Bill Konigsberg's Blog, page 12

The kind of review that makes me smile

I felt like sharing a delightful review of Openly Straight this morning… this comes from author Nyrae Dawn, who rights ridiculously popular novels for young adults and new adults. She is on my list of authors to read. Check her out here…

My favorite sentence:

Have you ever read a book and wondered, WHY ISN’T EVERYONE ELSE IN THE WHOLE WIDE WORLD READING THIS BOOK? Why isn’t everyone talking about it? Why aren’t I seeing it EVERYWHERE? That’s how I feel about OPENLY STRAIGHT by Bill Konigsberg. I loved it so hard you guys.

Come to think of it: Openly Straight has done very well, but how DO we get it in the hands of more readers? It seems like there’s a whole world out there that doesn’t know about the existence of Openly Straight. Any thoughts? 

 

Love the sinner, hate the sin

So I was sitting with a friend of mine the other day at the dog park. He is a straight male I’ve known for six months or so, and we were having a doggie date. His Frasier, a Cockapoo, and my Mabel, a Labradoodle, were playing, or more like Mabel was chasing other dogs and otherwise creating trouble and Frasier, who is almost 15, was hanging out with us. Point is, the idea of a play date between specific dogs at a dog park is sort of like having an intimate date with someone you’ve never met before in a crowded bar.

Anyway, my friend and I were talking about life. He is a devout Catholic, has been for most of his life. He is a terrific person with a good heart. We were talking about when I told him I was gay, which was probably the second time we met.

He said, “That wasn’t difficult for me in the least. I’ve been taught to love the sinner, and hate the sin.”

I digested that for a bit. It’s not like it’s the first time that’s been said to me. In fact, I have gay friends who have said the same thing. In that religious model, we are all sinners, and we should not judge others for sinning. We should simply love all other people, and recognize that they sin and we sin, too.

And then I thought: wait. What’s the sin here?

I don’t want to get into a biblical argument, because I cannot win a biblical argument. I have read the bible, but I’m far from an expert. I know that “men lying with men” is mentioned a couple times in the New Testament, and a bunch of times in the Old Testament, and it’s never a good thing. But I also know that we always have to keep in mind that the bible was written by people at a specific time, and at the time both of those books were written, there was no understanding of sexual orientation. “Men lying with men” at the time of the Old Testament, for instance, was a pagan ritual often occurring along with other pagan and sexual rituals in Canaan and Egypt. In those same rituals, entire families would sometimes have sex, and there was also sexual intercourse with a priest to gain favor with a goddess of fertility.

So yeah, different times. The bottom line is that pagan rituals were not looked upon kindly in the bible.

I didn’t want to get into an argument with my friend, but I didn’t want to let the words just stay with me and fester in me. I mean, what sin is he talking about? Is sex between two consenting adults a sin? And in my case, I am a married man in a monogamous relationship with another man. Is sexual activity in a monogamous relationship sinful? Who would it be hurting? 

So I said to him, “The God I believe in is all about love. He loves me with all His heart. He cherishes my union with Chuck. I don’t believe I’m broken, and I don’t believe that my relationship with my husband constitutes sin.”

He didn’t respond to that. I get it. We don’t agree about that. I know that I cannot expect to change his beliefs about God, nor can he expect to change mine. We can try, but those changes are rare and they happen when they happen.

I am thinking right now about the various reactions my friends would have to this story.

There’s one friend who will be annoyed that I am friends with someone who thinks being gay is a sin. He’ll think I lack courage.

There’s another friend who rolls his eyes when I talk about God, since he is an atheist. If I had to guess, I’d guess he thinks I’m too smart to believe in “magic.”

There’s another friend who will say he doesn’t have time for people who have hatred in their heart, period.

I cannot say any of these people are wrong, and I cannot say any of them are right, either. I guess I feel like part of my tax for being an openly gay man who has spent his life changing hearts and minds is conversations like this. I don’t enjoy them, but I think they need to happen because they are honest expressions of where we are, and where we differ. I believe, deep in my heart, that organized religion is the next major area for change. I think it will become too difficult to reconcile a message of God’s love with a message of judgment about sexual orientation, and that it’s the young generation who have grown up with Glee, etc., that will change that. 

In the end, I hold on to my ties to religious friends because I think there’s plenty of good that goes along with what I perceive as bad. And I think someday we’ll be glad we’ve held on, those of us who are unwilling to throw the baby — God, in this case — out with the bathwater — religious dogma.

 

The Crazy White Lady and the Man of Iron

I am friends with the crazy white lady.

About a year and a half ago, I went to a Chinese buffet in Chandler, Arizona, for lunch one day. I was seated in a booth and told that Lisa would be my server.

I admit it. I’m a snob. You know how sometimes a theater director will say, “There are no small roles?” I guess I don’t really believe that, because to me on that day, a server at a Chinese buffet in Chandler sounded like a small role. And then I met Lisa, the crazy white lady.

A smallish, middle-aged woman with a big smile, Lisa approached my table like she was approaching a long-lost friend. She greeted me warmly, and she took me on a tour of the buffet. Then, during the meal, she came by a bunch of times and told me stories. Sometimes jokes. I noticed she did this with a lot of her clientele. She just bounced around and took care of everyone. Incidentally, we were the happiest section in the buffet that day. Her section always is.

When I told her I’d definitely come back to see her again, she said, “Just ask for the crazy white lady.” As it turns out, that’s what the staff calls her as she is the only white person on staff. Everyone else is Chinese.

We’ve become friends. She brightens my day, and she seems to love when I come in. She’s read my novels, for instance. Sometimes I ask her for ideas on things, and she loves to be included in my writing process.

She cooks turkey on Thanksgiving and Christmas for the restaurant. No one asked her to do this. She volunteered. It’s awesome, by the way. We’ve been there for it twice. She teaches the Chinese workers how to curse in English. She shares great stories about her wacky family with everyone who will listen. 

She’s taught me that life is what you give to it. If you approach life scared and silent, that’s what your life will be. If you celebrate every day, if you connect with the people around you, your life will be a celebration, and you’ll give and get so much.

Case in point is my husband Chuck’s good friend, Patrick.

When Patrick moved to Phoenix a couple years ago, he felt isolated. He didn’t know anyone here, and he wasn’t really the kind of guy who did well with getting to know people. He was introverted. 

And then his thinking changed. He decided to be of service to others, rather than thinking so much about how lonely he was. He started to say hi to people at coffee shops and in supermarkets. Sure, I’m guessing there were failures in these attempts. Just like I’m sure some people think Lisa is “too much” at the buffet when all they want is a meal. But there were lots of successes, too. Sometimes, he’d anonymously buy people cups of coffee. He did other random acts of kindness, too. Just because he could.

Patrick has been making changes in all areas of his life, and one thing he’s been doing is training for the Iron Man triathlon. That event involves a 2.4-mile swim, a 112-mile bike ride, and a 26.2-mile run. Given that I cannot run a mile without my legs getting tired, this is about as foreign an idea to me as flying to the moon, but Patrick has set his sights on it. 

Anyway, if you volunteer at an Iron Man race, it gives you first shot at amateur registration for the next year. So Patrick did that. 

The race was two weeks ago. Patrick was a volunteer in the same way he is a person. All giving. He told people he’d do whatever they needed. “Anyone need a hug?” he was yelling out, after the biking portion. 

Some people did. One man in particular, a 72-year-old man, needed a hug. He told Patrick he was a recent cancer survivor, and he wasn’t sure he’d make it. Patrick held him tight. “You’re going to get through this,” he told the man.

Patrick then watched the marathon from about the 17-mile point. Hours and hours later, the 72-year-old man trudged by, struggling terribly. Patrick did what Patrick does. He joined him. He ran with him. For the final 9 miles of the race, he ran side-by-side, urging the man on. He helped the man finish, about 30 seconds under the time limit.

After the race, through tears, the man told Patrick he had recently lost his wife. During the race, he said, he felt his wife’s spirit next to him, through Patrick.

Could Patrick have stayed silent as a volunteer at an Iron Man race? Yes, but then the 72-year-old man would not have finished. And Patrick would not have had the life-changing experience of having helped the man finish.

Could Lisa stay silent as a Chinese buffet server? Sure. But think of all the people whose days she has brightened. Their days wouldn’t have been brightened, all those times. And who knows what that changed in their lives, and in the lives of others? We simply don’t know, when we throw a pebble out into the massive lake, where the ripples will lead.

This is what I’m learning about these days. In fact, it’s a major theme of my work-in-progress, The Porcupine of Truth. What can one person do? What happens when we bottle up our fear of other people and throw it away, and instead embrace the world like everyone else in it is also a human being? Lisa and Patrick make a difference in other people’s lives every day, sometimes a life-changing difference. 

That’s not do-able when we sit on the sidelines. Or when we let fear guide us. What can I do today to make someone else’s life better? 

 

Some undeniable truths about you (and me)

OK kids, this morning I feel like sharing (read: oversharing) a bit with y’all.

You see, today I fly home after 18 (18! Yikes!) days on the road. The last time I was home with my dog Mabel, she was a zygote. She is going to jump all over me and then give me so much attitude when I see her in a bunch of hours. I am punch drunk and exhausted and that’s when the oversharing is most likely to occur, I guess.

Anyway, this morning I feel blissful and transformed. This has been simply an epic trip, where epic things have happened. I got married. I read with Rainbow Rowell. I saw Judy Blume. I ate too many fried Ipswitch clams. I learned to appreciate how f***ing great Bill Konigsberg is.

And it occurred to me that perhaps I would share this with you, seeing as I am probably not the only kid who ever sat in the school hallway, scrawling lines in my notebook because I felt like I didn’t have a friend in the world, and I was a total piece of shit garbage loser face, and no one loved me, and no one would ever love me, and maybe I should just die, because no one would miss me.

I promise you. This and more. This is how I felt about me. Some of it because I was gay. Some of it because I was a teenager. Some of it because maybe possible I suffered a little bit from depression, I don’t know.

The truth is I am a f***ing miracle of the universe. I am kind and good hearted and talented and yeah maybe a little bit of a freak but that’s okay because I am the only Bill Konigsberg that will ever live, and you are the only you who will ever live, and you owe it to the world to be that to its full capacity because when you do that the miracles start to happen.

So let’s do an exercise. It’s an annoying one for sure. It’s called “Affirmations” and it’s the kind of thing they make fun of on SNL and they should. It’s so cheeseball that literally as I talk about it I am eating a piece of cheese that has formed in front of my nose simply from thinking these thoughts. It is also the most important thing you can do for yourself. Affirm yourself. Because the world will tell you all this bad stuff about who you are and what you will amount to, and it’s up to you to turn it around and find the truth. And there are so many assholes out there who will try to make sure you never find out this truth about you.

I will do the affirmations for me, and you do them for you. Promise me you will. 

They are actually reverse affirmations — the things I always thought about myself — followed by what is actually true about me.

1. I am not good enough. I will never be good enough.

I am actually pretty great. I grew up thinking that there was something permanently wrong with me, awkward about me, whatever. I put everyone on a pedestal always, from classmates to teachers to strangers, and I couldn’t look anyone in the eye. They have their shit together, and it’s all I can do to get up in the morning and brush my hair. This is what my brain always told me as a teenager, and then as an adult. This is a lie. What is true is this: when I do my best, it is, by definition, good enough. Because I cannot do better. And that same personal struggle is going on in most people, just behind the curtain. I’ve never met a person who thought they were good enough, always. I have singular talents that have begun to manifest themselves when I began to believe in myself, and they don’t need to be compared with anyone else’s talents. They are mine, and they can’t be taken from me.

Here I am yesterday in David Levithan’s Prius, with David, Rainbow Rowell, Paul Rudnick, and Elliot Schrefer.

 

First of all: wow. Quite the car full of talent, smarts, cleverness, you name it, right? David is the voice of a gay generation, and beautifully so. Rainbow is quickly becoming John Green, and rightfully so. Elliot is a National Book Award finalist. Paul wrote one of the funniest movies of the last two decades (In & Out), and one of the most moving plays (Jeffrey). Can I just tell you that the jokes in this car were coming kinda fast and furious? I mean, like pinball fast. Like nothing I’ve ever seen. And the truth is I can do that. I can hang. Just being me, I can hang. The little scared boy who thought he was worse than everyone else didn’t see that one coming.

2. I am ugly.

There’s inner beauty and outer beauty. I happened to go to a high school with some of the most beautiful people in the world. Kids of the extremely wealthy. Great genes. Think Gossip Girls. I went to those schools, actually, and I always felt horribly ugly in comparison to others. Compare and despair, they say.

This is me and my husband, Chuck, on the night of our wedding. Is my nose too big? Could I have bigger muscles? Is my face getting pudgy? WHO THE F*** CARES??? Look how cute that guy is! And by that guy, I mean MY guy, Chuck, the one on the left. He thinks I’m the most beautiful man in the universe, so why do I need to care how I match up against the most (outwardly) beautiful men in the world? That’s not a comparison that is going to help me in any way. And look in my eyes. How happy is that guy? Happiness is very attractive. 

You may be fat, acne-pocked, less blond than you wish, too blond, too white, too black, not black enough, have a face that’s too big for your body, a body too big or your face, a huge honker (nose, I mean, not boobs), too (or two) huge honkers (breasts) that you wish were smaller, whatever. I felt at least five of those things. Learn to worship whatcha got. The more you embrace the individual beauty you possess, the more that will translate to others, and that will lead you to the one (or, hell, the three, I don’t know!) who will find you more beautiful than anyone else in the world. And vice versa.

3. I always screw everything up.

This one has followed me around all my life. My brother and I have a joke from just a couple years ago. I was working for him, and I used to say, as a joke, “I’ve ruined everything.” It was like a verbal tic. We all know that underneath every joke is a kernel of truth. I always felt that I was a ruiner of things, and the reasons for that are many and personal, too personal even for this blog posting.

The truth is that I am human. I screw SOME things up, SOMETIMES. As a human, I am prone to folly, whether that means saying the utter wrong thing in front of people I’m trying to impress, or tripping while walking down the street, or farting on an elevator. Are these things we should aspire to? No. Might they happen sometimes? Yes, though with the last one, we should definitely endeavor not to do that if we can at all help it.

Here is a picture of me reading at Brookline Booksmith yesterday with Rainbow Rowell, David Levithan, and Paul Rudnick:

For so many years, I chastised myself for screwing up my career. Everyone else after college got steady jobs and I didn’t. I bounced around a lot. I didn’t stick to anything. I was lazy. I was a loser. I had good opportunities, and I flubbed them. These are the thoughts I had all my life about who I am/was, and those are powerful things to say to one’s self, aren’t they?

Yesterday, I spoke in front of 400 people in the afternoon, signed some books, and then I read in front of 150-200 more folks and signed some more books. Do I know exactly how I got from Point A to Point B? No, I do not. It’s hard to say, really, what the defining choices have been in my life to this point, and the places where I might have made (better?) choices. What I know is that here I am. I am doing me, and I do it very well, and if indeed I screwed everything up all my life, I screwed them up wonderfully. Do yourself a favor and stop telling yourself that you’re screwing up, because the truth is you have no bloody idea if you’re screwing up or not. You may think you know, but we lack the foresight to know what we need to do at any moment to get from A to B. Do your best, and be good to yourself. The rest will work itself out.

I could go on and on. I just want you to know that I am you. You are me. We are we. There is not a nasty thought you’ve thought about yourself that I haven’t thought about myself. You don’t have any secret thoughts that are more deplorable than mine. That’s just part of life, the whole not being perfect thing. Cherish it all because it’s what you have. I never thought I’d feel this way, but I am so damn grateful for my life. Every part of it.

Love you.

 

 

“Marry Me Bill…”

Seven years ago, in September of 2006, Chuck and I had a civil union in Stowe, Vermont.

As Chuck eloquently put it (think Ben in Openly Straight), the civil union meant we were nearly married, any time we happened to be in Vermont. 

This was us seven years ago at the ceremony.

 

Seven years later, because we can, Chuck and I are making our union official in the eyes of the government. On Saturday, Nov. 16, we are getting married!

It’s a small ceremony. Including us and the person marrying us (Famous Author Rob Byrnes), there will be six of us in Central Park. We felt it didn’t make sense to have another huge event, since the one we had seven years ago is so firmly entrenched in our memory as our “marriage,” even if the IRS didn’t see it that way. 

That said, in recent days I’ve been overwhelmed with a feeling that I find it hard to describe. Pride? Gratitude? Jitters?

There’s simply something about the word marriage that changes everything. In a good way. For me, I mean. This is an institution that millions upon millions of humans have embraced, throughout history. By getting married, I re-commit to Chuck. But I also join the rest of the world, in a way.

I told you this wouldn’t make sense. I am struggling with the words. I wish I were a writer…

I will be married. Not partnered. Partner is convenient, because it allows listeners to decide the gender of my partner. They can also decide that I mean business partner. Not so in marriage. Marriage is not a business relationship. It is rooted in love. And when I switch, in four days, from partner to husband, it will feel odd to me at first. But it’s also good. Because as much as I am like Rafe from Openly Straight, and sometimes I get the gay fatigue and don’t want to come out to every person I meet, it helps me be authentically me to announce that I have a husband. I do. Or I will. 

And having a husband makes me no less of a man than if I had a wife. In fact, to my way of thinking, it hits my personal definition of man in several ways: I am accountable to another for my actions. I am connected to another and to the universe. I share my gifts with a spouse. I stand up and get counted, telling people who I am even when it would be easier not to.

So yeah. Bill Konigsberg gets married. I like the ring of it. I am humbled by it. It makes me want to be a better person.

My 16-year-old self’s biggest nightmare

I spoke at a great school on Friday. Sunrise Mountain High School in Las Vegas, with fellow authors Katie McGarry and Hannah Harrington. We did four talks in the auditorium, 80 minutes each.

It went really well. The kids were fun, asked good questions. Around the third session, however, I realized what was happening. I realized it as I stared out at the kids, waiting for Hannah to finish as I would go to the podium after her.

This was, in fact, the nightmare I’d had back in high school.

In that nightmare, I was forced to stand up on stage in front of hundreds of classmates, and, with all their eyes on me, I had to come out of the closet.

After I came out again in that third talk, I made the joke, but no one really laughed.

And why would they?

All these years later, every time I said, “I am also an out and proud gay man,” I got a huge ovation. The kids clapped and whistled and hooted. They also did so when, in each Q&A session, a student asked me if I had a boyfriend and I answered that not only do I have a boyfriend of 10 years, but we’re getting married in a couple weeks.

It’s a funny thing when you live out your nightmare, time and time again, and you keep waiting for the other shoe to drop. Because it’s so powerful, the memory of what i was afraid of. Everyone pointing and laughing. Being shunned, made fun of, beaten up after.

But the shoe isn’t dropping. There may be places where for kids that other shoe does still drop, daily, but often it doesn’t.

It’s true that a few kids came up to me and asked me whether I still got judged for being gay. I said “Yes, definitely.” They nodded their heads, because they know what that’s like, too. But I added, “That’s always going to happen. But we don’t have to focus on that, because there’s a lot of applause out there for being who you are, too.” And they nodded at that, too. Because there is for them, too.

Look at this, it’s SO AWFUL!

I like to surf the web in the morning. It’s just a thing I do. I like to know what’s going on politically, in sports, in the LGBTQ world, with my friends on Facebook and Twitter.

I’ve noticed a trend recently. And this isn’t a new phenomenon by any stretch; it’s just I’m noticing it more now.

So much outrage!

I’ve been part of it. Many days I’ve shouted out on social media about some horrible injustice that I’ve read about and want to share with my friends.

Read that sentence again. Think about that for a minute.

Ellen Degeneres has an old routine she does called “Taste This.”

This is what I’m saying to my friends when I do this: you need to be angry about this! This is terrible. Look at it!

And people do look, and they do get angry. How do I know? Because if the numbers weren’t there, the blogs and news sites wouldn’t keep serving it.

That’s basically the truth of our world today, especially our world on the Internet. And in the media in general. People want to see horrible stuff. Or at least that’s what we’ve come to want.

I went to one of the LGBT sites I go to most days this morning. This is what was on it:

-A story about how Fox News claimed an anti-gay hate group is a “well-respected Christian ministry.”

-A story about whatever garbage Rick Santorum is saying today.

-A story about a Christian group suing the London Transit Authority for having pro-gay ads.

There were a couple other stories, sure. But the vast majority of it was basically, “Look how many awful people hate us!”

And don’t even look at the comments. Outrage at Christians. Outrage at gays who are too sensitive. Outrage at gays who aren’t sensitive enough. Everybody is furious. I get it; I’m furious too when I read stuff like this.

I have coined a new term for this: Anger Porn.

I felt it this morning. How my blood pressure spiked as I read these things. I don’t want to read these things anymore. Not that I want to stick my head in the sand and not know what’s going on, but why do I care what Michelle Bachmann thinks of gay people? I already know. Why do I care if Pat Robertson has said something infuriating about whatever natural disaster has been caused by gay marriage? I get it. He’s an idiot and he hates us.

I want to live in a world where we focus less on what’s wrong with the world (hint: a lot) and more on what’s right (hint: also a lot). And moreover, I want to stop rubbernecking at Anger Porn. Because it’s me. I’m the problem. I’m reading those stories, giving those sites big numbers, thereby telling those who run them to continue to publish more outrageous stuff about hate.

Upcoming School Visit: Kennesaw State University

I have a bunch of great trips upcoming. For more information on where I’ll be, check out my tour page.

Today I want to highlight one visit that I’m especially excited to make: Kennesaw State in Georgia. In 2009, I visited Kennesaw with Laurie Halse Anderson and Ned Vizzini. This time, I’ll be making the trip alone, and as Kennesaw is home to one of the absolute best English Education programs, one that focuses heavily on young adult literature, I couldn’t be more pleased.

For more information, check out the Kennesaw Mountain Writing Project site.

Here’s the flyer. If you’re in the vicinity, see about coming to the reading on Tuesday night. I hope to see you there!

Los Angeles Teen Book Fest

So I’m off to LA for the Los Angeles Teen Book Fest!

 

This promises to be a great day of events. I mean, look at that list of authors! I’m especially excited to see my friends Ned Vizzini (It’s Kind of a Long Story) and Andrew Smith (Winger). I’ve worked with Ned once before, but Andrew and I have a friendship that has been, to this point, totally online. I am so impressed by his writing, and the fact that he is close with my buddy A.S. King tells me all I need to know about him otherwise.

I don’t mean to single anyone out, because, I mean, look at that list! There are so many authors who I truly admire who will be there. 

Here’s the schedule of events:

 

I’m on the 2pm panel “Keepin’ It Real” with Maureen Goo, Patricia McCormick, Ned and Andrew. Huzzah!

Then at 3, I’m on “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” with Josephine Angelini and Elana K. Arnold. Very intrigued by the possibilities for that panel!

I’ll be signing books at 4. 

If you’re in the area, stop on by! It should be a terrific event!

R U Coming Out?

I was interviewed recently for a terrific site called rucomingout.com. 

It made me think about stuff I don’t think about that much anymore, now that I’m a bit, shall we say, older… It reminded me of just how hard it is to take those first steps. 

I get emails all the time from people who are in the process of coming out, and I tend to say similar things in my responses to those people:

1) Good!

2) Before you come out, make sure you have a support system in place, and make sure you are safe and have a place to go in case things don’t go well.

3) It’s going to be fine in the end. You will be able to find, somewhere in this world, people who will love you for exactly who you are. Hopefully those people will be the people closest to you now, but if that turns out not to be the case, it’s not the end of the story — just the beginning.

I think these are solid points, but I realize I give them without always re-living what it feels like to be coming out. How scary it is to stand out on that ledge and wonder if it’s worth it. If being fully authentic is worth the possible repercussions with family and friends. And it is, by the way. But still, I need to remember just how frightening that was to me. 

It almost ended my life. It really did. Those who knew me back when I was a teenager know just how sad I was. How much realizing that I was different than my family of origin in a significant way simply destroyed me. I’m a sensitive bloke; but I think it would be hard for anyone who is being honest with themselves. At some point, those of us who happen to be LGBTQ have to look at this issue of authenticity, and damn. It’s rough. Even today, when it’s less rough than it used to be.

So anyway. To those of you going through that today, know that we on the other side are cheering you on, and that we have your back, and that we’re so Goddamn proud of you. Because we are.