Who’s Yer Daddy?: Gay Writers Celebrate Their Mentors and Forerunners

Teenage Riot: Notes on Some Books That Guided Me through a Profoundly Hormonal Time

153 Alis­ tair McCart­ ney Pro­ logue I ­ turned thir­ teen at the end of 1984. By then I’d al­ ready fig­ ured out two­ things: that I was gay and that I ­ wanted to be a ­ writer. Grow­ ing up in a Cath­ o­ lic house­ hold in Perth, West­ ern Aus­ tra­ lia, I kept both ­ things to my­ self for a few more years. But as I fig­ ured ­ things out by my­ self, se­ cretly,­ slowly, I read. Com­ pul­ sively, fer­ vently, pro­ mis­ cu­ ously, like only a teen­ ager can. No one reads with the li­ bid­ i­ nal in­ ten­ sity of a teen­ ager. So let me give ­ thanks, just like Mar­ cus Au­ re­ lius at the start of his Med­ i­ ta­ tions, to some writ­ ers who came be­ fore me, who ­ formed me as both a gay guy and a ­ writer. Let me take you on a non­ chron­ o­ log­ i­ cal tour of some books that sus­ tained me. Ten­ nes­ see ­ Williams Williams’s plays were prob­ ably the first homo­ sex­ ual lit­ er­ a­ ture I ever read. I read them be­ cause I could read them with­ out any­ one sus­ pect­ ing a damn thing. I had a book of plays with The Milk Train ­ Doesn’t Stop Here Any­ more, A Street­ car Named De­ sire, and Sweet Bird of Youth. It had a pic­ ture of ­ Brando on the front, swel­ ter­ ing and sulk­ ing in that­ T-shirt. Teen­ age Riot Notes on Some Books That ­ Guided Me­ through a Pro­ foundly Hor­ mo­ nal Time Alistair McCartney 154 I read the plays so long ago I don’t quite re­ call the ex­ pe­ ri­ ence, but I know I got off on the at­ mos­ phere, the neu­ ro­ ses, the lan­ guor. I’d read the stage di­ rec­ tions and every­ thing. I think ­ Williams ­ taught me to read­ between the lines—boozy older fe­ male ­ equals boozy aging homo­ sex­ ual,­ warped melo­ drama ­ equals homo­ sex­ ual epis­ te­ mol­ ogy. He ­ taught me the in­ cred­ ible power of the dis­ so­ lute, of the ­ covert. Yukio Mis­ hima My mom ­ bought me Con­ fes­ sions of a Mask for Xmas one year. At my re­ quest. The book had a white cover, with a pic­ ture of a hand­ some shirt­ less Jap­ a­ nese guy on the front. I think it was Mis­ hima him­ self. I­ haven’t read that book since, and to be per­ fectly hon­ est, I re­ mem­ ber ab­ so­ lutely noth­ ing of what was in­ side. (Sorry, but this prob­ lem, the prob­ lem of mem­ ory, will arise through­ out this essay.)­ Though I do re­ mem­ ber that ­ around the same time I read it we were stud­ y­ ing Jap­ a­ nese his­ tory at the Cath­ o­ lic boys’ ­ school I at­ tended in Fre­ man­ tle, and we all had to do pres­ en­ ta­ tions. I chose ­ Mishima’s pub­ lic sui­ cide by sep­ puku, aided by some guy he was ro­ man­ ti­ cally ob­ sessed with, who, if I re­ mem­ ber cor­ rectly, ­ failed in help­ ing out his be­ loved. Some other guy had to fin­ ish the job and do the be­ head­ ing. Of­ course I ­ didn’t men­ tion the homo as­ pect of this in my pres­ en­ ta­ tion. I just ­ talked about how “hon­ or­ able” a death it was in Sam­ u­ rai tra­ di­ tion and the pol­ i­ tics be­ hind it. But se­ cretly at night I fan­ ta­ sized about find­ ing some­ one who loved me so much (maybe David P , who sat in front of me, or Angel B , in the seat next to me) that he’d help me com­ mit rit­ ual dis­ em­ bow­ el­ ment for some vague po­ lit­ i­ cal ­ agenda. It was like some­ thing was born in me when ­ Mishima’s stom­ ach was ­ sliced open and his in­ tes­ tines­ spilled out. Thank you, Mis­ hima, for teach­ ing me how to talk about some­ thing with­ out talk­ ing about it and in­ still­ ing in me a life­ long de­ vo­ tion to the art of mor­ bid, vi­ o­ lent erot­ i...