Information about my soon to be completed (and then published) memoir
Boystown Revisited: My friendship with a male escort
The focus of my memoir is the friendship I found with Alex. As the title suggests, Alex was a gay male prostitute. I knew this from the first moment I met him, and from that, our friendship and love for each other grew.
At the age of 40, I met Alex, and his companionship and love carried me through the most difficult years of my life.
Alex opened new doors in my life and introduced me to things that I didn’t know were possible. I was forever changed by the enchanted friendship Alex showed me.
Although the focus of the memoir starts with me at age 40, I have flashbacks to my childhood and college years which illustrates how I became the person Alex met.
Most of my time spent with Alex was in the gay clubs of Milwaukee. However, we took road trips to other cities in Wisconsin and several excursions to Chicago. Each trip brought new and surprising encounters.
My goal is to bring the reader with me on these travels and adventures with Alex and have them experience the events as I did.
I find writing my memoir emotionally difficult. Dipping into the past is painful as I relive those events. When I’m writing, the first draft comes out in the present tense. Then I convert it to past tense, and 75 percent of the verbs are “was.” Half of the rest of the verbs are “got.”
Digging deep to pull out more details when I’m revising is painful. The most difficult thing of all is when I rewrite again to express my emotions and thoughts about the passages. It is then that I am too close to the truth.
Other people find healing and relief when they write about past trauma and abuse. I don’t. I end up reliving it. Some people can write 300 pages about childhood abuse. I can’t. That is why I don’t spend much time there in my memoir. I focus more on pleasant events.
