Subtitled “A novel of sex, theft, friendship & musical theater,” gay humor columnist (The Gospel According To Marc) Marc Acito’s debut novel How I Paid For College (Broadway Books, 2004, $19.95), contains all of the above. It also contains outrageous situations, itinerant mothers and nurturing mothers, a father’s goose-stepping girlfriend, an appearance by the “Chairman of the Board” himself, and laughs along the way. Garnering rave reviews in the gay and mainstream press, How I Paid For College is also big-screen bound. With his full plate, Acito graciously took time out of his busy schedule to answer a few questions.

AE: In the event that you were working on both the column and the novel simultaneously, what was it like to balance the two writing projects?
MA: Exhausting. You see, not only did I continue writing the column while working on the book, but I was also drawing a comic strip, plus working sixty hours a week at a job I hated so much I wanted to chew off my arm. In retrospect, I’m not sure how I did it; I was totally sleep-deprived for about a year and a half. One time I actually came home from the grocery store and put a gallon of milk in the laundry room and a gallon of bleach in the fridge. But you’d be amazed at what you can accomplish in five-minute increments; I literally wrote this book at stop lights and sales calls.

AE: There is a tradition of contemporary, humorous gay novels by authors such as Joe Keenan, Mark O’Donnell, and Dennis Hensley, to name a few. Would you consider any of these writers to be an influence on your fiction?
MA: I think of Joe Keenan as my fairy godfather. Not only did his novel Blue Heaven influence the writing of How I Paid for College, but it also played an important part in the sale. You see, Chuck’s agent is Edward Hibbert, who is also an actor, best known as Gil Chesterton, the fussy restaurant critic on TV’s Frasier. Now, it just so happens that the head writer for Frasier was Joe Keenan, so when I queried Edward I mentioned how influenced I was by Blue Heaven. Well, Edward sent my book over to Chuck’s editor at Random House, who, as it turns out, was also the editor of Blue Heaven. The similarity caught his attention and the book sold in just two days. I mean, what are the chances of that happening? As for Dennis Hensley, not only am I fan, but I’m a friend, too. Dennis is the kind of funny that makes you blow milk out your nose.

AE: How I Paid For College has a farcical sitcom quality to it. Do you think that farce and modern gay life are well-suited?
MA: Cleverness seems to be genetic in gay men. Someone ought to do a study on it.

AE: Because of the novel’s setting and time-frame (end of high school, right before starting college) there is a young adult novel quality to it. Did the book start out as a young adult novel or was it always written in such a frank and sexually graphic form?
MA: Funny you should ask, because it actually started out even more graphic. My friends from high school and I think it’s a total howl when there’s a review that says the sex in the book is implausible, because I actually toned down our experiences for the book. But I wanted to be sure that this story had as broad appeal as possible—young and old, gay and straight—because the world of the “play people” was so special to me that I wanted to share it with those who weren’t lucky enough to experience it for themselves.

AE: On the subject of young adult writing--you will be judging Scholastic Books’ 2005 Scholastic Writing Awards. What are you most looking forward to about that?
MA: Hearing what they have to say. I’m a naturally progressive person—I never tire of discovering what’s next. That being said, I still can’t believe they even asked me. What were they thinking? It’s like getting Margaret Cho to judge Junior Miss.

AE: Did you have a Kathleen (mother of girlfriend Kelly) in your life?
MA: Too many to mention. It takes a suburb to raise a writer. I was lucky to have a lot of catchers in the rye who made sure I got out of adolescence alive.

AE: Are there other characters who come close to resembling people in your life?
MA: The family in the book isn’t my family—my parents are actually stranger than fiction, not to mention my biggest fans. But I wanted to write a book about a family of friends and to do that, the biological family had to be missing in action. The book is really my love letter to my nutty friends from high school.

AE: I’ve often heard people over thirty refer to the theater department as the closest thing they had to a Gay/Straight Alliance in high school and in your book, the “Play People,” as you call them are an example of how theater was the one place where the cliques could come together. Was that true to your own experience?
MA: Absolutely. The theater was a safe haven where we could be our most outrageous selves. I get e-mail every day from former and current theater geeks thanking me for “telling our story.” I especially like the mail from teenagers, which is always filled with exclamation points and emoticons.

AE: On your reading tour, is there one particular section of the novel from which you are reading or does it vary?
MA: Typically, I read the section on Creative Vandalism, because it’s the heart of the book. That’s why it was chosen for the animated excerpt, which can be seen on my web site, marcacito.com. When appropriate, however, I read the cunnilingus scene.

AE: Is there a movie adaptation of How I Paid For College in the works?
MA: The screen rights have been optioned by Columbia Pictures for Laura Ziskin, the producer of the Spiderman movies. The writers of the sequel to Meet the Parents (Meet the Fockers) are working on the screenplay right now. More dreams come true. My cup runneth over.

AE: Can we also expect to see a collection of your columns in book form someday?
MA: From your lips to God’s ears. Let’s hope so.

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