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did you wait so long to write your first
book?
JB:
I did do some early writing. When I
came to New York, I wanted to work for
magazines, got into book publishing in-
stead, did some freelancing for a while.
Then the drinking took over. I was a func-
tioning alcoholic for a long time, so I kept
my job and I kept moving up in the publish-
ing world. I even made the decision that I
didn’t have time for any other artistic en-
deavor because I was busy working and out
living my life. I didn’t say, “out drinking”;
it was “out living my life.”
CS:
At the age of five, you watched Peggy
Lee sing “Is That All There Is
?”
on TV
and it became your song. Why the instant
attraction?
JB:
She was unlike anything I’d
ever seen before on television. She
was this large, ghostly, sparkly,
freaky image in a fog of lights and
white chiffon. Her appearance
drew me in. Then, the song itself is
this great story. I related immedi-
ately to the melancholy of it and to
the acceptance of disappointment.
If crap comes your way in life,
let’s just have a party and keep
moving.
CS:
Now that you’re sober, do you
still have the desire to “break out
the booze and have a ball”?
JB:
I still like to have a good time.
But I don’t throw myself into a
party, i.e. drinking, to get over
life’s disappointments. These days,
for the most part, I face them head
on. Some alcoholics say that from
the beginning they drank to avoid
reality, but I started drinking be-
cause I like to have fun and drink-
ing got me there faster.
CS:
My heart went out to you sev-
eral times when you related how
you’d go out for a drink after work
and then you’d realize the sun was
dawning on the next workday. This
account must have been painful to write.
JB:
I’m glad you said it was painful to read,
because then I’ve done my job of telling the
story, which was painful to live. The guilt
and shame were the worst part—worse than
the physical hangovers, worse than the
money spent and the money lost. Worse
than any of it was the self-loathing that it
caused.
CS:
You’re unflinchingly honest in your
storytelling. When you describe how the
anal warts you picked up while still in high
school looked like “a cauliflower bouquet,”
I wanted to laugh but was so horrified that a
fifteen-year-old had to go through such em-
barrassment. Have you overcome your
shame?
JB:
I have. As for the STDs, I never had
crabs and never had the clap, but I had anal
warts and scabies and HIV. So when I do
STDs, I go the full gallop.
CS:
Are you always as transparent as you
are in the book?
JB:
If it makes for a good joke, I’ve never
had problems making jokes at my own ex-
pense. But no, I was not always that trans-
parent. That comes from being sober,
because part of how you stay sober is by
being unflinchingly honest—not necessarily
with the public but with yourself and with
one other person.
CS:
While you were at home, your mother
warns you that you have a predisposition to
alcoholism due to family history.
JB:
It was something I ignored because I
thought she was a bit of a wet blanket when
it came to drinking. She was always on my
father’s case about his drinking—and I
thought unfairly so. Then, when I saw other
people with drinking problems crash and
fall, I thought I’d figure it out before I be-
came one of those people. I even read booze
memoirs long before I thought I had a prob-
lem or considered getting sober. I was riv-
eted and thought, “Oh my god! I can’t
believe that,” never once thinking that
might be me.
CS:
Speaking of booze memoirs, there’s al-
most a sub-genre of gay men writing about
addictions:
Portrait of an Addict as a Young
Man
, by Bill Clegg;
Dry
, by Augusten Bur-
roughs; Ron Nyswaner’s
Blue Days, Black
Nights,
to name a few. What makes your
story different?
JB:
Well, it’s my story, for one thing. We all
have our different stories. I tell it through
the prism of my relationship with my
mother. When I started, I had to decide, am
I going to write a book about my mother, or
am I going to write a book about my alco-
holism? I thought about it, but not for too
long. They’re integrated because she was, in
a way, my conscience throughout.
CS:
You ask yourself throughout
the book, “W.W.M.J.T.”? (“What
Would Mama Jean Think?”)
JB:
Exactly. For a long time, it
pissed me off—and then it worked
for me.
CS:
What pissed you off?
JB:
That I couldn’t get her out of
my head. That no matter how far I
traveled, no matter how much I
drank, even when she wasn’t
there—she was
there
. At one point
fairly early in our relationship, my
husband Michael and I had a terri-
ble fight in Zurich. It was pretty
awful. He was hurt and went for the
jugular saying, “What would your
mother think?” I said, “Don’t bring
her into this!” but she was always
there.
But it worked for me in the end.
Because when I was struggling to
stay sober—after I had gone to a
rehab that Mama Jean paid for—
and I had been relapsing, she went
into decline due to dementia. I was
seven months sober when I saw her
in the hospital. I didn’t even know if
she knew who I was. As I turned to
leave her, she grabbed my arm in a
vise grip. I turned around and she was star-
ing me down. She was Mama Jean, when
that whole visit she had not been herself.
All of sudden she said, “You’ve been drink-
ing.” “No, I haven’t.” I wondered how
could she know I’d been relapsing. She
said, “Don’t lie to me.” I said, “I’m not.”
She said, “Okay, promise me.” “I promise.”
That moment I told myself, “Listen, if you
can’t stay sober for yourself, do it for her.” I
haven’t had a drink since.
Court Stroud works in Spanish-language tele-
vision in New York City.
May–June 2015
45