Age Before Beauty: Robert Rodi on 'When You Were Me'
Interview by Christian Wright

On a beautiful morning at the end of May, Robert Rodi sat down with Christian Wright at The ING Café in Chicago to discuss his latest novel, When You Were Me. In the course of their hour-long conversation they tackled questions of genre, issues related to travel and tourism, and techniques for dealing with distraction while writing. And without giving too much away for those who haven’t yet read When You Were Me, the book follows aging financier, Jack Ackerly (53), and slacker/stoner/sex kitten, Corey Szaslo (26), after they’re able to switch bodies (and lifestyles) following an inventive Freaky Friday-esque procedure conducted by an unlikely, but incredibly likable, “fusion witch” named Francesca. Got it? Good. Andiamo!

Christian Wright: I haven’t quite figured out the geography of Chicago, but it’s really gorgeous!

Robert Rodi: Oh, it’s your first time here?

Wright: Not really, but I was really drunk last time I was here – It was like Halsted, Halsted, Halsted—

Rodi: Yeah, yeah. It’s all right; I mean it’s a pretty simple city. Plus, you’re here on the lakefront and everything radiates out.

Wright: Like I keep going in the opposite direction that I intend to. When I want east, I go west. When I want west, I go east.

Rodi: So we grew up with a sixth sense of locals, you know, with the lake. We always knew.

Wright: Yeah, I’m a little blond.

Rodi: That can be cute.

Wright: Yeah, except when you’re lost, and you’re hungry, and completely bitchy. So, technical questions about When You Were Me. It took you about a year—

Rodi: Yes.

Wright: —to write?

Rodi: Uh-huh.

Wright: Do you do drafts that you can keep track of or do you just, kind of, plow through?

Rodi: I just write over the old drafts.

Wright: Yeah, I do too.

Rodi: (Smiling) I don’t think posterity is going to be that interested.

Wright: You don’t save everything meticulously?

Rodi: No.

Wright: Like Andy Warhol?

Rodi: No. I mean, when I did Bitch Goddess I ended up deleting a bunch of chapters and I kept those, but that was a case that, you know, that I didn’t want to just jettison like twenty-five pages of material in the end.

Wright: I’m really interested in process, so your dogs wake you up at 6:30, you walk them, and then you write furiously until midnight?

Rodi: No, usually just the morning because it’s exhausting, you know? I mean that’s physically writing for a few hours in the morning, but then you need a break. When you’re not actually at work.

Wright: Right.

Rodi: I actually think that that’s important. It’s important to give yourself what I call “subconscious time” when your animal brain is working on it because all of a sudden something will just stick to the front burner when you least expect it and then you think, “Well, okay! There it is! There’s the answer to that problem.”

Wright: Do you wake up in the middle of the night and have to scratch things [on paper] in the dark?

Rodi: No, I’m too old! Not unless I have to pee.

Wright: (Laughing) So, you write for maybe three or four hours in the morning?

Rodi: Yeah

Wright: And noon happens and then you’re free to go?

Rodi: Yeah, actually, life kinda happens. That’s why I write in the morning because once you start getting distracted by delivery men, phone calls, or whatever your day is gone and I can’t get back. Morning works for me. (Pause) Sometimes late at night, too.

Wright: So, do you postpone e-mail and hopping on the Web until after you’ve written?

Rodi: (Laughing) Theoretically.

Wright: “Theoretically,” that’s a HUGE issue for me. In fact, I checked the Web and it seems like everybody asked all the questions that I was going to ask about this book. Other than that with [Jack and Corey] — Are they based on actual people or are they composites?

Rodi: I just drew on personal experience, really. Because, you know, I’m fifty now, but there are times when I still feel like I’m really green, like I’m a kid, I’m not ready for this kind of responsibility, so I feel like a kid in an adult body. At times. But there were also times when I was younger, when I was in my twenties, when I would go out with my friends and I would think, “G*d, they’re such children!” I felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders and they were, you know, just playing at life. I felt like I was older than I actually was. Probably everyone goes through these same things. So they’re both really just based on me. Originally, I really only wanted to write novels about middle-aged people now that I’m middle-aged, but my agent… I kept giving him these proposals for novels and he kept saying, “Can’t you do something for the kids? Can’t you do something “younger?” So, this was sort of my compromise to do something that incorporated both. And then I thought as long as I was, you know, doing both why not have one comment on the other? That’s where that came from. And also it kind of gave me an opportunity to comment on the arc of, not just a gay man’s life, but a man’s life which is something that I’ve been thinking about. You know, reaching the half-century mark, you can’t help thinking about it. So, it turned out to be one of my favorite projects.

Wright: Great.

Rodi: Your last one is always the favorite.

Wright: Was your initial reaction to your agent’s request, or query, was it positive or negative?

Rodi: I always give him the benefit of the doubt because he’s been with me since I started and he has very good instincts. And a lot of the times he tells me things that make me just want to just slit my wrists. It’s like, “I’m DONE. I’m never writing again. No one gets me!” But then I always think I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt, I’ll do it his way and see what happens, and he’s usually spot on. You know, like two or three times when I’ve fought him on something and won, but I choose my battles with him because he’s pretty smart.

Wright: I actually was trying to, you know, break it down in my own brain and I was like, “Okay, Is Jack Robert and Corey is the sexual ideal?”

Rodi: Well, actually, in that sense, yeah. I mean, Jack is much more accomplished and much more secure than I am, right now, financially. Yes, he has a more solid place in the world and Corey certainly had more fun than I did when I was that age. So I did idealize both of them a little bit just to provide a contrast.

Wright: And did you misspend your youth?

Rodi: Not enough! I got out of college in ’79 which was the midst of the recession and it took me a couple of years to get a job so I didn’t have much money to do anything and I didn’t have a real clear direction and I, kind of, drifted for a while. And then I got into advertising in the 80s – I don’t remember a lot of that because it was advertising in the 80s and, you know, there’s just this cloud of white powder over the entire decade.

Wright: This is another logistical question, but how many pages do you get a day? On average?

Rodi: You know, I don’t.

Wright: You don’t know?

Rodi: You know, I don’t really count. No. I mean, I have a friend who is writing a novel and he calls me up and says, “Oh, I wrote thirty-five hundred words today.” And I thought, “Well, okay! If that gives you a sense of accomplishment…” I can’t imagine judging my progress by that. There’s a story, g*d I can’t remember what it’s about, maybe it’s Joyce—

Wright: I’ve heard of her.

Rodi: Let’s just say it’s Joyce. If I figure out if it’s somebody different I’ll tell you later, but he had an assistant who would – I mean, he wrote all day — so this guy would come in and feed him three times a day and he came in at the end of the day with dinner and said, “How did it go today, Mr. Joyce?” And he said, “I wrote two words today.” And the assistant said, “Well, all right for you that’s better than your average!” And he said, “But one of them was wrong.” So, I kind of like that story. Keep that in mind, because sometimes you don’t get much out and sometimes you get reams and reams and none of it’s any good. Sometimes you get a few pages and they’re brilliant. I don’t really have a yardstick.

Wright: With my freelance stuff, it’s all word count.

Rodi: I mean, I have a lot of people ask me that. It’s like, “Do I have to make an outline for my novel first and follow it?” And I said, “Look, who’s going to punish you if you don’t follow it? It’s up to you!” People put themselves in boxes and they don’t really have to.

Wright: Well, that’s another thing, you know, in terms of structure. Or do you want to find out what happens next?

BuyWhen You Were Me by Robert Rodi

Rodi: I always compare it to driving. You don’t get on the freeway until you know what exit you want to get off. Otherwise, you’re just going to be driving forever. So you do have to have a plan, you do have to have a structure in mind, but you also have to be open to – You have to be a little elastic – If you’ve written fiction before, it’s kind of amazing how certain characters do become something that’s almost separate from you. They take on an aspect of independence, you know? Autonomy. And you get to a point in the narrative where a character’s supposed to do something and they’re like, “Uhn-unh.” Wow, okay what do I do now, you know? You have to be a little elastic about that. That’s kind of the magic of fiction, too, it’s kind of nice when that happens. And then you get characters who you invent to serve a specific purpose and then they just don’t want to leave the stage. You’ve got to find something for them to do otherwise they threaten to take over the whole novel. It’s fun. And I’ll miss it. I’m working on a nonfiction book now, so, I kinda miss fiction for that reason. I can’t get people to do what I want them to do. I have this nice arc that I want and no one’s cooperating. And I’m sort of stuck with real people doing real things, which is maddening.

Wright: Right now, this morning, who are you more inclined to spend time with? Extended periods of time with?

Rodi: Between [Jack and Corey]? (Pause) Jack because the economy is tanking. I could use some fiscal advice. So, I suppose I would prefer to be in his position because he was secure.

Wright: I saw that When You Were Me was in the InsightOut catalog recently and that seems to do wonders for books.

Rodi: I’m hoping because I’m very fond of it. I would like for it to be a success. I was a little… No one’s really written about gay middle age and I was, sort of, excited to sort of pioneer that, but this came out at the same time as Armistead Maupin’s book about Michael Tolliver.

Wright: Bitch.

Rodi: Oh, I was so upset! Of course he got all of the press. I could have pushed him down a flight of stairs, you know?

Wright: I saw him, actually.

Rodi: Yeah?

Wright: I judged The Gay Porn Awards this year—

Rodi: Oh, did you?

Wright: So, he was one of the first people that I saw when I went to the event and I was like, “Oh, my g*d! There’s Armistead Maupin!” But I didn’t get a chance to talk to him.

Rodi: Is he at least fatter than me?

Wright: Oh,yeah!

Rodi: There you go! I feel good about that! He got the press, I got the size 32 jeans. There we are.

Wright: What’s the nonfiction that you’re working on?

Rodi: I love writing fiction, but I’m tired of being a cult novelist. I’m tired of being a cult figure. I want to be a big fat fucking household name, so my agent said – He’s been telling me this for two years – He’s like, “It’s not going to happen with fiction. Write nonfiction. Write a dog book. People always love a dog book.” So, I’m writing a dog book. It’s about a year of competing the world’s least likely agility dog.

Wright: It’s like The Bad News Dog?

Rodi: What is that?

Wright: Remember The Bad News Bears?

Rodi: Oh, yeah! Okay. Yeah, it’s an uphill battle. I’m actually just finishing that.

Wright: Does it have a title?

Rodi: Dogged Pursuit. That may change.

Wright: Are there photographs in the book? Is it a photographic—?

Rodi: That’s to be decided, yet, I don’t know. I’ve got them.

Wright: And how many pages? Hardcover?

Rodi: I don’t know.

Wright: You don’t know.

Rodi: I don’t know. It’s as long as it needs to be! It’s like two-hundred and fifty manuscript pages, but I may add a little bit more. I’m just finishing the manuscript.

Wright: And then do you take a break or are you going to, like, just jump into the next—?

Rodi: I have another idea for another nonfiction book.

Wright: That you want to write or—?

Rodi: That I want to write. I haven’t pitched it, yet, so I shouldn’t even talk about it.

Wright: All right, never mind.

Rodi: But it would involve moving abroad for a couple of months.

Wright: That would suck.

Rodi: No, that’d be cool…

Wright: Italy?

Rodi: Yeah. Because I’m ready for a shake up. I’m fifty! I’m ready for something! So, we’ll see. Forty’s great—

Wright: Really?

Rodi: Thirty-eight was my best year. If I had an age to pick to be for the rest of eternity, I’d be thirty-eight. Thirty-eight was great. I mean, when you’re thirty-eight you’re old enough to know better. You’ve learned your limitations, you’ve learned your capabilities, you know how to live within them. You have self-confidence you don’t have at twenty-eight. Ideally, you have a little bit of, you know, you have some accomplishments, you know? And you’re still young enough to look great and feel great, you know? The slow deterioration of every physical aspect of you hasn’t started yet, so...

Wright: Oh, come on!

Rodi: Everything goes to hell after fifty.

Wright: Yeah, I mean, you pretty much captured all of that in When You Were Me.

Rodi: There are benefits to it, you know, as well. I went and lectured an Italian class at Northwestern a couple of months ago and these are kids who are nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. They seemed awfully young to me. I was surprised. I kept trying to speak to them as peers, which was difficult enough, because we’re all speaking Italian. But then I kept trying to pull back a little because I didn’t want to come across too strong. They just looked like such babies, you know?

Wright: Are you fluent in Italian?

Rodi: Fairly fluent.

Wright: Wow.

Rodi: Which would help living there.

Wright: Is that from book learnin’ or have you spent time over there?

Rodi: I’ve spent time there. Also, I have a lot of Italian friends here. I belong to an Italian book club. I just do it just to keep it going.

Wright: So, when you’re working, you’re doing your morning thing, what is the greatest threat (other than some random interviewer) to your productivity? Is it e-mail? Is it TV?

Rodi: Yeah, it’s e-mail. Because there a couple of other writers that I, sort of, converse with all day long and it’s like having a couple of friends in the room with you, so I have to just shut down e-mail when I write, so I don’t see when they come online.

Wright: You’re writing about writing? Or talking about writing?

Rodi: No, we actually don’t talk about writing, at all. We talk about everything else. Everything else.

Wright: Because my friend that I’m traveling with — who is blissfully asleep now – We’re checking our e-mail last night and I was like, “You’re here, so I’ve got nothing!”

Rodi: That happened two years ago when I went to — one of the writers got married – and we went to her wedding and we we’re all there and I kept having this urge to go check e-mail… I’m an ancient history buff and you know that Cicero wrote all of those letters throughout his entire life that give us such a clear picture of everything that happened in The Late Roman Republic, which is this period I’m obsessed with. But he wrote all his letters to this friend of his, I can’t remember the name, but then he would occasionally go and visit his friend for periods of time and we have no idea what’s going on because he wrote no letters because he was with his friend.

Wright: That’s great!

Rodi: It’s very frustrating.

Wright: Have you written about this obsession?

Rodi: No, not much.

Wright: Any plans?

Rodi: Maybe, maybe.

Wright: So, I’m in Chicago for another day, essentially: Art Institute or Museum of Contemporary Art?

Rodi: I prefer the Art Institute because it’s got more range. I used to work downtown, I used to work just a few blocks from there, and what I would do – Because I find when you go to a museum and you try to take it all in, it’s just too much, you short circuit. What I used to do is, like, once a week on a Wednesday on my lunch hour, I would go there and I would look at four things. I would just pick out, like, I’d just wander, not even in a single gallery, just from gallery to gallery, from wing to wing, and I would just stop and look at one thing for like ten minutes. And I would feel like I had actually seen something. As opposed to going to The Post-Impressionists and trying to just [here Mr. Rodi makes a very guttural sound like a previously docile housecat suddenly, and viciously, attacking the family dog while he slept]. So that’s my theory of museum going. So, actually in that sense, it really wouldn’t matter which you went to. I mean you have a little bit more range at The Art Institute. The Art Institute, architecturally, is pretty great, as well.

Wright: I remember the big Seurat.

Rodi: Yeah.

Wright: I think Nighthawks, as well?

Rodi:Yeah, it is.

Wright: I used to do the same thing at SFMOMA. I’d go on the free days during my break from whatever crappy job I had at the time. Do the Jasper Johns, Rauschenberg, Robert Indiana circuit. My Holy Trinity. So, when you’re doing nonfiction, does it almost seems like every other person you run into knows everything about your life?

Rodi: That’s one of the things that I’m having trouble with is… I had to, sort of, for this book – I shouldn’t really say this – I’ll say it: I had to, sort of, turn myself into a character in order to make this book doable at all. Because there has to be an arc. Like an arc in fiction you have to take your character and give him some place, something to go through, and someplace to arrive. So, in order to do this, I actually had to go back to the beginning and scale back my experience level and my self-confidence level and create a “me “ that was little more insecure and a little more uncertain and inexperienced in order to get to the place at the end where I’m found. In order to just get through the kind of experiences that you need to have an interesting story. I had to fictionalize myself to a certain extent. So, I hope that [readers] don’t think that I’m some complete flailing, you know, shrinking violet or something.

Wright: You pushed yourself back on the learning curve?

Rodi: Yeah, yeah. And I play up my shyness and my social awkwardness to a huge degree and, you know, the way I was twenty years ago. But it makes for a better story.

Wright: Did you find dialog to be different? Or more challenging from fiction to nonfiction?

Rodi: Yeah, because I’m reporting dialog between real people and I have to be sensitive to that, you know? I know that that’s a big issue now with memoirists. One of my friends is Augusten Burroughs and he actually was cornered a while back by an interviewer who kept pointing to actual lines of dialog and saying, “How do you know that this… You can’t recall that this is exactly what was said at this time?” He didn’t say that, of course, but… So, I’m sensitive to that in this Dogged Pursuit, but this isn’t really a memoir and I’m not self-aggrandizing, you know, so I don’t worry so much about it. Especially when I’m doing my friends, I want to capture their voice and portray them accurately, but not in a way that’s going to [piss them off].

Wright: I like to just slander all of my friends constantly.

Rodi: That’s one solution — Just trash them all!

Wright: Because really, that’s the way you are. You’re THAT obnoxious.

Rodi: See, I’m a nice guy, though. They wanted me to take this book on and sort of do a Best in Show type of thing and basically mocking all these people in this world. I really couldn’t do that because, first of all, I’m one of them. So if they’re clowns, what am I? And second, they’ve all been really nice to me. Ninety-five percent of the humor in the book is at my own expense. I keep my karma nice and clean.

 

The paperback edition of When You Were Me is out now from Kensington. Dogged Pursuit is forthcoming from Hudson Street Press.

 

Wanna know more about Robert? www.robertrodi.com
Buy Robert's new novel, When You Were Me

 

Christian Wright is a visual artist and writer who lives in the America Midwest. He holds an MFA from San Francisco State University, reviews filthy bear porn for GAYVN Magazine and SexHerald.com, and is currently at work on his first novel. Reach out and touch him at christianwright.blogspot.com.