Meet the Man Behind The New Gay Bestseller.

ChristopherStreet

Encountering the Cocktail Dandy

A Conversation With Ethan Mordden

"You know what gay writers do best? Feeling jealous of each other."

For three years, Ethan Mordden has

kept a column in CS, "Is There a Book

in This?," on gay life and love, told with a pungent wit and slashing insights. There was a book in this, for St. Martin's Press has just published I've a Feeling We're Not in Kansas Anymore, partly drawn from his column. This month, the book shot to the top of our best-seller list. I thought it was time for CS readers to come face to face with the debonairly irascible Ethan Mordden.

To that end, I wended my familiar way to his apartment, appointed in a mode that must be termed early-middle record store. There is as well a flourish of books, including 14 of Ethan's own (Opera Anecdotes has come out simultaneously with Kansas). As the shadows lengthened over fresh-peppered vodkas and slices of Ethan's unique pizza (the recipe for which happens to be cited in Kansas) we chatted into the surly microphone. During Ethan's years at CS, he and I have become comrades, and we spoke freely, quick velvet. We decided to run the conversation without expurgation.

TS

Tom Steele: This isn't an interview, it's a conversation.

Ethan Mordden: Good, then we don't have to sound organized. Why did you shave off your moustache?

by Tom Steele

I forget.

You look about eight years old.

I act about eight years old. I'm going to treat this like TV, where you have to do three controversial things in the first minute to get people's attention. What will you do?

Throw my drink in your face. And waste good Finlandia? My fans expect it of me. That's not really what you're like. Fuck you. What am I like?

I think it's interesting that everyone who knows you well comes to the same conclusion in discussing you, while people who meet you only once describe you wildly differently. One will say you're quiet and intense, while another will call you ebullient, and a third, incredibly, will say you're somewhat stiff.

Hold still. (Aims drink)

Well, what do you think you're like? I think of myself as Conan the Firbank.

You've got this weirdo address. Nobody I know lives in East Midtown Manhattan. Strange but true, a great combination. People live on the Upper West Side, in the Village, Tribeca, but no one lives amid the office buildingsAnd the hustlers.

Did I make the world?

Gay writers don't live in doorman buildings, either.

They call you "Mr. Tom" when they call up. Anyway, the point of living here is to be a mere walk away from anywhere I want to go. New York is a walking city, a textured city, a looking city. I'm not impressed by the ghettoization of gay culture, by those supposedly sophisticated gays who plume themselves on never going out of the Village. What do they think they have down there, Howe Caverns? That's not sophisticated, it's provincial.

One might say it's provincial of you to write so insistently about New York.

This is the cultural capital, the emergent city. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there has been no great school of gay fiction coming out of Columbus, Ohio. Most cities are where you just live. You just live. New York is where you happen, especially for gays. And it's the same in other countries-the cultural capital is where you meet other stimulating people, where you go to the opera, the cafes, the bookstores, the salons. In England, it's London. In France, it's Paris-there's no great school of writing in Nancy, in Lille, is there?

You must admit that the gay scene in San Francisco has a unique flavor.

in the new issue of

ISSUE 97 / 41

ChristopherStreet