What Else Can I Say? Everyone Is Gay
March 19, 2000

I've always found something rather peculiar -- queer even -- about the ruminations of Douglas Coupland. It was shortly after Microserfs was released that a nagging, indescribable unease started buzzing about my cranium. There was something, well, wrong with his fiction -- the literary equivalent of watching a slightly out of focus film.

It was only after reading Girlfriend in a Coma that I pinpointed my problem with Doug's oeuvre. None of his heterosexual relationships rang true for me. In any of his novels.

There are a limited number of explanations for this perceived shortcoming.

• Door Number One: I'm an idiot unfit to breathe the same brilliant air as Sir Doug.
• Door Number Two: Doug is a bad writer, despite the big advances he commands.
• Door Number Three: Doug has had limited experience in the romantic world, a contingency which has been accurately reflected in his writing.
• Door Number Four: Doug has violated the first commandment of fiction: Write about what you know.

Recent evidence pointed me towards Door Number Four, which, when opened, revealed a closet. Discovering that Douglas Coupland is single, thin and neat meant I had some serious journalistic decisions to make. I grabbed a copy of Esquire's October 1997 issue, whose cover boldly stated, "Kevin Spacey Has a Secret." Surprising, Esquire's usual barbed wire reporting didn't help me much. The only salvageable sentence in the entire magazine was thus: "[I]t was about time, if you ask us, that somebody tried to invade his privacy and finally treat him like the celebrity he is."

This raises a valid point. There exists the argument, even post-Diana, that celebrities -- in exchange for money and power -- tacitly agree to leave their lives open for discussion. Private truths aren't inherently newsworthy, but hypocrisies and secrecies certainly might be. Perpetrating invisibility helps maintain antigay stereotypes and fuel homophobia while coming out or being outed gives courage to millions who remain in the closet due to fear or shame. Doug is long past the point where his sexual orientation would impact his career, be that negative or positive. He'd make a cool role model -- and he's cute to boot.

Yet none of this made my decision any easier. Many people (gay or straight) would rather be defined by their work and life than by their sexuality, whether that be for personal or economic reasons.

That being said, the phenomenon of "inning" is what is compelling me to write this piece. Willfully obscuring someone's sexuality by using a phrase like "confirmed bachelor" is intellectually dishonest. I believe that most prominent Vancouver journalists know "the secret" but continue "inning" Doug. And it's starting to bother me.

- - -

Running a boolean search of "Douglas Coupland & gay" through the Lexis-Nexis database provided 90 matches. None, however, replaced my ampersand with the verb "is." Which just goes to prove that The Mead Corporation doesn't know everything. Yet.

Most of the flagged articles contain "Doug" and "gay" by accident, but a few articles come painfully close to converting coincidence into cover story. A May 17, 1998 article from The Independent (London) is one of the better examples. Reporter Oliver Bennett spends 2,000 words pondering the popularity of irony and sarcasm during the 1990s. Bennett namechecks Douglas Coupland's fiction of ironic detachment and later notes that "[T]he ironic attitude as we know it today probably started as a Masonic code among like-minded people -- often gay, and bound up in camp -- to differentiate themselves from lumpy, literal straights."

- - -

In the spring of 1998 I attended a party at Douglas Coupland's house. I later converted my experiences into an article that was published in the April 1999 issue of Borderlines. During the course of my research I read more than 50 interviews with Doug. Certain patterns emerged again and again. Doug refused to discuss his love life. Again. And again and again.

Maintaining privacy is understandable, but Doug is selectively private. He does promo spots on MTV. He does book tours. He does a lot of interviews. He is the embodiment of the author-celebrity. But certain topics have always been off limits.

Pre-emptive avoidance is why good publicists get paid so well. They warn journalists about what their clients will and won't discuss. And said journalists are happy to comply, since Doug is considered A Very Important Person. Interviewing him is an honour and many journalists must be so giddy at the prospect of speaking with the ur-prophet that they gladly misplace the tough questions.

However, journalism[tm] is supposed to be about poking around where you don't quite belong. Doug's new book, Miss Wyoming, hits bookstores in early 2000. The publicity juggernaut will mostly likely be dialed to eleven, since he's switched publishers and Pantheon has to earn back a monster advance. I'm sure I'm not the only person who's interested to know if Doug's sexual proclivities have influenced his written work. Literature is about describing and creating authentic experiences that make convincing connections with readers. There has to be something in the fact that Doug isn't telling us the whole story, either in interviews or in the books he writes.

I hope someone pops "the question" since I doubt I'll be given that particular opportunity.

- - -

Remember when Rob Halford (ex-Judas Priest lead singer) outed himself? It was a non-event. A few wags felt his admission was a shrewd, calculated maneuver designed to promote Two, his new band, rather than a heart wrenching disclosure that couldn't be kept secret from his fans one moment longer. If nothing else, it made his satanic past wonderfully poignant -- sweet revenge for those tortured by the homophobic high school boys of the heavy metal parking lot. Halford "turning" homo made a nation of rednecks simultaneously experience the aural equivalent of the Crying Game disrobement scene.

Halford helped prove that celebrities can be openly gay and not face reprisal. Ditto Ellen DeGeneres, who showed us that lesbians can make warm and pleasant sitcoms that are every bit as banal as the heterosexual variety. Homosexual celebrities now inhabit a territory bookended by Seinfeld's "Not that there's anything wrong with that" and middle America's jocular homophobia.

Outed actors like David Hyde Pierce (Niles on Frasier) prove how unimportant sexual preference is in portraying particular characters. His gayness evaporates the moment I watch him pining over Daphne. I believe Pierce because he exudes genuineness and authenticity, two traits that are not the exclusive domain of heterosexuals.

In a similar way, Bob Mould's music (ex of Husker Du and Sugar) also transcends sexuality and gender. His song "Can't Fight It," from the No Alternative compilation got me through a terrible breakup. When I read his October, 1994 interview in Spin -- the one where he voluntarily "outed" himself -- the song that had gotten me through sleepless nights was recontextualized.

But not for very long. Bob, regardless of his sexual orientation, had written a song that had made a connection with me. Both David Hyde Pierce and Bob Mould create characters and songs that I, as a straight male, identify with. They don't "water down" or alter their acting or music to be more mainstream, gain more acceptance (Emmys) or sell more albums. Bob spins yarns about the human condition in an authentic and compelling manner. David Hyde Pierce makes me laugh out loud. QED.

But what about the written word? Fiction, even the intellectual kind, is meant to be part entertainment and part enlightenment. Novelists are actors, directors, editors and script doctors all rolled into one. And I think it's fair to say that Doug Coupland wears some of these hats better than others.

I have always found the weakest, vaguest sections of his novels to be those all-too-rare paragraphs that portray male-female relationships. (Which, obviously, is not to suggest that gay writers can't accurately describe such relationships. To argue that being gay excludes a writer from discussing heterosexuality is equivalent to saying that a male author is incapable of creating a convincing female protagonist or vice versa).

But even Doug seems to silently acknowledge his deficiencies in this department. One tactic is evasion, evidenced by Generation X's Andy stating "Claire and I never fell in love, even though we both tried hard. It happens." Many Doug protagonists -- the characters most likely to embody portions of Coupland -- are single. These supra-observant eunuchs express their love and loss through other characters.

Another tactic of Coupland's is romance rushing, like the following example from Shampoo Planet: "The experience had made Anna-Louise, well, randy, and I was summoned to her apartment. By midnight, hours later, we were both lying blissfully on her futon, under the down coverlet, her face and body like a recently vacated carnival site, disconcertingly unchanged by the burst of life so recently bubbling on top."

Many of Doug's characters are tentative romantics. "I would like to fall in love again but my only hope is that love doesn't happen to me so often after this," notes a character in Life After God. "I'm new at this love thing," says Dan from Microserfs. (Interestingly, Dan and Karla never consummate their relationship. But then again, it is a novel about computer geeks. :)

Even more interesting is Bug from Microserfs. Half-way through the novel he suddenly blurts out that he's gay: "I've been 'inning' myself for too long," he said, "and now it's time to out myself. It's something you'll all have to deal with, but believe me, I've been dealing with it a lot longer than you."

- - -

Doug's lack of disclosure makes me feel cheated somehow. I'm sure many will disagree. That's what letters to the editor are for. Regardless, I find it hard to believe that something as fundamentally defining as sexuality would not influence one's creative work in some way. I find it even harder to believe that avoiding said sexuality wouldn't have an even more appreciable effect on one's creative output.

My decision to force the issue is tempered by the fact that Doug's privacy will remain mostly intact. The same forces that have acted to "in" him thus far will ensure that this "new" information remains buried. Few publications can afford to provoke the ire of Douglas Coupland, which is a far more important consideration than wrangling over the ethics of outing somebody famous.

I'd like to make this clear that this is in no way a punitive outing -- I hope only to provoke discourse on an issue that's worth raising. Perhaps Douglas Coupland will one day feel comfortable enough to be honest with us. But until then, for the sake of decorum, let's keep this our little secret shall we?

I hope readers will consider this article a starting point, rather than a conclusion. Here are some resources for further consideration:

The End of Gay by Toronto author Bert Archer is a new book that examines sexual identity and how it is becoming less and less important in people's lives. Archer believes that sexual behaviour only became a part of our notion of identity 130 years ago, and while it was enormously useful and valuable to win various legal, legislative and social rights, during the past 10 years it's become more constricting than liberating.

Also check out the 1997 article on the Kevin Spacey/Esquire controversy that Feed Magazine has re-published. Here.

Finally, the book Gay Ideas by Richard Mohr and Queer in America by Michelangelo Signorile are both worth examining.