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How He Learned to Snap |
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An Interview by Jack Nichols
Jack Nichols: Here's a feisty writer, I thought, a real twenty-something wildman who can turn his dismay about those who lack training in the social graces into an occasion wherein readers get to roll laughing in the aisles. I decided to keep my eyes open, therefore, while reading your new memoir, How I Learned to Snap because I wanted to know which early influences had encouraged you to so wickedly poke fun at the expense of the cultural goosesteppers. It must have been to a great extent your Mom, I decided. Was it? You wrote there was the ability to shock imbedded in her sense of humor. Kirk Read: I'm definitely the proverbial Mama's boy. My mother helped me come out and was extremely supportive at every step. I grew up with a military father, so we were always hosting parties with generals and politicians and whatnot. Mom has this uncanny ability to take people off guard and shake them a little. She's irreverent and good natured, but she also likes to suck the hot air out of a room when things get too pompous. That's what I strive to do with my writing. Jack Nichols: One thing that impressed me about How I Learned to Snap was how you embraced the goosesteppers in Rockbridge County instead of rejecting them outright. That caring for them became particularly obvious as you described your foray one night into a cow pasture with those redneck boys. In the end, they'd stopped seeing you in one dimension only and they took you with them to join in their oddly absurd nighttime celebrations, bonding with them this way. I'd say that that particular empathetic embrace of yours is a very touching aspect of your way of seeing others and something for teens to consider who might be in similar circumstances. Although you live in The City today, your heart is still with those small town folks in Lexington, Virginia. That's one of the things that makes your book (called a 1980s comic and poignant reflection on growing up gay in the Bible Belt South) so very valuable. You wrote this book in part, didn't you, hoping with pizzaz to make suffocating boonies life for teens a tad easier? You write that you were atypical, but then weren't we all? If a rural-towned teen reads your book, I'd say he'll probably ingest a special kind of hope.
Jack Nichols: You know, when your Mom and Dad were arguing about your sexuality in front of you and she rose to your defense, just the way she said 'Duh' really said it all about her earthy awareness, didn't it? Kirk Read: That fight is such a vivid memory for me. My parents were in the kitchen screaming at each other about gays in the military several years before it became a big national issue. But they were really fighting about the fact that they had a gay son. I wrote down every word they said and it was one of the defining moments of my adolescence. Everything overlapped in that moment -- my identities as a young gay man, a writer, a member of the family, a Colonel's son, a Southerner…everything stacked up and vibrated in my pen. Jack Nichols: I kept wondering while I was reading How I Learned to Snap about those characteristics shared alike by actors and writers. Both groups, after all, are unafraid of being noticed. Far greater numbers of America's orthodox citizenry seem to be spectators instead of actors. In Virginia, only a few years ago you became an award-winning teen playwright whose work was performed in the state capital. This development somehow must have meant you weren't simply content to act out a script somebody else had written, but, perhaps, because you sensed the value of your own insights, you therefore took to writing your own scripts. Is that at least partly right? Kirk Read: To be completely honest, I started writing plays to get attention from an older man I had a desperate crush on. It took off from there. I was also a pretty terrible actor, mostly because the plays our school and community did seemed silly to me. They were big, old-fashioned plays where actors had to be really hammy. I just wasn't willing to go there. So when I started performing my own work, it all made a lot more sense to me and I could get behind the words. I love doing readings and do them as often as I can. I think that's where my theater background really shows. Not because they're about acting, but because I think it's a sacred thing when an audience and performer come together to tell stories. Holy, magical things can happen if the energy is up.
Kirk Read: I broke a window in Pat Robertson's childhood home. I was trying to hit the door and missed. I didn't even know it was his house at the time. I was just being a brat. He's such a freak. I'm an insomniac, so sometimes when I'm up late, I'll watch the 700 Club and call in to their prayer line and crank call them or speed dial them over and over to tie up their lines. Pat Robertson has a lot of blood on his hands. He's participated in the deaths of a lot of queer teenagers who've either killed themselves or died on the streets after getting kicked out by their "Christian" parents. If there is a hell, he's going to need lots of Aloe Vera for that sunburn. Jack Nichols: I confess you've originated and grown up in a geographical locale that's always been a magical region to me. Starting on Skyline Drive in the Blue Ridge Mountains, with my very first long-lived boyfriend, a sailor, we celebrated our honeymoon in October, 1957, exploring our then-newly-adopted state. It would be hard to imagine any place equal to those leafy hills in autumn. In the 1960s with Lige Clarke, driving across Virginia to his Hindman, Kentucky hometown, we passed many times through Roanoke. Then Norton…Beautiful, rolling hill country, far-reaching rural enclaves. I remember looking across grassy expanses from our moving car and wondering where, in all that rolling greenery, someone such as you might possibly be found. It looked so gay-bleak, and yet, only two decades later, you became galley-proof positive that there were not just contented cows in them thar hills. Reading How I Learned to Snap awakened me to a new generation of young people gay and straight. An happy-go-lucky 80's youth rebel came alive. And I feel immensely appreciative of that now, in 2001. About you, I thought that while you were you were admittedly atypical, you could, as a writer, really cut up the rug dancing across your pages and that this encourages even straight-labeled folks, you encourage them to use their imaginations and live a little. Kirk Read: I sure hope so. I get so frustrated sometimes when friends of mine get bogged down in the birth-school-work-death model of living. I wish everyone would be more impulsive and stir up more magic. This culture's very button down and grey. We need boys in sparkly nail polish, girls in green overalls, men skipping down the street holding hands, and women on streetcorners casting spells. More affection, more magic, more glitter, more creativity. I'm a double Aquarius, so my role on the planet is to free people. Let's play! Let's connect! Let's dance!
Kirk Read: I'm really attracted to guys who have done a lot of inner work. Guys who've really questioned all the masculinity bullshit and figured out ways to be tender with other people. I like guys who do volunteer work and some sort of community service. I think the mark of an evolved man is someone who has reached the point where he can accept his father energy as well as his mother energy. Someone who can be really loving to the lost kids we meet everywhere in life. Kindness. That's probably the biggest turnon in the world for me. Jack Nichols: Knowing early that you intended to write a book someday, you often used a wonderfully provocative journalist's threat in family spats: "That's going in the book!" I was wondering at certain points how you think your school chums and relatives will be taking your take on them? Frankly, I think you've painted a loving portrait of most of them all, wonderfully zany, to be sure, but loving, nevertheless. Have you had any trepidation about the post-publication visit home? Kirk Read: I have had a lot of panic attacks over this. A lot of my friends and relatives have read the book and really loved it. I'm nervous about going home mostly because I'll have given up a lot of my privacy. My adolescence, or at least parts of it, is out there for public consumption. And that's really scary at times. But it all boils down to fourteen year-olds in small towns. If they can get their hands on the book and it helps them even a little bit, then my being uncomfortable at my church's Christmas eve service is a tiny matter. Jack Nichols: You left The City, I believe, while writing How I Learned to Snap. I guess you felt you'd focus better on things in the countryside. Do you have any thoughts about big city virtues or those in small towns? Kirk Read: I moved to a tiny lakeside town in Northern California where rent was cheap and the air was clean. I love living in San Francisco. This week alone I've seen two art house movies, a concert with Tori Amos and Rufus Wainwright, and four amazing floors at the Museum of Modern Art. I love having access to all that wonderful culture. But I also adore the country and having wild turkeys wandering through the backyard. So the rest of my life will probably be balanced between those two kinds of living. Jack Nichols: How about a few words about drawbacks in the big city as well as those in small towns? What, in your view, are a few drawbacks of today's mainstream culture? Kirk Read: The main drawback of mainstream culture is that it's so bland and boring. Pop music is filled with tired romantic clichés. TV is unwatchable unless you completely veg out. Hollywood movies are idiotic. I like culture that makes me jump up and down with ideas and inspiration and challenge. I have rarely found that in the mainstream. And it's not about being a snob. But at a certain point, you have to accept that what goes into your brain is what comes out in your expression of who you are. So people who feed their brains a steady diet of "Seinfeld" and "Friends" and sappy romantic comedy movies are not necessarily going to be the most original thinkers. Look a little harder! Find underground culture - zines and websites and comic books and independent music and writing. It's all out there and it's much better soul food.
Kirk Read: I think our culture's fascination with sports is all about sexual repression. Fathers teach their sons how to throw a ball instead of giving them proper sex education. For children, organized sports is a replacement for the kind of loving touch that they desperately need and don't get. For teenagers, whose hormones are going through the roof, we've got pep rallies and screaming at games and all the drinking that happens afterward. And for adults, there are tons of bachelors who aren't getting laid, drinking beer with their buddies and watching sports. And sports bars. They're just pathetic. What's really breaking my heart is seeing so many gay bars with big TV screens. So people are standing around watching TV, zoning out just like they do in sports bars. Not connecting, not paying attention to the people around them. It's so 1984. It's such a big yawn. Jack Nichols: You came on your own to a realization, it seems, that being the youngest sibling in your family meant that your parents had learned to interfere less by the time you were born and thereby to give you more of what is called unconditional love. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said that "Unconditional love will have the final word in reality." Is what you're suggesting a similar realization? Kirk Read: I think Martin Luther King, Jr. said just about everything, didn't he? I was the youngest of six kids, so by the time my parents raised me, they'd really learned a lot about parenting. Their strategy was to give me a lot of love and freedom and get out of my way. Most parents and children fight about silly things like curfews and car keys. My parents gave me a lot of leeway and treated me like an adult who could make his own decisions. That's what I mean by unconditional love. They trusted that I would figure out who I was. That made all the difference.
Kirk Read: I think most Virginians are pretty reasonable people, contrary to stereotypes. Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell have made such cartoon characters out of themselves that they really don't have credibility anymore. They're like Louis Farrahkhan (check spelling!) or Bin Laden any other extremist hate monger. People can see that. As for the recent gubernatorial election, keep in mind that southern Democrats are kinda like Yankee Republicans, so we still have lots of work to do. Plus, the Republican candidate was a complete nutcase, so it's not like the state's electorate sent a swelling pro-gay mandate. Jack Nichols: You said one thing about Baptist drama troupes that was surely the truth, that without queers there's be no such troupes. Great Gay and great straight friendships are made in every production . When I was part of The Children's Theatre of Washington, I noticed how we actors/ actresses shared a real camaraderie. You seem to have felt that way too, haven't you? Kirk Read: Theater is an amazing place for people to form friendships. It's one of the places in our culture where there's a true sense of community, because people are coming together to form an intentional working family unit. It requires cooperation, leadership, encouragement, support, and trust. In an ideal world, there would be more living situations like that. Communes, for lack of a better word. Government really ought to be working cooperatively, instead of the backroom political mess we've got. Theater is a place where magic still flourishes inside a world where magic is increasingly rare and precious. Jack Nichols: Thank you, Kirk. I expect How I Learned to Snap to be a big hit. It should have an immense appeal-being backed by such provocative good humor as it is. You have plenty to say to everybody in this book, not just to gay teens. You've a written a love message from a gay American teen to his small-town neighbors. Its really very funny too. And I misted up a little at the end. Kirk Read is the author of How I Learned to Snap a funny memoir about being out in a small southern high school Buy a signed copy directly from the author at: www.kirkread.com |
Kirk Read 
Kirk Read: When my publisher approached me and asked me to write a book, I had a lot of freedom to decide what I wanted to write about. I decided to write about high school because I felt my experience had been so different from any of the coming out narratives I'd encountered. The typical story is usually about escaping the boonies and fleeing to New York, which I did as well, but I also go home 3 times a year to see friends and family. I always get excited about seeing the guys from the football team when I go out to the local bar. Those people are so engrained in my memory. They're important. You might as well take a deep breath and make peace with those memories and laugh about them. I started that process while I was in high school, which was scary at times, but also a lot of fun. I hung out with lots of different types of people, and on many nights found myself drinking with the county kids, cruising the strip in their trucks, listening to Hank Williams, Jr. I thought it was hilarious. For them, it was just a normal Friday night.
Kirk reads from How I Learned to Snap
Jack Nichols: You appear to me to have given some thought to the question, 'What Makes a Man a Man?' and I read how someone once described you in an essay publicly, defining what had cast you as a true male to him. While I wouldn't expect you to list all that can comprise your own such definition, what to you are a few attractive qualities or values you admire if you sense them in a guy?
Kirk takes a 'rest' 
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