Hard Core: A Glimpse into Wayne Hoffman's Sexy
New Novel by Jameson Currier
I
was a fan of Wayne Hoffman’s long before he published his
first novel Hard; in the late 1990s we worked together
at The New York Blade News. I was always impressed by
Wayne’s sharp observations of popular culture (at the time,
he was the Arts Editor), but it was also obvious to me that he
had a clear and passionate interest in the field of sexual politics
(he was also one of the co-editors of the anthology Policing
Public Sex). Wayne eventually became Managing Editor of The
Blade, and throughout his impressive career as a journalist,
he has contributed articles and reviews to a number of local and
national publications, including The Washington Post,
The Village Voice, The Nation, Billboard,
and the Advocate. He is currently the Managing Editor
of The Forward, a New York-based Jewish weekly.
Hoffman moved to New York City in 1993, shortly after graduating
from Tufts University. He has set his extraordinary debut novel,
Hard, in Manhattan in the late-1990s during the city’s
“sex wars,” a time when a conservative mayor and the
city government were cracking down on public sex venues under
the auspices of preventing the spread of HIV. Hoffman’s
details and descriptions of city-life and the gay community of
this era are superbly drawn (and he does present a “gay
community” in Hard—from buff-bod hustlers
to hunky bears to HIV-positive ex-lovers), and he easily displays
how this gay community overlaps with many other professional communities,
such as those of journalism, advertising, travel, and, in particular,
the theatrical community; many of his gay characters in Hard
are also actors, playwrights, producers, and critics. While the
political construct is what makes this novel so unique in gay
fiction, it is Hoffman’s dead-on descriptions (witty and
wise) of his characters’ sexual psyche that make it soar.
(One character, in fact, runs a delightful cost-analysis on how
much his search for sex costs him.) But I am also happy to report,
that while Hard is political, sexy, comic, and full of
social-consciousness, it is also encased in a surprising romantic
yearning.
Many critics and fellow-journalists have compared Hoffman’s
Hard to Larry Kramer’s 1977 novel Faggots,
another enormously brave, comic, and risky novel that peered into
the sexual yearnings of gay men and the comparison of the two
works is apt. Hard, however, factors in the impact of
the anxieties and activism of the modern AIDS era that did not
exist in the 1970s that Kramer was portraying. And while Hard
is a complex weave of nuanced sexual and political situations
and scenes, the primary conflict is between two gay journalists:
one, Frank DeSoto, an AIDS widower and gay newspaper publisher
approaching 50 who wants to see all the sex clubs and adult theaters
shut down, and the other, Moe Pearlman, a 26-year-old sex-positive
activist and would-be journalist who wants to keep them open.
While trying to start up an alternative gay newspaper to provide
what he feels is a more objective depiction of gay life in the
New York, Moe also spends his spare time arranging safe-sex parties
and giving the best blowjobs in the city. He views the closures
of the adult theaters and sex clubs as a personal assault on his
sex life.
Recently, I asked Wayne to weigh in on some of the elements behind
the creation of Hard.
Jameson Currier: How much of Moe Pearlman
is Wayne Hoffman?
Wayne Hoffman: Moe and I have similar backgrounds
and interests—we’re both gay, Jewish journalists—and
our left-leaning politics and daddy-bear-centered sexual tastes
match up pretty well. But what most readers really want to know
when they ask this question is whether I, like Moe, am the greatest
cocksucker in New York City. And the answer is yes. Yes, I am.
Currier: There’s a great amount of
social and political consciousness to your fiction. How has your
work as a journalist helped shape this?
Hoffman: My work as a journalist has helped
me “get to the bottom of things” when I see something
interesting or unexpected or unsavory going on. And it helped
me understand how different people use the same basic facts for
very different purposes, without actually lying per se.
Currier: What have been some of the influences—writers
and teachers and courses and books—that have impacted or
shaped your work as a gay journalist and novelist?
Hoffman:
Gay Community News taught me the value of advocacy
journalism when I lived in Boston in the ‘80s, and my years
of work with the Washington and New York Blades
showed me the different, but equally valid, value of neutral reporting—presenting
just the facts, which is particularly essential in places where
those facts aren’t being reported elsewhere…Eric Rofes—a
dear friend, committed activist and brave writer who just died
— had tremendous impact on how I connect my politics and
my writing…There are too many authors to name, but I’ll
single out Armistead Maupin for illustrating how fiction can sometimes
communicate the truth more effectively than non-fiction, and how
a sense of humor can make deadly serious subjects much more palatable
to readers.
Currier: Hard is a great examination of
a social and political issue that gay New Yorkers faced when the
city administration began targeting sexual outlets such as the
closing of the adult bookstores and theaters and sex clubs. What
are some of the issues you feel the gay community in New York
is facing today and how (or how not) are they responding to them?
Hoffman: We’re in a quieter time right
now, for a number of reasons. There are still issues brewing—same-sex
marriage in New York, ongoing targeting of gay bars in Chelsea
and the East Village, anti-gay violence (i.e. this summer’s
attack on Kevin Aviance). But the volume is definitely lower than
it was 10 years ago, from all sides.
Currier: Act Up is gone. Queer Nation is
no longer around. Do you think our community has lost its sense
of activism?
Hoffman: I did a reading recently in San Francisco,
where a 32-year-old man (I am 35) suggested that gay activism
had become “irrelevant” in the past decade because
“we got everything we wanted” and there was nothing
left to fight for. On the one hand, I truly hope that man has
gotten everything he wanted, and I hope that’s true of lots
of gay people. But who are “we,” exactly? Just because
some of us have “everything” (or, perhaps, have very
modest dreams) doesn’t mean that we don’t have other
members of our community who are still struggling. Activism isn’t
just fighting for yourself—it’s fighting for your
community. It’s easy to forget, sitting in Greenwich Village
or the Castro, that there’s still so much work to be done.
But there is.
Read an excerpt Hard
Read more
about Wanye Hoffman or Hard at:
www.hardthenovel.com
Jameson Currier is the author of the novel, Where
the Rainbow Ends, and a collection of short stories,
Desire
Lust Passion Sex. His short fiction can also be found
in the anthologies Men on Men, Best American Gay Fiction,
Best Gay Erotica, Mammoth
Book of Gay Erotica, Making Literature Matter,
Rebel Yell, and Circa 2000, among others. His story
“Snow,” published in the first issue of Velvet
Mafia, was selected for Best
Gay Erotica 2003 and Best
American Erotica 2004.
