When I first met David Levithan, he was the editor of my suburban New Jersey high school newspaper. I was a sophomore and he was a senior. He was one of those nerdy-cool kids. He read Anne Tyler novels and was in love with Anna Quindlen. He wrote long loopy notes to friends and passed them off in the hallways, lines upon lines of erudition written in a tiny but consistent hand. He made mix-tapes with music you might not yet know. He would cut out designs from construction paper and frame the song titles, making art that enhanced the 10,000 Maniacs or Julia Fordham tape you had just received. He was smart and funny in a meticulous and offbeat way. Today, in the era of “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” and “Will & Grace,” you might say that David had a queer aesthetic — good taste, an eye for new trends. But you certainly wouldn’t have said so back then. Because at Millburn High School in 1989, “queer” was far from a friendly epithet.
As far as we knew, there were no gay kids at Millburn High School. It was a small school. A wealthy school. A Republican school, with George H.W. Bush winning straw polls and Jim Florio considered by a majority to be a liberal, evildoer governor. This was the 1980s, and there was nary a gay role model on the horizon: Melissa Etheridge and K.D. Lang weren’t even out, for God’s sake. Even the Indigo Girls were a mere rumor. The only literature for teens with gay characters was terrifying: Sandra Scoppettone books from the 1970s that ended in brutality, or the early 1980s classic “Annie on My Mind,” by Nancy Garden, in which two girls fall in love but everything falls apart in the end when they’re busted by a morality squad.
I lost touch with David not long after he went to Brown University in the fall of 1990. I heard, vaguely, that he’d come out, and that after college he had become an editor at Scholastic Books. And then, a few weeks ago, and years after I’d last heard his name, I discovered David’s new young-adult novel, “Boy Meets Boy.” As I read it, I heard David’s voice again. More refined, but with echoes of his high school self, a strong, engaging and intellectual stream of consciousness.
“I tell Noah about Kyle — how could I not? — and about some of the other disastrous dates I’ve had,” says the book’s protagonist, Paul, who is on a first date with a boy named Noah. “More the funny stories than the pained ones. The blind date with the boy in seventh grade who tucked his shirt into his underwear, and his pants into his socks, just to be ‘more secure.’ The boy at sleep-away camp who giggled whenever I used an adverb. The Finnish exchange student who wanted me to pretend to be Molly Ringwald whenever we went out. There is an unspoken recognition as we share these stories — we can talk about the bad dates and the bad boyfriends, because this is not a bad date, and we will not be bad boyfriends. We forget the fact that many of our earlier relationships … started in the same way. We pencil-sketch our previous life so we can contrast it to the Technicolor of the moment.”
“Boy Meets Boy” is a utopian gem of a novel, marketed to teens but so layered and wry, it’s bound to attract an adult audience too. It’s a queer romance, a coming-of-age tale, and it takes place in a high school that would make conservatives shudder. It’s the book I wish we had all had growing up, gay or straight.
In the past three years, literature for gay teens has had its own coming out. Books like “Rainbow Boys,” by Alex Sanchez, took a hard look at the issues of coming out, HIV and violence against gay teens. “Geography Club,” by Brent Hartinger, is about five gay kids who decide to form an underground gay-straight alliance. “Keeping You a Secret,” by Julie Anne Peters, features a popular, athletic girl (with a boyfriend) who falls in love with another girl and realizes she is a lesbian — with tragic familial consequences. But even these books, while commendable for featuring gay characters, are mini morality tales. The gay characters are scared to talk about being gay, or are tossed from their homes when they do.
“Boy Meets Boy” is notable for having none of that underlying anguish and for having a main character who isn’t keeping any secrets. When I recently sat down with David in his parents’ backyard in Short Hills, N.J., we talked about how his book transcends the heavy genre of Gay Teen Literature, with a queer main character who isn’t worried about being kicked out of his house, beat up at school, or ostracized from his family. He isn’t coming out. He barely even knows where his closet is. Like everyone around him, he’s just worried about finding love and keeping it. “Paul knows exactly who he is,” David says. “It’s not an attribute gay teens are normally given.”
Paul, a high school sophomore, has known since kindergarten that he’s gay. (“I had just assumed this man-woman arrangement,” he says, upon learning that not everyone is gay, “was yet another adult quirk, like flossing.”) He’s had boyfriends. He’s been class president. And all the while he, his friends, his family, his community — an unnamed New Jersey town that closely resembles Short Hills — has always known who he was. “There isn’t really a gay or a straight scene in our town,” Paul says, early on. “They all got mixed up a while back, which I think is for the best.” Paul’s story has all the ingredients of a typical teen romance — angst, rejection, redemption — but the characters happen to be boys. Paul and Noah fall hard for each other. Paul totally screws up the nascent romance by letting his ex-boyfriend Kyle kiss him. Word gets around that something is up between Kyle and Paul. Noah finds out and Paul has to do everything he can to win him back.
This Judy Blumesque drama is set in a fantastical, queer-friendly universe in a time period that is never specified, but might be right about now or in the very near future. Paul’s school is simply called “the High School.” It is the anti-Millburn, a place where the star quarterback is a drag queen, the cheerleaders ride Harleys, and the janitors are day traders. “In Paul’s world,” David says, “people, for the most part, are able to do what they want, and the result makes it a happier place. The boys and girls love who they want because, well, they can. It’s all a part of the ideal, which is different things for different characters.”
But beyond the quixotic confines of the High School, things are a bit more complicated. Tony, Paul’s best friend, who lives one town away, has a family that refuses to accept that he is gay. Unlike Paul, who lives with a loving and accepting mom, dad and brother, Tony has parents who are religious zealots. Paul and his friends spirit Tony away from his household under the pretense of Bible study and give him a taste of life — “romantic comedies, dimestore toys, diner jukeboxes” — outside. Says Paul, “We figure Tony’s parents would understand if only they weren’t set on misunderstanding so many things.” The system works, until one day friends of Tony’s family see Paul and Tony hugging each other in the woods. It’s not what it looks like, but it doesn’t matter — Tony is grounded and forbidden to see Paul. When Paul encourages Tony to run away, he refuses. “They think that being gay is going to mess up my life,” Tony says. “I can’t prove them right, Paul. I have to prove them wrong. And I can’t prove them wrong by changing myself or by denying who I really am.”
That the book is able to deal with Tony’s struggle without descending into the maudlin is a triumph. Tony manages to persuade his mother to allow Paul to be his friend, to come and see him — even if they have to keep his bedroom door open. “This is what a small victory feels like,” Paul says with wonder. “It feels like a little surprise and a lot of relief. It makes the past feel lighter and the future seem even lighter than that, if only for a moment. It feels like rightness winning. It feels like possibility.”
David explains that “Boy Meets Boy” didn’t start out as a teen novel — it began as a Valentine’s Day story for friends and quickly turned into a full-fledged manuscript. “I wrote the book I wanted to find as an editor,” he says. But he also wrote it as a way to rewrite all the unhappy endings in books and songs about gay teens. Tony is named for the eponymous Patti Griffin song, about a gay boy: “He looked in the mirror and saw/ A little faggot staring back at him/ Pulled out a gun and blew himself away,” Griffin sings. “I’ve heard that song hundreds of times and it still clobbers me,” David says. “I’ve never wanted to rewrite an ending so desperately, never grasped the narrator’s voice so much.”
David’s healthy characters come partly from his own healthy childhood. While he didn’t come out until college, he says that’s more because he was “oblivious” to his sexuality than closeted. At Brown he came out “gradually,” without any particularly painful scenes.
I ask David, what if his book, and others like it, had been around when we were growing up? “That’s a tautological question,” he replies. “The thing is, it couldn’t have been written when we were in high school.” He means the cultural moment we are in right now is unique, a product of everything from “Ellen” to “Queer as Folk” and everything in between. “It’s a different mind-set,” agrees Jennifer Brown, children’s forecast editor at Publishers Weekly. “It wouldn’t even occur to [these authors] who grew up in the late ’80s, early ’90s … to see a stigma [in being gay].”
Clearly teens are hungry for books that feature gay characters. “We’ve seen a big change in the last five years,” says Kathleen Horning, director of the Cooperative Children’s Book Center at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. “We used to just have just one or two books a year [with gay characters], and it wasn’t even every year. But in the last couple of years we’ve had several each year, so that’s a big, big shift.”
While booksellers don’t have a method for tracking the sales of gay teen novels specifically, the sheer number of books that have come out in the last five years is an indicator of a sea change in the market. From 1969 until 1998, says Horning, 28 young-adult novels appeared with gay, lesbian or bisexual characters. From 1998 until today, 42 more novels have been published. The Gay Lesbian Straight Education Network’s Web site lists dozens of books recommended for teen readers, nearly all of which have been published in the last few years. And, in another sign that these books are gaining mass acceptance, they are winning awards. Since 1999, four gay-themed books, or books with gay secondary characters, have picked up the Young Adult Library Services Association’s Michael L. Printz Awards, which is comparable to winning the Newbery award for children’s literature.
“Boy Meets Boy” has already received positive feedback, both from reviewers and readers. Booklist said it represented “a revolution in the publishing of gay-themed books for adolescents.” (Booklist also chose the novel as one of its top 10 romances — gay or straight — this month.) The Bulletin of the Center for Children’s Books (published by the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) praised it as well: “In a genre filled with darkness, torment, and anxiety,” it said, “this is a shiningly affirmative and hopeful book.” David says that teens e-mail him daily at his Web site to tell him how much they can relate to “Boy Meets Boy”: “I thought that the dialogue was very witty,” says Tamar Sandweiss Back, a straight 13-year-old who also lives in a New Jersey suburb. “Someone who is gay can relate to it,” she continues, “but if you’re not gay it’s still a good book. I think it’s interesting to read. I’m attracted to books that are about people that I’m not.”
Teens — gay and straight — read to find themselves, David says. “Book-inclined kids, who read to find identity in part, weren’t finding anything saying it’s OK, it’s cool to be gay, and [the story] can be happy,” he says. “It should not be such a radical thing.”
It’s a rainy and cold Friday morning in February. Adria Petty is packing furiously for a trip to Los Angeles to raise money for and interest in her newest short film, “Issa.” Her bed is a crazy mess of cats (three), Indian prints, press packets, suitcases, shoes and clothes strewn every which way. Aimee Mann croons from the stereo.
Petty’s plane leaves in an hour and she’s ordering in from Tea and Sympathy, the Anglophile eatery in downtown Manhattan. She throws hundreds of shirts onto her bed, searching for something that says, “Give money to a young, hip filmmaker.” (“When in doubt,” she says, sounding like a pull quote from a celebrity profile, “Agnès B.”) You get the feeling this isn’t the first time Petty has made a mad dash for a flight or, for that matter, put together a public presentation of herself. Anna Gabriel, Petty’s partner on numerous projects, shows up, ready to go, packed neatly into a rolling bag.
In case you hadn’t guessed, Adria Petty, filmmaker, is also Adria Petty, daughter of Tom — a fact that Petty, 25, would like very much not to be the center of attention. Better yet, let’s not discuss him at all.
Her work, she points out again and again, is her own. She doesn’t want a “poor little rich girl” profile or one about “how Tom opens doors for his daughter.” She’s not an idiot, she points out; she knows how far her name and her background have taken her, but that “only gets your foot in the door,” because without talent, she’d be ushered “right back through it.” In fact, the whole line of questioning is more than a little uncomfortable.
It’s impossible to be with her, as a reporter, and not constantly be struck by the paradox. The child of a rock star (read: irreverent icon), she was raised on money, celebrity, drugs, music and anti-establishment values. Now, thanks to her lineage, she has access to money, power and the media. And she wants to take that and turn it into an opportunity to be seen as an artist (read: irreverent icon) in her own right. Because while rock star may mean edgy, child of rock star means trust fund. And a trust fund kind of messes with your starving-artist image. Add to that the whole weird world of the music industry and what it must have been like to grow up in it (“I love your hand of God,” Petty said, looking at the large silver hamsa around my neck. When I told her it was purchased in Israel, she said, “Oh, I loved Israel — I was there when I was 13 and my dad toured with Bob Dylan“) and you have one peculiar little package.
Petty (as well as Gabriel, Peter’s daughter) has joined the ever-swelling ranks of celebrity children forging their way in the world while trying to navigate the fine line between exposure and exploitation. As Carrie Fisher once told the Los Angeles Times, she grew up as a “famous child just wanting to be normal.” But she never was, nor really tried to be. And Petty is still a celebrity kid looking to stay famous, which makes it all the more ridiculous to hear her lament. She doesn’t want to be written about because she’s a celebrity child. How can she possibly escape it?
Petty’s identity crisis began early, growing up as she did in the heartland of celebrity progeny. She was “way too eccentric for L.A.,” she says without irony, noting how much she hated her private school (“I was voted most likely to forget where she went to high school”), filled with the children of people in the “biz.” Hate it though she did, she acknowledges these contacts helped her later, grabbing her a lowly, yet prestigious — as only these jobs can be — $4-an-hour position in director Jonathan Demme’s (“Beloved”) office, where she “worked her ass off” as an intern. “No one wants to do things for sniveling rich kids who don’t work,” says Petty. In 1992, Petty moved east to attend the famously quirky Sarah Lawrence College, where Anna Gabriel was a dorm mate.
Until recently, Petty’s Greenwich Village house (a peculiar little building, at once tiny in scale and huge in square footage, tucked in an alley) was filled with friends who helped her raise her much younger sister. We spend very little time explicitly discussing her father, but his presence is never absent.
Scattered and fun, with streaky platinum blond and purple hair, matte red lips, clear blue eyes and a bright pink ’50s coat, Petty is kooky in the best possible way. She’s also unnervingly candid. At the same time she’s guarded and distant, in the manner of someone born to a life filled with prying eyes like mine.
For her trip to Los Angeles, Petty has put together a 12-minute promotional video that runs through six of her films, ranging from work she did as an undergraduate at Sarah Lawrence to her projects as a New York University film student and some independent work. Petty is interested in everything from documentaries (she’s playing with a project about Cosmopolitan magazine) and full-length feature films to commercials. She has an eye for character and detail and seems to be heavily influenced by music videos.
Her latest film, “Issa,” is an investigation of “internal and external privacy” and “not wanting to have the truth dictated to you,” Petty says, between sips of a latte at her corner Starbucks. Which means? She is interested, she says a bit wearily, in the ways we are all invaded — from the merging of information sources to the prying eyes of people who are interested in someone because of, oh, say, who her father is. It’s also about a “girl who doesn’t want to conform, so she wears disguises.” (Petty hid her father’s identity from her schoolmates at NYU for the first year she was there.)
Petty and I met twice in February at her house. Our introduction took place on a subway going uptown — to the Paper magazine tent set up for Fashion Week in Bryant Park. Petty, in pink tinted sunglasses, waded in among the hip and beautiful, pointing out people she knew. That day, clothing designer Claude Sabbah was showing his newest collection and using one of Petty’s short films as a backdrop. Sabbah designed the costumes for “Issa,” draping characters in luxuriant, heavy cloaks with eye slits that conjure up images of glamorous ninjas.
While it’s clear that Sabbah respects Petty’s work, how many NYU film students have access to couture costume designers? In the crush of young actor-director aspirants, everyone works hard and trolls for contacts, but in such celebrity-drunk circles, it becomes especially apparent just how much last names do matter.
While we sat on the uncomfortable risers at the show, a photographer took Petty’s picture as she smiled and whispered, “That’s paparazzi.” But most people didn’t notice us — there were too many full-fledged celebrities in the crowd to trifle with the kids. And there was something a little awkward about the whole thing. For one, Petty’s films weren’t where they were supposed to be. (It turned out they were being projected in the main foyer while the fashion show took place inside.) Petty was a little embarrassed. Sabbah, of course, was mobbed after the show, so we spoke only to his assistant. Petty then introduced me to her producer, Gena Boyer, gushing that Boyer would “love” me, as she herself did. I was flush with the praise — until I remembered we’d known each other for just an hour.
We grabbed a cab outside Bryant Park, Boyer and Petty furiously barking into cellphones as we headed back downtown. Petty dropped Boyer off and suggested we get drinks in the lobby of the Mercer Hotel. The Mercer is a funny place, not the sort of stomping grounds that upstart — or unknown — filmmakers linger in. You can’t sit in the exclusive hotel’s lobby unless you’re a guest or unless the hotel “knows you.” We fell into the latter category. A couple of hours, a handful of free drinks from the obsequious staff and an assortment of off-the-record stories later, I felt as if we’d bonded — become friends even.
And then Petty, late for a production meeting, was off, hopping into a cab with a tart goodbye and nary a backward glance. I was left with a mild buzz and the peculiarly off-center feeling that I’d contributed to the pyramid scheme of celebrity culture — meeting Petty before she’d even produced a full-length video, let alone a feature film. My notes were a mishmash, filled with phrases like “Dad has nothing at all to do with my life in the city” and “hard work” and “L.A. is always perfect, that can make you crazy too” and “surreal.”
Back in 1984, when Walter Mondale was interviewing potential vice presidential candidates, he announced that he intended to share the Democratic ticket with a woman. But, he said, memorably, “there are certain realities” he had to face, namely that women “wouldn’t have the same range of experience” as men — nor could anyone expect that they would.
When Mondale chose Rep. Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate, she was one of only 24 women in the House. Today, there are 56. And while Nancy Landon Kassebaum and Paula Hawkins were the only female senators in 1984, today there are nine.
Fifteen years and four elections later, Ferraro remains the only woman ever to have graced the presidential ticket for a major party. But the picture — and the VP pipeline — has changed. The buzz created by Elizabeth Dole’s short-lived grass-roots presidential campaign and the rise of politicians like Republican Gov. Christine Todd Whitman of New Jersey and Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California is helping fuel speculation that the leading presidential candidates may tap women as their running mates in 2000.
So great are the gains made by women in American politics since Ferraro’s rise and fall in ’84 that Mondale’s caveat about the “range of experience” no longer applies. Many of the female names mentioned as vice presidential contenders have as much political experience as their male counterparts — and some have more.
“There is a significantly greater pool of qualified women to pick from than there was in 1984,” said Ellen Malcolm, director of EMILY’s List, an organization that helps elect pro-choice, Democratic women.
With more well-qualified women available, the parties won’t have to settle for someone unknown to the public.
“No one can afford a Geraldine Ferraro — or a Dan Quayle for that matter,” says Rich Galen, Republican strategist and a former Quayle press secretary. No one is going to “pluck someone out of obscurity.”
Normally, the two major considerations in selecting vice presidential candidates are the number of electoral votes the candidate will bring, and how he or she meshes with the presidential candidate’s policies. But sometimes additional factors enter the calculation, such as a candidate’s appeal to particular demographic segments, name recognition, issue expertise and access to funding networks.
Salon News asked Washington strategists, lobbyists, pollsters and staffers to assess a short list of women whose names are most often floated as vice presidential contenders.
1) Elizabeth Dole
By all accounts, Dole is the female front-runner. With her name recognition and a large network of women donors, Dole could help a Republican running mate close the gender gap. Working against her is her lack of experience in elected public office, though some dismiss that. “She has a lifetime of public service” behind her, says Republican strategist Ladonna Lee. “She’s an accomplished lawyer [and] cabinet member, and she ran the Red Cross.”
2) Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.
There isn’t much of a pause when wonky Washingtonians put together the words “Democrat,” “woman” and “vice president” — Feinstein is at the top of every list. The two-time senator from populous California and former San Francisco mayor has “proven her mettle up and down the political system,” says Marie Wilson, a founder of the nonpartisan White House Project, an organization that seeks to get women elected to the presidency and other key offices. “She’s knowledgeable about foreign policy, has worked across party lines and her name is known.” Working against her: At 65, she may be “too old,” says one strategist.
3) Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, R-N.J.
The rumor mill went into overdrive after Whitman dropped out of the race for a Senate seat earlier this year — was she underfunded, as she said; did she have health problems; or was she seeking to get tapped as George W. Bush’s veep? Though her name keeps popping up, “it would take a major act of courage to appoint Whitman because of her aggressive stand on abortion rights,” notes Eleanor Clift, contributing editor at Newsweek and author of “Madame President: Shattering the Last Glass Ceiling.” Even scarier to conservative Republicans is the outspoken stance Whitman has taken against the Christian Coalition. And though some believe a Bush-Whitman ticket would be strong, pulling in a good chunck of Democrats, the majority of Republican commentators don’t think it will ever happen.
4) Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas
The Constitution won’t permit Hutchison to be on the same ticket as Bush, since they both represent Texas. But many believe Hutchison is a top Republican candidate. “She would be the archtypical woman,” gushes strategist Galen, “the person who would fit the mold of someone who would be a terrific VP nominee: smart, understands politics from the ground up, strong.” She’s also more conservative than Whitman; some believe that Hutchison will eventually run to head the ticket.
5) Gov. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H.
Shaheen is described by EMILY’s List’s Malcolm as the “real sleeper candidate.” Shaheen was the first Democratic governor elected in New Hampshire in over a decade and the first woman ever to hold the office. She also helped deliver a Democratic majority to the state Senate for the first time in 60 years. Enormously popular in her home state, Shaheen recently threw her support to Gore. In the primary election, this endorsement could tip the state in Gore’s favor. But despite its influential primary, New Hampshire is a diminutive New England state with only a handful of electoral votes.
6) Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine
The first Greek-American woman elected to the Senate, Snowe is highly respected across party lines. But Snowe lacks the support of conservative Republicans, who dismiss her as too moderate. “Olympia Snowe has never seen an abortion she didn’t like,” sneers Sheila
Moloney of the Eagle Forum. Snowe has worked her way from the Maine Legislature to the House of Representatives to the Senate. But it may be Maine’s lack of electoral votes that keeps her from higher office.
7) Gov. Jane Dee Hull, R-Ariz.
The leading member of Arizona’s so-called “Fab Five” — the secretary of state, attorney general, treasurer and superintendent of public instruction are also women — Hull has been lauded for her progressive education initiatives. But like New Hampshire and Maine, Arizona lacks the electoral votes to make Hull an obvious running mate.
Rep. Jennifer Dunn, R-Wash.
One of the few self-proclaimed soccer moms in Congress, Dunn serves as the deputy majority whip and as a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. Dunn is respected by her party, but has little national visibility. And as with Whitman and Snowe, her stance on abortion — liberal by conservative standards — may alienate her from the Republican base.
9) Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash.
The “mom in tennis shoes” who ran for office and won, Murray is the vice chairwoman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. “She is very out-front on educational issues,” says Roslyn O’Connell, president of the National Women’s Political Caucus. “I think she’s a very appealing candidate, youthful, [but] a proven politician.” But Murray’s low name recognition nationally is a strike against her.
10) Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md.
Mikulski is from a “working-class Democratic base,” says EMILY’s List’s Malcolm, and she remains close to her roots, “showing that she really gets what their lives are about. She’s a community organizer turned senator. And she’s feisty and funny and smart.” Mikulski’s commitment to women’s health care is admired, but some fear she may be “too liberal” for a centrist Democratic Party ticket.
On the horizon
Many observers have their eyes trained on three rising stars in the House as future vice presidential material: Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.; Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif.; and Nita Lowey, D-N.Y. In her party, Pelosi, who has focused on health care and human rights, has “terrific respect,” says Marie Wilson, but “not a lot of name recognition” nationally. Sanchez is seen as an up-and-comer. “She’s a real pistol!” says NWCP’s O’Connell. Plus, as a Latina, she appeals to the fastest growing ethnic group in the country. Lowey’s name recognition increased exponentially when she was edged out of the Senate race by Hillary Rodham Clinton. She is widely recognized for increasing funding for breast cancer research and for her commitment to providing foreign aid to Israel.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend — Maryland’s lieutenant governor and the most likely Kennedy to carry on the family’s political torch — and Louisiana Sen. Mary Landrieu are also floated as potential future candidates.
