Benderson Interview     By Andy Horowitz In 1999 Nerve.com sent Bruce Benderson to Hungary to write about the brothels of Budapest. On his first night there he met a Romanian hustler with whom he would carry on a tumultuous affair for the next nine months. In 2004 the story of this affair was published in France, winning the Prix de Flore, and this year was published in English as "The Romanian." More than just an erotic memoir, it is a travelogue, a history lesson, and the story of an all-consuming obsession. You have said that "The Romanian" was an attempt to distance yourself from an identity you no longer desired. What were you running from - what identity were you trying to distance yourself from? Well, I'd had a literary identity as the poet of Times Square, the poet of the American underworld. I'd already written three books about the subcultures of Times Square, about junkies and prostitutes, and I felt that I was at a dead end in America. I no longer had a terrain because Times Square was over. I was no longer interested and I was really alienated from gay culture. It was an attempt to distance myself from my identity as a gay American. In the book you say "I still saw my homosexuality as a narrative of adventure, a chance to cross not only sex barriers but class barriers, while breaking a few laws in the process." How is that different from the gay American identity you were trying to distance yourself from? Well, I think the idea of gay identity is having a crisis now. What' s gay identity? It just means you like to sleep with people of the same sex. Imagine if a heterosexual person said, "My primary identity is my heterosexual identity, I'm attracted to women and that is my identity. Now let's discuss the culture around that?" Nobody would do that. The only thing that created gay identity was the fact that it was illegal to sleep with people of the same sex. You could get in trouble with the law. And so that created a kind of outsider identity. Now that it's no longer illegal in most places in America, now that you don't even have to worry about it, people are at a loss. I don't think there is a gay culture, really. When you read gay magazines now they're completely empty. They're all about gay fashion, gay music, maybe a film about homosexuality. There's something very thin about all of it now, because what gave it some substance were the politics around it. And now that those politics are less urgent, there's nothing else. Reading the book often feels like it's from another time; it feels like a novel. That's my archaic style. Fewer and fewer people are interested in a couple of things that the book is obsessed with. Almost no one is interested in passion anymore, or in romantic love. How many novels or memoirs have you seen about romantic love or passion in the last eight years? Hardly any. And people are less and less interested in the imagination - so if it's a memoir usually it's an inspirational memoir - the facts of their recovery or how this medical treatment led to that or how their father abused them... And then people get obsessed about the authenticity of it - like this James Frey/Oprah mess. America is the only country where memoirs have to do with authenticity, where they are inspirational. When we encounter memoirs and autobiographies in other countries, if they're literary, they quite often have something to do with a larger metaphorical truth. No one is really interested in whether you were really wearing a blue shirt at that time or whether this or that was actually said. They realize that you're trying to make a point about your life, and the details are less important than that point. That being said, you are brutally honest in the telling of the story, yet for an erotic memoir it is relatively demure. It's not because I was repressing anything - I didn't think that the sexual scenes were that interesting or that there was a necessity. I thought the emotional drama was a lot more interesting than the sexual drama. If all you're describing is sex then all you can do is pornography. There are limitations about how much you can talk about pure sex because it's a repetitive, very well known act. It is desire that sets the memoir in motion; it's more about love or erotic obsession than it is about sex. You say it is about desire and love, but still you are paying Romulus for sex. Our mutual needs were understood from the very beginning. I made them very clear and he made them very clear. Shortly after we met I decided that I was in love with him and I wanted to be with him, and that when I'd be with him we'd also be having sex sometimes. He decided that he really liked me a lot, that I was the only friend he'd ever had and that he was aware that I had sexual needs. And it was understood that I could also support him - which is always a problem for someone who is impoverished. So it was kind of an arrangement. It had practical benefits for him, friendship benefits for him, friendship benefits for me and sexual benefits for me. And for a while he was willing to play it that way. There's somewhat of a transgression in the notion that real relationships can happen in a paid context. I've always believed that because I've had that experience quite often. There's always something wrong with relationships that happen in the context of money - but they're extremely common even in the normal heterosexual world. I mean, right now I am on the west coast near Los Angeles and I think there are probably hundreds of May/December pairings in which the woman was primarily interested in the money and power of the man, but there's probably a friendship and good relationship between them if the marriage endures. But money and power are a consideration. I had vast experiences during the old Times Square days with lots of hustlers and I always enjoyed the situations. And it was partly because the moment that it was acknowledged that it was a money thing I was able to stop worrying about whether the person was really attracted to me or was really excited by me. And he didn't have to worry about faking it or pretending that he was extremely attracted to me or in love with me. And somehow that eliminated a lot of the tension that we find when two people date or two people come together. And not in all cases, but in more cases than you would imagine, strange friendships and relationships grew out of that soil. I am still close with people that I had sex with in that context in Times Square many, many years ago. There's one that I've known for twenty years and he's one of my closest friends now. Your book struck me not just as a story of an erotic obsession, but also as an obsession with a place, Romania. I had written the story of Romulus and my love affair and I looked at it and thought how many people are going to be interested in my obsessive love affair? And then I realized this was also a love affair with a country for me. I was fascinated by the idea of being in Romania. I began to realize that a lot of what I loved in Romulus weren't necessarily personal traits, they were Romanian traits and that I had been in love with, not just with Romulus. So I began to research some of the peasant art and culture of Romania. It seems like this kind of obsession could only have happened in another country, some place far removed from American culture. I think that's really the reason people travel today. What we're all trying to escape when we travel is global capitalism, we're trying to escape the fact that all meaning is defined by merchandising; we're trying to escape the fact that everything is there to be bought or to be advertised. When I was in Romania there was a low level of media and a low level of merchandising. And that's always exhilarating now because we're absolutely infused with it. Everything - identity, desire, all of it is shaped by merchandising. And so if we can find some small place or small amount of time where that isn't the case we feel that we're experiencing human life for a while. Does that make the sex hotter? I think it does make sex hotter. But also, sex in some way is a shortcut to deep communication with people, at least for the few moments that it lasts. And since desire is, at bottom, the desire to know or experience something we don't already have or know, what could be more exciting or pleasing than sex with an exotic foreigner? In the regimented world we live in, it's often difficult to get a glimpse of the hearts and minds of people who belong to a different class or different culture than ourselves. Yet in some way, sex is like a flashbulb that goes off, producing a short but visceral moment of intimacy that illuminates things that have been hidden from us before. When it happens with a foreigner it's an intense, exotic experience. Even if we are, ultimately, imprisoned in our worlds, the short escape that sex offers into another makes it worth it. Andy Horwitz's writing has appeared on Nerve.com, Heeb Magazine and other places. He edits the alternative performance blog Culturebot.org and co-produces The WYSIWYG Talent Show, the first-ever all-blogger series of readings and performances. He has also created several hit solo performances and run for Mayor of New York City.