An Interview with Wayne Courtois by Sean Meriwether

Sean Meriwether: Wayne, the first thing I have to ask you is why tickling?

Wayne Courtois: I’ve been writing fiction for a long time, but most of my work is more mainstream, literary, with gay characters. When I first submitted a story called “Taurus” to Greg Wharton for Suspect Thoughts, he loved it. He asked for some more material. I submitted a much longer piece, “Ten Apologies”, which explored tickling. Greg published it in three installments. When he started the press, he said he was interested in a novel-length project and I sent him a lot of material, finished novels, unfinished novels, short stories, all of which he liked, but when he read the first draft of My Name Is Rand he said that the novel was exactly the kind of work Suspect Thoughts Press wanted to handle. I didn’t think My Name Is Rand was publishable (laughs). It’s a personal story about my own erotic obsession, and I wasn’t intending to put it out there, but I enjoyed writing it. I had only shared parts of it with other guys online who are into tickling.

SM: Do you think that the reason why the novel is so direct is that it’s from your personal experience and enjoyment?

WC: Yes, I enjoyed writing it. My Name Is Rand is a big departure for me. It’s personal, and the guys I shared it with got a big kick out of it, but it was something that I made up as I went along. I had no idea where it was going, but ideas just leapt into my mind. I would get this wonderful idea, like having these men living underground and taking on the names of stars. I thought, how do you take that idea and make it into story? How do you make it real? I enjoyed the challenge.

Normally, I find that most erotic novels are very boring, they just don’t do it for me. I think there is a distinction between good fiction and porn.

SM: What would you say was the distinguishing factor?

WC: Porn is utilitarian, you use it to jack-off, and I have nothing against it, I encourage it, I use it. I hope that guys will be jacking off with my book; that they will have to buy a second copy because the pages get too sticky. If I can add to the sum-total of male orgasms, then I’ll be glad, but the story is more than just that.

Patrick Califia wrote a wonderful blurb for the book calling it “one of the scariest and the weirdest porn stories” he’d ever read. I was very flattered, and Greg wanted to put that on the cover, but I asked him if he could remove the “p” word. I could understand where Greg was coming from, but I felt uncomfortable having it there. I find porn very easy to write, but fiction is much harder, there’s more to it. It’s got to have heart and soul and great characters. When “Ten Apologies” was published online on Suspect Thoughts, I was getting emails from people saying what great characters it had, what soul. It was great getting responses like that. That’s what I want from My Name Is Rand.

It was hard, especially the last third of the book, to keep the characters real. There are a number of guys introduced that we haven’t met before, and we don’t get that involved with them. When the guys are living underground with nothing to eat, if this were real life the last thing they would be thinking about is sex, but it works here.

What I hope that people see in this book is that homosexuality is taken for granted. Even when Rand is a teenager, he isn’t thinking, “Am I gay?”, he’s thinking, "Am I attractive enough to other boys?". There’s no differentiating among the men in the last section, whether they are gay or straight. They just fall into sex with each other. It’s taken for granted that men have sex, there’s no internal struggle about “Am I gay?”. This was not a coming of age story, which I have written, where the internal struggle is important, but here I wanted to keep the story moving forward as fast as possible.

When Greg Wharton read the first draft of the book, he said, “This guy Rand is a cold fish. We should warm up to him. He should be more sympathetic.” His comments were extremely helpful. So I went back and added in his background, I added in the problems he is having with his boyfriend, a scene with his first experience. I gave him some history so you can see his entire erotic journey.

SM: What caught my interest the most about the book is the elaborate bondage that is utilized. Where the men are restrained, not for that sake of being bound, but so that other people can do things do them.

WC: I’m not into bondage for itself, but here they are using it to immobilize you. The opening scene with Granger was taken from an actual encounter. Guys get into it. This is because a lot of men don’t get to escape and explore their sexual lives, even taking a road trip to have some guy do something to you. I wanted to show that being tied up is not a weird experience, and I encourage people to explore things and get into the erotic side of their lives. I’ve met a lot of nice guys that way.

Part of me feels a little scared to have this out there. It’s so different from what I normally write, which is a little more mainstream. But I’m glad to have it out there, and I’m proud that it’s something that might not have been explored before.

SM: It’s certainly new territory for me. So what’s next?

WC: I am working on a new novel, which is also about tickling, called Hands of Stone. It’s about a master-slave relationship that starts with two young boys and works through early adulthood. I don’t want to be pegged into a sub-sub-sub-genre, but I’m inspired to write this.

[Regarding the excerpt published in Velvet Mafia] What I liked the most about that was we can see Michael is not just a victim, but is protected by the two other boys. You identify with him. There’s a revenge on a bully motif, which is popular in a lot of B&D fiction, and something that everyone can identify with, we’ve all been victims. People have revenge fantasies. I also love the end, the three of them walking across the field with their dicks hanging out. It's very lyrical, in an obscene kind of way.

I can’t say enough about Suspect Thoughts Press. It’s hard to believe Greg has done so much in so short a time. When he first started the magazine, he said he wanted to publish books as well in the future. I thought five or ten years, but then he came out with Of The Flesh and then built up this energy and excitement about publishing. I’m very excited about being a part of that. And for my book. There are a lot of guys out there into this, there are a lot of Yahoo Groups and other websites all over the world for guys into tickling. I just hope this book will reach them.

Greg has been great to work with, we've had a number of… discussions (laughs) about things. About the cover, for example. But he was willing to compromise. He could have put whatever he wanted on the cover, but it was great that he was able to work with me to make me happy. It’s great to have a publisher like that. And it’s a sexy picture of really attractive feet, I’m sure a lot of guys are going to pick it up based on the photo alone.

For more information on My Name Is Rand or Suspect Thoughts Press, please check out: www.suspectthoughtspress.com.

Read an excerpt of My Name Is Rand in Issue 10

In addition to his work on Velvet Mafia, Sean Meriwether is the editor of Outsider Ink, the content editor of the gay links resource TheGayMaleBody.com and half of the Blowsquish.com design team. His work has or will appear in Best Gay Erotica 2001 and 2002, Love Under Foot: An Erotic Celbration of Feet, as well as online in Lodestar Quarterly and 3AM Magazine. Sean lives in New York with his partner, photographer Jack Slomovits, and their two dogs, Sasha and Nik Nak.