Private Eye and Gym Bunny Talking with mystery writer Greg Herren by Gregg Shapiro

Greg Herren has been a fitness columnist and editor of the Lambda Book Report. Now he’s written his first novel, Murder in the Rue Dauphine, a mystery set in his native New Orleans, and the first in a projected series about gay private eye Chanse MacLeod. Just out from Alyson Books, the plot follows how Chanse takes a simple case of uncovering the blackmailer of his pretty-boy client's rich, closeted boyfriend. But when the pretty boy turns up dead, Chanse’s search for the killer leads him to a gay rights organization, boys for hire, and New Orleans society. Herren is also editing two anthologies of erotica, Full Body Contact (gay sports erotica) and Shadows of the Night. Herren will be reading from Murder in the Rue Dauphine April 5, 5:30 p.m., at Murder by the Book, 2342 Bissonnet, 713/713/524-8597.

OutSmart: Physical fitness figures prominently in the plot of Murder in the Rue Dauphine–the main character, Chanse McLeod, is a former cop who is now a private investigator, and he spends a lot of time in the gym. The gym is also where he meets his client Mike Hansen, who is subsequently murdered.

Greg Herren: [laughs] I’ve been a personal trainer for seven years. I was heavily into working out and fitness for two years before I went into it as a career. The gym is really a big part of my life. You have a tendency, when you write, to write about things that you know about. A friend of mine, who is an editor, gets on my case because he says I always write about people at the gym. [laughs]

Fundraising, male escorts, blackmail–those are three themes that are central to your novel. I would like to address each one. Let’s begin with "fundraising."

I think that the idea for [the fundraising subplot] came from a local scandal here in New Orleans involving a gay nonprofit that was a hospice for AIDS patients. They had a lot of funding from the national and local governments, and they raised a lot of money every year. Overnight, the executive director vanished with all the money. He had apparently been embezzling from the nonprofit for quite some time. It was quite a shock for me. It started me thinking along the lines of, in the community, we have a tendency to automatically confer trust, because if someone is gay, they can’t be bad. That got me thinking that that’s a very easy way for someone who has a criminal bent to take advantage of the community. After the book was finished and sold and I was waiting for it to come out and be published, the whole Millennium March money-disappearing scandal happened. Maybe I was thinking along the right lines. We need to be a little more careful.

Male escorts are part and parcel of the gay community. What is your opinion of our brothers in the sex work industry?

To be perfectly honest with you, I don’t have a problem with it. [laughs] I really don’t. I think that prostitution, in our society, isn’t nearly as evil and horrible as it is made out to be. Yes, there are a lot of people who are on the streets and homeless and drug addicted, who have to sell their bodies in order to keep their habits going. I think that if it was legalized and controlled and taxed … [laughs] We could probably pay off the national debt if we taxed prostitutes! It’s a victimless crime, to me. I know a lot of people who have paid their way through college escorting. If you can make $200 an hour, and only have to work two hours a week to make enough money to support yourself through college … Hey, why not? More power to you.

The blackmail aspect of the novel is closely related to straight, married men who become sexually and romantically involved with openly gay men.

I don’t know how it is in the rest of the country, because I’m from the South and I’ve lived here, pretty much my entire life. But, I’ve noticed that down here, there is a lot of pressure on people. It’s not quite as open. Especially 20 years ago, when everybody was coming out in New York and San Francisco and everywhere else, it wasn’t that way down here. It was still very backward, as far as being able to come out and be openly gay. A lot of people ended up giving into that and following that path of denying themselves and getting married.

I know lots of Southern gay men who are out and open now, who are divorced and have kids, especially in a city like New Orleans. When you get involved with the old moneyed families here, it’s very, very prevalent. There are a lot of gay men who are married and have kids, who belong to these families. Ooh, I’m getting myself in trouble here. They have an understanding with their wives. They are totally gay, except they have a wife and kids. They do the whole Mardi Gras society type thing. I find that fascinating. As long as the wife is aware and knows what’s going on and doesn’t mind . . .

I know that’s not politically correct–in our community–to say. But, at the same time, you can’t really judge anybody else’s situation without having been in it. I think there’s a lot of judgment in our community as far as people who get trapped. I didn’t come out until I was 30, [although] I knew I was gay when I was nine years old. It was not an option.

Were you ever married to a woman?

I was engaged twice. I never married. I was always smart enough [to realize] this is not going to work. I went back and forth with it, because it simply wasn’t an option for me. [Because of] where I was living, I didn’t know any other gay people. I’d heard that there were these gay communities in New York and San Francisco, but I’m also not a big-city kind of person. Moving to New York or San Francisco, on my own, trying to make it in a big city where I knew no one, just so I could be openly gay, was a frightening prospect for me. Interestingly enough, it took getting a job at an airline to meet people who were openly gay and comfortable with it. I made friends with them and they walked me through the process.

Have you begun working on your next novel?

Yes, my next novel, Bourbon Street Blues, is almost finished, and will be coming out from Kensington in April of 2003. After I finish that, I am going to take a month or so off. I’ve been working very hard for the last few years and just want to recharge my batteries. The first draft of the next Chanse novel, Murder in the Rue Royal, is finished, and I am going to finish it after the break. Then I have another novel to write for Kensington, Death Spiral, and who knows what will happen between now and then? I love to write, and I have tons of ideas for books. I have several first drafts just lying around that I have never finished that I would like to finish. I guess I am trying to make up for lost time.

Living in Chicago, Gregg Shapiro writes for Next Magazine (NYC), Windy City Times (Chicago), and Gay & Lesbian Times (San Diego), among many others. His fiction can be found online at Blithe House Quarterly (www.blithe.com) and Velvet Mafia (www.velvetmafia.com).