Tag: computers

But there does come a time [Maroney says] when you really have to ask yourself why you have ended up alone.

Why have you? says our host.

I don’t know. But last night I was lying in bed, wondering, Who do I love? I mean whom.

That’s what I want you to write about, says the publisher. Even though gay men seemed to have stopped reading. Even though the mainstream publishers have given up on us, the bookstores have closed and the gay audience has gone elsewhere.

You mean movies and computers, says our host.

Yes. Before gay books, there was no place to read about yourself or your life. Then came “Will & Grace”—and all its spawn.

The publisher puts down his cocktail and says, “Will & Grace” killed gay publishing.

Everything in your country, says the British scholar, seems to end up a sitcom.

You’re right, says the publisher. How I hated “Will & Grace.” It was so L.A.—so vacuous and bitchy. It had nothing to do with our emotional lives.

But you have to appreciate the challenge they faced, says the young man from Miami. They had to satirize gay stereotypes they knew homophobes would take literally. They had to instigate a discourse within a heteronormative hegemony.

So not what you write, says the publisher to Maroney.

If you’ll forgive my ignorance, says the British scholar as he leans forward, but then I’m a historian, what is it that you do write?

Wistful longing, Maroney says.

Every writer has a tone, says the publisher. Maroney’s is regret.

But, Maroney says, regret is out.

Oh, says the scholar, and why is that?

Gay life is about different things now, he says, it’s about marriage, service in the military, adopting kids, “Will & Grace.” It’s post-gay.

And is wistful longing, says the scholar, pre-gay?

Yes.

But surely homosexuals have as much right to be wistful as anyone else, says the scholar.

Not anymore.

The wistful longing in Maroney’s books is about being homosexual, about the impossibility of love between two men, says the publisher.

Which is now considered retrograde, says Maroney.

Then why, the British scholar asks the publisher, do you want to start this company?

I want to start this company, says the publisher, because I like wistful longing and regret! Won’t you give me something, he says, turning to Maroney, a book of essays, your collected book reviews? I’d kill to have anything from you on my fall list!

But I don’t have anything, mumbles Maroney against the plastic weave of his chaise longue. I’m dried up.

I’d give you cover approval, says the publisher.

Thank you, says Maroney, but I just don’t have anything…to say, about love or anything else. I’m post-gay.

But your readers need something from you, says the publisher, your readers want to know what you’re thinking. Gay people need someone to describe this hopeless longing, this demented search for love!

Maroney lifts his head like a plant responding to sunlight.