Paul Monette: A Writer's Life
and After Life
An interview
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The situation is worse than before.
You mean worse than pre-plague?
Worse
than just a few years ago. What’s
uxurious doesn’t do justice to the new
happened more than anything is that things
Four Seasons hotel on Chicago’s North
Michigan Avenue. Inside the richly marbled have polarized.
Before Stonewall, homophobia was
lobby, well chosen antiques make subdued
entrenched. Now, these [bigoted] people are
statements of authority. The help is couneous
but never intrusive. Gaggles of grey-flanneled out spewing their venom. I just try to stay
men and women go about their business,
calm and say things like “Listen, this rage and
shuttling from silent elevator to muted
fear that’s coming from you usually comes
meeting room to tasteful multilingual phone
from the fact that you have someone gay in
bank (each phone equipped with matches,
your family that you can’t deal with. There’s
ashtray, notepad and pen, all courtesy of the
someone in the closet — a child, a brother,
management).
someone —jn d your cage is rattled about it I
Despite room rates that begin at $225 a
ask these people: “Have you talked to your
night, the Four Seasons has no trouble
children? Have you inculcated your hatred in
attracting affluent CEOs and power shoppers
them the same way?” You just try to raise it as
who only have to cross the street for
an issue of bigotry.
Magnin’s, Bonwit’s, Lord and Taylor.
Sometimes even people who like us, who
Bloomingdale’s is even less trouble — it’s
call into a radio station to say how much they
downstairs in the same building. In a meterial like gay people, will then say something like
sense at least, this is the best Reagan’s
“I don’t think my friend would choose to be
America has to offer, the quintessence of the
gay; it’s a really hard life.” I always say,
Eighties.
“Excuse me, if I had any choice I would be
It all seems totally different from a gay
gay. I like being gay. Gay is who I am. Gay is
activist’s existence — the world of ACT-UP
fabulous.”
rallies, constricted research budgets, medical
“Oh, it’s such a tough life.” Hah! It’s such
conferences, financial sacrifices and
a tough life to live in Ethiopia.
alternative politics. But writer/activist/gay
I don'~t normally like prepackaged
man Paul Monette knows both worlds
questions, but here’s one Crown [Publishers}
intimately. His publishers sent him to Chicago gave me that's good: "In general, do you
to promote his two newest books, the novel
support the often vehement strategies of ACT-
After Life and the 1988 memoir of lover Roger UP" ?
Horwitz’s death by AIDS, Borrowed Time,
which has just been re-released in paperback.
The Four Seasons has superior access to
media, so Monette stays here.
Inevitably, Monette’s 43rd-floor aerie has
a sweeping, power-and-money view of
Chicago’s Near North Side and Lake
Michigan. He greets me warmly —
remembers our previous interview two years
ago — and tactfully points out a factual error
made then (’’You flattered me by saying I had
written the screenplay for Predator. I only did
the novelization”).
Whenever possible, Monette swings the
conversation around to the politics of AIDS
and ACT-UP. But he’ll talk on almost any
subject and is always interesting. Our edited
interview follows.
How's the tour going?
The reception across the street yesterday [a
bookstore in Water Tower Place, an atrium
mall] was dismal. I signed maybe six books in
the whole hour. The experience at Unabridged
Bookstore [North Side, gay-owned] was
delightful.
It’s hard to enjoy the constant barrage of
radio interviews. I did a talk show yesterday
on [Chicago] AM radio. One person called up
and said “You’re abnormal.” But someone
else called in and said this was. the best hour
I defmitely support the “often vehement”
of radio he’d ever listened to. That’s because strategies of ACT-UP )laughs). I have a dark
Ted Lauderback [the host] was not afraid to
pessimism in me about the nature of the
talk about his feelings about achieving
plague and the course of it over the next
intimacy. It was a straight man talking to a
several years. I think the holocaust is going to
gay man about common interests, common
continue and that it will continue to devastate
conflicts. And that’s fascinating! Straight men the community the way it has because » so
and gay men should do that all the time.
many of us are seropositive.
/ agree.
Where I am a cockeyed optimist has to do
The only talk show I’ve turned down was
with gay life after the plague and the
one out of Berkeley. This station reaches way marvelous connections between gay men and
out into the hinterlands, and the calls are
lesbians within the plague. I think that ACT-
always so disgusting and filled with hate.
UP is one of the places that’s happened. I
There seems to be a lot o f unfocused
think the agenda of ACT-UP is already a
hatred in the country.
revolutionary agenda, already
BY
ALLEN
SMALLING
L
P AUL M O N E T T E
4
"Where I am a cockeyed
optimist has to do with gay
life after the plague. .
beyond AIDS: these young, fiery people who
understand their connection to issues like
women’s rights and abortion rights.
I support ACT-UP’s guerilla theater very
much. It is unfortunate that someone stepped
on the host at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. I do not
want to be accused of using the same tactics
of hatred against my enemies that they use
against me. For my purposes, that was going
too far. But, as Larry Kramer says, when
you’ve got 500 people at a rally you can’t
control what all 500 will do. This is the case
for pro-life rallies as well.
I’ll ask you a red herring question:
Supposing ACT-UP blocked a vital bridge
leading from one part o f the city to another
and because of that, an ambulance was not
able to get through and someone died?
Well — that would be tragic. Even without
that ambulance, that wouldn’t be doing very
good PR among the people. I think there are
ways of preventing that agenda that would get
people on your side, but ACT-UP is a
democratic organization and the general flow
of the organization has to do with
confrontation. I mean, there are really people
who wanted riots at the international
conference in June. If that’s where it goes,
that’s where it goes.
I feel there will be a coalition of rage in the
Nineties, and it won’t be just gay people
affected by AIDS. It thrilled me to turn on the
TV a while back and see the parents whose
children had died in the Lockerbie disaster
[midair explosion] challenging the
ambassador and calling him a liar.
So rage is a good thing, sometimes?
Yes.
How do you define "rage" ? It’s seen that
the word has been co-opted and used as a
buzzword of fashion. Nearly every big city has
a nightclub called "Rage," for example. What
does rage mean to you?
Rage means not being impotent Rage is
something that seeks articulation, and I hope it
seeks community. What we hope for in the
AIDS activist community is that rage will
seek political passion and political courage.
“What we hope for in the
AIDS activist community is
that rage will seek political
passion and political
courage”
At least we have some political freedom in
this country to fight back at our oppressors.
There were a lot of gay people in Russia
before the Revolution. We must never forget
that we are loathed as deeply on the Right as
on the Left; that the Communists and the
Fascists equally want to put the electric prods
to us.
Are you a libertarian?
No, but I don’t trust anybody among
politicians in making a coalition. I’m a