A Visit with Matt Bernstein Scyamore, author of Pulling Taffy
Interview by Kirk Read

Kirk Read: One thing that intrigued me about the novel is that it's not organized according to conventional time.

Matt Bernstein Sycamore: The novel as a whole developed over a number of years and I worked on each section individually. Each page is meant to be self-contained. The narrative, for me, just fell into place. I am a really extreme editor, so even though it's going to be published in a month, I'm still taking things out. The thing that's the most important to me is the voice. If something doesn't work with the voice, it has to be cut. I'm not interested in plot as a device. Plot's something that arrives through voice. People's lives don't have plots, especially my life. I don't like most novels I read that are limited and constrained by plot. I wanted to avoid that.

KR: The narrative, close as I can tell, is told in Hooker Time, which is the measurement of time and space that falls outside the typical 9-5 workday. It's organized according to mood, as opposed to linear time.

MBS: When you have more control over your time, you have more ability to recognize mood. It's not organized like a workday, because what is that? The only reality the conventional workday has in Pulling Taffy is as an outside force.

KR: I want to reference some particular passages and moments in the book. There's a section where you and your friends lean out the window singing "Like a Virgin." Didn't we all do that? When Cyndi Lauper was eclipsed by Madonna, it was one of our generation's first great injustices. But that was when you were a teenager and the novel, told in the narrator's twenties, doesn't contain a whole lot of cultural icons. A lot of gay novels obsess about film or music icons, but yours doesn't.

MBS: It's true I don't have many icons. I have them in moments, like if I see queens doing runway at 5 a.m. in a club, that's my version of an icon. In terms of larger cultural markers, there are very few people who get that big that move me. I think it's true for the character in the novel-David Wojnarowicz is definitely up there.

KR: There's a sweet moment with a client where the narrator realizes he knew Wojnarowicz and the narrator falls silent and tries to absorb all the information he can.

MBS: That trick isn't very sweet or tender but nonetheless there's this magic that comes out of it. The book is about searching for home and not necessarily finding it. There are moments of home, whether it's in a backroom or in a club or at a trick's house.

KR: Or the moment where you're with a trick walking to the elevator, holding hands, wearing the trick's dead lover's clothes. It really struck me that you write about sex work in such a personal way, not just as an occupation.

MBS: I see writing about sex work as a window into everything else. Sex and sex work are both things I want to write about because they illuminate other larger issues in such a direct way. If I tried to do it outside that, it would seem so much more forced. That scene with that trick is so multi-layered. It's a trick who's super rich, does tons of drugs and doesn't pay me the full amount. It's a web of irony. Most people think irony is about distance but I think irony can bring you closer to something both in terms of appreciation and feeling.

KR: The narrator is named Matt. Tell me a little about the relationship between you and narrator.

MBS: The difference between fiction and autobiography is that fiction tells the truth. The character is definitely me, although that doesn't mean I haven't thrown in lots of lies and things that never happened to me. The voice is me. People say "How is this voice so strong?" and I say "That's my voice." All the best character-driven fiction happens when that voice is you, even if it's someone who has vastly different life experiences than you. In order to be successful you have to put your own voice in there. There will be people who read it entirely as non-fiction even though it's a novel. And vice versa. The things people have the hardest time believing is the stuff that's completely true. I love throwing in the most insane lies and making people believe them.

KR: I was moved by the character's relationship with HIV as something that's always been there and is always looming, even in the most erotic passages. The character doesn't just deny it or avoid it-he's constantly engaging with the ideas of risk and desire.

MBS: It's always been my intention to write about sex in a vulnerable way. Queer men or gay men or whatever write about sex in one of two ways-"look at the depraved life I led" and "look at the amazing potential that sex opened up for me." I wanted to present a character who struggles with safer sex. The voice is unrepentant and honest but isn't asking for understanding. So much gay writing about sex is about asking for forgiveness. "You led this crazy decadent life full of drugs, but you've paid for it, so we can absolve you of your sins." I'm not interested in that. It's about presenting an honest and unapologetic voice. I think there's a lot [in Pulling Taffy] about struggling to stay alive. Safer sex, drugs and having a sense of self as an outsider in a world that wants outsiders dead and wants outsiders to pay for it.

KR: I loved the moment in Provincetown where Matt is having a political discussion with a mainstream vacationer. There's a tension between Matt being an outsider and having contempt for the mainstream and his hope to remain part of that world and challenge it.

MBS: There aren't very many options, especially sexually for queers who 1) see themselves as outsiders and 2) refuse to conform to hyper-male gender presentation and 3) feel really political about the outsider identity. So I think a lot of the book is how do you negotiate that. You're right about hope-there is a connection with other gay men on some level. It's usually sexual. That's the beginning of the P-town section and it's an argument with other gay guys on the beach about forced sterilization of poor women. On one hand the narrator is thinking "How could these people say this?" and there's the recognition that "Oh, they're just not going to get it." And a question of "Are we together?" Even while knowing the answer is no, the narrator still feels a yes, on a certain level. Steve Zeeland who writes books about men in the military, positions himself as existing in between straight and gay. His sexuality is entirely [about] having sex with men and my positioning is more on the radical fringe of queer, but centered in that identity. He asked me once how can you exist within that? I still want to struggle for some version of queer that embodies my politics, my anger, my sensibility, my hope, my vision. Not only rejecting the mainstream but struggling with it.

KR: One way Matt struggles with this in the book is the way he compromises his visual presentation to be more sexually marketable, like when he takes off his earrings before going into a sex club.

MBS: The tension is definitely played out sexually. The scene you're talking about is the West Side Club at 7 a.m. It's packed and no one's wearing clothes and on a certain level this is the world the narrator is most disgusted by. The world of gym-toned, obsessively normal drug fiends. Let me go back to drugs because that's another thing that's interesting to talk about. There's something about those people that the narrator finds disgusting but is completely turned on by. He's in a room with two other guys and he wonders to himself "Am I passing as a Chelsea boy?" Those people would never be able to handle hearing that out loud, or someone having vision or doing runway in the hallway of the West Side club.

KR: It seems like a contradiction to vehemently oppose the ideals of people that you want to have sex with, even look like them.

MBS: A lot of the novel is about contradiction. Here's someone who's vegan and a cokehead. A queen and a flame but passes as butch whore. Someone who hates fashion but knows what Prada Sport looks like. I'd never be caught dead in Prada Sport but I know what it looks like. Those are the contradictions that make the character more real and vulnerable. Those are the contradictions that we all live by, for better or for worse. There's this struggle for balance and health. But one day after a three day drug binge, the narrator says the only difference in the way he feels when he's macrobiotic is that he's a little more edgy. The book is a struggle against hopelessness. Part of that is with drugs, the mainstream, honesty, with his past, with being abused as a kid and trying to heal and not be surrounded by it at all times.

KR: It was refreshing to see the narrator's childhood sexual abuse in the context of a vibrant sex life.

MBS: It's just there. The narrator can't really get away from it but it's not a survivor narrative. It's about the way that abuse underlies things in a non-pathological way. Oh, this trick is trying to fuck me in the middle of the night without a condom. This triggers me. Part of it is about going to that paralysis and leaving it. In a certain sense, it's about the tension between struggling to find home and struggling to escape. Is there a difference? Along with that comes sexual abuse memories, unsafe sex, drug addiction, despair and the mainstream. The four deadly sins.

KR: "The mainstream" comes up in that wonderful scene in Provincetown where you and your friends are kicked out of the magazine store even though you're regular customers.

MBS: That store is the ultimate Ptown scene. Here we are in the magazine store that we go to every day. We're laughing about them and having fun. We were not just being queeny but we had a critique of mainstream culture and that's what got us kicked out. That's transcendence really, when something can give you joy even though it's so horrible. And this happened in a gay resort town. And then we got kicked out of the gay cruising bar because they didn't want any dykes. Here we are in a gay tourist town and we're outsiders in the same way we would be at a mall in Kansas. People have the same lack of understanding of what it means to be queer. That's the definition of assimilation, when gay people don't know what it's like to be outsiders. That scares me more than anything.

KR: I love when Matt says, and I'm paraphrasing, "You don't have to have sex with people you don't want to."

MBS: I've certainly gotten caught up in that trap in my life. There was a time when I first was coming out and having sex. I would have sex with these people and I wouldn't enjoy a thing about it and I'd think "Well, you're having fun, here's my body, you can have it." I do think sex work, on a certain level, makes me much clearer about what I want and I'm more able to articulate it. At this moment in my life, I don't want to have sex that feels like working. I feel like the point and time we're in is really scary because people have become so nihilistic and separate from each other. I used to find so much joy in public sex and I haven't found that in a long time. I feel like people don't want to connect at all anymore. Having amazing transformative moments in sex and being there in the moment and feeling that connection and then not even wanting that moment because it's so scary to them. That's another part of the search for home, a search for a sexual home. The narrator keeps going back to these places that he hates because he doesn't know where else to go. I think that's another one of those contradictions. The narrator is very grounded physically and sexually present and knows what he wants and the places where he goes people are very out of their bodies, unclear about what they want and uncomfortable. In a lot of the backrooms in the back of the book, there's a contrast between the people who are uncomfortable about being there and the narrator. There's judgment that they hold onto.

KR: The only thing worse than a slut is a shame-filled, fearful slut.

MBS: Slut's a good thing. It's the dishonesty that I can't handle. A lot of this book is about New York and the narrator's critique of New York. They know there are backrooms and they've all been there and they still feign this sort of innocence and distance. Again, it's the struggle for honesty in all the wrong places. There are moments where suddenly a sexual scenario will erupt into this feeling of community. I guess that's what he's drawn to in those moments, that feeling of safety.

KR: Which is ironic, because the most heightened example of this transcendence is at the West Side Club where the narrator gets pulled into a bareback orgy.

MBS: Even though the narrator is always doing drugs, it doesn't always relate to having sex. This is the exception. It's 7 a.m., he's all coked up and he thinks "Oh, now I understand." There's this pull, this tide, into that world and there's some of that nihilism and also a critique of it. But still, he's drawn into it. That's the part where he's fucking and getting fucked.

KR: Which is his ultimate fantasy.

MBS: And he's getting fucked and it doesn't hurt because there's no condom. He feels this closeness and also this distance and loneliness. He goes right from there to another similar scenario. That story is about being swept up into that world. And I think there are a lot of things he knows are not home that he keeps being drawn to. Do a couple bumps and boom, you're home, you're there. As long as you don't leave that world, it keeps you. Once you crash and don't have more drugs to do, it's despair. That's one of the worlds he keeps being drawn to but can't really escape to.

KR: I found a lot of parallels with your book and archetypes of gay men in history, particularly as hunters-Edmund White's Sexual Hunter, Tom Spanbauer's Lonely Hunter, Jim Sears' Shy Hunter.

MBS: I don't like the word hunt because I'm vegan and hunting involves killing but definitely in terms of searching. Another connection which is interesting is the public sexual culture in the book, because the narrator is in his early-to-mid-20s and the sexual culture that he identifies with is the sexual culture of the '70s, or what's left of that culture. I think even sexual honesty is more reminiscent of another time. One major difference is that there's no attempt to tie it up, in terms of anything. That is very purposeful. So many novels are going so well and then they tie it up in some pretty bow, or a ratty piece of telephone wire and I think WHY? I'm struggling against that need for closure and for a pretty package or even an ugly package.

KR: There's only really one character in the book. The others seem blurry, always mentioned in passing.

MBS: In terms of the voice, I didn't want anything in there that wasn't part of the voice. The narrator already knows these people. I didn't want to introduce new characters. I just wanted to be in the voice. That's much more interesting and authentic. Authentic and real are such weird words. But it feels more effective. This is a narrator who's not interested in explaining things. I am also not interested in explaining things, so I wanted the reader to enter on the narrator's terms. Over the years I've had various edits about this sort of thing. Editors asking me, "What's a k-hole?" When I read William Burroughs I had no idea what yag was and he certainly didn't explain it but I went there. I hate William Burroughs but whatever. You know what yag is. I still don't know exactly what it is. It doesn't matter. You just know he knows what he's looking for. And it's about entering on the narrator's terms. That's honesty, that's what that's all about. How can a narrator be honest if he's constantly going into other people's heads. I try not to be limited by what other people think, even if I'm aware of what they think.

KR: I read it in bursts, one section at a time, even though a voice driven book is addictive and easy to read in one sitting.

MBS: I'm really drawn to novels where I want to devour it. I like that it works on both levels. The way I space the book is meant to suspend it in time on a certain level. It's also relentlessly pushing. Each section is very self-contained but it could also run together. A lot of that is about the narrator's sense of time and the way each moment really is separate. You know, the tide. I keep using the word tide. There's that piece in the book where there are all these guys having sex sex sex on the beach and the tide comes in and in a few more minutes there will be nowhere left to stand. In five minutes, there may by nowhere left to stand.

KR: That's a good way to live.

 

Read an excerpt of Pulling Taffy, Macrobiotics, in Issue 6

Kirk Read is the author of How I Learned to Snap: A Small-town Coming-of-Age and Coming-Out Story, which was a finalist for both a Lambda Literary Book Award and the American Library Association Book Award. It will be released in paperback this summer by Penguin. Visit the Kirk Read website at www.kirkread.com.