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Compromise

August 9, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

A while back there was some movie where football players or some other high school age athletes, lay down on the yellow line in the middle of the road to show their bravery or something.

(It was a movie.  Don’t try that at home.)

Anyways, after seeing the film, a number of young people got run over, lying on the yellow line in the middle of the road.  One can imagine the lead up.  Some kid, desperate for approval or street credibility is goaded into the act.  I don’t think the kids were stupid.  I think the need for acceptance is that strong.

We all do it.  We laugh along at the joke that demeans some group or other.  We let people think we liked a book or a film we thought was a pretentious bore or juvenile crap.  We applaud with the crowd but secretly wonder why we can’t see the Emperor’s new clothes.  We know that what is being suggested is wrong, yet we compromise.

In the end we end up looking stupid, or worse.  Still, what else might we expect for willingly compromising with people we know are wrong?

It would be great if this was just some youthful phase.  Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case.  It’s unfortunate when this kind of yearning for acceptance and approval ends in the strained back of some needy middle-aged, touch-football player.  We wince at the regrettable photos when someone, old enough to know better, winds up at a social event in spandex they outgrew a few years back.

But it is tragic when the government of the most powerful nation in the world runs this way, as ours does.  Over and over again, I see people compromising with folks who are clearly wrong.  It’s not like, well maybe they have a good point.  Like maybe if we force poor people to pay for their own insurance that’ll fix it.  Or maybe this time trickledown economics will in fact trickle down.

Even when there is actual empirical data that the opposition is wrong or worse lying, our leaders will compromise their beliefs and principles in exchange for popularity.  In a republic, I’m not even sure how you get around it since the group most likely to be ill-informed and wrong is in fact the electorate.  What I can say for sure is that compromising with someone I know is wrong doesn’t give me a 50% chance of being right.  It just means I’m wrong, too.  And worse still, by compromising, I signed up to be wrong.

I don’t think President Clinton actually wanted Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and I can’t think of a better example of compromising with folks who are wrong.  But President Clinton was re-elected.  Separate but Equal? No such thing, just another example of two wrongs making a mess.  Still, one can hardly imagine running for office without supporting it much prior to 1964, and even then.  Invading Iraq, on balance, not such a good idea, but we’re still there, thanks to the support of many who now regret it.

So, it is understandable that as our current President, the first black man elected to that office, the child of an only relatively recently legal interracial marriage and perhaps the person who has most benefited from civil rights progress in the history of our country says he is “morally opposed to gay marriage.”

Recently, President Obama was in Los Angeles.  Through a friend, I got tickets to the town hall event he was holding here.  I went to meet him, to shake his hand, to congratulate him and to ask him about it.  I got to shake his hand but I didn’t get called on to ask my question so here it is — and don’t think I didn’t rehearse this!

“Mr. President, I am so glad you were elected and I am thankful that we have you to lead us in this difficult time.  I am also thankful that your parents, despite the moral opposition of many at the time, were able to marry so that you might be here and be our president today.  I wonder then, what is your moral opposition to my having the same right that your parents had?”

Honestly, Mr. President, if you’re listening, I’d still like to know.

In my heart, I don’t really think the man does feel that way.  Hell, I think if Present Bush, the younger, had thought that gay marriage would make old white guys richer, he’d have performed the ceremonies on the White House steps himself.  I think that both men thought they had to compromise with people they knew were wrong in order to get elected.  Maybe their motives were different.  One seems to have been creating a wedge, the other a bridge, but in the end both men were trying to get out the bigot vote.

Given recent events, this is shaping up to be an awkward stance.

I’m sure the lights of many careers were dampened by the tacit or overt support of segregation by those who were probably only compromising their principles for a few precious votes.  More recently, it’s worth nothing that President Obama got his party’s nomination in no small part because he didn’t support the war in Iraq.  In truth, that’s probably because no one asked him at the time, but who knows?  He did bravely speak out against it in the Illinois Senate, though they were not asked, either.

Viewed in the light of history or the ER waiting room, how brave is it to lie down in the middle of the road? It might make you more popular for a minute.  But in the end, you just get run over by what’s coming.

It might seem scarier to choose a side and stand up for what you know is right, but true courage isn’t the absence of fear, it’s being afraid and doing it anyway.

Next time, that’s who I’m voting for.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments »

A Little Less H8

August 6, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

Turns out, you can’t pass laws taking away the rights of people you don’t like! Imagine that.  In a country literally built on the principle of inalienable equal rights, it has taken all this fuss to determine that the majority can’t take away the rights of folks they hate.  And we’re still going to have to ask a few more people before we can be sure.

Honestly!

But, that said, the world is a little less hateful today than it was the morning of August 4th.  I’m relieved and glad and celebrating.  The gay boys and girls in California are still singing.  I feel like I can celebrate the outcome of the November 2008 elections for the first time.  At the time, I felt so excluded from that exultant outcome by the electoral expression of hatred that is Prop H8.

But the end of a little more voter sponsored bigotry is a victory for every American, not just the gay ones.  Everybody is a member of some minority.  That’s right, no matter how mainstream you are there’s someone out there who hates you for it.   Save for the ideals that, in theory at least, protect us all, I could make a list of the groups I don’t like and put together a campaign to systematically take away their rights through grotty little ballot initiatives and special interest legislation.

For instance, were it up to me Rightwing radio and TV hosts would be off the air and forced to give up all their money and property to the poor, barred from speaking in public or publishing their hateful, untruthful and misleading words.  I’d give five dollars to Deport Rupert dot com.  And bottom feeding, fear mongers are a tiny group.  It would be easy to take away their rights.

What about hateful religious groups? The reason we have separation of church and state is actually not so churches can play politics tax free.   It’s because many immigrated to this country initially to escape the religious persecution where they came from.  That’s changed.  Today churches are in charge of religious persecution.  But, church by church, each denomination is still a minority.

What if a group set about to take away one specific denomination’s tax status, strip them of non church property, bar them from voting and prevented them from marrying or adopting in an effort to get their group to die out? Unlike being gay, religion is actually a choice.  Who would choose to convert to a religion when doing so would cost them their rights as citizens?  Another easy five dollar donation.  And, after the Mormons and the Catholics actually gave money to Prop H8 and promoted it from the pulpit, maybe even ten dollars of my money would be winding it’s way to Get-the-Hypocrites dot com.

I’m not saying that anyone should do any of this.  What I’m saying is that the rights of Pious Jerks and Radio Wingnuts are safer today, because a few more gay people fought for and won the same rights everyone else already had.

If you can’t take away my rights because you don’t like me, then I’m less likely to be able to take away your rights when I don’t like you.

It isn’t perfect, but it is a little less hateful.  I think that’s what this is all about.  The Constitution points out, we are seeking to “form a more perfect union.”

Today, that union seems a little more perfect, to me.

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

Home Made

August 4, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

Whenever I’m offered something that’s “Home Made” I always ask myself:  “Who’s home?”

I’ve been in some homes where I would not have eaten anything offered.  Got a Home Made Pie from a home with unemptied cat boxes, overflowing trash and a texture to the kitchen counters?  Well, I’ll pass.

I kind of feel the same way about the Family Research Council.  “Who’s family?” and perhaps more to the point, “What research?”

Theirs is the kind of family where Dad campaigns against equal rights for all Americans, particularly the gay ones, and then hires a young man half his age from Rentboy.com to accompany him on vacation.  Then, because dad is such a great guy, he lies about hiring the prostitute even though there’s home movies of them together at the airport.

If dad wants to take a hooker on vacation, I don’t really think it’s any of my business.  Mom’s maybe, but not mine.

But let’s say dad founded an organization called the Family Research Council, as George Alan Rekers did.  And suppose that organization is devoted to preventing Americans from having the right to marry people of the same sex, just as the Family Research Council does.  What kind of research would then convince Daddy George to pay someone of the same sex hired off of Hustlerboy.com to go on holiday with him? Was it these same findings that told him to lie about it? Or was it a different study?

Either way, theirs is a family reunion I don’t want to attend.

And what about Uncle Tony and his prayer group of Christian Law Makers? Was it research data or just good old fashioned Christian family values that brought AFC President, Tony Perkins together with those Godly legislators in a televised prayer circle to entreat the Lord for the poor health or, better still, the death of an ailing Senator so they could prevent poor people from having access to healthcare?

Whichever it was, I’d rather pass on Thanksgiving at their table.

Now, the good family folks at the Family Research Council want to ban groups they are prejudiced against from access to public transportation.  That’s right, not just the back of the bus, they want the right to keep other people off the bus entirely. Or in this case, off the train.

Just like in the good old days, the FRC family values bigots actually object to sharing public transportation with minorities they are prejudice against.  Fortunately, it’s gays they hate.  If they came out against black or Hispanic Americans on public transpiration they might actually have more to fear than sharing a seat.  (Head’s up though, research shows it was okay to be for whites-only drinking fountains not so long ago.)

What kind of family are these people a part of? And what is their research telling them? That God hates poor people? That Christ would pray for a man’s death to get his way? That calling for a return to Pre-Civil Rights Act restrictions on public accommodations and transportation is a good or even a popular idea?

My research indicates that none of those are particularly family values.  But then who’d order cat hair pie, right? They can hardly call themselves the Voice of Evil and expect to raise the kind of money they need to protect the health insurance industry.

So apparently, according to the latest Family Research Council data, it’s okay to take a rentboy on vacation, just not on the train.

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

High School Civics

August 2, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

I had dinner with some friends last night at Gardel’s.  It was lovely.

There was a man in our party who works as a teacher here in LAUSD.  Despite the pay cuts, layoffs and daily violence he faces, he did not complain to me about of any of that.  He did tell me that he is being persecuted by the parent of one of his students for being gay.  She made up stuff about him, forced an investigation and got her totally untrue rumors spread thoroughly about the school.

In short he has been made to suffer by a liar who faces no consequences.

I know what’s wrong with her, but what the hell is wrong with LAUSD?

Gay people don’t have rights in this country.  We are not citizens.  We are treated almost daily to the bigoted and outrageous claims and statements of people who have nothing to fear in making them.  Right wing pundits can call a politician a faggot and still have a career.   Saying that something is Gay is a commonly used term of derision.  Telling the truth about your sexuality can get you fired from a Federal job.

There was a time, not too long ago, when a black man could be lynched for “leering” at a white woman.  Today the person making any such claim would be suspect, not the man.  My friend, whose career is being impacted by the false charges of this bigot, is on the same limb.  There may be no rope involved, but threatening someone’s livelihood with false claims is threatening his life.

Will the cities of this country have to be burned again in order to expand civil rights to include all Americans?

Maybe if we funded education the way we fund the military, we’d be smart enough to learn from our mistakes.  Who knows, maybe we’d be so smart we’d no longer need a military.

We’ll certainly get no smarter if a man who’s working in dire conditions, at reduced pay, to help educate the child of this ignorant woman, is forced out of his profession because of lies, bigotry and the systemic refusal of this country to offer equal protection under the law.

Just in case you’re wondering its:

Ramon C. Cortines

Superintendent, LAUSD

333 S. Beaudry Avenue

Los Angeles, CA 90017

2123-241-7000

Superintendent@LAUSD.net

Email and contact details for the school board can be found at:

http://www.lausd.k12.ca.us/district_directory/

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments »

Discovery

July 30, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

Discovery

I’m working on a new novel these days.  It’s thrillerish, so I’ve had to do something I don’t really like to do.  I outlined the story.

I like to read novels because I want to know what’s going to happen next.

I write novels for the same reason.  I want to know how they turn out.

Often, I’m surprised by the turn of events in a story that I am telling.  If I can help it, I try not to know how things end up.  It keeps me interested in the story long enough to finish it.  Sometimes though, I have to write to an outline or I’m following real events or the nature of the work is too complex to leave it to chance.

Because of the style of the book I’m writing just now, I kind of have to know where I’m heading.  I don’t want to end up with some copout, train wreck, Lost-style ending.  So, I have to think of ways to keep the telling of the story fresh.  Otherwise I get too bored and before you know it, I’m shopping or looking at porn.

Success varies.

The computer is a huge challenge for me in this.  The very same tool I use to write offers distraction on an epic scale.  The excuse of checking the Email, or Facebook can drag me away from what I’m doing.  Just mentioning it, actually has me thinking I should switch over quickly now.

Once there, what else to check on? The temperature – my Google home page weather gadget actually offers current weather conditions, i.e. the temperature, as recorded at the park across the street.  Now I have a thermometer on my desk, next to me, but I can’t hardly keep typing this entry for wanting to see what the temp is at the park.

Recently, a friend told me about a “dating” site he likes.  Now I have long since lost interest in internet dating.  The idea is great, but the implicit resume building dishonesty of the process doesn’t really work for me.  On a dare from a friend, I joined Match.com in the last year or so.  I put up an un-retouched snap shot, told the truth about my age and myself and kissed fifty bucks good bye.  Not one single response to any of my attempted contacts and on the two occasions when someone spoke to me first, when I replied, they never did.

I’m not feeling sorry for myself here.  This is just the reality of a dating process where I’m in direct competition with professionally made porn and candid snaps of Zac Efron at the beach.  ( Just went to check the spelling of Zac’s name and found out that it’s 70.6 degrees across the street.)

Occasionally, because this truth kind of annoys me, I will create and post a fake ad offering up the fantasy that I know my peers are looking for.  The speed with which my inbox fills up is almost as dispiriting as the reality of my most recent online dating excursion.  Turning them all down is some consolation.

So anyway, I’m working on the new novel.  I check the temperature at the park and I remember this new dating site.  Well, it’s about time for a break.  I’ll just quickly check it out.

Now I have to tell you, my present concern is with my career.  Dating would be lovely, even if it was only for an hour, but that is not really a big concern for me.  Honestly, I’ve reached a point in my life where I’ve made peace with the fact that a love life is probably not in the cards for me.  If I didn’t have to pay rent I’d give up on the career too — though never on the writing.  But this site? Well, I’m on break.  I’ll just have a quick look.

Oh my God! They actually have people who are looking for a “date” listed by neighborhood and, in my case at least, street.  I’m sunk.  How can I not look to see who’s there?

And I was so richly rewarded! In addition to a number of people who I know and think are kind of yummy and who don’t acknowledge that they know I’m alive, there are some real finds.  I try to guess, based on the photo backgrounds, which buildings on my street these people inhabit.  There’s even a naked shot of a guy taken in MY LAUNDRY ROOM! I’m hooked.  It’s bad.

So, while I write I log on, just to see who’s there.  My profile is not flagrant.  It’s an old one with an older picture, enough to be intriguing without being clear or a slut about it.  I don’t respond or say anything to anyone — it’s more the dating-by-the-hour kind of site.  It’s fun, it feels a little naughty, a little like I’m getting away with something.  And then one morning, I see the profile of a guy I actually think sounds kind of great.  He seems a little too young for me, though he’s probably lying about that. Still, he’s kind of excellent.  And it’s a picture of his great smile, not some body part.  “Wouldn’t that be nice?” I think.  And I move on to one where I recognize one of the fireplaces from my building behind the action.

Then I get an Email from the guy with the great smile.

I’ll just check.

It’s charming.

I fight the urge to respond and lose.  I don’t flirt.  That’s not really why I’m on the site and my profile is only resume honest.  He’s smart and complimentary, flirty without the usual “what are you into?” kind of smarm.  He’s a professional.  He’s avoiding work, too.  He wants to buy me a drink.

Sigh.

So, I tell him the truth.  I tell him I’d like to meet him.  I tell him I’m not really serious about the site so my profile is not as forthcoming as it might be.  I tell him I’m interested, but I tell him what the resume omits. I give him the out since he didn’t actually get to ask me for coffee, it was a profile.  He never replies.

Ouch.

Now, I was not online to meet anyone.  I’ve given up on dating.  I was just avoiding working on my novel.  I only ever looked at the site because of the “geographic insights” that it offered.  And it DESTROYED me.  I was crushed.

The very thing that informs my interest in books, in movies, in TV and in writing is the thing that makes life almost unbearable.

It’s the not knowing that makes me turn the page.  But it’s the uncertainty the makes me avoid working on the book.  Is anyone going to like this one? Will I make a sale soon? What’s going to happen?

Hi, this is who I really am.  Would you still like to have that drink?

Maybe it’s the manageability of the revelations of storytelling that makes it preferable to the agony of the not knowing that is real life.  Still, it’s real life that so rarely surprises me.

Maybe I prefer fiction because I can’t predict the ending.

Posted in Personal | Tagged , | 1 Comment »

Names

July 28, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

Je m’apelle Eric.

But that’s not what everybody calls me.

Over the years I’ve been called a lot of things.

In Spanish class they always used to give me a Spanish name at the first of the year.  Mine never seemed to stick.  I was always so Eric.

Queer used to be really popular.  I got that a lot in “middle school.”  Do they still have middle school I wonder? Or have they gone back to having junior high?

Fag really gained in popularity in High School or the more formal, faggot.

I was so sexually naive that for a long time I didn’t even know what it meant.  It was just bad.  And then of course I understood what it meant.  And then I understood that I was.  But was I bad?

I didn’t think so.

For a long time, these names made me really angry.  Then one day it hit me.  I am a fag.  By every definition of the bigot’s efforts to slur me, I am.  The name only hurts if I think there’s something wrong with being a fag, and I don’t.

I live in West Hollywood where I’m told we have the largest concentration of gay people per capita of any city or whatever.  That means a lot of great things for me.  Mostly it means that I get to be not special as I go about my day.  What it also means is that if there’s some bigot out there who wants to call a gay person a fag, they pretty much only need to drive through town, roll down their window and shout.  Yelling fag in West Hollywood is like using a semi-automatic weapon, you don’t have to aim very carefully to hit your target.

Such affronts used to send me into a defensive rage, memorizing license plates, answering in kind.  Now, I just smile and wave.

I am.

You can’t hurt me with your hatred if it is no longer shared.

Still, I’m not big on the rather casual play that gay slurs get in the media.  What if Anne Coulter had called John Edwards the ‘N’ word? A very different outcome, I think.

It is currently okay to use slurs against gay people and white men, it seems.  One group because they really don’t care cause they already rule the world and the other because the government still sanctions institutional discrimination against them, so it must be okay.   Guess which is which.  This is not to say there aren’t many groups suffering the pains and privations of bigotry.

My point I think is that the power of names is given by the recipient not the user.

Everybody is calling everybody else a racist.  It is heartbreaking to witness the plight of the white Anglo Saxon American heterosexual male, these days.  N’est ce-pas? (I think that’s French for “You feel me?” or, for the other white boys out there, “Get it?”)

In the end the charges are at worst cynical manipulation or at best useless.

I can’t stop anyone else’s bigotry or their feelings of hatred, but I don’t have to participate.  Waving my flag and freaking out doesn’t seem to be helping.  In fact, with the current spate of poor put upon white men being ‘discriminated against,’ outrage seems to have been co-opted by the most bigoted among us.  Ask Shirley Sherrod.

I think the solution is the same now as it was for my Uncle Glenn.  When he was a little boy he was surrounded by a house full of doting women.  He had no need to speak.  He could just cry or throw a fit and he would be provided with all his needs.  By the time he was three, or so the story goes, he had yet to utter a word.

My Grandfather Silas, by all accounts a rather forbidding man, decreed that Uncle Glenn was not to be fed again until he spoke.

Apparently he was jabbering like a magpie by suppertime.

The point, I think, is this.  If we stop paying attention to the “shocking” utterances of bigots and racists and stilly white boys trying to draw a foul, they’ll try something else.  They really only want our attention, so what if we only pay attention to the good stuff? What if we only answer to the names we want to hear?

Meanwhile, just smile and wave.  It really pisses them off.

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , | 4 Comments »

Manners

July 26, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

I mourn the passage of manners.

This age of selfishness has precluded the necessity.  We are diminished by the loss.  I’m hardly the most formal of people.  My vocabulary would offend a sailor.  (Is that really true I wonder? Are sailors really that foul mouthed?)

But I miss the simple niceties of making the effort, however sincerely felt.  I miss the act.

I have a friend who has cancelled on me three time in the last few months each time because “He has a friend he needs to catch up with.” I assume that he is unaware that he is in essence telling me that I’m not a very important friend, but still.  Why not actually honor the invitations you accept?

Another friend, on cancelling an invitation he had previously accepted said “I never said I would come.” He had, in writing.  It was a minor social event and only an irritation that he’d cancelled.  Why call me a liar? Needless to say, further invitations have been curtailed.

California, my wonderful home that I love, is a bit challenging in this area.  No invitation or acceptance of same here are deemed final until one actually arrives at the event.  It is the land of the better offer.  That is, all invitations are accepted conditionally and honored only if there is not something better on offer.  Not my style.  But it is the unwritten rule here.

It was hard to take at first.  I actually changed my outgoing voicemail message to “At the tone, please leave the time and date of the engagement you’ve called to cancel.”  I’ve gotten used to it, not okay with it.  I’ve simply stopped making plans with people who can’t show up.  Instead, I enjoy spending time with the flakier members of my set when chance dictates.

But my social life is only a speck in the eye of dignity.

We are drowning in bad manners.  At a movie the other night the ushers had to announce more than once to get people to stop texting and blinding others, and then there was an attitude.  Traffic has become a competitive arena where people cut each other off and generally behave as if there is no one behind them or anyone else on the road.  This of course leads to gratuitous horn honking, bird flipping and obscenity shouting (I’m doing better, okay.)

“You lie.” An elected member of the US Congress shouted that at the President of the United States, while he was speaking to a joint session.  Even if he had been lying, which in fact he was not, how have we arrived at a place where that is okay?

I’m not even okay with referring to the President of the United States by his last name.  I think it is derisive.  It is President Bush or President Obama, not Bush this or Obama that.  Whether I agree with their politics or not, they are President, and for as long as they live.  We would hardly refer to the Queen as Windsor or worse, her original last name, Saxe-Coburg-Gothe.  There is reverence for the office that has nothing to do with the man or the woman.

Vulgarians, liars and brutes have taken over the airwaves.  Leaders in the field of crudity like Howard Stern have made it okay to simply say anything you want true or not, rude or not, to or about whoever you feel like saying it.  His popularity has directly given rise and permission to Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Reverend Fred Phelps and Timothy McVeigh.

The price paid is not that my delicate sensibilities are offended.  I have come to wonder what someone would actually have to do to shock me.  I am not devalued by your crude remarks and boorish behavior.  You are.

The Presidency is a the perfect example.  We all choose the President, even the ones who vote against him or her.  Even those who don’t vote, vote by their abstention.  So the Presidency is us.  If we have or show no respect for the President or at least the office, then we have no respect for ourselves.

I am but one driver on the road I share with others.  If I don’t respect the other drivers, then I don’t respect myself.  Or the other movie patrons.  Or my fellow gym members.  Or the shoppers at my local grocery, my neighbors or simply the friends I stand up.

Manners are how we show respect for others, but mostly they’re how we show respect for ourselves.  If I treat you as though you are worthless, then what value, as your equal, do I have?

If I have no manners, I have no self-respect.

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments »

On Writing #3: Not Writing

July 23, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

I wrote my first book on Saturday mornings.

Between the job I had at the ad agency, the one I had writing a column for a local alternative newspaper and the job I had shooting, writing, producing and hosting my weekly television gig, Saturday morning was all I had left.  But above and beyond the tight schedule, there was a nearly insurmountable obstacle to my novel.  I was new and naive and had no idea what I was facing.  As time has passed though, I’ve come to understand a truth that all successful authors have mastered.

Writing is really boring.  No, that’s not it exactly.  EVERYTHING else is more interesting than writing.  That’s the only way I can explain it.

In order to write on those long ago Saturday mornings, I had to complete a vast and intricate ritual to make it possible.  The apartment had to be clean.  And I don’t just mean the bed was made  and the books were all shelved.  I mean it had to be photo shoot ready.  The floor waxed, the furniture polished, the laundry done, the dry cleaning delivered/picked up, the sock drawer sorted, the grout bleached, the porcelain gleaming and the dishes washed and put away.  Otherwise, disaster.

Here’s how Not Writing happens.  You sit down at the table with your coffee to write.  You light a cigarette (I used to).  You open the pen.  You leaf through your most recent scratchings.   You take a contemplative sip.  You review any notes you’ve made and begin to ask yourself “What’s next?”

As you stare thoughtfully into the middle distance, you see a dust bunny peeking playfully out at you from under the sofa.  And you’re done.  You don’t realize it yet, but your work day has ended before you’ve committed a single word to the page.

With the intention of getting right back to what you were doing, you go get the vacuum cleaner to chase that pesty bunny away.  You discover what a state the hall closet is in.  You take everything out of the hall closet to reorganize it, as you’ve been meaning to.  Amidst the detritus, you discover that iron you had meant to give your sister.  You call your sister to see if she indeed wants the iron.  You’ve never once used it yourself and can’t recommend it, but she did that time she visited and you remember she really seemed to like it.  She has no recollection of the incident but did you hear what happened last night at the Astor Bar? We should meet. Why not there?

When you finally get home, the guts of the closet are still spilled all over the floor and “What are all these papers doing on the kitchen table?”  The dust bunny, long forgotten, haunts the recesses beneath the love seat, poised to destroy another Saturday morning’s writing.

I never stood a chance.

Before I could write the book I had to master Not Writing.  The first step is admitting that Not Writing is infinitely more fascinating, seductive and satisfying than the Pulitzer, the Man Booker and making the Times best seller list all rolled into one.  Those things are great but they only might happen.  Once the socks are paired and sorted by color you will know peace and satisfaction every time you open that drawer.  Well, the first couple of times anyway.

Once I had made this admission the only possible solution was abject surrender.

Of course, all work on the three other jobs had to be completed and filed and the next week fully scheduled.  I did the marketing.  I repainted the living room.  The plants on the balcony thrived for all the attention.  There was no dust in the crevices in the base boards or under any of the furniture.  I retiled the entire apartment, even the closets.  I covered each and every dingy yellow tile in the bathroom with a gleaming square of malachite vinyl and carpeted the matching dingy yellow floor.   Everything that could be framed was hanging.  Every DIY scheme I ever had for the house was completed.

I spent large blocks of time thinking of all the Not Writing tasks I could imagine and got them all done by Friday night at bedtime.  It was even necessary to act preemptively.  I made plans for Saturday evening and booked Sunday so that I would not have a reason to pick up the phone.

Saturdays I got up, put on the coffee and hit the shower.

Breakfast was coffee and cigarettes in those days.  Since that was also the first step in my writing process, they happened simultaneously.  I sat down before the yellow pad I had placed on the table the night before – looking for things is a very dangerous prelude that can easily lead to Not Writing.  I unsealed the Pilot Razor Point, one of a multitude I had stolen from work for just this purpose and placed within arm’s reach well in advance.  (I’m certain any number of pre-laptop manuscripts languish in dusty, forgotten drawers around the world for want of ink in the favorite pen.)  At last, with a self-satisfied sigh and a desperate glance around the apartment for a loose thread or wilted leaf, I touched pen to paper and began.

And that’s how I came to write my first novel.

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Next

July 21, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

I once read, I’ve no idea where, that the quality that most successful people share in common is that they know when to quit.

It seems a brilliant notion to me.  But it is a perilous idea to have in my head.  Everything since has become an exercise of balancing results on the scales of persistence.  When do I give up?

It is not my nature to just give something a try and then move on.

I have stuck with the worst prospects for relationships in my life and am single to this day almost without exception.  I have stood by bad friends who’ve stolen from me, lied to me, betrayed me and ditched me for better offers.  I’m getting better with the friends thing, mostly by getting out of it.  I’ve adopted a policy of making time only for people who make the effort – I want only to be with people who want to be with me.  No sign on the boyfriend front yet – ouch — but I’ve a much better group of friends.

Professionally, I’m wondering how to apply this same idea.

It took ten years to get my first novel, Say Uncle, published.  It took nearly three just to write it.  I had three other jobs at the time and wrote it in long hand — personal computers were just the wet dreams of Jobs and Woz and Bill back in the before times.

Once I was done writing I faced a tough market.  The idea of a book about a single gay man raising a child was not well received by the very conservative publishing world in the 80’s.  It wasn’t a daily effort, but I persisted.  In the end, the book was published.  While it was not a big success, it changed my life and set me on a new course.

It’s fifteen years later now and I wonder, is it time to quit?

I wrote a sequel to the first novel, centered around the idea of gay marriage but that was too much for the still more conservative publishing world of the mid-90’s.  Ironically, Say Uncle was pushed out of print by the memoir of a gay man adopting and raising a child.  My controversial idea had become the banal musings of some journalist.  I have written and published several other books since, though none original to me.  Despite the success of those, I’ve had no other writer for hire offers either.

Still, I have persisted with my writing.  There is now a stack of novels and other works.  I keep trying to get this to work as a career, but it doesn’t seem to want to work for me.  I have thought to walk away.

I worked for a medical professional organization for a time.  I was fired because my work was too good – no kidding, that’s actually what they said.  There was a stint on a little TV show, Game World, working as a script coordinator.  It was cancelled because the new guy in charge of the network didn’t think of it.  You could tell he cancelled it for his ego because he replaced it, not with another show, but with infomercials.  Each time one of these doors closed, writing came back to me as the thing to do.

Yet my writing career is a bit like the chase sequence in a Scooby Doo cartoon.  You know those scenes where the characters run randomly in and out of the many doors lining a long hallway? Like that.

1.  The villain chases the gang into the hallway and everyone disappears behind a different door.

The offer of the Queer as Folk novelization series arrived the day I cashed my last unemployment check from the doctor’s group and came with the promise of work on the show.  The production of Say Uncle as a movie brought a period of financial independence and presented itself following the cancellation of Game World.

2. Velma and Shaggy run out of doors on opposite sides of the hallway than the ones they entered.

Then QAF “decided to go another way”.

3. Shag and Scoob emerge from the same door.

The studio that was going to make the movie was bought just as we were ready to go into production.

4. The villain backs into Shag and Scooby and everyone runs into the nearest door.

Most recently, the spectacular success of the Star books that I developed as a series with Pamela Anderson was destroyed without explanation by Ms. Anderson.  She has not offered any reason or returned a phone call or even made any effort to find out if I’m okay after ending the project just before it made me any money and leaving me destitute.

5. Daphne and Freddie collide with Velma, Shag and Scoob.

So here I am again, in a heap in the middle of the hallway.  I keep writing and persisting, but I’m faced with that little habit of the successful? Should I quit? And if I do, what to do now?

I know the ending of everything is the beginning of everything else.  I think the real talent is knowing and recognizing when the end has actually come.  Am I there? Or am I just waiting in the hallway for the next door to open.  Will it be another villain or the hero this time?

What’s next?

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In Defense of Marriage

July 19, 2010 by Eric Shaw Quinn

I’m really worried about the sacred institution of marriage.

Recent court rulings, relying on liberal notions like the bill of rights and the US Constitution, have ruled that the Federal Government and ballot initiatives cannot be used to effect discrimination.  That’s right, the United States Government cannot compel Massachusetts to discriminate against its own citizens.  What’s more, a minister from Maryland does not have the right to call for a vote to bring discrimination back to the city of Washington, DC.

Can’t they see that these people are only trying to defend marriage? This sacred institution is the foundation of civilization as we know it – and look how well that’s going!

I think that something needs to be done at once to preserve this blessed bond, this holy contract.

The problem in keeping marriage as it is seems to me to be the laws.

Marriage has become entangled with all these legal rights and privileges.  As a result, the courts and the laws get all involved.

So, here’s what I think we should do.  I propose founding the Society for the Preservation of the Sacred Institution of Marriage.  Our organization’s primary focus should be to divest marriage of all these legal entanglements so that the courts will be powerless to deface this hallowed union.

It all begins and ends with death and taxes, it seems to me.  Taxes are particularly insidious where marriage is concerned.  There are so many so-called tax benefits attached to marriage it’s easy to miss the government intrusion.  To keep the union of one man and one woman sacred, we must do away with all tax law impinging on marriage.   No more joint filings, everyone files separately.  The benefits of having the option to file jointly do not apply.  Who cares that the majority of married couples save money by filing jointly?  Paying higher taxes is a small price to pay to preserve marriage and keep the courts out of our homes and bedrooms.  Why shouldn’t spouses be taxed individually for their share of business income? Who needs child tax credits? It’s all just a way for the government to get their fingers on marriage.

Of course we would do away with notions of the rights to inheritance, joint property or the transfer of pensions and Federal benefits.  Bereaved spouses will find the extra taxes at the time of the loss of their loved one a comfort that further consecrates their marriage vows.  What is the shared work of a lifetime and financial security in old age compared to the peace of mind gained from the certain knowledge that marriage is only between one man and one woman? Widows and Widowers of federal employees, office holders and veterans will be able to hold their heads up proudly in the breadline, knowing that their marriage was pure and sacred and totally not gay.

Certainly we’d want to keep the INS out of marriage vows.  The promise of spousal citizenship is just another clever trap to bring legal encumbrances into marriage and allow the courts to dilute this sacred rite.  Deportation is such an ugly word.  Living separately has led to the long term success of many marriages.

And Divorce? This one seems the most obvious.  Divorce is a boondoggle to the legal profession and a real stumbling block to keeping marriage sanctified.  The bible really only makes divorce available to men and then only when a wife has been unfaithful, so who needs the courts involved in that? Let’s keep it consecrated.  Let the church do it.  Let the Pope or Oral Roberts or Jimmy Swaggart or the Ayatollah decide who gets the house.  And custody? If we can’t trust a priest to do what’s best for the children, who can we trust?

Sure the GAO says marriage confers over 1100 specials rights, benefits and privileges to those who invoke those blessed vows, but that’s a GOVERNMENT agency! We want government out of the business of telling us who we can and can’t marry, right? So who needs the rights of joint custody or the adoption of children? They’re God’s children, let Him take care of them.  And as a man and a woman, united by God, it’s always possible to have more.

The rights of next of kin are really only good for getting in to see your spouse in the hospital, but hospitals are so depressing.  You might catch what your loved one has.  True, it might seem helpful to be able to make decisions regarding the health and well being of a wife or husband who is ill or incapacitated, but isn’t it more important to make sure that not just anyone can get married? I mean, you may lose the right to decide where or how your beloved’s remains are handled after death, but they’re dead anyway.  They can rest in peace knowing that the blessed, sacred bond of marriage is only available to one man and one woman.

And game show contestants.

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