Richie Jackson, GAY LIKE ME
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[1:00]Zibi Owens.com. I'm excited to be here today with Richie Jackson who's the author of gay
[1:05]like me, a father writes to his son. He is an award-winning Broadway film and TV producer
[1:10]whose most recent productions include Harvey Fierstein's Torch Song on Broadway and
[1:14]Showtime's Nurse Jackie. He and his husband Jordan Roth were honored with the Trevor Project's
[1:19]2016 Trevor Hero Word. He currently lives in New York with Jordan and their two sons.
[1:24]Hi, Richie. Thanks for coming on Moms and have time to read books.
[1:27]Thank you for having me. It's great to be here. Yeah, it's my pleasure. I'm so glad we
[1:30]Carpenter is sort of like she's an author. My first guest she has like connected me with so
[1:35]many other authors including you. So she's the first person I told the idea for the book.
[1:40]After I told my husband. No way. And her immediate enthusiasm for the idea really gave me
[1:46]confidence to go and write it. So briefly describe what the book gay like me was.
[1:50]So I was originally sat down. I had finished producing a TV series for seven seasons and I had
[1:56]sat down to create a series about I wanted to do a series about the difference between being gay
[2:02]when I was a teenager and what it's like to be gay now. And I wrote plot out lines that came
[2:08]up with characters. I thought it would be really funny if an older gay man found himself living
[2:13]with a 20-something gay and the hilarity ensues. And just as I was trying to figure out the show
[2:20]our 15-year-old son told us he was gay. And everything I was trying to put in the pilot
[2:28]was happening at our dinner table. And I thought oh this is not a TV show. It's my real life.
[2:35]And he told us it's no big deal. My generation thinks it's not a big deal. I thought oh
[2:42]I need to tell him what a big deal it is. Being gay is the best thing about me. It's the most
[2:48]important thing about me. And it's been the blessing of my life. And I wanted to share that with
[2:53]him so he wouldn't undervalue what a gift it is. And then in 2016 Donald Trump was elected
[3:01]and declared war on gay people. So I also had to warn him what it takes to be a gay man in
[3:07]them right now. So that was the impetus for the book. Well I have to know right away what was it
[3:13]like when you gave your son this book? Well I finished it right around the time he started college.
[3:19]So I gave it to him just as his professor gave him Aristotle. And I think he felt he better read
[3:26]Aristotle first because he had to do it for class. So did you give it to him in this finished form?
[3:32]I didn't give him pages. I said to him and I asked him permission to write it. And he said yes.
[3:41]And I said I'm going to teach you how to be gay. And he said I know how to be gay that. And so as
[3:47]things would come up I would talk about them. I didn't see pages but sort of subjects or ideas I had
[3:54]we would talk about. And a lot like parenting lessons you sort of laid at their feet and they
[4:00]picked them up when they're ready for it. So the books there for him and he'll read it when he
[4:06]wants to. Now he loves when I ask him to come somewhere with me. He'll say it's called gay
[4:11]like me dad. Not gay with me. That's funny. So he hasn't read the whole thing covered in cover.
[4:19]I don't believe you. Oh my gosh. I know. I think he'll start to read it as he starts to hear things.
[4:25]And even now he said to me you know when you say I don't think it's a big deal it sounds like
[4:32]you're saying I don't care. And so he's already picking up what I'm talking about with the book.
[4:39]And I said to him no I don't think that's what people are getting when I say that they think
[4:44]the visibility and the exposure that the gay community has now has made it so you can think of it
[4:51]as not a big deal. They don't think you don't care about it. They just think you're living in a
[4:57]a better time than I did when I was 18. I don't happen to believe that. I don't agree with that.
[5:02]And that's where the tension in the book is. So interesting. Yeah. Oh my gosh.
[5:07]In the book you write this to your son. My greatest wish for you was for you to be gay,
[5:12]for you to have a gay life, for us to have that central and keep part of ourselves in common.
[5:17]Being gay is a gift. It's freedom. It's the gift of possibility. So I was wondering well would you
[5:23]have been disappointed to have had a straight son? And do you think your ability to connect with
[5:30]your child is related to a shared sexuality? So my son says I would have been disappointed if he
[5:37]was not gay. But the real disappointment would have been if I wanted him to be nothing like me.
[5:45]How could I have parented with any self esteem? If every day I was praying please don't be like me.
[5:52]please don't be like me. Please don't be like me. It is the blessing in my life to be gay. Why
[5:57]would I not want that for him? And it more is I wanted him to have the gift I was given. Not so
[6:05]much that we had to have that commonality. So we'd have more in common. I just wanted him to be chosen
[6:13]just like I had been. And you know we all have expectations of our children when we're when we're
[6:19]expecting. That's what expecting means. And your ideas of what your life will be coalesced
[6:25]instantaneously once you know you're going to have a baby. And my desire was for him to be gay.
[6:32]Of course, we all know that the only parenting lesson there is. We can figure out the feeding
[6:38]and the sleep schedules and all that. The only important parenting lesson is you parent the child
[6:45]not the child you thought you'd have or you thought you wanted. So I would have obviously
[6:51]parented and loved whatever child I had. But I did have a strong desire that he be given the gift that
[6:58]I have been given. So interesting. So let's go back to when you were talking about how he thinks
[7:03]being gay isn't a big deal and you are concerned about that. A lot of people not a lot of people.
[7:08]Some people might argue that what activists have been trying to achieve is just what your son is saying
[7:14]that there is no difference. And trying to get rid of some of the big differences among everybody
[7:19]sexuality religion whatever is what we're striving for. I don't think we want to get rid of our differences.
[7:25]I think that you know we celebrate our similarities but we should revel in our differences.
[7:32]That's everybody should be able to do that. You know I don't think that the entire country
[7:39]4.5% of the people are LGBTQ. So that's not a defect. That's not worthless. That's chosen.
[7:49]We get to look at the world from a completely different point of view than most people.
[7:55]And I think why would you diminish that? Why would you say oh that's just matter of fact or
[8:01]I just happen to be gay or gay doesn't define me. To me those are diminishments and when you diminish
[8:09]yourself you break your heart. And I write in the book that you're going to love. You know it's
[8:18]how you love. It's how you create. It's how you crave. It's how you're going to be governed.
[8:25]It's how you're politic. So it is a major part of who we are. And I don't want him to break his heart.
[8:34]I don't want him to diminish himself because then he's doing the job of our adversaries. They want
[8:40]him to do that. Interesting. In this not to keep jumping around here but in this playbill article
[8:45]you said about parenting instead of saying it takes a village you said it takes a Greenwich
[8:49]which I love. So tell me more about that. Well do you think it takes different a different
[8:56]do you think it takes something different to raise a gay child? Well I think partly it takes a
[9:01]village for all of us right and because all of us have a covenant with all the other adults in the
[9:08]world when we send our children out and we're not with them our covenant is somebody else will
[9:14]help take care of them. Somebody else another adult will look after them if they earn trouble on a
[9:20]bus or in a park or so we all have this covenant that makes us this community to help raise each
[9:28]other's children and protect them. But as gay parents we have an added burden. We traveled with
[9:36]his birth certificate everywhere so that nobody could question our parentage either out of an airport
[9:43]or God forbid in the hospital and you know just a couple that just had a baby in Michigan
[9:51]and brought the baby to a pediatrician with the pediatrician refused to treat the baby because it was
[9:57]a gay couple. It's insane. It's insane now.
[10:00]So we do have that extra burden and then we have to come out as a same sex
[10:08]family all the time our son has to come out as having gay parents even if he
[10:12]wasn't gay. That is something he has to come out about to friends to teachers.
[10:18]But I think the community is important for all of us to remember not just gay
[10:23]people because we have to protect our children. We have to take care of them and
[10:29]and I take a big responsibility in that when you have a play date at your
[10:34]house or when you're in the playground or anywhere where there are children you
[10:39]know if their parents aren't with them you want them to know they could you
[10:43]know you'll be there to help should something happen. I mean how many
[10:46]parents in New York City have told their children when they go on the subway
[10:50]loan you know who to go to if you need something. You know my friend said I
[10:55]always told the person to go to a cop and I said well I always told my son to
[11:00]go to a woman you know who look like you know if she had a child or something so
[11:07]I feel a big responsibility with other parents. And let's talk about why you
[11:12]think being gay is a gift because there's a lot in your book that shows some of
[11:17]the struggles that have come with it and some of the stuff you've had to put
[11:20]up with and even you know from coming out to your own father to things at
[11:25]school to I mean you know there's a lot. Yeah I say some other words I was
[11:30]called at school. Yes. Yeah no it's look it's extremely challenging to be gay it
[11:37]takes daily vigilance to protect yourself every single day as a gay person. I
[11:42]talk in the book about how every gay person has a gay guard and I have not
[11:48]in 36 years of being a gay adult let down my guard I always know who's around me
[11:54]who can hear me I don't kiss my husband goodbye without making sure that
[11:58]on the street without make sure the coast is clear enough I had a gym teacher
[12:03]when I was in fourth grade he heard I was in chorus and he told all the boys to
[12:09]jump on the faggot and that was the first time I had heard that term from my
[12:13]gym teacher because I had not thought anything wrong with it I thought I was
[12:17]special and so it is harrowing and it is takes a lot of vigilance and it
[12:24]can be exhausting that vigilance but it's still worth it you know and that I
[12:29]don't think that religions have stigmatized us our government has battled us
[12:35]time and time again we have survived a plague we are bullied as children we
[12:42]disappoint our parents that all doesn't happen against us because we're just
[12:48]defects it happens because all of those people trying to diminish us know that
[12:53]our power isn't our gainness so that's what I talk about in gay like me it
[12:59]is my creativity it's my it's my world view it's my empathy it's the way
[13:04]I love everything good in my life is because I am gay and I don't think it's
[13:10]just being gay that my book is a permission slip for anybody who knows there's
[13:16]something inside of them that's special and needs permission to hit the gas on
[13:21]it who needs to be told yes make that central to your life invest in it and
[13:27]have faith in it for me it was my gainness and I did that and I never scrubbed it
[13:33]off I never diminished it and I think I have the life that is the result of
[13:38]that it's really beautiful it's a great thing to say yeah I'm you know I that's
[13:43]why I do not want people to say don't make a big deal of it because I am
[13:49]my happiness is because I'm gay everything good that I can celebrate my
[13:54]children my creativity my husband our life all stems from that well of
[14:00]gainness so I I'm not interested in making that smaller and even though it
[14:06]comes with the struggle and the vigilance you still want your son to have that
[14:11]as well because of all the benefits absolutely I mean I think we are every the
[14:15]struggle is the proof that it's so worth it and I didn't want to let him
[14:21]leave our house not understanding the struggle because we kind of kept it
[14:26]from him because we didn't know he was gay when he was younger we knew we had to
[14:32]make him feel safe and loved so I didn't share with him all the dangers that
[14:37]Jordan and I feel on a daily basis or that I went through as a young person or
[14:43]or the plague that I experienced because I didn't want to scare him but then
[14:48]when he told us he was gay and he's about to go off to college I was like there's
[14:54]a lot he doesn't know there's a lot he doesn't understand and had it keep
[14:58]safe and alert as a gay man and that's what I wanted to warn him about and you
[15:03]even put in this whole like primer on all the acronyms of the different dating
[15:08]sites I was literally like sitting in my playroom with my little guys like playing
[15:11]in the carpet nearby and I'm reading all these terms and I'm like blushing like
[15:14]all right I don't know I feel like I like shouldn't be reading this with them
[15:19]so close by or so they get it out there's so prevalent I know I know I mean good
[15:24]now I know you know okay now I'm well well quick yeah you know I was I was
[15:34]definitely more concerned about my parents reading the stuff about a sex than I
[15:40]was my son because I've never wanted my son to think I was fully formed I
[15:45]wanted him I've always been clear on things I was challenged by things I wasn't
[15:51]good at things I didn't understand I wanted him to feel loved and safe and that I
[15:57]was constant but that I wasn't I didn't know everything and that I wasn't good
[16:03]at everything and when it comes to sex I mean sex is a tightrope you have to be
[16:08]vulnerable and you have to protect yourself and I didn't understand that
[16:13]when I was younger and I was deeply hurt by my first experiences and the only
[16:19]way to have warned him would be to be as specific as possible otherwise it would
[16:27]have just sounded academic to him but it takes like a lot of bravery I mean I
[16:33]don't think I could write a book called Street like me and detail my sexual
[16:37]experiences to my children I mean that like makes me want to die thinking about
[16:41]doing that I could never do that I'm like I like get embarrassed guessing my
[16:45]husband around my kids you know I mean so this you know I a lot of people who
[16:49]have read the book have said how brave I was and I ran home to Jordan and I
[16:55]say what did I write that I shouldn't have written because I wrote with pencil
[17:00]and paper and it felt very intimate when I was writing and I thought did I
[17:06]forget other people were going to read this did I kind of lull myself into
[17:10]this idea that it was just putting my heart on paper and nobody else would see
[17:15]it and my husband explained he said I think they're saying vulnerable and you
[17:22]know I had one shot he's leaving home and I had this incredible opportunity to
[17:30]share everything I know I've learned everything I did wrong and all of it
[17:37]made sense all of a sudden all of the things I went through that were so hard
[17:41]and so difficult and so demeaning and all the people who have tried to
[17:45]diminish me my whole life all of it made sense in the moment that I thought oh
[17:51]now I get to warn him as a gay man and I get to show him the potholes and I get
[17:56]to impart what I have learned everything I went through made sense now because I
[18:02]get to do this so I had to be as specific and it wouldn't have worked not to be
[18:08]honest it just no parenting doesn't work if you're not honest no I know but
[18:12]there's I don't know something I don't know like uncomfortable about like
[18:15]talking about sex with your kids and I don't know how about with strangers who
[18:19]are gonna be you know I would rather talk about sex with the stranger I would
[18:22]rather write an article about it that I knew everyone in the world except my
[18:25]kids would read then talk to them and write an article about myself or my kids
[18:29]I don't know so that's what I'm saying it's great I mean it's like not
[18:32]for even a bad way I don't think there's anything you should have taken out it's
[18:34]just I don't know that like parent child it could factor something I don't know
[18:40]I just nobody teaches gay people I had to have sex less than 7% of LGBTQ kids
[18:49]get inclusive sex set so we're literally erased in our classrooms we're
[18:55]basically being miseducated we're being taught to be straight so we go out
[19:01]into the world and we fumble and we make mistakes some of them could be really
[19:05]dangerous and deadly because nobody has taught us to protect ourselves or
[19:11]protect our mates and so I had to tell them everything and the only way to do
[19:17]that would have been here is where I was hurt and here are the places where I
[19:22]am still in pain over those early assaults and you also you wrote an article
[19:26]called be the person someone can come out to right which I also thought was
[19:30]really interesting because obviously a lot of people will be going through that
[19:34]and how can you be the type of parent who is ready for that and knows how to
[19:38]handle it the right way so like what advice would you have there well my first
[19:42]advice for a parent who might have a child who is gay is to
[19:46]regain gay like me but not my what I would say is congratulations I'm thrilled
[19:53]for you and I'm thrilled for your child and now you have a decision to make you
[19:58]can be your child's first
[20:00]a song. They're first obstacle or you could help raise them with gay self-esteem and I laid out
[20:08]in my book how I did it for myself because I was not educated but I laid out I learned gay history
[20:14]not because it's a responsibility but because it helped place me in a group of extraordinary people
[20:21]and it made me feel less alone and then I immersed myself in literature in gay writers
[20:29]who taught me how to be gay and taught me the gift of otherness and how otherness can be used as
[20:35]a positive and are and dance and by doing that I learned who I was and how extraordinary it was
[20:46]so I would say for a parent of a young LGBTQ person if you can do that for them
[20:54]then you are going to have an extraordinary experience with your child that you never imagined
[21:00]and it takes one adult to help save an LGBTQ youth's life. Wait you have I have these statistics
[21:09]hold on I wrote these down 25% of young people who didn't have at least one accepting adult in
[21:15]their life reported attempting suicide in the past year. Right and so 40% didn't if they had
[21:23]one accepting adult and the extraordinary thing about that figure is the adult does not have to be
[21:29]a parent so if all of us can watch our words because words matter and if we can we can make our young
[21:39]people around us feel seen and feel heard and not judged that can save a life and it doesn't have
[21:48]to be our own children. That's very powerful. Yeah it's extraordinary statistic. Oh my gosh
[21:54]wait so did you really say that you wrote this book with pencil and paper? I did. I think you
[21:58]slipped that. So I had never written the book before so when I had the idea I sat down with my computer
[22:07]and I said well this feels like work it feels like email and I couldn't do it I had no process
[22:13]and I fumbled around at the beginning to find the process and then when I took a pencil and
[22:18]paper I found it flowed out more easily because I just felt more vulnerable but speaking to not
[22:25]having time to read. My entire adult life I've carved out the first hour of my day to read
[22:32]and as it has been my since I was in college and when I first born son was when he was born
[22:39]I started to wake up an hour before he would get up to still preserve my hour of reading
[22:46]because I wanted that time to sort of gently start my day. I wanted to start my day with words
[22:53]immersed in creativity and I was doing that at 5 a.m. So by 6 a.m I had already done something
[23:00]for myself and I was I had gently moved into a new day through art and creativity and then words so
[23:09]I've always done that. My evening bedtime is designed so that I can get up to read at 5 a.m
[23:17]and then when I started writing the book that's that time became my writing time so at 5 a.m with
[23:23]pencil and paper in my living room I wrote the whole book. How long did that take? It took about
[23:28]a year I'd say and I haven't read any books because I'm not only didn't have time I couldn't
[23:35]read other people's it was a strange experience so I had to give that up and what was selling
[23:41]the book process like so I was I think probably very lucky Lee Carpenter had taught me how to
[23:48]write a book proposal and I wrote the book proposal and then she said okay now you have to write
[23:54]a table of contents so I wrote the table of contents which I had 10 chapters and descriptions
[24:00]the book changed since then and then another friend of mine Ariana Huffington asked me what I
[24:07]was working on what what am I up to and I told her about the book and she said you have to meet my
[24:11]book agent and so I I met her book agent Jennifer Rudolph Walsh at William Morris and she read it
[24:19]and she immediately was enthusiastic about it gave me excellent notes on how to improve it
[24:26]and then she sent it out and Jonathan Burnham had Harper immediately respond and said I'm crazy
[24:33]for this could we meet and he bought it while I was talking to him. Wow I feel very blessed Ariana
[24:40]Huffington and Lee Carpenter are sort of guardian angels. It's amazing. It's an extraordinary
[24:46]and how does your so your merit your merit to Jordan Roth is has his own success in the world and
[24:53]everything so what's it like being successful yourself and then managing someone else with I know
[24:57]this is an off topic now but I'm just curious managing like a relationship when both of you are
[25:03]successful in your own fields with some overlap of course like how does how do you find time for
[25:09]each other. So one of the things I think we do well is really take good care of each other and
[25:16]invest a lot of time in taking good care of each other and we spend a lot of time together
[25:22]and we want what the other wants for themselves. So his enthusiasm for the book is extraordinary
[25:30]and I know couples who don't have that and I talk about in the book about talk about how to love
[25:38]somebody and I think what Jordan and I do well is we love each other the way each of us need to
[25:44]be loved and by doing that we've healed each other so it's more like because of the love and
[25:51]because of the foundation of our relationship each of us feel emboldened to go and try to explore
[25:58]and expand our vows we pledge to expand the canvas of our lives and it's because we have that
[26:05]foundation of love that we each get to try new things and and experience things. I thought
[26:13]it was so interesting and not to keep talking about Lee Lee I hope you're listening because
[26:17]this is like all about you know Lee Carpenter's essay in the November 2019 town in country which
[26:21]was called for the Roth family life is about the right to choose your own story and she talked about
[26:27]how when all of you are considering different projects you think will it make people feel
[26:32]right tell me a little more about that. Well you know Maya Angelou says people don't remember what
[26:37]you do or what you said they'll remember how you made them feel and that's always been very
[26:43]moving to Jordan and I but my mother's gonna call me if I was supposed to be Jordan and me
[26:49]I'm not all the time but if I had written gay like me without the thought of how I wanted
[26:58]people to feel it would have been an academic book I would have said being gay is the best part
[27:03]about me and they would have glossed over that I had to make I had to have it have an emotional
[27:11]I worked very hard on figuring out how to take the reader from the beginning and build a feeling
[27:19]so that they can open their mind because if you make people feel first they may think differently
[27:27]or at least be open to a new idea and that's why it's important to make people feel because they'll
[27:34]they'll feel more connected they'll feel more alive they'll feel like they belong and they might
[27:41]just look at something differently. So now they've finished this book it's being launched out
[27:47]into the world what do you want to do next is this change are you still going to do that pilot you
[27:51]mentioned at the beginning? No I think I've done it I'm not off the list. I have an idea for another
[27:59]okay and I was sort of taking notes on it and but Meg Woolitzer said on your podcast
[28:07]just write 80 pages and if you throw them out it won't ruin your life so I'm taking her advice
[28:14]that I heard on your podcast I'm just going to start writing and see if I can get 80 pages
[28:19]and then see if the idea has legs after that. Oh I'm so glad that's something from the podcast
[28:25]she's amazing she's amazing she's amazing do you have any parting advice to aspiring authors
[28:32]I know you've sprinkled a lot in throughout our conversation. Well I think since I've only written one
[28:37]book I'm more in need of advice but I've always had this vague fantasy that I'd like to write
[28:45]a book since it's my favorite way to get a story much more than television and theater and film
[28:51]which is fun because that's where I've spent my career but I think what held me back is I always
[28:58]heard writers and writing teachers say write what you know write what you know and I thought well I
[29:04]don't know enough to put in the book I don't know anything that well and then I wrote what I loved
[29:12]and it poured out of me I love being gay I love being a parent I love being in love so what I would
[29:24]say to a aspiring writer write what you love because it will come out easier and also I wasn't
[29:32]ready for how writing a book takes up occupancy in you and it's all you think about and you're
[29:40]constantly turning over phrases and words and ideas I was carrying out a pencil and paper
[29:46]everywhere in case something came up I had one by my bed and bolted up in the middle of the night
[29:52]so you have to love it because it's going to live in you in a profound way for the period that
[29:59]you're writing.
[30:00]One.
[30:01]Well, thank you, Rudy.
[30:02]This was so fun.
[30:03]Thanks for having me.
[30:04]Thanks for having me.
[30:05]And for sharing your story, not just with your son,
[30:07]who I'm sure will appreciate it when he read the bed
[30:09]for everybody and everybody's son and all the different types
[30:13]of parenting there and everything else.
[30:16]Well, thank you for having me.
[30:18]I'm for setting a light on books.
[30:19]It's really an extraordinary thing you've built.
[30:22]Oh, thank you.
[30:22]Really beautiful.
[30:23]Thank you.
[30:25]Thanks for listening to Momstone.
[30:26]I have time to read books, the award-winning podcast.
[30:29]Today's episode of Momstone Have Time to Read Books
[30:31]was sponsored by pediatrician in your pocket
[30:34]by Dr. Jennifer Tractenberg, Dr. DashGen.com,
[30:39]and your code PIP20 for 20% off of these
[30:44]can't miss modules that will make your parenting life
[30:46]so much easier.
[30:47]You can follow me on Instagram at momstonehavetime
[30:51]to read books.
[30:51]Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texturesound
[30:54]for the sound editing.
[30:55]And thank you to Morning Moon Productions
[30:57]for providing this fantastic intro.
[30:59]Now, trim music.
[31:00]Thanks for listening.
[31:01]You can always email me at zibi at zibiowens.com.