Chicago, IL -
Dan Savage is the author of "Savage Love", an internationally syndicated, sex advice column that runs in more than a hundred newspapers in the United States, Canada, Europe and Asia. But Savage is more than just a sex columnist. In his native Seattle, Savage edits The Stranger, an alternative weekly. He is also the author of Savage Love (Plume), a collection of his advice columns, and The Kid, a memoir about gay adoption and gay parenting. Savage has contributed articles to The New York Times, Travel & Leisure, Salon, Nest, Rolling Stone, The Onion, and NPR radio's This American Life. Savage lives in Seattle, Washington with his boyfriend, Terry, and their adopted son, D.J.
I caught up with Dan Savage at the Miami Book Fair International, where he was promoting the paperback (Plume) edition of his third book, Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America. (buy book) A Savage response to the right-wing "virtuecrats" - Bill Bennett, Robert Bork, Pat Buchanan, Bill O'Reilly and "Doctor" Laura Schlesinger - Skipping Towards Gomorrah was widely read, though not by its targets: "The only real response I got from the [virtuecrats] was that they are not going to read the book. They were asked to go out on cable television with me and debate me but they all declined. Bill Bennett was busy at the casino, Rush Limbaugh was busy at the gas station where he was getting his Oxy-Contin, and Robert Bork was busy with his head up his ass to talk to me." Savage did go on the Bill O'Reilly Show, an appearance that Savage honestly calls "a disaster."
Savage was not surprised that some of the virtuecrats, like Bill Bennett or Rush Limbaugh, were caught indulging in their own vices. "Everybody has their vice," he tells me, "some pleasurable pursuit that other people consider sinful or a vice. And that we should all leave each other the hell alone. You know, I don't have a problem with Bill Bennett gambling. The deal, though is, if I am not going to make a big deal about Bill Bennett gambling he can't make a big deal about the things that I do that he disapproves of. I disapprove of gambling, but if Bill Bennett wants to blow millions of dollars like an idiot in casinos that should be his right. If I want to blow something else some other way that's my right."
Though conservative critics don't care much for his book - one of them called him "a liberal homosexual who wants to debase American society and force acceptance of his immoral lifestyle" - Savage admits that he got "one of the nicest reviews" in The Weekly Standard, an arch-conservative journal. And though Savage is both liberal and gay, it would be unfair to pigeonhole him or his book. As he reminds me, "Only one chapter deals entirely with a gay issue. The rest is all about immoral straight people. I am promoting immoral straight lifestyles here," he smiles. Skipping Towards Gomorrah was not "pigeonholed" as a "gay book:", nor is the book's readership strictly gay. "Straight readers these days are more willing to listen to and read and buy books by gay people. Look at Andrew Sullivan on the right and someone like me on the left. So my readers aren't all gay people.
In Skipping Towards Gomorrah, Savage wrote that "While the efforts of the virtuous to make their virtues compulsory haven't been successful . . . the virtuecrats go largely unchallenged in the public arena. The virtuecrats haven't succeeded in halting the sale of rap CDs, the giving of blow jobs, or the getting of high; they have succeeded in convincing us that no one has a right to challenge them." A year later, Savage believes the virtuecrats are still in control. "The virtuecrats have been very successful in framing the debate in such a way that you can't even challenge them, because then you're for vice. They just want people to be good but if you are going to argue with them you want people to be bad."
"One of the concepts I introduce in the book," Savage tells me, "is the notion of the ethical sinner. That all of us are sinners and all of us like to indulge and there are ways to indulge in the things that are naughty in a controlled, rational way with restraint and conscience. That's how people should sin. And, you know, you are not going to get a lot of time on Fox News or on CNN if you talk about the ways in which people should use recreational drugs or how to use recreational drugs without hurting themselves or anyone else. But if you want to talk about the dangers of recreational drugs and why they shouldn't be legal then they hand you the microphone."
Even so, there have been challenges to the virtuecrats' reign of error, and not just from Dan Savage: "There have been a whole bunch of new lefty books coming out by Molly Ivins, Al Franken and Michael Moore. Perhaps I should have waited a year and been a part" of this new trend. Three years into the second Bush Administration, "liberals are finally getting their winds. You see it with Howard Dean. It has finally sunk into our thick heads that, however ingratiating we are, whatever common ground we attempt to find with conservatives, they are not interested in finding common ground or working together. They are interested in slitting our throats and attacking. So it's better to be Howard Dean and give them something to attack you about. If you are going to be attacked for attacking the president you might as well attack the president."
As research for Skipping Towards Gomorrah, Savage traveled the country looking for examples of Greed, Lust, Gluttony, Envy, Pride and Anger. But for Sloth, the seventh deadly sin, he stayed home and smoked a joint. "Of course I was being lazy," he laughs. "I decided I would commit all seven of the deadly sins and I could not justify killing myself for Sloth. It would be antithetical to Sloth. But I did a lot of research for Sloth and I might not have left the house but I still worked very hard on that chapter. It was close to my heart, that chapter," he adds.
Savage angered a lot of virtuecrats with his chapter on Sloth, since it unabashedly advocates the legalization of marijuana. Savage notes a dissonance between many Americans, who would allow marijuana use under certain circumstances, and the Bush Administration, which is totally against any marijuana use. "Every time it comes up for a vote, Americans approve of pot use. There has even been a vote in Seattle about recreational use that passed overwhelmingly, 60-40, a citizen initiative to instruct the Seattle Police Department to make marijuana possession its lowest law enforcement priority. So if the Seattle Police Department is arresting more people for pot possession than for jaywalking the Seattle Police Department would be violating the law. They are losing the battle on marijuana because the facts and the reality of peoples' experience with marijuana are so out of step with the federal government's and state governments' rhetoric around marijuana. All of us know very successful people who indulge in pot occasionally. All of us know people who destroy themselves with alcohol. There's a disconnect between reality and policy that is untenable and will fall, like we've seen it fall in Canada and Great Britain and Germany and France and the Netherlands and New Zealand and Australia it will fall eventually here. America does not lead on freedom any more in the West. America lags behind, whether we are talking gay marriage or drug law reform. But we will catch up."
In his chapter on Lust, Savage wrote that he could not commit adultery because, according to a Baptist minister he consulted, he wasn't "married" and therefore could only fornicate. Even so, Savage is a self-declared "fan of marriage" who"would marry my son's other father, if that option were open to us." On the issue of same-sex marriage, Savage is "optimistic about it because marriage has always evolved and has always changed. Conservatives argue that you can't tinker with marriage; it is an ancient institution and if you start to tweak it would collapse. It's bullshit. Marriage is always allowed to change with society. Women were once property and they are not anymore. And that didn't destroy the institution of marriage. It destroyed some marriages - women aren't property anymore and you can't treat them like shit and expect them to stay forever. And that's positive. In some ways the divorce rate is a positive sign."
The Bush Administration, Savage notes, is "going to make a huge issue out of gay marriage. When your record is as terrible as Bush is on the economy, on jobs, the deficit, and the mishandling of the peace in Iraq, it's much more fun to talk about gay sex than to talk about the economy, the war, deficits, the destruction of the EPA and environmental protections. So, yeah, they are going to talk about virtue. That's their game. That's how they trick a lot of working-class white people into voting against their class interests by going about how scary gays and feminists and abortion are and how they are going to fuck your kids. So of course they are going to make an issue out of it."
Savage agrees that the recent Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas "was groundbreaking, and not just for gays. Lawrence overturned a whole bunch of heterosexual sodomy laws." Though doubtlessly groundbreaking and very satisfying, Lawrence only "confirmed the fact that gay people are part of this society and that gay sex is no longer this great unspeakable, dastardly, horrifying soul-shattering damnable act. Gay and lesbian Americans freed ourselves and Lawrence v. Texas confirmed that reality."
Though Savage writes favorably about pot use, swingers clubs, and casino gambling, he considers gay bathhouses "revolting"; which prompted at least one critic (yours truly) to call him, on this issue at least, a virtuecrat. Savage agrees somewhat, adding that "We are all hypocrites in some level. I think that allowing other people to do the things that make them happy doesn't mean that you have to smile at all those things. I think all drugs should be legalized and regulated. I don't think people should use heroin. I think heroin will kill you. I think crystal meth is a disgusting drug that makes you look terrible and smell bad and destroy your life. But, hey, if you want to do it you go ahead. But I have the right to my opinion about crystal meth.
So, yeah, I think bathhouses are a disgusting place. The point where you cross over to be a virtuecrat is if you try to shut them down. I am not trying to shut them down. I try to talk my friends out of going to them, especially now in Seattle where there's a huge syphilis epidemic that's soaring through the bathhouses. So I don't think they are wonderful places to pass an afternoon. But a virtuecrat would then try to pass legislation to shut them down."
For the sin of Pride, Savage went down to West Hollywood for that city's annual Gay Pride parade, which he don't think too much of. "One of the dogmas of modern gay life is the pride is always good for us, like vitamin C," Savage wrote. "The gay man who doesn't take pride in all things gay - without question, without thought - has long been accused of self-hatred. These days they're also accused of Demonstrating Insufficient Concern for Gay Youth. Gay Pride isn't a slogan anymore or a rallying cry. It's dogma. Gay Pride has become a sort of gay civic religion."
In our conversation, Savage elaborated on this. He agrees that "an annual cultural festival that celebrates gay difference and gay life has merit". On the other hand, Savage believes that "the Pride ideology is insipid and harmful and backfires. That is not the same thing as saying I don't think gay people should ever march down the street together or gather together and have a big celebration. I think we should. But let's call it what it is, it's a gay Mardi Gras, it's a gay party, it's a celebration of gay sexual difference. Because sex is what makes us non-straight people, so to celebrate gay difference you have to celebrate sex. So let's be honest about what it is and drop the whole ‘gay is good', ‘gay/lesbian brothers and sisters' crap, because that does more harm than good to gay people."
In criticizing Pride events, Savage also pokes fun at the GLBT communities' consumerism. One example of excessive consumption that Savage wrote about is a mail order catalog that featured "the Pride Plug, a fulfilling anal plug in the classic sensual shape . . . wear your Pride Plug proudly". As Savage says: "I wrote in the book that no one ever went broke underestimating the insecurities of the gay and lesbian consumer, because so much of the stuff out there that is marketed directly to us comes with the message that ‘It's OK to be gay. Stop worrying about it.' And for those us who don't ever worry about it, to walk into one of those gay Pride merchandise stores can be like being on the moon or something, going back in a time machine to 30 years ago. I think a lot of gays do spend too much of their disposable income on tchatkes and crap but, you know, they have the right do. So if plugging your ass makes you feel better about being gay, well then, go for it."
Though Savage is best known for "Savage Love", as the editor of The Stranger he writes about a variety of topics, from politics to public transportation: "People who are only familiar with me because of ‘Savage Love' think I am all about sex but it's not true. I write about all sorts of other things." But Savage enjoys his sex column, and hopes to continue it indefinitely. "I don't think I'll ever get tired of the sex. Who ever gets tired of sex? What did Socrates [sic] say when he was 80?: ‘At last I am free from the cruel and irrational master.' So maybe I'll stop when I'm 80. But a successful advice column is not something you just give up. Mine will be pried from my cold, dead hands."
Savage has been on TV's Politically Incorrect and radio's This American Life. But there is no possibility of a Dan Savage radio or television talk show in the foreseeable future. "I don't like to do radio because it's so ephemeral. I like This American Life because they are essays and you can hold on to those essays and the shows are wonderful." As for television, Savage admits that TV "people talked to me about hosting a reality show. I have no interest in hosting a reality show. None. So I said no. And TV people are kind of shocked when you say no. But I have a really swell life in Seattle editing my newspaper, writing my column and hanging out with my family. I don't want to live in L.A. and do crappy television."
Savage admits he's a fan of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, where gay experts on culture, fashion, food and wine, grooming and interior design helping clueless straight men. Savage himself has "been queer eyeing the straight guy in sex for 13 years. Straight guys write to me and ask me where the clitoris is, which is ridiculous. I think there should be a sex advice aspect to that show and I would do that. Some gay people have a problem with it - that it's a stereotype about gay men being effete or fashionable - but some men are those things. As Harvey Fierstein said about Jack in Will & Grace, some gay men are sissies and that's one of the realities of the gay experience. I think that we can scrutinize media representations of gay people less vigorously now because they are so many of them.
Savage is currently working on a fourth book, "about the house that I grew up in as a kid. I grew up in a two-flat apartment in the north side of Chicago where four generations of my family lived at once, which is rare for Americans, especially white Americans. It's different for people of color in this country but for white Americans to have a big, multi-generational household is rare." It will be different from Skipping Towards Gomorrah, just as that book was different from Savage Love or The Kid.
Speaking of The Kid, I closed my interview by asking Savage about his son D.J., the kid in The Kid. Like any parent, Savage is happy to talk about his son: "He's almost six and he's reading, which is a thrill for a writer. And he's a good kid. Like all five year olds he has his tantrums and their meltdowns. But he's a wonderful, thoughtful, boyish boy." And is D.J. aware that he has a famous Dad? "He has seen me on television. He knows he's on the cover of a book [The Kid]. And he knows that I work for a newspaper. But I don't think he understands. He knows what a book tour is and he resents them terribly, because I'll be gone for five or six weeks. But I told him the next book doesn't come out until 2005 and he can come with me. So that will be fun."
I caught up with Dan Savage at the Miami Book Fair International, where he was promoting the paperback (Plume) edition of his third book, Skipping Towards Gomorrah: The Seven Deadly Sins and the Pursuit of Happiness in America. (buy book) A Savage response to the right-wing "virtuecrats" - Bill Bennett, Robert Bork, Pat Buchanan, Bill O'Reilly and "Doctor" Laura Schlesinger - Skipping Towards Gomorrah was widely read, though not by its targets: "The only real response I got from the [virtuecrats] was that they are not going to read the book. They were asked to go out on cable television with me and debate me but they all declined. Bill Bennett was busy at the casino, Rush Limbaugh was busy at the gas station where he was getting his Oxy-Contin, and Robert Bork was busy with his head up his ass to talk to me." Savage did go on the Bill O'Reilly Show, an appearance that Savage honestly calls "a disaster."
Savage was not surprised that some of the virtuecrats, like Bill Bennett or Rush Limbaugh, were caught indulging in their own vices. "Everybody has their vice," he tells me, "some pleasurable pursuit that other people consider sinful or a vice. And that we should all leave each other the hell alone. You know, I don't have a problem with Bill Bennett gambling. The deal, though is, if I am not going to make a big deal about Bill Bennett gambling he can't make a big deal about the things that I do that he disapproves of. I disapprove of gambling, but if Bill Bennett wants to blow millions of dollars like an idiot in casinos that should be his right. If I want to blow something else some other way that's my right."
Though conservative critics don't care much for his book - one of them called him "a liberal homosexual who wants to debase American society and force acceptance of his immoral lifestyle" - Savage admits that he got "one of the nicest reviews" in The Weekly Standard, an arch-conservative journal. And though Savage is both liberal and gay, it would be unfair to pigeonhole him or his book. As he reminds me, "Only one chapter deals entirely with a gay issue. The rest is all about immoral straight people. I am promoting immoral straight lifestyles here," he smiles. Skipping Towards Gomorrah was not "pigeonholed" as a "gay book:", nor is the book's readership strictly gay. "Straight readers these days are more willing to listen to and read and buy books by gay people. Look at Andrew Sullivan on the right and someone like me on the left. So my readers aren't all gay people.
In Skipping Towards Gomorrah, Savage wrote that "While the efforts of the virtuous to make their virtues compulsory haven't been successful . . . the virtuecrats go largely unchallenged in the public arena. The virtuecrats haven't succeeded in halting the sale of rap CDs, the giving of blow jobs, or the getting of high; they have succeeded in convincing us that no one has a right to challenge them." A year later, Savage believes the virtuecrats are still in control. "The virtuecrats have been very successful in framing the debate in such a way that you can't even challenge them, because then you're for vice. They just want people to be good but if you are going to argue with them you want people to be bad."
"One of the concepts I introduce in the book," Savage tells me, "is the notion of the ethical sinner. That all of us are sinners and all of us like to indulge and there are ways to indulge in the things that are naughty in a controlled, rational way with restraint and conscience. That's how people should sin. And, you know, you are not going to get a lot of time on Fox News or on CNN if you talk about the ways in which people should use recreational drugs or how to use recreational drugs without hurting themselves or anyone else. But if you want to talk about the dangers of recreational drugs and why they shouldn't be legal then they hand you the microphone."
Even so, there have been challenges to the virtuecrats' reign of error, and not just from Dan Savage: "There have been a whole bunch of new lefty books coming out by Molly Ivins, Al Franken and Michael Moore. Perhaps I should have waited a year and been a part" of this new trend. Three years into the second Bush Administration, "liberals are finally getting their winds. You see it with Howard Dean. It has finally sunk into our thick heads that, however ingratiating we are, whatever common ground we attempt to find with conservatives, they are not interested in finding common ground or working together. They are interested in slitting our throats and attacking. So it's better to be Howard Dean and give them something to attack you about. If you are going to be attacked for attacking the president you might as well attack the president."
As research for Skipping Towards Gomorrah, Savage traveled the country looking for examples of Greed, Lust, Gluttony, Envy, Pride and Anger. But for Sloth, the seventh deadly sin, he stayed home and smoked a joint. "Of course I was being lazy," he laughs. "I decided I would commit all seven of the deadly sins and I could not justify killing myself for Sloth. It would be antithetical to Sloth. But I did a lot of research for Sloth and I might not have left the house but I still worked very hard on that chapter. It was close to my heart, that chapter," he adds.
Savage angered a lot of virtuecrats with his chapter on Sloth, since it unabashedly advocates the legalization of marijuana. Savage notes a dissonance between many Americans, who would allow marijuana use under certain circumstances, and the Bush Administration, which is totally against any marijuana use. "Every time it comes up for a vote, Americans approve of pot use. There has even been a vote in Seattle about recreational use that passed overwhelmingly, 60-40, a citizen initiative to instruct the Seattle Police Department to make marijuana possession its lowest law enforcement priority. So if the Seattle Police Department is arresting more people for pot possession than for jaywalking the Seattle Police Department would be violating the law. They are losing the battle on marijuana because the facts and the reality of peoples' experience with marijuana are so out of step with the federal government's and state governments' rhetoric around marijuana. All of us know very successful people who indulge in pot occasionally. All of us know people who destroy themselves with alcohol. There's a disconnect between reality and policy that is untenable and will fall, like we've seen it fall in Canada and Great Britain and Germany and France and the Netherlands and New Zealand and Australia it will fall eventually here. America does not lead on freedom any more in the West. America lags behind, whether we are talking gay marriage or drug law reform. But we will catch up."
In his chapter on Lust, Savage wrote that he could not commit adultery because, according to a Baptist minister he consulted, he wasn't "married" and therefore could only fornicate. Even so, Savage is a self-declared "fan of marriage" who"would marry my son's other father, if that option were open to us." On the issue of same-sex marriage, Savage is "optimistic about it because marriage has always evolved and has always changed. Conservatives argue that you can't tinker with marriage; it is an ancient institution and if you start to tweak it would collapse. It's bullshit. Marriage is always allowed to change with society. Women were once property and they are not anymore. And that didn't destroy the institution of marriage. It destroyed some marriages - women aren't property anymore and you can't treat them like shit and expect them to stay forever. And that's positive. In some ways the divorce rate is a positive sign."
The Bush Administration, Savage notes, is "going to make a huge issue out of gay marriage. When your record is as terrible as Bush is on the economy, on jobs, the deficit, and the mishandling of the peace in Iraq, it's much more fun to talk about gay sex than to talk about the economy, the war, deficits, the destruction of the EPA and environmental protections. So, yeah, they are going to talk about virtue. That's their game. That's how they trick a lot of working-class white people into voting against their class interests by going about how scary gays and feminists and abortion are and how they are going to fuck your kids. So of course they are going to make an issue out of it."
Savage agrees that the recent Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas "was groundbreaking, and not just for gays. Lawrence overturned a whole bunch of heterosexual sodomy laws." Though doubtlessly groundbreaking and very satisfying, Lawrence only "confirmed the fact that gay people are part of this society and that gay sex is no longer this great unspeakable, dastardly, horrifying soul-shattering damnable act. Gay and lesbian Americans freed ourselves and Lawrence v. Texas confirmed that reality."
Though Savage writes favorably about pot use, swingers clubs, and casino gambling, he considers gay bathhouses "revolting"; which prompted at least one critic (yours truly) to call him, on this issue at least, a virtuecrat. Savage agrees somewhat, adding that "We are all hypocrites in some level. I think that allowing other people to do the things that make them happy doesn't mean that you have to smile at all those things. I think all drugs should be legalized and regulated. I don't think people should use heroin. I think heroin will kill you. I think crystal meth is a disgusting drug that makes you look terrible and smell bad and destroy your life. But, hey, if you want to do it you go ahead. But I have the right to my opinion about crystal meth.
So, yeah, I think bathhouses are a disgusting place. The point where you cross over to be a virtuecrat is if you try to shut them down. I am not trying to shut them down. I try to talk my friends out of going to them, especially now in Seattle where there's a huge syphilis epidemic that's soaring through the bathhouses. So I don't think they are wonderful places to pass an afternoon. But a virtuecrat would then try to pass legislation to shut them down."
For the sin of Pride, Savage went down to West Hollywood for that city's annual Gay Pride parade, which he don't think too much of. "One of the dogmas of modern gay life is the pride is always good for us, like vitamin C," Savage wrote. "The gay man who doesn't take pride in all things gay - without question, without thought - has long been accused of self-hatred. These days they're also accused of Demonstrating Insufficient Concern for Gay Youth. Gay Pride isn't a slogan anymore or a rallying cry. It's dogma. Gay Pride has become a sort of gay civic religion."
In our conversation, Savage elaborated on this. He agrees that "an annual cultural festival that celebrates gay difference and gay life has merit". On the other hand, Savage believes that "the Pride ideology is insipid and harmful and backfires. That is not the same thing as saying I don't think gay people should ever march down the street together or gather together and have a big celebration. I think we should. But let's call it what it is, it's a gay Mardi Gras, it's a gay party, it's a celebration of gay sexual difference. Because sex is what makes us non-straight people, so to celebrate gay difference you have to celebrate sex. So let's be honest about what it is and drop the whole ‘gay is good', ‘gay/lesbian brothers and sisters' crap, because that does more harm than good to gay people."
In criticizing Pride events, Savage also pokes fun at the GLBT communities' consumerism. One example of excessive consumption that Savage wrote about is a mail order catalog that featured "the Pride Plug, a fulfilling anal plug in the classic sensual shape . . . wear your Pride Plug proudly". As Savage says: "I wrote in the book that no one ever went broke underestimating the insecurities of the gay and lesbian consumer, because so much of the stuff out there that is marketed directly to us comes with the message that ‘It's OK to be gay. Stop worrying about it.' And for those us who don't ever worry about it, to walk into one of those gay Pride merchandise stores can be like being on the moon or something, going back in a time machine to 30 years ago. I think a lot of gays do spend too much of their disposable income on tchatkes and crap but, you know, they have the right do. So if plugging your ass makes you feel better about being gay, well then, go for it."
Though Savage is best known for "Savage Love", as the editor of The Stranger he writes about a variety of topics, from politics to public transportation: "People who are only familiar with me because of ‘Savage Love' think I am all about sex but it's not true. I write about all sorts of other things." But Savage enjoys his sex column, and hopes to continue it indefinitely. "I don't think I'll ever get tired of the sex. Who ever gets tired of sex? What did Socrates [sic] say when he was 80?: ‘At last I am free from the cruel and irrational master.' So maybe I'll stop when I'm 80. But a successful advice column is not something you just give up. Mine will be pried from my cold, dead hands."
Savage has been on TV's Politically Incorrect and radio's This American Life. But there is no possibility of a Dan Savage radio or television talk show in the foreseeable future. "I don't like to do radio because it's so ephemeral. I like This American Life because they are essays and you can hold on to those essays and the shows are wonderful." As for television, Savage admits that TV "people talked to me about hosting a reality show. I have no interest in hosting a reality show. None. So I said no. And TV people are kind of shocked when you say no. But I have a really swell life in Seattle editing my newspaper, writing my column and hanging out with my family. I don't want to live in L.A. and do crappy television."
Savage admits he's a fan of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, where gay experts on culture, fashion, food and wine, grooming and interior design helping clueless straight men. Savage himself has "been queer eyeing the straight guy in sex for 13 years. Straight guys write to me and ask me where the clitoris is, which is ridiculous. I think there should be a sex advice aspect to that show and I would do that. Some gay people have a problem with it - that it's a stereotype about gay men being effete or fashionable - but some men are those things. As Harvey Fierstein said about Jack in Will & Grace, some gay men are sissies and that's one of the realities of the gay experience. I think that we can scrutinize media representations of gay people less vigorously now because they are so many of them.
Savage is currently working on a fourth book, "about the house that I grew up in as a kid. I grew up in a two-flat apartment in the north side of Chicago where four generations of my family lived at once, which is rare for Americans, especially white Americans. It's different for people of color in this country but for white Americans to have a big, multi-generational household is rare." It will be different from Skipping Towards Gomorrah, just as that book was different from Savage Love or The Kid.
Speaking of The Kid, I closed my interview by asking Savage about his son D.J., the kid in The Kid. Like any parent, Savage is happy to talk about his son: "He's almost six and he's reading, which is a thrill for a writer. And he's a good kid. Like all five year olds he has his tantrums and their meltdowns. But he's a wonderful, thoughtful, boyish boy." And is D.J. aware that he has a famous Dad? "He has seen me on television. He knows he's on the cover of a book [The Kid]. And he knows that I work for a newspaper. But I don't think he understands. He knows what a book tour is and he resents them terribly, because I'll be gone for five or six weeks. But I told him the next book doesn't come out until 2005 and he can come with me. So that will be fun."
