Design For Living: Strengthening the Body Politic Seven Ways

by: Armistead Maupin

Several months ago my friend Timothy Leary gave me some advice about my
upcoming national book tour.

"Before you go", he suggested, "figure out exactly what you want to
say, and don't be embarrassed to say it over and over again. It may be
the hundredth time you've said it, but it's the first time they've
heard it, so make sure you sound like you mean it. The hundredth time
is just as important as the first."

He was right.

Three weeks and 15 cities later, I had summoned up the same answers so
often that I felt like a cross between Dr. Ruth Westheimer and the
audio-animatronics Abe Lincoln at DisneyLand. Most of the questions
were about my books ("When will Mouse find a lover?" and "Didn't you
kill Connie twice?" were two of the biggies.), but a surprising number
of them cast me in the role of Coming-Out Consultant, a keeper of the
mysteries of Happy Homohood.

Remembering Tim's suggestions, I surveyed my most frequent responses
and discovered the following blueprint for a more fulfilling life. Read
it once, and I promise I won't bring it up again.

1. Stop Begging For Acceptance

Homosexuality is still an anathema to most people in this country--even
to many homosexuals. If you camp out on the doorstep of society waiting
for "the climate" to change, you'll be there until Joan Rivers
registers republican.

Your job is to accept yourself--joyfully and with no apologies--and get
on with the adventure of your life.

2. Don't Run Away from Straight People

They need variety in their lives just as much as you do, and you'll
forfeit the heady experience of feeling exotic if you limit yourself to
the company of your own kind.

Furthermore, you have plenty to teach your straight friends about
tolerance and humor and the comfortable enjoyment of their own
sexuality. (Judging from "Donahue", many of them have only now begun to
learn about foreplay; we, on the other hand, have entire resorts built
around the practice.)

Besides, it's time you stopped thinking of heterosexuals as the enemy.
It's both convenient and comforting to bemoan the cardboard villainy of
Jerry Falwell and friends, but the real culprits in this melodrama are
just as queer as you are.

They sleep with you by night and conspire to keep you invisible by day.
They are studio-chiefs and bank presidents and talk-show hosts, and
they don't give a damn about your oppression because they've got their
piece of the pie, and they got it by living a lie.

3. Refuse to Cooperate in the Lie

It is not your responsibility to "be discreet" for the sake of people
who are still ashamed of their own natures. And don't tell me about
"job security".  Nobody's job will ever be safe until the general
public is permitted to recognize the full scope of our homosexual
population.

Does that include teachers?

You bet it does. Have you forgotten already how much it hurt to be 14
and gay and scared to death of it? Doesn't it gall you just a little
that your "discreet" lesbian social-studies teacher went home every day
to her lover and her cats and her Ann Bannon novels without once giving
you even a clue that there was hope for your own future?

What earthly good is your discretion, when teenagers are still being
murdered for the crime of effeminacy?

I know, I know--you have a right to keep your private life private.
Well, you do that, my friend--but don't expect the world not to notice
what you're really saying about yourself. And the rest of us.

Lighten up, Lucille. There's help on the way.

4. Stir Up Some Shit Now and Again

Last spring I wrote a commentary for the "Los Angeles Times" on the
subject of television's shoddy treatment of homosexuality. The piece
originally contained a sentence to the effect that "it's high time the
public found out there are just as many homosexuals who resemble
Richard Chamberlain as there are who resemble Richard Simmons".

The editor cut it. When I asked him why, he said: "Because it's
libelous, that's why."

To which I replied: "In the first place, I'm not saying that Richard
Chamberlain is gay; I'm simply saying there are plenty of gay men who
resemble him. In the second place, even if I were saying that Richard
Chamberlain is gay, it wouldn't be a libelous remark, because I'm gay
myself and I don't say those things with malice. I don't accuse anyone
of being gay; I state it as a matter of fact or opinion."

Three years earlier, I confronted a similar problem with an editor at
the "New York Times" who forbade me to make reference in an essay to
"gay film writer Vito Russo" without some written proof from Vito--an
affidavit, no less--that he was in fact, one of those.

I asked the editor if the "Times" took similar precautions when mention
was made of black or Jewish people. Surely there are plenty of
Americans who would hate to be mistaken for black or Jewish, so why
isn't their bigotry protected by the strong arm of the newspaper libel
law?

"Because", said the editor, "it's just not the same thing."

And they're doing their damdest to keep it that way. When the new city
of West Hollywood assembled its council last month, the Associated
Press identified the three openly gay members as "admitted
homosexuals". Admitted, get it. Fifteen years after the Stonewall
Rebellion, the wire service wants to make it perfectly clear that
homosexuality is still a dirty little secret that requires full
confession before it can be mentioned at all.

If you don't raise some hell, that isn't going to change.

5. Don't Sell your Soul to the Gay Commercial Culture

Well, go ahead, if you insist, but you'd better be prepared to accept
the Butt Plug as the cornerstone of Western Civilization.

I am dumfounded by the number of bright and beautiful men out there who
submerge themselves in the quagmire of gay ghetto life, then wonder why
their lives seem loveless and predictable.

What the hell did they expect?

If you have no more imagination that to swap one schlock-heavy
"lifestyle" for another, you haven't learned a god-damned thing from
the gay experience.

I'm not talking about sex here; I'm talking about old-fashioned bad
taste.

No, Virginia, we don't all have good taste. We are just as susceptible
to the pit falls of tackiness as everyone else in the world. Your
pissing and moaning about the shallowness of other faggots falls on
deaf ears when you're wearing a T-shirt that says "This face seats
five".

Not long ago I sat transfixed before my TV screen while an earnest
young man told a gay cable announcer about his dream of becoming Mr.
Leather Something-or-Other. He was seeking the title, he said, "in
order to serve the community and help humanity". He wore tit rings and
a codpiece and a rather fetching little cross-your-heart harness, but
he sounded for all the world like a Junior Miss contestant from Modesto
[California].

If our fledgling culture fails us, it will be because we forgot how to
question it, forgot how to laugh at it in the very same way we laugh at
Tupperware and Velveeta and the Veterans of Foreign Wars.

6. Stop Insulting the People You Love by Assuming They Don't Know You're Gay

When I began my book tour, a publicist in New York implored me to leave
his name out of it, because "my family doesn't know about my...uh,
lifestyle".

Maybe not, but they must be the dumbest bunch this side of Westchester
County [New York]; I could tell he was gay over the telephone.

When my own father learned of my homosexuality (he read it in
"Newsweek"), he told me he'd suspected as much since I'd been a
teenager. I could've made life a lot easier for both of us if I'd had
the guts to say what was on my mind.

7. Learn to Feel Mortal

If AIDS hasn't reminded you that your days are numbered--and always
have been--then stop for a moment and remind yourself. Your days are
numbered, Babycakes. Are you living them for yourself and the people
you love, or are you living them for people you fear?

I can't help thinking of a neighbor of mine, a dutiful government
employee who kept up appearances for years and years, kept them up
until the day he died, in fact--of a heart attack, in the back row of
an all-male fuck film.

Appearances don't count for squat when they stick you in the ground
(all right, or scatter you to the winds), so why should you waste a
single moment of your life seeming to be something you don't want to
be?

Lord, that's so simple. If you hate your job, quit it. If your friends
are tedious, go out and find new ones. You are queer, you lucky fool,
and that makes you one of life's buccaneers, free from the clutter of
2,000 years of Judeo-Christian sermonizing. Stop feeling sorry for
yourself and start hoisting your sails. You haven't a moment to loose.

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