|
|
|
You know, what I do is write for children, and I'm probably America's most widely read children's author, in fact. And I always tell people that I don't want to show up looking like a scientist. You can have me as a farmer, or in leathers, and no one has ever chose farmer I'm here today to talk to you about circles and epiphanies. And you know, an epiphany is usually something you find that you dropped someplace. You've just got to go around the block to see it as an epiphany.
That's a painting of a circle. A friend of mine did that -- Richard Bollingbroke. It's the kind of complicated circle that I'm going to tell you about. My circle began back in the 60s in high school in Stow, Ohio where I was the class queer. I was the guy beaten up bloody every week in the boys' room, until one teacher saved my life. She saved my life by letting me go to the bathroom in the teachers' lounge. She did it in secret, she did it for three years, and I had to get out of town. I had a thumb, I had $85, and I ended up in San Francisco, California -- met a lover -- and back in the 80s, found it necessary to begin work on AIDS organizations.