by Kat Georges

Alvin Orloff has been writing most of his life and is one of San Francisco’s true underground literary superstars. Three Rooms Press was pleased to publish his memoir, DISASTERAMA: Adventures in the Queer Underground 1977-1997, and in October we’re thrilled to release his fourth novel, the “hilarious and wickedly-paced” VULGARIAN RHAPSODY, which features Harris, San Francisco’s most annoying gay barfly, as he struggles to find a place to live after getting kicked out by his drag queen roommate at the peak of the gentrification trigger of the 90s dot-com boom. 3RP co-director Kat Georges caught up with Alvin to discuss the new book and what life was like in those days when cheap rent seemed to vanish.

Kat Georges: First off, congratulations on the upcoming release of your latest novel, Vulgarian Rhapsody. Having lived in—and been personally displaced—by the dot-com “boom” of the 1990s in San Francisco, I feel a special affinity toward this book. What were you doing in the 90s and how did the influx of technology mavens affect you?

Alvin Orloff: In 1999 I was working in a bookstore, putting the final touches on my first novel, I Married an Earthling (a queer romance between a teen Goth and an alien from a Planet Zeeron, a world ruled by hairdressers), and living in terror. Landlords were evicting people from San Francisco apartments right and left so they could lease them out to tech workers at quadruple the rent. Since I was earning diddly-squat, losing my rent controlled apartment would’ve meant leaving town – a terrifying prospect. I’d found something akin to happiness living amongst the city’s dandies and dilettantes, floating between dead-end jobs, thrift stores, dive bars, and cultural events just avant garde enough to guarantee commercial failure. Fortunately I managed to hang on to my apartment and was never forced to join the real world.

KG: Vulgarian Rhapsody’s main character, Harris, is in a precarious situation—trying to preserve his bohemian lifestyle in a world of skyrocketing rents. Why does he insist on being so annoying?

AO: I used to think people who were deliberately and constantly annoying were just big jerks. I have now been reliably informed that bad behavior is invariably the result of unprocessed trauma. So what happened to Harris? Well, middle-class, white, American males born in the hyper-optimistic mid-20th century (like Harris and also yours truly) grew up expecting to become President, an astronaut, a business tycoon, a spy, a world-famous couturier, a literary lion… something important. For most of us these expectations of effortless success didn’t pan out and we developed more modest aspirations, adapted to our lowly stations in life. Harris (possibly because of bad parenting?) failed to do this and instead lives with a shame so intense he can only relieve his psychic pain by wallowing in self-pity and belittling others with hypercritical snark. That’s my theory anyway. He might just be a jerk.

KG: Your new book features a kind of drag that is a bit grittier than what we see on RuPaul’s Drag Race. Describe a typical night at a Polk Street drag bar during the late 90s.

AO: The people who put on drag shows in darkened dives like Trannyshack or Aunt Charlie’s received naught for their trouble but a smattering of applause, a couple of drink tickets, and a few greasy dollar bills stuffed into their cleavage by drunken audience members. They were doing what they did for love, Art for Art’s Sake, the purest form of creativity. The shows might have been low budget affairs, but they were generally high concept – truly weird and interesting.

The people who put on drag shows in darkened dives like Trannyshack or Aunt Charlie’s received naught for their trouble but a smattering of applause, a couple of drink tickets, and a few greasy dollar bills stuffed into their cleavage by drunken audience members. They were doing what they did for love, Art for Art’s Sake, the purest form of creativity.

KG: San Francsico’s queer bohemia survived, even thrived, during the height of the AIDS epidemic, but was dissapated by the leaps in the cost of living, especially rent, brought on by the dot-com boom. Cities have only become more expensive, worldwide, yet there still seem to be pockets of freewheeling bohemia in every one. How would a person like Harris fit into this new world?

AO: I’m pretty sure Harris would now spend ninety percent of his waking hours on the internet leaving catty comments on facebook and doom-scrolling.

KG: Vulgarian Rhapsody features a gentle omniscient narrator who pops in every once in a while with commentary (and warnings) on Harris. What inspired the use of this narrator?

AO: It’s terribly out of fashion now, but I’ve always loved 19th century novels wherein authors tell readers exactly what to think via some know-it-all narrator. It’s so nakedly presumptuous and manipulative! I made the unnamed narrator of Vulgarian Rhapsody extra judgmental just for fun, and eventually inserted him into the story as a character – one of Harris’s victims. Despite an understandable frustration with him, the narrator actually really likes Harris and is more disappointed than angry that he’s such a vitriolic, self-sabotaging mess.

KG: All of these characters seem so authentic, which takes real skill as a novelist. What is your process for creating characters that seem to leap off the page?

AO: You’re too kind! Well, my characters are all Frankenstein composites of people I’ve known. There’s a lot of me in several characters as well, but I’d rather not say which!

KG: As a bookstore proprietor/bookseller yourself, what would you tell someone about this book in order to convince them to read it?

AO: Vulgarian Rhapsody is wickedly satiric romp through the world of low-level showbiz wannabes and bitter barflies.