Cee Farrow

 

The album cover of Red and Blue by Cee Farrow.

Listening to the 1983 synth-pop album Red and Blue by Cee Farrow I feel like I am sitting with a cosmopolitan or martini in one of my old Atlanta haunts, Red Chair a long, long time ago. Red Chair is ancient history and I faded out of the nightlife scene ten years ago this year. I had my fun, have no regrets and I am grateful for having my fun when bars and clubs were different.

Today, there does not seem to be a sleek, stylish, moody and masculine decorated gay bar (not a club) left in Atlanta that just plays music and pours drinks. A bar that is fashionably slick, not trendy, and it feels like you are wearing sunglasses indoors in the middle of a Human League or ABC music video.

Halo, in the basement of the Biltmore, fit that mood many years ago, but the music tended to be more ambient and trippy lounge (think Hotel Costes) which was cool too. Halo became something very different in its last years before it was finally put out of its misery. 

One of those blurry nights at WETbar. Photo by me, August 2006.

Oh, there was the sleek and long bulldozed for student housing WETbar too. I spent many a night making that short walk from 6^th and W. Peachtree to Spring and 8^th. We had it pretty good in gay Atlanta in the 2000s. Everything changes and they label it progress. Well...

Yeah, happy gay pride and all that this June 2026.

 

Cee Farrow.

Cee Farrow, real name Christian Kruzinski, was a Frankfurt born model who emigrated to Los Angeles in the early 80s and recorded one album. Red and Blue was a commercial flop, but the single Should I Love You? reached number 82 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It did not help matters in terms of sales and promotion that the record label, Rocshire Records, was seized by the federal government in 1984 and shut down.

Commercial success is not an indicator of talent or lack thereof and I like the album for what it is and not what critics thought it should be. My favorite songs on the album are Touched, Wildlife Romance, Should I Love You?, Paint It Blue, Backwards, Lost and Memorized and Think of Me. These are all songs that fit within the context of being played in my favorite type of gay bar where one could sit alone, think and drink, mingle with friends or pick up a stranger on the way out the door.

With his music and modeling career over, Christian did what one does as a former singer and model if one wished to continue a glamorous lifestyle and became involved in the club scene. He was associated with The Apartment, Maxx and Arena in L.A. up until 1990. He released a final single in 1991 called Imagination and it too had no success.

Christian Kruzinski.

 

Cee Farrow, Christian Kruzinski, died in 1993 of an AIDS related illness. He was only thirty-six years old. He is one of the too many AIDS victims who should be remembered and celebrated this June.

The Christmas Spirit Shebang

Catching the Christmas spirit. December 2024. Photo by me.

This has felt like the quickest Christmas season, I thought, as I walked into Rich's, or the shell of what was a Rich's department store until Macy's murdered the Atlanta institution. I will forever have a warm place in my heart for Rich's, the Christmas of 1992, working there and being a part of the team to bring the holidays alive at a local senior living home and dodging Holly under her mistletoe trap. I also would like to relive the late seventies with my grandfather purchasing me chocolate covered peanuts from the bakery at the Cumberland Mall Rich's or the eighties with my mother buying eclairs from the bakery at the Cobb Center store. Yet, those are Christmases past and the scent of expensive leather no longer wafted through the store as I looked at the marble floor.

I have written about so many Christmases from the 1970s through the 2000s which were terrible, strange, oddly funny or weird in all four of my books that you could collectively call them The Art of Bad Christmases Series. I promise, they are fun for the entire family and should be read with a cup of whiskey laced eggnog by the fireplace.

I hear he's nice. December 2024. Photo by me.

 

December 2024. Photo by me.

Monkey Gone To Heaven according to The Pixies. December 2024. Photo by me.

The Christmas of 2024 was tame and could never be used as inspiration for a story in a book and there are no complaints about that. I went to see Christmas light displays, made notes for my next novel and had some satisfying conversations.

I also got sick on the weekend before Christmas. While catching the Christmas spirit among the last minute crowds on Sunday at a mall, I caught a cold. Perhaps I caught it from the foolish man wearing gym shorts in forty degree weather as he trudged by hopefully seeking out a bargain on some pants and underwear.

Tube Socks The Stray Kitty performs.  December 2024. Photo by me.

My nose ran marathons and I had used so much Kleenex that I was Rudolph or an 80s rock star coke fiend without the fun. That was the big mishap this year. There were no family secrets revealed and nothing smelling of reindeer shit came down the chimney; there was no Claxton fruitcake this year either. I napped on Christmas and worked my way through a box of chocolates, not the old and discolored kind my grandmother gave me each Christmas as a kid that resembled something from a litterbox. The neighborhood stray cat visited briefly and performed Stop, Drop and Roll in the rose beds too.

Between naps, cat entertainment, cups of coffee and squirts of nasal spray my thoughts went through Shadow's Gravity, my last novel. I was replaying scenes and I kept getting stuck on how I had described a three-way sex scene as going skiing. I had no embarrassment over it and laughed several times that I had the guts to write honestly about my early twenties. It was the Christmas of the three of us singing RENT's Seasons of Love on repeat so... Rarely do I ever think of a reader's reaction to something I write, but about that particular scene I have. I hope they laughed and that image is permanently burned into their brain.

My mind also pondered The Dead Internet Theory, which is not entirely true, but with AI and bots it seems to be becoming more true by the passing day. If it can take down social media or help create a new and better one then maybe it is not such a bad thing. I miss the 90s internet of Geocities websites and AOL chatrooms on every imaginable topic. The internet had hope and Encarta! I still have a working AOL email address from the 90s which I check daily, radioxguy@aol.com, and I am never surrendering it.

The day after Christmas, I am glad the whole “shebang”, a fine word my mother often used and I never hear anymore, is over. Also, I swear I watched the music video for WHAM's Last Christmas in 4K only twice this year. The amount of hairspray that was used in the making of that video would be enough to fill an oil tanker.

Onward to 2025.

 

A Different Life, That Nightlife

 

"It's funny how the music puts the times in perspective, add a soundtrack to your life and perfect it." The Japanese DJ Nujabes from Luv(sic.) pt 3 or the extended version with the sampled Rod Mckuen introduction from In Search of Eros (1963). 

 

In Search of Eros, Rod Mckuen

How anyone ever thought that Mckuen was straight, I cannot understand. Sure he lied about dating women, having children in Europe and called his longtime lover his brother, but that cover art should have given him away. Mckuen is mentioned in my novel Shadow's Gravity during a winter's night conversation between Everett and me in Louisville.

Me at WETbar left, Halo on  right. Photos 2006.

I swear I first heard this song in Halo Lounge in the basement of the Biltmore way back in the mid 2000s when it was a gay/mixed crowd and it was cool and the crowd pretty. Also, RIP WETbar from those days. A different life, that nightlife.

 

Blurry nights. WETbar's upstairs patio had the best view. Photo by me, 2006.

WETbar. Photo by me, 2008.

 

WETbar. Photo by me, 2008.

A different life that nightlife, but were those years lived by a different me? I would never disavow those years.  So many names lost to time, but the faces are all there to be summoned with closed eyes. I enjoyed it then with no regrets and when the lights went up for the final time I was glad it was over. Damn the person who reminded of that Nujabes song and making me miss those years.

"With the whole city fast asleep, out cold
True words seem to rise to the lips, take hold..."

Shadow's Gravity

 

Me during the various periods of the Aviary Hill series from 1979 to 2005.

This week was the release of my latest novel, Shadow's Gravity. It is the last book of the Aviary Hill series. The series is written about my family and my life between the years 1979 to 2005. 

The series began with Dweller On The Boundary in 2020 and ends this week with Shadow's Gravity. It has been forty years coming since a conversation with my father over pizza in December 1984. There have been many secrets, tragedies and a few triumphs in this story. Hopefully there has been some humor along the way and readers have met some interesting characters, from Uncle Ridley to Robin, David The Bishop, English Stan, Dylan, Everett, Piper, a boy from New Hope and the rest. I will miss writing about most of my characters, but I still have some of them in real life. 

Shadow's Gravity is the most complex, mature and most lengthy novel of the series as it takes place when I was twenty-two to thirty-two years old. It is set in the past, but readers should find that it remains relevant to today with some of the topics contained in it. 

I began writing this series in 2018. The release of Shadow's Gravity brings to an end a writing process that spanned the last six years with origination for the idea dating back to a conversation with my father over pizza in December 1984. This book brings to an end a forty year project. There is no plan or desire by me to write further in this series. I am free to move on to writing something else after four decades and what comes next will hopefully not take as long to complete.

There is plenty of material and stories that were edited out of the series, but with anything, it is impossible to tell everything. What was published in four books was the distillation of those years. It is unlikely that any of the stories cut during the writing process will see the light of day, though I believe some of them are some of the best writing I have done. Perhaps they will serve as inspiration for what I write next.

Shadow's Gravity is in part dedicated to the readers who took a chance and allowed me to tell them a story. I am grateful to them for their time and interest.  Thank you for reading.

Update On My Next Novel

 

That is me in October 2001 at a special place I have written about a few times, Patton's Run on the Nantahala River in North Carolina.

As of this morning's edit, it appears this novel should be finished and out by late June barring any major life interruptions or unforeseen developments. The word count currently sits at 112,000 words which would be by far my longest book. The cuts have already been deep and I want to bring this book in at around 100,000 to 105,000 words max.

This is the end, spanning from 1995 to 2005. It contains all of the answers that I can ever provide about everything I have written about my family and life. I hope readers find it engaging, fun, mysterious, surprising, not too depressing and different. I have been open how I struggled with a period of serious depression to write this. There are some seriously ugly, shocking and sad moments in it, but humor finds its way through. The last chapter, Silent Bridges, fits this lifelong project.

Farewell to Robin, Oliver, Elliot, all of the characters from all of the books, the past and may they rest in my new written time capsule. This book is for Everett, Louisville, Paulding County, Baby X and all of the other hidden children.

Thank you for reading.

 

Spring Roses and Bob Edwards

 

It has been such a wonderful spring for the roses this year at home. The blooms have been abundant and with the rain last Sunday the weight almost broke some bushes.
 

This orange one growing at one end of the back yard has been spectacular.

 

The New Dawn that we grew at my childhood home and I grow now has its first bloom of the season. It should be covered in the coming weeks.

The tall Louisville, Kentucky boy, Bob Edwards, with President Jimmy Carter.

I did not learn until yesterday that former NPR Morning Edition host Bob Edwards died in February. Bob was the original host of Morning Edition since its inception in 1979. He was a hero of mine in radio with his wonderful voice and style. I was a regular listener to his show in the 1990s and early 2000s. He was also a Louisville native and there was that special connection since I lived and worked in radio there too. Bob is mentioned in my next novel, Shadow's Gravity.

I no longer listen to NPR, haven't for several years, as the hosts are insufferable and the programming is insulting. The Atlanta affiliate WABE has completely lost me too with its narrow viewpoint and activist journalism that I can't relate.

Louisville which has three public radio stations under the Louisville Public Media umbrella, including one that is still dedicated to classical music (rare these days), is a better option.

Although Bob Edwards had the rare longevity of hosting the same radio program for twenty-five years, it was a shame that he was pushed out in 2004 and what NPR became.

At My Most Fragile

 

It is late winter, the middle of February, but here in Georgia that means early Spring. We come by our global warming here naturally. The trees are budding and I sit here in my Keith Haring tee shirt, needing a haircut and wearing a fuzzy cardigan still living like it is 1994. Blueberry yogurt is digesting in my stomach and the morning sun is out. The birds, no Robins, are singing what sounds like Nirvana's Smells Like Teen Spirit. Needless to say, I'm feeling stupid and contagious.

Without further fanfare here is the promotional mock interview for my next novel due this summer.

 

---

 

At times I didn't think I could write this book.

 

Let's talk about secrets.

Okay. You first. (laughs)

You have written extensively about family and personal secrets. Some of them have been quite tragic including sexual abuse, rape and suicide. Some of these secrets are related to growing up gay in a small town and others were more common to American families from the 70s and 80s such as infidelity, domestic violence and divorce. Having revealed all of this, how do you feel about it and what's left to tell?

I said something a month ago, it was that I found writing to be an emotionally abusive occupation. I had to go back during the writing process and relive all of it to some degree by reading my old journals, watching videos, looking at photos and talking with people that knew me then. I've cried over some of it, I've been angry about other parts and Shadow's Gravity put me into a serious depression last year. At times I didn't think I could write this book, but then it clicked for me and out it came every morning.
It comes with a price besides my mental health and there are some people who look at me or think of me differently after knowing, but I can't be worried about it. I wanted the truth to be known.

And it's not like domestic abuse, infidelity and some of these topics were exclusive to the American family only when I was growing up. Humans are still humans and there remains no cure for those problems within families, nor are these problems strictly American.

If growing up gay today is easier, I can't say. It might be a different time and on some level easier, but being different will always be a challenge. It might be new times, but with that possibly comes a new set of problems. If anything, it may be more confusing and embarrassing for children with some of the attention placed on it in school these days. I know that if I was a fourth grader and the teacher was discussing gay life in class I would have turned bright red and tried to crawl into a crack in the floor. I don't know if that perspective is taken into consideration. I knew what I was, but I didn't want others to know because I was taught what I am was shameful by society. Children today may be different though and if the shame associated with it can be minimized then that's a good development. It might save lives. It's difficult to find trustworthy current statistics on suicide rates because of how the numbers are clustered together under the umbrella of LGBT.

There are plenty of secrets left. I've never teased some of what is in this book. Also, I've never told all of the abusive stories that happened in New Hope at home or at school. There is one story in this novel which is about a complete emotional breakdown of mine in my teens. I finally came clean with it in therapy in the 2000s. I also come clean with readers that have followed my books about what I felt for someone that I wasn't completely forthright about before.

 

When does Shadow's Gravity take place?

Originally it was planned to span nine years. It ended up covering 1995 to 2005. I was a busy person, much happened and it made for a more complete circle from 1979 to end in 2005. This book sprawls and covers lots of territory in terms of themes, people and locations. During this time, there were also crucial events that still define our world today such as the widespread adoption of the internet and cell phones, Y2K, September 11 and the heinous murder of Matthew Shepard. This novel is my most ambitious. I'm excited about it and I feel the same about it as I did when I was writing Dweller On The Boundary.

There was another unplanned change. When I was writing this novel something happened in real life to one of the people behind one of the main characters of all my books. This development resulted in a drastic change in the course of the book.

I deeply loved him and considered him my twin brother.

What happened and to whom?

I can't say what exactly happened, but it was David The Bishop. I was shocked at what occurred involving him and it made me want to go back and delve further into that relationship in an attempt to find clues and offer an explanation. I haven't had any contact with him since the 1990s, but I was hurt by what recently happened with him. It made my head spin because I thought so highly of him, I deeply loved him and considered him my twin brother. It tainted my memories of us. As with any of my relationships, I've never spilled everything, just what I viewed as the most important aspects. I had to go back and examine that relationship and I did write more about it. My heart breaks for him that it came to this.

 

Paulding County has been the epicenter of your books, how much Paulding County is in this book?

The story picks up with life at the factory in Atlanta when I worked at Turner Broadcasting. It surprised me when writing this book, how much Paulding County is in it. I look back on life in that period and I don’t automatically think about Paulding County, but I realized it was still an important part of my life and I was often there. I lived there twice. Even when I was living elsewhere it seemed like there was a chain tied around my feet connected to the bumper of a van with one of those murals painted on the side that was popular when I was a kid and it was dragging me back out there for events. Years after I had graduated I was at Paulding County High School three times, talk about being surrounded by ghosts. My mindset then was, one day I will say goodbye to Paulding County once and for all, but it seemed impossible. I suppose I'll never say goodbye to it now.

 

What's your relationship with Paulding County these days?

I was there this past January, but I don't have a relationship with it besides the cemeteries. I don't live that close to it anymore, about an hour and a half away and with traffic it's a miserable drive. I pass through there a couple of times a year and it's less recognizable each time. I'm proud to be born and raised there, but we aren't compatible. If I haven't made that case yet then I hope it is obvious in Shadow's Gravity after I disclose what happened at my last house there in 2002. In the last few years, writing these books I have walked down Main Street in Dallas, the cemetery in New Hope, the Silver Comet Trail a couple of times and have been a few other places. I feel like maybe I've conquered the past, but then being there still makes me a little jittery. Also, I doubt I'll ever be asked to come out and speak at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon or at the main branch of the library where I met David The Bishop at a chess tournament. My experiences there are probably not something they would want to promote.

 

My belief is that if you wanted me to say something nice about you then you should've treated me better when you had the chance.

 

Are you saying you've presented Paulding County in a negative light?

Not entirely and I haven't been unfair to it by any stretch. My belief is that if you wanted me to say something nice about you then you should've treated me better when you had the chance. I loved growing up there, but I have to be honest. The Paulding County educational system was great to me at the time with some failings, but the community as a whole wasn't too kind. It was a pretty place though. As an adult, I don't have much in common with it and that's a sign that one, or in this case, both have changed.

 

Does Decatur County, Tennessee figure into this book?

Yes, I was there frequently in the 2000s. I don't even know if my family knew how often I was there then. My mother didn't know. It was the beginning of something new with my father. There may never have been any of the books in this series without those times in Decatur County. My relationship with my father may not have been as cut and dried as readers may suspect. We were close for fourteen years, with twice weekly phone conversations, regular visits and we traveled together.

 

You mentioned ghosts earlier, are there ghost stories in this book?
Yes, there are three ghost stories and another type of supernatural experience in this novel. The one ghost that my character experienced terrified me in real life. You can think what you want about ghosts, but I believe they are a genuine phenomenon. Whatever they are I cannot say, maybe they are a form of hallucination or maybe they are something that is not a creation of our mind. I'm open to either possibility. Most people will not believe in them, but unless you've experienced it then I suggest keeping an open mind about them. I've experienced way too many shocks in my life, but the experience I had in this book was the most shocking experience I've ever had and I have no explanation for it.

 

Who is your favorite character in this book?

Everett. I loved getting to finally write about this wonderful person that was locked away in my past. He was a transplant like me to Louisville, but had lived there longer and had a family connection to the city. He was a significant part of my Louisville life. He came from New York, was private schooled and was very much from a WASPY background. He was a polished person in areas that I was more rough around the edges. He was someone that I would have considered unattainable, he was extremely beautiful, sophisticated and intelligent. He was the kind of person that I did not think I would ever know or become involved. He came into my life in an unusual way and I'll leave it at that.

 

What made Louisville so special for you that you mention it on a frequent basis?

It was a city that gave me everything I ever dreamed and experiences I didn't know that I wanted. No place has ever embraced me the way that city did in the nineties. It was beautiful, historic, interesting, charming at every step and it had zero connection to my past. It was everything Atlanta was not for me, a chance to live a fresh new life. It was also fun trying to figure out what the mystery odor was that wafted around the city on certain mornings.

 

It feels like I'm losing them all over again and that hurts.

 

Since this is the end of the series, readers will expect resolution to the storylines that have been featured in your books. Is that going to happen?

Yes. It will not be neat and tidy though and requires an epilogue which is something I've not included before. I will resolve everything from my grandmother, to the search for Oliver, coming out to family, my relationship with Dylan, David The Bishop, Elliot, other people and places too like Aviary Hill.

Now this is coming to end, I am both happy and sad that this is the last book in the Aviary Hill series. I am happy to finally finish what I set out to do since I was a child and can move on to new writing territory. I am sad because I fell in love with some of these characters and I am unhappy about letting them go. I've spent years with them and trying my best to convey how meaningful to me these people were. It feels like I'm losing them all over again and that hurts.

No mention of Robin.

I'll be honest and say that there hasn't been a resolution with him, I don't believe it will ever be possible and that's for the best. He's not a major character in this novel as I never communicated with him during this period, though his presence and influences are heavily there as there was no way to deny the lasting impacts he had on me. Readers might think the sound of the crickets story and its effect on me in Uncivil X was fiction, but that was one example of the very real influence he had on me. He was a major figure in my young life and you don't ever shake someone like that.

 

Any plans to write another book about your family or your life?

No. I feel like I'm still living in the period that follows Shadow's Gravity and I want to keep my privacy. I might find some inspiration from parts of it, but I would not wish to do more than that. My day to day life isn't all that interesting anyway. Writing, hiking, gardening, photography, travel, work around the house and loafing in antique shops or wherever is what my life is these days. People on my Facebook can tell you that it's terribly lame like watching old music videos on YouTube or bad photos of stuff I see alongside the road or where I walk. I collect postcards and maybe I should start sharing that hobby on Facebook. I'm not all that interested in social media. I'm still a shy person no matter how much I have written about the past parts of my life. I won't say never, I learned that lesson a long time ago, but it is very, very, unlikely that I would ever do it. I still maintain a journal, but that's for my eyes only.

All that remains of the past that I want to publish is my poetry book from the 1990s and much of that is subject matter about family and growing up. I'd like to do that this year, but I don't know if it's the right time. It's me at my most fragile. 

 

A Chris Jr. running around out there? Hmm.

 

You shared a few details about the possibility of you having a child. Do you?

A Chris Jr. running around out there? Hmm. Well, it would spoil a few things to answer that here. I answer that in Shadow's Gravity and the circumstances about that very possibility. I'm a good secret keeper, I've proven that. I'm not one to share everything about my current life on social media and I have serious concerns about the detrimental effects of what social media does to children's mental health.

 

What's one weird story in this novel?

There would have to be several or it wouldn't be my life, but I'll mention hanging out late one night at Charlie Dick's house in Nashville. Okay maybe two, how I was dragged onto the film set of Remember The Titans, which I've still not seen. I did leave out the story of  my being at 99X and how it involved a thrift store album of my favorite, Barry Manilow.

 

There are a lot of music references in your books, from names of songs that were pivotal to the stories or playing in the background of scenes. It's obvious music is important to you, so what are some of the bands or songs mentioned in this book?

 

There are several music references in this book, but hopefully fewer as I was aware of it and trying to get away from that, but since I was in radio for much of this book it was kind of unavoidable. Also, it's kind of an interactive experience for a reader. I enjoy exposing people to music that they may not have heard and may enjoy if they look it up when they read a book of mine. Did people go listen to Robbie Dupree's Steal Away after reading about it in Dweller On The Boundary? I don't know, but they should. It was one of those songs bouncing around in my little brain in the evenings when I was out running around with Robin in the twilight. Or maybe readers my age were reminded just how great the Cure's Lullaby was by having it playing while Tavin and I fumbled around in my car in a church parking lot. People could go study the lyrics to songs by The Police and see the similarities to my life.
As for Shadow's Gravity, Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark album is part of a scene with Everett in Louisville. Her songs Free Man in Paris, People's Parties and The Same Situation from that time with him capture the mood. Another band mentioned would be Pansy Division, a San Francisco gay punk band, who I got into in the mid 90s when I was going through this period of finally being comfortable in my skin for the first time ever. By the way, the guy on the album cover is from Georgia and was the last lover of William S. Burroughs and was involved with Allen Ginsberg too.

 

What is one random object like a toy that you still have from your childhood?

This toy gun. It shot those red paper caps. I used to play with it with Robin. I may have mentioned it in Dweller On The Boundary. I lost it for a time, but as a teenager I found it sticking out of the mud one day walking around the front yard.

What is something random from your childhood that you have not written about?

I loved train sets. My first train set was the Golden Eagle. There was always something with birds, wasn't there? I had a few train sets and would buy extra cars and buildings for my town at the Kessler's at Cobb Center. That store had one of the best toy departments except for the Lionel Playworld on Windy Hill Road.

 

Since I can't ever say who he was or share a photo, that is the closest I can come.

Any final secrets you care to share?

Okay, why not? When Robin left me a music video came out that June and it was like this gift to me. It was Bonnie Tyler's mega hit, Total Eclipse of the Heart, and one of the best videos ever made at the height of the MTV era. The video is set at a boy's school. One of the boys looked to my ten year old eyes like Robin. I fantasized that it was him in the video and I never moved when it came on television. I was pitifully heartbroken. He appears at the very end of the video and runs up to the group of boys already assembled. Since I can't ever say who he was or share a photo, that is the closest I can come to ever sharing what he looked like. I loved that video and took comfort in it. You can cross your heart on that. This video was also released near the time my gifted teacher wanted to send me away to private school and it shaped my idea of what it would've been like. It might be the most homoerotic video ever made too.

What is next after all of this?

I have piles of research on a Georgia murder from the 1970s that I may use for a book. I recently went by one of the locations for it and some time ago I hiked out to where the bodies were dumped. It was a spooky place. I have other ideas in various stages of development too. I am tempted to write something that is pure fiction and stretch myself. Part of me wants to write a book with 80s Atlanta punks as the main characters. People probably don't realize that there were punk clubs like 688 or the Metroplex in the eighties because that facet of Atlanta never seems to be talked about. I'm not certain what comes next, but whatever story is next it will be set in the American South, one of the most complicated and beautiful places on the planet. It has bothered me for most of my life how people get the South wrong, even people born here. There's a lot of lazy propaganda produced in the news and entertainment industry about what the imperfect South is from attitudes to culture. Without being an apologist for the South and the history before I was born, I want to try and change some of the misconceptions about what the South is.

 

Last question. What is the biggest challenge for indie writers?

Finding a book I wrote on the shelves of a Barnes & Noble bookstore was an incredible feeling. November 2020.

A lack of a promotional budget and a big publisher behind you when it comes to publicity. I'm grateful for the audience I have who took a chance on me, but of course I'd love to sell more books. Every writer wants to be read. I don't care anything about being famous or culturally important, but I do want to be read more widely and not be a niche writer. I willingly chose to be an indie knowing the challenges that come with it so I'm not complaining, but I'm mentioning it as a challenge to the business side of writing. I try not to promote myself all that much because there is something unseemly about that. Much of my promotion comes via word of mouth on social media and I'm dependent on ratings and reviews from readers on services like Amazon to help coax the the algorithms into favoring me. I wish more people that read my books would take the two minutes to rate or review me there with their genuine feedback. I have far more readers than ratings and reviews on my books and more feedback would definitely help me.

 

Thank you for reading. 

 

Inside My Skull

Me in 2000.

 

To write about the past is not as easy as opening your head and spilling it out onto the screen. If only it was that easy then I could write much faster. 

 

One of the techniques I use to remember the past is immersive. I visit places from that time, listen to music from then, watch videos if I have them, look at photos, read my journals or hold objects from the  time. Those actions are an attempt to reconstruct what it felt like in my life  and to coax out memories that may have been misplaced. Since my next novel is set in the second half of the 1990s and the early 2000s I still  have clothes from that period that did not end up in one those charity bins in a shopping center parking lot. Luckily the clothes still fit and I have put them on.

The year 2000 was a big year for me with many changes. I had come into my own, was successful, confident and was having a lot of fun. I was into trip hop, trance and jazz since rock music was going a direction that little interested my tastes. I was exposed to trip hop by a guy I dated in late 1999 that was Mr. Hip Designer, living-in-a-loft guy. It was a brief relationship, but it changed me for the better. I cannot listen to the sensual downtempo music of Massive Attack, Portishead, Alpha or Hooverphonic and not think of him. He left his fingerprints inside my skull.

A copy I still have of an XY Magazine from 2000.

I was rummaging through the bookcases in my office and came across this magazine. I remember buying it at a Borders bookstore near where I lived. I had grown up a magazine reader and in the early 2000s I often went to bookstores rifle through the magazine rack and read. Even a simple magazine from twenty-three years ago had memories attached to it that had little to do with what was printed on its pages.

 

To look at this XY Magazine from November 2000 is for me to remember how much I loved the television show Queer As Folk. I added Showtime to my Direct TV package just to watch and I cared little about television. The show debuted that December, but there was much buzz about it in gay circles beforehand about just how gay and sexy it was going to be. It turned out to be just as advertised and in those first couple of seasons I never missed an episode or taped it on the VCR if I could not watch it when it was scheduled.

Looking at this magazine also reminds me of a guy I met that fall and the deep red accent wall of my master bedroom. I remember him holding this very magazine in bed next to me after sex and asking who the guy on the cover was as he pointed at Justin played by Randy Harrison.
 

"He's hot. Who is this," he asked.

I agreed and explained that he had grown up in metro Atlanta and some of his family still lived here.

The guy I was in bed with was twenty-one, a twink, from the small Georgia town of Jefferson. I had aged out of my twink years and was twenty-seven. He was attractive, good in bed and a fling that lasted a few weeks. Our getting together was never meant to be anything more than temporary fun. I was on to the next guy and he probably was too.

I did write about this guy in the first draft of the next book, but whether he will make it through the further drafts remains to be seen. There are so many stories that could be told in every life, but never will and that is one of the more difficult parts of writing, knowing what to cut. A good memory does not always make for an entertaining one or one that fits within a larger story that is being told.

To the Jefferson twink, I still remember your name and if you are out there and you find this, I hope you are doing well.

It might not be trip hop, but that year I loved Macy Gray's I Try.

 

Music For The Deep End of the Ocean

I

n the early 2000's when my career and life were stressing me out I became interested in meditation. I do not know if I was ever successful at achieving any type of higher level of consciousness or insights, but I was able to relax.

 
I would meditate with music playing and sometimes with incense burning to help set the mood. One of the albums I regularly listened was 1984's The Pearl by Harold Budd and Brian Eno that was produced by Daniel Lanois. 

 
The Pearl is an ambient album that reminds me of floating in the ocean and staring upwards at the sky. Listening to it with closed eyes is like letting the music become the warm ocean water washing underneath your body as you drift aimlessly in the waves.

I stopped meditating for the last ten years or so because I could not make time for it or I just felt as though I did not need it any longer. Sometimes life takes us away from the things we need so that we can experience other aspects of life and that is what happened to me. Eventually or rather hopefully we return to the things that are good for us so now I am returning to meditation.

That return to meditation is what reminded me of The Pearl. I had long since forgotten this music until one day it reentered the forefront of my mind like an errand I had forgotten or a friend that had disappeared and then returned. Listening to it today, it still has the same peaceful calming effect that it did all those years ago.

Time slows down and then evaporates listening to this music, everything takes on a shade of blue and whatever was bothering me is lost in the deep end of the ocean of my mind.

My favorite track on the album is Late October followed by the title track The Pearl.

Dispatch: From A Loft in Castleberry Hill

 

Sam Wagstaff, self-portrait.

Iwas sitting over a coffee on Peters Street in Castleberry Hill. I realized that I needed to finish that biography of Sam Wagstaff to complete my summer reading list. I have not opened the book for a week. I am struggling to maintain interest. Wagstaff's life story should be more interesting, maybe it is the writing? 

Sam Wagstaff & Robert Mapplethorpe

 

He was the lover and sugar daddy of photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, had his own career in the fine art world as a curator and there are his sexual excursions in the 70s and 80s through the New York gay underground. He was friends with Warhol and was the first to hang his work, the Campbell's Soup can, in a museum in 1962. His life should be fascinating, it was in the 2007 documentary Black White + Gray, but it is not in this book. 

*****
 

I see that anarchists marched down Ponce this morning and attacked a Starbucks. The interior was destroyed and customers were injured. It was mayhem as anarchists are want to do. There is a sizeable contingent of them here associated with the ominous sounding The Black Cross. Two were arrested. Here is the Reddit thread about it.

*****

George Plimpton

The Falcons start their season tomorrow and that excites me. Yes, it is okay to like football. You do not have to be a cretin to like the game, even George Plimpton liked football and he was not exactly a dullard.

*****

And now I sit on Peters Street in Castleberry Hill, where in the late 90s I was introduced to Massive Attack in another loft. A guy opened my mind to trip hop. My coffee cools years later, I am still in this neighborhood and he is not. We were too different, but we both liked ETBTG and when I hear this I think of him. Life almost imitates art.