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October 14, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

In case you haven’t noticed already, resident EricShawQuinn.com web genius Tyler has created a new tab on the blog page and I need your help with it.

https://ericshawquinn.com/anti-christ-rogues-gallery/

I am really enjoying writing in this new way.  My favorite part is hearing from you.  What you think, how you feel, what my little rants and digressions inspire in you.

Writing is very solitary.  I’m a pretty social person.  I didn’t even start out to be a writer.  All my training has been as an actor.  So, while I love the creative control that writing allows, it is hard on a man of my temperament to work alone and in silence.  Even after publishing, sales have long been the only measure that I am reaching anyone and there’s no guarantee that sold books are read books.

But this blog business is different.  I get to hear what you think almost immediately.

I’ve had people make suggestions about the blog itself.  Thanks to your input you can now post blog entries directly on your Facebook page or Tweet them, or Email them or Digg them or a whole host of other options with the click of a button.  Even cooler, I get to hear your thoughts, your praise and your disagreements with my weekly essays.

You have no idea how amazing that is!

Before blogs, the few days or weeks of book tour was the only opportunity I got to speak with people other than my editors about my work.  So this is like Christmas after a 20 year wait — okay, 30.

The new tab is an idea I had after writing last Tuesday’s post (10/12/10.)  The idea is to get your nominations for new Anti-Christs – people who use their God or religion to justify bigotry, violence, discrimination, etc.  What do you think? Who would you nominate?

https://ericshawquinn.com/anti-christ-rogues-gallery/

And if you’ve got a better idea, what is it? Just so you know, my email is Eric@EricShawQuinn.com so feel free.  I’ll do my best or my worst as the situation warrants.   Meantime, thanks for reading and posting and retweeting and making this thing a success enough that I’m still speaking to Joe who convinced me to do this in the first place.  He’s a really great guy and you’ve seen how I get when I’m pissed.

Okay, your turn.  Can’t wait.

More soon –

Eric

 

 

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Evil

October 12, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

When the World Trade Center was attacked, the Reverend Jerry Falwell said the hideous terrorist act was God’s punishment on the US for offering equal rights to gay people and, worse, women.  It was, in Falwell’s view, God striking out at this country for believing that all men are endowed with certain inalienable rights by their creator.   Clearly, the Right Reverend felt we are not all so endowed and that the country was being punished for it.

Apparently Mr. Falwell thought God was a not only a Muslim extremist, but also a little slow on the uptake since notions of equality are the principals on which this country was founded several hundred years prior to September 11, 2001.  Not sure what God was waiting for and I’ve no idea about Falwell’s whole Muslim extremist/God connection beliefs.  Perhaps it’s just one extremist admiring the work of another.

Falwell was creating hatred with his words.  He was encouraging the shooting of fifteen year old Lawrence King for being gay.  He was arming the lunatic who murdered a doctor for performing medical procedures he didn’t agree with.  He was doing the work of evil by creating evil in the world with his words.  He was an Anti-Christ — the opposite of Christ in his words and actions.

When a massive earthquake struck Haiti, destroying the capital and killing tens of thousands, the Reverend Pat Robertson said it was God punishing the people of Haiti for throwing off the yoke of slavery and fighting for their freedom.  Another Anti-Christ, Robertson  was creating evil in the world by speaking it.

I’m gay so I don’t feel welcome to be a Christian, and I would never presume to suggest asking ourselves “What would Jesus do?”  Perhaps, though, I could suggest asking “What would Jesus say?”  I can’t imagine Jesus saying that gay people getting married is the same as “incest and pedophilia,” as the Anti-Christ, Reverend Rick Warren said.

Apparently what Jesus did say was “Love one another as I have loved you.”  He did not say that we should love one another with the following exceptions.  Nor did he imply that we should love one another but feel free to work against others sharing our same rights and privileges.   What he did apparently say was that “By this all men will know you are my disciples, if you love one another.”  This means we can easily recognize those who are NOT his disciples.  They’re the ones who don’t love others, or advocate it, or speak out for it or, as in the case of Anti-Christs like Warren, Falwell, Robertson and those like them, speak out against loving one another.

So when in the face of this epidemic nation tragedy of gay teen suicides, Mormon Elder Boyd Packer gives a hate filled sermon claiming that God is incompetent and made some of his children to be unnatural and impure.  When Packer rails against sacred bonds of love and marriage, it’s easy to see he’s too is an Anti-Christ.

It is odd to me that the most evil things I hear in the world today are spoken by those who claim to speak for their God.

I don’t know that I’m a disciple, but it’s easy to see who isn’t.

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On Writing #6: Editing

October 7, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

My favorite part of writing is editing.

I love the writing part.  Once I’m into a story, the words just pour out.  Writing offers me an escape from reality into a world of my own making; a world where I am in control.  It is an escape that no naturally occurring or man-made substance can enable – just take my word for it.

But editing is to writing what sculpting is to marble.

Writing is essential.  I cannot begin the work until the words and the story are on the page.  But it is editing that reveals the work.

My first book, Say Uncle, was just a little over three hundred pages when it was first published.  When it first arrived at the my publishers it weighed in at well over five hundred.  There was a part of the book that wasn’t working for me, somehow, but I couldn’t say why.  My wonderful editor Peter saw the problem at once.

The book is about the relationship between two members of a two member family.  In the part of the book that wasn’t working for me one of those two people was missing.  When Peter pointed it out, it was like a door being thrown open in a dark room.  Two hundred and fifty pages vanished.  They were fun and well written, they just didn’t belong in that book.  Under my editor’s watchful eye, I retold those excised aspects of the story.  I wrote a couple of the book’s best chapters and completely changed the ending.

Say Uncle was better and stronger than before.  Like Michelangelo, I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

That’s editing.

I mourn the increasing loss of this relationship.  I feel the absence in the hollow and incomplete works that are published more and more.  Most novels are all marble and no angel.

Publishing is floundering.  There are a lot of theories.  Most blame technology.  I think it’s because little or no value has been placed on writers by publishers.  Magazines, newspapers and books may or may not survive this technological tipping point that is upon us.  But the creators of content will be the same as always.  The writers, the storytellers, will endure as they did even before the written word, certainly before the printed one.  It seems to me that those trying to preserve publishing in its present form may have missed that.

I wrote a book for a famous person in the last few years.  She didn’t write a single word of it, beyond those of hers that I quoted.  That was the deal.  She was the selling point, but there was no book before there was me.  Still, I wasn’t kidding myself.  The crowds that were lining the streets days in advance of our signings were coming to see her.

Our first signing though was a private one, at the publisher.  I fully expected to be ignored at most of our signings, but this one I thought would be a little different.  These were publishers.  These people knew I had written the book.  This skyscraper had been built by writers.  I still didn’t expect to be the center of attention, but I was surprised that only one person present asked me to sign his book or expressed any interest in meeting me.

I’m still writing.  My “co-author”? Not so much.  Probably most of the people in attendance that day have been laid off since.

Publishing as we know it will not survive if it does not provide a place to nurture writers and to allow their work to flourish.  The environment has never been more hostile to writers than it is today.  Editing and the relationship between editors and writers seems lost.

But it is not my job to save publishing.  They’ve had a great run.  It’s been 570 years since the technological revolution brought about by the printing press.

Perhaps it’s time for the immediacy of the digital world to come to writing.  I celebrate that this new medium may at last empower writers.  I worry though about the loss of editing.  In our rush to get the work into the hands of consumers and our hands into their wallets, what is lost?

What of all those angels, trapped in the marble, never to be set free.

 

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Faggot

October 5, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

My heart is broken.

Last month, six young men decided that death was preferable to being gay.  Two were only 13.  The oldest a mere 19.

I’m hearing a lot of talk about bullying and intolerance.  The focus is on their classmates and the institutions to which we entrust our children.

I’m glad.  But that is not the whole problem.

The real bullies are not on the playground.  They are not yelling the F word, but they have found a thousand other ways to make us hear it by word and deed.

I heard that awful word most every day of my life from sixth grade through college.  Prior to sixth grade I was called queer and sissy, but with puberty came that odious word.  I was beaten daily at the bus stop and on the bus.  I was harassed and tormented in school.  I was sexually assaulted by a group of boys in gym class in the eighth grade.

Such was my childhood.

As a grown man, I was once struck in the head in the first class compartment of a Delta Airlines flight into Columbia, South Carolina by a man who aiming that word at me.  Last Christmas guests leaving a neighbor’s party shouted that word at me and pelted me with eggs.  The F word is a big part of my life.

I’ve survived.  I’m old enough that I can embrace the word without serious injury.  I wave at people who yell it out their car window when passing through my oh-so-gay neighborhood.  The scar tissue has grown strong on that wound, opened so often, so very long ago.

I’m one of the lucky ones.  I lived through it.  I matured enough that I can endure the pain of US Senators, local politicians and the President himself, speaking of me as though I was some sort of subspecies.

I am thankful for the debate.  But, rising with the tide of change are the number of cruel and hateful things being said in the press by people who only know to hate me because I am gay.  Every hurtful thing they say about gay people, they say about me.  That’s how it feels.

When Prop H8 passed in my home state, it was hard for me to go out of the house.  Which of the people at the grocery store hated me so much that they thought this of me? More than half of the people at the movie theatre thought that I was not entitled to the same rights they would grant a convicted murderer. I will never feel safe in a Christian Church.

I have learned to live with never feeling safe or free.  I have endured never being young and in love.  I have come to accept that, as bad as this is, it is better than it was just a few years before I was old enough to understand who I was.

I have learned to find joy and take pride in this half-life that is all I am offered.

Six young men didn’t make it, last month.  Six children were exposed to the constant, casual bigotry of folks like Senator McCain and the tacit prejudice implicit in the Obama administration’s practiced inaction.  Six lives were ended before they’d begun when those boys were unable to see hope for a life worth living.  There is no difference between bullying and the hateful rhetoric that has risen in direct proportion to the tiny advances in civil rights for gay people.  Those media-amplified taunts are crushing to children.  They’re young but they know the code.  It’s all the F word.

Every time the President takes cover behind political expediency, I hear the F word being screamed.  There is no difference between overt and subtle bigotry.  Either you are for equal rights for all Americans, or you’re not.  We’re not just whining, we can tell the difference.  So can the children.

Asher Brown, from Texas, shot himself, he was only 13 years old.  Seth Walsh from California, also 13, hanged himself.  Billy Lucas a 15 year old High School Student from Indiana, also hanged himself.  Justin Aaberg, a 15 year old from Minnesota thought that hanging himself was his only solution.  Raymond Chase, a college student in Providence, Rhode Island hanged himself at 19.  And the hideous case of Tyler Clemente 18, a promising student at Rutgers tormented to death by those given permission by the overt hatred of lunatics like Tony Perkins of American Family Research and those hiding their evil behind Christianity and political self-righteousness.  And that’s just September.  And it’s probably not everybody.

The children are listening.

All of them.  Not just the straight ones.  The gay ones can hear us, too.  Our gay children are being plunged into despair in this growing, anti-gay atmosphere.  But we are also educating a new generation of bigots.  Nobody is born hating people for the color of their skin, or their faith or the politics they practice, or who they love.  You have to learn to be a bigot.

Being a gay kid is especially hard when you are young.  You don’t go home to a gay family or a gay neighborhood or a gay church.  You are more likely to go home to an anti-gay environment than a gay one.  It feels as though you are the only one.  The information all around is that who you are, down deep where no one can see, is the worst thing you can be.  You believe that you must keep it secret at all costs.  If you can get beaten just for being suspected of this “awful thing” how fearful would it be to tell the truth about yourself?  What if you really are the F word?

I would beg if I thought it would make any difference.  I would give up the fight if I thought it would help.

All I can do is what saved me.  I can live a life that offers hope to those children being beaten at the bus stop.  I can use the talents and abilities that I have to try to get word to those who I’ve never met that there is hope.  I can try to be the change I hope to see in the world.  I can appeal to those on both side who would use the issue of rights for gay American as a political ploy to activate the bigot vote — consider the cost to the only truly precious and irreplaceable resource that this country produces – our children.

We’re six short.

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Success

September 30, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

As I wander down the path of life, the urge to gauge my progress is a part of the journey.

How far along am I? How’s the trip going? Are my supplies holding out? Is this the right path?

Success is a more mercurial measure.  Advancing to the next level is part of the simplest game.  I tend to judge my life the same way.  Maybe it’s just me, but the rites of passage serve as milestones along the way.

Where I’m concerned, I’m not usually a very fair judge.

The temptation is always to look at those around me; at how others are doing on what I think is their path.  It’s like going to the gym and comparing myself to the bodybuilder who, frankly really doesn’t do anything else.  If I compare my progress to Mr. Twelve-Pack I seem to be a failure.  If I look around at some of the other men my own age, well, I’m Mr. Universe.   On the other hand, some of my peers could kick sand in my face on Middle Age Beach.  (I’m middle aged only if I live to be 102, we’ll see.)

I tend to judge my progress along the same lines.  I look around at friends from high school or who toed some other imaginary starting line with me.  I see their spouses, their families, their homes or their children and I seem to be falling behind.  I rarely consider their mortgage, college fund or couples counseling in these self-flagellatory spot checks.

Two things are usually missing from my self-pity orgies.

First off, I tend to omit the degree of difficulty.  Choosing the path of least resistance is a perfectly reasonable life choice, but judging my own progress against those who are just drifting isn’t very accurate.  For a long time I mapped my success using the coordinates of my parent’s journey.  Mostly, that just got me lost.  I’m an artist and my parents are civil servants working in state jobs.  I’m proud of them and grateful for the support they were able to give me.  Still, it drove me crazy when I didn’t have job security, a pension fund or major medical.  What I didn’t include was that my parents haven’t written any best sellers, or lived the kind of life that I’ve gotten to live.  I wouldn’t just them that way, so why do it to me?

That bring us to the second thing I usually leave out when I’m determined to feel bad about my life, the path itself.  I don’t actually know what Halo is, but I’m betting it’s harder than Candy Land.  It wouldn’t really be fair to compare the scores from the two to take the measure of the player.  Mr. Twelve pack from the gym may be in Hollywood to become a movie star or to become a competitive body builder.  Either way, just having the twelve pack isn’t very far on either of those paths.  He’s a triumph if he plans to be the trainer in the best shape at my gym.

The same goes for me, though I hate to admit it.

If my plan was to marry and settle down in the suburbs of my parents’ hometown, I’m a flop.   I tried that, but I wasn’t really qualified.  It seemed like the easy choice.  For me, it wasn’t.  I’m actually doing better at the thing that seemed like the harder choice at the time.

So, how am I doing?

It depends on the yardstick I feel like using to measure.

If I’m measuring with the money and fame yardstick, I’m a failure.  Times are tough right now.  I don’t have a publishing deal or a book out.  My agent isn’t calling.  I’m not even sure how many people are reading this.

On those rare occasions when I’m willing to use the quality of life yardstick, well I’ve got dust clouds billowing in my wake.  I’m in perfect health and great shape.  I’ve got a host of friends and a life filled with possibility.  There’s still talent to spare even though I’d a be a geezer in most other fields.  If I was a dancer or an athlete my career would be over by now.  Most of all I’m pretty happy most all the time.  I’m that annoying guy who walks around smiling like he’s got a secret.

My secret? I’m still on the path.  The purpose of life is the journey, I think.  Getting there is nice but it really only begs the question: what’s next?

Winning the Academy award takes about thirty seconds.  If I do wind up with an Oscar but that’s the only fun I’ve had getting there? Well, that sounds like failure to me.

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Change

September 28, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

Twice last week, we could have ended Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.  Twice, defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory.

Thanks to the very folks who say they want to end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, we still have federally institutionalized bigotry in this country.

First, they had the chance to repeal DADT legislatively.  To appear to support repeal and give cover to those who think they need the bigot vote back home, they tied the repeal to defense spending and immigration reform.  It seems clear now that the plan was never to get either repeal or reform, but only a chance to make the opposition look bad for not supporting the military in time of war.  So, the folks who say they want to help me to have equal rights are once again using my civil rights as a wedge issue just like the last administration did.  Not much change there.

The second chance to end DADT then presented itself.  A Federal Court Judge ruled Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was unconstitutional.  All the President — who says he’s got my back on this — had to do was decline to appeal the ruling.  It would have been over.  What happened? The people who say they are in favor of equal rights for all Americans, even the gay ones, are now fighting in court to keep Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in place.  That doesn’t feel like a change to me.

I’ve kind of had it.  I’m not talking about the opposition.  They and their hateful, hurtful rhetoric I kind of expect.  It’s my side I’ve had it with.

Maybe they just want to keep the wedge issue? Whatever their reason, it’s clear they don’t care about my rights as much as they do their jobs.

I’m sick and tired of being taken for granted by the folks who keep asking for my support.  The other side openly hates me but at least they do me the courtesy of not asking for my vote or my money.  I’m reaching the end of my patience with supporting a side that says they support me but acts pretty much just like the folks who hate me.  What’s the difference? At least the Foxpublicans hate me for free.

The President was elected on the promise of change.  He is the self-declared “Fierce Advocate” of gay civil rights.  He’s also the guy who says he’s morally opposed to Gay Marriage.  To be fair, Hilary said she favored civil unions, the separate but equal of marriage equality.  They kind of all say the same thing one way or another.  It’s a game they play.

What it boils down to is craven, political expediency.  Almost no one who says they want to help me to have equal rights has the courage to spend the political capital it would take to actually do anything to help.  They don’t have a bill that offers a straight up or down vote on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.  That would risk them losing the bigot vote.  Or my vote by showing their true bigot colors.

Instead, they bundle my rights up in legislative packages that allow them to say to the bigots, “I had to vote to fund the military.  I’m a patriot” while pretending to me that they care if I have equal right or not.  They tell me that someday, down the road, after they’ve gotten everything else done, if there’s any capital left and there’s time, then they might help with my little equal right thing.

How stupid do they think I am?

I’m sorry, I thought they all swore to uphold the constitution.  Not second or later or if there’s time or if it won’t cost them the bigot vote, but first and foremost.  In fact, isn’t that the only thing they swear to do?

Is it just me, or isn’t the equal rights of all Americans in the constitution?

So what do I do here? Find another party? I’m honestly looking.

The Libertarians actually call what I’m going through “battered gay voter syndrome.”  They say:  “Sexual orientation, preference, gender, or gender identity should have no impact on the government’s treatment of individuals, such as in current marriage, child custody, adoption, immigration or military service laws. Government does not have the authority to define, license or restrict personal relationships. Consenting adults should be free to choose their own sexual practices and personal relationships.”

Sounds great right? But they also think the Boys Scout’s ban of gay people is their right as a private organization.  Ron Paul’s declaration that he had problems with the Civil Rights Act was another troubling Libertarian notion.

Having the courage of one’s convictions is one thing.  But it would be nice if those convictions didn’t include hatred, discrimination and the continued dismantling of the Union.

In the real world, the government actually has to stick up for the little guy.  That’s kind of why we have government in the first place, isn’t it? I mean if it’s just the will of the strongest, richest and most powerful, well, that’s kind of the law of the jungle or the dark ages.  Given the decline of education and the rise of extremist religious superstition in government, we may already be living in or on the brink of a new dark age.  The crusades are already underway.

Here’s what I’m looking for.  I’d like the chance to vote for someone who actually believes in and is willing to stand up for the stuff they swear to do in their oath of office.  Period.  I don’t even really care if they win.  I’ve voted for plenty of candidate I didn’t really like over the years because they were less horrible than the alternative.  Wouldn’t it be nice, win or lose, to stand up for what we say we believe in? Now that would be a change.

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Romance

September 24, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

I watched Bridget Jones’s Diary with friends this past weekend.  I love that movie.  It’s a wonderful story, wonderfully well told.  The “bad” guy is Hugh Grant – sigh – and the hero is the still more dreamy Colin Firth as my archetypally perfect Mr. Darcy.  The film is well done and, better still, based on the work of the sublime Jane Austen.

It was a grand evening, but it left me with a hyperawareness of just how profoundly single I am.   It’s fall, the weather is perfect, it all conspires to put me in mind of romance.

I would hardly put myself out there as an expert on the topic.  I’ve been single all my life, so far.  Still, as an interested third party, I think my lack of involvement makes me a more impartial observer in this area.  Miss Austen herself was a Miss till the end and her observations still hold us in thrall.  We tell and retell Emma, Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility and endless permutations thereof.   We all have our own Darcy in mind.

It seems to me though that, owing to Jane’s influence and those who follow after, we have lost our way a bit.  In romance we are like those who ache for the perfect family Thanksgiving celebration only to find our loved ones the same tatty disappointments sharing the same sad turkey each year.  We have created a Technicolor, Cinemascopic version of romance.  This shared fantasy is, I think, the source of our troubled love lives rather than our romances or lack thereof.

I too am plagued by a number of these fantastic notions.

I long to believe in this imagined truth.  Still, on closer inspection, I can see how the movie model for relationship building, might have a few glitches.

In movie and TV romance, we are told that the way to attract the attention of our incredibly hot and for no apparent reason still available Darcy is to be a complete mess, insecure wretch or total bitch.  Our Darcy will either be instantly repelled and combative – always the first step to a healthy relationship – or touched by our pathetic incompetence, immaturity, bad hair, out of shape or flabby body or other obvious flaws.  What movie romance teaches us is that to attract romance the last thing you should be is available, competent or compatible.  There is often even an example of just such a person present in relationship to his or her Darcyness just to show us how bad a partner the good choice would be.

Okay, so now you’ve met.  Mr. or Miss Darcy feels sorry for or hates you.  Naturally, the romance is on and sexual tension begins at once.  Next, the universe throws you together in some way.  You needn’t bother to work at this, the universe will make it happen.  It is your job, once it does, to act like a complete lunatic.  You should make unreasonable demands, be blisteringly critical or such a shattering coward that the other person is compelled to get even, prove you wrong or fix you.

In short, it’s on.

Now that our movie romance is underway, we should do everything we can to discourage our Darcy who, for reasons defying all logic, is now totally unshakable in his or her determination to be with us.  The worse we behave, the more committed they will become.  This includes, but is not limited to, irrational fights about some imagined slight, class difference or unacceptable behavior, inexplicable insistence that this will never work, we need space or it’s going too fast or slow, or complete overreaction to the revelation of some past mistake or defect that has nothing to do with us.  By using this as a reason to make some ridiculous, self-important pronouncement or simply to go missing for weeks, months or even years at a time, our Darcy will be inexorably drawn to us.

The only possible and acceptable response is for Darcy to follow us to the airport, give up some amazing personal opportunity or make some other over the top gesture that proves that they really do love us and will sacrifice their every dream and joy to insure our happiness.  Then, in the grandest leap of all, we believe them.

And the divorce rate is surpassing 50% for those for whom everything, including the tax code has been crafted to support and encourage.  For those of us who are still regularly beaten for holding hands, it can be even more challenging.

To be fair though, how could we do better? We are bombarded by this scenario as the model for romance, over and over again in everything from cartoons to advertisements to grand opera.

Perhaps it would be helpful to note that there is a reason they call it romantic comedy.   These people are idiots.  The humor comes from their bad behavior, incompatibility and the absurdity that anyone could or would love them let alone that they’d love each other.  And honestly, dramatic or tragic love stories differ only in that they are told from the perspective of the pretty one and have a different soundtrack.

The Twilight girl and everyone Jennifer Anniston and Matthew McConauwho have ever played are an example of what NOT to do in romance unless you want other people to laugh at or weep for you.  Bad boys are just that – BAD.  Stay away from them unless you are a bad boy or girl, too.  A certain amount of yin and yang makes for good partnerships, one taking up where the other leaves off.  But opposites means, necessarily, those in opposition.  Your opposite is only a good choice if you’re looking for trouble.  Also, on a more practical note, your opposite isn’t probably going to be attracted to you in the first place – see also the meaning of opposite.  And, unless you’re trying to get them to leave you, do NOT talk to your boyfriend or wife or whatever the way anyone does on television including and especially on the reality shows.  Even the hosts.

Though a wonderful source of entertainment, movie romances should serve as an example of what not to do.  They should – Sigh — But they don’t.  Maybe the reason I like them so much is that they reaffirm my belief that it’s my special brand of crazy that will make my Darcy fall in love with me.

Damn you Jane Austen!

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Encouragement

September 21, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

We’re in a national crisis, and I think I know why.
When I was on tour promoting my novel Say Uncle a funny thing happened. Many people who came to get me to sign their book also came to ask me child rearing questions. To be fair, the book is about a single gay man raising a child. It’s my meditation on what it might have been like for me to raise a child at that point in my life. But it’s fiction. That means I made the whole thing up. Apparently though, readers with young children tried some of the solutions that I made up and they actually worked. They wanted more.
I’m no child expert, but I am an expert on Say Uncle. So, I told them what I thought the character in the book would do – literary child rearing advice, perhaps?
In preparing to write the book I did ask parents I knew about their experience. I got a lot of answers. Very few were the same, save one. Whatever you react to, you reinforce. If your baby cries when you put him to bed and you go pick him up, he won’t sleep through the night. Not because he can’t but because you taught him if he cried you’d come pick him up. If you react to the bad behavior you’ll get more. The trick, and it’s a hard one, is to react to the good behavior and ignore the bad.
From what I’ve observed, this applies long after childhood is over. We are in a period of bad parenting on an epic scale. Through TV, the news, the internet and in a thousand ways we pay attention almost exclusively to the bad behavior. Good behavior? Well, no one pays much attention and there seems to be less and less of it.
We ignore the good and affirm the bad by focusing on it.
The most famous person in Hollywood is not Meryl Streep, though she’s arguably the best we’ve got, it’s Lindsay Lohan. I guess Mean Girls was pretty good, but really, what else is there? Yet, she is receiving a lethal amount of airtime and press attention. If we want to help Lindsay, we should ignore her – we should probably ignore her anyway, but I’m just saying. There is no incentive for Lindsay to get better. It did kill Anna Nicole. I was afraid we were going to lose Robert Downey, jr. the same way. He kept crashing and burning and he kept getting another chance, thanks to the headlines for the bad behavior that kept him famous. Any idea what he’s up to lately? Sandra Bullock, the Oscar winning best actress and currently the most bankable star in Hollywood only got coverage when her husband’s tattooed, pole dancing girlfriend went public with their affair. The Divorce is final and she’s slipping into obscurity.
This doesn’t just apply in the frivolous world of entertainment. Our whole country is currently being run by the bad kids.
That woman who used be governor in Alaska for instance. Her career has been built, not by the people who like her, but by those who think she’s terrible. They just can’t stop reporting on how terrible she is. And now she’s so terrible that she’s rich, famous, powerful and a political force to be reckoned.
The crazy people yelling at town hall meetings, the 100 member church and their book burning, that crackpot Iranian President Almondine, the two remaining black panthers and the Birthers are getting more coverage than economic policy and legislation despite double digit unemployment.
Recently, a woman the republicans apparently aren’t particularly fond of got nominated to be their senate candidate in Delaware. I don’t care, I don’t support her, she is opposed almost everything I’m in favor of. No surprise. That’s kinda of how it goes in politics. Yet, I would not recognize the man she will run against if he knocked on my door. He has received NO coverage by his opponents or his SUPPORTERS! Meanwhile, the bigoted, part time Wiccan, assault-Christian, anti-nature, embezzler he’s running against is being made into a viable national candidate by her OPPONENTS.
For all the good people in politics – as in most every other field — doing a good job, working hard, helping the people they were elected to support, it’s the one’s with anti-masturbation platforms who get all the coverage. The good guys languish for lack of attention while the bad apples flourish in the warm nurturing glare of our obsession.
The good guys are still out there. I personally think they’re still the majority. Let’s encourage them and stop paying attention to the lunatics and the assholes. I don’t know that they’ll go away, but wouldn’t it be nice if we could just stop hearing about them?

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Worst

September 16, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

The worst thing that ever happened to me was the author of all the best things in my life.
I was coming up on ten years at the ad agency. I had come back to Columbia, South Carolina from New York when I discovered that the pea under the mattress there was more or less permanent. I’d worked at that agency since my return. Despite doing really great work for the shop, my salary constituted theft, I had been passed over for any sort of substantive promotion and I was being actively discriminated against. The jerk I was supposed to “report to” was a failed, hack playwright who asked me to help steal the agency’s best client and start a new firm with he and this out of town sales rep.
She was an unfaithful cokehead and he only ever spoke to me when he wanted something. It didn’t seem a good fit. Plus, how they were treating their employer was also not a good sign.
The only reason they wanted me at all was because this particular client loved me. The client would fly me in for meetings on projects I wasn’t even working on. I loved them too, so I was glad to go. But steal their business and move to Houston? I don’t know, maybe I should have.
When I turned the jerk down, my troubles began. Jerk began telling people that I had made a pass at him. I hadn’t. Even so, I’m not sure why that would have been such a big deal in itself, but it was the early nineties a time when Don’t Ask Don’t Tell still seemed like a good idea. Anyway, it was his proof that I was “unstable.” I lost all my accounts. My requests to report to anyone else were met with a stony denial and the reminder that I was unstable. Even the information that the jerk was trying to steal our biggest client and go into competition was met with the same “unstable” rebuke.
Bigotry is a powerful weapon. It excuses fact and reason from all argument.
Mysteriously, we lost our biggest client – the ones who loved me and were suddenly told I had been taken off their account for no apparent reason.
As often happens in agency life, layoffs accompany the loss of a big account.
Naturally, since I had been with the firm for nearly ten years, they kept my assistant and gave me the choice of being fired or working as an entry level copywriter at a remote backwater office in – gasp – Orlando. Now if you love Florida and are crazy for Orlando, seek professional help. I just don’t. Flat, hot, service economy, bleah. Not for me. Did I mention hot? And the humidity?
At the time, despite the fact that I had a regular TV gig at the local NBC affiliate and a popular column in The Free Times, a local entertainment tabloid, my salary mostly came from the agency.
It was one of those opportunities in life where maybe I missed my moment. I don’t know. I was so stunned that I was being shown the door. I simply could not believe the betrayal. I don’t actually know what happened. I suppose that the jerk was given a certain amount of budget to cut and I was his choice. I’ll never know for sure.
In the end I was offered, on a Thursday afternoon, to keep my salary if I could report for work in Orlando the following Monday.
I had 72 hours to completely shut down my life and be in a hotel in a city I hated or I was fired.
Perhaps it was a mistake, but I picked my salary. I’ve always wondered what would have happened if I’d told them to go to hell. Instead, I put everything I had in storage, rented my apartment and gave notice at my other two jobs.
I was the primary creative source for the agency at the time so they kept bringing me back for meetings on big new clients and pitches. But I had to live in Orlando. It was the worst period of my life. I cried uncontrollably for no reason at unpredictable times. I could not sleep. I either got so drunk that I passed out or I was just up all night. My friends had a birthday party for me that year in the infield at the Aiken Trials. All the pictures are of me in a white dinner jacket and dark glasses, crying.
I don’t know what a nervous breakdown is, but I might have had one. Whatever, it was the worst.
I lasted three months.
Then one day, I woke up and thought, “I quit.” Nothing is worth this. I pick bankruptcy over this. I resigned. My stuff was already in storage. I packed the convertible and drove to Los Angeles, a city where I knew no one, had no prospects, no place to stay, no job and had never been before. It just seemed like the right thing to do, even though it was the wrong thing in so many ways.
And that, as Mr. Frost would say, has made all the difference.
My life is transformed. I never wanted to be in advertising. That was just what happened to me. That job was miserable and I was miserable doing it. I loved the TV thing and miss it. This blog thing has reminded me of how much I enjoyed the column. But the rest? Yuck. Maybe I’d have loved advertising if I hadn’t worked at such an awful place.
I was published within two years of arriving. I had my first movie deal in two and a half. I found myself in a place where there was nothing wrong with being me. My life has blossomed in ways that were not even possible there. All of the best things that have ever happened to me happened as a direct result of that terrible, awful day.
I am reminded of that day a lot lately.
Times are hard right now. For me and for a lot of people. I’m not sure what’s next. Some days it’s easy to be overtaken by my fear. But, my tears have been few and I’m sleeping soundly. I think it’s because my worst day taught me that I can’t always recognize my blessings when they come.

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On Writing #5: Redux

September 14, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

I’m bringing my novel Say Uncle back into print!
I’m going to try my hand at digital publishing. Then, maybe I’ll publish it in traditional print form, too. If that goes well, maybe I’ll bring out the sequel that I wrote but which my turncoat publisher refused to release. We’ll see. It’s all very new and exciting and I hope I can count on your support.
It’s also presented me with one of my most interesting exercises ever.
Say Uncle was published back in ancient times – 1994. The process of publishing simply bears no resemblance to those primitive earlier days. I’m not sure I could have been a writer before there were computers. The prospect of retyping an entire manuscript every time I had to edit it, well, I simply could not have faced it.
And I wrote this, my first book, in long hand, as I did everything back in the before times. But I then typed it up on a 300 pound “portable” Compaq and saved it on giant, actually, floppy disks. Then I printed it out. The last time was at a HUD office in East L.A. where I was temping. It shut their network down and took all day to print out.
Once printed the hard copy was sent to agents and later publishers. Each edit was done by hand, on paper. I then made the changes, reprinted and sent another paper copy. Finally, the publisher typeset the book, which involved someone there typing the whole manuscript over again. Then they sent me a paper copy. I marked changes and sent it back. This happened a few more times. Finally, the book itself was printed.
Today, things I write might not be printed on paper until they are published. I guess, with digital everything and Kindles, iPads, Nooks and eReaders eventually books will only ever be printed as collector’s items. Who knows?
The point is, the only final copy I have of Say Uncle is the book.
Hence, my interesting exercise. I have to retype the whole novel in order to publish it digitally. Alas, no file I have is final.
I love Say Uncle. It has a special place in my heart. It’s my first and so it will always mean something more to me. But I wrote it in the early 80’s. I would not be much of an artist if my writing style and skills had not changed and grown in 25 years.
Picasso’s early rose and blue periods hardly hinted at the cubism that he came to be known for. Da Vinci apparently kept the Mona Lisa with him all of his life. I wonder if he kept working on it? Perhaps that’s why it is considered such a masterwork. Or did he simply say one day, “That’s it. All through,” and hang it over the sofa?
So here I am, faced with retyping words chosen 25 years ago to describe emotions and events by a twenty-five-year-old. I am committed to preserving the original, to recreating exactly the book that’s in the Library of Congress. On the other hand, I don’t write this way anymore. I don’t even feel this way anymore.
That is to say, I feel the same things, but I feel them differently.
I’ve always thought reading was an incredibly intimate process. When I read your words, I’m actually having the thoughts that you had in the order and evolution that you had them. Through reading I get to experience personally the greatest thoughts of the greatest minds that ever were. Nothing is more intimate than that.
If you know me you’ve probably heard me say that or something like it at least once and, forgive me, probably more often. But it never occurred to me that I could have that experience with my younger self. This book was always very personal to me. It isn’t autobiographical in that I’ve never raised a child. It is in that it’s as close as I’ve gotten so far in life. It was my best imagining of what sort of parent I would have been at that point in time.
I started retyping after I exhausted every other conceivable option. I’ve only just resigned myself to the task.
It’s jarring. My first impulse, as is so often the case with youth, is to “correct.” There’s some insight in that for me. I really just want to change it. Whether that would be an improvement is debatable. I hope I’m more flexible than that with young people or just other people.
Not far along, I’m taken with the intensity of everything. I suppose since the feelings were new, they felt stronger. How intriguing to taste the salty tears of my youth on a palate jaded by experience and the knowledge of how much worse it can be.
I don’t know yet if this will be my Julie and Julia exercise – and dear god help me to be a better human being than that woman – but I’ll keep you posted. I’ll certainly let you know when it’s done and the book is again available!
Meanwhile, the thought that comes to me most comes from the original Peter Pan, J. M. Barrie: God gave us memory so we might have roses in December.
I don’t know if I’m quite at December yet, but I do want to say to that twenty-five-year-old me scratching on yellow pads at the kitchen table: “Thanks for the memories.”

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