Out of this World

Stephen Boyer; Parasite

Parasite, the debut novel by Stephen Boyer—who is genderqueer and uses the pronouns “they/their,” and is perhaps best known for their work compiling the Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology—is a subversive and wildly imagined work situated in the long tradition of outsider literature. Fittingly, it is the third book in Publication Studio’s Fellow Traveler’s series, which, the publisher says, “presents great new work that has been effectively ‘censored’ by the market.”

Boyer’s story follows Josh—a sexually adventurous and highly dissociative teenager. After he leaves his home and his Evangelical parents behind to escape the threat of gay conversion therapy he heads straight for San Francisco, where his subsequent exploits include a stint as a live-in houseboy sub, some work in porn, drag, daydreaming and some good old-fashioned hustling. But while Josh’s newfound “freedom” is intoxicating, it also comes at a price, and does little to assuage his feelings of alienation.

“The book is very much fiction, but very much based on my own experience,” Boyer tells me. “I was working at the St. James Infirmary [a clinic by and for sex workers] when I was first working on Parasite and heard so many crazy stories. I met so many people who had moved to San Francisco thinking they were going to find this wonderful queer life and ended up on the street, losing all their teeth.”

Parasite, which Boyer describes as “a little bit fiction, a little bit nonfiction, a little bit science fiction,” is the culmination of those stories—and seven years worth of writing, reading and revising.

“For me writing is a lot like sewing. I’m constantly reading things and taking that sentence and putting it in somewhere, or taking those three words and putting it in somewhere, you know, walking down the street and thinking something, texting myself, figuring out where it could go.”

The result is a book as varied and unusual as its mash-up of genres might suggest. Josh’s first-person narration is prone to long, surreal flights of fancy, some of which reveal a fascination with extraterrestrial life—a fascination Boyer shares with the protagonist.

“I’ve always been obsessed with UFOs and oddities, so I felt like that had to go into the story. Also I had this crazy moment with my friends when we were kids when we saw this thing that was a total UFO. I’ve never been abducted, but I like the idea that that’s possible and would love to be abducted and—” Boyer continues, laughing—“go away from here for a while. I thought maybe if I put it out there like that, I’ll get found.”

Of the relationship between their art and activism, Boyer says, “I go back and forth in my life between doing serious street activism and wanting to work on art. I feel like it’s a lot easier to sway minds through creations than by standing on the street yelling at people. Both have valid places in the world, but art is lasting.”

Stephen Boyer recommends: Inferno by Eileen Myles, Close to the Knives by David Wojnarowicz, Journey to the End of the Night by Louis-Ferdinand Céline