This is me aged 14 during a family home video. My brother asked me what my aspirations were, and I answered, “I want to be a writer. I know it's a long shot, but I hope to publish a novel.” I hadn't yet gone through puberty but I was certain about this. I was also certain about liking men, but I hadn't seen a naked man before, let alone porn. Books were my media, and through memoirs, short stories, and novels, I experienced the lives of other gay men and learned to avoid their mistakes. I came out because of a gay man's memoir (Paul Monet's, if you're curious), and as this was the 1990s, I read about the sadness that was HIV/AIDS. Some boys would have been scared off, but I wasn't. My desire for men was stronger than any fear.
I won first place in a Canada-wide short story contest in 1997. My story was controversial as it centred on a man who was addicted to porn. He was straight, so it wasn't autobiographical, but I had discovered the internet by this time, and I was struggling with staying up until 5am downloading 28.8 kbps gay porn one pixelated line at a time. I commend the jury for picking my entry even though my character objectified women in the story, but I'm also proud that my fiction about straight male addiction was convincing. Kudos to 17 year old me for passing as a straight man.
Past university and moving to Berlin. I was invited to a television news report about the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall circa 2009. My sound byte was, “It’s a city that’s still young when you consider all the changes it’s going through. It’s going somewhere but it’s not yet there, and I feel like if I’m here, I can experience the journey with the city.
Fast forward
Who am I?
My Berlin journey
Anyone who's visited Berlin knows it's a place that feels like no other. Few cities in the world can be described as unique but Berlin is the only Berlin, poor and sexy as it is. That was 2009, and as the years passed, Berlin became a little less poor and a little less sexy, but no less Hauptstadt. For artists and gay men, some cities possess a Zeitgeist that truly exemplifies what it means to lust for life. Some artists have captured that Zeitgeist in paintings, others in films, or for writers, in novels.
Writing is different for gay men. Gay men don't necessarily have brothers or fathers to learn life's lessons. We had to learn on our own; that is, unless we read. Baldwin for Paris, Maupin for San Francisco, and Isherwood for Berlin before buildings were bombed and war destroyed the fun. Post-war and post-wall, Berlin regained his Zeitgeist, and I was fortunate to experience it and write my novel from this experience. See Naked Love Berlin for more.
