The Psychopath Test: You Don't Have to Be Crazy To Work Here, But It Helps

When Jon Ronson first went on the Daily Show months ago to promote his book, plugging the words "psychopath" and "test" into Google got you some very interesting results apart from references to his slim volume. I did this the night he appeared on the show. And while I wish I could pass on the link, I'll tell you anyway about a weird little story that came up in Google's entries.



If I'm remembering it right, the essence is that a woman goes to a funeral of someone she doesn't know, where she meets the man of her dreams. The two really hit it off, but the guy leaves before she can get contact information from him. She does her best to track him down, but to no avail. In the end, she winds up murdering the guy's cousin. Now if you're a psychopath, you supposedly understand why she did this.

I have to add, I could be retelling this morbid tale wrong, so maybe you've guessed the answer because of that, and you're not a psychopath (let's hope... and by the way, stop sharpening that stick).

The point is that the woman fully expected the guy to show up at the cousin's funeral, giving her another opportunity to meet him. And if you find that chilling, you have some idea of the effect Ronson's book has. Like other reviewers on here, I more or less scooped it into my brain in one sitting -- it's that good. It's easy to see the embryonic structure of a movie adaptation, in the same way that his previous book, The Men Who Stare At Goats, became a George Clooney vehicle.

Ronson recounts the story -- which is bound to be the core of any film -- of how naive shrinks at the Oak Ridge facility in Ontario decided the best way to treat psychopaths was to give them LSD and use "naked therapy!" For real. It's astonishing how anyone could imagine this would be a good idea, and if you're expecting disaster... Well, I won't spoil it for you. Why should you sleep any better than me? There is a thread of a narrative about an enigmatic young man named Tony who has spent the better part of his life in Britain's infamous Broadmoor institution, with his cause being championed by the Scientologists. The trouble is that Tony might be a psychopath. And Ronson goes to visit a being of genuine evil, Toto Constant, whose atrocities in Haiti most likely had the backing of the CIA.

Even Canada's Karla Homolka makes an appearance. For those not familiar with the story, Homolka plea-bargained her way to a lesser sentence in the 1990s after she helped Paul Bernardo rape, torture and kill two teenage girls while videotaping it all. Ronson retells an anecdote in which Homolka allegedly needed to be brought back to the scene of the gruesomeness and casually asked one of the police officers about a bottle of perfume she had left behind.

As an aside, I have to admit that the Bernardo and Homolka case is one of the few that interest me. I picked up Ronson's book because of my curiosity over the science. What makes psychopaths, if anything? Or are they born that way? How do they function in our world? We're fed a regular diet of nihilistic, soul-crushing brutality in the form of Criminal Minds, Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior and the nastier episodes of CSI. As much as people keep telling me Dexter is a good show, and from what I've seen it is, I can't bring myself to watch a program where a serial killer is presented as a sympathetic protagonist.

So I have to admit I've always been fascinated by the weird twist of fate that Paul Bernardo could find a "soul mate," a woman who didn't run shrieking over the suggestion of, "Hey, honey, why don't you use veterinary drugs so that I can date-rape your sister as my Christmas present?" Which they did. And the drugs killed her. And they almost got away with it. What are the chances of two beings lacking in moral restraints finding each other?

But as Ronson suggests, psychopaths may be more common than we think. Just as a recent study implied that nasty, mean people actually do better and rise to the top at the office, if you're a psychopath, this may actually work in your favor. And it may explain why our world is so fucked up. It's a compelling theory. But you won't get much sleep either if you accept it.

This is a breezy book with a conversational style, and Ronson has taken a unique and highly effective approach. If he had written this with the detachment of regular narrative non-fiction, it would still be a great read, but he has included himself as one of the central characters and a flawed one at that, a man who's decent enough but who supposedly irritates his family and friends with his neuroticisms (which you have to suspect he exaggerates). By telling his little stories this way, he reassures us that he's sane, and so likely are you. We share his horror at some of the truly batshit, scary things recounted.

In a very mild way, the book also offers an indictment of the psychiatric field and the drug business -- though not in the shrill manner of Scientologists who have declared all-out war on them. No, Ronson's concern is our own. The nagging doubt that the shrinks really don't know what the hell they're talking about, and when they do close in on an empirical method, it's one that boomerangs back with disastrous results and has allowed a pharmaceutical industry to cash on the self-diagnosing, self-medicating masses. Ronson quotes Bob Hare, the guru who came up with the test to identify truly frightening people: "Just wait and see what happens when they develop a drug for psychopathy..."

In the same way that active toddlers who prove annoying suddenly become diagnosed with ADD, so every pharmaceutical drug for psychopaths will needs thousands of customers to make it cost-effective. Surprise! We have now discovered there are many more out there than we think. Hmmm... What do you figure? Do you want a high-functioning psychopath in a corporate boardroom, running on just his cup of joe in the morning? Or do you want a psychopath experiencing side effects, in the same way that some teenagers have committed suicide after taking the wrong anti-depressants?

Then again, what are the chances that psychopaths, who apparently know how to rise to the top, don't succeed as well at Pfizer and Johnson and Johnson?

Notes from the Battlefield of Television Pitching

To me, at least, there's something to be said for the cost-effective ratio of work committed to chances of acceptance when it comes to TV scripts. It can take me about three months to write a novel, and of course, as many of you out there know, only a few seconds for a publisher or agent to say, sorry, no thanks. It takes me about a week or so to write a spec script, which is no less painful getting rejected, but you feel like you can move on more quickly.

This past week has been somewhat brutal in the parade of "nos" and incredibly frustrating because of the Return of the Great Tease, as I'll call it. I'll explain. A couple of years ago, an actor friend of mine actually paid me to represent the lot of us working together to go to Pitch Fest in Toronto. It was something of a revelation, and here's where you get to sneer and snort at me derisively, because I suffer from a great deal of ostrich head, never bothering to network much. Hey, in books, if email works, you never have to go outside now, do you? I write up what I do, I send it out, and someone either loves it or tells me to get lost. In movies and television, you must talk to people. Yikes.

At the Fest, I made a good impression on a number of execs, and I know this, because they actually gave me their cards, their emails and invited me to submit. Consequently, I didn't get too far after that with our joint projects with my collaborators, but one particular network here at home (and since we have so few, it's not hard to figure out which one) was greatly encouraging. One of their drama execs at the time emailed to say my main gal "is one of the more interesting heroines that we have seen as a lead character in a series and we appreciate that you have stayed, to some degree, within your wheel-house as far as subject matter goes. It certainly shows." That being said, they didn't like the overall idea behind the pitch, (which is fine), soooo they "like to move the dialogue on to what else you might be working on or any other ideas that you might have. Can we keep trying?"

Now this is wonderful if you're a writer slogging away. Nothing ultimately came of it, because the next pilot I pitched was allegedly too close to something they already had in development. I didn't think it was anywhere close, but there you are, and I moved on. Time passes, I work on a couple more non-fiction books, I go broke trying to get Gallivant off the ground, la, la, la. Until I try my hand again at pitching some spec pilots. 'Tis the season when development is in bloom.

The exec who was always encouraging and nice has moved on, too, but just the same, I got back a very polite note from the head domo of the department who wrote that my latest heroine for a very different concept "is a fascinating one as you have conceptualized her, and we enjoyed your script." But they're not going to do anything with it. Errggh. Their big tent show is already up and running and they "have two pilots currently in production so our schedule demands are currently being met by the material we have in production or is about to go to camera."

And here we come to the point where this isn't really about me. It's the larger issue of what's wrong with television in my country, Canada. If one completely sucked, it's easy enough to blame the incestuous relationships between prod companies and the networks, the horrible taste of commissioning execs, the crap that gets on, etc. You can rationalize all kinds of ways to excuse yourself from the truth that you suck. But here's an exec telling you in black and white that yes, you are good -- and we're still not going to develop your idea or ask you back this time for more ideas. We have our three new shows (three! Imagine!).

There's no point blaming a specific individual. If anything, it's nice to get a response and a very polite, encouraging one at that, especially in these days when if you're in books, you often get nothing back in reply.

But it is something of a travesty and a joke in Canada that we have so few networks, and of those, there is so little money to be spent on cultivating our writing talent. We are still hewers of wood, drawers of water when it comes to making films and television, with the remake of Total Recall being done in downtown Toronto, but you can bet the script wasn't written here. I can think of plenty of shows produced with Toronto and Vancouver locations, but only count on one hand the number that are written by Canadian writers, and of those, fewer still that are not utterly unwatchable.

Yes, I admit some of this sounds a little like sour grapes, but consider that there is empirical evidence to back me up. NBC promptly dropped The Listener after a handful of episodes due to low ratings. It's not that the Listener is outright terrible, it's just exceedingly bland and dull. And it's still getting made, which suggests somehow we'll stomach it while Americans have pushed the plate away (is it because it fulfills the Canadian content regs for the netowrk?). Blink and you would have missed the Bridge, which had a brilliant pilot, followed by a whole season of lacklustre, cliche-riddled episodes, prompting CBS to finally say no, thank you. Am I implying that American TV is better? Hell, yes, it's better. As much as you may sneer at the relentless stream of crap, with the horror of a revitalized Charlie's Angels due in the Fall, we've also had House, Law & Order, Dexter, Mad Men, The Walking Dead, Breaking Bad, The Big Bang Theory and that's just recently. American TV has been built on a foundation of Paddy Chayevsky and Rod Serling.

Contrast that with Canadian TV raising us on such derivative, cringe-inducing fare such as King of Kensington, The Beachcombers, the downright embarrassingly awful Wayne & Shuster, decades of coma-inducing Front Page Challenge. Now we have the CBC network's continual love affair with retro-80s and 90s fare, such as The Republic of Doyle, which is nothing more than the Rockford Files with a Newfie accent and Being Erica, which is a watered-down Ally McBeal. It's also given us of late InSecurity, which the Globe and Mail and the Toronto Star have both slammed as excruciatingly unfunny. Yet it will get more episodes, even though its viewership has declined.

It's funny because I've just spent the last half hour trying to rediscover a link I thought I bookmarked but hadn't. Too bad, wanted to share it. A TV writer in the UK wrote an excoriating column earlier this month for the Guardian on how drama commissioners at the BBC were becoming more like American film development execs, constantly contradicting each other in trying to put their grubby fingerpints on the creative product, since they have no talent but are in a position that seemingly validates their judgment. Writers, the columnist argued, redraft and redraft material into a porridge to please. As the columnist put it, however, when this is done in the States, the writer at least winds up with a swimming pool.

Of course, the grass is always greener. The BBC still gives us Sherlock, Luther, Doctor Who and so many other brilliant shows. Only the Brits could take a chance on a concept like Life on Mars. And if you don't like the Beeb, there's wonderful stuff being done for ITV and Channel Four that make you think you have options when you send your stuff around.

Is it the case here? No. We are told there is not enough money. But that's too simple an explanation. There is also a great lack of balls. In some ways, we have graduated a little to the point where at least on the Listener, there are references to "ministers" and "parliament" without disguising the Canadian political landscape. But it's still a show with an incredibly trite premise. The hero's a telepath; wow. It makes the upcoming "Unforgettable," with its premise of a detective with an eidetic memory, look positively PBS-worthy (unless the writing is very, very good, and even if it is, expect a nosedive in ratings for that one in the same way the wonderful Lie to Me died). And Flashpoint is still a rehash of the old Seventies nugget, SWAT.

Yes, these shows do find a market overseas -- to countries that can barely afford their own original programming. Okay, maybe a few spots in Western Europe, too. While living in the UK for several years, it was bizarre to discover Street Legal re-runs relegated to a 3 AM slot on Sky. Still, these sales are not a huge feat. When the Americans want to rip off or buy the formats for our Prime Suspect or Life on Mars or Steptoe & Son, then our television industry will come of age. And so we go on boasting about Paul Haggis being one of our own, when the goal should be to create an environment in which a Paul Haggis has enough money and creative freedom thrown at him that he doesn't need to leave... or want to.

Confessions of a Sex Scene Writer

So there I am, tapping away at my keyboard, while renovations go on down the hall from my apartment or I hear the goofy dog barking through the wall next door or the traffic is getting too loud, but it’s all okay because my magic carpet of a Compaq PC has whisked me off to New York City, where my two fictional gay lovers are getting it on. And I’ve typed something like:

Brin's hands were already pulling down his underwear as they stared eye to eye, and he enjoyed the fact that the young man's breath was growing rapid. He was swelling in Brin's palm, Brin's other hand cupping his testicles, finding the delicate sensitive area just underneath that prompted a moan of vulnerable longing.

And I think, Oh, damn.

Ahem, I have to excuse myself and go take care of business.

I won’t tell you what I was doing. You can probably guess what I was doing, which makes me wonder how common it is with other writers: getting aroused by your own sex scenes. To me, it’s downright goofy, a kind of literary masturbation that you almost feel as embarrassed over as the physical kind (but given that the first inevitably leads to the second one, I get to be embarrassed over both). Does this happen to other novelists? I wonder. It gets even goofier when you jump your partner with spontaneous passion, and since they might have the heard the clackety-clack of your keyboard moments ago, they can somewhat pointedly ask you, with some amusement, “You were writing something dirty just now, weren’t you?”

Ummm... Yeah... But honestly, babe, you turn me on much better than any fictional hunky guy! That’s all imaginary.

“Fine. Then you can make do imagining me for the next while...”

Ouch.

Okay, that hasn’t happened to me yet. But one of these days, I might be accused of imaginary adultery.

I know I can’t be the only one. We all have our peccadilloes. Lisabet Sarai, who’s written her share of hetero erotica M/M and M/M/F novels, writes in the nude and has a photo on her website’s gallery to prove it. Of course, she has the body for it. If I did that, I’d scare readers and might possibly blind them for life.

But back to our issue. Here’s the other strange thing. Just as you might get turned on by your own prose, once you interrupt yourself and (cough, clears throat) come back to work, it’s all largess. Was it good for me? Yes, but now we have to take care of you. Now I’m here for you, honest (ignoring the fact that we took care of me first; “You selfish prick”). Now it’s about turning on the reader, and you have to think over whether those purple, oh-so-rushed descriptions will be sexy and toe-curling for this anonymous audience. Quick! Delete, revise, put that here, change that there, take your time, no hurry--

Which brings us to another weird and wonderful territory. What’s entertaining, even arousing in sex scenes to readers of M/M?

But let’s back up. More foreplay please.

Back in 2009, on reviewsbyjessewave, Wave did a poll, “Sex in M/M Books... Do Readers Want More or Less?” As it turned out, readers thought of our genre as “two categories of books – sweet M/M romances, and M/M ‘erotic’ romances where the sex is anticipated and very much desired.” I’ll let you go look up the results, but I was grateful at least that readers’ tastes sort of reflected my own in that they didn’t want too much “trash talk,” (neither do I, in bed or on the page), they wanted sex scenes to also have a point in advancing character and plot (so do I... No, honestly, I am trying to improve my character in bed...and, um, my plot; at the moment, I’m scheduled to be murdered in a totally cliché way). And they want tenderness. Don’t we all.

The heart wants what it wants when it reads, but there are no formulas to this kind of stuff. There can’t be. As with pick-up lines and banter in real life, I’m sure M/M readers can see the players coming. “You’re not really with me. You’re thinking of those other characters! This is too familiar!” It better not be. So we writers do have to show a bit of ourselves and our tastes in sex scenes, because no fan -- and no devoted lover -- wants a sex life to get dull and routine. Butterfly kisses again? Zzzzzzzz... If you mine the depth of your imagination, you have to bring up fresh diamonds.

But it gets complicated. In one of my pseudonym alter egos, I was interviewed by Writer’s Digest over hetero erotica and discussed the perceptions that readers might mistake the sex life of characters for the sex life of the author. Of course, the two are very different. For one thing, in real life, I use more puppets. When I did write straight erotica, one of my hetero partners casually remarked, only half-jokingly, “By the way, if you ever write about anything we do in bed, I’ll kill you.”

I was at a complete loss for what I could possibly describe that we did that would stand out as anything unique or different from a gazillion other couples on Earth. I found myself ticking off a mental list, like one of The Big Bang Theory geeks checking their comic collectibles: “Got it, got it, got it...” But in this case, it was, “Done it, done it, done it, so’s the rest of the world...”

When it comes to M/M, however, I have to confess my sex scenes have gone from the more personal, evolving to the more generic and less personalized with each book. My brilliant editor, ever on the watch for fanfic clichés, is quick to rap my knuckles with a ruler like a Catholic nun, should I ever let a “mewling” escape one of my characters in bed or have a guy sound remotely feminine in a somewhat submissive role. And in this, she’s right. Something can be written as true, but still feel hackneyed and like well-covered ground. But here’s the thing. If you’re a guy, having someone inside you—whether a guy or a girl with a toy—can be an incredible experience that does bring you to a vulnerable point where you sort of empathize with the feminine. Someone’s inside you. That’s powerful.

So swinging back full circle, I haven’t decided for myself when I write an M/M sex scene whether it’s “my job” to arouse the reader, since most readers in the genre care overwhelmingly more about the romance than the sex. But let’s face it, I’m no Jane Austen. I can’t do the “he took him in his arms” followed by hasty ellipses. I like subtext dialogue as much as the next reader, but an M/M Austen with sedate sex scenes, I ain’t: "No," said Darcy, "I have made no such pretension. I have faults enough, Emmett, but they are not, I hope, of understanding. My temper I dare not vouch for—and if you don’t drop your pants this instant, I’ll drag you into the billiards room and give you a blow job right there in front of Miss Bingley.”

Yes, I like my guys to talk, but I also want them to end up getting it on. To me a hot scene by definition should have nice build and lots of foreplay, and that makes it entertaining. And of course, a scene isn’t hot at all unless we care already about the two people involved.

The emotions are usually not the problem for me to write. The truth is when I compose a gay sex scene, I usually get my limbs all tangled up as much as my pronouns. He kissed him down his chest, lifting his leg as—hold on, wait a minute, who the hell’s doing what to whom?

Yep, it’s possible to have really bad sex on the page. Writing it, that is. You can get interrupted. You realize you’ve let the guy go on for paragraphs kissing and fondling in over-the-top description, but you’re not gaining any momentum to move things into the bedroom, so you rush the sentences, but it feels forced until you’re finally telling yourself, “It’s not you, honestly, it’s me.” Um, who are you talking to, dumbass?

In the end, you have been playing with yourself all along even if you keep your fingers on the keyboard.

But when it works, when it really works, your partner -- your reader -- will tell you how you were without you blowing your cool and credibility and asking if it was good for them. That’s one advantage over sex in real life. When it’s over, I don’t know many people who have their lovers put up stars in a public forum and who openly recommend you to friends and complete strangers.

Ben Shapiro's Fantasy Island of Sinister TV Liberals

I’ve decided to write more political posts when the mood strikes me and the inspiration’s there. As it happens, a story’s come out from the Hollywood Reporter that is quite relevant to my slow, slogging work on The Fourth Estate, a novel intended to be about the polarization of news (okay, plug accomplished, let’s move on). The Reporter’s piece isn’t really about news, it’s about Hollywood’s TV servings. Go read it here.

Many of the reactions to the Reporter article have echoed a “Duh,” as if the liberal bias is a self-evident fact. More troubling is the hate speech on numerous occasions in the comments, such as the long screed I read in the morning that called Obama a “Muslim” president and regurgitated the ol’ whopper that the “gay agenda” was being pushed down people’s throats.

I’m starting with the comments because I looked in vain for a rather obvious reality check to Benjamin Shapiro’s “revelation” that American TV is controlled by liberals and churning out liberal-sided programs. (I admit I haven’t gone through every one of the 5,000 comments and still counting, because I finally had to give up.)

A caveat here. I haven’t read Shapiro’s book; it was only released May 31st, so I have to rely for the time being on the Reporter story, the so-called “revelations” of his released interview clips, and his own website’s blurb. If this sounds damn little, I assure you that you don’t need much more to poke holes in his theory. Because Benjamin Shapiro claims: “Primetime Propaganda is the story -- told in their own words -- of how television has been used over the past sixty years by Hollywood writers, producers, actors, and executives to promote their liberal ideals, to push the envelope on social and political issues, and to shape America in their own leftist image.”

The implication, at least given in the Reporter story, is that there’s a liberal mafia that’s gained control and had control for some time. And even Shapiro’s promo blurb implies that the Hollywood insiders found ways to put their (ooooooh, sinister) viewpoint across like so many subliminal “eat popcorn” frames.

Something to keep in mind: Shapiro was born in 1984. And his self-incriminating liberal conspirators seem to only go back as far as Leonard Goldberg, who gave us such novocaine as Fantasy Island and Charlie’s Angels, and Gene Reynolds of MASH fame.

But wait a minute, Shapiro claims bias for 60 years. Sorry, bzzz, bullshit. I’ve been waiting for someone to point out that no, there was hell of a lot LESS liberal bias in old television than Shapiro can claim, and oh, by the way, for close to 25 years, we put up with television the way conservatives wanted it.

Want conservative TV drama? Try this. The FBI, a Quinn Martin Production that ran for close to a decade and portrayed Bureau agents as heroic, noble guys… ahem, except when they were violating the rights of anti-war protesters and at J. Edgar Hoover’s behest, trying to smear Martin Luther King with sex tapes and dig up more dirt on the Kennedys. As it turns out, the FBI had an actual veto over show casting decisions! Now isn't that a cozy arrangement for the establishment and the supposedly liberal producers?

Still want conservative TV? Okay. How about The Mod Squad, that oh-so-hip (not) show with a brother and a blonde and of course, the nominal white guy, who instead of going to jail, rat out their friends each week to the cops. And this during a period of massive dissent among young people on university campuses, not only in the States but all over Europe.

Gee, you really want conservative values on your television? How many times have we had dreck such as Highway to Heaven, Touched by an Angel or variations thereof in the 1980s, which you could argue were pushing the “agenda” of an itinerate Jewish carpenter who likely didn’t exist and who supposedly got nailed to lumber? And during the hardcore conservative era of television, it took until 1968 –- mark that date, folks, 1968 –- for a black woman to star in her own series. Don’t remember it? I do. It was called Julia and its lead was the beautiful Diahann Carroll. It took until 1974 for television to get around to even showing Hispanic neighborhoods with Chico and the Man.

Sixty years of liberal bias? That would bring us back to 1951. Oh, really? During the era of Ozzie and Harriet, which believe it or not, you can still find re-run in some places. That era? An era of Father Knows Best and the Danny Thomas Show when everyone was white, slept in separate beds and homosexuals apparently didn’t exist and black people were only mechanics and maids? That era?

But a more precise example to show how farcical the premise is, because any “agenda” would have to start with producers and writers. So let's talk about Rod Serling.



I have a love-hate relationship with Rod Serling, still most well known today for The Twilight Zone. My feelings about the Twilight Zone sort of echo those of Futurama spoofing the famous twist endings. On Futurama’s show, The Scary Door, a guy yells, “There's a gremlin destroying the plane. You gotta believe me!” The other guy holds up a mirror. “Why should I believe you? You're Hitler!” And on it goes.

By his own admission, many of Serling’s episodes of TZ were dogs. His word, not mine: dogs. Hack work. (And oh, boy, I agree, ecch.) But long before the show, Rod Serling was writing cutting-edge dramas for programs such as Playhouse 90 and Kraft Television Theater. I defy anyone to watch the original kinescoped broadcast of “Patterns,” a hell of an indictment of corporate politics, or “The Comedians,” a searing portrait of a sadistic, bombastic celebrity, and tell me they’re not as true today and as powerful as when they were first broadcast. But the networks and their sponsors were often fucking around with Serling’s work. They frequently wouldn’t let him say what he wanted to say. So Serling fled to science fiction where a Martian could say things he couldn’t put in the mouth of a Democrat or a Republican.

The all-powerful liberal chipping away at American values and warping it to his or her own vision? For 60 years? Are you kidding me? Early television has scores of anecdotes of legendary writers such as Serling and Paddy Chayefsky having to put up with dolts who insisted, “You can’t say that.” One of my writing heroes, Harlan Ellison, is still very much alive and kicking, wrote scripts in the 1960s, and related in his two books of essay-reviews, The Glass Teat and The Other Glass Teat, some of his own battles against network and corporate censorship. In fact, the Nixon administration went out of its way to try to sink The Glass Teat when it came out in book form!



Shapiro had “Larry Gelbart and Gene Reynolds talk about pacifist messages” in MASH. But the point of MASH, a show ostensibly about the Korean War, was that the Gelbart and Reynolds couldn’t get a show on the air about Vietnam. Now consider that by the time MASH started on CBS in 1972, Vietnam had brought down Johnson, Nixon had already started a secret bombing campaign against Cambodia, young Americans were protesting the war by the thousands. Americans had been in Vietnam for years…. and you couldn’t get a drama on the air about the subject. You had to disguise it as a completely different war.

Shaping America? What. A. Crock.

Is there a blacklist in Hollywood today against conservative actors, writers or directors? Possibly. And it would be wrong -- as wrong as those network execs who stuck their big fat, untalented thumbs in during the 1960s when Ellison couldn’t make the point about housewives on prescription uppers while kids were sent away for years for an ounce of pot; when Serling had to fight to get a script about racism in the South on air; when the actors for the kitschy, Sixties version of Batman were told they couldn’t touch each other or stand too close lest they be mistaken as homosexual. Has the pendulum swung too far to the left? Doubtful.

Consider that in one of the last episodes of one of the most thoughtful and provocative shows ever on television, Law & Order, a show brutally cancelled by NBC, a balanced view is given of the abortion debate where the “anti” side is given its due, and a humanized, compassionate portrayal it is at that. Can you think of one other lead character besides Gregory House on network television who’s presented as being an atheist and advancing that view? And yet House is depicted in all his flawed, fucked-up humanity, a drug addict who makes politically incorrect barbs and who’s an adolescent in his romantic relationships. Even the CSI guys, from Grissom to Horatio to Mac Taylor, are the science heroes, yet portrayed as either believing in God or being safely, neutrally agnostic.

Shapiro -- Buddha help us -- is 27 years old. He’s very successful. But like many 27-year-olds, his frame of reference for history obviously doesn’t allow for much past Wham videos and the original (ugh) Battlestar Galactica.

I’ve viewed a lot of Sixties television, even viewed a fair share of 1950s television and viewed hours upon hours of television through the 1970s and 1980s into the 90s and onward. The horror, the horror… The coma-inducing fare for much of the Me Decade as well as the 80s at most, briefly flirted with occasional portrayals of women as three-dimensional characters and offered stereotypes of black people that were so excruciating you want to run out and buy Tyler Perry DVDs. Ask an older black person how many times he saw his race depicted in cop shows pre-1980 as dope fiends, pushers, rapists, etc.? Then ask him or her to be nostalgic over that wonderful period when there was more than one “loveable” sitcom about a rich white guy adopting black kids. And how revolting that was...

Roe v. Wade from 1973. Did you see that in your comedy or drama? I can only recall one show that dared to cover the abortion debate, and that was Maude. Silence on the issue for the most part until the 1990s. Gays? Gays that aren’t swishy, faggoty, stereotype gays? You can count the portrayals on one hand probably. Forget transgender issues, unless you want to go do an academic re-evaluation of the very last episode of the original Star Trek (check it out, you could make a case for the subtext).

Poverty? Yes, there was a lot of bleeding heart drama over poverty from the 1950s on, but except for Serling and Chayefsky, did anyone get to point fingers at Wall Street before the 1980s? Good luck finding episodes of that show.

Shapiro has been a recurring welcome guest on Fox News. And like Fox News, it seems clear that he doesn’t want any facts to get in the way of his premise. The book will sell, no doubt. And more is the pity. In today’s United States of Amnesia, history doesn’t last as long as a vicious little idea with no foundation. History is an unaired pilot…

Meet the Scientific Illiterate

I haven't finished it yet, but I already have to rave about Packing for Mars by Mary Roach, she who brought us insights already into cadavers (Stiff) and the science of sex (Bonk). I'm not doing a review here, but since I'm using her book as a launching point, I might as well highly recommend it, which I do. Huge fun. I haven't been reading it for fun, but it's great to be entertained while I learn.

This is a wonderful book in which you discover bizarre, hilarious facts, such as how a sex toy dummy was actually considered by Russian cosmonauts and more than you really want to know about throwing up when you reach multiple G's of acceleration. Which brings me to the subject of this little blog, which I intended to write at a later date, but what the hey.

I'm actually reading Packing for Mars for research. Because, full confession here, I am a scientific illiterate. I could blame it, of course, on Mr. Kitchen, my Grade 10 Science teacher who appalled many of us when he blatantly started pushing Creationist theory (which we all promptly ignored as bullshit), but ehhhh, that's not it. I could blame it on the idiocy of the way they taught Chemistry, which insisted you get the lab results predicted in the textbook otherwise you failed; the late Richard Feynman already pointed out in one of his fun memoirs how this taught three generations to cheat and fudge data instead of actually learning from mistakes. But no, the truth of it is my brain simply isn't big enough to handle Math, let alone basic chemistry and physics.

At one point, I really wanted to be a surgeon while growing up. Bodies were cool. The history of medicine is fascinating and cool. Bzz! Sorry, kid because a) I was blind as a bat for decades until recent surgery to insert contact lens implants, and b) those annoying grades stopped that plan cold.

Hmmmm, and yet I've been trying to write, among other things, science fiction novels, or "science fiction-ish" novels. This can get one into trouble. I idly put a throwaway line into The Karma Booth over the story not too long ago that heralded an arsenic-based life form. Unfortunately, a reviewer wiser than I who keeps up to date on such stuff read follow-up material on how, yep, the media did it again and misreported things, getting its facts wrong. She pointed it out, and I was so embarrassed by my sloppiness, I made sure this was corrected in the paperback edition.

And damn it, I should know better. Back in the 1980s, Discover Magazine, the American networks, everybody jumped on the bandwagon over something called Biosphere 2. When my boss of a producer wanted to do a story on it at the TV station where I worked, I had to mercifully point out to him that the Village Voice had done an investigative article, linking the project to a cult. It wasn't that I was so lip-smacking clever; it was because I bother to read and watch more than the operation I work for.

That was (cough, cough) ages ago, and today I have a conundrum. Got a brilliant idea for an SF novel, which involves space travel. And physics. And chemistry. And biology. And probably more Math than I can handle. The concept was originally pitched as a series to a certain television network, which said, wow, this is really brilliant, it's intelligent, it's cool, yada, yada, yada... We're not going to do it. For reasons which have nothing to do with the idea or its scientific plausibility, not even with me, but over their demographic. C'est la vie. Now I could keep shopping it around as a script in its early, rough treatment phase, or I could get cracking on it with my first instinct as a novelist. Which is why I've been reading Packing for Mars, to help me understand more about the mechanics of space travel.

But now is as good to enlist a few beta readers and hopefully a couple or maybe even a few people -- because hey, you never know -- who have the degrees that I don't but who might be able to help. Hey, this blog finally got interactive! (Well, sort of.) So if there is someone out there who's got credentials of a kind willing to be patient with a very dim novelist over the easygoing course of six to nine months, who understands physics, space technology, etc. drop me a line. God knows, I need educating. :-)

Er, Not Having It Both Ways: Bi Heroes in M/M Part Two

So after writing my blog this week about bis in m/m fiction, Wave of reviewsbyjessewave and I engaged in a friendly but spirited debate on the issue via email. She took me to task for my remarks that "guys are dogs," pointing out, of course, that there are scores of gay guys in committed, monogamous relationships. Which is true, and no less than the guy who is arguably the father of the gay rights movement in Canada, Jim Egan, was in such a relationship for decades (I tell his story in How to Make Love in a Canoe: Sex in Canada). So I should clarify my remarks to say that I wasn't singling out gay guys per se, which would be really hypocritical of me if I did. (I still disagree with Wave over men's promiscuity over that of women, but ehh...) And I probably should have made it clear that I was really discussing perceptions anyway as opposed to realities. My bad.

No matter how I bungled expressing my own views, Wave makes some excellent points that suggest I could be way off the mark anyway. Well, I'll let her tell it:

Wave: Here's my take. This is not related to whether the hero is bi or gay: It is simply a matter of readers not wanting to have women in a sexual situation with their gay or bi protagonist because a lot of women who moved to M/M had been fans of het erotica or Harlequin romances for years and were tired of the TSTL women in these books, especially in bodice rippers. Personally I don’t want to read about women having sex, I want to read about men having sex with each other and having a romantic relationship, without all the drama of a woman in the mix. In addition, in most of the books with women having on-page sex with gay or bi men, they are there mostly to have babies. Your scenario of having female protagonists in M/M defeats the purpose of why many readers moved from het romances in the first place - we might just as well go back to het erotica, which frankly bores me to tears.

At this point, Wave quotes me blathering on and whinging in my typical way about HEA, HFN, blah, blah, blah.

Wave: I love gay romances or just gay fiction and I agree with you that not all romances must have an "optimistic" ending i.e. a HEA/HFN, as the Romance guidelines dictate. I would like more realistic endings and some publishers, such as Dreamspinner with its Bittersweet Dreams line, are pushing the boundaries, but these stories will never be as popular as books with HEAs or HFNs no matter how unrealistic the endings are, because most M/M readers come from a background of being fans of "Romance" with a capital 'R.'.

I agree that bi does not mean being a cheater or being promiscuous. By the same token I could say the same thing about being gay. A bi hero is okay in M/M as long as any sex with women happens before he hooks up with the other male protagonist. Most readers read these books for escape from real life. Some of them have been cheated on and have no desire to read about that in their romance books, so in a lot of cases, even if the cheater is redeemed, it leaves a sour taste in their mouths and more often than not they don't feel that he has done enough penance to be forgiven. :( But the major issue is that the majority of readers of this sub genre don't want women in romantic situations with their heroes and there's no way that that will change in the immediate future.

Sorry, I didn't mean to write a book but I wanted to explain why most M/M readers are adamant about no on-page sex with women. However there are lots of publishers, such as Ellora's Cave, Loose Id, Amber Heat, etc. that publish stories with M/F/M or M/M/F ménages, but that's a different breed of readers who love these books, so all is not lost for our bi heroes. lol.

Me again, Jeff. As I wrote to her privately, Wave can write a book here anytime. I can't think of anyone who's done more to promote the m/m genre and especially up-and-coming authors than her. It gives me special hope that she's in the camp of more realistic endings, while sharing my own pragmatism that HEA/HFN will always be the norm, because her site is the place to be. If there any innovative, groundbreaking books pushing the envelope of the genre, you can bet you'll see 'em either promo'ed or reviewed on her site first. And what is great is that despite the bi issue, I think in many ways m/m writers have a lot more room to play around with mixtures of genres, styles and yes, more ambivalent endings than regular romance. Where will we go from here? Not a clue. But it should be an interesting ride.

Having It Both Ways: Bi Heroes in M/M

I was incredibly naive when I started writing m/m. When I wrote erotica novels for print, I had to sort of "channel" my female characters because of course, I'm not a woman and will never know what a woman's experience of an orgasm feels like (but I can be damn envious, given that the male one lasts according to statistics an average of six seconds). So when I began writing Dragon Streets, I poured so much personally into that novel, and it was only after Dreamspinner brought it out that I discovered that the biggest website on the planet for the genre, reviewsbyjessewave, normally didn't review anything with scenes of straight content. It's to Wave's great credit of open-mindedness that she ended up reviewing the novel, and when Gallivant Books started, I plugged the notion that we could have more bi heroes.

Now I'm not so sure it matters, but it kind of rankles, because for a fan base that's supposedly liberal, this demonstrates a helluva bigoted attitude.

Let me be clear. Those who actually have read Dragon Streets know that there's a key plot element when an m/f sex scene is necessary. It's not even that long. I'm only advocating m/f sequences in m/m novels for cases where the plot justifies it, because you're entitled to get what you pay for, and you wouldn't want gay sex popping up in a vanilla bodice ripper. But it irks -- oh, boy, does it irk -- that the door is more often that not firmly closed to any minimal depiction or involvement with women.

I have a few ideas about why this is. I'm bisexual. It's taken me sooooooo long to come to terms with that, and I'm still figuring it out. And just to show you what a chicken shit I am, this is the first public forum where I've outed myself. As a bi person, there's a fair degree of bullshit you encounter in personal dealings (on my last date with a gay guy, he turns to me and says, "So you call yourself bi -- what's that about?" Other bis are used to this: we're posing, we're kidding ourselves, it's a phase, we're traitors somehow to the culture, yada, yada, yada). So it's to be expected that some assumptions are just as prevalent among readers. I don't know about other bi men, but my tastes are highly selective, and I'm predominantly attracted to women (and especially bi women, because more often than not they are more open-minded). Frankly, a very uninhibited female partner can do the same things for me a male could do, so at the risk of spoiling my own credibility, I can't say I know the "gay scene." Gore Vidal admitted when he wrote his bestselling novel, The City and the Pillar, that he hadn't a clue how two run-of-the-mill queer guys would behave. He made it up -- which is fine. That's what writers do.

Dale's ambivalence, his constant angst until he finds Phirun, are mine. Guys are dogs. You can go on Craigslist any hour and hook up within 30 minutes, and if you're like me, paranoid of disease, you will pause carefully before you think of doing something stupid (not that I'm so clever, just fearful, and having a child, even if I don't live with her, means I no longer have the right to inadvertently shorten my life through HIV/AIDS, etc. if I can help it). I like to know a guy a little before I jump into the sack with him. Of course, straight guys are also dogs, so where am I going with this? We're going back to the name: m/m romance.

Most m/m readers are female, and I think having a bi hero screws with those romance assumptions. A bi hero conjures up expectations of "cheating" in the novel, and when it comes to personal life, a woman's legitimate concern that her lover would have the higher probability of giving her something nasty by being with a man than with another woman. It's hard to argue this is wrong when in my own home city, cops have routinely busted park washrooms to nab guys who turn out to be married.

But I think the biases have calcified into another restriction on writers as limiting as HEA or HFN endings. Don't get me wrong, I like HEA and HFN, too, and write them more often than not, but a satisfying ending doesn't necessarily = HEA or HFN. What if your noble Steampunk gay hero sacrifices himself, diving off the train at the evil gangster, so that his love interest might survive? And the survivor, of course, will always remember him, somehow find another, blah, blah, blah. In the same way, why choke off an interesting story arc of a bi hero struggling with his sexual tastes, rejecting a seduction by a female character (or hell, villain) than not having it all or worse still, the wimpy solution, putting it "off screen"? I happen to think it's more powerful for a conflicted bi hero to make his choice for his gay lover than regularly relegating bi heroes' involvement with women as back story.

In Buddha on the Road, for example, my editor wisely talked me into having the hero, Brin Harper, break off his relationship with his boyfriend, Richard, before taking up with his friend-with-benefits, Aung. I say "wisely" because of course, I want readers to sympathize with Brin and cheating could put them off. In the original draft, he sleeps with Aung just before the break-up, but given how strongly readers feel Richard is a prick, I think they would almost forgive my hero. To me, the original version was far more realistic, but it was no biggie. I do find it interesting how we readily follow our TV characters when they cheat but refuse to see shades of gray and flaws in our novel heroes.

I don't regret adjusting the narrative, but like the bi issue, do you want us to grind out McGay novels or wouldn't it be more interesting if we gave you the Harvey's approach of the "beautiful thing" that's made special? Sorry to keep the fast-food metaphor going.

I'm working away now on The Fourth Estate, in which the two heroes are both clearly gay. There's no reason story-wise to have either of them bi, and it felt natural to make them both gay. But ironically, I found myself saying the things I still want to say about sexual issues in Bianca: The Silver Age , a paranormal fantasy novel with over-the-top alchemy superheroes running around, because by the time I wrote that one, I knew I'd have a hard time getting a fair hearing on bisexuality in m/m. And even then I had to think over brief depiction of lesbian love-making. Given what's happening in Tennessee and Uganda lately, maybe we haven't come so far after all.

I won't ever grumble that m/m romance should be like gay fiction. It's clearly not (and in many ways, it's much more fun). One of the nicest compliments I pick up from reviews of my work is that my protagonists show compassion. That is a huge deal for me and puts me over the moon, because it's a trait I prize as well. Bi does not = promiscuous, nor does it = cheater. And if m/m does not always necessarily = gay fiction, maybe it's time for the genre to be flexible.