by Arden Grey 

For Pride month, we sat down with Alvin Orloff, the author of VULGARIAN RHAPSODY and DISASTERAMA. While VULGARIAN RHAPSODY is a fictional tour of San Francisco’s queer bohemia through the struggle of a looming tech gentrified society, DISASTERAMA is an autobiographical account of Orloff’s adolescence in the 1980s and growing queer underground. In this interview, Orloff discusses how he’s dealt with the aftermath of writing his novels and LGBTQ+ club culture today.

Author Alvin Orloff

Arden Grey: You’ve written two books for us, one a work of fiction and the other your life’s story, do you feel like they intertwined together to paint a larger picture of yourself?

Alvin Orloff: Not really because neither book is about me, Disasterama! may follow my experiences, but it’s really all about the manic-verging-on-wacky response to AIDS among lowlife queer creatives. And Vulgarian Rhapsody is about the implosion that befalls a character who waits for his life to happen instead of making it happen.

AG: You’ve done many different things throughout your life from a punk band to your cabaret performances, now that you’re the proprietor of Fabulosa Books, how have the communities you fostered grown and changed with you over these adventures?

AO: I don’t know anything about the punk or cabaret worlds anymore because those are both late night subcultures and I am now incredibly old and in bed with my kitties by 10:30 pm every night. Friends have told me, though, that they’re both still there and doing OK. And, as a bookstore proprietor, I can say from firsthand experience that the literary community is also still chugging along. That any of this has survived the internet is quite encouraging. People still seem to want a a bit of IRL culture along with the endless social media scrolling.

AG: What inspired you to become a writer? Was it always something innate to you or did you find yourself working hard to put the stories you wanted to tell onto paper?

AO: As a child I was a bit of a tattle-tale. I felt that nerdy, nelly little gay boys like me were entitled to tell on the bullies who abused and humiliated us. That instinct to strike back at people and things that vexed me through telling fed into my desire to write. Holding up a mirror to the world can be very aggressive – a way of fighting back with words.

AG: Disasterma highlights a lot of San Francisco’s booming LGBT community of the 70s and 80s, especially during a turbulent time with the AIDS pandemic. Why do you think it’s important for your and the stories of your community to be told?

AO: Unlike other marginalized groups, LGBT people aren’t (usually) raised within a community of peers that gives us a sense of our shared history and culture. As a result, we have to do a bit more homework than your standard ethnic or religious minority. In telling stories about how queer people survived and thrived in spite of all our travails and tribulations, one helps inculcate younger members of the community into a grand tradition. In truth, though, I think stories are important mostly because they’re intellectually stimulating and emotionally moving, ie. entertaining. And life without entertainment is no life at all.

AG: Vulgarian Rhapsody is a fiction work of the same community, set in the 90s, did you feel the community changed drastically in those thirty years? How did you come back together afterwards?

AO: The queer community was very tight during the AIDS crisis. The challenges posed by the disease and the homophobia it engendered made everyone feel like they were at war. It was scary, exhausting, exhilarating, traumatizing and surreal – but also incredibly unifying. With advent of effective treatments – starting in 1996 or so – and the waning of anti-queer bias, that unity dissipated. Everyone needed a breather and for a few years people aspired to a sort of ultra-normalcy, they just wanted to get on with their private lives and not worry so much about the larger community. Disasterama! takes place in that first hyper-dramatic reality, Vulgarian Rhapsody in the second; so although they both take place in queer San Francisco and are only separated by a few years, their cultural contexts are completely different.

AG: What about your older books? Have you felt your writing has changed since your debut novel?

AO: With every book I write, I get pithier. This is both because my attention span (like most everyone else’s) has been shrinking thanks to the internet and because I no longer feel immortal as I did when I was young. Our time on this planet is cruelly limited! That said, I still like my earlier books and suggest that everyone read them.

AG: What have you been doing in the time since Vulgarian Rhapsody was released? How has this novel affected you in comparison to Disasterama?

AO: Meeting readers has provided a bit of post-publication fun for me. Reading someone’s books is as close as you can come to a Vulcan Mind Meld. Not all books, I suppose, but certainly the sort of books I write where the author’s Point of View is so central. As a result, whenever I publish a book, there are always total strangers who suddenly feel like they know me (which I guess maybe they do!) and send letters or invite me out to lunch or message me on social media. I love that!

AG: What’s something you wish you could impart on young writers and artists, newer members of the LGBT community, and anyone who felt on the outside of society?

AO: Being part of a marginalized community has a few silver linings For one thing, an outsider’s perspective is generally somewhat clearer than that of someone who’s always been part of the in crowd. Also true, the friction between you and the world produces a sort of energy that you can harness to your own purposes. And finally, being an outsider also makes it easier to meet and bond with other outsiders, which is terrific.

AG: Thanks for speaking with us!