It seems perhaps innocuous to our modern ears, but in that place, at that time, it really isn't, is it?

No, because the stakes are so high.

In 1988, even if you didn't experience it yourself, every gay Jamaican knows of a story of a gay person being beaten.

of a mob arising on just the rumor of being gay.

My character, when he's not rehearsing, goes through a place called Tropical Plaza.

And Tropical Plaza was infamous for a massive riot that erupted because two men, I guess, touched each other.

They even ran into a pharmacy and the police, who was used to beating them, had to, like, They had to be guarded against because these people were about to destroy the farmers that they went into.

does that work?

Can we talk about Jordan Brown?

Jordan has one of the longer sections in the book because Jordan takes it on himself to be this instrument of revenge.

Jordan has the wildest misreading of Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon ever.

Yeah.

in the sense that he's inspired by the Seven who decide to take revenge in their own hands in America, not realizing that the guy who throws himself off the roof at the beginning of the novel is one of the Seven, and that the road he's going is going to drive him mad, especially if he takes on that role.

But Jordan, you know, Jordan is a lot of things.

Jordan actually, I think, just wants love, honestly.

Can you talk about that?

They're not supporting the LGBTQ community there.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, there's a lot of that.

But also, you know, the book ends in two, in, you know, in 2005.

Um, I remember going back a few years ago, and there was a LGBT association for students, and I, which I didn't even know it existed, and I'm giving them their it gets better speech.

You know, things are hard now.

And you're like, "We don't wanna hear that crap.

Do you see that as an act of choice or an act of necessity

Mm.

So you're writing them into being, and that's the first thing.

Um, eventually history catches up.

You know, I tell people history changes every day depending on who's writing it.

So sometimes the, the stories that we need or the stories that reflect on people who are not leaders, you know, who are not famous, have to come from, from fiction, has to come from the books.

You know, there, there are certain things you're gonna l- learn about yourself from Huckleberry Finn that you're not gonna learn from, you know, from Shelby Foote.

Do you see it as an act of choice or an act of necessity in Jamaica at the time?

I think it's both.

What were you, what was-

I, I'm not sure I was trying to wrestle it from the tabloid history because I don't really respect the tabloid history.

And I think, I think in some ways acknowledging a tabloid history is to give it a certain credence, which I, I, you know, I wasn't able, I wasn't able to take it as legitimate.

Um, that said, yeah, it, it's, it's, the, the, the idea that, um, even, you know, it must have been him kill himself.

You know, that's why reading about lynchings was, was, was, um, really helpful because a lot of times lynchers would say, "Yeah, they, they, they, you know, they all hanging themselves," and so on.

Um, with the Paul Royal thing, I, yeah, the, the, the narrative...

One of the things I thought was really interesting about the public's reaction to it is that predators like him need the public to thrive.

... or...?

Mm.

So you're writing them into being, and that's the first thing.

Um, eventually history catches up.

You know, I tell people history changes every day depending on who's writing it.

So sometimes the, the stories that we need, or the stories that reflect on people who are not leaders, you know, who are not famous, have to come from, from fiction, has to come from the books.

You know, there, there are certain things you're gonna l- learn about the soul from Huckleberry Finn that you're not gonna learn from, you know, from Shelby Foote.

Do you see it as an act of choice or an act of necessity

I think it's both.

Mm.

So you're writing them into being, and that's the first thing.

Um, eventually, history catches up.

You know, I tell people history changes every day depending on who's writing it.

So sometimes the, the stories that we need or the stories that reflect on people who are not leaders, you know, who are not famous, have to come from, from fiction, has to come from the books.

You know, there, there are certain things you're gonna l- learn about the soul from Huckleberry Finn that you're not gonna learn from, you know, from Shelby Foote.

Okay.

I think, um, when you're in the margins, sometimes, you know, in order to not have the light turned on you, and, and in order to not have the oppressors come and knock on your door, you find ways.

Tell me about the exorcism.

So the exorcism actually happened for years after I became a Christian because I became a Christian as big in church.

I actually did some exorcisms.

Well, in evangelical church, we call them deliverances.

You know, Catholics do exorcisms.

Evangelicals do deliverances.

So I was a deliverer, part of the deliverance team.

And you write about this incredibly well, but it's also really funny.

What is this?

This is a Victorian body cooler.

It's from the 1800s.

I'm

not feeling good about any of this.

All new, Scariest House in America, Friday night at 9 on HGTV.

But what you're showing us is that they are, in some ways, performing all the time.

Yeah.

They're drawn to act in a play because performing, acting, code switching is something that I think Certainly for me, if you're gay, if you're queer in a homophobic country, you learn how to act.

And you perform enough to be normal.

You don't perform enough to be exceptional.

You perform enough, again, to vanish.

It's based on a much rumored event from those years.

This is one of the foundational fears of my young years.

yeah

and um an identity is so fluid it's never permanent it's never set um and that of course spills over into sexual identity and it spills over into into um gender and so on but that was one of the things that was such a pleasure to learn from the research just how fluid and how up for grabs all these things were and i wanted that kind of sensory world that sensual world in the book i also think um I think it's, for me at least, it's one of the things that was very different from the fantasy I read quite a bit of, where a lot of those things are sort of cut and dry, to the point where they're dependable.

They're things I want from my hero, which I get in, say, Strider.

And I looked at Strider a lot when I was writing Tracker, actually.

But I kept going, what if Strider were in Game of Thrones? You know? But it's...

I think that there are things that we hold on to to the point where they become kind of sources of prejudice, like the idea of what a man is and what is normal or what is straight, what is gay, what is so on.

And it's not that I don't mind labels.

So maybe this is a good time to hear a little bit of the prose.

meeting one another.

It's the first time they're rehearsing.

The first rehearsal.

So have it.

Places, Havelock shouts.

Each of these towels represent a bed until props come.

Rocky, bed stage right.

And I'm like, I pulled

And that's why this is important to talk about in terms of the representation, because you're like, you don't want to, you want to go past Bob Marley and Sunny Beach commercials, and then you take us all the way to the gully, you know what I mean? And it's showing something even more, showing something that you're almost scared to show a public that already knows has reduced your community to stereotypes.

Yeah, but it's easy to play the game of just, well, let's just swap it out for a different stereotype.

Let's take away one short-sighted thing for another short-sighted thing and have beautiful beaches and wonderful people.

Even in this era, which is 20 years or four today, There are all these sort of complex negotiations people are making.

There are people with queerness, with homosexuality, with difference, and so on.

But at the same time, I left for a reason.

All my trans friends are living here now.

You know what I mean? In the work.

And I'm just wondering for you, a person who reads and loves books and talks about books on your podcast, what you are hoping to do, what it feels like for you, what is exciting to you about having your work be so directly in conversation with other texts? Yeah.

Well, I mean, all of that is really deliberate because I'm always in conversation with other texts.

I'm always in conversation with other records.

I'm always in conversation with other works of art.

Um, I, you know, I, um, I'm in, in a lot of ways, even more inspired by non-text art.

Um, you know, I'm, I'm more in, you know, I put on, I put on jazz music before I write, um, If I can't figure my way through a paragraph, I'm more likely to look at art than read a story.

I just think art is always the best.

legit.

I wonder, did you want the novel to resist identifying one morally correct way to survive?

Absolutely, because there isn't one.

There isn't one, and I'm not sure any of them were morally correct or morally incorrect.

I, like anybody else, um, feel the vengeance, the vengeance urge.

But the character in the book who chooses vengeance not only loses a sense of mooring, not only loses a sense of self, he lose, he, he kinda loses his mind.

Um, the, the, the there's a price you pay even if you feel justified There's a price you pay for trying to go through evil to get to good.

Hmm.

I remember all the homophobic cool kids took the bus to school at 6:00, so I realized if I take the bus at 6:15, I don't have to deal with any of them.

And these other men are actually less of a resource than one might hope.

DAVID ROCKEFELLER JR.: Yeah.

Because in Jamaica, and I can only speak for my country, in Jamaica, masculinity was always up for grabs.

The goalpost was always shifting.

There is a scene in the second section, Black Jacks, where this guy reels off all the people he should kill.

Kill a man with a high voice, kill Boy George.

Kill anybody who recite poetry, kill a poet.

listen, you got to do the thing

So I want to talk a little bit about this character as one who is using— different masks maybe in order to like live the life that he feels is expected and then the life that he wants.

Yeah.

Um, well, I mean, the first thing about, about Matt is unlike a lot of people who wants to close, which he has the means, um, and he can do it, and he has light-skinned privilege, and he has pretty privilege, and all of that.

But he also, as we get to know him more near the end, again, he's also scarred by who he should be and who he shouldn't be.

He is sort of scarred by expectations.

He is really, really sort of shell-shocked by the hatred because he's one of the people who's attacked.

And he's attacked pretty – I mean, they're all attacked badly, but he's also attacked particularly badly.

Well, as we okay, so as we kind of wind down, I want to just ask about like, how did this writing this book doing the research for this book, make you encounter or reencounter your own experience as a gay Jamaican?

What is it that makes it possible to bridge that they don't get to have a chance at?

Well, I think to bridge takes some growing.

And I think Jordan, in a way, never stops being that in 19.

And sometimes, I think somebody alludes to this in the book, sometimes one of the worst things that trauma does is that it leaves you in the present tense.

It leaves you there.

I know for me, like, for example, I'm triggered when I run across schoolmates, because I remember how horrible high school was.

And yet, you know, high school was 40 years ago.

Interesting.

Were there parts of your gay experience that were illuminated by literature that really helped you to solidify your thinking?

Yeah.

Weirdly enough, no, because I was too scared to read gay books.

I read Giovanni's Room when I was, what, 50? And the first thing I thought of is, man, if I read this when I was 18, I'd have gone so far in the closet, I'd be onto my fifth kid by now.

And I'd be so unhappy.

One of the things I remember about, well, one, it's Jamaica, so there's no way you could get a gay book in Jamaica without announcing you're buying a gay book.

And then again, nobody would be shipping it.

I mean, these men pretty much

[laughs]

And, and I was very, I, I was very satisfied with this answer.

And then he said to me, "Tell me about your mother." And I had no...

I froze.

It never occurred to me at all to think about my mother.

And it just came all at once that everything I was living at that time, the lie I was living, the, the, the ways in which I was not being myself was all in this effort to never disappoint my mother.

And I realized at that point my entire life was built around the sham of not ple- not displeasing my mom.

[laughing]

Are current leaders over-leveraging the future for the next generation? That's next.

My search for the scariest house in America has taken me to some unsettling places.

Not by choice, but per my contract.

The spooky.

Yikes.

I don't like it.

What is this? This is a Victorian body

... "We knew you had to be our first in-person guest."

I think what people like, what I've gotten from people, is that they like that it's showing them as them.

... who got convicted of bribes-

In that really ugly incident we saw in Minnesota, protesters called an ICE officer the N-word.

Mark, do you expect that we'll learn more here soon?

soon?I, I do, and to echo what Josh just said, they know more than we know, and that's appropriate.

They have to keep some of these facts close to their chest because I would be very surprised if they don't have some information about some car somewhere.

But rather than let that out, thereby telling the person in the car maybe to change cars or whatever, they're going to keep that close to the chest.

That's just, you know, investigation 101, to gather a lot of information and let some of it out to the public so you're getting additional information.

But that critical mass of information they have to keep close to their chest until they develop it properly, and that information getting out would give information to the bad guys that they don't want them to have.

[whoosh]

The Republicans should say, "We wanna take over.