About posing as a gay writer or not.

Interviewer:

Most people in your book are gay. But you refer to gay people as faggots or homosexuals, the few times you refer to their sexuality? I find this condescending.

Writer:

A trivial fact: at that time the concept gay was not in use; at least not by people in Europe or Australia. As you notice, they never discuss their gender-roles or sexual preferences. There was no movement to defend or subject oneself to; they just went on with their daily living as any standard human beings.

I: Being gay was still a controversial issue they had to deal with.  

W: Heterosexuals deal with their relationships and their sex-lives. They don’t discussion their heterosexuality and they don’t boast about being straight either. They just try to live an ordinary life. A straight life, Jeff would have said, without being quite straight.

I: You are not even willing to choose LGBTQ+ as a category for this book. Why?

W: Absence doesn’t belong with LGBT books. I read the short introductions to the books labelled as LGBT. They use the same language and the same content as stories in cheap pornographic magazines during my childhood in the fifties and as in kiosk whodunit for tuppence ha’penny. My book does not belong to that category. This is serious literature and should be judged as nothing else.

I: The content is still largely about LGBT people?

W: Yes, but they do not appear as the typical LGBT people you find in books at Amazon. I refuse to let my characters be classified. Every single one is an individual of his own. And what more, each one lives with his unique sexuality. But I’m sure many would gladly stuff them into a can and put a big, fat label on the gadget; the way they commonly do to secure relief of tension and to make them feel comfortable.

I: One may infer from the book that you have a complicated relationship with homosexuality. In one place you let the main character refer to his sexual life, and I cite: “Whatever practical adjustment he made with others of his sex, there was no mutual connection with equal gratification for both parties as for a pussy and a dick, only a second-rate attempt which never could reach the fulfilling glory of the original act of love.”

W: Yes, a tough insight to deal with for a young man. And he seemed to deal with this ‘straight fact’ by getting drunk most of the time.

I: To continue with this theme: the only positive sexual relationship in the book is between a young man and a young woman.

W: The most negative sexual relationship described in the book is also between a young man and a young woman.

I: What should we infer from this? That it equals out?

W: No. But do not use every single instance to make an inference about a collective or another member of that collective. Evaluate each case by its own special circumstances. And let every individual represent only himself and be treated for his own merits, and don’t judge routinely referring to popular concept which are losing their meaning, like misogynist, paedophile or racist, used popularly as invective to silence people with a different view.

About sexuality in the Anglo-Saxon world.

I: The narrative takes place mainly in Mediterranean countries. There you let your characters make critical remarks about Anglo-Saxons and especially about people from the USA, or United States of America, as you spell it out.

W: Yes, because you have a negative, I would say hostile, attitude to sexuality in general and of course also to your own. You pretend bodily functions don’t exist. You don’t even have a toilet; you piss and shit in the bathroom. You treat sexual activities with shame and don’t see fellatio, cunnilingus, or anal stimulation as something of the most positive a human being can do to another human being, something one may spend hours to celebrate with zest and abandon. You quickly do away with sex in darkness, after turning off all the light and when you’re tired or intoxicated by alcohol or drugs. How often do you spend hours in the full sunlight of a warm day naked with each other for hours? You don’t. You have more important things to do. Perhaps one could argue giving happiness and pleasure to another human being is the essence of loving. Instead, you are loaded with a religiously determined hostility, which has created limitless harm to yourselves.

Your hostility towards human sexuality has created wounds in your emotions that are so deep and so excruciating that you condemn or regard as reckless everything that threatens to make you aware of your wounds and even more make you aware of the harm you do to yourselves and to others. And thus, you punish with hate and destruction anything or anybody that makes you become aware of your own buried agony and pain.

I: Oh dear. But we are the land of the free. How can you say that we are enslaved by rules of a hostile religion?

W: You are not free to express your sexuality. Therefore, you have created a world of compensation and adjustments: laptop dancing, strippers, gayness, pornography, a glittering circus of empty attempts.

I: So why don’t you write an ode to this fantastic human quality? Instead, in this book at every instance when these people find themselves in a sexual situation, things go wrong. They do each other more harm than good?

W: Because they are wounded, each one of them in his own ways.

I: What has wounded them?

W: Their mothers, their fathers, without understanding what they did. And why did they wound their children? Because they are wounded children themselves and have not become aware. Their hostility or fear is too painful to deal with or even recognise. You live your lives in an all-embracing denial.

I: And this is particular in what you call the Anglo-Saxon world?

W: Different cultures tackle sexuality in different ways. Your way is destructive and will kill itself in the long run. A child born into a culture automatically is affected by the collective mind of that culture. Nemini parcetur

I: There is no way to get out of the misery you describe?

W: Yes, there is, at least theoretically. By turning away from ignorance and face reality and accept.

I: Ha hah, I can hear both Jeffrey Smart and Simon in that reply.

W: Yes, of course you can. Madame Bovary? C’est moi!

About homosexuality as a consequence of serious emotional wounds.

I: You say the people in your book are all wounded. Is their homosexuality a consequence of those wounds?

W: Yes, I am sure. But distinguish between homosexual behaviour and homosexual personality. Liberated from religious hostility towards sexuality, sexual activities between individuals of the same sex would be natural for many sexually active and sexually attractive individuals, especially during their most active years. That would occur when life is good and generous, to act ‘homosexually’ and would be a part of the celebration of the lust to give pleasure to those involved.

On the other hand, being compulsively gay is disastrous for most people. Media feed us with the few gay people who may have found an acceptable way to live. For most gays, life deprives them of the fruits of the earth. Their deprivation of real love creates a devastating wound to carry through their lives. Some do it with a gay hurray, some with a dagger in their chest, the coward does it with a thrill hilarity, the brave man with a thousand tears.

I: Why do you think life is not good for most gay men?

W: Because gay men are not being loved.

I: I know many gay people who love each other

W: Of course, you do. There are always exceptions. Most gay people never get the love they have sacrificed everything to be given. Most gay people urge for the love of a man, not from another gay “sister.” The men, whose love they long for, don’t love them. They love women.

I: Ok, but if this were true, why do you need to say it?

W: Ignorance and denial will only create more wounds and more wounded children. Parents are let to believe the misconception that being gay is as emotionally and sexually rewarding as being straight. It is not.

I: And your book?

W: Maybe a small contribution to avoid the growth of too much ignorance. Even if the reality of your life seems harsh, you will fare better by accepting than pretending it is gay, not harsh.

I: Do you want people to see your book as a discourse?

W: No. See it as a tale about some special men half a century ago living in special circumstances. I hope the reader finds the book entertaining; it certainly still affects me emotionally even if I have read most of the book hundreds of times. If the book also makes you reflect, the better, and I would be pleased.

About the acknowledged and appreciated Australian artist Jeffrey Smart.

I: This person, who is well-known and appreciated in Australia, occupy a substantial part of your book. There may be clues in the book why you write about him, but why do you?

W: I found superficial both his Memoirs from 1996, called Not Quite Straight and the various shorter biographies appearing in the many books about his paintings. They gave the picture of a different Jeff than I had known. Was it necessary to write a book to amend that superficial view? Probably not, I may harbour ulterior motives as well.

I: In Australia people will be shocked by some opinions he so freely seems to share. His view on Australia and Australians will probably surprise people. And so will his permissive attitude towards paedophile activities. You must have considered the effect this could have on his post-mortem reputation

W: Yes, but remember, this was another time and to a great extent another world. Most things in human behaviour were looked at differently from today as they will be looked at differently tomorrow.

I: As a narrator you air a positive attitude to Justin O’Brien’s relationships with Brian Dunlop, who could have been as young as fourteen when they began their ten year long sexual relationship. You are also overwhelmingly positive to his relationship with the fifteen-year-old Ethan?

W: Sometimes it’s easy to see when people love each other. And who are we others to forbid them to do that, based on some arbitrarily chosen rule? Let everything be valued on its own merits and circumstances. Try not to scream with the wolf-pack even if doing this relieves you of some threatening internal tension.

I: Finally, what do you think will be the destiny of your work? What do you fear and what do you hope?

W: Considering the look of the market for books, I guess to drown and become a failure is an imminent threat. I serve no sweet and tasty pastry to a hungry audience. If I am lucky and the book is good enough, which I sometimes believe and sometimes not, I could reach an educated, open-minded audience, readers of literature not too comfortable with their lives and circumstances. They may get some solace from sharing with my people their experiences and lack of love and sex, from eleven-years-old prostitute in Athens’s sleazy harbour town to the opulent abode of a Roman palace and its president in a world-wide oil company.