Coming to you from the dining room table at East Barbary Lane. Welcome to a special episode of Full Circle the Podcast. I am your host, Charles Tyson Junior, and today I am delighted to be sitting with our guest. He is a wonderful author, storyteller, educator, and what a human being. Wayne Scott is here to talk about his memoir The Maps They gave us One Marriage Reimagined, and I am here to tell you that it is a wonderful read and I can't wait to talk to him
about it. Wayne. How are you welcome to the Full Circle Table.
Oh, thank you very much for inviting me. It's an honor.
I've been looking looking forward to this. I just finished the last thirty pages last night.
Last I'm bowing to you, like not like the writer's soul, like like somebody, especially in this day and age, somebody saying they read it.
I mean, oh, I inhaled everything, but the last thirty pages in like less than a week because I read it while I'm at work, because I have a little bit of downtime. It worked, okay, okay, and then I got busy and I had the last thirty pages and it was causing me to have a little tick.
Wow. Okay, that's so cool for me to hear.
So this is a deeply personal story, obviously mamoors usually are. But you talk about a lot of deep things. Uh family, identity, Uh, sexuality. Why don't you tell us a little bit about, or more than a little bit, what the maps they gave us is about.
Yeah. Well, first of all, maybe what it can say is where the title comes from. The title comes from a love poem that was written by the lesbian feminist poet Adrian Rich in the seventies, a series of poems called the twenty one Love Poems, and it was about the beginning of her relationship with another woman, and it was very much about what it's like to love each other in a world that's hostile to your love. And so the line is, whatever we do together is pure invention.
The maps they gave us were out of date by years.
Beautiful.
Yeah, And so she's very much talking about how for queer couples we have to chart our own course. We have to forge a different path. You know, we can't actually fit into the kind of heteronormative containers that are supplied to us. They won't fit and so we have to figure out some creatively, imaginatively, we have to design our own containers. And so this very much fits with
my experience. My spouse and I are in what psychologists, I'm going to just a clunky term here, what psychologists call a mixed orientation relationship, which means she's straight and I'm not. You know, I identify as queer or bisexual, and and you know those don't fit those kinds of relationships don't fit in the usual heteronormative script. Although you know for I'm not, I'm not, I'm not unlike many bisexual guys who marry women and move in straight passing relationships,
and that you try, you try. This is what this is what, this is the form, the container that is given to you by your the people that you want to please and get approval from minister's family, things like that, and so you try. And you know, when my spouse and I made are marriage vows, right, we were in our late twenties. And you don't know what do.
You know what? You don't know much in your twenties.
No, and you don't know much in your sixties. I mean you can't foretell, right, you can't see what life is going to be like. You don't know a lot about what it's going to be like to get older, to age. You don't know like the ways in which desire and intimacy shift and evolve as two people are aging together within the same receptacle. And so for us, at least the heteronormative container we had it, it didn't
it didn't fit. At a certain point, at about the fifteen year mark, we had a bit of a crisis and I realized I had kind of lopped off this huge important part of myself. It's almost like I had forgotten who I was in a way that I just kind of I couldn't tolerate anymore. The loneliness and the
desperation and the desolation was too much. And I also I didn't know how to talk to her about it, because, again with the script that was a supply to us about what a heteronormative marriage is supposed to look like, for me to initiate the conversation would be to initiate a conversation about divorce. That's that's how it felt like.
We have a very binary way of thinking about all these different you know, whether it's male or female or monogamy or they are straight or marriage or divorce, right, yeah, or monogamy or not. Like it's they're very polarized ways. And and in fact, human humans, human relationships and humans are messier and more fluid than that. Right. And we
need and we need to find containers. Maybe we need to reinvent, reimagine containers that are going to allow us more room to grow, to evolve, to heal sometimes.
Right. And I think it also comes down to I think wiring because some people I was actually just having this conversation a couple of days ago, how like, I don't think I'm wired for something like an open relationship.
Mm hm, like.
I And I think part of that is, you know, in my twenties and thirties, I was such a hoe. So when I'm ready to settle down, I'm ready to like settle down.
Yeah yeah, yeah yeah.
And I'm seeing more and more with friends that they're exploring open relationships, and to me from the outside, it just looks so messy.
Yep, No, you're right, it is messy.
But if it works, I mean, you know, I try to like not sit in judgment because if it's working for you and no one's getting hurt. Who am I to have anything to say?
Yeah?
But yeah, I just don't think I'm wired that way. So if you are good at god speed, you know what I mean?
Well, And I actually appreciate you saying what you just said, because I think it's very important to come into any conversation like this with out an agenda and without being prescriptive or dogmatic that one relationship form is superior to another. We all have to find our way, right. And actually, you know when you first said I am not wired
for nominogamy, honestly, Charles, I would have said that. I would have said that a couple of years ago to you know, And the period of time that's depicted in the memoir is a period. It's a it's a crucible, it's a period of intense struggle with this couple trying this marital experiment. Can we transition into a non monogamous form from what we had? And we didn't know it
was going to work, We really didn't. We thought of it as an experiment and it was quite fraught for you know, for about a year, it was quite fraud But at a certain point, as with everything, you do it enough you start to develop your your routines and your grooves and your guardrails, and you figure out how how this is, how we can make this safe. And you know, one of the biggest ways for us, that's in the memoir that we made it safe was to
make sure that we always honored our bond to each other. Right, you know that we had to continuously nurture our bond and have very open discussions about you know, how were these other relationships going to be Where were they going to sit in relationship to the to the thing that was important to both of us, which is what was both our bond but also our family. We had three school aged children.
Right, Yeah, it felt very like our marriage is this, anything else is that and that cannot affect this and vice versa.
Yeah, And you know, I want to say too, like I because I'm a psychotherapist myself and I work with a lot of non monogamous couples. There's so many forms this takes, and in many ways I probably have you know, I'm probably more vanilla flavor of polyamory than the average person. And that we do like our marriage is the central thing and then we have outside relationships and not everybody does it that way some some people do it in
a way where they're more equal egalitarian. All relationships are important. There's just so many ways to do it. And I have respect for all of them, actually, and I have I have respect for people who are in monogamous bonds as well. It's it's hard no matter what you do, right, it's gonna be its. It's both joyful, but it's also struggle whenever two people are trying to move through life and tandem right.
And I guess it comes down to what are the needs being met by each relationship? Yeah, right, because I mean, you know, not every everyone can't be everything, So you need to find the healthiest way to get those needs met, keeping everyone basically safe and sane. It's a it's a tap dance, I feel.
Yeah, I know, you know it is it is. It is a dance. And you have to be conscious of what your what your partner's doing, what they're needing. You know, you have to keep your eyes on each other, out of out of a place of caring.
A very tense part for me anyway. I was like literally on the edge of my seat when I was reading. Was the moments when you made that you both made the decisions to introduce the other to your other, you know, and then you're both having varying degrees of you know, how should I be? Wait, I kind of like this person? Should I like this person?
Yeah? No, I mean it's when we first started down this path, we decided that, because of our own history, because of our own emotional dynamic, if we were going to have this experiment, she had to go first. She had to make connections with other people and see how that would go for her. It couldn't be me going first.
Because that would be too close to.
Yeah, and I think it would. I think it could be seen as self serving. I I just she was the more I think she was of the two of us, she was a little bit more ambivalent about going down this path. I mean I also had my anxieties about it, but I think she was She had a little bit more ambivalence, and so just out of respect for you know, for me not to get out too far ahead of her, to respect her pace. Yeah, Yeah, basically that was it.
But you know the thing is, even when she sort of was connecting with other men, having dates and things like that, it was like very threatening for me. Like I didn't think it I didn't imagine. I didn't think it would be, but it but it was. It was. And the first couple of times she went out, these are these are all stories that are in the memoir. I was miserable. I was miserable at home waiting, you know, like I kept thinking I should have something to do
productive with my time to distract myself. I should watch a movie, stuff like that, and I kept just be like, I'm just waiting. I was just like waiting looking out the window at the parking spot where her car was supposed to be, just waiting for her to come home, which is just the worst thing you can do. It's not I do not advise that as a way to deal with the first a few times your partner goes out on a date. But that's what I did. I was I just I just made myself miserable, right.
And then when she comes home and she's not miserable, she had the nerve to have a good time.
Then, yeah, I mean what A lot of no monogamous couples refer that refer to that as re entry dynamics.
When you come back to the to the person who was left, you know, and both people often are in very different emotional spaces that way, and you gotta and you gotta have conversations about how do we want to navigate that, what's the level of transparency we want to have about what each of us is up to and things like that, how do we what's the right level of connections to each other's lives as well as protection?
And I imagine also because what basically was the impetus for this whole thing was you had a moment of you know, we'll call it infidelity, and so you probably had a moment of like, do I even deserve to do I even have the right to have any feelings about this?
Yeah? Definitely there was betrayal, right, and there were behaviors that I am not proud to talk about. But I think, you know, like many human beings, you know, I had kind of backed myself into a corner having agreed to a marital form that didn't allow me enough room to have it, to even have that conversation that this isn't this isn't working or fitting for me, Like, I didn't know how to have that conversation, because to have that
conversation would be akin to asking for divorce. Within the model we had been supplied right, right, And my thing was, I want to be married to you. I'm still in love with you. I don't ever want to not be with you, but I also want to be able to acknowledge this other part of who I am. Right, And again, there's just not there's a lot of erasure in our culture around when it comes to queer and bisexual, especially bisexual identities.
But that's the thing, like as as a bisexual man, like I completely understand. That's why, you know, when I was still dating cis gender women, they had to be queer.
They had to like at that table, yeah, because then they would understand, they would they would they be able to I mean it wouldn't mean that it would be completely easy, but they would understand why you couldn't just kind of buy into a heteronormative container that wasn't going to fit for you, right.
And you know then because inevitably the tired tropes start coming in. Well, I can't compete with a man, it's not a competition, huh yeah, yeah, you know, or you're just gay.
Right obviously not right? Right? Yeah, you know, it's interesting I learned there's a there's a potential when you go down this path to learn an awful lot about yourself that you wouldn't that you wouldn't know otherwise. So, like you know, I mentioned that when she would go out on dates, I would stay at home and have a
private little crisis of masculine pride. A lot of stuff insecurity came up about my own male identity and having grown up as a kind of a misfit boy right in a heteronormative world, being very kind of genderly typical myself. I had absorbed a lot of shame. There was a lot of residual shame that I just don't fit in this world. I'm not right. There's something wrong with my boyhood, my masculinity. And this came up very powerful from powerfully
for me. When she went out with a regular heado sexual guy, he was the better guy, you know, yes, And I either some part of me wanted to be a normal guy who doesn't when they're a kid, especially you know, you want because what you would be safe then then people wouldn't pick on you as much. So a lot of stuff. But interestingly, because we had committed this to this path of nominogamy, the way that I had to manage that internal sense of threat. I couldn't impose.
I couldn't try to control her and say, well, you just can't do that anymore because it brings up too much unpleasantness in me. I couldn't do that. I had you actually have to go inward and say, Okay, I need to understand this part of myself. And and for me, painful as it was, it was a really really important reckoning. You know that I had absorbed, still had absorbed so many messages that there was something wrong with the way I showed up as a guy in the world that
I needed to still let go of. I needed to shed those supplied and just structive definitions of masculinity, that the way that the way that I was a man was perfectly.
Fine, exactly. And you know, I've been a huge proponent of the idea that there is more than one way to be a man, and I used to say there's no wrong way, but examples that make that statement wrong keep coming up these days or whatever. But yeah, I
I totally, I totally get that. And when you're a bisexual man, you're walking that line because if you're dating men, if you're in the space where that is the accepted norm you know, then you run the risk of not being gay enough, and then the in the the other after that, you're you're a quote unquote too gay. So it's like, how do I set those levels? It's yeah, it's a unique thing for for queer and by folks.
Yeah, and I still like a little guilty confession here, But like, I still feel like I have a very uneasy relationship to the words queer and gay because experientially I feel like I belong. But I also, I mean, I still live under the same roof with my wife. I still I still have enormous privileges in moving through
the world in a straight passing relationship. And so sometimes I feel I feel, I feel like sometimes when I say, when I refer to myself as being queer, I feel like I'm going to get thrown out of the club, or that there's some kind of police that are going to show up and say, you know what, h no, You're not living with enough danger and risk. But I mean I think, you know, I mean, you know, I mean I'm not as straight passing now as I was
pre having all these publications. You know, like now most people know that I'm an odd ball, you know, I'm like, I'm a kind of my own weirdo, and I'm happy that way. You know, I'm happy, I'm kind of proudly kind of charting my own path. But I didn't always used to be that way.
Well, I know, I think it was at your wedding or after the wedding, I think you like said to your mom, can you like just drop a little hint about my queerness just to let.
People know, yeah, that I'm not even though we were getting married in a relatively conventional looking form that, at least at that point in the game, I did not want to. I didn't want people to think I was losing that awareness who I was. I didn't want it to be perceived as me converting. Right. That was actually the most frightening thing of all is that anyone witnessing our marriage would think, oh, gay men can just change them. Well,
let's just ask them all to change. Let's just start putting pressure on our sons to sort of like to be to go back out and go out with girls, and if they just give it a try, they'll be. That would that would, to me, would be the most toxic thing for people to take from our being together, our our our wedding ceremony.
Yet the right girl.
Yeah, yeah, but but but in a world that is still still to this day so hostile. Oh my god, it's getting I mean, I just feel like I feel like we made so much progress and now I just feel like it it is. I never thought it could be so terrifyingly retro.
Thank you. I It's funny. I'm revisiting so many conversations that I've been having with you today. I was just talking about how, you know, I came out in the early nineties and and like that whole decade, queerness was still taboo. You know, we still had we were on the well not really tail end of, but we're on the the the later part.
Of the AIDS very dangerous right.
Sex of any kind still has that that specter around it. People were still equating homosexuality with with AIDS. So there was still that permeating homophobia in in society. So you know, that's what we were dealing with. So my queerness and my being out throughout that decade felt very confrontational. It felt very you know, punk rock. It felt very you know, I'm here, You're going to deal with me. You're gonna
like it. And if you don't like it. And it's starting to feel like that again, Like, you know, I haven't had a bottle thrown at me from a moving car in broad daylight yet, so at least it's different in that sense. But so, yeah, we're going backwards.
Yeah, you know, it's interesting to me, I said, I might get sad talking about this because it just hits so close to home. But the way, the degree to which our larger authoritarian structures are picking on trans kids is just killing me because I'm so much more aware currently, and I'm a parent, I'm so much more aware now of how incredibly vulnerable that tiny group of kids are in the world, you know, Like, and they do not
need any more hostility piled on top of them. They do not need any more peace people in the world telling them there's something wrong with them. They are already a bit vulnerable in this you know, kind of brutal world. But then just being a kid is vulnerable. But then being a kid who doesn't kind of fit the mold. I mean, I think it's a little bit easier, depend
on what region of the country you're in. But but the other piece of me, you know, remembering back to our history, you know, and Stonewall is remembering you know what, watch who you pick on, Watch who you pick on, because you know it. The first people who fought back at Stonewall were our non binary siblings. They were they were the first person people to fight back with ferocity,
and people sometimes forget that. So, you know, So there's also a part of me that's like, you know, we have been here before where there was this cultural animosity towards the queer community. We've been here before, and in a way we kind of know what to do. You know. You just don't lose your voice. You know. The people who are positioned to be strong and to raise their voice,
you know, have to keep doing that, you know. And I see them out there, you know, I see people out there saying that this is wrong, what we're doing and how we're talking. Especially again, I'm just particularly sensitized now to the to the plight of trans kids. But you know, we got we gotta stay strong.
And indeed we really do. And luckily, you know, we now come from that stock of activism and rebelliousness, you know, And this is the part that it cracks me up because it's, you know, the idea that queer folks are weak.
It's like, we spent a lot of our lives fighting, like what makes you think, you know, and we have these people that, you know, the ones making these decisions are overfed, overprivileged, never had to go through anything significant, right, and they're coming at us who've had to like overcome all of the things, you know, make something fabulous out of nothing. It's like, why do you think that you can come for us like that?
Right? Right? Right? Yeah? I mean, and I love you saying I love that you just said making something fabulous out of nothing, because I mean the teeny tiny consolation that for me is coming out of this brutal period of history that we find ourselves in, is that these are the kinds of crucibles that produce extraordinary art. You know, Like I said, I think about like James Baldwin's Giovanni's Room, which to me is like this, to say it's path breaking for what it was doing in the fifties is
to is to diminish it. It was like like like I mean, like it was visionary. I mean it actually you know, one of the things in my memoir I there's a reckoning, there is a there's a there's a reckoning with the fact that, you know what, I'm not actually doing anything particularly new or innovative. Here. There is a legacy of queer and feminist writers and people and heroes who have lit the way, if you can only find them, right, because you just gotta find them. You gotta,
you gotta you, we gotta. This is why banning books is so incredibly dangerous, right, because it erases history and culture, marginalized cultures that in fact show you know, you're It's like, it's like Baldwin says, you're suffering. You think you're suffering is unique. You think it's the worst thing that's ever happened in the world. It's not. It's not. Other people have done this, and if you can find those examples, right, there's this There's a scene in the memoir early on.
You know, I was during the just like you, I kind of was coming of age during the AIDS pandemic, and I found out that one of my former boyfriends had probably had AIDS how to go through getting tested, and at that time you would wait through or weeks for your results, this unparrible period of like and I was sick during the time, I had a really bad cold that wouldn't go away, probably because of the stress. So I really thought I really thought it. Yeah, I
really thought this was it. But in that time of crisis, when I was so miserable and so alone too, because I didn't tell anybody I was waiting for my HIV tests, I was too embarrassed and shamed. Right, I discovered Audrey Lord's The Cancer Journals, her intimate exploration of what it was like as an African American, lesbian, Famish woman to have breast cancer in a world that politicizes that disease and blames the victims. Right, And it was really like
she was like, she's like my best friend. I slept with that book, and it's a thin book. I just read and reread The Cancer Journals because I just was like, she is my fellow traveler. She has already gone down this path. And you know, and it's interesting too because in eighty seven when I read The Cancer Journal, she was still alive, right. I think she died a couple of years later. But and that's the sort of the brilliant thing about literature is, you know, it's our cultural DNA.
Even after the writer dies, they're still there.
Yeah, and you know, you talk about this this rich legacy, this tapestry of you know, the work of queer artists and queer writers, and it is it's so rich, and it makes me sad because you know, there used to be a time when the queer community at large, all the letters, you know, we had more of a community, We were able to lean on each other more, we
were all in the same gang as it were. And I feel like now, and you know, there are obvious, you know, exceptions, There always has been, because you know, racism has always been a thing. Misogyny has always been a thing. But I feel like more so now, the infighting, the way we just eat our own, you know, it's we have to. And I guess it's because it's been easier put in italics in air quotes for a couple of decades, that we don't feel the need to have to lean on each other as much. You were able
to have a little bit more autonomy. You know, we don't need to all gather in the hole in the wall gay bar, the lesbians and the queer men and the trans folks and the drag queens, because you know, the men can go on grinder and ordered dick like pizza now, you know, so we don't need that. That whole aspect of community is lost. That's the part that makes me sad that coupled with banning books that are our history, trying to prevent the next generation from learning about where we come from.
It's the one thing, that one thing, that's one thing that's kind of like interesting to me about I don't know about conversations about book banning and this in the day, in the day of the internet, right it's you know, like it's really not just these physical books we burn. I mean, like I mean, I mean, like like the toothpaste is already out of the tube. Like really, you really think you're going to eradicate this, Like I know, like I feel for uh, queer and marginalized kids in
Red States. I wish I could create a pipeline where it could just come to Portland, work and where I live, which is very progressive, you know, But I mean, but it's out there, you like, you know, like I mean, do we really think we can just completely erase it? It's it's out there and people will be able to find if people are determined, they will, they will find their examples and their history. It's just it's just we
are you. You said, you know, we we we kind of have had had a period where maybe it felt a little bit easier, and you put that in scare quotes, and I agree. There were some there were protections that we had coming of age that our forebears didn't have. Certainly James Baldon didn't have them, right, And and also there was a there's been of visibility. I think with the Internet that has also been it's been problematic in some ways, but also in many ways it's been really profound.
Oh yes, especially for people growing up in more isolated areas where they don't have many role models.
Right.
So it's just hard for me to like, you know, like it's it's hard for me to imagine that it's you know, I think it's an old fashioned thing to think you're going to ban these books.
They're out there exactly there, I say many times on the podcast. You know, it would be a really bad idea young queer people in in small towns if you were to find someone on the Internet that's from a big city with a big library and you know, let them borrow their library card and go on the Libby app and then you have access to all these books. That would be a really bad idea. You shouldn't do that. Don't do that.
When yeah, yeah, yeah, right right. I mean I'm I'm a parent. I have three children, they're all in the early twenties now, but I remember when they were even before they were teenagers, they had access to the Internet, and this idea as parents, this older idea that we somehow controlled what information they had access to. I mean, that's that was that was ridiculous. They knew everything that was going on in the world before we did because
they were on their phones. I mean, I didn't do a great job of like ty trading my children's exposure to the you know, to to you know, to the world through the Internet and through their phones. But yeah, the kids will figure it out.
Oh yeah, that's as long as there have been kids and parents, there have been kids figuring out ways to sneak to do.
Yeah. That's I think we got to hold on to that during this this really vulnerable, hostile period in history to remember that, like we we are still designed to survive under adverse circumstances. We are we are and.
Yeah, it's in our DNA at this point. Yeah, yeah, you can't stop the beat. So, in addition to your telling of your story and the challenges you met with your marriage, you also had a particularly difficult relationship with your father. That was a very poignant part of the book. Would you mind talking about that a little bit?
Yeah, sure, thank you for asking about that. I think very fraught relationship with my father, who for most of my life was a pretty pretty lost in his alcoholism. And he was also very kind of conventionally socialized as a cisgendered male. And so one of my father's big influences life was the influences in life was this cowboy western.
It was a film that came out in the nineteen fifties called Shane and Shane is the original rugged individualists who calls the shots and is celebrated for keeping his secrets from people and doesn't you know, tells everybody that he meets, you know, don't get too attached to me, because when I leave, I leave and nobody follows me. I'm my own person. I'm not going to get bogged
down in the frills of the domestic front. Right. And Shane comes to this town in the Wyoming Territory and befriends a farmer and his wife and their eight year old son, Joey, and the book is from the perspective of Joey, and uh and yeah, it's just a it's just a it's a camp every campy story about this hyper masculine character. And that was my dad's role model. That was That was that was who like, who kind
of defined who he was. And when I was eight or nine years old myself, i'd about eleven o'clock at night. My dad comes up to my bedroom and wakes me up and says, it's on. You've got to see it. The movie Shane is on the is on the late show, so he carries me downstairs, and I was like, this
mandatory conscript. He's gonna show me Shane because that's he's giving me a He's giving me a survival strategy, you know, because he knew I was a kid that was bullied a lot, and Shane is the role model of how to fight back because Shane is always pulling out his guns. Whenever anybody pisses him off, right, he just shoots them, so you know, So that was that was, that was the role model.
And you know, and it makes you wonder how much of a role model he was for so many more men, because that's.
Well, he's definitely a roll model for my dad, because when I was fourteen, my dad left, you know, my just in the same way that Shane got on his horse and rode off into the horizon and said, no one's allowed to follow me. That my dad did that too, right, And so you know, growing up, I growing up, I didn't actually make the connection between my dad's script for his life and Shane, the movie that he worshiped and loved so much. But I made it later later, it
ends in the memoir. I made it later in life. I realized, Oh, that was his script, that was his justification, that was his rationale for living this life that was so in so many ways, so disappointing to his sons and his wife because he really just left and didn't tell us where he was going. Right, So that was
the role model. And you know, I struggled with my dad throughout my life, struggled trying to help him get into rehab, and I would not not successfully, right, you know, like he actually is one of those Like when his death certificate came back when he died about twenty years ago. It said cause of death. It said drinking. When I didn't know you could die from a behavior. I thought it would be some fancy Latin diagnostic word, just one word drinking.
Right, because you hear the phrase drinking himself to death and it feels like a metaphor. But no, you can actually do that. There were a couple of things you said in regards to your father in the book that like, just let the air out of my sales. The one moment was when you asked him, are you saying that you're choosing the bottle over us? Basically, and he said yeah, I am.
Yeah.
I was just like wow, But it's like the honesty of that. But at the same time, well damn yeah.
Well you know, it's actually it's interestingly interestingly for me to have to hear you mirror that back, that that scene from my from my life, because it was at the same on the one hand, it was so incredibly painful to hear him say that, but on the other hand, it was kind of a gift of liberation because because he was he was kind of saying, you can't rescue me, you gotta let this one go, And it actually did.
It freed me up that actually that that scene occurs right in the chapter before my spouse and I decide to get married. I was suddenly freed up to have other adult relationships. I didn't have to give so much of my psychological real estate to this man who was kind of admittedly kind of lost in his alcoholism. So yeah, like a really a painful moment, but also weirdly kind
of a gift, you know. And it's one of those things too, like when he said the alcohol is more important than you to me, it wasn't like he was actually telling me something I didn't already into it, right, I mean, the example of his whole life up to that point was that, yes, of course he's always choosing the alcohol over being a sober you know, conversationalist with me.
Right.
It was only when he was just days from his deathbed that I had a conversation with him sober for the first time in really a very long time. Years went by and I hadn't seen him sober.
So and I imagine there had to have been a little bit of hope that by asking the question that would have like awakened something and snapped him out of something.
But yeah, you know, you keep hoping. You know, when you're a kid, you know this whole idea of codependence, which is such an old fashioned idea. Now I'm really skeptical about it in many ways because if you have a loved one, if you have a family member who's suffering with a chronic disease, and alcoholism is just a chronic disease. It is not a personal feeling. It's a
chronic disease. But there's a behavioral component to it as well, where some people do kick it right, some people do get into recovery, and so you always hope that your parent will be the one that kicks it right. Mine was not. Mine was not, but it does. It does give me this incredible appreciation whenever I meet any person who's a parent, especially a father, who has gone from being an alcoholic to being a recovery I'm like, I'm thrilled.
I'm inspired by their example on the gift that they are giving to their children.
Yeah. And the other moment that guided me was I think it was either at the funeral or around that immediate time, and you were hearing everyone and tell these stories about how much they loved him and how much they had these affectionate feelings for him, and you had that moment of like, did I love him? I don't think I did.
Yeah, well, you know, I'm thank you for mentioning that I had this incredible gift from the universe. A couple of years after my dad died, which is that some of his very good friends from his navy days reached out to me. I'm like you, I'm a junior. I see you've got junior in your name. I'm also I'm named after my dad. So that's another weird gift that he gave me, or that I was given. And so this guy reached out to me and said, hey, I'm looking for a Wayne Scott who served in the Navy
during these years. Is that you or is he in a relationship to you? And I said, well, that was my dad. And the friends didn't know that he had died because he had fallen out of touch with them, but I said, yeah, he passed away. Ya da da. They invited me to their reunion. They said, you know what, we're getting together to reminisce. Why don't you come? You come in your dad's place. And so I went to this gathering of these four friends of my dad they had known him since he was a teenager, and of
course they had a very different relationship with him. They I was the disappointed son, right, but they were the drinking buddies. They were the people who went through young adulthood with him, and they had nothing but happy, fun memories of him. And it was kind of fun to realize that, you know what, I actually might have liked him if I hadn't been an economic dependent, like if I you know, if I hadn't needed to developmentally, you know, in my experience of him, I had needed him to
show up in certain ways. But if I had just met him at a bar, actually I might have liked him. I probably would have really enjoyed him. And so it actually expanded my capacity for empathy into his life. I actually was able to recognize, you know what, he was a funny, likable, loving man to many many people in his life. He wasn't great with kids, he wasn't yeah, yeah, but I had these and I also had this example, like with these men, they're so gruff and they're all
I'm sure Republican. I know many of them. I still keep in touch with many of them. I know they voted for Trump. You know, but they were so kind to me, and I really think it was because of their connection with my dad. They were kind of like these grandfather grandfathers by proxy, right, My own my own dad wasn't alive to be able to coop over his grandchildren. But they wanted to see pictures of my kids and they and they could and it was and it was
a gift. It was a gift. It was it was you know, like I was like, I was like, okay, well, I didn't get the the benefit of being able to see my dad live into his seventies and maybe see if he would have changed. But these men who were his friends and who knew him, they came into my life and they could, they could They helped me heal something. You know, they really did help me heal something. And
it was from the most unlikely place. You wouldn't think that these older white guys, Niagara Republicans would be so kind to this, like progressive social worker guy from Portland, Oregon. Right, he's very queer identified.
Right, And I love how you had described a photograph of your father with his his drinking buddies, and you know, the picture I got in my head was like this is kind of home erotic, but beside the point. And when they basically demanded that you take a picture with them, and when you said I was in my father's place, I was just like, oh.
Yeah, yeah. I mean the the the ultimate and unexpected experience of belonging where you never thought you'd belong right. And they had this picture that was taken in the fifties when they were in the service, when they were out having a wild night on the town of the four or the five of them standing next to each other with these big shittyat and grins on their place and beers and cigarettes and all that kind of stuff.
And basically what we literally did is we recreated that photo with me in the place where my dad was.
That's so cool.
Yeah, so it was. It was it again. It was a gift.
It's like that internet trend of families recreating their childhood photos.
Yeah, that's fun. It's yeah with with with a bunch of older guys. Yeah, there's I love.
I love the the way you have with words when you write. It's the book is such an easy read because you have this comfortable voice and you have a wit, and you know there are things that are just downright funny, like the first thing I had marked. I'm probably not going to find it by the end of the sentence. But you had mentioned when you were exploring being with women, and you said, you know, you wanted to be good at it, and you had heard about the term going down.
I much prefer the word kind of lingus. It sounds like something you would do with a wine taste, I cackled.
I appreciate you saw the humor in that.
Where where would you say that your your humor comes from? I mean, I think I know the answer to this, But where'd you say your humor comes from?
Hm? Wow? I had thought about that, well, you know, maybe just because we were just talking about him. I mean, my dad was hilariously funny, you know, and was very charming in groups of people, and I always knew that he was funny, you know, and that that that that was something both my parents put a lot of value
on humor and seeing the humorous in life. And then I think that got potentiated when I found myself a member of the queer community, because I think, you know, gay men and lesbians and queer people, I think they're
hilariously funny. They have to be right, you know, like it's their coping mechanism and strategy and and you know, like part of that whole section that you were talking about where the younger version of me has got this kind of scorecard where he's keeping track of all the different sexual acts he's participated in and what he still got to do. It's his to do list of sex, which I'm so ashamed of now in retrospect. But that is the way I thought when I was nineteen twenty.
I mean, you know, not proud, but it's true, true to who I was that you know, uh yeah. It also speaks to the limitations of the language and the ways we had of thinking about you know, that meant I was the script I was given about sexuality at that age was that it was a series of accomplishments. It was bases to be run, which is terrible, Which is terrible. I was not given this idea that it I was not given this idea of intimacy, of actual genuine intimacy and how and what sex is really like
separate from the pornographies that are offered to us culturally. Right, And you know, and there's a point where I'm with my spouse and we're going down that path, and I realized, oh my god, that list. I have to forget that list ever existed.
You know, And you know, going back to you know, the role Book of being a Man, It's like, when you think about it, the quote unquote traditional correct way to be a man doesn't really serve them, you know, it definitely doesn't make them ideal partners. You know, you come from this mindset of sex is transactional, sex is something that you win, you know, being emotionally unavailable, showing emotions is considered weak. It's like, you know, there's a
whole TikTok genre. I'll call it. This gentleman named Barrett Paul, and he has this whole thing about why we don't need straight men, and it's very much that. It's like, if your idea of what makes you a man is in trend in all of these things that don't make you a great person, yeah, you know, and all the qualities that we associate with being weak, with being queer, those are the things that are actually goals. It's like, how do we end up here?
Right right? Yeah? Well, it's interesting as you were talking, I was thinking about the way in which the cowboy Shane story, you know, kind of laid the roadmap for my dad, and I think he wanted to lay that roadmap for me. And you know, Shane is very connected to the tragic history of Western expansion imperialism. You know, the story takes place in Wyoming. There is in both a movie and the book it's based on, there is
not a single reference to indigenous people at all. And yet, of course we know archives and from history that there had been this forcible, violent erasure of those people, but it's not even mentioned, right, But what is mentioned is that men have secrets and men protect their secrets, and
that is to be celebrated. That a man knows who he is and that he doesn't have to tell you anything he doesn't want to tell you, and he gets to white wash and tell what the truth is, and that truth doesn't have to even acknowledge that you exist.
And so it's interesting to me like having this like intimate experience with my dad of his abandonment of our family, his devaluing of family relationships, and then realizing this connects to these broader forces in history that don't care about community, that only care about power and expansion and control and imperialism, right, and and how much that is that's the roadmap that boys, espect white boys especially are given or sexual boys are
given to their detriment because it doesn't make them happy people.
Right. And you know, if you really think about it, like male cisgender heterosexuality is more homosexual in that, like they don't really seem to like women, like queer men like women.
Right well, having like you know, emotional, playful intimate confidences. Yeah. Yeah.
And I always say, you know that all of homophobia and transphobia is deeply rooted in misogyny because we don't raise boys to be men, we raise them to not be women.
That's that's very wise. I think that's very true.
And it's it that battle against anything that is feminine or considered feminine is like the root of almost all the evils that we have.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it absolutely is. And our resistance to women in power, you know, and and you know, like, what is it about this freaking country that we can't get a woman into the highest office? What you know? What is that about? You know, Like I mean obviously that speaks to how incredibly entrenched in ourselves the cells that make us. It is that we cannot allow a woman to be in that role, and how much better the world would be if we had that sensibility.
Well, and you know, part of that is, you know again, self introspection is not one of those qualities that's nurtured so right and.
And respect and honoring of of people's inner lives, right and feelings and vulnerabilities. That truly the stuff that makes us humans and not ken dolls.
Right, hold on one second, I'm.
Sorry, that's okay.
What were we saying.
I'm sorry, We're just talking about talking about Western imperialist expansion. It's connection to the we're talking about the big stuff. We're talking about big ideas.
I love how that tends to happen on this show. It's like we go from so my book to well the meaning of life. Yeah, yeah, but one could argue that in your story those two concepts are not mutually exclusive. Please and thank you.
Well, thank you, thank you for reading.
It, because yeah, your story is really, of course, it is yours story, but it is also an exploration of the dynamics of relationships, the personal journeys of self discovery, family dynamics. Like there's just so many big capital letter you know, subjects that are touched on in your story, and I'm grateful that I got to read it.
That's so lovely to hear. Thank you so much.
Well, thank you, and I definitely want to say that it has been a pleasure talking to you.
Likewise, you're very skilled at putting people at ease.
Oh well, thank you. I'm very glad to hear that. So if we wanted to learn more about you and where to purchase the book, where would we go?
You can go to my website which is Wayne scott Wrights dot com and that will lead you to the website of Black Lawrence Press, which is the small independent press that published and published the memoir and has been wonderful to me. And we should always of course support the little guys, you know, the small independent presses. So if people buy directly from Black Lawrence, that would be the most amazing thing. They have been. They knew from
when I from I when I first found them. They they they recognized that it was such a vulnerable, intimate story, and they were really clearer to me that they were going to protect it, you know, and they were gonna be they were going to be they were gonna be careful with me as I kind of moved into this kind of capitalist commercial economy of book buying, that they were gonna be protective and I and I always appreciated that about them.
I love it. I love it, and we will make sure to include that information in the notes of this episode, because so the book is currently available, it is okay, Yeah, so make sure that everyone within the sound of our voice gets your own copy of this book. It is a wonderful, wonderful story. The title of the book is The Maps They gave Us One Marriage Reimagined. I you know, it's not often that I gush over a book. You know, I'm glad that. You know, I'm always glad when it's
a good read. You know, I love I love authentic stories. I love wit, I love humor, I love honesty, and all of that is contained in this story. And you should be very proud. One more quick question. Yeah, if there was going to be a movie, who would play you?
I actually know the answer to this immediately because my in my writer's group we did this. We were all writing books, memoirs, and we all had to figure out who was going to play us. I think Noah Reed would play me. From Shit's Creek, Shit's Creek. Remember David David's boyfriend in Shit's Creek.
Okay, okay, okay, okay, nice, So did you okay? All right? So do you have a dreamcast for anyone else?
Hm?
Hm.
My spouse I think would be played over There are in different generations, but I always think of Lord Laura Dern when I think of my spouse. Okay, different generationally from Noah Reed, but you know, I think about the span of her career. I could see Laura Laura Dern in that role and then actually the couple's counselor the brilliant couple's counselor that we went to Liney, who's a big character in the book. She would be played by Alexandra Billings. Do you know how? Yes, I remember, I am
I right. Wouldn't that be like you know, like, so, Alexander, if you're out there, you know this book is waiting for you. This is the.
Part of me thinks that Alexander Billings listens to this show. So I think you might have done something and I did not. I would not have thought of that when reading the book. But now that you say it, yes, that is the right choice.
Yes, So day I got it all cast out. I got it all cast out. Somebody so I'm Larady from highlowig does need to give me a call. I'll pick it up.
Well now, I can't wait for the movie, right, So, Wayne Scott, thank you so much for joining being here at the Full Circle table.
You are delight, as are you.
Thank you, and I have a feeling this is not going to be the last time we sit and chat, oh hope. So thank you very much and you have.
A wonderful day, you too, you too.
Take care. Full Circle is a Never Scurred Productions podcast hosted by Charles Tyson Junior and Mark the Madrigal, Produced and edited by Never Scurred Executive Produced by Charles Tyson Junior and Mark the Madrigal. Our theme in music is by the jingle Berries. All names, pictures, music, audio, and video clips are registered trademarks and or copyrights of their respective copyright holders.