An Interview with Ian Philips
by Greg Wharton

I love Ian Philips. His is an amazing voice that is truly beautiful and lyrical, at times biting, and always emotionally haunting. His stories and images stay with you long after the words have been read.

OK, so I'm partial. I have been a fan from the moment I first read his words, and suspect thoughts journal has been very fortunate to feature his work in several issues. What can I say? I'm a big fan. But nothing prepared me for his first collection of short fiction.

See Dick Deconstruct: Literotica for the Satirically Bent is a very strong collection. It is compelling, literate, satirical, funny, sexy, smutty, tough, gentle, bittersweet, sad, lovely, and touching. These 15 stories--10 new and 5 previously published--cover just about any emotion you could want, sometimes being able to combine several with skill and clever wit.

These are smart stories that tackle an array of subjects from the political to the spiritual. Ian Philips offers his subjects with intelligence, obvious knowledge, and sometimes, with sharp teeth. This doesn't take away from the fact that it can--and does--arouse the body with its many wild and wonderfully imaginative erotic moments, because See Dick Deconstruct is full of good old lusty fun. The sex is at turns sweet, loving, rough, kinky, comedic, and imaginative. Mmmm... smart and sexy. Sounds perfect, doesn't it?

Ian Philips is very modest about his talent. He will no doubt cringe when he reads this, but I am certain See Dick Deconstruct will be considered one of the best collections published this year by many people besides this somewhat biased fan. And, I expect, will at least be nominated--if not win--several awards for both him and AttaGirl Press.

Enough praise. Read the interview... then get the book and read his words. See Dick Deconstruct is fantastic.

Patrick Califia-Rice wrote the foreword to See Dick Deconstruct. In his forword, he writes of your friendship and a special relationship as a Novelist's Support Group of two. How did you meet and how has his friendship helped you as a writer?

We had a champagne and cake party in San Francisco this June to celebrate both the launching of AttaGirl Press and See Dick Deconstruct. And at this queer little shin-dig, I nervously (I come from the reclusive school of writers) gave a toast in which I said there are so many people here in and beyond this room I want to thank for making me a published author. And then I paused to put down my nearly sloshing glass and continued, however, there is someone in this room I want to thank for making me a writer.

And that, of course, is Patrick. Because he didn't dismiss me as some misguided wannabe writer when I told him, as we stood in his kitchen almost seven years ago, of a story I wanted to write about a televangelist in hell with a Latina/o hermaphrodite demon as his inquisitor. Instead, he laughed encouragingly and said, "I want to read that." And I slowly wrote it and it became Sheldon Smalley Meets His Satan.

And that was also around the time when the Novelist Support Group began. Because that story is also a chapter from what I call simply "The Novel." I wish I could be more specific on when we decided to start it. The actual moment has retreated into legend much like Avalon. But, somewhere on that misty Apple Island, someone knows the truth. However, I'll take a guess that it was Patrick who suggested we form a writers group of two and I who panicked first (because it was Pat Califia suggesting doing this with me and I was just beginning to accept my fated calling as a writer) and then agreed.

That's often what happens between us. Patrick was and always will be the pioneer. And I'm happy to be his fey Sancho Panza. Or as I've come to call us in our almost nightly phone conversations, the Red and Grey Eminence.

What I do remember is us going out for pizza at The Sausage Factory in the Castro and toasting our novels-to-be over Cokes and pepperoni slices. And just like he says in his beautiful foreword, neither of us have written those novels... yet.

In the years to come, I wrote the stories that became See Dick Deconstruct and a third of Satyriasis and he's written four or five other books--plus the three novels he's working on--as well as the one he originally was working on.

It's amazing how much he can get done in a day. And I'm going to be in so much trouble for going on about him here (that no-more-than-2-compliments-per-conversation rule we have is real). But it's true. And I am incredibly blessed to be able to watch him go through the process of writing and publishing a book. And it doesn't hurt to be able to throw ideas past him and have him give me technical advice so that I don't have people doing anything too impossible.

That is a pet peeve of mine: porntastic tales where all laws of physics are suspended. And I know I'm one to talk because I consider myself a magic satirist. But even though my tender tales are often fantastical or surreal, I try to get the sequence of events to be as realistic as possible as well as the actual sex acts. In other words, I can't have someone on his knees sucking someone off and then in the next line be up to his pubic bone inside the very same person. And worse, still be sucking them all the time. Unless, of course, that disorientation is intended--but so often it's not.

Sorry to get all righteous. But it's a peeve and I'm very grateful to all my piggish friends for being such wantons and give me such flawless "insider" details that make me appear much more debauched than I am--so far.

For the next collection, this Sodomite and fledgling sadist is definitely ready to take the training wheels off and has just the perfect bottom in mind upon which he can work out new story ideas. My very own consort-in-crime. Bless the lad.

Now as for how Patrick and I met, well, that was almost ten or eleven years ago. I've worked on the Damron Company's series of LGBT travel guides since I moved to San Francisco in 1989. And Patrick, who was Pat then, was a friend of one of the consultants to the company who, in time, would eventually become one of the owners. The first time I really remember seeing Pat was at the funeral of my first boss in 1991. And at that time, I'd just read and loved his columns in The Advocate Advisor. Of course, before that, when I was in college I'd heard of Pat Califia "the lesbian SM writer/essayist" but hadn't read any of her works.

And how that sounds like college: four years of name-dropping authors and books you've never read.

Fortunately, that has all changed now--and I am such a richer little fiend for it. Especially after devouring Macho Sluts. That totally opened my eyes to what porn could do. There are so many different voices and stories there. I still get short of breath thinking of the stories Jessie or The Surprise Party.

The first time we actually talked beyond the pleasantries of greeting and inquiring after each other's health was when we both ended up at the first Queer Spirit, a gathering of Lavender Pagans, here in northern California. So, in the beginning, we got to know each other first as witches and then as writers.

Only in San Francisco, as they say.

Sorry to go on so--and I could a lot more than this--but Patrick is both my best friend and ideal reader. And I thank the Furies every day for letting our paths cross and entwine as they have.

Walt first appeared in Best Gay Erotica 2000. It blew me away. Walt is a totally original, surprising, and very erotic story unlike any before it--that I know of. What kind of reactions did you get from this tale of desire between a bio-boy and a transgendered poetry reciting bear top?

Wow. Thank you very much.

I guess it is a pretty rare tale--outside of San Francisco. Here I imagine it's an every day occurrence that tranny and bio-boys can fall in love through the seductive powers of Walt Whitman and a fierce enough tip-clamp.

"Oh, Captain. My Captain."

Actually, I honestly have a hard time seeing this story as that original because I incorporated (a nice and very literary way of saying "stole") so many details from events going on around me as I wrote that story.

The bio-boy was based on a guy I had a crush on in this poetry workshop I was taking with the kick-ass poet Mark Wunderlich. He's also a great teacher. And on our first night of class, he got us all fired up to write by playing a recording taken from a recently discovered wax cylinder of Uncle Walt reading his poetry. And Walt, the character, was physically based on a cute bear I'd gone on a coffee date with. And as for the lust that fueled Joe through that night with Walt, well, I just used my own for this tranny beauty I was rather smitten with at the time. Since we never got it on in the flesh I played it through on paper.

Ah, yes, a bit of reportage and a bunch of wish fulfillment--definitely sounds like one of my own stories.

Outside of a wonderfully kind letter from a fellow writer in Colorado, I've only received responses from my friends and my editor cum friend Richard Labonté, the amazing series editor for Cleis Press' Best Gay Erotica. Well, that's not true. I did hear somewhere that another editor thought it had too many Whitman quotes. But I haven't heard much beyond this--yet.

Foucault's Pendulous... appeared in the first issue of suspect thoughts, and was reprinted in Best Gay Erotica 2001. This complex little ditty has some good raunchy fun with one man's obsession with his academic super-hero. Is Michel Foucault a love of yours or did it come from too many years of academia?

I was very honored to one of your firsts, by the way.

Thank you. The pleasure was mine... and those that got to read your words.

As for Michel ma belle, I wish I could say I've read all his works with ease. But that would be almost as great a lie as to say I read Judith Bulter to unwind.

Actually, I've mainly heard his name intoned with hushed awe in various queer theory tomes and academic gatherings under the dark of night. And all I've really read by and about him are a biography and some snippets from his work to help me get a very decentralized grasp of his work.

I always like to think of that particular story as the fantasy of the boy who is dressed up and then down in See Dick Deconstruct. That's definitely why I placed them side by side in the book.

I can see that. They work well together.

The One, True Lord of the Dance, parallels--in many ways--the critical word battle between two real-life gay columnists including the double-standard of preaching against "bareback" sex and the truth of doing it. Have you gotten any feedback on it yet?

From friends who enjoyed the publishing industry jokes or the lengthy description of circuit music or The Boys in the Band-esque Greek Chorus, yes. But beyond that, no. And as for the columnists, Mr. Kettle and Mr. Pot, well, I doubt either will read it unless some kind soul commits it to a thick, almost unbending scroll and wedges the unprotected pages up their respective asses. But I can still hope against hope that Mr. Pot might yet and throw a drink in my face. Then I will know I've earned my wet badge of courage.

There are many resurfacing themes in these stories. One is Christian theology playing vital parts not only directly, but also subtly, within many of your stories. Is this from your past or have you studied theology?

Well, I think any child raised in a fundamentalist household--of any faith--has undergone a theological boot camp. And that was certainly true of me. And to add to the experience, we weren't one of the cool forms of fundamentalist Christianity in Tulsa, OK--a mighty stud on the Bible Belt. We were Christian Scientists--a very non-charismatic form of Protestantism. Yes, no snake-handlers or in-tongues-speakers we. And even within our church, our family was on the outside--my mom was too much of a free-thinker for them. So, the isolation that fundamentalism thrives on was all the magnified. And in my case that meant I retreated further into my head and the books. And in Christian Science, you read all the time. And pray. And, at best, you read prayerfully. And not just from the Bible, but Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Christian Science's Discoverer and Founder Mary Baker Eddy. Wow. I can still get that all out. And I'm realizing as I write more and more just how much trying to decipher this book of aphorisms written in high Victorian as a child has influenced my writing style today. Certainly my vocabulary. Though Mrs. Eddy would not use such potty words as "feculent" or "meretricious."

And since I've become a born-again pagan--I'm a New Reformed Smorgasbordian or, as I like to think of it, a Nouvelle California Eclectic--I've been working through my deprogramming in print. And that will be most true of The Novel where I go after the man that's caused the most grief in my life, after my father: St. Paul. But I promise it will be a wild and funny tale too.

One of two stories involving Satan or a demon as a central character is The Devil and Mrs. Faust. You had mentioned to me previously that Ruth Faust is one of your favorite characters. Why is she a favorite and where did she come from?

I'm keenly aware I live in California; I have the electric bills to prove it. And so others may roll their eyes elsewhere, but I honestly believe that I channel the really good stuff in my writings. And Ruth and her story were all channeled.

Yes, originally, I based the character very loosely on my flaming-tressed-warrior-queen friend Jen. Certainly her lustiness. And she too is from Long Island. But after the initial notes about Long Island, good Italian names, and story ideas, the real Ruth came in and took over for the months it took to write and rewrite and rewrite. In fact, I really believed I was the "you" sitting at her kitchen table with her and sharing the pecan ring. And when the story ended, I wanted to go wherever she and Lilith and Mephistopheles and Rick took off for. I wish my reality were more like hers. That's why I write these weird little stories. And so, I honestly walked around very empty and somewhat sad as I waited for her to come back to talk to me. And she might someday. But I still had several stories to write at that time. So, I mourned--ate and read and watched reruns of Buffy The Vampire Slayer and Popular--for a few weeks and began, I think, The Color Khaki.

You write sex like nobody's business. A great deal of the sex in your stories involve dominant/submissive and sadomasochistic sex, love, and lifestyle. I truly believe--as both an editor and reader--that many authors should not write of which they don't understand, especially when it comes to this subject. As a self-dubbed gentleman sadist, how does experience come into how you write a sex scene? Or does it?

Ah, my queendom for a willing bottom upon which to hone my craft. At the moment, yes, this gentleman sadist remains self-dubbed. And until that dark and stormy night where I take my well-oiled riding crop down from the wall, I will content myself to keep company with the rogues' gallery of perverts of all searing stripes and bruised hues that are my friends. And their epic tales of debaucheries have wonderfully sickened my brain and encouraged it to blossom into the noxious flower of evil that it is today.

So, long story short, when it comes to the writing of sex, I have been well-endowed with a monstrous imagination. I consider it a precious gift from the Furies to soften the blows of so many bad first dates--dates which I and the forever-fickle men of San Francisco have mutually bungled. As for the many sex acts I have never performed, I've been gifted again. My piggish friends also make for flawless technical advisors who allow me to appear much more diabolical than I would be my first time through the dungeon gate.

That said, I think, unlike that old saw about poets, that perverts are both born and made. And though my rope tying technique and precision flogging skills could be much improved, I do know exactly what I would do once I had my pet all trussed up with nowhere to go.

And I certainly know the fever of forbidden desires. Now more than ever. And that absolutely effects and infects my writing regardless of the hours I have or haven't logged in front of a sling.

And that is what really shows in the writers you've described--the sad fact they've never been sick--really allowed themselves to get dirty enough to even get sick--sick in all the wondrously wicked senses of that word. And sick can be such a many splendored thing.

The final story Memento Mori is a powerful, bittersweet, beautiful, and sad love story that effected me deeply. Was this a hard story to write?

It was-and for many different reasons.

There were so many stops and starts in the beginning. I jotted down some ideas: that this story would be the final piece; that it would chronicle the end of relationship in contrast to Walt's exploration of one's beginning; that it would revolve around poetry like Walt; and that the poem that becomes the anniversary gift would come from Catulus. Even then, I worried that I didn't have the skills as a writer to convey Julian in all his emotional complexity and maturity. He is, after all, a sixty-something-year-old gay man who'd lived through the first wave of the AIDS epidemic in San Francisco and who was now dying of cancer himself.

I have lost friends to AIDS, but nothing like the hundreds that Patrick has or Julian would have. And hearing Patrick talk about his beloved dead was/is very moving. The air grows very still and charged like before a huge storm. But the water that is gathering is at the edges of our eyes.

And so I grew even more apprehensive that I just couldn't pull this off.

But a month after scribbling those first story ideas down and wringing my writerly hands, the death crone came a-calling.

I had been living alone for the last six years with my cat, Yo. She had chosen me to be her human two years before that at previous roommate's house when he brought her home from his friend who could no longer take care of her because his dementia was growing worse and there was the constant threat of toxoplasmosis from the kitty litter.

So, Yo went from one crazy queen to another: he had tried to burn down the huge radio tower that looms over the Castro, and I was convinced the Furies came to me in a vision and told me, in Latin no less, to write.

And after several years of kicking and screaming in journals that I wasn't a writer, I bought a computer and started to write. And, like I say in the acknowledgements, she really did sit on my lap and purr as I wrote and re-wrote the stories that became this book. I learned how to be quite nimble and acrobatic as I typed around her head laying on my wrist guard like a pillow.

Until the last story, when Yo, at the grand age of 18, died of feline AIDS.

Like every human, I have plenty to cry about. But thanks to my hearty Puritan genetic stock, I get emotionally constipated. But after I made the hardest decision I ever have and she died while I hovered beside her, still petting her, that cork was popped. And I was reacquainted with the pain of old losses and fears and the fresh pain of this overwhelming new loss.

For a week, I walked around in a daze, stunned by how aggressive life can be when you're awash in death. The world loudly went on. And in time, I came back to this story, more aware of how Julian might feel.

Of course, I also took little fun side excursions, research junkets in my mind, as I worked my way through the story. I re-read a lot of Catulus' poetry and much of Suetonius. I got to read the brilliant Thom Gunn. And I read Thomas Mann's Death in Venice for the first time and then Visconti's movie. I don't know how much of that story seeped into mine in the end. But it was fascinating to see the differences between the novella and the movie. And the fact that Visconti's Tadzio looked like the European equivalent of Leif Garrett.

And there was one other book I discovered at that time that actually did heavily influence my final version of Memento Mori: Anne Carson's Eros The Bittersweet. She begins from a line of Sappho's which is usually translated as "bittersweet love" and takes the reader, with beautiful language and exposition, through a fascinating discourse on eros and poetry.

In fact, the notion of love being sweetbitter, as Carson translates it, made that cliche word--bittersweet--new again to me. And I tried to keep that in mind as the story progressed.

But in the end, much of what works in that story, for me, was woven in by the elves while I was sleeping. Connections and insights that were made that I was not aware of as I was stitching the paragraphs together. Especially how wonderfully well that Catulus poem worked out--and I had not even thought about the whole "live now for tomorrow we die" theme running through it. Honestly, I picked it because I liked all the kissing in it and the fact that I could still translate it with my rusty high-school Latin.

Thankfully, the Muse works in many mysterious ways.

AttaGirl Press has done such a great job with your--and their--first book. Not to jump too far ahead, but when might we expect your second collection Satyriasis or your novel The Absolute Final Temptation of St. Anthony?

Wow. Have you been talking to Patrick? Because he's been asking the very same questions lately--especially about The Novel.

In all honesty, and knowing how long it took to get this book out even with all the amazing, heroic efforts of everyone who worked to help build AttaGirl Press, I'd have to say a year-and-a-half for Satyriasis and two years, minimum, for The Novel. Unless a miracle occurs and I no longer have to save my writing for before and after work and weekends.

And for those who can't wait--bless your wicked hearts!

 

Read Shameless Self-Promotion from Issue 1
Interview originally appeared in suspect thoughts
author's photographs © 2001 R.A. McBride