Guest Post: James Klise

Some books and movies take us on adventures, journeys to faraway places; but just as many (my favorites, in fact) entertain us by revealing truths about our ordinary lives—the basic truths about who we are.

It took me a while to discover some of the basic truths about who I am. Maybe this was because, when I was in high school in the 1980s, books and movies with LGBT characters were nowhere on my radar screen. Instead, on weekends, my two best guy friends and I sat around watching VHS copies of Thoroughly Modern Millie and Wait Until Dark, repeating lines by heart, gulping down vast quantities of diet Cherry Coke, and expressly not talking about who we might be. Often, on movie nights, we included the girls in our crowd, the ones we took to dances. I spent those four years wavering between a giddy cluelessness and blind terror. (Gee, no wonder we obsessed about those two movies! Folks, I’m here to confirm that if you glance back at your life looking for obvious metaphors, you will find them.)

Flash-forward: I went to college, got a clue, extinguished the fear, and came out. I became a writer and a high school librarian. And then, when I decided to try a novel, I wrote the book I needed to read when I was a teenager. Love Drugged (Flux, 2010) is a novel about internalized homophobia, a sense of dread and denial experienced by many young LGBT people. The panicky fear and confusion I felt when I was a teen.

It was a weird place to go, emotionally, “a faraway place” to be sure, after having been out for nearly two decades. Being in the closet means keeping secrets, making excuses, hapless romances with the opposite sex, and living a lie. Returning there brought back all sorts of forgotten anxieties. It was so strange: I had trouble sleeping while I was writing it, lost weight. My complexion, shall we say, suffered in the old familiar ways. To get me through, I included lots of humor—the same way I did in life all those years ago. And I felt such relief, at the end, when my freaked-out narrator made it safely to the other side.

I recognize that some readers and critics take issue with contemporary novels that present teenage LGBT sexuality as “a problem.” I can hear them saying, “Oh, honey, I am so done with that.” Lots of readers—understandably—want books that present queer sexuality as just another element in a teen character’s identity. I celebrate those books too, and promote them to students in my library. Like everyone else, I look forward to a world in which an easy experience for LGBT teenagers is commonplace.

At present, of course, we are not “done with that.” To see how far we are from being “done with that” in this country, just open the newspaper. I advise the gay-straight alliance at the high school where I work in Chicago, and I know plenty of teenagers who identify as LGBT. For many of them, until they come out, being gay does feel like a problem—a dark, horrible burden. For many of them, coming out feels like a risk with the highest stakes imaginable.

As their friend and ally, as a happily partnered, out-and-proud man, and as a writer, I’m grateful now to be able to give voice to the fear and confusion I felt as a teenager. Fear and confusion, I’m sorry to admit, that I had forgotten about for many years. For a long time, I enjoyed the luxury of being “done with that.” And then I remembered.

Conventional wisdom says that it’s easier for LGBT teens now. True, many straight teens are more tolerant, more sensitive and supportive than in the past. Most LGBT young people surely are not as clueless as I was at their age. At the same time, there’s added pressure now for these teens to identify themselves—an expectation that they should go from awareness to acceptance to the Pride Parade in about 15 minutes. That expectation seems both unrealistic and unfair.

Times do change, but I wonder if it will ever be easy to admit to yourself, much less the world, this secret that you feel different, in a deep, profound way, from the rest of your family and friends. It demands real strength of character to come out. It takes absolute trust in one or two people who can support you through the process. And it requires a heck of a lot of courage.

My hope is that my work (both in the library and on the page) will offer some young people the courage and the companionship to know who they are, as well as some basic truths about who they can become.

James Klise is a Chicago-based author. His short fiction has appeared in literary journals like StoryQuarterly, New Orleans Review, Ascent, Sou’wester and Southern Humanities Review. His essays and reviews have appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, Booklist, the Readerville Journal and elsewhere.

By day, he works as a high school librarian in Chicago, where he also advises a teen book group, writing club, and the Gay-Straight Alliance. Learn more about James and his novel at his website.

Related posts:

1. Guest Post: James from Book Chic
2. Guest Post: Lee Bantle
3. Guest Post: Catherine Ryan Hyde
4. Guest Post: Malinda Lo
5. Guest Post Julie Anne Peters