Interview with Armistead Maupin

AE: You've been writing about gay lives for over thirty years. How has the gay community changed in that time?
AM: Everything has changed. I watched Brokeback Mountain and thought, ‘Oh my God' because I'm the age that Ennis and Jack would be if they both lived. Watching it, I felt happy I had made the decision to be out when I did and didn't waste any time at all.

The Internet has changed everything because gay people can find each other now instead of going to some crappy little bar somewhere and waiting for someone you like. There are ways to hook up, not just sexually but as friends.

Still, it saddens me the way so many young people are careless about barebacking and all the issues around that and the use of speed. I'm not prudish about these things. When it comes to pot, I'm an old druggie from way back, but I see people really destroying their lives, really reflecting a kind of self-loathing that's alarming after all of these years, and I don't think they've really reaped the benefit of the way the culture has changed.

All of us have to do the work. The culture can't do it for us. We have to learn to love ourselves on our own. It has nothing to do with anything out there. It has to do with what's inside.

AE: You kicked up a stir a while back that had to do with Starbucks. What exactly happened?
AM: A couple years ago, Starbucks asked me if I would contribute a quote to their ‘The Way I See It' series with sayings by well-known people on the cups. I thought really hard about what I would like to say to the world and I told them I would give it to them if they ran it word for word.

It was: “My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it for so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I might have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life is too damn short.” That's sixty words exactly, a grande-sized quotation. I think that they thought that the mocha was going to hit the fan, as it were.

AE: And did it ?
AM: It was immediately condemned by the Concerned Women for America. It's a very interesting organization. Most of them are men. The thing I loved the most about it is that Baylor University, the Baptist University in Texas, seized 500 cups from the local Starbucks on campus. The cups are not arranged by author so they had to pick the cup with offending quote out individually and destroy them. So I'm probably the only person in history who's been the victim of a cup burning.

AE: I would wear that distinction proudly.
AM: I was very proud of it. I was delighted.

Michael Tolliver Lives is available everywhere June 12th.

Dennis Hensley is the author of the books Misadventures in the (213) and Screening Party. His website is www.dennishensley.com