Novelist Gary Goldstein Looks Back at 1970s Gay Boston

Prolific screenwriter, film critic, and Los Angeles Times culture writer Gary Goldstein has written many rom-coms for the Hallmark Channel – several of them holiday themed – and he's even penned one of the channel's (still very few) queer-themed films, last year's "Friends & Family Christmas."

Goldstein brings the same blend of comedic and dramatic sensibilities to his novels, the most recent of which, "Please Come to Boston," merges nostalgia for a time of youthful exploration and a simpler era (college in the mid-1970s) with the complications of an unexpected love triangle. But the book has dramatic heft, too, as its trio of main characters work out tangled bonds of lust, love, and loyalty. The inexperienced Nicky tries to figure out where he fits on the spectrum of human sexuality; his more worldly friend Lori, who's still trying to get over her last boyfriend, wades into romance once more, though with some trepidation ("Be careful who you lose your virginity to," she warns Nicky); and Joe, the magnetic, athletic, and sexually adventurous man they both end up involved with, refuses to look his same-sex desires in the eye, even though they overtake him from time to time.

Bookending the story is a glimpse at Nicky in his later years. Now almost 70, he returns to Boston, where he has an appointment with the ghosts of the past – and the man he never got over.

It's obvious that Goldstein loves these characters, and the reader can't help but love them too. But, the author cautions, "Please Come to Boston" is not a steamy roman à clef. Rather, it's a way of looking back at a place and time – college days in Boston fifty years ago – when sex was liberated but still messy, confusing, fun, and, even pre-AIDS, a little dangerous – especially when it was something a young man yearned for with other young men.

"In writing a book these days, there's such a push for authenticity – for the whole concept of, 'Why are you the only one who can really write this story?'" Goldstein tells EDGE. "What can I bring authentically? What story can I write that I can tell authentically?" The answer to that question was this new novel, and, Goldstein adds, while its core intended audience might be "gay men of a certain age," it's something that anyone who has ever been young and in love (or lust) will relate to.

EDGE caught up with Gary Goldstein to hear his thoughts about nostalgia and "what might have beens," the writing of sex scenes, and the fine art of the rom-com.

EDGE: You have several Hallmark Christmas movies to your credit, as well as the 2011 rom-com "Politics of Love," and your first novel is also kind of a rom-com. You have various stage works, as well. What attracts you to the rom-com genre?

Gary Goldstein: I'm not a genre writer per se, but if I had to pick a category, rom-coms are probably the closest. I like writing comedy. When it comes to Hallmark movies and all the TV movies I've written, by and large, they're rom-coms. I've written a couple of mysteries for them, but even then those mysteries have been romantic comedies within the mysteries. Even my first book, "The Last Birthday Party," I didn't write it to be a rom-com but it got classified that way. I was happy with that. It just became something that I felt comfortable doing, and something that I feel like I bring something to the table with. If I get the work. I'll take it.

EDGE: Your first novel had gay supporting characters; one of your Christmas movies was about two women; and now you have written a novel that is an out-and-out gay romance. Is it an arrival for you to have written a straight-up gay male love story?

Gary Goldstein: It's a good question, but there's a whole other side of my career where I've written stage plays and had a number of them produced. My first three stage plays were all gay romantic comedies, and they [were written] a long time ago, way before it was de rigueur to do this stuff.

Writing, "Please Come to Boston" was interesting because I was looking back on the period of time that I went to college. It's not my story per se, but it is kind of one of those "what if?" stories: "What if back then I had more self-knowledge than I did?" It just wasn't in my head at the time, even though I look back on it, and it's like, "Oh, of course I was [gay]." So, what if I had been maybe a little more intrepid than I was, and a little more self-aware than I was, and these opportunities presented themselves – a guy like Joe, a woman like Lori – would that triangle happened? Nicky's journey is, in a way, what I wish my journey had been.

EDGE: It's funny how close the novel is to my sophomore year in college.

Gary Goldstein: A lot of people say that!

[Laughter]

EDGE: Reading the book, it's so gutting but also so cathartic. As the author, did you have that same experience?

Gary Goldstein: Absolutely. I'm still so moved by it, not because I wrote such a great book but because these emotions are so raw. I don't know if I pushed the envelope in this book, but I wanted it to feel authentic. The sex between the guys in the book never gets really intense; it's not "Fellow Travelers." But I felt it was honest, and even though it stops at a certain point, I felt it was real. There's an innocence to it, which is what I wanted, because any experiences I had back then, there was an innocence to it. You didn't quite know what you were doing, but you did it.

Gay men of a certain age are the core audience for this book, just because I think the emotions are so relatable, particularly for men who went through what Nicky went through at that time. I know way too many people who were gay, but they ended up marrying women, having children, getting divorced, ending up with guys when they were in their 30s and 40s. That was just the trajectory.

The emotional quotient was very important to me. When you can tap into a reader's emotions, they can say, "I remember that; I relate to that; I remember that feeling." Or, "That's my brother. That was his feeling; that's what he went through." I think a lot of people have been reading this book feeling that way.

EDGE: Is that why you didn't want to get into explicit sex scenes?

Gary Goldstein: I want this to be a mainstream read, and I think, by and large, it is. What I'm finding is that straight people who read the book, they're moved by the whole thing. People have seen a ton [of more explicit sex] in movies, on streaming, or whatever, so that's not a big deal. But when you include the emotional quotient, that's where it really hits people.

EDGE: Does being an arts writer and film critic for the LA Times enable you to put your finger on the pulse of our culture in a way that lets you find what the gaps are, and fill those gaps in your work?

Gary Goldstein: I think that does inform the writing in terms of the book. I was trying to go back to what was the zeitgeist then. That was the hard thing to do, but I loved doing that because you're dealing with the zeitgeist back then, and then you're dealing with the zeitgeist today, in just the way people relate to each other and communicate with each other, and how people look at gay life now versus then. Obviously, there are plenty of issues now, and we're not out of the woods in any way, but we certainly have a lot more impact and a lot more acceptance.

EDGE: The audiobook version of "Please Come to Boston" is about to be released. Can you say a word about that?

Gary Goldstein: I'm really happy with how it came out. My narrator, Dan Levy – not that Dan Levy, but he's got a great voice! – did a wonderful job bringing the text and the characters to life in so many engaging and evocative ways. It was so interesting to listen to the chapters as he sent them in for notes and to hear how he interpreted the line readings. Sometimes they were as I'd imagined them; other times he brought a fun, warm, or smart new spin to a passage that really enhanced it. I was surprised to find myself laughing or tearing up at the audio in places I'd never expected, or had read so many times before. I took that as a good sign.

EDGE: How does it stack up to audio versions of other books you've written?

Gary Goldstein: An audiobook was done for my first novel, "The Last Birthday Party," which I think also came out really well. It was a different narrator, who brought his own sensibility and interpretation to the text, so it kind of stands on its own.

I'd say most audiobooks are a reflection of its author and narrator, in the same way a film or TV role might vary from actor to actor. They're unique collaborations.

EDGE: Were there revisions to the text for the audio version?

Gary Goldstein: Not really. It was pretty much read as written. But there were a few times where we added in a "he thought" or a longer pause to demarcate a character's inner thought from dialogue that might follow. Things like that may be clear on the page, but less so in audio. Working on one of these, you realize there are many differences between how one "hears" a book versus how one physically read one.

"Please Come to Boston" is available now in print as well as the newly-released audio book edition.