First publication, December 1977

 

TBT: My first national publication was this poem in 'TEEN magazine, in December 1977, when I was fifteen. I'd written it the previous summer. Like so many other "firsts" at that age, you never, ever forget the first time. On a Sunday night in early November I was at the bus terminal waiting for the chartered bus to take us back to school. The December issue of 'TEEN was there on the rack, like this was just any other day. The title was in bright pink letters. The model was Lindsey Erwin. I reached for it. My hands were shaking. I opened it to the page indicated on the table of contents. In spite of the acceptance letter that had arrived in October—on mint-green paper with the 'TEEN logo in darker green letters at the top, all the way from Los Angeles—right up until the moment I found my poem in the magazine, with my picture and my name, I was 100% sure it wasn't going to be there. It was too much to be true, even at the point. But it was, and it's one of the happiest memories of my adolescence, that "first." There have been others over the years since then—first magazine article, first cover story, first book, first award, first actual fan letter—but that moment at the magazine stand, on that dark December Sunday night, was holy.

George

I remember so vividly when John Kennedy, Jr.'s George magazine launched in the fall of 1995. There was still a sense of optimism in politics, with none of the scorched-earth nihilism we take for granted as a daily reality today. The notion of engaging everyday people in the political culture was a positive thing—pre-Facebook, pre-Twitter—and Tucker Carlson was still a cute, non-toxic libertarian media star in khakis and a bow tie; more like George Will's son than Hitler's grandson. While there's no point in crying over the very dark path popular culture has taken, and while there's no way to rekindle that specific spark of pre-9/11 optimism, it's maybe worth looking back and trying to remember what it felt like, so we can watch for it, and fan it, if it ever comes around again.
 

World AIDS Day

Today is World AIDS Day. In the summer of 1992, when I was doing a summer writing workshop in Cambridge, MA, I met John Preston, an acclaimed journalist, author, anthologist, and tireless activist for LGBT rights, when I interviewed him at home Portland, Maine. We became friends. He formally named me and two other writers as literary protégés that December, forcing me to legitimize my identity as a writer in my own mind, which is where such legitimacy always has to start. He published my early essays in handsome hardcover anthologies, and impressed upon me the responsibility to someday nurture and mentor young writers in my turn. I took this picture of him with Joan Nestle in Boston in October, 1993 for the dustjacket of Sister and Brother: Lesbians and Gay Men Write About Their Lives Together (HarperCollins, 1994) which also included my essay "Alex." He died in April 1994 of complications relating to AIDS. I remember John Preston every December 1st, and I speak his name aloud—with gratitude, inspiration, joy, sorrow, and with love. Speak all their names.

American Thanksgiving memory: Paris, 1981

 

One of the happiest American Thanksgivings I ever spent was in 1981. The exquisite American Church in Paris has an annual Thanksgiving dinner—I was 19, and it was my first year out of high school. I was thrilled to be in Paris, participating in that magical era, but also homesick. The church, with its glorious Louis Comfort Tiffany stained-glass windows became a regular haunt of mine. It served as a bridge connecting various nexuses of my childhood and my future, and the expats there were kind and welcoming. When I left Paris and returned to Ottawa, I arranged for a hymnal to be placed in the nave in memory of a classmate who'd drowned in the Red River at the end of our senior year. My profound love for, and identification with, Americans has deep, deep roots, starting with my American-born mother and our American family on her side; the years I spent going to school side-by-side with American kids; and, of course, later years writing for American political publications as a journalist. But even with all of that, 40 years later, what I can still remember, aside from the familiarity of it all, is the warmth of the welcome I received that Thanksgiving day in Paris, in such sharp contrast to the cold November rain outside on the Quai d'Orsay.

Transgender Day of Remembrance, 2021

This Transgender Day of Remembrance, I'm struck by two cruel realities—not only that this has been the deadliest year on record for murdered transgender or gender-variant individuals, but that the phrase "deadliest year," in this context, has been used with such chilling regularity, year after year. I'm immensely fortunate to have a blog that is read by so many compassionate, intelligent, forward thinking people. In a very real sense, I'm preaching to the choir here. That said, I beg every person reading this post tonight to reach inside and bring forth an extra measure of that compassion, intelligence, and forward thought, and re-commit to changing the world for our transgender brothers, sisters, and non-binary family. We don't need to "understand" transgender issues in order to put ourselves between a vulnerable trans or non-binary person and hostility or violence. All we need is empathy. We don't need to "accept" or be completely "comfortable" with gender variance to speak up when a trans person is used as the punchline for an obscenely unfunny "joke," or as offal "humour" fed to raucous crowds by millionaire comedians out of a payday. All we need is baseline human love, and an awareness of how poisoning the social climate in order to "other" certain groups has led to violence, murder, even genocide, throughout human history. Be kind, even when it might be more fun to be cruel. Just because we can get away with it doesn't mean it's right, or that someone else won't pay a terrible price in the long run. Don't roll your eyes at days like Transgender Day of Remembrance. All over the world tonight, and most nights, people are reliving the loss of beautiful souls they've known and loved—souls whose only reason for extinction was being born different, and being unable, or unwilling, to be something they aren't. Peace to all those who suffer tonight, and comfort to all the bereaved and the mourning.

Dad and Princey

 

Dad and Princey, 1971. I saw a Norwegian Elkhound in the park today, and I was unaccountably moved. They're rare in the city, and Prince was my first dog, and the first dog I ever loved. It sent my mind down a wandering path this evening. There comes a point in all our lives when we can touch memories of loss that used to cause us sadness, but now just give us a sense of gratitude to have been allowed us to experience them; and a sort of gentle, if wistful, transcendent peace.

Ruby Bridges

 

On this day in 1960, six-year old Ruby Bridges desegregated her school in the company of armed federal marshals, and faced a ravening mob of white adults, as well as children, calling her unspeakable names no six-year old should have to hear, and waving unspeakable signs no six-year old should ever have to see. I know sixty-year olds that don't have the grace and dignity she had on the first day of first grade.

Forthcoming publication news: Nate Gowdy's Insurrection

I'm thrilled to share the news of the forthcoming December publication of Insurrection by the brilliant young Seattle-based photojournalist Nate Gowdy, with an Introduction by yours truly. The book is a powerful photo essay of what he saw on January 6th, 2021 while shooting the riot for Rolling Stone. Gowdy's work has appeared in numerous international venues including CNN, Die Zeit, Fisheye, Al-Jazeera, The Huffington Post, Mashable, Mother Jones, Vice, and the cover of TIME. Earlier this fall I was invited to write an introductory essay for the book. I readily agreed. Given my longstanding admiration for his work, I would be tempted to call it a "dream collaboration," except it isn't really a collaboration at all: like the best photojournalism, Gowdy's work has always told a resonant, sometimes frightening American story without the benefit of any words. I was honoured to be asked to contribute mine. That said, after a decade of focusing primarily on fiction, I confess I enjoyed returning to my professional roots as a journalist, essayist, and political culture critic in the service of this beautiful visual record of one of the darkest days in recent American history.

Ten-year anniversary of Enter, Night

A cherished memory from 10 years ago tonight—signing Enter, Night, my just-published first novel, at McNally-Robinson in Winnipeg on the night of November 11th, 2011. Having gone to school outside Winnipeg, it was very nearly a homecoming, and it was absolutely a reunion with many loved ones.

Viola Desmond arrest anniversary

 

On this day in 1946, beautician and entrepreneur Viola Desmond was arrested for refusing to leave the whites-only section of the Roseland movie theatre in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia. In 2018, Ms. Desmond's fight for her civil rights was celebrated on the Canadian $10 bill, the face of which she remains today.

Indigenous Veterans Day, 2021

In advance of Remembrance Day, which is Thursday, today is Indigenous Veterans Day. Naturally, on social media, the question "Why do we need a separate Remembrance Day for Natives?" has already been passive-aggressively asked more than once already. I suspect one answer might be that it's not "separate," it's complementary. And it seems particularly worthwhile to set aside a day to honour veterans whom many non-Native Canadians, with no discernible irony, thought of as something less than "Canadian," but who still courageously, and with valour, fought, bled, and died for Canada, in war upon war, anyway.

Throwback Thursday: Beckett, 2014

"One evening when he’d been living with us for six weeks or so, we went to the hill brow above the park. It was a perfect late-summer pre-twilight: the light on the grass was of the gilded variety unique to that particular time of year. The air was warm, but cooling, with the barest hint of autumn carried on the breeze like an afterthought. 

"I sat down cross-legged on the grass. Beckett lay down beside me, and we both watched the dogs and their owners gamboling in the distance with tennis balls and sticks. Further afield, a rugby team practiced passing drills. As I caressed Beckett’s head, my thoughts wandered back to Harper and Simba, as they did several times a day in those weeks following Simba’s death. They played down there too, I thought. Harper and Simba used to be part of that pack. The three of us used to own that park—it was part of our world. 

"Suddenly I felt Beckett’s soft pink tongue on my hand, smooth as the inside of a rose petal. I looked down. He was still stretched out beside me, but he wasn’t looking at me. Instead, he was focused on licking my hand. He licked and licked, with increasing urgency now, almost as though he could read my thoughts, almost as though he were trying to say, in his turn, Please don’t be sad. I’m here. I will always protect you and keep you from harm and pain, whatever the cost. You’ll never be alone, and I will love you forever. And by the way, please forgive yourself."

—From "Life, Measured Out in Labradors," first published on Salt Water New England, 2017

 

Re-reading Jonathan Aycliffe's The Lost as the cold sets in

In the spirit of November's cold, I recently took a deep dive back into Jonathan Aycliffe's 1996 novel, The Lost. I read it when it came out, and certain images from it have haunted me for a quarter of a century the way traces of a particularly bad nightmare do—and I mean that in the best possible sense.

An Englishman of Romanian descent, Michael Feraru, travels to Bucharest to reclaim some family property lost in the communist takeover of 1947. In the process, he learns that he is a titled hereditary aristocrat with a dark, centuries-long family history, and a vast castle in the Carpathians to which he is the rightful heir.

The novel is set in the immediate aftermath of the fall of the Ceaușescu regime, and the cruelty and tragedy of that era mirrors the cruelty, tragedy, and horror of The Lost. The epistolary style owes a structural debt to Stoker's Dracula, but Aycliffe, like Susan Hill, is in line of literary descent to the mantle of M.R. James, and the beautiful writing and storytelling is 100% his own.

The voyages described in the novel notwithstanding, reading The Lost is a voyage in its own right—even as Michael Feraru travels to Castel Vlaicu and the inherited horrors awaiting him there, the reader travels from the relative safety of the protagonist's soul shores to the dark and terrible place where he eventually makes his physical and spiritual home. It's not a vampire novel in the accepted sense of the term, but it expands the theme of the undead in ways that surprised, delighted, and deeply satisfied me.

Aycliffe has flawlessly rendered a country in pain following the depredations, physical and moral, of a despotic dictator. Re-reading it, I was reminded of sitting in the back of a cab in Bucharest, in 2004, with a monolingual American colleague, while a cab driver with bright, cold eyes, speaking French to me, offered to set us up with underage girls for the night, for a fair price. I can still hear the horrible eagerness in his voice and his utter conviction that anything could—and should—be had for the right price.

Likewise for Michael Feraru, even as he lays claim to his birthright, it lays claim to him. Aycliffe, like the best horror writers, makes his geography and morality as much characters in his novels as any of the human ones. 

Long out of print, The Lost is now available on Kindle. You could do much, much worse for a classic horror novel as the days grow shorter and shorter and the cold sets in.

My funny Valentine

 

A sweet memory floated up this morning. Valentine was my first dog as an adult, and the first dog with which the Hero MD™ and I made a pack. We always called him "the Red Dog," as though it were a royal title. He came to live with us on Valentine's Day, 1986. This photograph by Lindsay Lozon was taken in spring, 1987 at our house on Winchester, before we moved to Milton. Valentine spent our Milton years with us, and left us a couple of years after we'd returned to Toronto. The first dog is always special, and I rarely hear "My Funny Valentine" without my eyes misting over, even after all these years.

Halloween afternoon, 2021

Just in from a long walk with Beckett through the boneyard and back. Since he's been a bit under the weather this past week, we took it very slowly, but he paid his usual assiduous attention to every leaf, blade of grass, tree, curb, gate, wall, and gravestone. So it took a bit of time. It's an exquisite Halloween afternoon—I'm not sure if it's the fact that the rain finally stopped, or just the joy of the day, but families were out together glorying in the perfect autumnal weather. I was unaccountably moved by the number of children in Halloween costumes, obviously going to or from Halloween parties just for them. I was likewise moved by the number of parents who were throwing mini-Halloween parties in the park for their kids, obviously determined to give them Halloween memories of childhood that will hopefully last at least as long as mine have. There is likewise a truly lovely post-pandemic sense of the world returning to normal. It was very different last year, as I noted in my journal on that day. But the best part of it is the absence of tense defiance of the virus that was present earlier this year—shrill and sharp as a dentist drill. No, today it was all smooth and warm and genuinely joyful, with the light as orange and yellow as candy corn, and the anticipation of Halloween night growing by the second.