The Bad Homosexual

[June 23rd, 2004] "I am not a good writer. David Sedaris is a good writer. I am not David Sedaris." I chanted this phrase over and over as I read his latest collection of short pieces, Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim.

Now it might seem vain to admit to even the slightest hint of professional jealousy toward this popular queer author, a former house cleaner-turned-expat. The author of books like Me Talk Pretty One Day, Naked, Barrel Fever and Holidays on Ice, as well as magazine articles for The New Yorker, GQ and Esquire, Sedaris has an audience that could wrap around the entire world--twice.

On the other hand, I write for an audience in Portland, Ore. So why the hell would I ever compare myself to someone who is obviously so much more talented--not to mention rich?

Well, there's "The Chicken in the Henhouse," a yarn Sedaris tells on page 211 of his new book. A perilous piece made up of equal parts Michael Jackson and Norman Bates, "Chicken" sums up for me what it's like to be a modern, middle-aged homosexual. Like many of Sedaris' essays, this one charts new territory, starting in one world and ending up traveling to another emotional galaxy.

After a few travel-related goof-ups, Sedaris begins to stew in his own juices, and this particular juice-stewing incident involves a young boy about 10 years old. The writer, in his attempt to help the boy by carrying a cup of hot chocolate through a hotel, ends up scalding his own fragile psyche.

And then Sedaris does something really heated and dangerous--he admits he feels uncomfortable when he is around a child merely because he is gay. He is afraid that others might think he's trying to "recruit" the kid, recruit all kids, actually. That bite of honesty, Sedaris' stock in trade, is what makes the writer look pathetic and wonderful, while telling a story as psychotic as it can get without the details being smothered in a straitjacket.

And that straitjacket is where I find myself most at home with Sedaris.

You see, Sedaris struggles, like me and probably a few more homos than would care to admit it, with the guilt of being gay. In "Chicken" he writes, "I am a person who feels guilty for crimes I have not committed--or not committed in years."

Our shared guilt isn't the kind that most might expect. It's not about our sexuality, but a shared guilt forced upon us by the culture we grew up in, a culture that still says there's something wrong about being gay. Or at least old and gay. Children aren't safe around us, even in our own heads.

He may be a good writer, but David Sedaris is a bad homosexual writer, because he's willing to admit this brand of guilt. He doesn't write about marching in parades, he's not getting married--hell, he doesn't even go on Larry King Live to talk about gay politics. What he does do is tell it like it is, like it really is, not the way we'd like to hear it.

That's a dangerous admission in this era of "we're queer and we can be anything we want." So what if I'm not a good writer like David Sedaris; at least I can be a bad, honest homo like him.

That's a cause worth fighting for, don't you think?