Andrew Beierle on his second novel: First Person Plural

Did you hear the one about the gay conjoined twin?

"My twin brother Porter and I have been inseparable since birth. That's not merely an observation. It's a diagnosis. We are conjoined twins ... we live cheek by jowl in what most people would consider one body ... within our single rib cage are three lungs, two gall bladders, two stomachs and two hearts. An important distinction: two very different hearts."

First Person Plural, the second novel by former journalist Andrew Beierle, is an astounding story of two people who share a body. It's a far cry from Beierle's first book, the campy The Winter of our Discotheque, soberly examining two young men's struggle to live in a sometimes hostile world while trying to maintain their own separate lives and identities - a struggle that becomes all the more complex when they discover that they have different sexual orientations. Bay Windows spoke with Beierle about what inspired him to tell the twins' tale, and what's universal about their singular situation.

Q: I think this book has the most unusual premise I've come across in ... I don't know how long.
A: You know, a friend of mine, when I told him about the idea, said, "I'm worried about you. I can't imagine spending the next couple of years in close proximity to characters like that." But it didn't turn out to be strange or grotesque. I grew to love the characters. The idea started as a short story that I entered in a contest sponsored by the Lambda Literary Foundation. Felice Picano was one of the judges, and afterwards he said the reason the story didn't do better was that it needed to be a novella or a novel.

Q: What did the short story cover?
A: It was the wedding. Porter was getting married, and some of the back story in chapters one and two was included. Mostly it was about the wedding and the complications that Owen knew would ensue

Q: Why do you think people feel hesitant about the subject matter?
A: I think a lot of people are just uncomfortable with the subject. In some of the reviews and comments, I've seen people say they were queasy about picking up the book. The idea grossed them out. There's a level of intimacy involved in Owen and Porter's relationship that I think people are uncomfortable with. And people are queasy about people who are different, people who are freaks. I did some research into freak studies - which is actually kind of an academic discipline, it's sometimes called disability studies-

Q: That doesn't sound very PC.
A: It's like gay people calling themselves queer. People who are studying freaks have adopted that language. Anyway, I did a lot of research about freaks and sideshows and why they were popular. Revulsion is part of it. The other part is being able to feel privileged about not being a freak. And then the novel became so complex as it went on, it took on all these metaphorical implications. I believe that gay people are really the last minority about which it's acceptable to have reservations. Nobody who is even remotely educated or sophisticated uses the n-word anymore, or any racial epithets. But I believe it's kind of acceptable to call people faggots and queer. It's not just a matter of language, it's the way gay people are treated. I mean, I never had any problems coming out personally ... but at the same time, I still feel self conscious about my gayness. It's like gay people have two heads! There's a lot of metaphorical stuff in the book about the correspondence between people who are marginalized for being freaks, and gay people.

Q: The irony is that the twins are in the public eye, they become rock stars, yet Owen is in the closet.
A: Exactly. And their mom, who loves them and suffered through everything with raising a two-headed child, cannot bring herself to embrace the fact that one of her sons is gay. I got some flack from some readers about whether that was believable. But we know that parents are sometimes the last people to come around. She was a tough character to write.

Q: Do you have different thoughts about her now? Would you write her differently?
A: No, I don't think so. I worked on this book for five years. I got to a point where I knew the book was done. There was nothing left for me to say about these characters.

Q: Of course, you could pick up the story if you wanted to.
A: I don't want to. I really wanted the story to remain somewhat ambiguous. The other thing is that I have other ideas I want to work on.

Q: First Person Plural is a lot more serious than your first novel. Is this how you're developing, or was it more about wanting a change of pace?
A: It's how I'm developing. I actually started writing Discotheque my senior year of college. That took 30 years to gestate! I was not even serious about writing. So the style in Winter is very florid. And I got that out of my system. The other thing was that Winter was in third person, and First Person is first person. And no one really thinks in the florid terms of my first novel. That was my attempt at writing in italics. Whereas First Person was a simple, straightforward story that I tried to have unfold in a conversational style. So yes, First Person is a more mature and subtle book.

Q: Speaking of point of view, did you ever consider writing from Porter's point of view?
A: I did consider that. It could have been interesting. Maybe having a straight person telling about his gay brother would sell more books than the other way around. I think the breakthrough in understanding Porter comes when they're in bed and they talk about how Porter wants to have a baby. I think it's the most sensitive and vulnerable that Porter is in the entire book, when he says he wants someone to love him without understanding that he's a freak. It was hard to make him a sympathetic character, because he's kind of holding Owen back, but that scene gives him a lot of depth. I could have written a book in alternating chapters. There's a book called The Girls by Lori Lansen, which I believe uses alternating chapters.

Q: We talked about revulsion, but there's also a fascination, isn't there? Because there's that book, there was the musical Sideshow, and last year the movie Brothers of the Head...
A: There's always a fascination with ... the people that you are not. I think that unconjoined twins are also fascinating. People are fascinated to see two people who appear the same. It leads you into thinking about ... what if there were another you? To touch on the metaphorical aspect, the book's slogan was going to be: Physiognomy is destiny. Which is to say, being gay is destiny, because it changes your whole life. And this is why I had Owen and Porter be very attractive, to emphasize what different lives they would have had separately.

Q: Why this particular form of conjoined twins?
A: Because the most important part was having them share the penis. That's central to the story, it increases the dichotomy between straight and gay. I wanted them to be as singular as possible yet be two people. And this can happen, in fact there are twins living in the Midwest right now who have this condition.

Q: Did you contact these twins?
A: No. I'm shying away from saying their names because I don't want to seem to exploit them or invade their privacy. But I would welcome the opportunity to meet them, and I'd love to know what they think about the book.