, you're like me, right,
Speaker 2: we're friends. I remember the first time I went to
Speaker 2: a gay bar in Tucson, Arizona, at the age of
Speaker 2: eighteen with my fake ID. I got to go in there,
Speaker 2: and what happened. I immediately ran into a drag queen
Speaker 2: who adopted me and took me up to the where
Speaker 2: the drag queens were and told me all about drag
Speaker 2: and everything like that. These were my people. I got
Speaker 2: to be surrounded by people like me. And I think
Speaker 2: that even now in twenty twenty five, people forget how
Speaker 2: important that is for queer people, especially queer people who
Speaker 2: live in rural areas, especially queer youth who live in
Speaker 2: rural areas, who don't get that kind of exposure unless
Speaker 2: it's on the internet, right, And that's not always the
Speaker 2: safest place for young any people to do anything like that.
Speaker 2: So I think of the nineties. I don't necessarily think
Speaker 2: of them fondly, but I do think of the nineties
Speaker 2: as a very pivotal time, not just for queer people
Speaker 2: but for humanity as a whole, because at the beginning
Speaker 2: of the nineties we weren't connected. At the end, so
Speaker 2: many of us were, for better or worse.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Because like I spent the bulk of the nineties
Speaker 1: ninety three to two thousand in college, because it took
Speaker 1: me seven years to get my four year degree, and so.
Speaker 2: If it makes you feel better. I have one semester
Speaker 2: of community college under my belt, so you understand.
Speaker 1: But so I associate the nineties with that time of
Speaker 1: being a rebel, being an upstart. I was getting a
Speaker 1: dance degree, so it was like I was a creative
Speaker 1: you know, so everything was you know, challenging what's going on.
Speaker 1: So that was the perfect time. The nineties was the
Speaker 1: perfect time for all that. And the birth of the
Speaker 1: Internet created so much culture, like cyberpunk, you know, became
Speaker 1: so prevalent.
Speaker 2: But it also allowed you know, it also allowed gay
Speaker 2: people to talk to other gay people. I'm not talking
Speaker 2: about like like you know, hookup apps or anything like that, and.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about like community at all, chat.
Speaker 2: Rooms, chams, message boards, all of this kind of stuff
Speaker 2: where people who were once unable to talk to anybody
Speaker 2: like them were able to actually talk to other gay people,
Speaker 2: queer people, lesbians, trans people. You know. It's just it's
Speaker 2: for all that I hate that the Internet has brought
Speaker 2: upon this world, I still have to remember that it
Speaker 2: has connected so many people who've probably felt alone and
Speaker 2: finally found somebody like them a community.
Speaker 1: And created helped create conversations like so much of the
Speaker 1: vocabulary that is frankly being weaponized against us. The word
Speaker 1: woke comes to mind, was born on the Internet, like Tumblr,
Speaker 1: for instance. If it wasn't for Tumblr, I don't know
Speaker 1: when I would have learned the term non binary. I
Speaker 1: don't know when I would have had the larger conversation.
Speaker 2: About the gender spectrum.
Speaker 1: You know what I mean. And that's when the Internet
Speaker 1: is being used as a tool. It's a wonderful thing.
Speaker 1: But then it's like the snake eating its own tail.
Speaker 1: Because yeah, because of things like now Grinder, where you
Speaker 1: can order dick like pizza, you know, the the community
Speaker 1: that is the gay bar and queer spaces, they're going
Speaker 1: away because you know, the underlying reason for these places existing.
Speaker 1: You can separate out and and like I said, order
Speaker 1: like pizza so you don't need to go through the
Speaker 1: the the social dance of meeting other people.
Speaker 2: And and then if you haven't met the right person
Speaker 2: standing outside the bar during like the meat market hours
Speaker 2: after the bar closes, and everybody's trying to find someone
Speaker 2: to hook up with, so you can go home after that, right,
Speaker 2: you know, and and and you know even further beyond that,
Speaker 2: you know, gay bars are are I don't think that
Speaker 2: they are as prevalent as part of our culture as
Speaker 2: they used to be. But even worse than that is
Speaker 2: lesbian bars. Those are pretty much not existent at this point. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I when I lived in two on Arizona, there was IBT's,
Speaker 2: the gay bar, and then there was the lesbian bar
Speaker 2: in another part of town. And the lesbian bar was
Speaker 2: closed a few years after I got there. The lesbian
Speaker 2: spaces for queer women, those shut down quicker than the
Speaker 2: spaces for gay men ever did.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so sad. And like every time I hear
Speaker 1: about someone trying to open up a lesbian centered space
Speaker 1: or women's centered space, I shouted to the mountaintops. It's like, yes, please,
Speaker 1: let this succeed longer than five minutes.
Speaker 2: Right exactly exactly, because you know, when we're talking about
Speaker 2: queer women especially, we don't just necessarily mean lesbians, because
Speaker 2: these women centered spaces were there for trans women too,
Speaker 2: They were there for all of these people who identified
Speaker 2: as a woman. And when you get rid of that that,
Speaker 2: I mean, look what is out there right now. Youth centers,
Speaker 2: which are very important, absolutely important, But your journey doesn't
Speaker 2: stop once you reach eighteen or once you reach twenty one,
Speaker 2: and hell.
Speaker 1: Your journey doesn't start when you hit eighteen.
Speaker 2: Right. This is one of my biggest issues, is this
Speaker 2: idea of coming out being the be all and the
Speaker 2: end all of our journey. Like when you look, there
Speaker 2: are far greaters authors and I who've written coming out
Speaker 2: stories about young people. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 2: that is not the end. No, because anybody you meet
Speaker 2: for the rest of your life is someone you potentially
Speaker 2: have to come out to correct forever. That's always going
Speaker 2: to be something that will be part of a conversation
Speaker 2: with anybody new that you meet if they plan on
Speaker 2: sticking around in your life, right, And it's it's the
Speaker 2: fact that you know, we don't have spaces necessarily geared
Speaker 2: towards older queer people that aren't you know, alcohol related
Speaker 2: in bars or hook up related and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: You know, I've seen in bigger towns, I've seen like
Speaker 2: like queer book clubs or queer meeting spaces. I mean there.
Speaker 2: I did a tour last year for one of my
Speaker 2: books releases, and one bookstore that I went to was
Speaker 2: a trans owned Everybody who worked there was trans and
Speaker 2: it was one of the most joyful experiences I've ever had,
Speaker 2: because I was surrounded by not only trans joy, but
Speaker 2: queer joy. And that's something that no matter what people
Speaker 2: try to do, they can't take that away from us,
Speaker 2: because we found each other, we've found community, we've found
Speaker 2: other people like us, and you can't take that away
Speaker 2: from us anymore. You cannot. You can try, you can
Speaker 2: scream and shout and say horrific things about young people
Speaker 2: who are trans and finding their truth, but at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, we still have each other, and
Speaker 2: we have always been here and we will always be here.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing I was thinking about this just
Speaker 1: the other day. It's like these people, not all of them,
Speaker 1: but most of them that are trying to take away
Speaker 1: all of our rights and trying to like legislate us
Speaker 1: out of existence. It's like they're these basically like cis had,
Speaker 1: white people who've never really had to like overcome anything
Speaker 1: right going against us, who historically have had to overcome
Speaker 1: all of the things. And we are nothing if not resilient,
Speaker 1: we are nothing if not creative, We are nothing if
Speaker 1: not a bunch of people who make a way out
Speaker 1: of no way. So it's like, ultimately, you can't fuck
Speaker 1: with us like.
Speaker 2: That, and some of us, some of us are very vengeful.
Speaker 2: M M, I can't like you know, it's funny. You're right.
Speaker 2: Our entire country is a patriarchy. It is run by old,
Speaker 2: rich white men. And look, I hate that I have
Speaker 2: to say this, but frankly, I sometimes I just don't
Speaker 2: give a shit. One day soon all these old white
Speaker 2: people in power are gonna die. They will. Maybe they'll
Speaker 2: be replaced by clones who are younger and just as
Speaker 2: white and just as rich. But maybe, just maybe, when
Speaker 2: all these old rich white people die, right, And why
Speaker 2: haven't they yet? Honestly, if I haven't seen Mitch McConnell's
Speaker 2: face one more time, I swear to Christ.
Speaker 1: What if old give up?
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know how is he functioning
Speaker 2: as a person. But regardless, change will come. It will come.
Speaker 2: It will take time, and it's going to be a
Speaker 2: lot of work. But when these old white people die,
Speaker 2: who's going to replace them? Young people? Young people who
Speaker 2: are going to change this world to what it should
Speaker 2: have been from the beginning. Welcome to all, Welcome to everyone, God,
Speaker 2: where we get to exist and be who we want
Speaker 2: to be without fear of retribution from people who think
Speaker 2: that because we're different or othered, that we aren't worthy
Speaker 2: of life, existence, happiness. If these people cared as much
Speaker 2: about anything else as they do about queer and trans people,
Speaker 2: we could probably solve world hunger. We can solve Musk.
Speaker 2: If Elon Musk gave seven billion dollars to the United States,
Speaker 2: it would be able to solve the United States hunger
Speaker 2: and housing housing problems like that. Yeah, we could. If
Speaker 2: rich people, If Warren Buffett, Elon Musk, Donald Trump, all
Speaker 2: of them came together and said, hey, let's use our
Speaker 2: money to make the world a better place. Right, it
Speaker 2: could be, but it won't happen. It won't happen. We
Speaker 2: have to fight tooth and nail for everything. And you
Speaker 2: know what, when I was younger like you, I had
Speaker 2: a chip on my shoulder when I came out. I
Speaker 2: came out in nineteen ninety eight, and then I graduated
Speaker 2: high school in two thousand and I was the out
Speaker 2: and proud young queer punk kid who when we did
Speaker 2: Pride parades would be the one yelling in the faces
Speaker 2: of the evangelist, standing there with a sign saying it
Speaker 2: all burn in hell, and stuff like this and as
Speaker 2: I got older, I started to soften a little as
Speaker 2: I was trying to find myself and trying to find
Speaker 2: who I wanted to be in the world. And I
Speaker 2: honestly expected it to get myself to get softer as
Speaker 2: I got older. But holy fuck, dude, in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 2: I'm just now as pissed off as I was when
Speaker 2: I was eighteen years old. If I see Evangelsis on
Speaker 2: the street with it in a queer celebration, I'm forty two,
Speaker 2: I will go up and yell in their faces to
Speaker 2: ask him what the fuck they think they're doing. You
Speaker 2: know what you have to sometimes, you know what, Sometimes
Speaker 2: even though my job is words, sometimes words just don't
Speaker 2: cut it. Sometimes you have to show them that you
Speaker 2: mean business. And frankly, you know, it's like the idea
Speaker 2: of all those Nazis that we see pop up in
Speaker 2: Ohio and they're standing on bridges with their thing and
Speaker 2: they're saying, we're proud of being white, we are the
Speaker 2: white racist superior. Why don't they ever show their faces?
Speaker 2: If there's part of being who they are, why don't
Speaker 2: they ever show their faces? Because they know the repercussions
Speaker 2: of what happens when you're a Nazi or when you're
Speaker 2: you know, some kind of racist homophobe. Transform They know
Speaker 2: the repercussions because they know it's shitty way to be,
Speaker 2: so they hide themselves while telling everybody else that they're
Speaker 2: better than everybody because they're white.
Speaker 1: White supremacists are very very very rarely slash never any
Speaker 1: kind of superior white.
Speaker 2: Because they all look the same. That's why whenever I
Speaker 2: see those news and there I'm proud to be white.
Speaker 2: I'm like, but you're wearing a you're wearing a black lavah.
Speaker 2: You're wearing something over your entire face, so nobody can
Speaker 2: tell that you're white. You're wearing and you.
Speaker 1: Left your mama's basement to come here, right exactly.
Speaker 2: You rented a U haul moving truck where you all
Speaker 2: hid in the back to be driven to this area
Speaker 2: where you got out and hung up your signs, and
Speaker 2: then when confronted by other people, you're like, oh, and
Speaker 2: then they run away. That's what I love. It's it's
Speaker 2: so fascinating to me. People are filled with so much hate.
Speaker 2: They go online, they spout hate, they scream hate, but
Speaker 2: when they're confronted in person, uh huh they crumble, They crumble,
Speaker 2: the argument suddenly flee out the window, and they go about, well,
Speaker 2: this is this is what I believe, this is what
Speaker 2: I think. Let's shut up, shut up. Nobody cares about you.
Speaker 2: Nobody cares.
Speaker 1: And part of that is, you know, there's a whole
Speaker 1: generation of people that were not raised with like I
Speaker 1: believe your your generation A listen to me, but like
Speaker 1: I think your generation might be the last generation that
Speaker 1: was properly socialized.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, we were. I was my generation probably the
Speaker 2: last that was not raised by computers, right, stuff like that, right, right,
Speaker 2: because we didn't. I mean, I remember when I was
Speaker 2: eighteen years old and I got my first text message.
Speaker 2: I was like, what is this?
Speaker 1: My first text message? Is the wrong number? And I
Speaker 1: was like, what is this going on?
Speaker 2: Too? It was wrong? It was meant for me. It
Speaker 2: was like some ad for something I don't remember. But
Speaker 2: I remember being eighteen, going you can do this now
Speaker 2: that part phones and stuff like that, I mean, hell
Speaker 2: to show you how much of a ludite I am.
Speaker 2: When smartphones first became popular in like twenty eleven, twenty twelve,
Speaker 2: I didn't get on that train. I was like, I
Speaker 2: don't know what that means. I have my flip phone
Speaker 2: when I was happy with it, and then in twenty
Speaker 2: like fourteen, I got a smartphone for the first time,
Speaker 2: and I'll never forget going to the Verizon to get
Speaker 2: my smartphone and asking the gentleman behind the counter what's
Speaker 2: the address for the app store, because I thought it
Speaker 2: was a physical location you had to go to in
Speaker 2: order to get apps on your phone. So, yeah, ours
Speaker 2: is probably the last generation that was not you know,
Speaker 2: Internet was not a part of our daily lives, right.
Speaker 1: I remember I remember going, have you heard about this Google?
Speaker 1: You can just ask it questions and it gives you information.
Speaker 2: Or jeeves, Yeah, ask jeeves what? Oh and did you
Speaker 2: do that too? Do you remember using AOL instant messenger? Oh? God,
Speaker 2: and the and the AI called smarter Child where you
Speaker 2: could write to you could write it was a friend
Speaker 2: on your friend's list in uh instant Messenger and you'd
Speaker 2: write to and it was just like AI that they
Speaker 2: have no right back to you. It was very It
Speaker 2: wasn't very proficient, but smarter Child was a big thing
Speaker 2: in the late nineties where you would talk to an
Speaker 2: AI on AOL instant Messenger. I remember just being like
Speaker 2: fascinated by that, like this is this is the future,
Speaker 2: and now I look where they are in twenty twenty
Speaker 2: five with Ai, I'm like, y'all, right, y'all need to
Speaker 2: do human things. That's why. Look, I've said this often.
Speaker 2: I do not like people. I love humanity. Humanity gave
Speaker 2: us movies and books and music and art and dancing.
Speaker 2: People just suck.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: And I'm not trying to say this like with any
Speaker 2: edge of cynicism, you know, I try not to be
Speaker 2: a cynical person, but it's the truth.
Speaker 1: So it's hard to yeah, because every time you try
Speaker 1: to be like, well, maybe I should be softer towards
Speaker 1: other people because.
Speaker 2: You know more understanding. You don't know what they're going through.
Speaker 2: You don't know if they have trauma that formed their beliefs.
Speaker 2: But before you can finish that thought, so like, Okay,
Speaker 2: I moved to I live in a very small town
Speaker 2: in the state of Washington. I live in the mountains,
Speaker 2: in the Cascade Mountains in a log cabin. I live
Speaker 2: up in the mountains, up on a hill. And what
Speaker 2: did I do when I first moved to my house.
Speaker 2: I put a gay pride flag outside my house, you know,
Speaker 2: the big one with the trans and everything on it,
Speaker 2: because that's my belief. And plus, when you buy a
Speaker 2: new house, you have to make it gay. It's just
Speaker 2: what it is exactly. And what I did not know
Speaker 2: when I put that up was that my neighbor, who
Speaker 2: I had not met at that point, was a raging homophobe.
Speaker 2: And how did I find that out? Well after I
Speaker 2: put up the flag, my handyman was leaving one day
Speaker 2: after having a meeting with me about a project that
Speaker 2: we were going to do, and my neighbor, again who
Speaker 2: I'd never met and my handyman had never met, stopped
Speaker 2: my handyman on his way out of driving past his house,
Speaker 2: made him roll down the window, and then asked him
Speaker 2: point blank, what's that faggot up to up there? My
Speaker 2: handyman is a straight man with children, and literally, not
Speaker 2: before he left, we were having a conversation where I
Speaker 2: told him, look, this is a pretty big project that
Speaker 2: I'm hiring for. I trust you. We've worked together for
Speaker 2: a while, and I trust that you do what you do.
Speaker 2: But if you hire anyone that's homophobic, or anybody who's
Speaker 2: even remotely smacks of that, I will fire all of
Speaker 2: your asses without a second thought.
Speaker 1: Yep.
Speaker 2: And so when that happened, right after he left, he
Speaker 2: called me, He goes, I just want to let you
Speaker 2: know that I took what you said seriously, and your
Speaker 2: neighbor called you some really horrific things, and I said,
Speaker 2: all right, straight ally, you got right, right, right right?
Speaker 2: And so what did I do as a queer person?
Speaker 2: I thought, what should I do in a situation like that?
Speaker 2: This is the house I want to live in for
Speaker 2: the rest of my life. I love it here, and
Speaker 2: what can I do knowing that my neighbor is a
Speaker 2: homophobe for all I know, Maybe he's the type of
Speaker 2: person that'll escalate. Maybe he'll get angry at me, Maybe
Speaker 2: he'll come up, maybe he'll talk to someone who hates
Speaker 2: gay people more than he does. Maybe they'll do something.
Speaker 2: Maybe somebody could hurt me, come after me. So I
Speaker 2: got revenge. And the way I got revenge was I
Speaker 2: found out that he does not own the house, he
Speaker 2: rents it. And I found out that his realtor was
Speaker 2: a big or. His landlord was a big realtor in
Speaker 2: the state of California who worked for a very big
Speaker 2: realty company. So I tagged the realtor his realty company
Speaker 2: on Instagram, and I asked, why do you rent to
Speaker 2: a homophobic tenant? Why do you rent to this person
Speaker 2: who is very vitriolic in what he says. I have
Speaker 2: never gotten a call from a realty agent that fastened
Speaker 2: my entire life. They called me, and of course they
Speaker 2: said things like I'm so sorry that I did not know.
Speaker 2: He was like that I would never do this, and
Speaker 2: I told him flat out, here's what I want. I
Speaker 2: want you when you get back into town to Mark,
Speaker 2: bring your tenant up, march up your way up to
Speaker 2: my house, knock on my door, and when I answer
Speaker 2: the door, your tenant will apologize. The reason I want
Speaker 2: this is not to rub it in his face, not
Speaker 2: to make him feel lesser. The reason I want this
Speaker 2: is that my books are taught in middle schools, high schools,
Speaker 2: and colleges all over the world. He has children. What
Speaker 2: happens if one of my books is taught in their schools?
Speaker 2: And what happens if one of their kids picks up
Speaker 2: the book and says, Daddy, I really love this book.
Speaker 2: I heard this author lives here. Can we go meet him?
Speaker 2: And this daddy has to say sorry, honey, I call
Speaker 2: them a faggot. We can't, we can't go see him.
Speaker 2: That's what I wanted. I wanted him to know that
Speaker 2: actions have consequences, not just because I was upset, but
Speaker 2: because what happens if your kid turns out to be queer?
Speaker 2: And if you think that this gentleman who stops someone
Speaker 2: he never met and use that kind of word, do
Speaker 2: you think he's never said that in front of his
Speaker 2: kids before, Come on, come on. So that the landlord says,
Speaker 2: I'll do what I can. Never happened. Never happened. But
Speaker 2: what does happen is two different things. First and foremost,
Speaker 2: whenever these people see me, they run inside their house. Second,
Speaker 2: the landlord reached out to me late last year and said, hey,
Speaker 2: their lease is up in April. Either they'll move or
Speaker 2: do you want to buy the house? Do you want
Speaker 2: to become their landlord? I had to weigh that for
Speaker 2: a moment because a most I don't want to be
Speaker 2: a landlord, even if it means having these people. So
Speaker 2: what am I going to do? I'm buying all the
Speaker 2: land around the house. Work. Yeah, I'm not buying that house.
Speaker 2: So even if they choose to renew the lease, I
Speaker 2: will still own all the land around their house. So
Speaker 2: now when they try to go outside and try to
Speaker 2: go on in my property, I will tell them you
Speaker 2: cannot be on my property. I'm sorry. Then, so I
Speaker 2: don't have to be a landlord, but I still get
Speaker 2: to be a dick.
Speaker 1: And those are my three favorite qualities when it comes
Speaker 1: to queerness. Our resilience are our creativity and our pettiness.
Speaker 2: I love that I don't. I don't take you know,
Speaker 2: when I was a kid, I took a lot of shit.
Speaker 2: I'm in my forties now, I don't take shit from anyone,
Speaker 2: anyone at all. If you want to try to walk
Speaker 2: all over me, that's fine, you can try, but you
Speaker 2: should not be surprised when this faggot fights back, because
Speaker 2: I won't. I won't let people win like that. I won't.
Speaker 2: I refuse. I refuse because for all I know, maybe,
Speaker 2: just maybe this will be the one thing that this
Speaker 2: dude needs to be like, holy shit, I'm a fucking asshole.
Speaker 2: Maybe that's what will happen. I doubt it. I rarely
Speaker 2: find that homophobes are introspective in any way, shape or form.
Speaker 2: But maybe it could happen. Maybe he'll stop and think,
Speaker 2: holy crap, I did this that chances of that gut
Speaker 2: thrown out the window a couple of weeks ago, because
Speaker 2: now they have a big Trump flag sitting in front
Speaker 2: of their house. So I keep waiting for him to
Speaker 2: be like, hey, what do you think about my flag?
Speaker 2: And I want to say, I don't care about that
Speaker 2: kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: Like you do, right exactly.
Speaker 2: Just remember revenge, revenge, living happily, living successfully, being your
Speaker 2: own person, making space for yourself, and never letting anyone
Speaker 2: take that away from you exactly.
Speaker 1: Well, like in our immediate area, like I love where
Speaker 1: we live. I was a city boy for forty two years.
Speaker 1: I lived in Philadelphia and now we live in Jersey
Speaker 1: in the suburbs, and I love where we live. We've got,
Speaker 1: you know, a few Trump flags around us. We noticed
Speaker 1: that they would have their flag poles and they would
Speaker 1: have their American flag flying, and then underneath that we
Speaker 1: either have a Trump flag or a Blue Lives Matter
Speaker 1: flag or something like that.
Speaker 2: Or like the Virginia flag that says don't tread on
Speaker 2: me with a snake that exactly.
Speaker 1: So we're like, okay, well, on our flag pole, we're
Speaker 1: going to have our American flag in our progress part
Speaker 1: pride flag because you know, we're following the rules and
Speaker 1: we dare you to say something. And we have four
Speaker 1: corners to this property, so we're going to have four
Speaker 1: pride flags. You see us coming, So you know that. Plus,
Speaker 1: you know, Martha and I we've had we're getting ready
Speaker 1: to start our fourth season of this podcast, and we've
Speaker 1: noticed that the listenership in our immediate area and the
Speaker 1: surrounding areas has gone up a lot, so folks know
Speaker 1: who we are, and I think that's helped create our
Speaker 1: bubble because it's like they've heard the things we'll say,
Speaker 1: and I have no problem saying it.
Speaker 2: But the the biggest thing that I think is it
Speaker 2: should be the focus now, especially going forward, is how
Speaker 2: we can protect young queer people, How we can how
Speaker 2: we can You remember a few years ago, it's probably
Speaker 2: even longer now, when that that movement came out, that
Speaker 2: that it gets better movement. Yes, I hate that with
Speaker 2: a fiery passion, because you were telling young people it
Speaker 2: gets better, not now. It's not going to get better now.
Speaker 2: It'll get better at some point in the nebulous future.
Speaker 2: It gets better, not today. Coming up tomorrow, but when
Speaker 2: you get older and you don't have to live under
Speaker 2: your parents' thumb or live with under this kind of homophobia.
Speaker 2: It was never actionable, It was never It was more like, hey,
Speaker 2: let's put things off for a little bit. My big
Speaker 2: thing is now is that we have to remember that
Speaker 2: there are queer trans youth that are getting picked on,
Speaker 2: not just by their classmates or their teachers, but by politicians. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and there are. And here's the thing. I've spent the
Speaker 2: last few years talking to young people all over the world.
Speaker 2: They are smarter, savvier, more empathetic than we ever were.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. Yeah, because they have the phone. They
Speaker 2: literally have a little magic box that can connect them
Speaker 2: with any piece of information known to humanity. That's what
Speaker 2: they can do. And they know that their LGBTQIA transmit
Speaker 2: classmates are being targeted. They know books are being removed
Speaker 2: from their schools, they know laws are being enacted to
Speaker 2: target one person, and they're pissed off about it. They
Speaker 2: are angry. They're upset because they see how older generations
Speaker 2: are built on the backs of marginalized communities, without giving
Speaker 2: them their due, without giving them their respect, without giving
Speaker 2: them the hope and enjoy that all other white people
Speaker 2: get to have, so why not let other people have that?
Speaker 2: Young people, I know it's going to be a difficult fight,
Speaker 2: but they are going to change the world. They absolutely will,
Speaker 2: because they are better than we ever were never.
Speaker 1: Oh, I love like every time I read about students
Speaker 1: having a walkout.
Speaker 2: Yeah, over their queer classmates, or over a jurisdictional thing
Speaker 2: or everything. They walk out because they know. Are some
Speaker 2: of them walking out so they don't have to go
Speaker 2: to school? Yeah? Probably, But you know what a lot
Speaker 2: of them are doing standing up for what's right, right,
Speaker 2: fighting for what's right. We saw it. We've seen young
Speaker 2: people do this for generations. We've seen we saw the
Speaker 2: queer riots in the Black Cat and Silver Lake and
Speaker 2: Stonewall in New York. We saw the young, queer, young
Speaker 2: trans people, young people of color coming together to fight
Speaker 2: for the rights of us, the rights that we now
Speaker 2: take for granted. Sometimes I just I wish not only
Speaker 2: do I wish for the safety and protection of young people,
Speaker 2: but I wish that more people remembered their history, especially
Speaker 2: queer people, knowing where we came from, knowing who fought
Speaker 2: for your rights, that it was trans and women of color,
Speaker 2: who really were the ones fighting for our rights? That
Speaker 2: the reason it's called LGBTQ. The reason why lesbians are
Speaker 2: first when it used to be glbt is because lesbians
Speaker 2: were some of the only people who came into the
Speaker 2: hospital rooms of dying Hi being an age man. They
Speaker 2: put us first, so gay men put them first. This
Speaker 2: is why it's LGBTQ. We need to know. Most a
Speaker 2: lot of people know about Marsha p. Johnson and Stonewall
Speaker 2: and everything that happened there, but the police raids actually
Speaker 2: started in Silver Lake, California, where there was an entire
Speaker 2: row of gay and lesbian bars until one nine in
Speaker 2: the seventies, the Black Cat was raided. All of those
Speaker 2: bars were raided. The Black Cat still exists, it's still there.
Speaker 2: It's a historical monument now with a restaurant inside and whatnot.
Speaker 2: But you have to know your history. For Tucson, Arizona,
Speaker 2: the reason pride started in Tucson, Arizona was because in
Speaker 2: the nineteen seventies a gay man came to Tucson from
Speaker 2: another state to visit friends. They went to a gay bar.
Speaker 2: The man left after the bar closed, where he was
Speaker 2: attacked and murdered by four teenage boys. Guess what happened
Speaker 2: to those teenage boys. They got parole for what they did.
Speaker 2: And that's why Pride started. So many of the things
Speaker 2: that we do started because of tragedy, because of death,
Speaker 2: because of pain, and we wanted to make it into
Speaker 2: something beautiful. It's still a work in progress, but we
Speaker 2: are doing the best we possibly can. And last thing
Speaker 2: I want to say on this tangent, please please, As
Speaker 2: we're getting closer to spring, that means we're getting closer
Speaker 2: to summer, which means we're getting closer to Pride month.
Speaker 2: Please boycott corporate pride bullshit. The ones that change their
Speaker 2: company logo in June and be like we like gay
Speaker 2: people now here by day stuff, and then the next
Speaker 2: month they're like, we're giving money to Republicans right because
Speaker 2: we want further their agenda. Don't fall for that. Don't
Speaker 2: fall for that. BS, be queer, be proud, but do
Speaker 2: it on your own terms, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's so crazy. We spent so much time
Speaker 1: battling the man and the establishment only to want to
Speaker 1: be part of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is. It is true. We have some great
Speaker 2: people in the world, great authors, artists, queer that that are.
Speaker 2: They are doing transformational things. We just have to ensure
Speaker 2: that those people are protected. Look again, I'm speaking from
Speaker 2: a place of privilege. I am very successful, but I'm
Speaker 2: also a CIS white gay. I am considered a safe gay.
Speaker 2: I'm not a trans person. I'm not, you know, a
Speaker 2: person of color. My books do not get banned at
Speaker 2: the level that trans authors get their or queer black
Speaker 2: authors get their books banned. If you look at the
Speaker 2: American Library Association's top ten band and Challenge books in
Speaker 2: the United States, every single one of them is queer.
Speaker 2: Some of them are by black authors about the black
Speaker 2: queer experience. I am in a very safe position. But
Speaker 2: what's gonna happen? Do we think they're going to stop
Speaker 2: coming after they come for trans people? Nope, of course not,
Speaker 2: because once they get done with trans people, they're gonna
Speaker 2: be like, Okay, what about non binary people? What about
Speaker 2: gender nonconforming if that's not included in the trans umbrella?
Speaker 2: What about bisexual people?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: I mean exists right? Right? So So either this is
Speaker 2: going to either a We're going to go back into
Speaker 2: the closet under don't ask, don't tell something like that again,
Speaker 2: which I'm a loud, motherfucker man, that will never happen
Speaker 2: for somebody like me, or they're going to try to
Speaker 2: eradicate the rights and and of of an entire community.
Speaker 2: And don't don't think that they won't, because if if
Speaker 2: if you give them an inch, they will take a mile.
Speaker 2: They always yep, yep, yep, yep, yep.
Speaker 1: That's why Martha always says, you know, I'm gonna be
Speaker 1: as loud and open my mouth as much as possible
Speaker 1: because if one day I disappear, I will be missed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you will. And that's just that. That's for
Speaker 2: me too, for every for every death threat that I get,
Speaker 2: for every person who hates me. Because I do what
Speaker 2: I do. I think about the thousands upon thousands of
Speaker 2: people I've met, or the thousands upon thousands of messages
Speaker 2: I've got from queer people, from straight people, from people
Speaker 2: from all walks of life, from elderly people, elderly men,
Speaker 2: especially especially the generation above mine, who was decimated by
Speaker 2: HIV and eighths, not knowing that this kind of literature existed.
Speaker 2: They did not know that gay people could be in
Speaker 2: books and do what gay people are doing in fiction
Speaker 2: and stuff like that. Now to be able to have
Speaker 2: that place, especially for older queer people who saw friends
Speaker 2: and families and lifestyles devastated, that they get to find
Speaker 2: some kind of happiness and peace and joy after going
Speaker 2: through that is one of the most remarkable experiences.
Speaker 1: That I've ever had, and that reminds me getting back
Speaker 1: to the book you mentioned. You know that you got
Speaker 1: pushed back with this book, The Bones Beneath My Skin,
Speaker 1: cause you classified it as not just science fiction but
Speaker 1: also romance, even though there's only one quote unquote sex scene.
Speaker 2: Oh God, that pissed me off, like he would, Yeah,
Speaker 2: talk about that a little bit, because that struck me.
Speaker 2: So this I was with a former publisher, an indie publisher.
Speaker 2: I had been with them since the beginning, and I
Speaker 2: sent in this book and I saw a couple of
Speaker 2: messages that were not meant for me to see. First
Speaker 2: and foremost was a message to my editor about this
Speaker 2: book saying, here's the new TJ. Clune. This one is
Speaker 2: weird even for him. And then second of all them
Speaker 2: wanting to say, hey, we don't know that this can
Speaker 2: be considered a romance, because romances because this book only
Speaker 2: has one sex scene. And I was lived a because
Speaker 2: i'd been I'd heard that word weird used to describe
Speaker 2: me as a majority of my entire life. When I
Speaker 2: was a kid, my parents would call me weird. They'd
Speaker 2: make fun of me for my love of reading and writing.
Speaker 2: I heard that from teachers, I heard that from classmates.
Speaker 2: I love my weirdness now, but when I was a kid,
Speaker 2: that was the thing that set me apart. And I
Speaker 2: had an almost PTSD like flashback of Oh, weird, that's
Speaker 2: where we're going with this, that's what you think. That's
Speaker 2: the word. You don't mean the word weird like when
Speaker 2: I mean it like it's a good thing. You meant
Speaker 2: it as in like this is weird. And second of all,
Speaker 2: they started they started asking me to include to put
Speaker 2: in more sex in the book, and I said, no,
Speaker 2: I don't even like writing sex scenes as it is,
Speaker 2: But a what does that mean for a sexual people?
Speaker 2: I'm asexual. Do you think that I am incapable of
Speaker 2: having romance because I'm not, like, I don't like sex
Speaker 2: that much. I have never. It was the turnaround that
Speaker 2: they attempted to do to say face, oh, that's not
Speaker 2: what we meant. That's what we met. We just know
Speaker 2: that there's certain expectations. I said, I don't give a
Speaker 2: fuck about expectations your If you don't think this is
Speaker 2: a romance, because these people bone once on page, that's
Speaker 2: a U problem, not a ME problem. So I pulled
Speaker 2: the book. I pulled it from this publisher, and I
Speaker 2: had this grand idea of self publishing it on my own.
Speaker 2: What I did not know was that this set off
Speaker 2: a thing that still goes on to this day, because
Speaker 2: what we learned after I pulled that book was that
Speaker 2: this publisher had been embezzling money from not just me,
Speaker 2: but from other authors, from other creatives that they worked with.
Speaker 2: To this day, this publisher owes me north of fifty
Speaker 2: thousand dollars in back paid royalties and stuff like that.
Speaker 2: So I had to pull every book I had published
Speaker 2: with them, twenty plus books and the bones beneath my skin,
Speaker 2: and self publish all of them at the same time.
Speaker 2: So the bones beneath my skin to me got lost
Speaker 2: in the shuffle with all that. And then a few
Speaker 2: years later Tor came knocking and said, hey, thank you
Speaker 2: for being successful with the house in Thisralian Sea. We
Speaker 2: would like to publish some of your other back catalog
Speaker 2: and I thought bones beneath my skin. I love this
Speaker 2: book two pieces. I love the message. I love Artemis
Speaker 2: Darth Vader more than almost any other character I've written.
Speaker 2: Please give this book a chance, and they said, fuck yeah,
Speaker 2: we'll do that, and then they publish it. No issues,
Speaker 2: No this book is weird. No, this book needs more sex.
Speaker 2: Nothing they said. They were happy to do it. And
Speaker 2: guess what A debuted at number six on the New
Speaker 2: York Times bestseller list. Fuck yeah, that's what you do.
Speaker 2: Remember what I said, revenge happily successfully get revenge where
Speaker 2: you can. And that's what I did.
Speaker 1: I love and I also love like the one sex
Speaker 1: scene that there is, you know, it's I feel like
Speaker 1: if it were more gratuitous than it was, it would
Speaker 1: not be as hot as.
Speaker 2: If I put sex in a book. It is there
Speaker 2: for a reason. I'm not writing necessarily to titillate. I'm
Speaker 2: not writing, you know, for somebody's massive butty fantasies. Whatever
Speaker 2: I'm writing, I'm by that point in the book. If
Speaker 2: you can't feel that connection and you need sex to
Speaker 2: justify that, then I've failed to do my job. The
Speaker 2: organic relationship that blossoms between Nate and Alex was something
Speaker 2: that I took great care in because I was very
Speaker 2: concerned about the idea of trauma bonding, which is what
Speaker 2: when you think of when you see a big action
Speaker 2: movie where there's terrorists and explosions and the guy gets
Speaker 2: the girl, do you really think that they're going to
Speaker 2: stay together. They just went through something horrific and profound.
Speaker 2: That's what brought them together, is that a relationship built
Speaker 2: to last. And so with this book, I wanted to
Speaker 2: take great care to avoid it reading like trauma bonding,
Speaker 2: to actually make it a real, viable relationship. And when
Speaker 2: you get to the single sex scene in this book,
Speaker 2: you believe that there's already something between them that they
Speaker 2: don't need sex to add it on. Sex isn't necessary,
Speaker 2: but it is an additive that helps to cement their connection.
Speaker 2: And it wasn't It wasn't full on penetrative sex. It
Speaker 2: was really, let's do this. It's not broke back Mountain,
Speaker 2: Let's spit on it and let's go in. It was
Speaker 2: it was a time and place kind of thing what
Speaker 2: they could actually do with where they were, and that
Speaker 2: it felt right for that moment to actually happen.
Speaker 1: When it did, it felt so real and the tension
Speaker 1: that was that you created between the two characters was
Speaker 1: like better, way better than the actual sex scene. And
Speaker 1: the fact that like what happened was like, like you said,
Speaker 1: it's what they could do in the constraints of where
Speaker 1: they were.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's like it went on for a couple
Speaker 2: of pages. That was right, That was all right. It
Speaker 2: was not. There wasn't sex every single chapter. This wasn't
Speaker 2: a ten thousand words sex scene with penetrative sex and
Speaker 2: and all this other stuff that goes along with it.
Speaker 2: That would not have made sense for this And.
Speaker 1: It's hard to write that and have it be good.
Speaker 2: It can be, yeah, and I've had I've written some
Speaker 2: that are not very good, and I it's just the
Speaker 2: idea that the more you write, the better you become,
Speaker 2: or at least that's what I hope, right right, right, So,
Speaker 2: but yeah, that sex scene, I'm very really proud, you know,
Speaker 2: as an asexual person, sex is for me whatever, But
Speaker 2: I'm very proud of that scene in the book because
Speaker 2: A I feel it's earned and b it feels like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a next logical step for these two.
Speaker 1: People, right, and having that detail about you makes it
Speaker 1: even better because It's like, wow, it was very organic.
Speaker 1: That relationship was so wonderful, and it grew from like
Speaker 1: real animosity to like, okay, you're you're that little kid
Speaker 1: punching the other little kid because you like them, not
Speaker 1: because you don't.
Speaker 2: Right exactly. They were pulling each other's pigtails. Exactly it is.
Speaker 1: And then it became that whole will there won't they will?
Speaker 1: They all come on? Come on just one time, come
Speaker 1: on right exactly.
Speaker 2: And I love that interplay. I love that. That's why
Speaker 2: most of the books that I write, if they have
Speaker 2: some kind of romantic angle to them, I'm going to
Speaker 2: make you wait, I'm going to make you work. I'm
Speaker 2: not going to write a book where two characters meet
Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden they have sex on
Speaker 2: the first you know, page or whatever. That's not how
Speaker 2: I do. Maybe that's more real life than not. But
Speaker 2: I love it when you, you as the reader, fill
Speaker 2: the pull, and by the time that that does happen,
Speaker 2: you're like, come on, huh, fucking chess already you're like
Speaker 2: a little kid with your g I jo's and your
Speaker 2: barbies and you're knocking them together.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to sit here and pretend that at
Speaker 1: one point I wasn't sitting in front of the book
Speaker 1: going kiss him, kiss kiss it.
Speaker 2: I always want to make people reach that line and
Speaker 2: then maybe cross it just a little bit more before
Speaker 2: I give you what you want.
Speaker 1: I love it. I love it so much. Here's a
Speaker 1: question for that, asked, who are who would you say
Speaker 1: were your biggest literary influences.
Speaker 2: Like many people of my generation, I grew up reading
Speaker 2: Stephen King at far too young in age same. I
Speaker 2: read my first Stephen King book when I was eleven,
Speaker 2: and that was The Stand, which is probably not the
Speaker 2: best book for an eleven year old. I should not
Speaker 2: understand most of it, but I remember being enthralled in
Speaker 2: ways that I hadn't been before. I did not know
Speaker 2: words could do that can make you feel that way.
Speaker 2: And the fact that King is in his late seventies
Speaker 2: and still putting out two books a year, right, Jesus,
Speaker 2: I mean he just announced a new novel or a
Speaker 2: new picture book that's in collaboration with Maurice Sendak, who
Speaker 2: was passed away many many years ago. Maurice Sendak did
Speaker 2: a bunch of drawings for this opera, This mystical, terrifying
Speaker 2: opera that never got done. So Stephen King was approached
Speaker 2: by this publisher with the artwork and said, do you
Speaker 2: want to write a story based on Maurice Sendak's art?
Speaker 2: And he said, fuck yeah, and so he did. That's cool, man.
Speaker 2: Maurice Sendak, to me is one of the greatest authors
Speaker 2: that has ever existed. If you don't know why, and
Speaker 2: you haven't read it since you was a kid, read
Speaker 2: Where the Wild Things Are? Do it? It is remarkable fiction.
Speaker 2: It is remarkable fiction. Growing up, I read a lot
Speaker 2: of horror, as I said, but I also one of
Speaker 2: the first experiences I had with gay people in books
Speaker 2: was a book called The front Runner. Do you know
Speaker 2: that book?
Speaker 1: I do not?
Speaker 2: Okay, So, in the seventies it was considered the first
Speaker 2: critically commercial and successful in terms of sales gay novel.
Speaker 2: It was written by a straight white woman named Patricia
Speaker 2: Nell Warren. And this book was about a collegiate coach
Speaker 2: named Harlan who is training one of his runners, Billy,
Speaker 2: for the Olympics. And this book was given to me
Speaker 2: by my library. And after I came out to her
Speaker 2: at sixteen years old, she was the first person I
Speaker 2: came out to and so She was like, here's a
Speaker 2: gay book, book with gay people in it. You can
Speaker 2: read this, And I said, hooray. And so I started
Speaker 2: reading the book and I was transported. I was enchanted.
Speaker 2: I was moved in ways that I had never I
Speaker 2: didn't know that gay people could be like this in books.
Speaker 2: You know, this is pre HIV AIDS. This was set,
Speaker 2: you know, there was It was very New York City
Speaker 2: bathhouse era kind of a story. But it was a
Speaker 2: love story between Billy and Harlan. And sorry, I'm about
Speaker 2: to spoil a fifty year old book that was once
Speaker 2: optioned by Paul Newman to be made into a film.
Speaker 2: But the book ends with Billy running in the Olympics
Speaker 2: getting shot in the head by an assassin from the stands.
Speaker 2: And that's the end. Oh shit, the end of the book.
Speaker 2: So imagine you're first reading gay people in a book,
Speaker 2: your first time, and they get murdered, they get killed.
Speaker 1: Fuck.
Speaker 2: I told myself I never wanted to write a book
Speaker 2: like that. That if I was going to write a
Speaker 2: book with gay people in it, they were going to
Speaker 2: not get murdered. They were not going to get hurt,
Speaker 2: they were not going to get killed. I appreciated their
Speaker 2: story because that was funny, A trope for so long. Yeah, fridging, fridging,
Speaker 2: the lesbians, burying your days. It's still a prevalent to
Speaker 2: this day. I mean you can still see certain TV
Speaker 2: shows that have that problem. But in twenty eleven, when
Speaker 2: my first book came out, I got an instant message
Speaker 2: one day on Facebook from Patricia Nell Warren. She had
Speaker 2: read my first novel and enjoyed it and wanted to
Speaker 2: reach out to me. What did I do? A fangirl,
Speaker 2: This is Patricia Nell Warren. She was an institution. She
Speaker 2: has since passed away, but I remember telling her the
Speaker 2: first quote unquote gay novel that I read was the
Speaker 2: front Runner, and I'll never forget her response. She wrote back,
Speaker 2: I am so sorry. She knew she had heard from
Speaker 2: So she was a very fierce LGBTQ advocate ally through
Speaker 2: and through, and she heard from so many gay men
Speaker 2: that the book hurt them. So what does she do?
Speaker 2: She went and wrote two sequels, So that book that
Speaker 2: showed the aftermath and showed this found family picking themselves up,
Speaker 2: putting themselves back together, dealing with trauma and grief. One
Speaker 2: of my most prized Possessions is a first edition signed
Speaker 2: copy of The Front Writer that I have sitting on
Speaker 2: my shelf because the story impacted me so much that
Speaker 2: I never wanted to write a book like it.
Speaker 1: I love that.
Speaker 2: I do too. I love I love miss now Warren.
Speaker 2: I miss her terribly. She was a wonderful person. I
Speaker 2: got to have many conversations with her before she passed.
Speaker 2: She was a delightful human being and did more for
Speaker 2: for the LGBTQ community than most street people ever have.
Speaker 1: And that's a conversation that I'm always having with straight people.
Speaker 1: You don't get to call yourself an ally, No, you
Speaker 1: have to be told that you are an ally right,
Speaker 1: Like I say, it's the same as the word diva.
Speaker 1: It doesn't count when that must be given to you.
Speaker 2: Typically it should come from a drag queen too.
Speaker 1: Don't hurt?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Is there?
Speaker 1: Uh? Do you listen to music when you write? Is that?
Speaker 1: What is the a soundtrack for your writing?
Speaker 2: If? Well, it depends on the book I'm writing and
Speaker 2: for the bones beneath my skin. I made soundtracks that
Speaker 2: were all nineties focused. It was R. E. M. It
Speaker 2: was Savage Garden, it was Britney Spears, it was it
Speaker 2: was all these Michael Jackson, all of these people that
Speaker 2: I grew up listening to. I included in the soundtrack
Speaker 2: that that I loud, that I listened or that I
Speaker 2: made for the book. But my favorite artist in the world,
Speaker 2: someone that I have gone and seen live multiple times,
Speaker 2: will always be Florence in the Machine Good Christ does.
Speaker 2: She sometimes make me question my sexuality because she is
Speaker 2: a handsome woman and I adore I've seen her live
Speaker 2: three four times and it's the most amazing is. I
Speaker 2: love that music so so so much. But I also
Speaker 2: am very, very into hip hop and rap music because
Speaker 2: especially music like by Missy Elliott or Buster Rhymes or
Speaker 2: Kendrick Lamar, who are such extraordinary wordsmiths. They can do
Speaker 2: things with words and rhythm that I will never be
Speaker 2: able to do, especially Missy Elliott and Buster Rhymes. The
Speaker 2: fact that they are so fast and can enunciate so
Speaker 2: clearly that you never miss what they're saying, and they
Speaker 2: do this wordplay that is so extraordinary. I just I
Speaker 2: love all kinds of music. I try to listen to everything,
Speaker 2: but man, rap music when it's when it's a good lyricist,
Speaker 2: when it's a good writer, is extraordinary to listen to
Speaker 2: because it can do things with words that you didn't
Speaker 2: think were possible. It's so cool how people can do
Speaker 2: things with words, put them in certain order to make
Speaker 2: them feel a certain way.
Speaker 1: I love it, and I love it when it's clever,
Speaker 1: like Kendrick Lamar, I'm sorry you want to strike a chords?
Speaker 1: Probably a minor is one of the most disrespectful and
Speaker 1: clever words.
Speaker 2: When that song first first came out last year and
Speaker 2: I listened to it and I heard that line, I
Speaker 2: was like, yeah, yeah. And then the smile he did
Speaker 2: at the super Bowl, the smile, I was like, God,
Speaker 2: I would not want to be the person that's directed towards.
Speaker 1: It is not a good time to be Drake.
Speaker 2: No, it is not a good time. And Serena Williams
Speaker 2: was up there.
Speaker 1: I was like, so beautiful. That whole thing is so perfect.
Speaker 1: Now you know who is This might may or may
Speaker 1: not be surprising to you. You know who is a rapper,
Speaker 1: who was a clever lyricist? Who Bob the Drag Queen?
Speaker 2: What really did they have music? They music on there?
Speaker 2: I did not know that.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, oh oh, Bob the Drag Queen is my
Speaker 1: favorite line. It's in a song they put out called
Speaker 1: gay Bars. Okay already clever, and the line is I
Speaker 1: don't speak Spanish, but I will top of toe you
Speaker 1: see clever clever.
Speaker 2: I love There's there's have you heard have you heard
Speaker 2: of Todrick Hall? Yes, and his song Fag, the rap
Speaker 2: song Fag. You should listen to that. It is remarkable.
Speaker 2: It is his His lyricism in it is hysterical. I
Speaker 2: absolutely love it. It's basically used to call me fag
Speaker 2: and now you want up on my nuts and it
Speaker 2: is the first funniest thing And I love it. I
Speaker 2: love that song.
Speaker 1: I have conflicting feelings about Todrick Hall, but I will say,
Speaker 1: when you want something, I know, but when you want
Speaker 1: some top tier faggety ship, that's what he does. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like period.
Speaker 2: But see then I think about, you know, like how
Speaker 2: rap music was in the early two thousands, you know
Speaker 2: and sometimes can still be today. Where you think of
Speaker 2: like Eminem who was you know, notoriously had notoriously homophobic
Speaker 2: lyrics and stuff like that, but then he learned, he grew,
Speaker 2: then he came out did all these things with Elton John,
Speaker 2: did all this music, did a lot of talking, a
Speaker 2: lot of listening and learning. And yeah, now he's in
Speaker 2: his fifties. Okay, I get that, but he's not the
Speaker 2: asshole that he used to be. He learned, he listened,
Speaker 2: he talked, and he grew and he's still one of
Speaker 2: the greatest rappers ever. And but he doesn't have to
Speaker 2: do this where he makes fun of marginalized groups to.
Speaker 1: Do it right.
Speaker 2: You don't have to do that. You can, I mean,
Speaker 2: unless you're queer yourself, you can make fun of right.
Speaker 2: That's fun.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing with hip hop. It's like, you know,
Speaker 1: you have to be really good for me to follow
Speaker 1: you after a certain point, because sometimes I know what
Speaker 1: I'm in for when I hit play, like Buster Rhymes,
Speaker 1: for instance, top tier lyricist, one of the best. I
Speaker 1: know I'm going to hear some homophobic shit when I
Speaker 1: hit play. I know I am, but you know, it's
Speaker 1: like it's the price of admission sometimes, you know, and.
Speaker 2: You know what younger me might would have bristled, Probably
Speaker 2: like the eighteen year old knee with a chip on
Speaker 2: his shoulder who came out and stuff like that might
Speaker 2: have bristled this something I don't want to think. I've
Speaker 2: softened in my old age, but I also kind of
Speaker 2: realized that that was kind of the thing to do, right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's how That's how it was. And maybe maybe it has,
Speaker 2: maybe it's gotten a little bit better than that, But
Speaker 2: at the time, that's what everybody did, right. Right.
Speaker 1: My dog is going crazy because I just got a delivery.
Speaker 1: He's this big, but he has to the entire neighborhood.
Speaker 1: You know, this has been an amazing conversation.
Speaker 2: Thank you. It has been a delightful and some of it,
Speaker 2: I know. We did talk about the book for the
Speaker 2: Bones Beneath My Skin right now wherever books are sold,
Speaker 2: and if you, if you can, you may be able
Speaker 2: to find a pretty cool version with painted edges and
Speaker 2: everything like that. So get it now before they're all gone.
Speaker 2: Oh it's a really damn good book.
Speaker 1: It really really is. I highly recommend it. I actually
Speaker 1: did have one more question about the book. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: the book has been described as an action movie in
Speaker 1: book form, which, okay, I agree with that. If you
Speaker 1: were on a cast it, who would play who?
Speaker 2: So I want to avoid like, like, okay, you know,
Speaker 2: I want to try to make it as queer as possible,
Speaker 2: so Alex could be played by Lee Pace, who is
Speaker 2: a tall drink of homosexual water. He's been in He's
Speaker 2: been in Pushing Up Daisies, he's been in the Lord
Speaker 2: of the Rings. All that he is just he's like
Speaker 2: six foot five and just like gorgeous. Hello. I'd like
Speaker 2: to be his friend. And then why don't we get
Speaker 2: somebody who's for Nate? Why don't we get somebody I mean,
Speaker 2: obviously you'd have to be in as young as he'd
Speaker 2: have to be in his twenties. Get one of the
Speaker 2: popular boys who hasn't done a Jake Gillanoll, Heath Ledger.
Speaker 2: I'm going to be gay for a little bit kind
Speaker 2: of thing. Let them get get like, what's his name?
Speaker 2: What's the the guy? Timmy, Tim Tim Tim True, Tim
Speaker 2: Tim Chellamy, Tim Timothy. I don't know. I don't know
Speaker 2: young people that way in terms of acting that well.
Speaker 2: I could have said Tom Holland, but I just don't
Speaker 2: want to.
Speaker 1: I actually thought Tom Holland, but no, I'll.
Speaker 2: Take it no or you know what? Who or oh,
Speaker 2: you know what? I just changed my mind. I just
Speaker 2: I'm going to change out white people or for me Pace,
Speaker 2: what's that guy who's in the top Gun movies. That's
Speaker 2: everywhere now. And and what's his name? He was in Twisters?
Speaker 2: Glenn Powell, that dude who looks like who looks like
Speaker 2: every other handsome white guy you've ever seen. You could
Speaker 2: do it. You can do it. I could do it.
Speaker 1: What about Artemis?
Speaker 2: I have no idea. It's probably a good thing. I
Speaker 2: don't know children actors' names. I have no idea, right, right,
Speaker 2: I mean, get somebody unknown, somebody who's never been in
Speaker 2: film or television before.
Speaker 1: Didn't I see The Eternals? Oh yeah, the actor that
Speaker 1: played the Eternally kid.
Speaker 2: Oh right, yeah, okay, that could work.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, That's why I picture.
Speaker 2: Actually, yeah, there would have to be. There would have
Speaker 2: to be you know, a kind of gravitas there because
Speaker 2: you're playing a kid. But are you right? Really right? Right? Right? Right?
Speaker 1: Wow? Okay, Now I want to see the MOVI so
Speaker 1: you have to make that happen.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll get right on that. Yeah, absolutely, Hollywood is
Speaker 2: if Hollywood isn't broken beyond repair when it comes to
Speaker 2: adaptations for books. And here's my thing, here's my thing
Speaker 2: that I'll take away from it. Even if my books
Speaker 2: never get adapted into anything, which you know, who knows
Speaker 2: what could happen at this point? Has there ever really
Speaker 2: really been a book that's better that or a movie
Speaker 2: that's better than the book? Really? Can you think of
Speaker 2: can you list like five different things where you'd say, yeah,
Speaker 2: this was better. I've never seen a movie where I thought, oh,
Speaker 2: you know what, I will take that back? There are
Speaker 2: I just lied. There are four. The Lord of the
Speaker 2: Rings trilogy is better than the book and also coming
Speaker 2: full circle, Maurice Index where the Wild Things Are. Spike
Speaker 2: Jones adapted that with James Gandalfini doing the voice of
Speaker 2: one of the main monsters. One of the best book
Speaker 2: to film adaptations I've ever seen, ever seen.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, there are I was just and I can't
Speaker 1: think of any now because my brain doesn't want a brain. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it does happen. But when it does happen, it's
Speaker 1: very rare.
Speaker 2: It is, and book to film adaptations are already rare
Speaker 2: to begin with, especially when it comes to fantasy, which
Speaker 2: needs bigger budget. Especially when you add LGBTQ i A
Speaker 2: on top of that. You would think Hollywood is like
Speaker 2: liberal leaning. No, they are very conservative. We had multiple
Speaker 2: studios turned down the house in the Crilian see because
Speaker 2: they said, we don't know how to position the Antichrist.
Speaker 2: I'm like, he's a six year old kid. He's just
Speaker 2: a kid, but they didn't want to position it. Sometimes
Speaker 2: I do wonder, though, is it because of the gay right.
Speaker 2: I have one producer who told me he wanted to
Speaker 2: tone down the gay stuff, and I said, well, you'll
Speaker 2: never be making anything of mine ever, right.
Speaker 1: And it's like, what is being a kid have to
Speaker 1: do with anything? The Omens series exists, right?
Speaker 2: Or or or that that neo gayman show on Amazon
Speaker 2: with David Tennant and and what's his good omens y? Yeah,
Speaker 2: good Omens that dealt with an Antichrist out of a
Speaker 2: character who is a kid. It's not that hard. It
Speaker 2: is not that hard to make. But I'm just happy
Speaker 2: that I get to write books. At the end of
Speaker 2: the day. That's all I want to do.
Speaker 1: There you go, and I want you to do it
Speaker 1: because you've made a fan out of me.
Speaker 2: Thank you, TJ.
Speaker 1: Klune. Thank you so much for joining us and going
Speaker 1: on Tangent after Tangent with me because it was a
Speaker 1: lot of fun.
Speaker 2: Thank you for having me. This is a delightful conversation.
Speaker 2: I appreciate it.
Speaker 1: I have a feeling this will not be the last
Speaker 1: time we said no, better not be.
Speaker 2: I've told my publicity team that, look, this is a
Speaker 2: safe space. I've told my publicity team that I'm reading
Speaker 2: really sick and tired of talking to straight people.
Speaker 1: That's a whole word.
Speaker 2: I hear, You'm because there are certain questions that queer people,
Speaker 2: queer interviewers don't even need to ask. You don't even
Speaker 2: need to do it. But three people like, so, why
Speaker 2: include gays in it? Because that's why, right, Because I
Speaker 2: never got to see myself so.
Speaker 1: Exactly, the representation is important, damn it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And look, I love all of the people I've
Speaker 2: gotten to spoke speak to over the past, you know,
Speaker 2: a couple of months for the release of The Bones
Speaker 2: Beneath My Skin. But at the same time, there's just
Speaker 2: something talking to other queer people that can understand that
Speaker 2: shorthand and that can speak on things that others cannot
Speaker 2: and should not.
Speaker 1: Speak on exactly, Because you know, that's how we get
Speaker 1: Brendan Fraser winning and Oscar for playing a gay role
Speaker 1: and then trying to say it's a universal story.
Speaker 2: Or when Eddie Redmain played that transformed in the.
Speaker 1: Movie and then became a jk Rowling apologist.
Speaker 2: Yes, oh, you know how we can end this interview.
Speaker 2: Fuck jk Rowling and everything she stands for. If we
Speaker 2: lived in a just society, she would be shunned from
Speaker 2: any kind of contact with the human race period.
Speaker 1: Bam. Thank you T. J.
Speaker 2: Klum for that word.
Speaker 1: You have a wonderful day, sir, and I can't wait
Speaker 1: to talk to you again.
Speaker 2: Thank you you too, Bye bye bye.
Speaker 1: Full Circle is a Never Scurred Productions podcast hosted by
Speaker 1: Charles Tyson Junior and Martha Madrigal, Produced and edited by
Speaker 1: Never Scurd Executive Produced by Charles Tyson Jr. And Martha Madrigald.
Speaker 1: Our theme in music is by the jingle Marys.
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