Most Popular
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Barack Obama and Me
It was the year 2000 and I was a young hungry reporter in Chicago covering a young hungry state legislator
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Mescaline on the Mexican Border
Texas is the only state in the country where peyote is sold legally. Really.
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A Prison Cover-up During Hurricane Rita
For days after the storm, inmates in Beaumont lived without A/C, electricity or hot meals. Press releases kept saying everything inside was fine. Guards and prisoners agree — that was nothing but B.S.
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Little Bitty Burger Barn
"It's okay to be little bitty in the big city" is an apt slogan for this new burger joint, where sliders rule
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Ghost Town CFS: Carriage House Cafe
Step back in time — to a spooky old carriage barn with a monster chicken-fried steak
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Barack Obama and Me (251)
It was the year 2000 and I was a young hungry reporter in Chicago covering a young hungry state legislator
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A Prison Cover-up During Hurricane Rita (19)
For days after the storm, inmates in Beaumont lived without A/C, electricity or hot meals. Press releases kept saying everything inside was fine. Guards and prisoners agree — that was nothing but B.S.
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Save Lobo: A Siberian Husky Mix is Sentenced to Die (28)
Why? Because he's big and intimidating and because one family complained about him over and over again
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Are You Hot Enough for Citizen Lounge? (7)
All This Useless Beauty
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HoustonHipHop.com Relaunch Party (5)
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"CSI: The Experience"
Exhibit inspired by CBS series puts you behind the evidence
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Lisa Landolt and Jo Barrett
Two law-school-grads-turned-chick-lit-authors show us amore might be the death of us yet
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Michael Winslow
The man with ten thousand noises comes to Houston
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Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo Parade
Watch downtown turn into cowpoke heaven
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Free First Sundays: Family Flicks
The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston hosts four kid-friendly films
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Over the Weekend: Fotos, Dogs and Sausage. And Hannah Montana Too.
08:50AM 03/10/08 -
Friday Night: Wilco at Verizon Wireless Theater
05:04PM 03/10/08 -
Rockets-Nets: Just Another Step Along the Road to Redemption
10:13AM 03/11/08 -
Jameson’s Rarest Vintage Reserve at $250 a Bottle
12:20PM 03/11/08
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Poetic Partnership
Two writers reflect on growing up gay in the burbs
By Dylan Otto Krider
Published: December 5, 2002Poet Mark Doty and his partner, novelist Paul Lisicky, both grew up in suburban neighborhoods, but neither was your typical suburban kid. Doty was a military brat and a self-described "chubby, smart, bookish sissy with glasses and a Southern accent" who also happened to be gay. Lisicky was a scrawny teen who dreamed of designing a utopian suburban community of his own. He, too, was gay. Both young men would end up writing extensively about coming to terms with their sexuality as they grew up in the burbs.
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Suburban exile: Doty.
Where:
Details:
Subject(s): Mark Doty and Paul Lisicky
Doty and Lisicky teach creative writing now -- Doty at the University of Houston, Lisicky at Sarah Lawrence College. They split their time between Texas and Massachusetts and make joint appearances when they can. There are some benefits to living with a fellow writer. As Doty told The Advocate, Lisicky has given him "a lot of help." And Doty gave a few editorial suggestions of his own for Lisicky's novel Lawn Boy, about a 17-year-old kid who gets tossed out of the house when his parents discover he's gay. (When Doty was a teenager, his parents happily dropped him off at Highway 1 to hitchhike to San Francisco.)
Though primarily a poet, Doty has written some well-received memoirs, including Heaven's Coast, about his former partner's battle with AIDS, and Firebird, about how his sexuality has affected his family. Lisicky tried his hand at memoirs about his youth with his recent book Famous Builder.
It's a more gay-friendly world now than during their youths. There are more openly gay role models, and as teachers, both Doty and Lisicky are seeing more and more students who are confident about their identities at a younger age.
Now if we can just find a way to overcome the trauma of a suburban childhood.
