The Glove Puppet Interview
A Candid Chat with Author Neal Drinnan
Q: Do you think Glove Puppet is a dangerous
book?
A: Dangerous to whom, the reader or to me as a writer?
Q:
Well either?
A: There is no doubt the issues surrounding teenage sex
and inter-generational sex particularly are sticky ones and definitely
polite society would rather not discuss them at all but I don't see how
their discussion could be dangerous. These things happen. It's like all
those right wingers who think including any sort of sexual diversity into
sex education curriculums is suddenly going to turn everyone queer. I
don't think so somehow.
Q:
So in Glove Puppet are you trying to say we should allow
kids to be rampantly sexual?
A: It doesn't matter what I say, teenagers will do as
they please sexually. Some will be real good, popular, study hard and
settle down--credits to their parents. Others will be trawling the streets
for liquor, sex and drugs. I don't make the rules about these things but
I know which group I'd rather write about. This book is essentially about
one character who is learning to play with sex and its power. He just
happens to be unseasonably precocious and bites off rather more than he
can chew.
Q:
Why is he so precocious and why choose such a volatile issue?
A: Because sexual precociousness and promiscuity always
throws respectability into question and because God's wisdom or the gene
pool lottery deigns that there be such people, It's 'the damned whores
and God's police scenario'. Sometimes it's hard to work out who is the
victim and who is the perpetrator of a sexual misdemeanour. But there
is that Gothic notion that somewhere in the world lurks one special person
for each of us and should we ever meet him or her, we will be completely
undone.
Q:
Have you ever met that person?
A: I've met several around the world. There's something
to be said for not traveling too widely.
Q:
So what's the solution?
A: Don't ask me, I've written a story that hopefully
forces readers to examine some uncomfortable questions. I've chosen the
most loathsome genre of crime in the current scheme of moral reckoning
but in fifty years who's to say what transgression will be considered
globally appalling. In Salem they summarily burnt women as witches for
the most minor eccentricities. In the fifties the slightest sympathy shown
towards communists would have rendered a writer an exile and books of
great social import like Silent Spring were seen as un-American.
It's up to society to contextualise and punish crime, moral reckoning
is for the reader's dabbling not the writer thank Heavens. This is a problematic
love story in which there are real and plausible dynamics. Crimes of this
nature are constantly leaping out from the tabloids but who knows what
goes on behind the superlative adjectives used to describe "the monsters
who perpetrate such crimes."
Q:
But it's more than the morality, this book is pretty explicit in its descriptions
of some of the sex.
A: I guess half the challenge is in trying to arouse
people with forbidden scenarios and my protagonist is an explicitly indecent
young man. The girls and boys he hangs out with all seem to suffer from
similar dearths of decency in one regard or another.
Q:
Do people find that bleak?
A: A few, but there is a lot of humour in the story as
well as some sense of awakening spirituality. Vaslav, the central character
is only twenty when he tells the story, he's been through a lot of shit
but at twenty it's pretty cool to be hip and miserable about stuff. He's
seen a lot of moral double standards at work so he's understandably cynical
about the media and its "morality."
Q:
So how do people deal with being on trial by media for personal matters
like sex?
A: Maybe you should ask Monica Lewinski? I don't know,
but Vaslav realises his involvement in a sex crime is part of a bigger
nasty picture. As much about selling papers and titillating the public
as it is about any earnest moral agenda. He also learns that being a 'victim'
offers no indemnity. He too is fair game and the process that sets to
work to incarcerate his abuser has no consideration for his fragile emotional
state.
Q:
You write in the first person, to what extent is the Vaslav character
based on personal experience?
A: Certainly some of his early experiences and his adult
adventures are things that have happened to me, or things I have witnessed
and I'm not going to be any more specific than that (blush blush) but
I grew up in a different environment than him. Having said that, I believe
had I found my life following a similar destiny to his, I'm sure I would
have fallen into all the same traps. The sexual currency of youth is a
powerful thing and perhaps one of the crueler aspects of our gay male
culture -- or even just male culture in general-is that as men we often
consume beauty and youth as if it were loose change. Men have a tendency
to think with their dicks -- fuck first, ask questions later. The smartest
man can be perilously foolish for lust.
Q:
So do you think you'll be seen as some sort of apologist for paedophiles.
A: That question really fucks me off. No one could read
Glove Puppet and say that. First of all you've got to ask
where does childhood innocence end and sexuality begin. Then you've got
to address the issue that as gay men we are always considered sexual suspects
around kids (despite all statistical evidence to the contrary). In part
I wanted to bite that bullet in a metaphorical sense by writing this.
I've said "imagine if something did happen and what would the consequences
be?" Then you have to ask whether as a society we can forgive certain
transgressions and the only road to healing for victims (especially in
family situations) is forgiveness. And finally one has to question oneself
by seeing this story from each character's point of view. At the end of
the day I would admit that as a fourteen-year-old I thought constantly
about having sex with older men. As an adult the thought of sex with teenagers
barely crosses my mind. Thankfully my tastes have become too sophisticated
and I really think teen-sex should be left to teenagers. I'm glad I haven't
come across Vaslav and equally glad that as a teenager, I never met a
Shamash. The question that tends to linger uncomfortably with readers
is "should society have thrown the baby out with the bath water?"
To quote one reviewer.
CAVEAT PAEDOPHILE: Don't miss this!
Copyright © l998, Neal Drinnan.
Sound interesting? Read some
excerpts and an interview:
- Glove
Puppet: Find out what people are saying about
this exciting, sexualy-charged novel.
- From
the Prologue: At seven, Johnny Smith's mother dies, and he lets
a stranger carry him away.
- Cure:
Johnny, newly rechristened "Vaslav," escapes with his new father to
Australia.
- Changling:
Vaslav explores the highlights and lowlights of his new life in Sydney.
- Melting
Ice: After Shamash's parents die in a plane crash, things begin
to change.
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