Gary Indiana

Michael: Where should we start?
Gary: Just read me one of the questions you wrote down.
I prepared for this interview by reading your essay ‘My Hole’ from ‘SLUTS’ edited by Michelle Tea.
What was in it? I forgot…
You say fucking someone in the ass is a metaphor for power relations.
Well, Michael, that’s because I don’t get fucked by smart people. My sexual partners tend to be much lower on the IQ scale than I am. I don’t want any competition. (laughs) You know it’d ruin everything…
Have any of your boyfriends ever been intellectually equal to you?
I went out with a few smart people. But, Michael, nobody’s smarter than me. That’s all there is to it. The only smart person was Werner Schroeter. I can’t even mention him without crying. I miss him… I went out with Werner for a long time. To me he was a genius, a god. I worshipped him.
I don’t know him.
You don’t know who he is?! He was a German director who was close friends with Fassbinder. Going out with Werner proved to me that I don’t want to go out with somebody smarter than me because my tendency is to want to be a housewife. And I have to fight that tendency with people that are smarter than me. But look, I’m old. I’ve had a lot of sexual experiences that didn’t fit into ‘My Hole’.
I’m sure, but in that essay you even admit that you’ve taken a foot in your hole? (laughs)
Well, yeah, I used to go out with this gorgeous, tall, Colombian guy. He had a huge cock, and he was… I just loved him.
Where did you meet him?
(shrugs)
Don’t remember?
We were just fooling around, and he asked if he could put his toes in my ass. And I said, ‘Sure, you can put anything you want in my ass.’ Then I realized I actually liked it. Is there something weird about that? I don’t think so.
Why not try everything? (laughs)
I really got off on it, and I’ve done it with other people. It’s not the first thing on my menu but…
…but it’s on the menu.
It’s something I’ll do.
Was Werner older than you?
By a few years. Our sexual relations weren’t that involved. I wasn’t his only person.
And he wasn’t yours?
No, he wasn’t. But in many ways, he was the center of my life for a long time.
There’s a line from ‘My Hole’ where you say: ‘I’m only into sex that has a possibility of opening a door into another world, the world of men I was never going to be.’ This statement stuck with me as I read your memoir, ‘I Can Give You Anything But Love’. Can you elaborate on that?
Everybody that you sleep with is some sort of revelation. Often it’s banal. You do find a lot out about people by having sex with them. Whether it tells you much about yourself or not is a whole other thing.
It does through your twenties and maybe early thirties, and then at some point it slows down. To learn from it, the experiences have to be more special or the people have to be more specific.
That’s probably true. I wasn’t always the bottom, but I converted to that at a certain point because I realized I like being dominated. I like masculinity as this thing that I don’t possess in any great degree, but with somebody else, masculinity allows them to use me like a rag doll.
You were kind of a perfect twink, no?
I was pretty, androgynous, and I was VERY available.
And did everyone tell you that you were pretty?
Everybody did, but I didn’t believe them. I never thought I was good-looking. Ever. It was only after I wasn’t anymore, looking back at photos, that I can see that I was pretty.
You didn’t have sexual confidence?
I didn’t have confidence because the milieu at that time was very much in favor of really masculine, Tom of Finland type of people.
McKenzie Wark, the Australian writer, once told me Tom of Finland ruined her sexual life.
I’m sure! It didn’t ruin mine, only because I continued to find people that wanted to fuck a twink. (laughs) But, yeah, I did okay.
You always got what you needed.
I usually do.
Your memoir opens with a description of how you started sucking dick in junior high, and you never felt shame about it.
I did do that. I was raised Catholic, but I never felt the slightest embarrassment or shame about sucking guys off. I really didn’t. I never believed in God for one thing. School, especially at that time, was hot because of the sexual repression. Guys couldn’t get girls because if the girl put out, she’d be ruined. The next best thing was having some fag suck you off.
You benefited from the repression.
I exploited it.
Were you bullied for being femme?
No. I was bullied for being a smart kid, and not being physically strong, or into sports. I was never bullied for being gay. I was much more stigmatized in that town for being smart, but I knew my intelligence was the one thing that was gonna save me.
Did you always know you were going to get out?
It was a tug of war between the security of family and wanting to be out in the world. I was terrified, really, to go anywhere further than Boston. Then at some point, I thought, ‘I’ve got to get away from this.’ And that’s when I went to LA. Before that, I’d actually gone to San Francisco. Trying to remember how that happened… Oh yeah! I was living in a kind of commune in Cambridge, and this guy that lived in the apartment upstairs was driving out to California and asked me if I wanted to join him. So that’s how I got to San Francisco.
You were still a teenager?
Yeah. And I found a room in a commune on Seventeenth Street.
That was during the heyday of communal living?
You couldn’t really call it a commune. Although I had crashed a number of communes that were more, you know, “commune-ish”. That place was more heterogeneous. Nobody knew each other that well. There were these crazy dykes that lived in the basement who were witches. I mean, they could make drawers fly open. I once drove to Sacramento with them. It was scary.

Did you think of yourself as someone that’s drawn to extreme people?
I didn’t think of myself that way. I’d just find myself in situations that were pretty extreme, like when these junkies would send me to the hospital to steal syringes. I’d be dressed in dowdy drag, and I’d just do it. I wasn’t afraid. I didn’t really think anything could ever hurt me.
And here you are.
I’m still alive.
And you lived through the period that killed most gay men.
When AIDS came, I was definitely afraid. I curtailed my sexual life. But in my early years, somebody had told me, ‘You could fly through a windshield and you wouldn’t get a scratch.’ I really took that to heart.
In the memoir, you describe your experience of being gagged, bound and left on a dock in the middle of a lake. You were only eight, and it was done by your camp counselors. Maybe that experience was so unsettling that nothing could ever scare you again.
Not much could top that.
That probably set your psychology for the rest of your l life. Not even being raped could shake you?
After I’d been raped twice, I wasn’t as traumatized as you may think. And it’s the truth. It was bothersome when it happened. (laughs) To say the least. I just left my body and floated up to the ceiling and I was looking at it from far away.
How did it feel to put that information out in the public?
Very strange.
Strange how?
My hope was that it wouldn’t allow people to explain me easily. I wanted to make a point that men can be raped as well because there’s still a belief that it’s not possible, unless you’re in prison.
You can’t rape the willing…
More like, you can’t say they raped you because you went to their apartment. ‘You’re a man. You could’ve fought them off. You could have done this or that.’ And it’s just not true.
Especially when you’re a tiny 19-year-old twink…
Especially when you’re 19, and you’ve already been raped by a Hells Angel at knife point, and then you’re at a psychiatric hospital and you get raped again by a male nurse. I mean…
And in the book, you say that it’s more embarrassing the second time.
I said it becomes funny after the second time. (laughs) It’s funny looking back. It wasn’t funny while it was happening.
The description of the Hells Angel rape is intense. I was reading it on the beach last week, and I wasn’t ready for it. You also don’t dwell on it. It’s succinct.
That’s what happened. What can I tell you?
Was it painful to relive it through writing?
No, I don’t feel anything about it. Nothing whatsoever.
Did you always want to be a writer?
Yeah, but I didn’t think it was possible. The encouragement I received from my family and everybody was, ‘Don’t be ridiculous.’
That was from growing up working class?
If you were from the working class you’d be lucky if you could get a plumber’s license. And my parents were hell-bent on making me go to college, but I didn’t want to because I still had this dread of being homosexual, just in the sense that the only homosexuals I saw at that time of my life were, like, really twisted.
Did you look up to any gay figures in your early years?
Absolutely not. You have to understand, when I was a kid the only homosexuals in America were Gore Vidal, Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams.
That’s not bad.
It’s not good either.
Now there are so many horrific gay role models. (both laugh)
Listen, I honestly don’t care. I don’t care about gay people. And I don’t care about straight people.
(phone rings)
Sorry. (on phone) Yeah, it can be either one at Chase Bank. Yeah. Okay. Right.
(hangs up) Sorry sorry sorry. That’s the one call I always have to take. When the corn god calls…
No problem.
I feel totally disconnected from gay culture. I always have. I never felt part of it. Why would I? I never wanted to be part of it. It never dawned on me as a subject of interest.
But you write so incredibly about gay relationships.
It’s the way I write about relationships in general. I never felt that I was included in a minority group. I know that I am, and I certainly defend other people on that basis. But as far as wanting to delve into the intricacies of the gay world of today or yesterday, it’s just of no interest to me.

Still, many people find your depictions of the gay underworld fascinating.
That’s cool.
(laughs) Have you ever been a hustler?
Yes, I was pimped out for my first consensual sexual experience. That’s how the rent gets paid.
What did you think at the time?
I really hope this will be over soon.
You didn’t resent the people who pimped you out?
No, not at all. This is the price for having a place to live, and for hanging out with these cool people. (both laugh)
You once told me about this bar, you said it was the first stop for guys that just got out of Rikers?
The name of that bar changed several times. Last I knew it was called La Flor. It was right across from the parole office.
That’s where you picked up trade?
I like ex-convicts. I like people that have gotten the bad end of the legal system.
Because they can fuck the best?
Not just that. They tend to be very very appreciative of kindness because they’re not used to it. I’m very kind to them because I’m very appreciative of what they give me.
Did writing the memoir make you see yourself differently?
One result of writing the memoir was a long dry spell of not being able to write. A writer friend, Lynne Tillman, said to me, you feel so exposed that you’re afraid to do anything. I should’ve written a novel instead, but the memoir is structured like a novel.
It has a poetic structure.
It’s a portmanteau. It’s not my whole life. It’s not the whole truth either. There are things that I’ve filled in just for the sake of literary economy, or whatever.
You’re almost too honest.
I don’t pride myself on my honesty. I just don’t know how else to be. I don’t know how to lie. I’m not good at it.
Would you ever use your talents to write something more commercial?
I’ve never had any commercial impulses or aptitude. I could do it. Absolutely I could do it, but only if I was somebody else. I’m not interested in that kind of success.
Was your book about Andrew Cunanan, ‘Three Month Fever’, your most successful book?
Maybe, but I sabotaged that book.
Why?
The publisher thought they were going to get a true crime bestseller. But there was no way I was going to do that, because I would’ve had to have lied like Maureen Orth did in her book about him.
What did she lie about?
She made up all this stuff about him being on amphetamines.
That definitely ended up in the show.
What show?
The Ryan Murphy one.
Oh, I never watched it, but I was told he stole a lot of material from my book.
I bet he did.
What am I going to do? Sue Ryan Murphy? (both laugh)
What was your impulse to write about Andrew Cunanan?
It seemed logical at the time. I had just done this thing about the Menéndez Brothers. And Andrew caught my attention long before he killed Versace. He’s a man of many faces and I thought that could be a book. I understand this guy. And I went to the same bars he went to on the West Side.
What did you understand about him?
His anger.
He was beautiful enough to be in the most elite gay circles…
But he didn’t have the money to really belong. And he always felt out of place. To cope he made up these stories. I could also understand falling under the sway of an older man with money. When I first came to New York, the first brisket that landed on me was the guy that wrote ‘Godspell’. (laughs)
And how did that go?
Not good. He wanted me to collaborate with him on a Broadway musical, but that never happened. He had this bevy of Broadway fags that’d sing show tunes around the piano. It was so nauseating, I can’t even tell you. (both laugh) And the funny thing is, I never asked him for a fucking thing. I never asked him for a penny, and these fags thought I was a gold digger. I was too clueless to be a gold digger.
What attracted you to writing about the Menéndez Brothers in ‘Resentment: A Comedy’?
There were times when I could’ve killed both of my parents.
Your parents came across as brutal in the memoir.
They weren’t brutal at all.
Really? There’s that line where you say that if you hinted at loving something, they would’ve run it over like roadkill.
That was a very posthumous observation. Looking back, I realized my parents were thwarted. They were fucked up by their parents, by the times they were living, and I must say, they weren’t unkind people.
Your mother found out you were gay because of your diary?
This is what writing will get you… I wrote about a boy and she wanted to call up his mother and tell her that I was having sex with her son, but I wasn’t. Fortunately, she decided not to call. It was weird for her to assume that. I resented her and I thought that the situation made her look stupid. And my mother wasn’t stupid.
Got it. What are you working on next?
I’m working on this film based on Balzac’s novel ‘Ursule Mirouët’.
Have you worked on films before?
Yes, dozens. I’ve acted with some pretty amazing directors, but I didn’t have big parts in them.
Any you want to mention?
No. (both laugh) The only one worth mentioning was probably ‘Terror 2000 — Intensivstation Deutschland’, which was the Christoph Schlingensief film. The main thing was that Udo Kier comes in with the machine gun and kills me.
Let’s talk about your book ‘Rent Boy’. My favorite line is: ‘You’ve heard 1000 John stories and 1000 hustler stories, and when you plow off all the bullshit, they’re a all the same. Every hustler is from a dysfunctional family and every John is lonely.’
I don’t remember writing that at all. I can’t remember anything that I wrote. I mean, I haven’t read ‘Rent Boy’ in 20 years. So when you read back parts of it, it’s like ‘Oh, okay, wow, I wrote that.’

It must be nice, emotionally, to have these memories completely preserved.
I guess. I don’t know?
It’s not why you do it?
Not to remember it later. I do it to get rid of the memories. Every one of us takes in so much fucking information. When you’re writing, somehow you have access to all this stuff. So you write it down, you write it out, and what comes from it is usually a surprise. I don’t know what I’m thinking until I write it down.
‘Rent Boy’ was written in like 1991?
I guess. I can’t remember.
In that period, you hung out with a lot of hustlers?
No. I had a lot of experiences with hustlers. I didn’t need to tap into their brains. A lot of them don’t have any. The character doesn’t realize how complex he is because he doesn’t know himself. That was the point of the book — he’s in constant motion. He doesn’t give himself any time to think.
And the different aspects of his life are compartmentalized?
I don’t know if he thinks of it as compartments. He just goes from one thing to another thing. He’s never alone. I got the idea for ‘Rent Boy’ by watching the movie ‘Shampoo’. Warren Beatty on that motorcycle, just going from one head to another.
In ‘Rent Boy’, you mention a sex club in Harlem. Was that real?
One time when I was really feeling incredibly horny, I went up to the baths in Harlem and hung around there for a few hours, and it was so depressing. These guys who were really burnt out and, like, on crack or whatever, would just come up to the door with their dicks out, and you’d think, ‘Oh my god. This is so sad.’ I didn’t have sex with anybody, but I figured if somebody did, they’d be even more depressed than I was when I left there.
And also, this passage: ‘I worship your ass, old man, every time I was inside you, the rest of time went away, and sometimes I even fucking believe in God and the way we could talk to each other in bed right after we came, that dreamy, quiet way we touch each other and say anything that came into our brains or nothing at all. I know you think you’re not pretty. That’s why you’ve been paying for it all this time. But to me, you’re a movie star.’ Like, fuck! That made me cry.
It made me cry and I wrote it. I got so pissed off at myself at the reading last Friday. I was reading from the memoir, and I just hit these passages. Oh my god. I suddenly choked up, and you can’t do this in front of an audience. I just was sort of overwhelmed suddenly by…Ferd being dead. There was a time in my life where I thought, ‘No matter how weird things get, we’ll have this.’
Ferd was one of the first people you met as a teenager when you moved to California, right?
Yeah, we met on a porn set.
Your relationship with him was a cornerstone in your life?
It was. I see that now. I didn’t see it at the time. I always just thought of him as a constant. Whether we were in touch with each other or not, I always thought he’d be there. But this is also what happens when you get beyond a certain age. I mean, we were still young when he died, we weren’t so young, we were in our fifties, but…
He died from complications…
He had liver cancer, but it was a result of AIDS.
Would you say he was the greatest love of your life?
(crying) I think he was… You would ask me that! I didn’t even realize he was that important to me until I finished the book.
How did the reading go otherwise?
Great. There was a really long line of people with books to sign.
The book was published in 2015. And now it’s just come out in paperback?
The publisher, Rizzoli, never published the paperback.
Now you’re reprinting it with a different publisher?
With Seven Stories. We relaunched it because it didn’t get to the audience it was supposed to. Rizzoli is a niche publisher for the art world, which I didn’t write the memoir for at all.
Do you have an audience in mind when you are writing?
I never have an audience in mind. Ever. I don’t care. One of my editors once said, ‘We have to think about the reader.’ And I said, ‘I don’t give a shit what the reader thinks.’ Bet they loved that.
Well, no, but they got the point.
You’ve written about avoiding societal and capitalist expectations in your sexual relationships — would you say that you personally live by these principles too?
Maybe not… If you pay for sex, then you’re already participating in a whole machinery. And I do like paying for it.
You do?
Yeah, that’s the only way you can guarantee that you’re going to get what you want, and it’s going to be over quickly enough that you can do something else afterwards.
(laughs) You want to be dominated, but maintain…
…control of the situation. Listen, if somebody wonderful came into my life that I wanted to have sex with and see a lot of — or see a little of — that’d be great. But at 74, people aren’t scrambling to sleep with you. I promise you that. No matter what Edmund White tells you, he’s paying for it. (both laugh)
Not even fans?
I’d like to see fans lining up to fuck me, but it’s just not gonna happen.
You must have had favorite hustlers?
The guy that I based ‘Rent Boy’ on began as a hustler situation. At first I was paying him to fuck me, and then it turned into a different thing, where there wasn’t money involved.
So over time it became…
Michael, I don’t know. Let me put it this way — it’s happened in my life. I can’t draw any conclusions from the way I’ve lived. Believe me, I can’t prescribe anything to other people. Everybody’s wired differently.
You have articulated that well in your writing.
What can I say? That’s the material I have. Part of the reason — even though I wasn’t aware of it at the time — that I put myself in some really extreme situations was so I’d have something interesting to write about later. Let’s see how far I can take this. Let’s see how far it’s going to take me. I might get killed, but maybe not.
You really are fearless. (laughs)
It all worked out in the end.
I like your pink socks.
Oh, thank you. They’re magenta.
Some extra faggotry for this interview.
Well, yeah…
I’ve enjoyed my summer of reading your work.
Oh, I’m glad. I do think I’m a good writer. That’s the one thing I have going for me.
You’re a fantastic writer.
Thank you, Michael.