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 hen I discovered Francesca Lia Block at a Half Price Books in 1998, it was like finding a new drug. I plowed through her life's work in one night (the books, typically found in the Young Adult section, are quite short) and when I finished them I sat on the porch, looking out on a landscape transformed. Suddenly, even in the darkness, everything shimmered, and even though I had no plants but cacti, jacaranda blossoms filled the air.The Weetzie Bat books — Weetzie Bat, Witch Baby, Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys, Missing Angel Juan, and Baby Be-Bop, since collected into the cool-looking Dangerous Angels — turn gray skies into a paradise of oversaturated pinks and greens. The mystical L.A. teenagers in the books find faeries and magic in drive-thrus and dance clubs and on the beach. But in Block's latest book, Necklace of Kisses, Weetzie is all grown up, with two college-aged daughters, a vintage clothing store and a distant husband (fans will recognize her Secret Agent Lover Man) obsessed with September 11th. So Weetzie does what any sensible Block heroine would do — runs away and has sexual encounters with a faun, a drag queen and a real live mermaid. Hooksexup spoke with her from her home in California; she'd just gotten back from taking her kids (ages three and five) to ride the carousel at the Santa Monica Pier. — Ada Calhoun The Weetzie Bat books always seem to inhabit their own reality. What made you choose to bring the real world, specifically September 11th, into this one? Because September 11th in particular shattered the pink bubble I previously was living in. How did your books get pegged as young-adult novels, especially given how sexually frank they are? I don't think of any of my books as YA. I find the label limiting. I love many of my young readers, however. And I adore my YA publisher Joanna Cotler and all the people in the YA world who support my books. You certainly have become a hero in the Young Adult fiction community. Have you heard about this YA book The Rainbow Party, about teenagers giving each other blowjobs? I just heard about that this weekend for the first time. I get frustrated sometimes by being categorized [as YA] because I don't really think of my books that way. However, I was just at ALA, and I won that Margaret Edwards Award and because of that, I was around these really brilliant and interesting people who are in the field and I learned it's hard to get a YA book published now without controversy, whereas in the past, when I was published, it was the opposite. I think now you have to have the blowjobs or you're not going to get the contract. This one guy there was so brilliant. He said the problem with these books — and he mentioned one . . . it had "whore" in the title. Whores on the Hill? Yeah. So, twenty pages before the end, no one's changed or transformed. Now he's a totally liberal guy who gives the kids in his library books on any topic, but he just didn't like that book because there wasn't any lesson or learning happening. To me, it's like I also don't want to be didactic and have them necessarily learn some moral lessons, but I do want my characters to be transformed in some way. Weetzie tries to make herself feel better about her marriage by pampering herself, and it seems to work magic. Is materialism underrated? I think there can be a deeper, even spiritual aspect to materialism — as controversial and taboo as that may sound. I have mixed feelings about that statement myself. I go back and forth, wanting to appreciate the beauty in life, including material beauty, and then feeling guilt about it. Do you think this will be the last Weetzie book you'll write? I may write another about Witch or Cherokee or about Weetzie having a baby at forty-ish. I have a book coming out in the summer — Orion, written with Carmen Staton. And I have Psyche in a Dress coming out next year. It's a narrative poem based on Greek myths. I read a funny piece you wrote for Fresh Yarn about how having kids made you more fashion-conscious. How else did having children change you? It definitely made me less self-involved and more stable, because you kind of have to be. And in some ways my creativity has been enhanced because the stress of raising them on a daily basis — without that opportunity to spend the whole day writing — made writing really precious to me. It's almost like getting to read a book or watch a movie, like a treat to me rather than something I spend the whole day planning my day around. What's your take on all that alpha-mother stuff — these new books about perfect motherhood? Even the question implies what I think, which is, you can't do it perfectly. And there's so much pressure to do everything — to be a perfect mother, spouse, to be sexy, smart and creative. I find the best thing is being around supportive friends who are going through it at the same time. I glean more from that and from my daughter's preschool, where I work once a week, than from reading about it from these loftier places. According to the Francesca Lia Block Shrine, something everybody should know about you is that you love "fairies, both kinds." That's funny, because I made a statement like that at ALA, and the librarians just went crazy laughing. Someone said, "You write a lot of gay male characters," and I said, "Yes, that's just my life." You know, I'm not trying to make a statement. I just believe in acceptance and openness and, you know, not harming each other. It's very simplistic to me. Writing gay and sexually active teenagers is brave because so many people fear the sexuality of teenagers and kids. It's interesting, because I do understand teenage sexuality pretty well, but with really young children and their sexuality, as a mother it can be startling to you as it comes up. I know my friends are like, "Oh my God, what do we do?!" Our culture doesn't talk about it and doesn't deal with it. I guess now I'm learning just to relax a bit. This is just the silliest story, I don't know if it's off the subject, but: My mom told me that my daughter named a group of her friends and said, "We go in the bathroom and we pull down our underwear and touch each other with our toes." And my mother didn't know what to say, all she could say was, "Um, your feet aren't the cleanest things." [Laughs] I guess I try with my own kids to accept and to learn as much about it as possible and to make them not feel any shame or guilt about their bodies. Have you seen that Miranda July movie Me and You and Everyone We Know? Child sexuality is addressed in that. I haven't, but it's been brought up to me so much. Actually, I'm working with a producer and we're going to send her the Weetzie Bat books. What a great idea. Your voice is almost identical to our writer Lisa Crystal Carver's. Do you get that kind of thing a lot, everyone wanting to share you with people or to share other people with you? I love it. I want more. I want a huge community of artists all sharing work and life. I am somewhat isolated, but that seems to be changing. n°
©2005 hooksexup.com.
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