Gay man tries on author-hood
Vermont-born Philip Galanes debuts first novel 'Father's Day'
by J.A. Lopata
BOSTON – The openly gay author Philip Galanes isn’t sure what
he’ll be wearing when he visits Boston on June 15 for the
reading and signing of his novel “Father’s Day” at We Think the
World of You.
He calls himself a “virgin” in book reading matters, “Father’s
Day” being his first novel and all.
Still, with a book jacket picturing a yellow sweater, and
chapter headings such as “Loud Blouse,” “Tennis Whites,” “A
Threadbare Towel,” and “Chinchilla Jackets,” it’s clear that
Galanes doesn’t consider sartorial matters to be taken lightly.
“Clothes are some of the ways we present ourselves to each
other,” said Galanes. The choice of what we wear addresses
questions about the parts of us that are “real, hidden, public,
and private.”
And in a novel where the gay hero is frequently chatting on
“Pump Line,” a phone sex line, the question, “What are you
wearing?” seems appropriate.
Still, it’s a question that Galanes can’t seem to answer;
perhaps because this forty year old has spent most of his adult
career as a full-time lawyer, wearing pin stripe suits and ties.
He’s still figuring out how to fit into his new role as author,
though he is not giving up his career as a lawyer yet. “It’s
much harder to balance a demanding job with the longing to write
than it is to balance the job with actually writing,” he says.
He is comfortable with his role as writer, although it took him
along time to get that way.
“I don’t know what held me up,” said Galanes.
Galanes began life in Brattleboro, Vermont, spending a great
deal of time in Massachusetts’s Berkshires, where his mother’s
side of the family came from.
He later studied at Yale University in Connecticut before he
made his way to his present home in New York City and into the
field of law.
Both New England and New York figure prominently in “Father’s
Day.” And Galanes’s fast-paced, short passages often cut back
and forth between the two locations and across time from the
protagonist’s childhood years to his adulthood.
In his writing, Galanes enjoys pitting the “innocence of small
town boyhood with big city adulthood,” he says. It all sounds
vaguely autobiographical. And it turns out that Galanes has no
problem confessing that much of the novel is based on his own
life experiences, right down to the hero’s father’s suicide.
Galanes’s father also killed himself. But that act doesn’t
preclude the novel from being funny. Funny? Yes.
Openly gay author Mark O’Donnell wrote that Galanes “has created
a delightful paradox, a character both superficial and profound,
casual-sounding yet compulsive, very funny and borderline
desperate – in short, a classic human being.”
How else does a human being cloth his discomfort with death, but
with humor? Take a short passage from the book, which is written
in the first person, in which the lead character Matthew talks
on the Pump Line. He hears the other person describe himself
first:
“’I’m six feet four and two hundred and fifty pounds of pure
muscle.’”
[Matthew shares he thoughts with us:]
“Two hundred and fifty pounds seems awfully heavy to me.
“’Totally hairless,’ he says.
“Like it’s a virtue.
“’Sounds great,’ I say, not meaning a word of it.
“Liza Minnelli probably didn’t even weigh two hundred and fifty
pounds at her peak, and she was huge.”
Amidst Matthew’s search for meaning and connection on “Pump
Line,” as well as finding the right clothes, he begins to make
connections and find meaning.
This is not at all unlike Galanes’ life. Here we have a New
England-bred man who found himself as an openly gay lawyer in
New York City and later discovers, just prior to entering his
fifth decade of life that he really wants to be a fiction
writer.
That’s a lot of searching.
“We all have so many different pieces of who we are,” said
Galanes, “It’s really fun to explore all of these different
sides.”
So tell us, Mr. Galanes, what will the “author side” of Mr.
Galanes be wearing when he reads in Boston?
“I don’t know,” says Galanes. “What should I wear?”
What a minute. Is this Pump Line?
Philip Galanes will read from and sign copies of his novel
“Father’s Day” at We Think the World of You, 540 Tremont Street,
Boston at 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, June 15. For more information,
call 617/350-0083.
Photo Credit: Amanda Weil
This piece first appeared in "In Newsweekly: New England's largest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender newspaper."
June 2, 2004