Bob Smith's gay time travel novel Remembrance of Things I Forgot

Bob Smith has read at In The Flesh and is wonderful and hilarious. I highly recommend his novel Selfish and Perverse and the few pages I've read of his new one, Remembrance of Things I Forgot, are wonderful. Here's the first sentence:

It's safe to say your relationship is finished if the only way you can imagine solving your problems is by borrowing a time machine.

I also liked this sentence:

Powrerful forearms always get me; there's something irresistible attractive about a man who looks as if he could break my heart with his bare hands.

I will warn you that if you're a Republican, especially a Log Cabin Republican...you might not love your portrayal in this book. And hopefully that is actually an endorsement for most people reading this blog!



And you can hear Bob read tomorrow night free at Drunken! Careening! Writers! For so long I couldn't attend because my night and DCW were the same, but now I can attend. And I'm reading in November!

Drunken! Careening! Writers!

Isa Coffey

Joel Derfner

Jenifer Levin

Bob Smith

"Glitter and Be Gay"

Thursday, June 23, 7pm

KGB Bar

85 E. 4th St., NYC

FREE

New column: "I'm Still Bisexual Even Though I'm Dating a Guy"

The more I type that column title, the more "duh" and obvious it sounds but still, it was something I felt was worth writing about. I'm always casting about for new column topics - one will definitely deal with Joan Price and her new book Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud About Senior Sex and elder sexuality. Maybe I can find something in London to write about! Still working on my Weinergate kinky sexting essay which I might just blog instead of going through the pitching rigamarole.



In some ways, my embrace of bisexual is also about a rejection of heteronormativity, of all the parts of straightness that feel oppressive to me. Yes, there are privileges accorded to straight people, but I feel there are also burdens; it’s assumed that you want to get married and become a parent and be monogamous. Stepping outside any of those roles messes with the dominant culture’s plans for you. I’d like to think being part of the LGBT community has made me more open and empathetic, and showed me how people are, in fact, so much more than any label.

What’s interesting to me is that this title, bisexual, is important to me, It's something I feel I carry no matter who I’m dating, or not dating, whereas “poly” and “kinky” are not intrinsic parts of my identity. They are things I have been at various times in my life, or rather, my relationships have been. Bisexuality is different for me, perhaps because it feels more primal than either being poly or kinky — not that they need to be pitted against each other. I used to struggle with the word “bisexual” because it implies there are only two sexes or genders, which is not something I believe, but it’s a shorthand that, in general, works for me.

My bisexuality has also played itself out in almost all of my relationships in some form. Often the form it takes is in talking dirty, and sometimes it’s gone beyond that. One girlfriend, who was pretty much exclusively into women, indulged my interest in a male friend of ours with a threesome. With most of the straight men I’ve dated, not surprisingly, they’ve been interested in fantasizing aloud about me with another woman or hearing about my own fantasies. I certainly feel freer when I have a boyfriend sharing my fantasies about women, real or imagined, than I do about other men.

Read the whole column (and if you like it, I'd love it if you'd "like" it on Facebook at the top and/or tweet, blog, etc. - all that really helps!)

Rainbow Book Fair, March 26th, NYC

I'm coordinating a day's worth of readings on March 26th at Rainbow Book Fair - featured readers are Christopher Bram, Martin Duberman, Thomas Glave, Raymond Luczak and Felice Picano. Mark your calendars. See the official site for other programming (and please don't ask me about that, I'm just working on the readings part).