S. BEAR BERGMAN Reading Sunday (October 27), 2 pm, Brigantine Room and November 3, 11 am, Studio Theatre part of the Rewriting The Rules Of Family panel, with Alison Wearing and Susan G. Cole, November 2, 11 am, Studio Theatre. ifoa.org.
S. Bear Bergman – trans dad married to a trans man, proud Jew, in a polyamorous relationship and bent on remaking the family – has his own road show. He’s performing a stage work based on several stories in his new book, Blood, Marriage, Wine And Glitter.
His audience includes members of Parents, Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG), LGBT readers, bubbies and zaidies, pierced-up and tattooed trans kids, curious hets and a few fundamentalists.
Take a guess at who gives him the hardest time.
“By far the most hostility comes from heteronormative gay men and lesbians,” he says while driving down the highway to his next gig in Connecticut. “They’re white, upper and middle class, mostly monogamous and infuriated that I’m talking about my family, that I’m out and trans, that my husband, who’s transexual, had our baby, that I am sex-positive and polyamorous and that I’m giving all of homosexuality a bad name.”
He may be a dangerous transgressive to some, but he’s also one of the most accessible queer writers around. That’s because he writes with burning intensity and an authenticity that makes his autobiographical stories resonate emotionally.
It wasn’t always that way. He tried writing as if it were a performative exercise in queerness until a college teacher told Bergman she could sniff the fakery. Get real, she said.
“So now I tell it just exactly how it is for me in the moment. I won’t try to make it more clear or less queer, more trans or less trans. If I have a point to explicate, I’ll do it, but I won’t pin a political agenda on a good story if they don’t match.”
Bergman’s ultimate mission in the new book is to celebrate his unusual family, which includes a known donor (he calls him the spuncle), and so three sets of grandparents, various fairy godmothers and lesbian aunts whom he calls sparkles, all of whom make up a community that gives him great joy.
He passionately believes in being “out” – whether he’s talking about himself or anybody else. In his essay Dear Parents Who Have Written Me, he urges those with queer kids not to keep them closeted because they fear gay life is hard. A kid who’s bullied at school but loved at home grows into a more whole adult than the child who tries to fit in while keeping a secret.
And Bergman himself feels entirely free.
“When I write about my family, someone might respond, ‘Oh god, yes, that’s exactly what I have,’ or, ‘Oh god, yes, that’s exactly what I want,’ or ‘Oh my god, that’s a teeming hive of perversion’ in a bad way.
“But I don’t have to care what they think. I just have to talk about the issues.”
Interview Clip
On when you’re ready to parent:
susanc@nowtoronto.com | @susangcole
