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In writing "Phyllida," I tried to portray
Andrew as that kind of man, someone who
had no serious aversion to women, who had
experimented with women -- the "upstairs
maid" and women in brothels in his teens
-- but who preferred men for his partners
... until meeting that one special woman,
Phyllida. He would come to love her, not
instead of his male partners but in addition
to them.
Q:
What is it about men who are into other
men you find appealing?
A:
This is a tough question. I think they're
sexy. Part of it is I think I'm the female
equivalent of all the straight guys who
get turned on by "lesbian" porn. I love
thinking about, reading about, seeing, hearing
about, hot men having sex with each other.
But it's also a cultural thing. I'm attracted
to stereotypically "masculine" men who are
gay or bi, that is, "butch faggots." Michael
Musto's definition of a "butch faggot" is
a man who holds his own legs up. I like
the subculture, the language, the code words,
the rituals, the dancing, the leather. ...
The idea of being the wife or girlfriend
of a man who has sex with one or more boyfriends
is my ideal situation, provided he was honest
from the start.
Q:
You mentioned before that your first story
idea was for a lesbian romance. By the time
you returned to writing your storyline was
bisexual. Does this parallel a journey in
your own life?
A:
Yes. At the time of my first attempt at
writing, all my sexual experience was with
women. I thought it would be fun to take
a familiar genre, the historical romance,
and write a lesbian version. I'm sure lots
of books like that have been written by
now, but then it seemed like a new idea.
I was aware of also
feeling attracted to men, but didn't do
anything about it. I had hoped to become
a happily married lesbian with a couple
of kids, but "inconvenient" bisexual feelings
got in the way of that. Now my writing is
more about exploring my unfulfilled fantasies,
specifically my ideal bisexual man or husband.
I don't have such specific fantasies about
women. I find lots of women attractive and
I've had some very satisfying sexual relationships
with women. But I don't find many men attractive
-- not even all the gay or bi ones, although
that's a must -- and I haven't really had
a satisfying relationship with a man --
no offense to the guys I have been with.
They were completely straight; the problem
was me, not them. So at this point, the
writing is more fulfilling for me than the
men.
Q:
One thing about you is different from any
other writer I've heard of ... you dont
really have any fingers. Being a writer
is not what most people would think of as
a career choice for someone in your situation.
Were there any obstacles to overcome?
A:
I actually do have a couple of rudimentary
fingers. What I don't have is manual dexterity.
People are constantly surprised both by
what I can and cannot do. Normal people
don't have to divide all their manual tasks
up into mental categories of those that
require dexterity and those that don't,
so they assume I can do a lot of, for them,
easy things that are in fact impossible.
For example: putting my hair in a ponytail.
These same people are amazed that I can
do things that seem relatively difficult,
but are actually not that hard for me ...
like putting in contact lenses and typing.
Not very long ago most
newspaper reporters were men and most men,
including reporters, did not know how to
touch type. The two-finger method of typing
was well-known as an effective, speedy method.
It's what I use. I have two finger-like
appendages, one on each hand, and that's
all it takes. No grasping, no manipulation
of objects, just pressing keys.
In terms of being a
writer, the obstacles I face are those that
all potential writers face these days: there
are more would-be writers than readers.
Also, fiction of any kind is a hard sell,
which is why the whole James Frey controversy
arose. He originally tried to market his
"memoir" as a novel. That would have been
honest, but nobody bought that novel. Instead,
he sold it as nonfiction for big bucks.
Q:
After her marriage, Phyllida can only write
books because her husband allows her to.
What were the social conventions or laws
at that time that restricted a woman's ability
to become a writer? Who was able to get
away with it and how?
A:
Legally, women were treated as property.
A woman was under her father's control until
she married; her brother's if her father
was dead. She rarely could own property
in her own right. The social conventions
that affected women writers were simply
the same ones that created and enforced
the inferior position of women before the
late 20th century, and particularly the
rules of upper-class society. People didn't
crave fame the way we do, and they definitely
believed there was such a thing as bad publicity
-- almost any publicity, even for doing
something good, was considered bad, especially
for a lady.
Jane Austen (Sense
and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice)
published her six novels (between 1811 and
her death in 1818) not under her name but
as "By a lady," a fact I had fun with in
"Phyllida." Andrew reads Sense and Sensibility,
and mistakenly assumes it's his wife's work.
Austen was from the super-respectable middle
class, the landed gentry. She never married
and her family, whom she lived with, didn't
object as long as she published anonymously.
Upper-class people could
get away with more, as could the more cosmopolitan
members of London society, for example,
the novelist Fanny Burney -- also mentioned
in "Phyllida." Burney also started out by
writing anonymously but her identity was
soon discovered. She continued to write
under her own name but didn't marry until
she was 41 and already well-established
as a writer.
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The
literary quality of the writing was also
a factor. Throughout the 18th century the
novel was still considered an inferior genre.
Poetry and nonfiction were much more respectable.
Novels written by women were especially
suspect. An exacerbating factor was the
popularity of the genre of "Gothic" novels,
somewhat passˇ by Phyllida's time. She still
writes them because it's her style -- she
can't help it. But this genre was increasingly
a woman's genre, and was known to be full
of sex, horror, improbable plots, coincidences
and kinky romances -- all the stuff that
makes for bestsellers. Jane Austen satirized
this genre and the most famous example,
Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho,
in her novel Northanger Abbey. Mary Shelley's
novel Frankenstein (1818) was like
a last, superior gasp of this genre, and
of course, as the wife of a notorious, atheistic
Romantic poet who hung out with others of
his ilk - - like Byron -- she was not "respectable"
in the way Andrew would expect his wife
to be.
Part of the situation
in "Phyllida" is that Andrew is very typically
upper-class and conservative in his outlook.
Absolutely no relation to today's so- called
conservatives but I can't think of a better
word. Just because he's gay ... or bisexual,
actually, doesn't make Andrew a political
or social liberal. The last thing he wants
is a wife who makes a name for herself with
"disreputable" achievements. He's marrying
for a legitimate heir, so he wants a wife
who doesn't generate publicity. The fact
that he falls in love with her and comes
to admire her writing doesn't change that
fact, and by the end of the story he knows
he will just have to learn to live with
it. I figured that Phyllida would not be
able to preserve her anonymity forever,
especially if her books are so popular,
but that's an issue for any sequel to take
up, along with the much-anticipated and
lamented three- way sex scene between Andrew,
Matthew and Phyllida that never happened
-- yet.
Q:
You mentioned before that in the Regency
period, the way in which "gentlemen" spoke
and interacted with each other was very
different from the way they behaved and
spoke with "ladies." What were those differences?
How would that differ from today?
A:
One big difference was language. A gentleman
wasn't supposed to say even so mild a word
as "damn" or "devil" in front of a lady.
Slang, much of it from thieves' cant (slang),
was popular with some gentleman, a way for
them to sound tough and fashionable and
also to distinguish themselves from the
older fuddy-duddies who presumably would
not understand them. Obviously, gentlemen
wouldn't use any of this speech when talking
to ladies. In talking with each other, gentlemen
would have no need to censor themselves.
Most people spoke very
formally to each other by today's standards.
In "Pride and Prejudice," the parents in
the family refer to each other and address
each other as "Mr. Bennet" and "Mrs. Bennet."
Only after he has proposed and been accepted
does Mr. Darcy address the heroine as "Elizabeth."
We as readers don't learn Darcy's first
name until late in the story when he signs
a letter "Fitzwilliam Darcy."
During the Regency it
became fashionable for gentlemen to participate
in many of the activities that before then
had been primarily spectator sports: boxing,
driving carriages and coaches, and horse
racing. Men attended cockfights and prizefights,
and no lady would ever go to one of those,
whether she wanted to or not. It's hard
to overestimate the love of bloodthirsty
sports among men of all classes. Boxing
was bare-knuckled and had few rules. Gentlemen
wouldn't talk about any of these activities
with ladies.
In writing a bisexual
love story, I had this wonderful situation
of two separate worlds, coexisting but rarely
mixing except in formal gatherings like
balls, and in private parties of acquaintances
getting together for dinner or to play cards.
Ladies spent most of their time in each
others' company and gentlemen in theirs.
Gay, straight or bisexual people, especially
unmarried people, lived in a sex-segregated
world. For a bisexual man, it would be relatively
easy and natural to have his relationship
with his wife or mistress in one world,
and separately enjoy his same-sex relationships
in that world. His life might not be all
that different from a straight man's. A
gay man could mix with the straight world
as little or as much as he felt like, avoiding
the gatherings that would be arranged for
single young gentlemen and ladies to meet
under their parents' or chaperones' watchful
eyes.
The fun of writing it
was to imagine a man who didn't think of
himself as bisexual at the beginning. Andrew
is aware of having to be careful in speech
and behavior when he's with ladies, but
since up until then he has had no reason
to spend any time with them, he's out of
practice. He's constantly forgetting to
watch himself around Phyllida. He's like
a gay man suddenly entering this foreign
world of mixed society, men and women, and
having to recall all his rusty skills of
polite speech and restrained behavior.
A lot of my thoughts
on this came together from remembering the
fun I had hanging out with gay guys in college
and afterward, hearing their intimate, uncensored
talk and sharing in it. That's when I discovered
just how similar gay men are to straight
men in their outlook on sex and life in
general, and different from women. In today's
world men don't have to watch their language
quite so much as in the past, and women
participate in so many things now that they
wouldn't have been able to.
Q:
So have you thought about your next book?
A:
Thinking too much, maybe. I'm having trouble
deciding between a sequel to "Phyllida",
a "Phyllida" prequel or a bisexual Pride
and Prejudice.
Q:
Why Pride and Prejudice? Why not
Sense and Sensibility, for example?
Which is my favorite of the two.
A:
Because Pride and Prejudice seems
to have a bisexual story already there at
its heart. I wouldn't be adding a bisexual
romance, merely bringing out and making
more explicit what I think Jane Austen implied
in the original. Reading Austen's version,
it seems clear that the two main male characters,
Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley, can be portrayed
as lovers without in any way distorting
the plot.
Darcy is protective
and jealous of his friend and a large part
of the original story involves Darcy's thwarting
of Bingley's romance with Jane, the heroine's
sister. By telling the story more from Darcy's
point of view, I can let the readers share
in his sexual and romantic feelings for
Bingley, and perhaps make him more sympathetic,
especially as he begins to feel unsettled
by his own unexpected attraction to the
heroine.
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