Oral History with Jeff Mann, October 30, 2014 (Ms2015-007)

Interview with Jeff Mann

Date of Interview: October 30, 2014

Interviewer: Ren Harman

Assistant: Veronica Nguyen

Place of Interview: 210 Shanks Hall, Virginia Tech

Length: 01:08:02

Transcribers: Ren Harman and Jacob Todd

Ren Harman: My name is Ren Harman, I'm here with Veronica Nguyen, we are in 210

Shanks Hall, October 30th, 2014, at about 1:40. So, first question: what is your

name and what is your role here at Virginia Tech?

Jeff Mann: My name is Jeff Mann and I'm an associate professor in English and I

direct the MFA program in creative writing. For the moment.

HARMAN: So tell me a little bit about yourself, where you grew up, and the area,

and give some details and what the area was like where you grew up and your

family and all that stuff.

MANN: Sure, so Clifton Forge was where I was born. There was a VA hospital and

my father was a veteran. Now I think it's an old persons' apartment building. I

was born there in 1959, August the 8th and we lived in Covington, Virginia, till

I 00:01:00was almost 10. My mother worked in the paper mill and my father was a school

teacher who got in trouble because he complained about the racist policies of

the school so they fired his ass and he was a house husband at a time when there

weren't a lot of those and helped raise us.

And we lived on Prospect Street and now I live on Prospect Avenue, Pulaski.

Strange circling around. And then we moved when I was 8, 9, 10 in the early

seventies to Hinton, West Virginia, which was where my father's family was from.

I think I was in around the seventh grade, thereabouts. No, earlier than that, I

can't recall. Fourth, actually, fourth grade.

We lived out of town for a while up on the Greenbrier River and then when I was

in around the 9th grade we moved down into town, Hinton, which is the county

seat of Summers County. And that was my home. I went to high school there. 00:02:00 I

graduated high school in 1977 and then I went to West Virginia University. So I

guess that's part of the background there.

HARMAN: So when you were talking about the racist policies of the schools at the

time, what were some of the policies that your father had an objection to?

MANN: You'd have to ask him. He's an essayist and he's published a book and has

been publishing controversial essays in West Virginia newspapers for years. But

I think that Virginia, when some of those integration laws were passed a lot of

Virginia was very resistant to following those laws and my suspicion is that he

pointed out that the administration of the school was not following these new

laws about integrating and they were annoyed and they fired him. So he's been

writing essays, liberal essays, essays about nonconformity, country 00:03:00living, for

decades now.

HARMAN: What was the racial make up, for people that may not be familiar with

West Virginia, what was the racial and socio-economic status of most of the

residents there?

MANN: Well in Covington, Virginia, black folks were certainly in the minority,

and I would imagine, though I didn't have a good sense of this then (because I

was a child and I really didn't think of such things), that most of the black

folks in the county were also much less well-off than some of the white folks. I

would also guess, however, that there was a hell of a lot of white folks who

were not very well-off. And it's the same with Hinton, West Virginia, when we

moved over there, it was black folks were in the minority and some of them were

not very well-off but there was an enormous number of white people in that

county too who were socio-economically pretty disadvantaged.

HARMAN: Right, so, one thing I didn't tell you when we were talking earlier, the 00:04:001994 movie Lassie was filmed some of it in Summers County and Tazewell County,

which is where I'm from.

MANN: Oh yes! We've got that in common.

HARMAN: So we have a little bit of a connection.

MANN: A Lassie connection!

HARMAN: A Lassie connection over a collie.

MANN: And I think that part of that- I never actually saw it-- why did I never

see that movie? Just because I would be curious to see-- I think it was,

Sandstone Falls. And we went there last weekend. When my friends came down we

went there, beautiful weather, so, the heroic collie was at Sandstone Falls.

HARMAN: Yeah, it seems like I went there when I was a kid, maybe, cause we had a

place in Narrows, Virginia.

MANN: Oh yeah.

HARMAN: And it seems like we always took, we went on a trip to Hinton and to

that area, and it seems like we went to some kind of falls or some kind of river

walk or something like that.

MANN: Probably.

HARMAN: I was trying to remember-- So, growing up, were you an only child, did

you have any brothers and sisters?

MANN: I have a younger sister, she's about four years younger than me. Amy. She

is now the first female prosecuting attorney of Summers County, West Virginia.

HARMAN: Wow.

MANN: 00:05:00I'm very proud of her.

HARMAN: That's awesome.

MANN: Yeah. She and I have, as siblings go, been really close. She's been one of

the great people in my life.

HARMAN: What's the age difference, did you say?

MANN: Four.

HARMAN: Four? Just four? See, my younger sister and I, there's four years

between us.

MANN: Yeah. I was born in '59, she was born in '63.

HARMAN: So, when thinking back, what was your earliest experience, do you think,

with your sexuality, or your gender, that you can remember?

MANN: I can look back and see that I was attracted to, even as a child, to some

of my father's friends. My sister and I compared notes after I came out and it

turned out that we were both attracted to Mr. Wolford, who was this--

HARMAN: [laughs]

MANN: My father at that time was a teacher, he later became a lawyer, which is

why my sister followed in his footsteps.

But, Mr. Wolford was this tall, good-looking man who wore turtlenecks and had

curly- I'm remembering this and I was probably, (oh hell, I don't 00:06:00know, I'd have

to do the math), but I was not in my teens. But, curly dark hair, very handsome,

beard stubble, and my sister and I determined that we both had had a-- as

children-- had had our eye on Mr. Wolford. And then I remember looking back, at

the time I didn't realize it, that it was sexual attraction, I was too young to

really put a name to it, plus once you put a name to it, you're in trouble,

because, then you gotta face what that means for you in terms of having a

sexuality in a society that is not going to be very welcoming. I had student

teachers in phys-ed and math and, I remember, once I realized that I was gay I

could look back on my attentions towards them and realize that it was sexual attraction.

HARMAN: Right, so, in our course, the first section of the course is really

learning about, pre and post Stonewall, and gay history and stuff, and then the

second part is learning oral history methods, 00:07:00so, looking back at gay history

and things and what we've learned and also in just talking with people, that it

was sometimes difficult, cause you didn't really have this operational language,

cause there wasn't a lot of openly gay figures, there wasn't a lot of people

that identified with a specific community back then. So do you think if maybe

you would have had some operational language that you would have known, this is it?

MANN: Earlier, but, I was lucky, because in the 10th grade, I found someone who

helped me understand all that--

I had this wonderful older cousin, I had a little crush on her-- I still think

women with glasses and long straight auburn hair are attractive.

HARMAN: [laughs]

MANN: (But then that plays into the whole West Virginia stereotypes of crushes

on cousins, so y'all can delete that, nah, I'm telling, whatever).

Her name was Ann, she was about four years 00:08:00older than me. She was in high

school, I was in junior high school and she was in an ecology club. This is back

in the seventies and so there were actually such things in high schools,

environmental groups, and the ecology club, and there was a biology teacher

named Jo Davison, who had created this group and Ann was a big part of the

student group, they used to do stuff on the weekends-- pick up litter and go on

nature walks-- and I thought that was all really cool so I got to go on a few of

these jaunts, even though officially you had to be in the 10th grade to be part

of this club.

And so I got to know this teacher, Jo Davison. So, when my cousin Ann graduated,

and I got to be in the 10th grade, I joined this group. Well, there were these

two women in the group, one of them was very masculine and one of whom was very

feminine, and they spent all their time together, and I got to know them. Bill,

we called her Bill-- she was that butch-- Bill and Brenda, 00:09:00and I eventually

realized that they were lesbians and the teacher, Jo Davison, whom at that point

I'd had her as a biology teacher, (I really really was fond of her), and she was

writing novels, and she gave me a copy of one of her novels, and there was a

lesbian character in it. And I, luckily was from a bunch of-- my parents were

both liberals-- so I just thought that was interesting rather than being horrified.

And I, again, realized that Bill and Brenda were a couple. (Sorry, this is a

very noisy chair). And at some point I asked Jo (I never would have called her

that when I was that age, I would have called her Ms. Davison) but, I asked her

if she had any books about gay men, as opposed to this novel she was writing

about lesbians, and she gave me a book called The Front Runner, which is a

novel, (came out in '75 I think maybe it was published? I'm not sure). By

Patricia Nell Warren, whom I met years later, which is very cool.

And I read that book and it 00:10:00was about a relationship between an Olympic athlete

runner and his coach (sexual relationship), and I read that book and that's when

I realized. I think that they had figured out I was gay before I did, and what

that meant was when I did figure it out I already had this gay support group so

it was super easy for me compared to a lot of people. And also my family, we

were not religious in any orthodox way, so I didn't have to deal with all that

"Oh I'm a sinner." I was very very lucky.

HARMAN: So when you talked, you mentioned your parents and they had liberal

beliefs and liberal policies. I think for a lot of people to understand the

geopolitical context of West Virginia now, maybe that's a little different. So

what was the political atmosphere of the time when you were going through this?

MANN: Well, it was more conservative in some ways-- in many ways, but, the 00:11:00interesting thing now is, (well, I had this conversation with someone in my home

town last weekend), Republicans were as rare as hen's teeth then in West

Virginia, it was a very Democratic state. Now, those Democrats might not have

been all excited about gay people, but they were still Democrats. In my life

I've seen that change. I never would have foreseen a time when Virginia would be

more liberal than West Virginia. It was always the opposite. Virginia would vote

one way and I would want to spit on the street and West Virginia would make me

proud, and now it's the other way around. So, it's complicated in terms of

politics. It was certainly much more conservative when it comes to homosexuality.

HARMAN: So it was around high school when you were talking about these two

teachers that you realized. So in harkoning back, there's a lot of debate within

the LGBTQ community (or whatever the acronym you wanna use).

MANN: Yeah, alphabet soup.

HARMAN: Alphabet soup kind of thing, yeah exactly. So, 00:12:00you know yourself, is

there a, a specific community that you classify yourself in?

MANN: Oh yeah. That's easy. Well, what happened then (this is actually kind of a

follow up to Patricia Nell Warren) I read The Front Runner in high school and

then she had published a new novel, and it was called The Fancy Dancer, and it

was about a priest in Montana who ends up having an affair with a this bi-racial

(of course, they called him a 'half-breed' at the time, but that was not a

phrase people use any longer). He was part some Native American tribe and part

Caucasian, and he was this tough guy with a leather jacket on a motorcycle.

And that attracted me in two ways: one, he sounded hot, and two, I was trying to

figure out how I could be gay, and also be a man, in a society where gay men

were supposed to be delicate little swishy 00:13:00things. And I wasn't attracted to men

like that, and I didn't want to be a man like that, and at that point I wasn't

any kind of man, I was 16 years old, but I had to figure out what kind of man I

was gonna be. So I thought "Well, OK, I like this," and so when I got to

college, this Bill, my butch buddy, who (Bill and Brenda went to WVU so I

followed them there because I knew I would know how to get into the gay world

there, and I got a scholarship there cause I had no social life so I studied a

lot in high school). I remember going to the mall with Bill and buying my first

leather jacket-- which I still have, (no way I could get in it, here or here,

but I still have it) and there I was with my butch buddy Bill, both of us

strutting around Morgantown, trying to look hot. Probably looking ridiculous.

So about that time, Patricia Nell Warren published another novel, and [this one]

was called The Beauty Queen, and it was based on the whole Anita 00:14:00Bryant-- I

don't know if you're all familiar-- OK so it was a novel about all that- and

there was..

HARMAN: --"Save our Children" right?

Mann: Yes the whole Orange Queen, Orange Juice Queen, yes, (cow!).

HARMAN: [laughs]

MANN: And this novel, there was a couple, Danny and Armando, and Danny Blackburn

wore a black leather jacket too, and he and Armando (he was a police officer) he

and Armando, the bartender, had an S&M relationship. So, I started to find out

about the Leather community, and that started to help me make sense of all these

erotic fantasies I had about cowboys and so on, tied up and so on and so forth,

so I started to realize that I was part of what we called then the S&M

community. Now we call them BDSM.

So the leather, at first was just this way of strutting around, but then it had

deeper meaning. And then, --almost done-- and then, in the mid '90s, I

discovered the Bear community, which 00:15:00really didn't coalesce, I think, until

maybe the late '80s in San Francisco, and so, that's the other community that I

relate to.

HARMAN: Alright, so, obviously you were born in Appalachia, grew up in

Appalachia, and you were talking about sexual identity and this hyper

masculinity. Do you think that being born in Appalachia kind of played into, yes

you identified yourself as a gay man, but also you were from this area where,

like you were saying, gay men were kind of seen as soft, but at the same time

you're in this community where you had very hyper-masculine figures. What was

that relationship?

MANN: Oh, hugely influential. Those were the kind of men I was attracted to,

those were the kind of men I was around. So those were the kind of men I

developed an attraction to and as I begin to shape myself, more consciously than

most, because, I don't really think I'm an intellectual, (I'm more of an artist

than intellectual) but I'm not 00:16:00stupid. I think a lot, and as an artist, most of

my writing is about the self (myself), but hopefully in relation to the world

and other people.

So I was very much aware of the fact that I was patterning myself on these men.

It's not like I swallowed it hook, line, and sinker, traditional masculinity.

Now I would imagine that compared to a lot of gay men, I'm more dedicated to

whatever you define as traditional masculinity. And I've gotten some shit for

that, and they can just kiss my hairy Rebel ass.

HARMAN: [laughs]

MANN: But I also got a potty mouth from West Virginia, and also somewhat of a

lack of interest in what other people think. So yes, absolutely, my attitudes

towards masculinity were very much shaped by where I'm from.

HARMAN: What was your experience in high 00:17:00school, cause obviously you went to

high school in West Virginia and you mentioned something about bullying and

things like that. Did you--?

MANN: Well I was pretty much asexual in high school. I mean, I didn't know what

I was until I was 16, and then when I realized what I was, there weren't any

other gay men to interact with, so I could just hang out with my lesbian

friends. It wasn't until I got to college that I really started to think about

how am I going to-- what's my style of manhood gonna be, whatever that means.

And in high school I was just-- I don't think I was effeminate-- but I certainly

wasn't masculine. I was just this little asexual nerd, an intellectual nerd.

HARMAN: So you felt like you, not hid, but you were covered by your intellectual abilities.

MANN: Oh yeah, that's the only way people thought of me, I was the brain. I 00:18:00 got

"Most Polite" and "Biggest Bookworm" in my yearbook. But then I got to college,

and I went to gay bars, and so many of the men there were very effeminate, and a

lot of it, it was just an act that they just put on to blend in. If you talked

to them one on one they'd be just relatively average guys but then when they

would get in a group they'd go into this kind of gay, very hyper-gay

effeminate-- and that was just their way of interacting with one another, and so

some of it was real and some of it was peer whatever.

And none of that appealed to me, and again, about that time I read these novels

with leather jackets and I thought "Oh, there's another way to do this."

HARMAN: So what was the experience of coming out to yourself and then coming out

to others around you? What was that experience like? Like an emotional

one--obviously with your parents and friends and family?

MANN: Yeah, well, it was 00:19:00easier for me than many as I have said because I found

a support group in high school and I followed that support group (those lesbian

friends) to WVU. So, when I got to WVU I knew where the gay bar was and they

introduced me to gay friends so that was very easy. I was not out as an

undergraduate in my classes. I wasn't out to anybody. I got two degrees, one in

English and one in Nature Interpretation so I was in the forestry department and

a lot of those guys were you know big butch guys with big boots and beards and I

fit right in, just the way I looked. But I wasn't going to let them know. I

wasn't solid enough in my sense of self to let them know I was gay.

My best buddy that I used to run with who I thought was awfully handsome, he had

this graying beard. He used to call me 'the gigolo,' because every time he saw

me I was with a different woman. They were all lesbians, but he didn't know that.

The parents, well [pause]. That high school teacher I 00:20:00mentioned, Jo Davison, was

from Columbus, Ohio and she eventually moved back there. She had enough grief

from the principal in Hinton. So now I was in Morgantown and she was in Columbus

and she would come to visit occasionally and every now and then, my lesbian

friends and I would go to Columbus for a big week in the big city at a gay bar.

And I remember picking up some--luckily it wasn't pornography--because she, (my

mother) found this material.

HARMAN: [Laughter]. Ohh man!

MANN: It was newsletters from gay bars and I remember it was my fault. I think

this was Christmas of my sophomore year in college. And I had called my mother

to ask her to look for something, so she had gone up to my bedroom and she

found, among other things, this 'literature,' as she put it.

HARMAN: [Laughter]

MANN: So when I came home for Christmas break, my sister, whom I had come out

to, said, 00:21:00"Don't be alone with mommy, I think she wants to have the big talk."

So I avoided that but then I ran out of excuses and we were alone and she

presented me with the "I found some literature in your room" and I thought for

about three seconds about pulling out some lie but I thought, screw it, let's

just do this. I was convinced it would kill her. That's always the "oh it will kill."

So we had the talk and she blamed herself and then she blamed Daddy and then she

blamed Jo Davison, because she figured out by then that she must have been the

'homosexual introductress.' And then she asked me if I would go to a

psychiatrist and I laughed in her face. Even then I had enough--you know with

that support system--(had I not had that it would have been a different matter).

And then she said "Well, one of these days I 00:22:00hope you meet a woman that makes

your penis stand up like a flagpole."

HARMAN: [Laughter].

MANN: [Laughter]. I said "Well [pause]. That's possible but don't hold your breath."

HARMAN: That's great, that's great. [Laughter].

MANN: Yeah, so she managed to keep that to herself for a while. I mean my father

is liberal but still it's a big--. And then my father--she and my father had

some big marital problems and I think she just got drunk one night and decided

she'd hurt him. So she pulled the "you don't even know your own children" thing.

And she said he was shocked out of his mind and he and I never really discussed

it then. He got really close once to-- it got very close to unpleasant words but

it didn't quite materialize.

But both of them got to be very supportive of me. My mother would 00:23:00stand up for

gays in conversations, and then proudly report that to me. I would--very

deliberately-- describe to her various drag queens that I had met so that she

would be happy that her gay son actually wore a leather jacket. I wanted to

remind her that there were easier--but I was pretty easy to deal with compared

to some gay folks. And my father has written part of these essays that he has

written over the years for newspapers in West Virginia, a handful have been

about this issue. In Loving Mountains, Loving Men I actually include one of his

letters and it starts out--something like "My son is not normal" or--I don't

remember. "My son is gay blah, blah." My sister had said to me, "Did you see the

newspaper?" and I said nope, and she said "You better pick up a copy". And I

picked up a copy and I thought you know it would have been polite to ask me but

he knows I am so out that I 00:24:00wouldn't have minded, so he has been very, very supportive.

HARMAN: You went to WVU which is in Morgantown, West Virginia. What year did you

start there?

MANN: '77.

HARMAN: So what was Morgantown like in 1977?

MANN: A lot better than it is now from what I can tell.

HARMAN: [Laughter].

MANN: It's an overdeveloped madhouse now. Well, [pause]. I was lucky because I

had that--the first gay community I was able to dip into. I mean, there weren't

any discernible Leather guys and the Bear community hadn't really developed yet.

But there was always a gay bar, they changed almost from year to year because I

think the students would all leave in the summer and whatever gay bar was there

would close because there weren't anybody to support it. But every year there

was a gay bar and we would dance and hang out and drink and--. 00:25:00There were some

friends of mine and I helped put together a [gay] student group on campus. So

there were some outlets, some friends of mine and I who are musicians we put

together a series of gay coffee houses where people would play guitar and sing

to raise money for the student group. It was a pretty good time.

HARMAN: So, thinking back, because you know a lot of people become active once

they go to college, and you were entering college at a time that was

post-Stonewall and there was an activism movement going on then, so you were

even seeing that in Morgantown?

MANN: Yeah.

HARMAN: So there were social spaces where you could go and hang out and spend

time with people that you got along with. Right?

MANN: Yeah, it was a luxury, I don't have that now, and I don't need it, the way

I did then. One of the advantages of being coupled is if there is a wasteland of

gay social opportunities you just kind of shrug your shoulders and say well--

HARMAN: Wow.

MANN: Well, at 55 my 00:26:00idea of a good evening--which I intend to have tonight, is

to go home and begin drinking at 5, cook a nice meal. John and I both like to

cook, and watch Netflix. I have no desire [for socializing], the only thing I

miss is dancing. I used to love to dance and gay Leather bars and Bear bars-- I

guess they think dancing isn't butch enough or something. So there isn't much of

that in those bars. And so I dance by myself in the basement in between sets

when I lift weights. Mainly Melissa Etheridge and Pat Benatar.

HARMAN: Ohh ok, awesome.

MANN: [Laughter].

HARMAN: So, you were talking about this student group when you were in college

so obviously you became active in college. Can you talk about that a little bit?

The coffee houses and stuff. Was there any type of social or political movements

you became involved with in college?

MANN: Well, the student group had a political edge to it. I remember one evening

we met with the Campus Crusade for Christ people and had a debate, which was 00:27:00entertaining. I remember one young woman said, they were saying it was a choice,

a simple choice, it's not us, it's something that you're born with. This little

girl named Irene jumped up and said, "So you mean that I just woke up this

morning and said 'I'm tired of God and goodness. I'm going to be gay today'?"

And everybody burst into laughter. So there were things like that. There were

marches in Washington DC. I went to some of those, which was incredible for a

little kid from Southern West Virginia to be on the mall in Washington DC with

thousand and thousands and thousands of other queers. It was really exciting.

Now I would think, God there's too many people. I hate crowds but then, of

course, it was really exciting.

HARMAN: Right. [Laughter] So, when did you begin dating?

MANN: Dating. Well, I didn't really date, I slept around, but not very

successfully. I made it to college a virgin but 00:28:00it didn't take me long. Jo

Davison had been in Morgantown that summer before and she had met this big beefy

guy who was the RA of one of the men's dorms.

HARMAN: Residential Advisor?

MANN: Yeah that's right, yes. She put us in touch and I remember, I think, I had

classes on a Wednesday, and I went up to visit with him. And then I had classes

on Thursday morning and by Thursday morning the virginity had been exorcized

from my system.

HARMAN: [Laughter]

MANN: It wasn't a particularly inspiring experience but at least I got it over

with fast. I was a horny young man. I think probably one of the reasons I'm here

is because I was very shy and I was a little country-fied and I 00:29:00wasn't a

particularly handsome guy. I had very bad luck in terms of getting men in the

sack. I really wanted something more serious. I was not one of those people who

was determined to fuck around as much as possible. I actually wanted, I was

definitely a romantic and wanted to date but I was just not appealing to people.

Those were the years when the AIDS virus was floating around and people didn't

know it was there. The fact that I was in Morgantown, as opposed to New York

City or San Francisco and the fact that I was very unsuccessful in terms of

trying to wrestle up a sex life-- those two things made a big difference. I was

not one of those gay men who had a slew of friends who died, because it was

Morgantown. The handful, two or three men I knew, not super well that died from AIDS.

HARMAN: So when you talk about during the AIDS 00:30:00movement and being in Morgantown

was there a lot of fear or anxiety about, especially being young, you were

talking about being shy.

MANN: Yeah. Yeah.

HARMAN: This is a new world coming from Hinton, West Virginia to Morgantown, to

a college town. Was there a sense of fear or anxiety there?

MANN: Well, there was a fear of disease.

HARMAN: Yeah, that's what I was saying.

MANN: For me it was exhilarating to have any kind of gay experience at all. To

go to coffee houses and go to student meetings and all that sort of thing. To go

to gay bars. That was all just an amazing brave new world for me.

I remember the summer of '82, the people were still worried about herpes--not

that it could kill you-- that it was incurable. I think it was '83, it was

somewhere in there that AIDS was finally located. And then everyone was going,

"Oh, holy shit." It was soon 00:31:00thereafter that everyone began to compulsively use

condoms. Again, I didn't have a particularly active sex life so I was removed from--.

HARMAN: So when you talk about being shy and things, going into an area like

English Literature and poetry, was that kind of an outlet for you to express

these feelings that maybe you were having?

MANN: Well, my father had brought me up to be a big reader. He brought me up to

do two things (well of course many things), but two things that stood out was to

love the outdoors and to be a big reader. So I promptly went to WVU and got

degrees in Nature Interpretation and English. Oh yeah, so Daddy's been after me

since I was a kid to read real literature. In graduate school--no, actually, my

senior year in college-- I read Sylvia Plath's poetry and I was really impressed

with her. And I had piddled with poetry since I had had crushes on 00:32:00boys in high

school when I finally realized that they were crushes. And I still have those

poems. They're not bad for a high school kid.

HARMAN: [Laughter]

MANN: I wrote on and off through college. I had crushes on guys but then I read

Sylvia Plath, then I graduated. And I was home and heading for a year painting

people's houses, not sure what I was going to do. And I started to read

criticism on Plath and I read everything I could get on Sylvia Plath.

And then I (not emailed at that point) [Laughing] wrote a letter to this guy,

Winston Fuller whom I had had as a teacher for Modern American Poetics as an

undergraduate and I said "Could I come back to WVU and do a creative thesis?"At

that point, they didn't have an MFA in creative writing. They had an MA in

English and you could do a creative thesis if you wanted and it's up there

somewhere. And he said, "Yeah, you need to sit on a poetry workshop with me

first so I can make sure you're good enough for me to waste my time doing a

thesis." So I was good enough and 00:33:00I wrote seriously starting in graduate school.

I decided, by god, I was going to be a poet.

HARMAN: [Laughter]

MANN: So my thesis was a book of poems and they were all gay love poems.

HARMAN: What I find interesting is when you were, coming from Appalachians,

Southwest Virginia, is that when you refer to your father you refer to him as Daddy.

MANN: Daddy, sure.

HARMAN: Can you talk about that a little bit?

MANN: Well, it sounds kind of ridiculous for a man my age to use those words--

Mommy and Daddy. Yeah, that's just the way Southerners, I mean lots of

Southerners talk. Yeah, of course now there's the whole Daddy-boy erotic

scenario, which is another matter entirely. And I have these men my age say, "He

called me Daddy", and like yeah, I love that myself. So I don't really think

about the two together. That seems strange. [Laughter]

HARMAN: [Laughing] Right. Right. Did you, I've even noticed this within my own

family, my grandmother referring to her own husband, my grandfather as Daddy.

Did you see that between your parents? Did your mom ever refer to your dad as daddy?

MANN: No, 00:34:00no. I'm curious, do you know folks whose grandmothers are Nanny or

Nana? Because my grandmother, my paternal grandmother was Nana.

HARMAN: Yeah, Nan, Nanny. But I just thought it was always so interesting that

my grandmother referred to my grandfather as Daddy. I just always thought that

was interesting.

MANN: Yeah.

HARMAN: Every time you said Daddy, it reminded me of my grandmother so that's interesting.

MANN: [Laughing] Yeah, yeah.

HARMAN: So you're in Morgantown and you're at WVU, you're experiencing all these

new things, you're in the heart of the early 80's right? early, mid-80's?

MANN: Yeah, I went to graduate school, I started WVU in '77. Graduated

undergraduate in '81. '81 to '82 I was back in Hinton pissing around, reading

Sylvia Plath, and painting people's houses.

HARMAN: [Laughing]

MANN: And then I started graduate school in, I went up to Morgantown in that

summer of '82 then I graduated with my Master's in '84.

HARMAN: Okay. So from '84 to (which is probably 00:35:00a bit of a time gap) between '84

and your arrival in Blacksburg, Virginia?

MANN: I got here in August of '89. When I graduated in '84, I got a part-time

position at WVU but then in '85 I decided that I was going to experience the big

city because if you're a country kid who's gay and you read gay literature, it's

all about New York City and Los Angeles and San Francisco. And if you're a young

man who is all horned up and wants sex and wants romance and wants My Big Gay

Life, you ain't gonna get it in West Virginia.

So I moved up to DC. I had a college friend who moved up there. I lived with him

for two weeks until I found another 00:36:00place to live, which was in the suburbs with

this older guy, middle aged guy, outrageous queen, hugely fun, sweet, wonderful

man, who was so kind to me. He was from West Virginia, Moundsville. And I found

a part-time position at George Washington University and I lived in the suburbs

of Maryland and I took the bus in. I got up at five in the morning; I took the

metro bus into DC. I taught an 8 AM and then I taught at 3:30 in the afternoon

so I saw a lot of DC, wandering around, then I would take the bus back out there.

So I was out there for that whole semester Fall of '85. I didn't sleep with

anybody, I didn't date anybody, I didn't like the traffic, I didn't like the

urban manners, or lack thereof. And that's when I realized, I was a Southerner,

(I'm sorry, Northern Virginia) a Southerner and an Appalachian. And I was just

going to have to come back to my country and somehow deal with the fact that I

was going to be gay here rather than there. 00:37:00Maybe if I had stayed longer, I

think there was a window there where if things had been different, but they weren't.

HARMAN: Yeah, when you talk about the mannerisms and politeness and things, I

can remember growing up and going other places; to Washington DC, to

Philadelphia, or somewhere like that and not understanding why people weren't

holding the door open for me and why they were letting it slam in my face and

why they weren't saying having a good day.

MANN: [Laughing] Right, right.

HARMAN: You know, where you and I are from it's a completely different state of mind.

MANN: Yeah, they chose us well. I like to visit up there. There's lots of great

ethnic restaurants. That's my major interest in cities actually is ethnic

restaurants for sure.

HARMAN: Right, right. So you arrived in Blacksburg in '89.

MANN: So what had happened was after that one semester in DC, I just couldn't

stand it and my contract wasn't renewed. It was one of those part-time things

where they give you a job at the last minute 00:38:00because they need to cover classes.

So I came back to Hinton for one semester then I went back up to Morgantown from

August of '86 to spring of '89. One of those years, actually, I lived in

Morgantown and taught about two days a week in Waynesburg College in

Pennsylvania, (which is about half an hour north of Morgantown) and three days a

week half an hour south of Morgantown at Fairmont State. They paid me every two months.

I had no money, my car was constantly breaking down. It was awful. And then I

got a job at WVU again and I was there for a couple years as an instructor. And

then I discovered there was a job here at Virginia Tech. Pretty much the same

job, three thousand dollars more a year, closer to home, so I got the job here

and came and started here in August of '89.

HARMAN: Wow. 00:39:00So what was Blacksburg, Virginia like in 1989? Because part of this

project, we are documenting the history of the LGBTQ community not only at

Virginia Tech but also Blacksburg because sometimes separating those two is kind

of important for this project I think, and so more in this interview, really

interested in how Blacksburg has changed over time and what it was like when you

started here since then. Give us a sense of what that was like.

MANN: That's a good question [pause]. Well, there wasn't a gay bar which is

still true, as far as I know, and that was a big change for me because all those

years that I had been in Morgantown, I had gay friends and there was a gay bar

in the middle-- well not always in the middle [of town]. I guess there was one

year when it wasn't in the middle, it was way out of the way--

HARMAN: [Laughing]

MANN: There was always some place to go be with other 00:40:00gay folks and dance. I got

to Blacksburg and I found out that the nearest gay bar was The Park and that was

in Roanoke and that was a forty-five minute drive and I think I have been in The

Park probably four times since 1989 because I was not going to drive all the way

there, drink, or not drink. What? Soda? [laughing] And stand in the corner and

be shy, be ignored and then drive home. So that was the end of my bar days and

my dancing days. I lived in a little, shitty little house up on Harding Avenue

by myself. I was very poor and walked around in the winter all bundled up

because I wasn't gonna pay the power company anymore than I had to and I got

that from my father and the whole West Virginia "don't waste anything, save

money." I got to know almost nobody in the 00:41:00 department.

HARMAN: What department were you in?

MANN: The English Department. We were in Williams Hall then. It was a very

lonely year for me. I am an introvert. I don't get to know people well. I knew

no gay people here. Somewhere in the first year or two that I was here I

discovered that there was a student group, LGBTA (now they call it Hokie Pride),

and I remember attending a few meetings. At that point, you had to call somebody

to find out--you've heard this already--

HARMAN: [Laughs]

MANN: As I recall, I think there was maybe something in the paper, the CT, about

the group and if you were interested then you had to call this person because

they were weeding out folks. I remember being at WVU and the student groups, and

being a kid from a small town, I was afraid a bunch of frat guys would come in

with baseball bats. I have a 00:42:00siege mentality or paranoia that comes from growing

up where I did, so they were being cautious. So, I attended a few of those

meetings and almost everybody was significantly-- and by then I was almost

thirty, no, I must have turned thirty in August, so I was significantly older--

so I felt kind of out of place. And again, I was introverted and I attended a

couple meetings and thought, "Hell, this isn't doing anything for me." And I

think I also contributed to my own isolation because since I was so close to

home, I would just go home on the weekends. It's an hour and a half, so I got to

know almost nobody.

HARMAN: Right. I had that same sense, growing up not that far from here. I

remember my freshman year going home a lot because I was so close, so I know

that sense of being 00:43:00removed from your family and then wanting to drive home to

see them on the weekends.

MANN: Oh yeah.

HARMAN: A lot of my friends were from areas where they could not do that, so

that was a luxury for me. My undergraduate has been able to have that close

connection to home so that's interesting that you bring that up.

MANN: How long of a drive is it?

HARMAN: It's about an hour and forty-five minutes depending on how fast you

drive [laughing]

MANN: How do you go, sorry this is--

HARMAN: Oh no, it's fine, I just go on 460 and most of the time take 460 West

because you can just hop on the interstate at Princeton--

MANN: Right, right right.

HARMAN: Most of the time I just stay on 460 because I stop by Starbucks.

MANN: Right. I remember going out there only once. It goes out through Grundy.

HARMAN: Yeah, see, my wife is from Oakwood, which is the town beside Grundy so

it's nice being close to home, but you do feel that sense of isolation I think a

lot of times. And 00:44:00I came here and I was the only person from my high school

graduating class [who] was here so it was a bunch of new people that I had to

meet. So, I've made this quote before: 'Blacksburg is really a place where you

can be forgotten in sometimes if you're alone.' If you don't have a lot of outreach.

MANN: Oh yeah.

HARMAN: If you don't have a lot of friends and stuff. So in those first couple

years, were you still pretty-- you weren't dating-- were you hanging out a lot

with some guys?

MANN: Okay, I'm trying to remember.

HARMAN: Yeah, it's been a while.

MANN: It's been a while, I'm trying to remember how I got to know any gay

people. I should have done some research.

HARMAN: Oh it's okay, that's fine.

MANN: [Laughing] I don't know. That would involve going through so many

journals. I have been keeping a journal since 1972 and I have them all.

HARMAN: Wow.

MANN: So I'll get back to you [laughing].

HARMAN: [Laughs] You write every day?

MANN: No. Not every day but I write pretty steadily. 00:45:00[Pause] Well, we are now

getting to the big--I got a lot of writing out of this. It was Spring semester

1991. When I was a kid, I was a fan of this supernatural soap opera called Dark

Shadows that was on from '66 to '71. I was in fourth grade or something. And

then they made a remake of it, that semester, Spring semester of 1991. There was

a bookstore out where The Weight Club and all that, it was called Printer's Ink.

There was this slender little guy behind the counter and I guess maybe it was

some book I bought and we got to talking about the Dark Shadows series. I

confessed I had always been interested in the occult and his eyes lit up and he

said "Oh well I am too and I 00:46:00got these roommates and they are really interested

too and we got to meet." And somehow or another it came out that we were both gay.

So at War Memorial Gym, I used to lift weights there, and this guy's name was

Buck and he introduced me to one of his roommates, who was doing impressive

bench presses, as I recall, and this guy's name was Thomas and he was this hot,

little, what we would call a 'muscle cub' now. The height I like, about 5'8",

muscles, chest hair, scruffy face. Just the way I like it.

He had a partner. Of course, he had a partner. And we got to talking, and

needless to say, his partner was also gay. So, these three gay guys who room

together, and two of them are lovers, and Thomas and I had all this occult

interest in common, and sooner or later that turned into-- 00:47:00actually it turned

into an affair-- because that very famous poet, gay poet, Allen Ginsburg, gave a

reading over at Radford. And Thomas, his partner Jon, and I went to this reading

and afterwards we got to go out and have beer with Allen Ginsburg because Jon

knew the people who were showing him around.

So we were at this table at BT's, which is still there in Radford (I've been

there only twice more since then). And Ginsburg was flirting with the only

straight man at the table. Jon was fascinated with Ginsburg. I liked Ginsburg

alright, but I was never that impressed by his poetry even though it was really

ultra queer. And Thomas and I got to playing footsie under the table somehow,

and that led into this big dramatic affair that led all into the semester. It

was incredibly passionate and full of delicious kinky sex, and I was writing

poems and poems and poems and poems, and fell desperately in love. It 00:48:00 was

incredibly painful, and they left town at the end of that summer. Thomas

graduated with a horticulture degree, they moved to Boston, and that was one of

the huge experiences of my life about which I have written a great deal.

So that was a kind of a glimpse into the gay world, but it was a very small one.

They had a bunch of friends, some of whom were gay, but at that point I was

living in Hinton again. I had gotten so tired of being lonely here [in

Blacksburg] and paying rent that I would get up at five, (here we go again) five

in the morning and drive over here to teach at eight in the morning and then

drive back to Hinton. So, I was living over there and driving over here to meet

with Thomas to have these little trysts. A friend of mine would lend us his

A-frame, so that was the big sort of romantic passion of my youth--

HARMAN: So, when you were talking about 00:49:00sexual hangouts and places, so you said

they were basically nonexistent in Blacksburg at the time.

MANN: I remember one semester when Sharkey's upstairs had a gay night. It seems

to me that there was a bar, actually, I know there was because I wrote a poem

about it and I published it somewhere. It's called "Hawaii Kai" [Laughs], and it

was, I think, around the area Moe's is now.

HARMAN: Okay, 'cause that was a record shop, right? At one point?

MANN: Oh, I don't know about that.

HARMAN: I think it was a record shop, maybe at one point, somewhere around there

Moe's was. Maybe not.

MANN: Well, actually, yeah, you're right. That was a record shop, so maybe it

was one over. Maybe it was where that Pita Vera is. It was in that general area,

and it wasn't there for long. But, I remember watching this very sexy boy, who

knew he was very sexy, with a very tight t-shirt dancing very seductively in

front of a mirror and I have this long poem about it. Poetry is sometimes a nice

way 00:50:00of keeping track of your own emotional history.

HARMAN: So, outside of social spaces was there any-- you talked about what at

the time was the LGBTA caucus, was for new faculty members. Was there any type

of support systems from department heads or other areas?

MANN: I actually helped found that caucus. I couldn't tell you what year that

was, and I was not part of it very long because I'd spent most of my youth with

really tight relationships with lesbians, and [in Blacksburg] I met lesbians who

did not like me. And I don't know whether it was because I'm a man, or because I

had met separatist lesbians, who didn't want anything to do with any man. I like

women. "What's wrong with you?" So I wasn't real impressed with them.

These lesbians didn't like me and I didn't like them, and I just 00:51:00said "Well,

fuck this." And I'll do what I normally do and that's simply withdrawal. So I

was only part of that group for the first year and then these personality

conflicts with only these two or three women. And I don't remember, it was petty

shit, I'm sure, but that's enough to send me packing.

HARMAN: And we've seen that looking at historical texts from people like James

Sears and people like this, and they start talking about the founding of a lot

of these groups, especially in the 80's with ACT, ACT Up and Tag, and places

like that. And then we talked about the Gay Liberation Front and things like

that. There was this huge debate among members, and that's why a lot of these

groups started branching out. And so you saying that even that happening here in

Blacksburg that seems to be apparent of a lot of early activists groups, it seems.

MANN: Really? Interesting. I didn't know that, but I guess that makes sense.

HARMAN: How do you think your gender and sexuality has affected your career in

academia, 00:52:00in any way, shape, or form?

MANN: [Pause] that's actually--

HARMAN: Have you found it hard because when you introduced yourself, you are a

tenured faculty member, so I was just wondering if that had played in or

factored in at all.

MANN: Yeah, well, okay, let's see. [Pause] This is very complicated. There are

lots of answers to that.

HARMAN: Yeah [laughs] take your time.

MANN: I'm trying to back up and see where to start with that.[Pause] I have been

publishing really, really, really frank gay stuff for a long time. And I was

fairly out pretty soon after I got here. I mean, probably not the first couple

years. I don't even remember exactly how I got to be as out as I am, I mean at

first, I don't know how that happened. I 00:53:00don't really remember; it's been so

long ago. [Pause] I was an instructor. I guess I need to give you a little background.

So I was hired here as an instructor, and an instructor is not a tenure-track

position so at any point you can pretty much be shown the door. And I taught

usually three sections of freshman, well four classes every semester: three

sections of freshman comp, generally, and one class to keep me sane. And

eventually, I taught Appalachian studies for a while, which was nice, wonderful

change of pace. Anything to get out of, you know, comp. And then I would teach

some literature, American Literature, and then I would teach creative writing.

And then Lucinda Roy, who's still here, I think what happened is that she was

someone [who] was very much admired and adored, and she was offered a job in

Miami, (this was about probably 00:54:002002, thereabouts). And she cut a deal with the

Powers That Be that wanted to keep her, and among other things she got an MFA

program in creative writing. And so they hired. Well, I had been publishing

poems; I don't know how the hell I did it teaching four/four.

HARMAN: Yeah, I mean just looking at your [Laughs].

MANN: I really don't know how I did it.

HARMAN: It's pretty impressive.

MANN: I was younger, had more energy. I don't know. And I thought, "Well by god,

I'm tired of this damn freshman comp. I never wanted to teach that class any

way, and I'm tired of four/four, and I'm doing all this stuff, and it's not

doing me any damn good. So I'm going to apply for this job." And at that point,

John and I were together. We got together in 1997.

HARMAN: How did you guys meet?

MANN: [Laughs] His line is, I was his student. Every four years faculty are

encouraged to take what used to be called 00:55:00FDI-- Faculty Development Initiative.

There's some new name for it, I don't know. But every four years, if you take

this, it's like a computer class thing for three days in a row in the summer.

They'll give you the latest, exciting, whatever, fancy computer. [Motions to his

computer] We call this 'Tiny Tim' because Tim McGraw has lost so much damn

weight now that I don't find him as attractive, and he shaved his chest!

HARMAN: [Laughing] Yeah, it's P90x or something like that. He's muscular.

MANN: Yeah, [Laughing] he's too thin for me. Now this, to continue on, this is

Tiny Tim and my emaciated computer.

HARMAN: [Laughing] Yeah, yeah.

MANN: I took this class in the summer of, in June 1997. And John had two degrees

in music, had been a band director in Texas and Yorktown, Virginia, and got

tired of dealing with the damn administrations of high schools, and he was in

the PhD program here in Instructional Technology, and he was one of the student

assistants. So, he was helping me because of the morons who'd put me in the PC

class, even though I had said I was a Mac guy, so I needed extra help. I really

did 00:56:00 [laughing].

And he and I got-- you know how gay, well you've heard enough about all this gay

people. We drop places, bars, books we've read as little ways to--This is back

before I was so, well you know, "I'm Jeff and I'm gay and if you don't like it,

you can just screw yourself."

Yeah, so that's how we met. So, John and I had been together ever since 1997 and

so this [tenure-track job] came up and I said to him "L,ook. I'm going to apply

for this position and if I don't get it, I'm quitting this job. I've had enough

of this." I'm very prideful; I'm a Leo.

I believe in astrology just because if you read definitions of Leos, it's almost

exactly what I am-- very prideful. He said okay. By then he had a good job. He

graduated. He's making a lot of 00:57:00money, about twice as much as I was making. He

said, "Well, okay, fine." Well, they ended up hiring two people. They hired me,

and they hired Bob Hicok. So, that was one of the great breaks of my life

because I went from four/four to a tenure-track with two/two. And so then, of

course, I had to worry about getting tenure because if you don't get tenure, you

have a year and then you got to leave.

So, I was publishing as frenziedly as I could, but I was publishing what I damn

well pleased. And some of it was [pause] poetry, some of it was creative

nonfiction essays, some of it was fiction. The fiction was almost all very-- as

a friend of mine put it--graphic.

HARMAN: [Laughing]

MANN: She wasn't accustomed to all the bondage and butt-fucking, as I like to

call it. I had even published this vampire novella, and I've actually kept this

character going over the years.

Anyway, so I came up for tenure, and what 00:58:00saved my ass was that Loving

Mountains, Loving Men book because it was published by a university press, and

all these [P&T]committees, it's all about university press. So, I got tenure,

but I had a couple scares. [pause] One person (it's always anonymous, and they

are little cowardly jackals, and they anonymously attack). And one person sent

an email-- a very lengthy email message, to all of the presidents of Virginia

Tech's alumni chapters complaining about the queer and erotic nature of my

fiction, in particular the vampire novella, which came out in 2003. And Lucinda,

who was chair of the department, stepped on him like a bug. She's very

attractive, very feminine, pretty little outfits, high heels. I can just see

that high heel coming down on him like a roach. She sent around this incredibly 00:59:00moving defense of me to all those people.

HARMAN: Do you know what year this was?

MANN: It was around, I think it was Fall 2003, because that's when I started the

tenure-track position. So, I had no sooner graduated to a job that I could lose

if I didn't get tenure when this occurred. So many of my colleagues were so

surprised, so concerned, and I was thinking, "I'm surprised this hasn't happened

a long time ago." I always expect the worst when it comes to this type of thing.

And then, Loving Mountains, Loving Men came out in Fall 2005 and a couple months

after that the Roanoke paper had an article called The Brokeback Professor.

Because of the whole country-queer (albeit, it's Wyoming instead of Appalachia).

But a nice interview with a big picture, and I remember being very 01:00:00 paranoid,

like "oh god now--"

And another dildo, anonymously, (except that John was able to figure out who it

was because John is a little wiz on the computers), emailed me and said-- it was

priceless. He said something like [pause] "Get a life. I have relatives in

Hinton, and I intend to investigate your allegations against that town." And I

thought, "I'm from Hinton too! Allegations?" The allegation was that it was hard

to grow up gay in Hinton in the 70's, big surprise! [Laughing]

And then he said "Get medical help." And I emailed him right back and said "You

have picked on the wrong queer because we now have this Safe Watch program and I

am reporting you to them." It took them months and all they could really do 01:01:00 was

cancel his VT email account, but he turned out to be someone who graduated from

the Mining Engineering program here, who had been an advisor to my very favorite

president, George W. Bush, insert vomiting noises here.

HARMAN: [Laughing]

MANN: And I am taking my revenge in my next novel, and I will just leave it at

that. So I know exactly who it was.

HARMAN: [laughs] Great, we will wrap up here in the next little bit so you can

get home to some dinner.

MANN: Okay.

HARMAN: How have you seen Blacksburg change from the time you arrived in 1989

until today in 2014? I mean obviously, we went through many governorships and

presidential administrations, and through the last few years, President Obama's

inaugural address was the first time that gay was ever mentioned in an inaugural

address. So, how have you seen Blacksburg 01:02:00adapt and change in that time period?

MANN: Well, it's improved a great deal. I think that LGBT issues are discussed

pretty regularly by the college administration. I remember-- I'm sure you've

heard this from other people already-- the time the BOV removed gays and

lesbians from the list of protected peoples. I remember all of that happening

and standing at a protest with Shelli Fowler, with both of us with black leather

jackets and feeling like we were going to kick ass.

HARMAN: [Laughs] That's great.

MANN: Yeah, it was fun. A lot, so a lot has changed. I think that the LGBTA

certainly seems to be really, (I'm on their listserv but I never go to any of

these events because I live in Pulaski, but I know how busy they are). They seem

to be thriving. I know that the caucus, (again, I don't attend because I'm an

outlier in all kinds of ways). I think it's a really healthy community, and a

very thriving community, and I think that many of the powers that be at the

university 01:03:00really do care about these issues rather than just giving lip-service

to them.

HARMAN: So for that community and the people that are members of that caucus and

things, do you have any advice? Did you ever, I probably should have asked this

earlier but, did you ever see yourself as any kind of activist? And if you did,

do you have any advice for the members of this community?

MANN: [Pause] Well, I'm trying to figure out how to do this politely-- I feel

very removed from that whole scene.

HARMAN: Do you feel that that's a result of being--

MANN: It's a result of my pride. I feel completely ignored by all of them, so my

response has been to simply remove myself from it. 01:04:00I've published 13 books on

these topics. What I didn't get to in the question about my career is that I

feel, in this department, very much overlooked, and I think it's because of the

nature of my publications. I don't feel taken seriously by my colleagues and

many of my MFA students, and that's embittered me in my response to that. And

it's easy, because I'm in Pulaski, to just go away. That said, I think people

just need to be true to themselves and live as honestly and authentically as

possible. And there are usually consequences for that, but that's no reason not

to do it. So there, that's as good as I can give it to you.

HARMAN: Right [Laughs]. So what are you passionate about?

MANN: Other than martinis and country cooking?

HARMAN: [Laughs]

MANN: 01:05:00What am I passionate about? Well, literature, music, travel, attractive

men with hairy bodies, strong women, strength of any kind, the natural world,

music-- did I mention that? I play guitar, piano, and all of that too. This

landscape-- the older I get. the more I love these mountains. It's harder and

harder to love people sometimes, but every time I drive home I feel a depth of

love for the landscape that just gets deeper every year.

HARMAN: I want to know about your tattoos.

MANN: Well, that will take a while.

HARMAN: [Laughs]

MANN: Actually, I'm going to take a position to do this without being vulgar.

HARMAN: Oh, you're fine.

MANN: Well, actually I've been meaning to write an essay about them. This is the

first. That's your standard [barbed wire] butch, country-boy thing. This is the 01:06:00Horned God since I'm a Wiccan. Can you see the beard and the horns?

HARMAN: Oh okay, now I do.

MANN: Right, male symbol.

HARMAN: Right.

MANN: This was the big sign for gay liberation back when I was in demand.

HARMAN: Lambda?

MANN: Right. Yeah, bear paw.

HARMAN: Oh, wow.

MANN: Yeah, the Scottish, Irish thing. That's the shamrock and that's a

Scottish-- it's called a targe, which is a shield with spears. Also, these are

the eight festivals of the Wiccan year. That's the Scottish thistle, though a

couple people think that's a pineapple, they don't know anything about botany.

HARMAN: [Laughs]

MANN: There's another pentagram. There's a pentagram here. That's the Thor's

hammer, which is also this. He's Thor for me. Thor and the Horned God are my two

big deities. They are both these big, male, horny, butt-kicking warriors.

[Laughs] So, you're having a good time? Glad. I don't want to be boring.

HARMAN: Oh no, no.

MANN: This kind of thing back there is a rune. A rune or 01:07:00Norse rune, the

warrior, the one with the arrow pointing up. I don't know what else is back

there. Oh well, all swords. I have a knife and sword collection. I'm big into

[knives]. They are phallic and also, I'm big into defending yourself and

defending the people you love. I'm the whole protector thing, which is also part

of Thor, if you read the mythology, as opposed to the Marvel comics (which are

interesting, especially when Chris Hemsworth is on the stage).

HARMAN: [Laughs]

MANN: He was the great protector of humanity against evil.

HARMAN: Yeah. Great.

MANN: So yeah, that's it. [Mumbles something] He undresses for the interview.

HARMAN: [Laughs] I'll be sure to include that one.

MANN: Be sure to include that one.

HARMAN: So was there anything that you maybe wished that I had asked that I

didn't? I know that I questioned you heavily.

MANN: No, it was good.

HARMAN: Is there anything else that you wanted to add or anything?

MANN: Good questions. No.

HARMAN: You good?

MANN: Yeah.

HARMAN: Alright, well, great. Thank you so much and we are looking forward to

all of this.

MANN: [Laughing] Thank you for your patience.

HARMAN: No, it was great. Thanks, 01:08:00 thanks.