Blackbird

by Larry Duplechan

  CD: You wrote to me that you enjoyed receiving letters from readers. What kinds of comments have you received? Do you respond to these letters, and if so, what do you say?

  LD: Well, first of all, it’s not as if I’ve been deluged with mail from adoring readers. I’ve only received a few letters, but they have all been very positive. Basically “I liked your book and I thought I’d write and say so” kinda stuff. I received one invitation for “a drink or something” the next time I’m in New York – I’ve never been to New York. For what it’s worth, almost all the men who’ve written to me are Caucasian (and mentioned the fact in the letter), and they tend to be about forty years old. So far, I’ve answered all my “fan mail” personally: I figure, they took the time, so why shouldn’t I? One man (a New Yorker) wrote to me, and I wrote back, then he wrote back and … well, we’ve been corresponding for nearly a year, and though we’ve never actually met, I consider him a friend.

  CD: Tell me about what you’re working on now.

  LD: Following a brief and abortive attempt at screenwriting, I have begun my third novel. What is it about, you ask? You would ask. Like most writers, I’m rather superstitious about any work in progress, so I’m not talking about it much. My party line for the moment is this: The new novel (working title: Love and Affection) is about three people – two men and a woman, all three Caucasian, just for the record – who love each other very much, and who over the course of the story, become a family. Vague enough for you? I can say, though, that the new novel is definitely not “Johnnie Ray Rousseau Goes to College” or “Johnnie Ray Rousseau Goes Hawaiian” or anything like that. And, unlike my first two books, it isn’t in the first person singular. I think I’ve pretty much established that I can write two hundred pages of entertaining monologue. I think it’s time to try something else. If only to see if I can.

  CD: I hope you’ll excuse me if I end with a personal but trivial question: In both Blackbird and Eight Days a Week, the narrator’s ideal man – “quite my personal cup of tea,” as it says in Eight Days a Week – is blond and beautiful. Is there a blond in your life?

  LD: My well-documented blond beefcake fantasies notwithstanding, the man in my life is a brunette. Brunet? He’s got medium-brown hair. (Could it be that Claire Booth Luce was right? “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” but “Gentlemen Marry Brunettes.”) Actually, Greg is an ex-blond. He was a tow-headed kid (I’ve got pictures!), but his hair gradually darkened as he grew up. But he has a very blond soul.

  Screenplay by Patrik-Ian Polk

  August 31, 2005:

  The following is an excerpt from an un-produced screenplay adaptation of Blackbird, written in 1994 by Patrik-Ian Polk, writer/director of the theatrical film Punks, and the television series Noah’s Arc. Being considerably younger than me, Patrik moved the story from the mid-1970s (when I was a senior in high school) to around 1990 (when he was a senior in high school). He also (quite inexplicably to me) changed my protagonist’s name to Randy Rousseau.

  This excerpt corresponds to Chapter 15 and most of Chapter 16 of the novel. While it is, for the most part, quite faithful to the text of the novel, I note a couple of interesting line changes:

  Patrik has “Randy” say, “Why do white people always assume black men have to be athletes?” An interesting question, but not one that Johnnie Ray asks.

  Where Johnnie talks about having bared his “scarred little soul” to Marshall, “Randy” of the screenplay refers to his “scared little soul” – I don’t know if this was a reinterpretation or a typo.

  Following a particularly emotional retort from Johnnie, I have Marshall say, “Anybody ever tell you you can’t take a compliment for shit?” Patrik changed the line to, “Anybody ever tell you you watch too many old movies?” Which I actually think is better.

  Again for Marshall, Patrick replaces my, “You’re beautiful, but you’re silly” with, “God, you’re beautiful,” which I don’t like quite so much.

  Perhaps most interestingly, Patrik’s screenplay omits both the pot-smoking and the sex.

  – LD

  INT. MARSHALL’S APARTMENT - NIGHT

  MARSHALL’S livingroom furniture consists of, among other things, a huge beanbag chair and a nice stereo. The rehearsal has ended, and MARSHALL and RANDY bid goodnight to ARNOLD, RAOUL and LIBBY. MARSHALL closes the door behind them and turns towards RANDY.

  MARSHALL

  I thought rehearsal would never end.

  RANDY, in anticipation of a passionate embrace, rises slightly on tiptoe and closes his eyes. Instead, MARSHALL leans down and kisses his lips quickly and softly.

  MARSHALL

  I’m so glad you’re here.

  MARSHALL, then, turns and heads for the kitchen.

  MARSHALL

  Let’s start cooking. I’m starved.

  RANDY follows reluctantly.

  SERIES OF SHOTS

  A) MARSHALL and RANDY in the kitchen preparing dinner.

  B) MARSHALL and RANDY sitting at the small table eating their spaghetti dinner.

  C) MARSHALL stacking the dishes in the sink.

  INT. MARSHALL’S BATHROOM - NIGHT

  RANDY rinses out his mouth and checks his face in the mirror. He takes a deep breath and exits.

  INT. MARSHALL’S LIVINGROOM - NIGHT

  RANDY enters. Soft MUSIC plays. MARSHALL sits sprawled out in the beanbag chair. RANDY takes a deep breath, strides across the room and plops down between Marshall’s outspread legs. MARSHALL slips his arms around Randy’s waist and RANDY settles back against Marshall’s chest.

  MARSHALL

  Hi there.

  RANDY

  Hi.

  MARSHALL

  (nuzzling his head)

  You smell good.

  RANDY

  What?

  MARSHALL

  I’m real glad you could stay.

  RANDY

  Me, too.

  RANDY lifts Marshall’s hand from his chest and slips it underneath his shirt. MARSHALL strokes his bare stomach.

  MARSHALL

  I like your body. It’s so solid. Do you play any sports?

  RANDY

  Not if I can possibly avoid it.

  MARSHALL

  How come?

  RANDY

  (sighing)

  I just never got into it. That’s all.

  MARSHALL

  Never?

  RANDY

  (getting irritated)

  Nope.

  MARSHALL

  Damn. With a body like this, I’da thought you were an athlete of some kind.

  RANDY

  (slowly and loud) Well, I’m not. Is that quite alright? Why do white people always assume black men have to be athletes?

  MARSHALL slips his hand from under RANDY’S shirt.

  MARSHALL

  Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything.

  An uncomfortable beat of silence follows.

  RANDY

  I’m sorry. It’s just that – Oh, God bless, this is so stupid.

  MARSHALL

  You just look like an athlete, that’s all.

  RANDY

  Yeah, yeah, it’s just that.… See, I’ve started working out this year because, well, because of Coach Newcomb sort of, but really because of – well, not to actually be athletic, of course, because I’m just not. What I really want to be is – well.…

  (spitting it out)

  Beautiful. I want to be beautiful, okay?

  MARSHALL

  What?

  RANDY

  You know: beautiful. Like a hunk. Like a jock. I mean, all my life I’ve watched these guys. Stared at them.

  MARSHALL

  Who?

  RANDY

  Jocks. You know – football players and baseball players and whatever.

  RANDY leans forward and props himself against his knees talking to himself as much as to Marshall.

  RANDY

  God, the energy I have wasted envying those guys, wishing I was l
ike them. With their broad shoulders and their muscles and everything. So sure of themselves. Hating them. But wanting them, too. Desiring them, you know? I mean, I know I’m not like them. I’ll never be like them, but I can try to at least look like them.… Beautiful.

  RANDY leans back into Marshall’s arms, feeling exposed.

  RANDY

  The end. Slow fade to black.

  MARSHALL

  Randall Rousseau, you are beautiful, you know.

  RANDY

  (Barbara Stanwyck)

  Sure, sailor, you’d say that now. Now that I’ve laid bare my scared little soul, and made an utter and complete spectacle of myself, I’m sure you feel quite sorry for me.

  (Bette Davis)

  Well, I don’t want your pity.

  MARSHALL

  Anybody ever tell you you watch too many old movies?

  MARSHALL jabs his fingers into Randy’s stomach. RANDY screams and leaps out of the chair and onto the floor.

  RANDY

  Don’t ever do that. I am so ticklish.

  MARSHALL

  (grinning fiendishly)

  Oh, are we, now?

  MARSHALL crawls toward him on all fours affecting a ghoulish laugh. RANDY crawls away backward crab-style.

  RANDY

  Marshall, don’t. I’m serious. Just don’t! Marshall, don’t you dare.

  MARSHALL is all over him, tickling. RANDY is completely helpless, laughing and shrieking and gasping for breath. MARSHALL suddenly stops. RANDY, eyes closed, lies on the floor with MARSHALL straddling his waist. RANDY opens his eyes just as MARSHALL kisses him very softly on the lips.

  MARSHALL

  God, you are beautiful.

  RANDY

  It’s probably getting kinda late.

  MARSHALL

  Yeah. I should probably be taking you home now.

  RANDY

  Yeah. I guess you probably should.

  (beat)

  I don’t want to go yet.

  MARSHALL

  I don’t want you to go yet. I wanted to show you something.

  RANDY

  What?

  MARSHALL

  It’s … in the bedroom.

  INT. MARSHALL’S BEDROOM - NIGHT

  RANDY wakes up with MARSHALL next to him stroking his face.

  MARSHALL

  Make no mistake about it. That was really good.

  RANDY

  Thank you.… Was it really okay?

  MARSHALL

  My dear, that was considerably better than okay. Where’d you learn that?

  RANDY

  Right here.

  MARSHALL

  You mean, this was your first time?

  RANDY

  Yep. With a guy.

  MARSHALL

  Wow.

  MARSHALL kisses RANDY long and hard.

  Interview with Larry Duplechan by Mark Macdonald

  The following interview took place in August, 2005.

  Mark Macdonald: As I read Blackbird, I was amazed by the freshness of Johnnie Ray’s voice, by the sheer honesty of his narration. Part of that is Johnnie Ray’s own artistic inspiration/inclination, but it’s his forthrightness and immediacy as a narrator that fascinates me most. Some people have speculated that his emotional accessibility is due to you writing autobiographically, but you negotiate his adolescent awkwardness and enthusiasm so well that I’m going to accuse you of writing “confessionally.” Not in terms of your overall experience as a kid, but in the details.… The beat-up Saab, Marshall MacNeill’s Native American ancestry, the drama group.… Are these details recycled from your life at all?

  Larry Duplechan: First off, thank you for the compliment.

  In the three novels in which I’ve used Johnnie Ray Rousseau as my protagonist/alter-ego/mouthpiece (Eight Days A Week, Blackbird and Captain Swing), I have taken a character who is (in most major respects) very much like me, put him into various situations, and let him (as we used to say in the ’60s) do his thing. Some of the situations are based on my personal life experiences, and some are not. Johnnie’s attitudes – likes, dislikes, pet peeves, romantic/sexual preferences – are probably 99.9% mine, at least the “me” that I was at the time each book was written, and not, please note, necessarily the “me” I was at the time the story in each book takes place. For example, I was nearly 30 when I wrote Blackbird, which is largely about Larry at 17. But some of what happens to Johnnie in his senior year of high school, didn’t happen to me until college, and a good deal of it never happened to me at all. Is it autobiography? No. Is it autobiographical? Yes, to an extent.

  In terms of the various details (physical and situational) in Blackbird: I feel that using real-life details helps give the work realism and dimension. For instance, the high school choir room milieu is practically a snapshot of the choir room at Antelope Valley High School in Lancaster, California (where I spent my junior and senior years) on any school day in the mid-1970s. But sometimes things I’ve lifted directly from my own little life, will strike a reader as far-fetched and contrived. My favorite example from Blackbird is the character of Carolann/Crystal, the girl with multiple personalities and ESP. That character is based on a girl I knew in college who really did have multiple personalities and ESP, but several readers (some of them reviewers) singled out that character as unrealistic.

  Marshall Two-Hawks MacNeill is based (again) on someone I knew in college: the first man I ever spent the night with. He was a grad student in Film at UCLA. He’s now a well-respected cinematographer with several Hollywood movies and indie films to his credit. I won’t name his name, because we’re not in contact and I don’t know if he’s out. Bob Saab was his car – he really did call it Bob Saab. But anyway, Tom’s a great big WASP. Marshall’s Native American ancestry is totally made up, a little something for him and Johnnie to have in common. By the way, I wrote the physical description of Marshall while looking at a photograph of Matt Dillon, so that’s who he’s supposed to look like.

  MM: Some critics of Blackbird have accused you of assimilation, apparently resenting your characters for not dealing more with race politics. The book is set in the 1970s, and most of the reviews were written in the mid-’80s. More recently, though, we have pop culture representations of gay, mixed-race couples (Six Feet Under comes to mind), and a spate of books by black authors looking at the phenomenon of men being “on the down low.” I wonder if you think the cultural and political climate has changed much (or enough) in the last twenty years for these early criticisms of Blackbird to have faded in intensity.

  LD: In 1986, when Blackbird was first published, I was one of very few black gay novelists published by a major New York house. It’s possible I was the only one, but I have no documentation to back that up. The ugly flip-side of having written the first black gay coming-out novel was that every black gay man wanted me to have written his story. And I could only write my own story. I was expected to represent all black gay men, and no book could do that.

  So, white men who slept with a lot of black men loved Johnnie Ray. Black men who slept with a lot of white men loved Johnnie Ray. Black men who slept with a lot of black men generally hated Johnnie Ray, hated me, and accused me of being ashamed of being of African descent.

  Now, my being of African descent is neither a source of shame nor a source of pride for me. Being black is not, in and of itself, an accomplishment. Like my being gay, it just is. Granted, like any human being, I had – and have – issues. Was I fixated on white men when I was younger? Yes. Was that entirely healthy? Probably not. But I have never set myself up as a role model, for black gay men or anyone else, and I’ve never set up Johnnie Ray as one, either. And I think a lot of people wanted him, and me, to be role models. But the fact is, I’m something of a neurotic mess, and so is Johnnie.

  And I certainly understand the desire, the need to have books that reflect your own experience. That’s why I started writing in the first place. Because in the early-to-mid ’80s, there were the G
ordon Merrick books (where all the men are white, and tall, and butch – the only black person was the maid), and the Lavender Quill Boys: Ethan Mordden, Edmund White, Andrew Holleran, those fellas. Very white, middle-class, New York City, summers at Fire Island. And that was about all. So I wrote books with someone like me as the protagonist, because nobody else was doing it.

  So when people came to me and said, “I wish you’d written a book about a black man loving black men,” or “I wish you’d written a book about racism in the gay community,” or whatever, my response was always, “You’re quite right – that book should be written. Go write that book.”

  So I think if anything has helped ameliorate my reputation as the Steppin Fetchit of black gay writing, it’s the fact that people came along who did, in fact “write that book.” Steven Corbin, Randall Kenan, Dariek Scott, E. Lynn Harris, and James Earl Hardy, et cetera, came along and wrote other kinds of stories about other kinds of black gay men. So I wasn’t the only voice anymore. That having been accomplished, some people have looked back and said, “Well, what Larry Duplechan did, he did rather well.”

  And for the record, I am no longer fixated on white men – though it might appear that I am, since I’ve been married to the same (white) man for nearly thirty years. But divorcing him in the name of political correctness just didn’t seem like the right thing to do.

  MM: I’d like to expand on a comment Michael Bronski made in his review of Blackbird for Gay Community News about comparing the book to young adult literature. The novel takes place in and around a high school, so in that way it is similar to a lot of young adult fiction, but in my reading Blackbird merely offers a glimpse at a stage in Johnnie Ray’s life, just as he appears in Eight Days a Week and later in Captain Swing. Reviewers who brought their own literary or political baggage to this book must have had an impact on you as an author. Was the life you created for Johnnie Ray Rousseau affected by criticism of your books? Was his character (your “alter-ego” as you have said) shaped by reviews or by editorial advice as the series developed?