Why I write...

It's funny. I sometimes worry that I've gone too far in a book...but then I read someone else's stuff and think, shit, I'm still vanilla. Vanilla bean with a dash of dulce de leche, yes, but still...it's a lot for me for me to expose to the world some of my stories. But I keep doing it because writing is therapy, to me. As I've noted before. That's why I wrote my first book, How to Rape a Straight Guy.

If you haven't read the story, to simplify it...it's told by a man named Curt, who's married and an ex-con. While in prison for drugs, he learned how to force a man to ejaculate while being raped. Thought it was a great method of revenge. Even did it to a prison guard who harassed him. He gets out, can't find a decent job, is hustling a couple of gay men in a bar, and reveals his ability...and they make a bet. If he can force a straight cop who's been harassing them to cum while being raped, they'll give him a car and cash. He agrees. And after a false start, they kidnap and do it to one named Shayes...and things spin out of control.

I've gotten my best reviews on that book...and my worst, save 1. People are horrified that I tell the story from the viewpoint of a rapist, but if they make it to the end, they find themselves feeling sorry for Curt.

I wrote it because I was going through a really rough patch. At the time, my mother was living with me and doing better in the film business than I ever had. She was an extra in Music Videos and movies. I was working at a book store. No gay friends, just a couple of straight ones. No need to hide myself but no social life. Losing interest in dealing with movies in any way, which was the reason I'd moved to LA, ten years earlier.

One night, I happened onto a guy on Third Street who was drunk out of his mind and trying to get home. Kind of cute. Lived a couple blocks from me, so I helped him. Liked how he felt leaning on me. Got him into his duplex. He crashed on the bed...and I began to undress him. Got his shoes off. His shirt. His pants undone and down his hips...and froze. 

Memories of my obsessions with Dean Corll in Houston and John Wayne Gacy in Chicago and William Bonin in LA flooded back into me...and I had the feeling if I'd taken one more step, I wouldn't have stopped. Wouldn't have been able to stop. There was something in the back of my heart that howled for more...of what, I'm not sure...just more. I was about to go over the line so left, freaked out at everything exploding within me.

I wrote HTRASG from Curt's perspective so I could understand something about a rapist...which is what I almost became. As I wrote, I found I liked the control narrative writing gave me...and that's what I actually needed. I had wanted control of that that guy...which would not have ended pretty. But with my books, I am in control...even when I think I'm not. And what I wanted was that sense of control in some part of my life.

I've been in therapy, more than once. Never on mood enhancers, fortunately. Close to becoming an alcoholic. And it was writing that saved me. Steadied me. Did more for me in gaining some sense of emotional stability than years of chat with a doctor ever did.

I bitch and I moan and I fight myself as I write, and I complain about my characters being assholes to me...but throughout I know it's me controlling the process. No one else. And that's what counts, in the end...to me...

And that's what keeps me from becoming what I write...