Like much of gay culture, this conversation started in the bathroom. San Francisco authors Kirk Read and Matt Bernstein Sycamore are teaming up for a west coast tour. Read is the author of How I Learned to Snap, a memoir about being out in high school in Virginia. The book was named an Honor Book by the American Library Association. Sycamore is the author of Pulling Taffy, a ferocious urban travelogue of sex work, drugs, grandmothers and freaks, all rendered in Sycamore's scathing, hysterical style. Along with Gore Vidal, Sycamore was named the hottest novelist in Out magazine's Hot 100 issue. Read and Sycamore have performed together in the Neo Dandy Cabaret, an underground hit on the San Francisco theater scene. Before leaving on tour, they recorded this conversation.

Kirk Read: I decided to be an HIV counselor today. I'm taking a phlebotomy class so I can do blood draws and finger sticks.

Matt Bernstein Sycamore: I could do the counseling part in a second, but the blood…no no noooo. I worry I'd stick the needle in wrong and kill someone.

KR: I love blood. I'm obsessed with looking at people's veins.

MBS: Pulling Taffy starts in a clinic. The narrator's accompanying his friend to get her HIV test results.

KR: The narrator? Isn't that just you?

MBS: I like to say that the difference between autobiography and fiction is that autobiography is all lies. That's why I write fiction. How much of your book is lies?

KR: My book's a memoir, so technically it's non-fiction. I had to change a few things and do a few composite characters because the book deals with having sex with older men when I was a teenager. The men are still alive, so I had to consider their privacy.

MBS: One of the things I find sort of amazing about the response to your book is that you've been positioned as this gay role model, even though the book deals with some taboo subjects. How do you think that happened?

KR: I have no idea. I'm just as surprised as you are that high schools are ordering the book.

MBS: I was always a freak and an outsider and a faggot. For me, being queer has always been about challenging everything about the world I grew up in. Often I'm confused by people who come out but still identify with the culture they came from.

KR: I never really identified that much as an outsider. My coming out experience was more about being the first openly gay person a lot of people in my hometown had known. So I had a very non-threatening persona.

MBS: It's interesting that you and I grew up only a hundred miles from each other. We come from such different worlds, both in terms of our families of origin and the cultures that surrounded us. Although we both dreamed of escaping to New York.

KR: There's such a sense of playfulness and possibility in Pulling Taffy. It's almost like you waited until your twenties to have a childhood where things were fresh and uncharted.

MBS: The first time I ever felt young was my twenty-first birthday. Pulling Taffy, in a lot of ways, is a struggle against hopelessness. I've gotten a lot of great press, but some reviewers can't look beyond their views of right and wrong, especially with regard to sex work, drugs and sexual safety.

KR: Those are all topics that are easy to sensationalize and people forget that there are real human beings involved. I've done tons of radio shows where the only way the host could deal with the idea of older/younger relationships was to crack jokes or say "Eeeewwwwww!"

MBS: Were these gay or straight programs?

KR: If they're gay guys, they're grossed out. If they're straight people, they try to avoid it and I force it into our conversation. That's the dynamic.

MBS: Gay people are so desperate to attain straight privilege that they're willing to deny the obvious realities of their own life histories. How many fags out there had their first sexual experiences with older men?

KR: We only talk about what we have in common in terms of pop culture. Like we all remember whether we preferred Cyndi Lauper or Madonna. You side with Cyndi in Pulling Taffy. Most gay guys were into Madonna. And now poor Cyndi is on the Gay Pride circuit, bless her heart.

MBS: I couldn't think of a worse fate.

read another interview with Kirk and Matt

go to the Matt Bernstein Sycamore featured author page

read more about Pulling Taffy

visit the Matt Bernstein Sycamore website

visit the Kirk Read website

email Matt Bernstein Sycamore

email Kirk Read