THE MECHANICS OF HOMOSEXUAL INTERCOURSE

I went to creative writing school as an undergrad with this guy who would later adopt the pseudonym "Lonely Christopher." He wrote these stories that basically no one knew what to do with—they were full of weird grammar jokes, sudden shifts of scene, and a kind of dream-logic that was sometimes funny if you figured it out, and sometimes deeply disturbing. He rewrote Stephen King's The Shining as a 100-page-long sometimes-abstract language program, started a novel that combined Dracula with the gay club scene, and drank way too much Ballantine Ale. Basically, he was the guy about whom everyone said, "Holy shit, that weird dude has some actual talent."

Now he's got a real book coming out, called The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse, on Dennis Cooper's publishing imprint, Little House on the Bowery, and is getting a bunch of rave reviews from people like Dale Peck, which is not bad for a 23-year-old who still drinks way too much Ballantine. His book release reading/party is tonight at Bluestockings Books, and after that he's going on a big book tour that includes a reading with performance artist Genesis P-Orridge. I swallowed my jealousy the other night and went over to his place, bought him a 40, and talked about how it feels to be all semi-famous and shit.

Vice: You went to school for writing and you produced a book of short fiction—that's pretty much what every writing student, in their ideal world, pictures themselves doing, right?
Lonely Christopher: I suppose so. When I was writing and thinking that I was eventually going to write publishable stories, in a way that was working against the attitude of writing school. It was sort of designed as a bit of a fuckaround, and a lot of the students were idiots, you exempt.

Thanks for that. Why is it such a fuckaround?
Maybe it's just an accident, I don't know. We studied under some really good teachers, like Joshua Furst, who used to teach at Pratt. He had a pretty defensible teaching model, which was he was going to take his students seriously, and whatever they were writing he was going to help them figure out logically how to develop that into something that worked.

I think writing school is very beneficial so long as you know what you're doing and you have enough focus as a student, but you do have to cut through some of the bullshit. A few professors, when I was learning how to write fiction, believed in my work and spent the time to help me develop as a writer, what I was dealing with a lot was—you know, I wasn't writing the kind of work they knew how to critique or that they even enjoyed and they said, "This is just too weird and not, ever, ever going to get published." And it's really easy to tell someone their work isn't going to be published, because 99.9 percent of the time you're going to be correct. Another thing about where we went was they didn't actually teach us how to behave in a publishing industry environment, like that's so unfeasible they don't even get around to talking about it.

Well, there was that one class where they told us that we would never get published.
I didn't go to that class. I went once, and there was an agent there who lectured us in a very condescending way about the publishing industry, gleefully, it seemed, crushing our souls. What she told us was that no one was going to respect our integrity as writers and if we wanted a book we would have to write a popular nonfiction book, and then people would start talking to you about your novel.

But you did get your fiction published, thanks to Dennis Cooper, right?
His interest in my work has obviously been life-changing. All of a sudden I had the interest of a relatively well-known established fiction writer who I had a lot of respect for. I mean, you wouldn't be sitting here asking me these questions if that turn of events hadn't occurred. So I'm really thankful for Dennis's support, and I'm happy that this book is out, because otherwise it would be sitting in a drawer and no one would be talking about it. It's been a startling experience having a conversation about my work occur in a room where I'm not sitting. That's definitely new to me.

How do you feel about that kind of low-level fame?
I don't know. My reaction vacillates between out-of-control pride and complete existential despair.

I mean, I don't think there's any special or inherent quality in myself that makes me any better than anyone else who has to make those kinds of decisions, and I've been poorly managing my life so far and I just happened to hook up with a really small but big enough publisher in Brooklyn, so I have a book now.

Well, in fairness, you're one of the hardest-working writers I know.
It's not to say that what I've been pursuing doesn't take a lot of work and sacrifice. I mean, I've been living a pretty indigent, despairing, bohemian lifestyle. I'm sort of embarrassed for myself the way I've been living. I don't know if this is something I picked up in school, but this tendency to be self-delusional and think what I'm doing is important enough to not have to figure out how to live in a very expensive city and try to make it work. Which it really hasn't been. I mean, I have a book, but the rest of my life is going completely to shit.

I realize that we might lack a certain perspective and people might find it foolish that we're talking so gravely about our circumstances when we're so young, but I don't feel particularly young.

That's fucking depressing.
I mean, I know I'm living like a child, but—

Like a drunk child.
Like a very drunk child.

HARRY CHEADLE

The Mechanics of Homosexual Intercourse Book Release
Blue Stocking Books
172 Allen St.
1/19/11
7pm