GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE OCTOBER 13, 1995

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ABOVE THE FRUITED PLAIN

Not to stop you in midsentence, but-

by Aubrey Wertheim

I need a moratorium.

Our literary community is becoming a nuisance you can't put down.

I swear on some non-sacred gospel, every time the Religious Reich torches another Heather Has Two Mommies, ten more queer authors fire up their keyboards.

And once they do start writing, their output is so prolific I'm beginning to suspect they've been genetically altered, like high-yield cows or semi-automatic chickens.

At any rate, the time has come to turn down the volume.

Used to be a time when every title about us could fit on a tidy shelf with plenty of room left for stereo speakers, a trophy or two and that old cast iron bank in the shape of a dog act.

Now! Floor-to-ceiling libraries in every room. The overflow's cluttering bedstands, coffee tables, windowsills, toilet-tank tops. Auxiliary book units are popping up in garages and gardening sheds all over town. Boxes of treasured Olivia LPs and workout equipment gone by the waistline are being bumped and becoming yard sale fodder.

We got women's fiction, men's fiction, non-specific gender fiction, science fiction, crime fiction, romance (homo Harlequins), baby books, children's books, young adult (by and for), biography, memoir, gossip, selfhelp, art books, photo books, cookbooks, poetry, rational and crackpot cultural analysis, political diatribe, scientific extrapolation, legal guides, travel guides, health guides, etiquette, inspirational/astrological, what is known in publishing as "same-sex erotica" (purple prose), almanacs, anthologies, cartoons, humor, and, of course, that whole muddy area of Well-Meaning Straight People Writing About Us.

I am critically overbooked. This week alone arrived:

Six new queer bookstore catalogues (local, regional, national)

Mailers from book clubs:

1) Book Fair-ies (male titles)

2) The LABIA List (Lesbians And Biwimmen Into Authors)

3) Don't Judge a Book (transgender titles) 4) Leather-Bound (well, obvious)

n A reminder notice from my queer reading group: "Don't forget! Friday night we're discussiong Love Under the Mushroom Cloud (an oral history of lesbians who met and meshed working on the Manhattan Project; Dutton, 785 pages)!

A cheery printout from my neighborhood library: "Just in: 34 new L-G-B-T titles we're sure you'll find of interest."

The consequences are becoming dire. Recently, I uncovered someone new at my authors lecture series. Given considerable mutual reading interests, we decided to date. A poetry slam, a calligraphy exhibit, secondhand bookstore browsing the usual.

After a pretty stimulating bookbinding workshop, we turned to more gripping exchanges back home. Things were unfolding pleasantly; nothing pulpy-sort of Ann-Ricewriting-as-A.N.-Roquelaure. As I lay there thinking what a perky journal entry this will eventually make, it began to occur to me my partner was taking a more-than-usually-long breather.

I raised my effervescent head from my intoxicated pillow. I cast my gaze down there...

Where my budding lover should have been was...abookmark! And further down, on my big toe... a Post-It!

"Sorry. Couldn't wait any longer to find out how (some damn author's) latest ends. Can we pick this up tomorrow night same place?”

I call for the writers of this community to lay down your pens. Take a year off. Allow us— your red-eyed/dog-eared/mind-boggled readership to catch up, clean house, master speed reading and stop getting waylaid mid-lay.

You authors go off and gather material. Take a major journey-spiritual, physical or combo thereof. Engage in some massive research to shed lavender light on some undiscovered chapters of history or science or Our Identity as Americans (though don't expect federal funding).

On second thunk, show some compassion. Don't do anything that will eventually result in another line to read.

Take up flamingly unliterary pursuits. Develop painstaking non-linear art forms-Tibetan sacred sand painting, for instance, must be entirely destroyed shortly after completion.

Reintroduce yourself to your lover, friends, pet, neighborhood and/or biological family— if any of them will speak to you after what you've written. Go on an epic bender/binge/ pig-out and then into extensive treatment. Avenge yourself on abusive editors. Sandbag marginalizing mainstream critics. Burn Babar in the town sqaure.

Definitely stay off the Internet. Here's an other area where the community's gone wordcrazy. Hundreds of fledgling writers pecking out of their narrative shells, testing their syntactical wings. Word is no longer Out. Word is Ballistic.

It's a kind of high-tech campfire. The Homo Hyperspace Story Hour.

It's got to stop!

Sure, it's great when you realize there are now more queer words in circulation than ever before-and every moment, we ante into the pot another million.

out.

But I'm getting overwhelmed. I'm maxing

By even writing this article, I'm compounding the problem. I'm part of the glut. I have to demonstrate my ability to delete myself, quit right in the middle of this-

Above the Fruited Plain is a regular column by Aubrey Wertheim, a writer based in Oberlin.

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