November 12th, 1997 to November 18th, 1997

The Return of D. Travers Scott

by Owen Keehnen

When D. Travers Scott moved from Chicago in 1993 (with boyfriend David Eckard) he was one of the brightest queer stars of the city's performance scene. Eckard had gained considerable recognition as a gifted sculptor. They met at the ACT UP Demo for healthcare, were co-founders of the Chicago chapter of Queer Nation, and were active Radical Faeries. They're still together and living happily in Seattle "working freelance and managing a 41-unit apartment building full of morticians, dominatrices, and heroin dealers."

Now Travers is back in town, but only for a brief visit to promote his new book (Nov. 19 at Unabridged Books). Execution, Texas: 1987 is a fine combination of literary work and compelling read. It's about 17-year-old "bisexual" Seeger and his growth from boy to man over the span of one tumultuous summer in a small strip-mall town in Texas. It's about his girlfriend and his boyfriend and dealing with parents and the vastness of the future. It's a unique story about being 17. The story and its presentation are at once mystical, sad, tender, and smart. Execution, Texas: 1987 is an exciting debut novel from one of today's most promising young gay writers.

Owen: What was your initial intent when you began Execution, Texas: 1987?

Travers: There are scenes in that book I began nine years ago and a lot of it developed organically as separate things. I didn't try putting it together 'til later. Much of the novel was a reaction to the gay books I was reading in my late teens and early 20s and wanting to create something I didn't have for myself as a consumer. I wanted to read something that was not about white middle-aged professionals living in Fire Island and having their relationship tested because one of them sleeps with the Latino busboy. I wanted to read something about a different part of the country that reflected my class experience.

Owen: The book deals strongly with identity, who we are versus who we want to be and how it comes across sexually, genetically, and even geographically.

Travers: As the book was revised all the queer-specific issues grew into larger issues. Sexuality and gender identity are only one set of stories we make up to understand ourselves and the world around us. The book became then these stories on different identities-sexual identity, class identity, regional identity, etc. So I was looking at how all these multilayered stories build up the point where you must weed through and pick and choose what ones you want to align yourself with.

Owen: Seeger, the 17-year-old main character, is so real. How close is he to who you were at that age?

Travers: Close but pretty exaggerated. He's a little more outgoing and in the middle of things. I was sitting at home, writing and pondering. Seeger's experience is fictional, but I've kept journals starting in the 4th and 5th grade so I had a lot of research material to get back into the adolescent mindset.

Owen: Large parts of the book also deal with precognitive visions and submerged memories. Is that something you've experienced or more a topic of interest?

Travers: Both. One thing that was accurate in the book was Seeger's mom was this very sort of extreme apocalyptic neopagan. My mom wasn't quite so extreme but we do go for psychic workshops and looking for UFOs. I didn't live with her but I spent the summers with her. When I was with her I was raised with this neopagan and New Age value system which was the complete opposite of how I was raised with my dad and stepmother. In the book I'm looking at these belief systems-mystical precognitive paganism, Christianity, and atheism and how they seem very separate at first but they begin to blend and cross over 'til at the end of the book you have Christian visions happening.

Owen: What do you want readers to come away from the book feeling?

Travers: Kevin Killian's blurb on the book says it has a "shuddery sadness" and that was one of the best descriptions I've heard of it. There are moments of humor, but I think overall the book has a feeling of sad yearning. It's about that point of adolescence when you really desperately want to believe in things 100% and think you know all the answers and can figure everything out. It's about me older looking back with a nostalgia for that, knowing it's not a feasible way to live, but it is sweet.

Owen: I've seen a couple of your performance pieces when you were in Chicago and it had an exhibitionist edge to it. Do you consider the novel as revealing?

Travers: People always see first novels as autobiographical and that is certainly an impulse in writing. One thing that happened though was midway through the book I started writing porn for different sorts of markets. Porn was great for breaking that autobiographical young writer habit. When writing lesbian or transgender porn I had to really fictionalize and completely create from the bottom up. It's important to tap into the autobiographical emotional impulse, but if you want to tell a good story it must be structured and have certain fictional elements. I applied a lot of what I learned in porn back into the book and what might have been more exhibitionist was sacrificed or reworked for the sake of telling a better story.

Owen: You've done erotica for Drummer and Steam as well as a dozen or more anthologies, not to mention all your published essays on sex. Did you ever imagine yourself a sex theorist and pleasure provider?

Travers: That stuff just snowballed! One interesting project was coming along after another. My performance was always sex-oriented. I made bar graphs of my sex life and videotaped my boyfriend and I having sex, edited it, and showed it in galleries-and for some reason he's still with me. Sex is such a fertile window into other things and from a queer perspective it ties into this whole larger debate going on of trying to transform out of identity politics and figure out different ways of looking at things and ourselves. If I stopped being motivated about sex I'd stop writing about it, but it's just so damn interesting.

Owen: You were so involved in the activist community here in Chicago with ACT UP, a co-founder of this chapter of Queer Nation, a member of the Radical Faeries. Are you still as much a direct activist in Seattle?

Travers: We dropped all that almost immediately when we left Chicago. One of the great things but also harder things about being in Chicago was there was so much to do. At that age I wanted to do everything and that was such a vibrant and powerful thing going on. When we left Chicago for Portland, where we lived three years before moving to Seattle, we really just wanted to get away from everything, focus on our work, take away all temptations and distractions, and narrow it to what was most important. Since then we've been seeing other venues for the activism. Direct activism always drove me nuts because of the group dynamics. Now I keep my activism on a personal level-going to my partner's family reunion in rural Iowa felt a whole lot more powerful than some big actions. Those one-to-one connections with people are so powerful because you can see the tangible result in another person's eyes.

Owen: Have you always wanted to be a writer?

Travers: It's something I've always done and it's always been there. I got into college on a film scholarship and writing was sort of second-hand. But even with my performance art, the impulse is always one of storytelling.

Owen: You've accomplished so much in the past few years. I mean, your resume is really impressive, you're considered one of the bright twenty-something stars of gay lit. Do you have a career goal?

Travers: Just to keep doing work and structure the stuff I have to do to make money in such a way that there's enough time and energy to create the work and then get it out to people either through publishing or performance.

Owen: I've been dying to ask this: what's the D stand for?

Travers: David.

Owen: I was hoping for something really outrageous.

Travers: My middle name is better. I was named after Mary Travers of the group Peter, Paul, and Mary.

Owen: Thanks, Travers, and good luck with the book.

D. Travers Scott will be at Chicago's Unabridged Bookstore on Wednesday, Nov. 19, at 7:30 p.m., 3251 N. Broadway, (773) 883-9119.

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