Today, MamaWriters is pleased to welcome New York Times Bestselling Author Suzanne Brockmann to join us.   Suzanne is the author of the fabulous Troubleshooter series (and if you haven’t read any, I can’t recommend them enough.  Get started with this Troubleshooter’s Sample PDF at her website.)  She also has an amazing new venture to tell us about below… so without further ado:

Suzanne Brockmann

JAMIE:  (to audience) So my mom is like the perfect mother. I can talk to her about anything. She’s totally awesome. Well, almost totally. She can get a little intense sometimes. She was calling to find out how the audition went. (into the phone) I guess at first I didn’t think it went well at all. (beat) Because I got interrupted by a phone call. (beat) No, no, not to me. God, no. The casting director got a call. (beat) I know. Anyway, that sucked, and I thought it was game over, but then, about five minutes ago – are you ready for this? (beat) I got a call back.

JENNIFER HOLLIS (played by SUGAR), screams so loudly, JAMIE holds his phone out from his ear. She emerges from the Greek Chorus and stands, downstage left.

JENNIFER:  Tell me, tell me! What part? Big? Little? What, what, what?

JAMIE:  Oh, my God, Mom, it’s big–it’s for Jimmie Shields, Billy’s boyfriend.

JENNIFER screams with joy again, and again, laughing, JAMIE holds the phone away from his ear.

JAMIE:  (laughing) Mom. You gotta stop that. The neighbors are gonna call 9-1-1.

JENNIFER:  I don’t care. You got a call back in a real movie! I’m so proud of you I don’t know what to do. Oh my God. You are perfect for this part!

JAMIE:  The good news is that you’re totally objective.

JENNIFER:  What does Harlan think?

JAMIE:  I haven’t told him yet. He’s still at work.

JENNIFER:  And you can’t call him while he’s at work?

JAMIE:  It’s hard for him to talk during the day.

JENNIFER:  It’s hard for him to talk – because he’s in the closet.

JAMIE:  Mom, give him a break, it’s a conservative place.

JENNIFER:  He’s out to his parents, though, isn’t he? (JAMIE is silent.) Oh, Jamie.

JAMIE:  Not everybody has a mother like you.

JENNIFER:  Well, they should. You have a kid, you love your kid, period, the end.  I have to tell you that I really don’t like you spending time with someone who’s ashamed to be himself. Because if he’s ashamed of himself, then isn’t he also ashamed of you?

From Looking for Billy Haines, by Suzanne Brockmann and Will McCabe

As a writer – and a mother – I’m in the middle of a huge adventure.  I’ve written a stage play that’s being produced Off-Broadway in New York City.  As a writer, I’m faced with a live audience nearly every night (seven shows a week, with matinees on Saturdays and Sundays), and wow, is that different.  Novelists, by nature, don’t have immediate feedback to their work.  Sure, there are readers who send me an e-mail when they finish reading my latest book, but it’s not as if I ever sit there, watching as readers turn pages and laugh through the funny parts, and cry through the sad parts.

But playwrights, in comparison, do get an instantaneous response with each new audience.  And this is a new experience for me as a writer — and not for the weak of heart.

As for my adventure as a mother, I’m being given a chance to tell a beautiful story about love and priorities — one that I hope will help change hearts and minds in terms of the ongoing fight for equal rights for gay Americans.

See, I’m a PFLAG mom.  (PFLAG stands for “Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays.”)  My wonderful, talented, creative, funny and kind son is gay.  And because he’s gay, there are some people, here in America, who feel he should therefore be a second-class citizen and not enjoy the same rights as heterosexual Americans.

And that’s just not okay with me.

I suspect that most of the mothers who read this blog have kids who are school age or younger.  (Although heads up, moms, the she-bear bristling and desire to protect and stand up for your kids doesn’t fade, even when they turn twenty-one.  Or twenty-four.  Or (I suspect) seventy-four.)

And through the years I’ve watched my beloved son Jason grow from the sweetest little boy, into a wonderful young man – a man of whom I am endlessly proud.  (See list of adjectives above.)

I suspected Jason was gay when he was about three years old.  I remember having a conversation with my husband about this:  What if Jason is gay?

We both immediately agreed that we loved him unconditionally and that it was of utmost importance that he grow up feeling good about himself.  See, when you recognize that your three-year-old is probably gay, if you had any doubts at all about the fact that being gay is completely natural, they dissolve on the spot.  (I wish I could introduce any skeptics regarding this to Jason at three, at seven, at eleven, at fourteen years old.  It’s so beyond clear that my little boy was a loving gift sent from a higher power – a child of God, if you will.)

But that question, What if Jason is gay? (because, of course, we didn’t know for sure, and we were careful to wait to let Jason define his sexual orientation for himself) stayed with me, and turned into a more specific question:  If Jason is gay, how can we give him the support and safe environment he needs so that he never feels he has to hide his true self from the world?

I didn’t want my beautiful son to take his brilliant, glowing light and be forced to conceal it.  Can you imagine how terrible it is to live in a world where “don’t ask, don’t tell” is considered a “solution?”  Don’t ask means you never get to ask about a fellow service person’s family life.  Don’t tell means they never get to tell you about their vacations with their life-partners or even the dinner they shared last night.  Plus, the need for secrecy implies that there is something wrong with being gay – and there is not.

I’m constantly astonished when I hear of parents kicking their children out of their homes for being gay.  To me, it’s as absurd as the idea of telling your kid to pack up and leave because she’s left-handed.

But okay.  There I was, all those years ago, with my little boy dancing about the room in his gold lamé cape, singing along to his favorite Broadway musicals, with a picture of Bette Midler in a place of honor in his bedroom…  (Stereotypical?  Maybe.  But all his choices.  And when your kid desperately wants the soundtrack to The Secret Garden for Christmas, Santa delivers.)

How could I protect my son from the people who hate him without knowing him?  From the people who insist that he will go to hell?  From the people who think he needs to be “fixed?”

The sad answer is that I couldn’t and I can’t.  But what I could do was make sure he grew up knowing that he was loved, in a home where being gay was something we talked about openly – it was not unheard of or kept secret.  Some men fall in love with men, some women with women.  And aren’t they lucky for finding love in a world where there’s too much hatred and divide?  And how about that Ellen DeGeneres.  I bet her mother is super-proud of her…

We were gender-neutral, too, when we discussed Jason’s future.  Someday you’ll find someone wonderful, someone with whom you’ll want to grow old…

And we absolutely, positively outlawed all gay-bashing – even as jokes – in our house.

PFLAG was and is a wonderful resource, filled with terrific information.  (www.PFLAG.org)

Jason came out to me when he was fifteen years old, and I was so proud of his courage and honesty.  Some years later, he admitted how scared he had been of my rejection – and this in a home where we’d all but laid out a red carpet for him.  (It really makes you think about the courage of kids who come out to parents who aren’t as welcoming.)

These days, Jason’s not just out, he’s Out, with a capital O.  He lets his light shine – and I’m so proud of him, that just like fictional Jamie’s mom, Jennifer, I often don’t know what to do!

So okay, that’s me as a mother.  Now let me tell you about my current project, Looking for Billy Haines.

A few years ago, I discovered Billy Haines.  I was forty-four years old before I first heard about him – and I consider myself to be a well-educated woman — as well as old-movie-literate, and a fan of the MGM era in Hollywood.  But I found myself blinking in disbelief at the idea that Billy Haines – a movie actor I’d never heard of before – was the top male box office draw in 1930.  We’re talking a shining star in the firmament in the style of, say, a Tom Cruise or a Harrison Ford.

Except – here’s the really cool part – just like my son Jason, Billy Haines was openly, unapologetically gay.

The way the legend goes is that after he’d successfully made the leap from silent films to talkies, MGM chief Louis Mayer offered him a new contract – on the condition that Billy marry a starlet.  (Pick a starlet, any starlet…)  But Billy refused to be jammed into the closet.  In fact, he told Mayer that he’d drop his longtime boyfriend, a former Navy man named Jimmie Shields, only if Mayer would divorce his wife.  Mayer said, “That’s outrageous!”  And Billy agreed.  In the end, he walked away from his movie career – and went on to spend the rest of his life in an out and honest relationship with his beloved Jimmie.  (They both died in 1973, after Billy lost a battle with lung cancer.)

When Billy left the world of movies, he didn’t look back.  He started a new business – and became the biggest, most successful interior designer in Southern California, with Jimmie always at his side.

Joan Crawford described Billy and Jimmie’s relationship as the happiest marriage in Hollywood.

Can you imagine?  Billy and Jimmie’s story is a romantic tale for the ages – a true American love story.  And I’d lived for a full forty-four years before I first caught wind of it.

As the mother of a gay son, I wanted to shout this story of love and commitment and courage – incredible courage – from the rooftops.  This is the type of man I hope my son Jason will find and marry.  Someone who prioritizes love over fame and fortune and career.  Someone who is willing to walk beside him, openly, in sunlight.  Someone like the truly remarkable Billy Haines.

As a writer, I took hold of that desire to tell Billy’s story and I wrote this stage play with music and dance — choosing a storytelling-vehicle that’s vastly different from my usual romance novels.

(And just a heads up -Looking for Billy Haines isn’t about Billy and Jimmie, although there’s a subplot that tells their story.  The play focuses on a 20-something young gay actor who lives in New York City, who gets an audition for a biographical movie about Billy Haines.  In the course of finding out who Billy was, the young actor begins to question his own relationship with a closeted man.)

My adventure into professional theatre is ongoing.  Looking for Billy Haines runs seven shows a week, through May 22^nd at Theatre Row’s Lion Theatre, on 42^nd Street in New York City.  It stars my talented and brilliant son, who not only grew up to be a terrific young man, but also a wicked great tap dancer and actor.

If you’re planning to come to town, and would like to see the play, you can use discount code STAR to get $39 tickets (regularly $49) from www.TicketCentral.com

And be sure to stick around after the show to say hi.  I’ll be the one beaming with pride.

Suzanne Brockmann is the award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of fifty books, and the mother of two wonderful, grownup children.  She usually lives in Sarasota, Florida, but is currently a resident of New York City.

www.SuzanneBrockmann.com

www.LookingForBillyHaines.com

Friend me on facebook, or join my facebook group, Suz Brockmann’s Troubleshooters World!

NOTE TO COMMENTERS:  Suzanne’s play opens today (Thursday) so it may take her a day or two to get back to respond to comments. Please check back on Friday or this weekend!