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WORK TITLE: Alligator Tears
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WEBSITE: https://edgargomez.net/
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PERSONAL
Born in FL.
EDUCATION:Graduated from University of Central Florida; University of California, Riverside, M.F.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Writer. New York Foundation for the Arts fellow; National Endowment for the Arts fellow; Black Mountain Institute fellow.
AWARDS:American Book Award, Stonewall Israel-Fishman Nonfiction Book Honor Award, and Lambda Literary Award, all 2023, all for High-Risk Homosexual.
WRITINGS
Contributor of essays and articles to a range of periodicals and journals, including Los Angeles Times, Poets & Writers, Catapult, Lithub, and Rumpus.
SIDELIGHTS
Edgar Gomez is a Florida-born writer with familial ties to Nicaragua and Puerto Rico. He has contributed essays and articles to a range of periodicals and journals, including Los Angeles Times, Poets & Writers, Catapult, Lithub, and Rumpus. He has received support for his writing from various organizations, such as the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Black Mountain Institute, and the National Endowment for the Arts. In an interview in Famous Writing Routines, Gomez noted that his “background influences the stories I feel the most urgent calling to tell (whether about machismo in Nicaragua, queerness in Orlando, or colonization in Puerto Rico), and the word choices I use to tell those stories (Spanish speakers/Southern people have sayings for everything, queer folks have our own references we pull from, etc.).”
High-Risk Homosexual: A Memoir details Gomez’s coming-of-age in his teens and twenties and identifying as a queer Latinx man. Gomez, who grew up with his Nicaraguan family in Orlando, Florida, uses the essay format to discuss how he personally dealt with erasure and heterosexuality being forced on him. He details how cultural differences transferred between Orlando and spending time with extended family in Central America. He considered the limitations of machoism and the freedom he witnessed in trans sex workers. Gomez also details hook-up culture in Orlando and how his doctor labeled him as high-risk simply because he sought medical advice on how to best protect himself against sexually transmitted infections.
Writing in the New York Times Book Review, John Paul Brammer mentioned that “Gomez writes with a humor and clarity that generally keep the melodrama at bay.” Brammer realized that, “as a writer, he invites us into the chasm between what he is expected to do and what he is capable of, giving himself plenty of room for emotion, self-deprecation and acerbic observation on the ‘machistas,’ or sexists, who proliferate in Latin culture.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor found it to be “an engagingly candid memoir from a promising young writer.” The same critic called the memoir “poignant, vivid, and often hilarious.” A contributor to Publishers Weekly lauded that the memoir “transcends a simple coming-out story to instead offer a brilliant and provocative interrogation of sex, gender, race, and love.”
In Alligator Tears: A Memoir in Essays, Gomez continued to offer more stories from his personal experiences as a queer Latinx man in his thirties. He chronicles his time working in retail, bars, and restaurants, as well as a brief stint as a sex worker. Gomez also shares his excitement over getting his debut memoir published and also how he feared his mother would read some of the things he discussed in it.
Booklist contributor Courtney Eathorne admitted that “it is beautiful to get to know the life of this artist.” Eathorne found the world Gomez described in the memoir to be “endearing.” A Kirkus Reviews contributor remarked that “this portrait of the artist as a young flip-flop salesman will inspire, amuse, and empower its audience.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Booklist, January 1, 2025, Courtney Eathorne, review of Alligator Tears: A Memoir in Essays.
Kirkus Reviews, November 1, 2021, review of High-Risk Homosexual: A Memoir; December 15, 2024, review of Alligator Tears.
New York Times Book Review, Feb. 6, 2022, John Paul Brammer, review of High-Risk Homosexual, p. 13.
Publishers Weekly, October 4, 2021, review of High-Risk Homosexual, p. 149.
ONLINE
American Booksellers Association website, https://www.bookweb.org/ (April 1, 2022), Michelle Malonzo, author interview.
Antioch University website, https://www.antioch.edu/ (May 25, 2025), author profile.
Edgar Gomez website, https://edgargomez.net (May 25, 2025).
Famous Writing Routines, https://famouswritingroutines.com/ (May 25, 2025), author interview.
National Endowment for the Arts website, https://www.arts.gov/ (May 25, 2025), author profile.
Rough Cut Press website, https://roughcutpress.com/ (May 25, 2025), Billy Lezra, author interview.
Rumpus, https://therumpus.net/ (February 16, 2022), Celeste Chan, “Your Job Is to Tell the Truth: A Conversation with Edgar Gomez about High-Risk Homosexual.”
Long Bio:
Edgar Gomez is a queer NicaRican writer born and raised in Florida. He is the author of the memoir High-Risk Homosexual, winner of the American Book Award, a Stonewall Israel-Fishman Nonfiction Book Honor Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. Their sophomore book, Alligator Tears, was released in February 2025 and was called "triumphant, dazzling, and unfailingly stylish" by Publisher's Weekly. A graduate of the University of California’s MFA program, Gomez has written for The LA Times, Poets & Writers, Lithub, New York Magazine, and beyond. He has received fellowships from The New York Foundation for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts, and The Black Mountain Institute. He lives between New York and Puerto Rico. Find him across social media @OtroEdgarGomez.
Short Bio:
Edgar Gomez is a queer NicaRican writer born and raised in Florida. He is the author of the memoir High-Risk Homosexual, winner of the American Book Award and a Lambda Literary Award. Their sophomore book, Alligator Tears, was released February 2025 and called "triumphant, dazzling, and unfailingly stylish" by Publisher's Weekly. Gomez lives between New York and Puerto Rico.
Edgar Gomez
Antioch University Los Angeles
Home › Faculty Directory › Edgar Gomez
Edgar Gomez is a queer NicaRican writer born and raised in Florida. He is the author of the memoir High-Risk Homosexual, winner of the American Book Award, a Stonewall Israel-Fishman Nonfiction Book Honor Award, and the Lambda Literary Award. Their sophomore book, Alligator Tears, was released in February 2025 and has received starred reviews from Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus. A graduate of the University of California’s MFA program, Gomez has written for The LA Times, Poets & Writers, Lithub, New York Magazine, and beyond. He has received fellowships from The New York Foundation for the Arts, The National Endowment for the Arts, and The Black Mountain Institute. He lives between New York and Puerto Rico. Find him across social media @OtroEdgarGomez.
Educational History
Dual Bachelor’s in Creative Writing/TV Production, The University of Central Florida
MFA in Nonfiction Creative Writing, The University of California, Riverside
Selected Publications
Alligator Tears: A Memoir in Essays (2025)
High-Risk Homosexual: A Memoir (2022)
Awards & Accolades
2023 American Book Award
2023 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir 2023 Stonewall Israel-Fishman Nonfiction Book Honor Award
Your Job is to Tell the Truth: A Conversation with Edgar Gomez about High-Risk Homosexual
Celeste ChanFebruary 16, 2022
I first learned about High-Risk Homosexual from Edgar Gomez’s tweets. One featured Edgar sashaying down the hall in a peacock-colored bodysuit, another chronicled Edgar’s journey from being kicked out of high school to debuting on The New York Times book list. I knew I needed to hear Edgar’s voice—their wit and smarts—at a time when Budweiser and Oreo cookies want to commodify and simplify queer experience. High-Risk Homosexual strikes back with a necessary counternarrative.
Edgar Gomez (he/she/they) is a Florida-born writer with roots in Nicaragua and Puerto Rico. A graduate of University of California, Riverside’s MFA program, his words have appeared in Poets & Writers, Narratively, Catapult, Lithub, The Rumpus, Electric Lit, and elsewhere online and in print. His memoir, High-Risk Homosexual, was called a “breath of fresh air” by The New York Times.
Gomez’s hilarious, tender, and wise voice shook me from the page. It was a joy to speak with them over email. We chatted about self-interrogation, leaning into embarrassment, queer fantasies, survival, and acknowledging fear alongside the funny.
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The Rumpus: You launch us into High-Risk Homosexual with a hilarious and real critique of “What is a Boy?” the document handed to your parents by the hospital when you were born. In true camp fashion, it says, “He is your captor, your jailor, your boss,” and you snort-laugh and wonder on the page, bringing your character alive while braiding in memoir and cultural critique. Tell us about your process.
Edgar Gomez: Thank you! The simplest answer is, I knew that while telling the story of my life, my story would inevitably brush against other people’s. If I’m talking about what the Pulse Nightclub shooting meant to me, someone who grew up in Orlando, I wanted to respect what the attack meant to the friends and family of survivors who lived through that, too. If I’m talking about the fear of HIV ingrained in young queer folk, I wanted to respect the people I know and love who live with HIV. Speaking more broadly, if I’m writing a memoir about being queer and Latinx, I know there are going to be queer Latinx kids who might pick it up seeking hope.
So every time I approached a subject, I had to ask myself: How can you make what you’re writing about worthwhile, not just for you, but for those other people? Are you just rendering the fear of HIV you used to have, or are you able to seize this opportunity to educate a reader about PrEP and the fact that if you are HIV-positive and undetectable it’s impossible to transmit the virus through sex? Are you just re-creating different moments of trauma, or can you find a way to make some of this funny for kids who might seek this book out in need of a laugh? Basically I kept asking myself how I could make my story bigger than me and useful, and from that self-interrogation sprang a lot of the humor and cultural criticism you see.
Rumpus: I read High-Risk Homosexual as a counter narrative, transforming harmful master narratives. For example: “Sex can kill you . . . They couldn’t have known the side effects of hearing that message over and over, that screenwriters would take it and multiply it by a thousand so straight people would have something morbid and exotic to consume for their entertainment, that I would turn to those movies seeking reflection and find in them only loss.” Whew. For real. Can you speak more about talking back and rewriting these narratives?
Gomez: It was hard, because some of these narratives came from people who were trying to look out for me, and a lot of these messages of fear were valid and urgent at the time. When the HIV crisis began, some people weren’t listening to warnings; fear was a powerful tool to keep them alive. I have a lot of respect and appreciation for the queer people who spread those messages, and at the same time, I can also see how those messages were distorted and weaponized against us and led to a generation of queer kids who are scared of sex and perpetuate stigma. That’s really who the chapter you reference is for. I wanted to tell queer kids who live in that fear that I understand it, I’ve been through it, but that they don’t have to be as afraid anymore. If they are willing to unpack and fight that fear, there is so much to be gained.
Rumpus: From JLo’s romcoms and To Wong Foo to Mariah and Prince and Kesha and Selena, music and movies accompany the ride. Did you listen to music or re-watch films? Or draw on your background in acting and film and TV?
Gomez: I did, especially with music and dancing because it’s so difficult for me to render those things on the page. Those are artforms that are better off being experienced first-hand, I think. It’s like re-telling someone else’s joke from memory—the original is almost always going to sound better. I ended up reading a lot of reviews to see how other writers approached music, just to find the vocabulary and to figure out what instruments were being used in songs, because I seriously know so little.
As for my background, I wasn’t really an “actor,” but I’ve taken a few screenwriting classes and have worked in TV (like interning at Telemundo briefly). I definitely drew from those experiences, especially in the chapter “A Room of My Own.” I took a film noir class in grad school a year or so before I wrote that, and when I started working on the story and laid out all the puzzle pieces before me (I usually start a story by just vomiting all the scenes and people and places I can remember into a Word doc), I realized I had everything to write a noir: the shadows, the red lighting, the smoking, the pessimism, the coded language, characters living double-lives. It was really cool bringing what I learned about noir into the chapter, particularly because plot-wise not a lot of dramatic things happen, except for one scene toward the end where all the suspense and tension that’s been building erupts in one chaotic moment. I’m glad I took that class because otherwise I would have convinced myself that the story wasn’t interesting enough to tell. It is (I hope); I just needed to figure out the right lens to tell it with.
Rumpus: I love how you capture awkward baby queer moments: “I winked again . . . ‘I just really have to use the bathroom.’ I bit my bottom lip like the girls in [George Michael’s] music videos. ‘If you know what I mean.’ / He cringed.” What was this like to recreate?
Gomez: It was both mortifying and super fun, because I was doing the opposite of what you’re supposed to do when something embarrassing happens: I was telling everyone about it. Embarrassing moments are some of the most interesting to mine. They lead to questions like: Why was that moment embarrassing? What were you afraid people would think about you back then? What about now, as a different group of people reads about it? Sometimes you realize that you’re embarrassed because your way of thinking was ignorant (for example, when I wrote about HIV and wanted to show how I moved past my fear) and sometimes you realize that you were so caught up in how you were being perceived (like in that bar scene with the bathroom) that only now, in retrospect, can you see how ridiculous you were acting. If something feels too embarrassing to write about, I say lean into that feeling. Investigate it.
Rumpus: Your voice and perspective ranges from witty and humorous to deeply vulnerable: “I thought of someone devouring a cup of the vacuum-dried meat chunks floating in brown, lukewarm water, then scurrying over to the sauna for a casual round of anal sex, and felt my soul slip out of my body.” This made me laugh out loud! Then later, you continue with: “All my instincts, all anyone ever told me, was that if I wanted to survive, I had to deny myself what I ached for.” Can you say more about bridging these different tonalities?
Gomez: When I started writing High-Risk Homosexual, humor was my priority. I was like, “JOKES! JOKES! MORE JOKES!” I felt this pressure to write “joyfully,” because I didn’t want to contribute another narrative of suffering to the countless ones that are already out there. I was avoiding admitting that though I currently have a sense of humor about a lot of things that have happened to me, back then I lived in a constant state of fear and shame and was deeply sad all the time. I was so preoccupied with not writing a narrative of suffering that I ended up writing myself as a flat character who just like, laughed at everything? It wasn’t believable. And it was monotonous to read, because it was pretty one-note. I had to slap myself and be like, “You’re not writing a narrative of BLANK. Your job is to tell the truth. Just do that.”
Rumpus: You splice together scenes of a cockfight with being a young teen locked in a room with a female sex worker, illuminating that throughline of gender and toxic codes of masculinity. Did you always know this was the book’s through-line?
Gomez: It was always present, but it wasn’t until I had a significant portion of the book written and was able to take a step back from it that I saw how machismo really impacted everything: my difficulty expressing emotions, my relationships to romantic partners and to family, my definition of what it means to be a man. Why, even after I came out, I felt pressure to perform masculinity and be a “good” son. I thought I was just writing about being gay. It wasn’t till I had a draft down that it hit me that being gay and machismo are inextricably linked. Once I realized that, I knew I’d have to go back in and make it more obvious to other people.
Rumpus: Reading High-Risk Homosexual, I’m reminded how queer fantasies have helped many of us survive. In a scene with The Rock and Prince lyrics: “It didn’t matter that I wasn’t savage or feisty or macho or spicy or that I lived with my mother, who was only a thin wall away. Thousands of eyes were on me, a sex MD, waiting for my healing.” Could you speak more about this?
Gomez: I’m a Pisces. I spend more hours of the day fantasizing than actually living in reality. I suppose the sad answer is that when your life isn’t what you want it to be—which is the case for many queer people—we escape into fantasies where things are better. Similar to escaping into books, fantasizing is what got me through the darkest periods of my life. I had to constantly invent joy for myself. A lot of the darkest moments in the book are paired with some sort of fantasy or disassociation. Until I find a better coping mechanism, that’s what I got!
Rumpus: You thank all the queer ancestors (Sylvia & Marsha P., Chavela, Bowie, Freddie Mercury, James Baldwin) and I can’t help but think that it continues a story.
Gomez: These are my heroes. Knowing they existed and being exposed to their work is what made it feel possible that I could make art, too. If we’re in conversation, it’s just me saying, “Thank you,” over and over and over again.
Rumpus: Does teaching influence your writing or vice versa? What do you find exciting about queer/trans writing today? I notice that you’re teaching Brontez Purnell and T Kira Madden.
Gomez: Teaching queer students definitely does influence me. It’s a job and it’s difficult like every other job, but I get to read stories by queer people written for queer people. It’s very healing after being in workshops where I’ve felt out of place or like I needed to represent all queer people or had to do the work of cultural translating. My students remind me that there is an audience out there who wants me to take more risks and to center myself. In return, I ask the same of them.
Brontez Purnell and T Kira Madden are two of my favorite writers out there right now. Purnell has so much heart and compassion in his work. I especially love the chapter “Three Boyfriends” from 100 Boyfriends and the questions he demands readers to ask themselves, instead of simply giving them all the answers. Madden makes the smallest details electric, plus the amount of self-interrogation she does on the page is bananas. I read her story, “The Feels of Love,” several times a year (because I teach it) and it always reveals something new to me. Both of them are the type of writers who make me clap my hands and say damn when I’m just looking at words on a page.
I’m really excited about all the voices we’re getting to read. It’s not only straight, white, cis men with the generational wealth to make writing their job anymore.
Rumpus: Any advice for queer weirdos writing today? What’s the best and worst writing advice you’ve ever received?
Gomez: My advice is to read as much as you can, especially other queer writers, to take your time with your stories and try not to rush into publication, and to make sure you’re prioritizing your friendships just as much as you’re writing. Writing is important but it’s not everything. Who is going to get a drink with you after writing that one really traumatic scene? Who is going to be at your book launch? Not your keyboard.
The worst advice I’ve gotten was to write more about what foods they serve at McDonald’s in Nicaragua so readers who haven’t been there can get a stronger sense of what it’s like there. The best advice was to make myself undeniable.
Rumpus: How did you meet your current writing group?
Gomez: My writing group is a combination of people who were in the same graduate program as me (though different years), people I met on Twitter, and their friends who became my friends: Minda Honey, Natassja Schiel, Asha French, Elizabeth Owuor, and Natalie Lima. We all found each other because we were unsatisfied with other writing groups we’ve been in for various reasons and wanted to be in a more supportive space. We also keep each other accountable. It’s helpful to have a deadline to write something by, even if it’s just with friends.
Rumpus: I’m impressed by the way you’ve researched and characterized and humanized Omar Mateen, the Pulse Orlando shooter. You’ve also spent time with friends at Pulse. I see this duality—and the considerable context you give to Omar—as digging deeper at the roots of homophobia/Islamophobia/toxic masculinity and violence. What was it like to create parallel stories of you and Omar in this context?
Gomez: I started writing that chapter to try to figure out how someone could do something like what he did. It freaked me out, because the more I dug into his life story, the more parallels I saw between us. We both grew up in Florida. We both were expelled. We both had a criminal justice background. We both experienced racism and xenophobia and (depending on whether you believe he was gay or bisexual or not) homophobia. When I saw all those parallels, the question shifted from “How could he?” to “Why didn’t you? What made him go this way and you go in the other direction?” That was a very scary thought to have, because this wasn’t a story I had a lot of distance from. I was in the middle of grieving. I’m still grieving right now. I am still angry, and when I think about him, all I want to do is scream. I suppose it came down to usefulness again. My hope was that if I pin-pointed where our lives drifted apart, I would be able to bring awareness to what would have made a difference.
Rumpus: You’ve created a narrative arc through the essays. What do you hope your character learned?
Gomez: I talk a lot about fear in the book. It’s present from the very beginning to the end, when I’m standing on a street corner in San Francisco in my “high-risk” outfit and nervous that someone might do something. Yet, despite all the fear, there are a lot of great moments too: making out with a boyfriend in high school at drama rehearsal, dancing with queer folk at gay bars in Florida, watching drag shows, having weird sex. Don’t get me wrong, the fear was present in those moments too, but I didn’t let it stop me, and I always think about how if I had, I wouldn’t have had those experiences. My lesson would be: You don’t have to stop being afraid, b. But you have to try to not let that fear rule you, because there’s so much you might miss.
Rumpus: Could you say more about acts of queer humor in life, in your book? I’m thinking about the Truck Nutz moment, where you all laugh at them, then “take turns guessing which one of their owners would like to murder us.”
Gomez: I think being able to laugh at something, especially something that scares us, takes power away from it, or at least makes it a little easier to deal with. A lot of times, queer people don’t have the option of leaving or fighting back, whether it’s an unsafe home or a job or country. We’re stuck in ugly situations. We can cry about it—and girl I’ve crieeeddd—but after a while we have to get up and keep it pushing. Or we can ignore whatever scares us and pretend it’s not happening, though if you bottle up all your frustration and resentment sooner or later you’ll end up having a meltdown. I’ve learned that I have to acknowledge my fear, rather than try to make it disappear, because it never truly disappears. And if I’m going to acknowledge my fear, finding something about it that’s funny helps it go down easier. That’s how I survive.
04
2022
Indies Introduce
An Indies Introduce Q&A With Edgar Gomez
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Edgar Gomez is the author of High-Risk Homosexual, a Winter/Spring 2022 Indies Introduce adult selection and January 2022 Indie Next List pick.
Edgar Gomez (he/she/they) is a Florida-born writer with roots in Nicaragua and Puerto Rico. A graduate of University of California, Riverside’s MFA program, he is a recipient of the 2019 Marcia McQuern Award for nonfiction. His words have appeared in Poets & Writers, Narratively, Catapult, Lithub, The Rumpus, Electric Lit, Plus Magazine, and elsewhere online and in print. His memoir, High-Risk Homosexual, was named a Best LGBTQ Book by Harper’s Bazaar. He lives in New York and Puerto Rico.
Michelle Malonzo of Changing Hands Bookstore in Tempe, Arizona, served on the panel that selected Gomez’s book for Indies Introduce. “High-Risk Homosexual by Edgar Gomez has my heart,” said Malonzo. “This memoir is hilarious! But it is also a poignant and searing examination of machismo culture in the Latinx community. Gomez dissects the gender dynamics within Latinx families, speaks with honesty and vulnerability about queerness, and what it means to flip those power structures that seem difficult to break. Yet he also writes about the joy at the intersections and ultimately this memoir is a celebration of what it means to be gay and Latinx. If you love Samantha Irby, then High-Risk Homosexual is your next read! It’s thoughtful while still making you LOL.”
Here, Malonzo and Gomez talk about the importance of Latinx LGBTQIA+ and Central American stories.
Michelle Malonzo: High-Risk Homosexual is an important addition in the Latinx canon. We need more Latinx LGBTQIA+ stories and Central American stories. There is a strong inclination in this industry to publish books by marginalized authors that fit in very neat and unrealistic boxes: here is the queer memoir, here is the immigrant story, etc. One of the things I love about your memoir is how you write from the intersection of being a Nicaraguan and Puerto Rican gay man. They aren’t two separate stories but rather one whole story. How do you write from the intersection when there are so many structures in place that don’t know how to receive it?
Edgar Gomez: To be honest, I was very, very aware while writing High-Risk Homosexual that it might not get published because it doesn’t fit neatly into any one simple, easy-to-market category. I swear, every time I go on Twitter there’s another depressing infographic about publishing. They say: this many queer writers get book deals a year and this many Latinx writers, but what they don’t say is, of that already small number, how many of those queer writers are BIPOC, how many of those Latinx writers are Central American/Caribbean? After having the thousandth bleak statistic shoved down my throat, I was like, okay, I get it, my book will never be more than a Word Doc. It was strange, because maybe that should have dissuaded me. But it didn’t. It freed me to stop thinking so much about publishing and instead focus on writing the best story I could, on being truthful about the full scope of my experiences and, better yet, having fun. When I started writing the book, it was as if I was making dinner for a group of super picky eaters who kept saying, “I don’t want that! Take that out! You’re putting what in there? Who is going to eat this?” Eventually I was like, “You know what? I’m gonna cook for myself and if no one else wants, y’all can stay hungry.” Being nearly certain that I wouldn’t be received helped me prioritize my own needs. Thank God I was wrong though! One of my needs is to pay my bills…
MM: You discuss in your memoir the machismo, misogyny, racism, and homophobia in the Latinx community, but you also write with humor and heart the joy that goes along with being a part of this community. As a Latina it’s an experience I know too well but find hard to articulate and you capture it so well. How do you write that dichotomy on the page?
EG: Thank you for saying that! Finding a way to balance humor and trauma was extremely important to me for three specific reasons. The first is that humor is a subliminal way to signal to people that, no matter how painful whatever scene they’re reading is, I’ve now reached a place where I can look back and laugh. This book is in no way a how-to guide, but I’m aware that many readers will be young, queer, Latinx folk, and I felt a sense of responsibility to them, both to not sugarcoat things and also to let them know that happiness is possible for us. Without the humor, I think some of them might put the book down before the happy stuff happens. The second reason for having that dichotomy is because it’s true to life, at least to mine. In my darkest moments — when I’ve asked myself, “Why keep going?” — what has saved me is thinking about all the joy I’ve experienced and want to re-experience, and so that needed to be included as well. And the last reason is that humor is a coping mechanism of mine. Machismo and misogyny and racism and homophobia are, and I hope this doesn’t come across as trivializing, so profoundly ridiculous. Maybe I have faulty brain wiring, but when someone calls me a slur, as long as I don’t feel genuinely threatened, usually I can’t help but laugh. I don’t really go out of my way to articulate that on the page; I just show it, like in the scene in the chapter “Mama’s Boy” when my mom confronts me in our kitchen to ask me if I’m gay a year after I’d already come out to her. Humor doesn’t always have to be jokes. The funniest parts of High-Risk Homosexual to me are when I describe a silly situation and my equally silly response, like what I did that day, which was laugh and run away.
MM: I was both appalled and unsurprised while reading your memoir that the phrase “high-risk homosexual” is an accepted medical term and billable diagnosis code. It’s one of the many ways you demonstrate how our current language binds and restricts us. You even offer a disclaimer in the beginning of your book about the limitations behind the term Latina/o/x to define such a complex community. Do you see your book as a way of reclaiming language?
EG: Yeah, it’s wild, another one of those ridiculous things that you can only laugh at. To answer your question: absolutely. One of the aims of this book is to reclaim language, reclaim identity. What I love about memoir writing as a genre is that it offers marginalized folk the radical opportunity to tell our own stories and assert, in our words, who we are, what we value, and how we see the world. I needed to put that disclaimer in there because I recognize the way terms like “Latina/o/x” can be oppressive, specifically to Black and Indigenous folk, who are often either barred from “Latinidad” or have it thrust upon them without their say. For me to reclaim my story while erasing someone else’s would be, to say the least, hypocritical.
MM: My favorite to ask any author: what were the books you were reading while writing your own - whether for research or for pleasure? What books do you feel your book is in conversation with?
EG: So many! Redefining Realness by Janet Mock. I Am Not Myself These Days by Josh Kilmer-Purcell. Butterfly Boy by Rigoberto González. Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala. How We Fight for Our Lives by Saeed Jones. Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls by T Kira Madden. The Country Under My Skin by Gioconda Belli. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. And more recent debuts: Pedro’s Theory by Marcos Gonsalez and I’m Not Hungry But I Could Eat by Christopher Gonzalez. All of these books have valuable lessons to teach: how to write about love, how to write with vulnerability, and humor, and compassion, and soul.
MM: Final question: as a fellow JLo fan — how do you feel about the return of Bennifer? Did you see it coming? Was it inevitable?
EG: Returning to old, toxic patterns? Desperate ploys for attention? Photoshoots on yachts? This is what I live for! I hope she goes even further. I want to see her on a pizza date with Jonathan Seda, like in that scene in Selena, though that might actually break me.
High-Risk Homosexual: A Memoir by Edgar Gomez (Soft Skull, 9781593767051, Paperback Memoir, $16.95) On Sale: 1/11/2022.
Interview with Edgar Gomez: “Write as much as I can, wherever I can.”
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Famous Writing Routines
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Edgar Gomez is a Florida-born writer with roots in Nicaragua and Puerto Rico. A graduate of University of California, Riverside’s MFA program, they are a recipient of the 2019 Marcia McQuern Award for nonfiction.
Their words have appeared in Poets & Writers, Narratively, Catapult, Lithub, The Rumpus, and elsewhere online and in print. Their memoir, High-Risk Homosexual, was called a “breath of fresh air” by The New York Times, recognized as a Stonewall Honor Book, and named a Best Book of 2022 by Publisher’s Weekly, Buzzfeed, and Electric Literature. They live in New York and Puerto Rico.
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Hi Edgar, welcome to Famous Writing Routines, we’re so glad to have you here with us today! You were born in Florida with roots in Nicaragua and Puerto Rico. How has your background influenced your writing and what role does your heritage play in your work?
My background influences the stories I feel the most urgent calling to tell (whether about machismo in Nicaragua, queerness in Orlando, or colonization in Puerto Rico), and the word choices I use to tell those stories (Spanish speakers/Southern people have sayings for everything, queer folks have our own references we pull from, etc.).
I used to have a fear that my background would limit me in the publishing industry and American publishers would reject my work for being too “niche.” It’s a valid worry and it does happen, however, the types of stories and art I enjoy most are, in fact, “niche.” There’s nothing wrong with being particular, or showcasing hyper-specific voices and unique situations.
As much as I can, I try to disconnect myself from my capitalistic impulses to mold my writing into what will sell and be most appealing to publishers, and instead trust that there are readers out there who will respond to me being myself.
Your writing often tackles themes of identity, sexuality, and community. How do you approach these sensitive and personal topics in your work?
Very slowly. When I first began to write, I was in such a rush. Chasing the high of getting stories published. Finishing a draft and sending it right out. Trying to get paid and have money for rent. Maybe that’s okay if you’re writing fiction, but with memoir and personal essays, the responsibility you hold to both yourself and to the people you’re writing about is… different.
The real-life consequences are higher. I try to give myself at least three months if I’m writing a story that deals with something sensitive. I like to sit with what I’ve written for a while and give myself the chance to change my mind. Something major can happen in three months that alters your perception completely. One day you might think a memory is traumatic, the next you could remember an absurd detail that makes you laugh at the same scene, a month later you might find a comfortable medium between the two.
Then there are questions that memoirists should always ask themselves: Am I being generous? Am I being vengeful? Have I done my due diligence? What are my motives for telling this? All of this takes time.
Your writing has appeared in various outlets including Poets & Writers, Narratively, and The Rumpus, among others. How do you determine which pieces to share in which outlets? How do you choose the right home for your writing?
It really depends on the story. There are some that are so personal, that I am so attached to and so unwilling to revise to meet a specific, perhaps higher paying magazine’s editorial eye, that I am okay with publishing it somewhere that gives me next-to-nothing if it means that I’ll get to maintain my authentic voice. I try not to make money my number one priority, though it’s very hard because, well, capitalism!
High-Risk Homosexual received a lot of recognition and praise from various publications, including The New York Times. What does this recognition mean to you as an author?
It’s been both shocking and not shocking, to be honest. Shocking, because I know what the statistics look like—books like mine aren’t often published, much less praised by those big publications. And shocking because I remember where I started, as a queer, Latinx kid who couldn’t even afford to go to the library sometimes because gas cost too much money for my mom to take me.
But it’s also not shocking to me, because I work very hard at writing, and because I’ve had to build up an immense reserve of confidence—I think almost all writers do; the odds are so low that any book will succeed, you have to believe in yourself. You have to believe you’ll make it. I’m grateful for any recognition, but the recognition that matters to me most is from queer readers. They’re the ones who never doubted me, and to whom I feel most indebted to.
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Being named a Stonewall Honor Book is a significant achievement for any LGBTQ+ author. Can you share your thoughts on the importance of representation and visibility for the LGBTQ+ community in literature?
Representation can be an important tool for the imagination. If you can’t see something, if you’re not sure it exists, then it can be difficult to imagine it for yourself, right? For me, one of my biggest insecurities around publishing was that I didn’t see many writers like me out there, and so I didn’t know if publishing a book would be possible for me.
Now that I do know it’s possible, I hope that shows other writers their stories are valuable and that there is a way. At the same time, representation can be tricky. We have to be critical of visibility. Queer people have always been around; perhaps now other people are learning about us more, but I had a whole life and community before any outlet spot lit me.
Many outlets, regardless of how unbiased they would like to appear, have agendas, whether they’re selling papers or shaping larger cultural conversations. It’s important to look at who they’re spotlighting and ask why, and who they’re excluding. I’m very hesitant to use my visibility to say, “I made it, so you can too!” because that’s a slippery slope towards tokenism. What does it mean to make it? According to whose standards? This is why recognition from other queer folks means the world to me.
Can you tell us about your writing routine? What does a typical day look like for you?
When I was in graduate school, I had a professor give me the advice that if I wanted writing to be my job, then I had to start treating it like my job. There are hundreds of thousands—if not millions—of people who want to be writers, people who are waiting for someone to tell them, “Okay, you’re a writer!” But no one is going to tell you that. You have to just do it. So, before I received a cent for my writing, that’s what I did. It’s simple and it’s not simple: you have to decide you are a writer and then you have to go do it.
That said, I don’t have a set writing schedule. My basic philosophy is: write as much as I can, wherever I can, and if I’m not writing, then I’m reading, and if I can’t do either, then I’m cleaning, so that there will be fewer distractions around me when I’m ready to sit down. As of late, I write about five or six days a week. If I’m busy, I’ll try to get in at least an hour in, even if it’s broken up into fifteen-minute chunks. If I have more time, I’ll go an entire day—from around noon to 10PM.
That’s because I’m under some tight deadlines at the moment. But I also make sure to give myself plenty of breaks. A week where I won’t write anything at all, or where I’ll just poke around in a story and revise. As a memoirist, it’s important to give yourself space to be a human in the world and make new experiences, otherwise you’ll stop growing.
If you could have a conversation with any author throughout history about their writing routine and creative process, who would that person be?
That would be Zora Neale Hurston. She had such style and determination and confidence in herself as an artist. I remember reading that when she lived in Harlem, she would host parties for figures of the Harlem Renaissance, and oftentimes while the parties were still going, she’d go into her room to write. I’d like to know more about that—about her passion and drive.
But I think what I would like to ask her the most about is money. She didn’t earn nearly what she deserved, and in fact she died penniless. From letters she wrote, it sounds like she anticipated that might happen. I’m interested in the ways artists find happiness outside of capitalism, what motivated her when she was afraid of things like paying rent, whether she was ever bogged down by things like that. Essentially: what made it worth it for her.
I’d love to know about the books you’re reading at the moment. What have been some of your favorite recent reads?
I’m currently reading a Spanish translation of a book by Mieko Kawakami titled Pechos y Huevos. Before that, I read Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin, All This Could be Different by Sarah Thankam Mathews, and Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams—all of which I really liked.
Right now, because what I’m writing about is poverty, I’m enjoying books that talk about money in a way that isn’t totally sad or totally funny (which can feel deflective). Books that make room for both, that offer me new perspectives about money and how to live in a world that is ruled by it. I’m here for anything that speaks of mutual aid, community, care work, and navigating systems of oppression. Also gay shit.
What does your current writing workspace look like?
I don’t have a stable writing space right now in Puerto Rico, where I’m currently living. Sometimes I write from bed, which I don’t love because I get sleepy. Sometimes I write from an Ikea desk my landlady is letting me borrow. In general, because writing can be so static, and because I get FOMO from people I see on social media having fun outside, I try to make it as fun an experience for myself as possible.
I’ll make coffee, light a candle and put out flowers or a precious stone, and dress up cute. I’m not a sweatpants writer. Wearing my good clothes helps me feel more connected to the world, instead of like a hermit who spends all day crouched over my laptop.
Edgar Gomez
2024 Prose
Edgar Gomez
Photo courtesy of Edgar Gomez
Bio
Edgar Gomez (all pronouns) is a Florida-born writer with roots in Nicaragua and Puerto Rico. A graduate of University of California, Riverside’s MFA program, his words have appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Poets & Writers, Lithub,the Rumpus, and beyond. Gomez’s first book, High-Risk Homosexual, received a 2023 American Book Award, a Stonewall Israel-Fishman Nonfiction Book Honor Award, and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir. His second book, a memoir about growing up poor in early 2000s Florida titled Alligator Tears, will be out in 2025 from Crown. His work has been supported by the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Black Mountain Institute, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Personal Statement
Less than a year ago, I was crowdfunding to help my family with living expenses, barely making ends meet. It’s difficult to prioritize art when drowning in worries about rent, where my next meal will come from, and how I will sustain myself in the long term. I know that I’m not alone in these problems, and I am immensely grateful to the National Endowment for the Arts for providing me with the financial support that will allow me to write about money and survival in my next book, Alligator Tears, which is about growing up poor in early 2000s Florida. I don’t believe one book can magically solve poverty; for that to happen would take a daily commitment by individual people to look out for one another. Instead, my goal with the book the NEA is supporting is to help provide joy, community, and hope to anyone who has struggled with money, both by reflecting our struggles and illuminating one path towards freedom.
Keep Going
In Conversation with Edgar Gomez
Billy Lezra
Edgar Gomez (all pronouns) is a Florida-born writer with roots in Nicaragua and Puerto Rico. A graduate of University of California, Riverside’s MFA program, his words have appeared in The LA Times, Poets & Writers, Lithub, The Rumpus, and beyond. His debut memoir, High-Risk Homosexual, was called a “breath of fresh air” by The New York Times; named a Best Book of 2022 by Publisher’s Weekly, Buzzfeed, and Electric Literature; and received a 2023 American Book Award, a Stonewall Israel-Fishman Nonfiction Book Honor Award, and the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Memoir. Gomez’s second book, a darkly-comic memoir about growing up poor in early 2000’s Florida titled Alligator Tears, will be out in 2025 from Crown. His work has been supported by The New York Foundation for the Arts and the Black Mountain Institute. He lives between New York and Puerto Rico. Find him across social media @OtroEdgarGomez.
You just turned in your second book, Alligator Tears, to your editor. How are you feeling?
I am feeling really relieved to be done and ready to turn my brain off and just chill. It’s been a really intense past couple of months. In Alligator Tears, I write about what it was like to publish my first book, High-Risk Homosexual, and how intense the months leading up to publication were, and how I basically became a hermit and didn’t see anybody other than my coworkers for almost a year. I kind of neglected all my friendships and I felt guilty because I didn’t feel like I was meaningfully contributing to my community. Returning to that really intense pace these last couple of months was strange, because I had the knowledge of, like: “Wait, you can’t repeat the same mistake. You can’t just go off the radar and not call your mom for months and not contribute.” But now that I’m done, I feel like I can focus on the other things that are equally important to me. I don’t want to just dedicate my whole life to writing; I also want to be a human being out in the world.
How did you interrupt the impulse to be a hermit during this very intensive phase of finalizing your book?
I was single when I wrote the majority of my first book, and now I have a boyfriend, so I can’t just go in the other room and disappear for months. He kind of tethers me to reality, and says: “No, we have to go out and do things, it’s your friend’s birthday, the downstairs neighbor needs a favor.” Stuff like that. And I am also more self-aware. Now I can be like: “Okay, you put in eight hours of writing today, maybe go do something else.” Being able to more clearly envision the end has helped me, because I’m like: “Okay, you might be a hermit right now, but in two weeks you’re going to be able to be out in the world more, so you can start making those plans now.”
Yes, you can plan for two weeks from now when you can be more of a person.
I know, it’s annoying. Do you ever feel that way? Like, guilty?
For me the writing brain is its own entity and just wants to be left alone. You know?
Yeah, I get it. I become a monster–not like these straight white men who go crazy, but I feel that energy inside of me. Like, when I focus, nobody better talk to me, nobody look at me. I think it’s also because I have undiagnosed minor OCD. I used to have it pretty intensely when I was younger, but over time, I think I’ve managed to channel it into my writing. I’m such a perfectionist when I’m writing, but also, I like to have a very controlled environment. When anything interrupts that controlled environment, I feel very distracted, and then I can’t think of anything else. Like: “Oh, there’s a door open over there,” or “I know there’s dishes in the sink,” or anything like that.
I hadn’t planned to ask you this question, but you’re speaking to something I think about constantly. I have a hard time separating my impulse to be controlling in my work from being controlling in my daily life. In the writing realm, being controlling can make a lot of sense–tinkering with each comma, worrying over each verb. But if I take that controlling mind and I speak to my partner from that place, my marriage would crumble, you know? So how do you negotiate and distinguish this impulse to control in the writing realm from your daily realm?
I would say that my brain compartmentalizes the act of writing. As you said, as a writer, I am all up in each sentence, like: “Oh my god, I don’t like that this word ends in ing. I have to spend two hours figuring out a better word. I have to move that comma.” But when I’m not writing, I am a completely different person. I’m a total double Pisces. I go with the flow. The breeze takes me. I think I channel all my controlling energy into my writing. And it does create this weird problem, though, because people know me as such a loosey-goosey person, I think they might think I am also unserious when I am writing. But writing is just a whole different world. It is so, so hard and takes so much effort and concentration and research and self-awareness. I don’t think people always understand how hard it is to really do the thing.
This ties into a question I had about craft. One of the elements I loved in your stories in High-Risk Homosexual is the presence of echoing images: how a detail in the beginning of a chapter will resurface in the end in a wonderfully unexpected way. How did you go about crafting that?
First of all, thank you for noticing. It gets to a point where the edits I make are really just for me, because nobody’s going to notice an image that is similar but a little bit different unless you are really honing in on each line, which I do not expect people to do. So really, all the little tinkering is how I make it fun for myself. With High-Risk Homosexual, I initially envisioned the book as a collection of essays. Because I had that structure in mind, I was thinking of each chapter as being very episodic in nature–almost like a capsule that is closed off from the rest. I wanted each chapter to feel like it was telling a complete story, which informed how I wrote the endings–calling back an image from earlier on in the chapter creates this feeling of completeness. Maybe the original goal I had at the beginning of the chapter wasn’t accomplished, but a reader can see how much growth has or has not happened since the first image was originally presented on the page. That’s why I really like to call back images within each chapter, but also within the book as a whole. In the final chapter I call back images from the first chapter, to create resolution.
I noticed how the book opened with a dedication: “To my mother and for my brother.” And then the book closed with the words “keep going.” I thought those two sentiments created an interesting conversation with one another.
Yeah, that was very intentional in a corny way. The first word in the book is “mama” and it’s also the last word of the first chapter. I was thinking a lot about my mom throughout the book and throughout my second book as well, which has even more to do with her. One of the things I was trying to get at with that final “keep going” is that not all of the problems I’ve established in the book are magically solved. One of the problems was the complicated relationship I had with both my mom and my brother, at the time. I wanted the ending to feel open-ended because in a lot of books I’ve read, in a lot of TV shows I’ve watched, mostly when I was younger, it felt like only two types of family relationships were represented. Either the family of the queer person was radically accepting, or, on the other end of the spectrum, it was just tragic. A lot of my queer friends and I are in this more ambiguous space where the relationships with our families aren’t either/or. It’s not like they’re cutting us off or we’re cutting them off, but it’s not like they are radically accepting. So I wanted a more nuanced representation where sometimes it’s a struggle and sometimes it’s amazing, because that’s my reality and the reality of many people I know.
One of the things I loved about the final story in High-Risk Homosexual is the disillusionment the narrator expresses when he arrives in San Francisco: how this arrival is supposed to feel like a haven but it is not experienced that way. Have you found a physical or ideological space that feels like home?
San Francisco was not it for me, but I did go back last year and I loved it. I realized that the first time I went there was when I was really poor, so obviously I didn’t have the greatest time because I couldn’t afford to do much. Going back and having a little bit of a budget made the experience different. And also going back with my boyfriend, who had lived there and knew where to go–all of that made a difference. But afterward, I moved to New York, and after jumping around a couple of places, I ended up in Jackson Heights, Queens. And that place has turned out to be everything I wanted San Francisco to be. It’s just like queer Latinx people everywhere. The gay bars have names like El Trio and Hombres. There’s a street named after a trans activist, Lorena Borjas. There’s a lot of community activism that goes on with food pantries. I was part of the Mirror Beauty Co-op, which is a beauty certification program for trans Latinx women, mostly immigrants. And I’m just so happy that right after this book was published, I ended up there. In fact, that is where I had my book launch for High-Risk Homosexual. It was just like a little thing at a gay bar, and I was in a knockoff Versace dress. It was really fun. It felt like such a full circle moment where I was like: “Wow, this does feel like the end of the rainbow that you were looking for.”
In an interview you said: “I try to disconnect myself from my capitalistic impulses to mold my writing into what will sell and what will be most appealing to publishers.” How do you make that disconnection?
It’s very hard. I try to recognize the part of me that comes from a poverty mindset that is like: “Girl, you should sell out.” And by “sell out,” I mean: “You should write a story about straight people because that’s going to open up your audience and more people will buy your book.” Or: “Oh, you should take out some of the Spanish because that’s going to alienate readers and turn them away from your book.” It feels like I have this devil on my shoulder that is like: “Look, you are positioned in this place where if you want to sell out, maybe you could.” But then I have an angel on my other shoulder that’s like: “Girl, you are about to spend two years minimum, every other day, sitting in front of your computer writing this story. You should write about something that makes you happy, that you’re interested in, that you think will be useful to other people, that you’re going to enjoy doing.” It’s important to recognize how much labor and time it takes to write a story, no matter what story it is. Because if I choose the other path, I’m just going to be miserable the whole time and I’m going to have ethical dilemmas. I want to use my limited time doing things I love, that I think will make other people happy. And I think I can do that best when writing about my immediate community, which is queer Latinx people.
Would you tell me about the title of your new book, Alligator Tears?
It comes from the expression “crocodile tears,” and it’s a memoir set in Florida. So I was like: “Okay, let me just change it to the actual animal that it is in Florida, which are alligators.” Part of the reason I chose this title is because the book has to do with growing up poor in early 2000s Florida, and poverty can be a very heavy subject. One of my biggest concerns was writing a really depressing book and then asking my queer Latinx audience: “Hey, in the one or two free hours you have every day, will you read this depressing book?” That seemed really sad to me. And so I was like: “I have to make it worth their while.” People’s free time is their most valuable resource, so I want to make them have fun and laugh. The other reason I went with Alligator Tears is because it signaled at a lot of the things I want the book to do. Aside from it being set in Florida, the book does have sad moments. There will be tears, but it’s not going to be really depressing. And I think the idea of “crocodile tears” imperfectly signals at the fact that there’s going to be humor and campiness as well.
I looked up the definition of “lagrimas de cocodrilo,” crocodile tears, and was curious about the performative connotation of the expression.
I would say that definition is most apt in the early chapters. There’s a scene where I’m twelve years old, and my mom had just had a stroke. My brother and I started working at the flea market, selling things from around the house. And it was at the flea market, at that age, that I realized that I could make more money from customers if I just played up being, like, a sad cute little kid. So that kind of plays into the crocodile tears, because I was making myself look like a little pobrecito. And in reality, I was a little pobrecito so it wasn’t necessarily a lie. But back then I also realized the performance of it all. In that same chapter, I write about how my mom had Bell’s palsy after she had her stroke. One of the symptoms was that she would just start crying at random. And it wasn’t necessarily because she was sad or anything; it was because she didn’t have full control of her tear glands. There was a performative element to that as well, because she would be like: “Oh, no, I’m not crying because I’m sad.” Sometimes I think she was just trying to make us feel better. But all that is to say: I was thinking about the classic definition of “crocodile tears,” and its performative element. There are a lot of crying scenes throughout this book. And with each crying scene I try to ask myself: “What is this scene doing differently than the last? How am I crying in a new and unique way? Or: “How are these tears different from the tears in the chapter before?” So, there are performative tears, there are angry tears, there are devastated tears. And then towards the end of the book, there are happy tears.
During the Tin House Winter Workshop I had the privilege of hearing you read a poem about all the things you love about being gay. Would you say more about this poem, about what you love about being gay today?
I wrote that poem towards the beginning of the pandemic, during a very bleak time. Every day I would wake up to more awful news about anti-queer and anti-trans legislation. I started going to these pandemic protests, and after a long time of doing that, I felt like I was forgetting what I was fighting for. It was just like: fight, fight, fight; tragedy, tragedy, tragedy. I wanted to remind myself of all of the great things about being gay so I could envision what my life might look like after the fight. Because I don’t want my life to be defined by fighting; I want it to be defined by joy. So I literally crafted a list of things I love about being gay, and it really helped me. I could have kept writing a list endlessly because there are so many hyper-specific things I love about being gay. I had a revelation towards the end of writing my second book, which is: when I was younger I only saw queerness as consequences, such as: “you might get disowned, you might get gay bashed, you might not find a job because nobody is going to hire you.” And as an adult, looking back at my life, I realize that being gay is such a privilege. Being gay allowed me to step outside the path toward the culture of machismo, and forge my own path. Being gay allowed me to travel and explore the world with this feeling of safety in knowing that no matter where I ended up, there would probably be a community of queer people who would see me and offer me a couch to sleep on, or a meal. There’s a built-in community everywhere I go; I know I’m going to be taken care of, or at least that I’m not going to be alone.
One of the themes I noticed in High-Risk Homosexual is the movement from silence to expression, from a sense of invisibility to visibility, and specifically the role imagination and representation play in that movement. Where and how did you learn to imagine?
I would say two places. I learned to imagine from my mom, who taught me how to dream big, and would always riff with me. When I was younger, we would drive around the suburbs and look at all the nice houses, and she would be like: “One day I’m going to get one twice as big in Miami and you’re going to buy me a Jaguar.” She was always fantasizing out loud. And so that really taught me to imagine. That, and growing up poor. We didn’t have a lot of toys so my brother and I would just be outside playing. He always liked to make movie spoofs, so we would write scripts together and record them in the backyard. Poverty sometimes forces you to be creative and imaginative in the best of ways. And so I would say those are the two ways I learned how to imagine: from my mom and from growing up poor.
What brings you joy?
What brings me the most joy is when I can do something, no matter what it is, that makes somebody else feel happy or relieved. I think it’s partly selfish: I am a double Pisces and I absorb other people’s energy. So making people happy makes me happy. It isn’t true altruism. It’s just, like, me wanting to suck the joy out of everybody around me (laughs). That, and really good food, going to the beach, anytime I can just turn my brain off and lie down somewhere brings me joy. The writer part of me feels joy whenever I read something and I’m just like: “Damn, this is so good. That’s such a good simile. I’m so into this story.”
What brings you hope?
These questions are so good because they’re exactly the questions I was asking myself when writing Alligator Tears: “What brings me joy? What brings me hope?” I wrote the book during the pandemic when I was not feeling joyful or hopeful, so I was digging through my memories, being like: “Okay, you felt this way during other periods of your life and somehow you managed to be happy and to keep going.” And so I wanted to remind myself of those things so I could keep going during the pandemic. I started feeling very powerless–like there were so many problems that were so much bigger than me. And because I was isolated, I was like: “How am I going to be able to solve these problems? Like, I am just one person.” And then I started going to the pandemic protests for Black Lives Matter, for immigration issues, for queer social justice issues. And during these protests I realized that I’m not alone, that I don’t have to solve every single problem by myself. That, in fact, it’s kind of an egoistic thought to have. Nobody was asking me to solve every problem on my own. And when you go to protests you see how everybody has an individual role to play. There are people on bikes blocking out traffic, there are people handing out bottles of water. Being there reminded me that all I have to do is play one part or play my part. And that gives me a lot of hope. Being in community, reminding myself that I’m not alone, that there are people fighting for the world they want to live in, that gives me a lot of hope.
How would you like to be remembered?
An iconic trans activist, Cecilia Gentili, recently passed away and had this massive funeral at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. Everybody who went was dressed to the nines, in their heels, their hair laid, with cute outfits. It was a celebration. People were dancing and remembering the true her and how she presented herself as a proud puta, la santa de las putas. And it wasn’t sanitized. I think one of the best things about Cecilia was how she encouraged people to be their authentic selves. I am inspired by anybody who has gone through some shit and made it to the other end, not just smiling and happy, but like, laughing. I can’t think of a better legacy. I want to be remembered as who I say I am, through my life’s work, establishing my autonomy through literature, telling people who I am in my books.
I feel as if you embody that; the last words of your first book come to mind: “keep going.”
I hope so.
High-Risk Homosexual is available for purchase here.
Edgar Gomez. Soft Skull, $16.95 trade paper (304p) ISBN 978-1-59376-705-1
In this crackling debut, Gomez recounts his coming-of-age as a queer man, passionately exploring what it means to celebrate one's identities and to make space for joy in the most unlikely places. "In a world desperate to erase us, queer Latinx men must find ways to hold on to pride for survival," he writes, "but excessive male pride is often what we are battling, both in ourselves and in others." In essays packed with dry wit and searing cultural insight, Gomez blows open this paradox as he contends with the difficulties and traumas of compulsory heterosexuality that were forced upon him growing up in his Nicaraguan family. He brings readers on an exhilarating trip through his teens in Central America, where bloody cockfights at his uncle's bar pulsated with machismo; reflects on meeting a group of encouraging trans sex workers, whose simple freedom both terrified and enticed him as a young gay person; recounts his awkward attempts to navigate hookup culture in his early 20s in Florida; and reflects on how taking PrEP instantly labeled him medically as a "high-risk homosexual." The result transcends a simple coming-out story to instead offer a brilliant and provocative interrogation of sex, gender, race, and love. Agent: Danielle Bukowski, Sterling Lord Literistic. (Jan.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation
MLA 9th Edition APA 7th Edition Chicago 17th Edition Harvard
"High-Risk Homosexual: A Memoir." Publishers Weekly, vol. 268, no. 40, 4 Oct. 2021, p. 149. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A679294095/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=9b08093c. Accessed 27 Apr. 2025.
Gomez, Edgar HIGH RISK HOMOSEXUAL Soft Skull Press (NonFiction None) $16.95 1, 11 ISBN: 978-1-59376-705-1
A Florida-born writer's account of how he learned to embrace and celebrate his identity as a gay Latinx man.
As an adolescent growing up in Orlando, Gomez fantasized he could live in a "rom-com" world like the one that Jennifer Lopez, his idol and beautiful Latina "damsel in distress," often inhabited on screen. But an "artsy asexual" facade hid the queerness that his machista Latinx culture denigrated. In high school, a gay friend took him to clubs to revel in drag queen culture, and college brought with it the opportunity to move out and further define his sexuality on his own terms. However, Gomez quickly found himself forced into a binary existence. "It was obvious," he writes, "that I could experiment with my appearance or I could have sex, but I couldn't have both." At the same time, the author also discovered a desire to engage in anonymous, multipartner gay club sex, and he joined a gay burlesque troop, where he learned, gradually, to be comfortable in his own skin. Leaving Orlando for graduate school after the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre gave rise to other important personal revelations. "I don't have sympathy for the man who murdered forty-nine people I used to dance with. I promise you I don't," writes the author. "But I do for the child he'd been, despite knowing how this story ends, because he reminds me so much of myself." Contending with the pervasive fear of contracting HIV, the author slowly began to learn to cautiously explore his desires while also continuing to "play the game. The game is hope." Poignant, vivid, and often hilarious, this coming-of-age memoir fearlessly explores intersectional identity and shows what it means to live and love authentically as a gay man today.
An engagingly candid memoir from a promising young writer.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2021 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Gomez, Edgar: HIGH RISK HOMOSEXUAL." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Nov. 2021. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A680615730/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=e5be80e8. Accessed 27 Apr. 2025.
HIGH-RISK HOMOSEXUAL A Memoir By Edgar Gomez
The concept of Latinidad, or ''Latinness,'' is an unstable one. Meant to encompass a multitude of cultures, languages and experiences, it inevitably falls short, as words often do. Although contested, the term at least attempts to put a name to a hazy collection of norms and realities, the pretty and the ugly that together constitute a certain idea of self. It's largely the ugly that ''High-Risk Homosexual'' is concerned with, and though often heavy, Edgar Gomez's debut is also a breath of fresh air.
The memoir recounts Gomez's life growing up queer in the literal arena of compulsory masculinity: The opening chapter takes place in his uncle's cockfighting ring in Nicaragua. Scenes of the birds sparring, their beaks and talons affixed with blades, are interspersed with those of a 13-year-old Gomez in an Orlando nightclub. In this other, no less lethal kind of arena, his uncle pushes him toward sex with a girl, the man's former housekeeper. It's a compelling portrait of machismo: a surveilled, violent dance.
Gomez is something of an alien to these rites, an unwilling participant in the mandatory spectacle of being a man. As a writer, he invites us into the chasm between what he is expected to do and what he is capable of, giving himself plenty of room for emotion, self-deprecation and acerbic observation on the ''machistas,'' or sexists, who proliferate in Latin culture.
This is as true in the early chapters, which see a young Gomez under the thumb of various authority figures like his uncle and his mother, as it is in the second half of the book, after he's out of the closet. The banner chapter, in which his doctor labels him a ''high-risk homosexual'' and puts him on PrEP, finds Gomez caught in a similar bramble. ''I didn't particularly feel high-risk, but given the history of H.I.V. among queers and the disproportionate rates that it affected Latinx people, I couldn't exactly say I wasn't,'' Gomez writes. ''I was stuck.''
This time, he turns to the authority of wise elder queers he's encountered in art and the media, who lived through the peak of the AIDS crisis in the United States. ''Be careful, they said. Sex can kill you. Look what it did to us.'' Ultimately these elders assume a mirror role to his uncle's: people who have Gomez's best interests at heart, but whose expectations he can't meet.
And like his uncle, this older generation poses the question that runs through the heart of the book: What happens after you've tried and failed to be the right kind of man? Or in this case, the right kind of gay man? Can you ever be an authority figure in your own right?
Gomez writes with a humor and clarity that generally keep the melodrama at bay, an absolute must in a memoir that might otherwise have been a laundry list of painful experiences. In a relatable scene that will likely make queer readers squirm, the author recalls a consultation with his doctor in which she asks, '''Do you prefer to give or receive?' ... as if the question weren't about anal but my philosophy on Christmas.''
Ever committed to parsing its central themes of masculinity and queer identity, ''High-Risk Homosexual'' does circle back on itself a bit, the chapters teetering on uniformity. Gomez's voice is equal parts warmth and acid wit, like a good friend you're slightly afraid of, but there are times in the middle of a passage where you'll feel you know what he's going to say before he says it.
These minor complaints do little to dull the shine of an exciting debut from an author with a rare point of view. ''High-Risk Homosexual'' deals with some titanic questions. What is Latinidad? What is machismo? What does it mean to be a man, never mind a queer man? By its own admission, the book doesn't have all the answers, but it makes a compelling case that they will come from the razor-sharp queers living in the margins.
John Paul Brammer is the author of ''Hola Papi.'' HIGH-RISK HOMOSEXUAL A Memoir By Edgar Gomez 287 pp. Soft Skull. Paper, $16.95.
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PHOTO: Edgar Gomez (PHOTOGRAPH FROM JOSEPH OSBORNE)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2022 The New York Times Company
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Brammer, John Paul. "Toxic Machismo." The New York Times Book Review, 6 Feb. 2022, p. 13(L). Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A691990785/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=b3e3165e. Accessed 27 Apr. 2025.
Gomez, Edgar ALLIGATOR TEARS Crown (NonFiction None) $28.00 2, 11 ISBN: 9780593728543
The coming-of-age of a queer Latinx Floridian, part two.
"I was the person who got expelled from high school, who mopped up lube at the sex club, and somehow I'd stumbled into this alternate universe where I was also the person who lived with his boyfriend in New York (albeit in a fake room), had a book soon-to-be out, and an inbox full of journalists asking me about my 'process.'" In a follow-up to his much-awarded debut memoir of growing up gay between Florida and Nicaragua,High-Risk Homosexual, Gomez gives a book-length answer to the question of his process. Though his 30-something years may seem few for two memoirs, this time he tells the story largely in terms of work: a meticulously evoked and darkly comic series of jobs in bars, restaurants, retail (readers may find the Flip Flop Shop taking up a permanent, coconut-scented place in their minds), and, briefly, sex work. Through it all, he clung ferociously to the idea that he was a writer. "'People likeyou get to make art too!' I'd hype myself up in the shower." His fierce love for his mother, a beloved barista at the airport Starbucks, again shines through the pages, and in a section that will mean a lot to aspiring memoirists, he recalls how the joy of his first publication was laced with terror that she would read the book, whose evolution he hid from her. He continues to contend with the legacy of the Pulse nightclub massacre, with homophobia, and with racism, but he also comes to a heartening conclusion: "In fact, it was aprivilege to be gay. It was because of my queerness that I was able to see how the paths set out for me weren't enough, pushing me to leave home in search of more."
This portrait of the artist as a young flip-flop salesman will inspire, amuse, and empower its audience.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2024 Kirkus Media LLC
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"Gomez, Edgar: ALLIGATOR TEARS." Kirkus Reviews, 15 Dec. 2024. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A819570276/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=fb8d7b2a. Accessed 27 Apr. 2025.
Alligator Tears: A Memoir in Essays.
By Edgar Gomez.
Feb. 2025. 256p. Crown, $28 (9780593728543); e-book
(9780593728550). 306.76.
Following the success of High-Risk Homosexual (2022), this collection of essays explores Gomez' life growing up in Florida as a gay Latinx millennial. Gomez is sweet and conversational, like a friend readers have known for life: nostalgic, playful, and caring. Gomez writes about growing up with his single mother and the sacrifices she made to support him and his brother, Hector, on her own. Her stress took a physical toll and caused serious health issues, which forced the author to confront American morality myths about poverty and hard work. Gomez shares what it was like to grow up alongside the dawn of influencers and how filming makeup tutorials allowed for creative identity expression while he still lived at home. The essays follow the author from youth into young adulthood and the experience of seeing his first book published, which propelled his relationship with his mother into a new chapter. It is beautiful to get to know the life of this artist, whose endearing world will remain with readers long after they've finished the book.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2025 American Library Association
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Eathorne, Courtney. "Alligator Tears: A Memoir in Essays." Booklist, vol. 121, no. 9-10, Jan. 2025, pp. 3+. Gale General OneFile, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A829739211/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=bookmark-ITOF&xid=dfdc2695. Accessed 27 Apr. 2025.