Stories like Orgasms: An Interview with Trebor Healey by Sam J. Miller

Sam J. Miller: What are these stories about? How do you sum them up?

Trebor Healey: I wanted to write stories that were full of vitality, because I’m tired of reading limp stories. I wanted to write stories that make people take a deep breath and feel energized.

I want them to laugh and shout and guffaw and snicker and cry and really feel these stories and characters in their bodies. A lot of these are stories about liberation. Escape. There’s always a window to freedom, an escape route, that the characters either take or don’t take. To me, that’s what being a fag is about—you can either take the route of celebrating it and accepting it—liberation—or being victimized into a life of misery, hiding and isolation, or even one of mindless excess and acting out. To make an orgasm analogy, I like stories to provide some form of relief and satisfaction.

Miller: How long a time frame do these stories span? When was the first one written?

Healey: “Skin and Bones” is probably the oldest,—God, I don’t know—probably from the mid-nineties. Although it’s been worked over several times. I wasn’t trying to have this collection be my latest stuff or my greatest hits, but the majority of them were written in the last couple of years. When I was first thinking about putting together this book, Felice Picano said “when you’re doing a short story collection, you want to show them what you can do.” So this was trying to do a wide variety of stuff so the reader wouldn’t be like “oh, here comes another Trebor story,” as if it’s one thing. Collections should be full of surprises and the unexpected and unpredictable. All fiction should be like that.

Miller: A lot of these stories are really funny—or at least there's some real light-hearted moments. Was that a conscious decision? Why?

Healey: I wanted it to be fun and entertaining, and that’s a radical concept these days—the idea that a story can be fun, fast-paced, humorous, and really enjoyable, and still have something to say—that seems really rare these days. I mean, I say that at the risk of being accused of not being serious. But part of it is just a reaction to how fucked up the world is after seven years of George Bush. I wasn’t trying to make people laugh at things, give them an entertaining escape from the horror—it’s more about being able to talk about the horror with a sense of humor. People who have been fucked over always have a good sense of humor. Why are black people and Jewish people and gay people so funny? It’s a natural thing, when you’ve been fucked over so much, you develop a sense of humor or you die. Irish people are like that too, to talk about my own background. Our history is just a series of horrible mishaps: the land of sad love songs and happy war songs someone once said.

Miller: What are some of the books you've read recently that excited you—that didn't fall prey to what you've called "boring earnest MFA book" syndrome?

Healey: I’m reading a lot of TC Boyle short stories. His novels too, but I like his short stories better. Something rollicking and fun like that gets old fast in a novel, but in a short story, it’s a great ride. Boyle kind of pokes fun at people and their follies, which at first made me not like his stuff—he seemed too mean to his characters—but now it feels more like it’s mocking human foolishness in general, and it’s nice to be in a space that’s devoid of heroes or earnest literary stuff…. A lot of literary novels these days are overly precious about people’s suffering—I mean, my novel Through It Came Bright Colors did a lot of that too, so I’m not saying I’m above it. But it’s high time for something new and fresh and that’s what I wanted to convey with these stories. I’ve also been reading Beautiful Losers by Leonard Cohen—it’s beautiful and poetic as you’d expect a novel by him to be, but it’s also very funny… and very queer. Bob Smith’s new book is hilarious and refreshing. Guy Davenport, who I actually discovered through the wonderful Rob Stephenson, writes the most amazing stories: layered, whimsical, funny, smart and kinda out-there weird in a really fun cool way. And Tom Cardamone, who just wrote one of the sexiest and funnest books on gay themes in a long time—The Werewolves of Central Park. And Rumi, who’s always dead serious and laugh- out-loud funny joyful. He keeps me honest and chill.

Miller: What are your plans, as far as publicity and hustling this book around?

Healey:I’m doing the West Hollywood Book Fair tomorrow… Skylight Books out here, then heading up to San Francisco to do Michelle Tea’s RADAR series, Books Inc. or A Different Light, and “Perverts Put Out.” And I’ll probably go back east and do Atlanta and Washington and New York, and maybe the Midwest because I love Minneapolis and Milwaukee… and New Orleans of course for the Faubourg Marigny Bookstore and Saints & Sinners, the best gay gig for the last 5 years, bar none! Wherever I have friends or where I’m wanted basically. I love traveling around and meeting people, because when you’re a writer you’re sort of alone… and on the road you get a chance to put it out there and meet people and sing basically.

Miller: Are there any good real-life stories behind these fictional ones?

Healey: I think I write less autobiographically nowadays… even when I do stories that are autobiographical, I radically change the character who people assume would be me. The narrator becomes somebody else… I don’t like writing about myself, I’m not a blogger, I don’t want to give people that much of me. I tried some new forms in this collection too. "Captain Jinx" is my first foray into historical fiction. Thanks to Stuart Timmons who was researching his Gay L.A. book, I learned about the captain, a cowboy dyke who passed for a guy—sort of. A really interesting story and I was fascinated with the Chinatown riots of 1871, which was really the beginning of the LAPD’s bad reputation. I’d never written a story about an elderly straight man with prostate cancer either, but in "A California Death", I needed to process what was happening to older men I knew, including my own Dad. Anybody who knows men over seventy learns a lot about prostate cancer. And the more I wrote about that, the more it felt like a metaphor for the aging of California, this weird state of possibility and renewal that is starting to really tear at the seams. In the first-person stories, there’s a sense of the self-effacing, would-be invisible narrator… like being the observer. When I go to a party I don’t run out on stage, I’m the guy in the corner observing. It’s a combo of being the writer, and being a student of Buddhism—you have to watch yourself, but you can’t over-believe your own viewpoint, you have to not take yourself so seriously—so I think it’s a combination of the two.

Miller: What do you do when you're not actually sitting down and typing?

Healey:I love being out in nature, hiking, I get a lot of ideas like that. I’m one of those people who always carry around a little notebook. Saunas and sweat lodges are also very inspiring. I guess it’s just about cooking your brain, a lot of interesting stuff comes up. Although you can’t really write stuff down in a sauna. So I have to carry a pen and run around the locker room scribbling on paper towels. I get weird looks. Reading, of course, that’s always a central part of the process of writing. Writing exercises—Natalie Goldberg’s books: Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind. She comes up with great ideas to prime the pump—sometimes it’ll become a whole story. And then just walking around… that’s the thing about LA, sorta like NYC, if you want to go to Armenia or Thailand or Iran or Vietnam, China, India or Guatemala, you find all these neighborhoods just wandering around. Just watching people… a coffee shop in Hollywood on a Friday night is fascinating… you see all the kids on their way to going out. It’s kind of trippy—seeing all these different ethnic and often immigrant communities of youth, seeing what’s hip for different folks. I like having people around that I don’t actually have to talk to. And it’s interesting how work affects me—hotel workers, and people without health insurance, I find them creeping into my fiction since I’ve been working with working-class immigrants. A lot of writers live in the world of academics and intellectuals, and that’s never really interested me—I find it really limiting. Literature is really removed from the common experience of real people that way, and I think that’s a problem—when people complain about how literature isn’t read and doesn’t matter, I think a lot of the time it’s because it’s so irrelevant to what most people are really living.

Miller: I've seen the word zeitgeist in interviews before, so I'm not going to apologize before I say it. What aspects of the gay zeigesit fascinate you teh most, and do you try to capture in your fiction?

Healey: The current zeitgeist of gay reality… I feel less and less connected to it. I like the outsider cowboy, wild-card aspect; that comes up in A Perfect Scar, or the lesbian cowboy in "Captain Jinx". The person who lives by their own rules, who has to survive in the world but pushes the boundaries. As far as the gay zeitgeist now, which is more about fitting in and not even identifying as queer… in some ways I’m happy for these young people who often didn’t have to deal with all the shit and turmoil we did. In some ways, as a group, I’m sure they’re happier, and they have healthier sexual attitudes; I’m interested in exploring that some more… in my story “Alaska,” which is about a straight-identified guy and a gay guy, I wanted to explore how normal and possible it is for the two to find common ground. I find myself less and less likely to hang out in gay neighborhoods because it’s become kind of oppressive—the focus on fashion and interior design, that’s just not my thing. Gay clubs haven’t really changed in any way in 30 years, maybe longer. And the idea that gayness and house decorators are synonymous is just bullshit… clothing designers… I don’t know who these people are. I only shop at thrift stores. Whatever happened to queer consciousness? Why aren’t we talking about Harry Hay? All I know is that gay culture is not terribly interested in books. I just heard Larry Kramer speak in San Diego—like a lot of gay people, I think, I find him grating but I also admire him—he really challenges people’s complacency and ACT UP was the most important thing that happened in my gay generation. I couldn’t be as angry and critical all the time as Larry is, I’d have a nervous breakdown, but I do admire it and I know I need to be grated, like we all do. Go Larry! He empowers us. Salman Rushdie said “a writer is someone who calls a fraud a fraud,” and we need that in our writers. Larry Kramer is like the Malcolm X of gay life—someone who says ‘don’t compromise.’

Miller: What do you get out of writing?

Healey: Definitely not a living. Frustration, self doubt, low self esteem, all the difficult emotions about ‘who the fuck are you and what’s your place in the world’? Having said all that—I keep doing it. Part of it is my Catholic heritage, I suppose I thrive on masochism and confession. And of course, it’s beautiful to render something in language. And when you do it and you get it right it’s very satisfying. It’s the way that I testify—in that old time religion sense. You’re telling your truth, you’re praising life, speaking in tongues, whatever—expressing the things you like about life, the things you don’t like, what you’ve learned, the things you want to celebrate and those you want to change or point your finger at and say ‘look everybody’ ; the stories that need to be told: what’s valuable about your life and the times you live in, both in terms of inspiring gratefulness, and in making people a little uncomfortable. It’s the best of times, it’s the worst of times. Every writer has to walk that line and express both truths. In some ways it’s as basic as that we all have a creative outlet and this is mine… it’s the monkey on your back. I’ve tried to stop and I can’t.

Miller: Final Thoughts: Favorite Movies, Favorite Books?

Healey: Movies. Tarkovsky, because he challenges my sanity. Fellini, because he celebrates the circus of life and I love clowns. I love Werner Herzog and his courage to make the movies he makes. Taxi zum Klo is the best gay movie I’ve ever seen. Totally dated, but it’s the best thing from the golden age of faggotry, so fun, and the most universal on some level. The Deerhunter, Walkabout, Doctor Zhivago, West Side Story, Carousel.

As for books, The Man Who Fell in Love with the Moon. Not only is it just incredibly well written and it’s a beautiful story, it’s a whole other level of queer consciousness. I’m always returning to the poetry of Rilke, Rumi, Amichai, Sparrow 13 and Antler, as well as the poesy of Jack Kerouac. Horse Crazy, a novel by Gary Indiana, is so perfect. Blues Hanging by Lois-Ann Yamanaka, and Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion. The Great Gatsby. People always argue about what the great American novel is, but to me it’s Gatsby—the novel is really about people who callously exploit the world around them, and those who witness that and try to talk about it, and that gets at who and what America is better than anything else.

 

Read "Winter Count" from A Perfect Scar and Other Stories

Sam J. Miller is a writer and a community organizer. His work has appeared in numerous zines, anthologies, and print and online journals. He lives in the Bronx with his partner of six years; drop him a line at samjmiller79@yahoo.com.