Confessions of a Queer, Catholic Nebraska Boy — PAPERBACK

Description

Tales of sex, drugs and rock & roll from a gay Gen-Xer! This candid autobiography delves into the traumas and joys of a multi-decade journey of self-discovery, from Catholic schools in Nebraska, to gay bars in Minneapolis, rock clubs in Boston, street protests in Portland, and ayahuasca ceremonies in Washington state. Detailed along the way are encounters with dozens of sexual partners, both male and female, and what they taught. In a case of life reflecting art reflecting life, the telling of the tale ends up shaping the direction of the narrative itself, leading to an unforeseen conclusion.

Content warning: graphic sex (including sexual assault), drug use, smoking, and profane language.

From the introduction:

The bulk of text in this book—61,828 words of it—was written in two bursts in 2021: during three weeks on a farm in Oregon in August, and a week camping by the Salton Sea in southern California, in November. Both sessions were all about spilling as much raw memory and emotion as possible without thought for overall order or form. My Patreon subscribers had access to this material as it came out in its original untouched state, not even spell-checked.

The editing process in New Mexico that winter entailed printing out the rough manuscript, cutting it up into nearly a hundred sections and arranging those into a cohesive whole. Here I rewrote, composed transitions and filled gaps, while taking pains to retain the original outpouring’s best feature, its candid quality.

The layout is not strictly linear, and the reader will need to skip back and forth to catch everything. I was inspired by the format of long-form articles in magazines and weekly newspapers, where insets and boxed sections are placed within a larger piece to call out certain points or to provide further detail and deeper analysis. The positioning of these various parts was carefully thought out, and physical proximity is intended to reflect relationships in meaning and theme. The layout is best appreciated by viewing each pair of facing pages as the basic unit.

The main narrative here, such as it is, is in a sanserif font. After-the-fact reflections are in italicized serif in grey boxes. Fragments, which include examples, definitions and asides, appear in the margins in a typewriter font.

This project is not merely a collection of memories, but a record of self-discovery and ultimately healing. Larger personal processes were unfolding for me in 2021 that were only somewhat, if at all, under my conscious direction. As told herein, timing and plant medicine were also major players.