Cult of Jef

I was writ­ing on my lap­top in my dorm room when I heard the door open and a sin­gle roll of toi­let paper wheeled across the floor and stopped in front of my feet. It pretty much summed up the Lambda Lit­er­ary Foundation’s 2012 Writ­ers’ Retreat for Emerg­ing LGBT Voices: You nei­ther knew what would hap­pen next nor where inspi­ra­tion would spring from.

Pic­ture this–46 LGBT writ­ers from around the world come together on Amer­i­can Jew­ish Uni­ver­sity (AJU) cam­pus in Bel Air, Cal­i­for­nia to study fic­tion, cre­ative non­fic­tion, poetry, and young adult fic­tion for a week with Dorothy Alli­son, Cris Beam, Jew­elle Gomez, and Alex Sanchez.

I have wanted to study with Alex Sanchez ever since I fin­ished the first Rain­bow Boys book and went, “Aw …” I didn’t have a lot of expec­ta­tions when I picked up that book out of curios­ity, but I was amazed at how gooey I got inside after read­ing about the romance that devel­oped between the math whiz and the bas­ket­ball jock. I totally believe that there is now a par­a­sitic 14-year-old girl liv­ing inside of me and I’m okay with that. So when I saw that Alex was going to be teach­ing the YA sec­tion of the LLF Writ­ers’ Retreat, I sent in the first two chap­ters of the novel I have been work­ing on since Feb­ru­ary, and I was delighted when he selected me to par­tic­i­pate in his workshop.

You never know how those “cre­ative types” can be, so I’m always cau­tious enter­ing a work­shop set­ting. How­ever, I couldn’t have asked for a more well-suited group of fel­low writ­ers. I learned as much from read­ing their work and cri­tiquing them as I did from them read­ing my work and cri­tiquing me. Alex was a very gen­er­ous facil­i­ta­tor. In fact, he was so nice, I began to won­der if he might be, in fact, a pod per­son. As it turns out, he really is super nice.

My YA fel­lows are an extremely tal­ented group of peo­ple. Some of us have already pub­lished or are in the process of being pub­lished, oth­ers were just start­ing out. The sub­ject mat­ter ranged from migrant worker chil­dren to inter­sex and trans­gen­dered kids to more typ­i­cal teenagers try­ing to make sense of their sex­u­al­ity, fam­i­lies, and school. My cri­tique con­firmed what I already knew (the pro­logue, now mat­ter how pretty it sounds, has to go), and what I didn’t know (con­tem­po­rary YA read­ers are not inter­ested in read­ing about teenagers in 1985).

“Why did you set your novel in the ‘80s?” Alex asked.

“Um, because I didn’t want to write scenes about tex­ting,” I confessed.

In the end, I received con­fir­ma­tion that the major­ity of what I had was solid, so I can make some minor adjust­ments and have a man­u­script that is closer to being ready to query agents.

One of the most refresh­ing things about the retreat was hav­ing access to all of these incred­i­ble writ­ers. We work­shopped with them. We ate with them. We sat in on read­ings, pan­els, and lec­tures with them. (We did not, how­ever, sleep with them, so they did receive a respite from us.) One of my favorite moments was hav­ing din­ner with Dorothy Alli­son and dis­cussing North Car­olina bar­be­cue, pol­i­tics, and adult nov­elty items, just like I was hav­ing lunch with a friend or one of my neighbors.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of my room­mate, Miguel. Judg­ing from his bio and blog, he seemed a tad seri­ous. I was con­cerned that he might not be able to tol­er­ate my silly ass, but we ended up get­ting along fine. In fact, we found out that we were the same age and had actu­ally lived, at times, in the same town grow­ing up. How weird is that? We could have been in the same movie the­ater or fast food place at the same time and never knew it. We got in the habit of hav­ing long con­ver­sa­tions in the morn­ing after we woke up. He kept shar­ing all these incred­i­ble mem­o­ries from his child­hood, and I’d say, “Miguel, that’s a story.” And then I’d see this light go on in his eyes and he’d real­ize it, too. Miguel is going to have an incred­i­ble book when he’s fin­ished, so be warned. It was so hard to say good­bye to him when it came time to leave.

It’s amaz­ing how quickly you bond with ten strangers over the course of a week. We not only spent time together in class, but at meals, and we’d fre­quently gather in the com­mon room. Christina explained British col­lo­qui­alisms to us, and we explained all the weird things about life in the United States: “New Orleans is in Louisiana, which is east of Texas.” “In the South, every car­bon­ated bev­er­age is referred to as a Coke.” “Water sports may refer to a num­ber of sports that involve water, such as ski­ing, kayak­ing, snor­kel­ing, or also be an euphemism for uri­nat­ing on a sex­ual part­ner.” Beth shared about oper­at­ing her own farm for a num­ber of years and home­school­ing her chil­dren. Brid­get is an artist and healer. AJ is an actor and singer. Nina pub­lishes zines. Rachel used to own a book­store. Lydia knows some­thing about every­thing. (She is a librar­ian.) And Annamee­kee, a high school Eng­lish teacher, and I were sep­a­rated at birth, because we had way too many freaky things in com­mon, which included know­ing the lyrics to Salt-N-Pepa’s “Do You Want Me.”

I must say that one of the rea­sons the retreat went so smoothly was due to the efforts of Tony Valen­zuela, Exec­u­tive Direc­tor, and Jenn Reese, Pro­gram Assis­tant for the Lambda Lit­er­ary Foun­da­tion. Any time you had a ques­tion or needed any­thing, they were always avail­able. I’ve never been taken bet­ter care of. We also had quite a few laughs, too.

There are a ton of mem­o­ries that I want to share, but space–and the need to sleep–prevent me from doing so. How­ever, there is one mem­ory that will always remain very spe­cial to me. On Wednes­day after­noon, AJ, Alex, Annamee­kee, and I drove one exit down from the cam­pus and vis­ited the J. Paul Getty Museum. (It was designed by Richard Meier, who also designed the High Museum here in Atlanta.) It’s a breath­tak­ing set of build­ings filled with lots of nat­ural light and open spaces and stun­ning works of art. I was espe­cially excited about view­ing the Herb Ritts exhibit, as he is one of my favorite pho­tog­ra­phers. While we walked through the museum, I kept look­ing around at AJ, Alex, and Annamee­kee, and I thought, This is one of those moments that I’ll remem­ber for the rest of my life. It was such a pow­er­ful feel­ing that I swear I could almost feel all of the mol­e­cules in my body vibrat­ing. Then I locked eyes with Annamee­kee and I knew exactly what she was think­ing: “Omigod, I’m totally at the Getty with Alex @#%*ing Sanchez and I’m look­ing at pic­tures of naked people!”